Piece of Cake (85 page)

“I'm awfully sorry,” Cox said, “but you see the coffin has been … um … sealed.”

“Scaled, is it?” Burnett said. “Would that mean they've screwed the lid on?”

“It would. I mean, yes, they have.”

“Ah, well, that's no great problem, is it?” He took a short
screwdriver from his pocket. “There would be no disrespect, would there? Half a tick, that's all it would take.”

“Look: I'm afraid a screwdriver won't do,” Cox said. “It's just not on, I'm afraid.”

Burnett looked at him, not understanding.

“Take care of this lady for a moment,” the adjutant told Cox. He took Burnett outside. “If you insist,” he said, “I'll have the coffin opened, but believe me you won't recognize anything you see and your wife will be very upset.”

It took a moment for Burnett to realize what this meant. “Maurice wasn't just … you know … killed, then?” He didn't want to look at Kellaway. He brushed dust from his bowler hat with his thick, strong fingers. He was accustomed to death and corpses, funerals and wakes; they were an important part of family life, a necessary and satisfying ritual. But this was different, horribly different. This was more than death. This was something so ugly and agonizing that it had to be shut away. This was pain and suffering so severe that it could hurt others, even after the body had died. This had the makings of a nightmare. “We thought … I suppose we thought … maybe a bullet or something …”

“Flight Lieutenant Moran was shot down in flames,” Kellaway said. “He was burned to death.”
There, you stupid civilian
, he thought,
you asked for it, now you've got it, so can we please get on with the job? Thank you
.

Burnett had to take a digestive tablet before he could go inside. He said nothing to his wife; simply shook his head. The funeral went off all right. Cox noticed that the chaplain said
Mo
ran instead of
Moran
. It made Flip sound like an idiot.

They changed from best blue back to flying kit and landed at Bodkin Hazel at four o'clock, just in time for tea, except that Jerry didn't believe in tea. The first cups were being filled when the squadron got scrambled.

Sometimes the
Luftwaffe
made cock-ups too.

Thirty Heinkel 111's were three miles ahead, circling the Isle of Sheppey at fourteen thousand. Barton leveled out at sixteen thousand—fourteen for the controller and two for luck—and called the tally-ho. With the sun on his left and the sky bright and empty, he had a huge view; and what he could see, in addition to the Essex
flatlands and all the Thames estuary, and half of Kent, was that Jerry had cocked it up. These slow Heinkels had gone on ahead expecting to rendezvous with their escort, and now they were having to stooge about and wait for the escort to turn up. In fact he could see the escort belting along the north Kent coast: twenty or so Messerschmitt 110's. No doubt the kraut R/T was crackling with bad temper.

The 110's started to climb as soon as they saw the Hurricanes, and the Heinkels came out of their orbit and headed west.

“Mango Leader to Blue Leader,” Barton called. “Your flight can handle those fighters. Better go now.”

“Okay, Mango Leader,” CH3 said. With Cox away, he was leading “B” flight. The squadron divided, “B” flight turning toward the escort; but immediately that happened, the Messerschmitts also divided. Half of them made for the Heinkels again.

“In and out fast,” Barton ordered. “Beat 'em up, shake 'em up, then back on top PDQ.”

They dived: three sections in line abreast, each wingman a few lengths behind his leader. When they leveled out, the leaders raced at the flank of the raid, fired, vaulted the outside bombers, climbed steeply away. Half a second later, the wingmen did the same. Bing Macfarlane clearly saw faces at the glossy, porpoise-like nose of one Heinkel, an upflung arm, a gaping mouth; then he boomed over the fuselage, snatching the bomber's aerial with his tail-wheel. It was enough to make any pilot twitch; Bing himself twitched a little at the cat's-cradle of tracer all around him; and several Heinkel pilots lost control. One began wallowing violently, like a dinghy in surf. Another wandered suicidally across the formation. A third started drifting back on the next bomber, but there was an excuse for that: his port engine was laying down a broad black carpet of smoke.

Barton checked the scene while his flight regrouped. A mile or two away, “B” flight was roaming around one group of Me-110's. These had changed formation: now they formed a perfect circle, ten or a dozen planes chasing each other's tails, endlessly.
Extraordinary
, Barton thought.
Where's that going to get them?
Below him, the rest of the escort had reached the bombers and were zigzagging alongside in an effort to match their trudging speed.

“Same again, ‘A' flight,” Barton called. “In and out fast. Don't mix it.”

As the attack went down, two or three of the big Messerschmitts swung away from the raid. Lacking speed, they were more cumbersome than ever. The Hurricanes swept past them, stormed into the Heinkels' flank, soared away to safety. Craning his neck to look behind, Barton saw heavy flak bursting a few hundred yards ahead of the bombers. As he leveled out, they were rocking and bouncing wildly on the broken, smoky air and not liking it. One plane jettisoned its bombload, then another, then six at once. Suddenly half the raid was turning back. Barton turned his flight loose. “Forget the escort, stay out of trouble,” he ordered. “Hit the stragglers.”

Haducek and Macfarlane formed White Section. They fell away at once. Barton, with Brook as his wingman, circled for a while and then went after the Heinkel with the shot-up engine, now trailing well behind the rest. Cattermole, leading Yellow Section, was in no such hurry. He waited and watched, while the raid straggled southeast over Kent, and Steele-Stebbing guarded his tail. Haducek and Macfarlane were streaking in and out making fools of the escort, closing to point-blank range, scoring hits, dashing off. Eventually, a bomber lurched and stumbled and sheered away, slicing the air like a big fish dodging the rushing current.

“Come on, Iron Filings,” Cattermole said. “Let's murder that invalid.”

It was not so easy.

The Me-110's did not interfere: their brief, it seemed, was to stick with the mass of bombers: stragglers were abandoned. This straggler defended himself cleverly and desperately. Hopeless to try to outrun the fighters. Pointless to remain at height and shoot it out with them. So the German pilot used the advantages left to him: size, slowness, skill.

By making a series of diving turns he kept the fighters behind him and he gave his belly and upper gunners repeated chances of a shot. The Heinkel had a vast wing, nearly a thousand square feet, and he made the most of it, side-slipping and skidding almost sideways, dragging his speed so low that the Hurricanes kept having to break away before they overshot. It made the bomber a
tantalizingly awkward target. And all the time the crew kept flinging out stuff to lighten the plane: ammo boxes, radio, sheets of armor plating, fire extinguishers, all came whirling past the Hurricanes. Worst of all, oil spattered their windscreens. For the Heinkel had been hit, and badly.

Steele-Stebbing fired off his last rounds as they crossed the coast. The Heinkel was down to a thousand feet but France was clearly visible. Then, as if it had tired of the whole silly business, the Heinkel banked to the right and headed for the Atlantic. Flames made a bright red garland, tipped with yellow, around its starboard engine.

The two Hurricanes flew alongside and watched. The bomber remained horizontal but it was sinking steadily. Nobody had baled out. Perhaps they were dead, or perhaps they had dumped their parachutes to save weight. Five hundred feet. The sea shone like tarmac after rain. Cattermole saw movement under the fuselage, as if someone were waving. He edged closer and lower. It was a man's legs, sticking out of the belly-hatch. They flexed and worked, running on air. The man was stuck in the hatch.

Four hundred feet. Speed, say, a hundred and fifty knots. When the Heinkel hit the sea, the impact would rip his legs off.

Cattermole turned, lined up the bomber in his sights, closed to a hundred yards, judged the deflection to a nicety, and poured eight streams of bullets into the dangling man. His legs kicked once and then trailed in the slipstream. A minute later the plane buried itself in a mound of foam, and when the foam subsided there was nothing left but the scarred sea.

“Home for tea, Yellow Two,” Cattermole said; but the patrol was not over yet. They were crossing the South Downs at two thousand feet, only a few minutes from Bodkin Hazel, when Cattermole's engine died.

“Feeling tired?” Steele-Stebbing asked. Already the Hurricane was sliding downhill, and the angle steepened as its airspeed fell away.

“It's this cheap knicker-elastic,” Cattermole said. He was checking his fuel, switching tanks. No joy.

“My word, it looks awfully bumpy down there.” It did: hills, woods, valleys. Even a quarry.

“Save me some tea.” Cattermole searched ahead but he couldn't
see anything flat and open. The late-afternoon sun flickered on lots of glass and made him squint. “And send a car to pick me up.”

“I will if you ask me nicely.”

“Get fucked.”

“In that case you can walk home. And no tea, either.”

At twelve hundred feet the bumps looked even bumpier. Cattermole uncoupled everything and baled out. Steele-Stebbing circled and saw him land, and flew on home. “He's not far from Ashford,” he told Barton. “By the way, how did we get on?”

“Your Heinkel makes four, plus a couple of 110's.”

“I say! Not a bad show.”

“That was before Skull got to work. Now it's only two Heinkels and half a 110.” Barton shrugged. “Who cares, anyway?”

Air Commodore Bletchley's car was waiting when they landed at Brambledown. Barton got driven straight to the station commander's office. Group Captain Dalgleish was there with Bletchley and a wing commander without wings whom Barton did not know. They all had expressions of deep concern. “You lost a kite this afternoon,” Bletchley said. “About half-past four. It crashed. Have you heard from the pilot?”

“Not directly, sir. The police phoned to say he'd baled out and landed on somebody's farm.”

“So he's alive?”

“Presumably.”

The answer did not seem to please them. “Had he been in action?” Dalgleish asked. “I mean, actually involved in combat?”

“Yes.”

“Well, that's something, I suppose. I mean, he might be wounded for all we know. Head injury. Paralyzed, even.”

“Not paralyzed,” the wing commander said. “Not if he managed to bale out.”

“No, I suppose not,” Dalgleish said grudgingly. “Still, semiparalysed, maybe.”

“I can easily arrange to have him maimed, if you like,” Barton said. “I mean, we have the weapons.” The wing commander's eyes opened wide.

“He was obviously suffering from shock,” Bletchley declared.

“His controls must have been useless,” Dalgleish said. “Shot to pieces.”

“Not according to his wingman,” Barton said. “He told me it was just engine-failure, he—”

“And what he doesn't know,” Bletchley said, “is the kite crashed into a row of houses in Ashford and killed four people, including an infant.”

“Oh,” Barton said.

“So it must have been out of control, mustn't it?” Dalgleish said. “Otherwise it wouldn't have happened.”

“Well, that's certainly a point of view, sir,” Barton said.

“Look: it's absolutely paramount that the press don't get wind of this,” Bletchley said. “No loose talk in pubs, no gossip in letters home. Understand, Barton? Tell your chaps to forget it ever happened. And I want to see that pilot as soon as he turns up.”

“Right, sir.”

“And Barton,” Dalgleish said, “I know it's difficult upstairs, but can't you do something about your squadron's language? It all gets relayed over the Tannoy in the ops room, you know, and the Waafs hear you fellows stiffing and blinding like fishwives.”

“If the controllers didn't mess us about, sir, we wouldn't have so much to swear at.”

“They have a very difficult job,” Bletchley said.

“Yes, sir. And some of them can't do it.”

“Be fair, old boy. What about all those kills you've got?”

“And what about all the scrambles that lead to nothing?”

Dalgleish sighed. “You expect rather a lot, don't you? Is there anything else we can do for you?”

“Yes, sir, since you ask: I'd like fuel-injection, a radio that transmits more than forty miles, and a catering officer who knows what peas and beans do to the average fighter pilot's stomach at twenty thousand feet. A couple of days ago some of my chaps got scrambled after lunch and they nearly blew themselves in half.”

Dalgleish made a note, and looked at the wing commander. “Your turn,” he said.

“I'm in charge of accounts,” the wing commander told Barton.

“Ah! You've got our back-pay?”

“Not yet, but don't worry. The matter is being pursued.”

Bletchley said: “That means they've lost the files.”

“Oh no, sir. I can assure you it's being very actively pursued.”

“That means they've lost the files,” Bletchley said, “but they're looking for them.”

The wing commander gave Bletchley a bleak little smile. “Very droll,” he murmured. “The matter of arrears is, I'm afraid, out of my hands,” he told Barton. “What concerns me at the moment is the size of some of your officers' mess-bills. To be frank, they're living far beyond their income.”

He produced a typewritten list. Barton looked at the names and the amounts.

“You see?” the wing commander said. “I'm afraid I shall have to have a word with them.”