Season Of Darkness (32 page)

“I know what take a leak means, Constable. Go on.”

“Well, I had rather a lot to, er, discharge, sir and I noticed
that I was making a hole in the dead leaves. I thought I could see something underneath. I called to Eager and Mr. Richards to come over and take a look.”

“I hope you’d finished pissing by then.”

“Yes, sir. Anyway we soon saw that something was buried there. Not too deep though. We pulled it out and found it was this suitcase. It’s locked but it’s quite heavy. I thought we’d better bring it straight back to the station.”

“You don’t think it’s a bomb, do you sir?” asked Richards.

“Good Lord, I hope you had a listen before you brought it to my office. Your ears are as good as mine.” He put his ear to the side of the case but couldn’t hear any ominous ticking, nor did he expect to. He had a good idea what the suitcase contained. He had a try at snapping open the locks. They didn’t budge. “I don’t suppose you found the key handy, did you?”

“No, sir. Sorry.”

“All right, we’ll have to pry it open. Give me your trusty Swiss army knife, sergeant.”

Gough took the knife out of his pocket and handed it to Tyler.

The locks yielded easily.

“Let’s see what Father Christmas sent us,” said Tyler.

He lifted the lid.

Inside the suitcase was a radio transmitter, clean and gleaming.

The chief constable of the Shropshire constabulary, Lieutenant Colonel Horace Golding, was not happy. He was snuffling and puffing at the end of the line like an asthmatic piggy.

“I don’t understand why I wasn’t informed earlier, Tyler.”

“We only found the transmitter a couple of hours ago, sir. I rang your office right away but you hadn’t come in yet so I
left a message for you to call me as soon as possible. I did say it was urgent, sir.”

“Yes, well, not all calls that are said to be urgent actually are.”

“That explains it, sir. I did wonder why it took you so long. You were considering the merit of the case.”

Golding sniffed. “When I say I didn’t understand why I wasn’t informed earlier, I’m not simply referring to that. I mean the fact that you have two murders on your hands. Two young girls. Land Army gals, I understand.”

“That’s right, sir.”

“Lady Somerville herself rang me earlier today. She is most alarmed. Not only is she concerned for the safety of the rest of the girls under her care, she is most anxious that nothing besmirch the reputation of the Land Army. There are some well-brought-up young women in the ranks. We don’t want to scare them away, do we?”

“No, sir. But so far there is no clear evidence to suggest that any other Land Army girl will be targeted. I’m pursuing the possibility of a lover’s quarrel.”

Tyler wished he was really as confident as he was sounding. For all he knew the killer was a barmy farmer out to eliminate this scourge of buxom young women who wore trousers. In a world gone mad, anything was possible. Besides, the discovery of the radio transmitter might put a different complexion on the matter.

Golding was continuing to natter at him. “We must get all divisions involved.”

“I believe the situation is in hand, sir. I’m sure manpower is short everywhere.”

“That is the case. I have had a request from Chief Constable Davis at the Shrewsbury constabulary for extra help to deal with the visit of one of the royal family. We don’t know which
one yet, but it will be an important occasion for the town and a great boost to morale, so naturally he wants everything to proceed smoothly.”

“Naturally, sir.” A visit from some no-chinned cousin twice removed was more important than bringing justice to two young women from the east end of London, thought Tyler, but knew he was being contrary. He hadn’t yet asked for help and didn’t intend to unless he had no choice. He also thought Golding was taking the matter of the radio rather casually. Whatever happened to national security? However, the chief constable returned to the subject.

“Now then. As soon as I heard that you had discovered a buried transmitter, I telephoned the secret service branch of the war office. They said they will have one of their men come over right away. Do you have the damn thing secure?”

Tyler wanted to say, “Well no actually. I thought I’d put it out in the town centre so somebody could pick it up and have fun.”

“Yes, sir. Quite secure.”

“Good. An agent will be with you in about half an hour, I understand.”

“Half an hour?”

“Yes. They’re virtually up the road. MI5 has been operating a base in Whitchurch since May.”

Tyler exhaled noisily. “Perhaps as police inspector for the town, I might have been informed, sir.”

“It’s all highly hush-hush. The fewer people who know the better.”

“What exactly are they doing here?”

“I’m not going to answer that right now, Tyler. You can speak to the director himself. What he tells you is at his discretion.”

If he could have reached through the wire and wrapped it
around the chief constable’s scrawny neck, Tyler would have. There had been a mutual antipathy between him and Golding from the beginning. The chief constable was known as a “by the book” man. An army man who didn’t have a clue about policing, but did have a lot of highly placed friends in Whitehall that he could enjoy chewing the fat with. Tyler had actually heard him say, “Can’t get good recruits these days.” As if he was oblivious to the fact that the young men who might have joined the police force were being conscripted into His Majesty’s army.

Golding snuffled again. “I have to go now. Please keep me informed as to the progress of the case on a daily basis.”

“Certainly, sir.”

After they hung up, Tyler remained at his desk. It was all very well to prance and stick out his chest, but he felt no further forward with his case. Whether or not the transmitter had anything to do with the murder of Elsie and Rose he had no idea. And what the hell it was doing in the Acton Woods he couldn’t imagine, except clearly it was serious if MI5 was paying him a visit. He felt like a useless prat.

There was a tap on the door and Gough popped his head in.

“A Mr. Grey to see you, sir.”

“Who’s he when he’s at home?”

“I don’t know, sir, but he said you were expecting him.”

“What the f– Oh shite.” It had to be the MI5 man. “Show him in. And make us some tea or coffee, will you.”

“I’m not sure we have coffee, sir.”

“See what you can find. He’s probably the kind of bloke that will only drink coffee. And some biscuits.”

“I’ll do my best, sir. I didn’t expect we’d be entertaining the gentry today.”

He withdrew, and Tyler shut his own dirty tea cup into the drawer.

The door opened and Gough ushered in a tall, bespectacled man in a grey trilby and baggy tweed suit. He looked like a schoolmaster. Tyler came from behind his desk and they shook hands. Grey’s hand was dry and bony.

“Please sit down, Mr. Grey. Can I offer you something, a cup of tea? Coffee?”

“Good heavens, if you have coffee I’d love that. I haven’t had any in ages.”

He had a slight accent that Tyler couldn’t quite place but might have been Dorset. He went to the door and called through to Gough to bring them some coffee. The sergeant held up a bottle of Camp Coffee and pointed at it, silently questioning.

“That’ll do nicely, Sergeant, thank you. We’ll both partake.”

The last time he’d drunk Camp Coffee Essence, Tyler had loathed it, but he wanted to go step for step with the new man. He returned to his desk. He’d half expected the agent to be having a look at the suitcase, but he wasn’t. He was studying one of Tyler’s photographs. The winning football team from C district. They’d triumphed over their archrivals from the Bridgenorth E division at last year’s championships.

“You play football I see. What position?”

“Centre half.”

Grey turned around and smiled. “Football is a game I enjoy to watch but alas was never good enough to play. Not well co-ordinated.”

Another tap and Gough entered with a tray. He’d found some biscuits somewhere and decent china cups and saucers. Tyler wondered how he’d managed that in so short a time. He moved a file folder off the desk to make room for the tray.

Grey took one of the cups and sipped at the turgid-looking coffee. He beamed. “Wonderful. It makes a change from the ubiquitous tea, doesn’t it?”

Tyler was certain now the man had been a schoolmaster. Who the hell would use a word like ubiquitous in ordinary conversation? He drank some of the coffee, which he found as unpalatable as ever, and waited. There was something rather peculiar about the way his visitor was behaving. He’d expected a secret service man to be quite excited about what they’d found, but in fact, he appeared almost uninterested.

Finally, he said, “Am I to assume from your presence here, Mr. Grey, that we have a spy in our midst?”

Grey put down his cup and dabbed at the corners of his mouth with the tip of his fingers. “Yes, as a matter of fact that is the case.”

“And you obviously knew about it?”

“Yes, we do. To tell you the truth, Inspector, it is most unfortunate that you have unearthed the transmitter. And even more unfortunate that you moved it from its location.”

Tyler forced himself to swallow more of the soupy coffee. “I think I deserve an explanation for that remark, Mr. Grey.”

“Indeed you do, but I must warn you that what I am about to tell you comes under the Official Secrets Act and you must not under any circumstances disclose the information I will impart.” He tentatively touched his jaw and winced. “I beg your pardon, a little tooth problem that I must have tended to. Now, where was I? Ah yes. Explaining to you what MI5 is doing in Whitchurch and so on.” He pointed at the coffee. “Do you know, I have found this quite soothing to my aching tooth.”

No wonder, thought Tyler. It tastes like mouthwash.

“Please continue, sir.” Strictly speaking, Tyler didn’t have to address the agent as sir, as he didn’t know his rank or if he even had one. But there was something about the man that made him address him that way. Grey seemed distracted, but whether it was the pain in his jaw or something else, he didn’t know.

“Sometime in early June, MI5 set up an intercepting station in the Old Rectory. You know the place, I see?”

“I thought it had been turned into an army laundry for the duration.”

Grey gave something like a chuckle. “We bruited about that’s what it was, but the washing that is done there is of quite a different sort. We’re one of several such stations and we intercept and monitor any wireless transmissions going between Europe and England. These are decoded and then sent down to our headquarters in Bletchley. Since the end of July, we have been picking up regular transmissions from the Acton Woods. They have been most interesting.” He held up his hand although Tyler had made no move to interrupt him. “You are probably wondering why we have not arrested our fifth columnist. We have two reasons. First, quite simply, we don’t know who it is. He – let us say for the sake of convenience, it is a man we are dealing with – he has to be a local resident who knows the area well. He changes location regularly. What he transmits is mostly low-importance news such as weather conditions, local morale, any signs of troop movements. Up here, in our quiet county, as you can imagine, that is not of significance since there are none. What is more important is that he is working for a German agent.”

Again he sipped on the coffee, swished it around in his mouth, and swallowed. He glanced at Tyler to determine his reaction to this information. “There is an internee in the Prees Heath camp who answers to
SS
commandant Reinhold Heydrich himself.”

Tyler was impressed.

“We intercepted some transmissions from German Intelligence, the Abwehr, themselves. I’m sure we were intended to pick up these messages. There is no love lost between the Abwehr and Herr Hitler’s men. They would each be more than
happy to discredit the other. Heydrich versus Himmler, Himmler against Goering, and so on. The Abwehr against all of them. Apparently the Fuhrer believes that if you keep your underlings in a state of constant rivalry and also in the dark, you can hang onto your own power longer.”

He paused again to make sure he had Tyler’s undivided attention.

“When we discovered this, we wondered what was so important about the Prees Heath internees that Heydrich would plant one of his own men as a mole.” He sighed. “So far, I regret to say we don’t know. And we also don’t know who Heydrich’s man is. What we do know is that the man they are interested in left Berlin in August of 1939.”

He began to pat his pockets and fished out a pipe.

“You don’t mind if I smoke, do you, Inspector?”

“Not at all. I’ll light up myself.”

Grey tamped down his pipe fussily. “So our second reason for not capturing our very own British traitor, which would probably be easy to do as he is not very adept, is because the devil one knows is far better than the devil one doesn’t. We have been allowing him to continue passing along what is essentially unimportant information in the hope that soon he will reveal the reason for Herr Heydrich’s interest in the camp residents. They won’t be here much longer. A couple of weeks at the most. That should get the hares on the run.” He concentrated on getting the pipe to light. “So you see now why I said it was unfortunate that you discovered the transmitter. To mix metaphors, we are not yet ready to flush out the fox.”

Tyler sat back in his chair. “Do you want us to put it back?” He’d intended it as a sarcastic question, but Grey nodded.

“Actually, yes, we do. The last transmission we intercepted was Thursday night. He usually transmits in the early evening
every few days so I’m hoping he hasn’t gone back to the spot yet. It’s a risk we’ll have to take.”

“How would this person have made contact with the German agent? If you have no idea who he is, how would our collaborator know?”

“Our mole would have recruited him. To recruit somebody to work for their country’s enemy requires great perspicacity, patience, and, believe it or not, money. It’s rather like trout fishing. You send out the bait on the water, light and delicate, and it must be the right bait. Is your target mercenary? Ready to sell out for forty pieces of silver? Or are they full of hot air and principle? And strange as it may seem to us, some people do believe that Hitler is right. That the Jews are responsible for all that ails us and that the Aryan race is superior.” He puffed out a dense cloud of smoke. “And there are those who are susceptible to coercion of the emotional kind. If you don’t do this for me, your family and loved ones will suffer. From our point of view, they are the most dangerous because they are the most desperate.”