summer heat and apples ripen in drowsy orchards. The rows of white crosses would glint in the sun in the great cemeteries from the first war. New mounds would be settling alongside them, filled with young men who’d never see the wheat fields of Iowa or Essex again. I fingered my scar and tried to tell myself I was lucky.
“OK, chaps,” called the pilot. “We’re over the Channel and heading for London.
We’re going into RAF Hendon. We’ve radioed ahead. It won’t be the first time they’ve had a wonky Lanc drop in for tea.”
Soon afterwards we began the descent, and I saw London spread out underneath us.
We were tracing the Thames westwards. From the ground it was hard to get a perspective on the damage. From up here its scars were fully visible. Docklands and the area around the Tower of London displayed their wounds. St Paul’s stood secure and insolent above the acres of devastation, as though its great dome was cannibalised from the flattened buildings all around it. We turned north and slid over Regent’s Park, levelling out at about a thousand feet over Hampstead Heath.
Again we dipped, and the runway of RAF Hendon sliced the green sward ahead. We circled, waiting for the tower’s instructions. At their bidding we tried twice, then a third time to lower the landing gear. But whatever had stopped the wheels coming up was stopping them going down. The last words from the pilot before he turned in for the landing were, “Brace yourselves.” We needed no telling.
I didn’t try to look forward this time. I took Eve’s hand. It was cold and limp.
“Just in time for the late editions,” I said. She tried a weak smile but it didn’t come off. The pilot called out the height. One thousand feet, eight hundred, six… a hundred feet…
The plane was flying level and true. I leaned out and saw a line of trees and beyond them some houses at the far end of the airfield. The runway was to our right. We were heading for the grass alongside. I prayed they’d had a lot of rain the last few days. I felt the tug on our wings as they pulled up the ailerons and feathered the engines. The grass rushed towards us and a fire truck charged out to meet us along the runway. Bizarrely I saw one of the firemen hanging on with one hand, yanking on his bell rope. I don’t know who he was warning, but we didn’t need it.
We hit once and bounced, then a second time. When we came down for the third time we stayed down, skidding along the grass in a series of thumps and bangs.
The flyboys had kept the nose up as long as they could but now it tipped and caught; our starboard wing went down and we pitched over. There was a great metallic screaming and a smashing and splintering as the starboard propellers buried themselves in the ground. The plane swung round like someone had grabbed its trailing wing. It tipped, and we were up in the air, balancing on one wingtip like a mad ballet dancer. Then we were falling back to earth and the whole shebang seemed to be fragmenting around us – then… nothing.
TWENTY FOUR
It was the second time in six months that I’d woken in a hospital bed with Gerald Cassells’ face looming over me. I tried to focus and realised my left eye was blocked. I raised my hand to brush away the obstruction and hit my face with a plastered forearm. Pain shot up my wrist and I let the weighty cast drop back on the bed.
“Steady, old chap. You’ve got a bandage on your head. And broken wrist. Nothing fatal. Soon be up and about.”
“Eye?” I mumbled, pointing at it with my free hand.
“Bruises and cuts, but still functioning,” he said.
“Where is she?” I asked.
Cassells looked puzzled.
I unstuck my tongue from the roof of my mouth and tried again. His face relaxed.
“She’s all right old chap. Better than you. Bit bruised and so on, but nothing broken. They’re keeping her in the next ward.”
I settled back. The relief washed over me. I began probing my body, flexing my limbs as best I could. Apart from the wrist which had ceased throbbing, I felt stiff and bruised all over. Hardly surprising. They found us at the crash site, still strapped into our seats, but with bits of the fuselage in our laps. There was a big hole in the hull and firemen were already clambering around. I heard their shouts and the hissing of water on flames, and the fireman I’d seen hammering on his bell – I swear it was him – eased his head through the jagged hole.
They cut us loose – from each other and from the wreckage – and tenderly eased our bodies out on to the wet grass. They gave us both shots despite Eve’s protestations. She wanted to get going, she had a story to tell, she kept saying. They didn’t listen, just lifted her on a stretcher into the back of an ambulance. She was quieter by then; the painkiller must have got to her. As it was beginning to get to me. I felt myself slipping away and letting go, letting it all go.
I fought my way to the surface again. “Gerry, is everybody else all right? Did they all get out?”
He screwed up his face. “The Redcaps are fine.” He shook his head. “But the RAF chaps in the front seats didn’t make it. The nose took the brunt.”
Shit. Shit, shit. They’d flown through the war, through ack-ack and clouds of shrapnel, against all the odds. Then they bought it, flying a pair of dumb civilians into London. Another bad joke, God.
“What happens now, Gerry?”
“You’re clear to go, old chap. I’d stay in bed for a day or two then hop it. You did your bit. Got the girl, and all that.” He suddenly looked sheepish.
“What about Eve? What happens to her?”
“Fact is, we need a bit of a chat with her.” He was avoiding my eyes. “Bert Wilson has a warrant.”
“Wilson! You can’t let that animal near her! Remember what he did to me!”
“I know, I know. But look, things have changed. He can’t throw his weight around now. I’ll see to that.”
I shook my head. “Can I see her before she goes?”
He shook his head. “She’s under guard. No one allowed. Look, it’s only for a couple of days while they find out what she knows about the Jerusalem attack.”
“A couple of days? Then what?”
“Then she’s out. We might want a chat with her. Make sure she doesn’t have any other ideas.”
“Ideas? About what, for Christ’s sake?”
“Look at it from our point of view. She came here as a German spy. All right, all right, she turned. But she went maverick. Killed a senior official in Berlin. She’s somehow linked to the bombing of the King David. We think she’s a threat, possibly a cell leader of a Jewish terrorist group. Wilson, for one, is wondering what she’ll do next.”
I sank back in my pillows and prayed they would never leave her alone with Wilson. Not even for two minutes, much less two days.
His Majesty’s Prison Holloway is a Victorian folly. Its crenulations and turrets would look more comfortable perched on a hilltop in Scotland, a staunch defence against the marauding English. Instead, Holloway Prison for Women dominates the quiet Parkhurst Road in north Camden. It has its own little walkway up to it and its great doors look as though they’ve been welded shut. Two policemen superfluously guard an impregnable fortress.
For late August the day was cold and windy, as though autumn was coming in early. I was told ten o’clock, and it was already quarter past. The two days had become four weeks. And instead of a friendly chat at the local nick in Charing Cross, they’d quickly moved Eve to the safety and security of Holloway. Cassells didn’t make it clear whose safety and security were at risk; it felt like Eve’s.
I stood waiting with a taxi across the road. The coppers wouldn’t let me closer.
I tried to scratch the itch that gnawed away under the tight bandage on my left wrist. Suddenly the little door in the blank expanse eased open. A warder stepped out, looked around briefly and signalled. Eve emerged. She looked straight ahead. Her eyes flicked over me without recognition. She walked slowly down the path to the public pavement, looked left then right, and began to walk away. She was wearing different clothes from the Army duds borrowed in Berlin, and she carried a brown paper parcel.
I ran after her, signalling the cab to follow me. “Eve! Eve, wait!”
She kept walking. I knew she’d seen me, heard me. I got within reach and put my hand on her shoulder.
