food. The Tally caffs in Glasgow only served fish suppers and ice cream. The wine was better than the camel piss I’d tried in North Africa when I had a forty-eight-hour pass, but not much. I’m a Scotch drinker through and through. But the acid red seemed to mellow her.
“Danny, I’m very boring. I work hard at the paper. Any spare time I have, I read. I read till my eyes bleed. That’s my life.”
“That’s not boring. What do you read?”
“Anything. Everything! There’s so much.” Her face glowed.
“Library?”
She shook her head. “I love being the first to open a book. It is a complete indulgence. But at sixpence a go…”
“Penguins!” Without thinking, I stretched out my hand and laid it over hers. She didn’t seem to notice, just nodded sheepishly as though admitting to a cocaine habit. I left my hand over hers.
“You too?” she asked.
“I’ve had to put up a new shelf. Who do you read?”
“Hemingway, Linklater…”
“Mackenzie, Christie…” I raised her.
She riposted with, “Orwell, Priestley…”
We were showing off. But isn’t that what you do when you find a fellow clan member? In the excitement, our fingers seemed to become laced.
“OK, OK. Here’s the test.” I squeezed her hand. “Steinbeck.”
“Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men…”
“Grapes of Wrath! What did you think of Grapes of Wrath?”
“I wept,” she said simply.
“Will you marry me?”
“And share my Penguins? Never!”
They tried clearing our table and sweeping up around us. Finally they put upturned chairs on the tables, so that we sat in a forest of thin columns. We took the hint at last and I walked her home through Bloomsbury to her digs in Russell Square. It felt companionable and right to hold hands all the way. Her fingers were long and slim and hot. We weren’t sure what to do on the doorstep and ended up with a brush of lips on lips. It was enough to get a taste of lipstick and wine and cigarettes, and I wanted more. But she seemed to blink, as though coming out of a dream. She backed away and slipped inside. Yet something had begun. It was easy to involve her in my business. Easy to get involved with her, period. That’s my excuse.
SIX
I woke early, but lay wondering at the turmoil in my mind. Nothing had happened last night. Had it? Why should it? She was my client. I was working for her.
Running a detective agency didn’t put me among the bankers and accountants, but it warranted professional standards. Didn’t it? Besides, if I wanted to pick up a girl who liked books as much as me, I should hang around libraries. And yet… we hadn’t been able to stop talking, comparing notes, trumping each other, flashing our best sides. We were kids showing off, excited by the promise of adventure. That’s all. But I should have kissed her again. Properly.
I got up and dressed and stopped myself three times from lifting the phone and calling her newsdesk. It’s a character defect with me, over-reacting at the merest sniff of a chance with a lively girl. I shoved her out of my head. I pulled my chair up to my desk and switched into SOE planning mode. I had work to do. But as I began to lay out the operation, all I could see were the risks for her. Maybe I should have called her and put her off. I had the phone in my hand when the boys arrived. I put it back in its cradle.
They were punctual: army training. I’d met them in the pub a couple of months ago, and over a few ales we became instant pals. As with Eve, you recognise your own type. I get them to do some stuff for me: recces of hotels and offices, tailing philanderers, that sort of thing. I can trust them. Four of us cloistered in my little office. Four men, two chairs. I took one, Midge the other. Midge Cummin, by common but unspoken assent, was my number two. An ex-sergeant in the Paras, one of the few who survived Arnhem. He was unemployed and living off the pittance of his demob pay supplemented by jobs like this, but his boots shone like he was Honour Guard at Sandhurst.
The other two sat on the floor with their backs against the wall. A pall of smoke already hung from the ceiling and at the rate we were puffing the cloud would envelop us all within the hour. I opened the window and watched the breeze stir and suck at the foul canopy. Maybe Prof Haggarty was right; I should give up the fags.
I went through my analysis of the layout at Tommy’s warehouse and briefed them on the plan, such as it was. There would be a lot of improvisation. I asked Big Cyril what he thought about the timing. He was squatting against the wall tugging at his beard. He was Navy and looked exactly like the bloke on the back of a packet of Players. Cyril Styles was the quiet man who killed with his bare hands, or with a knife or anything that came to hand, in his former life as a platoon leader in Special Boat Squadron.
“It depends on the tide. I’ve checked the tables and we should get floated at 21.35. It’s already dark by then. But you said we’ve no idea what time the raid will happen?”
“That’s true,” I said. “We could be wasting our time tonight, but you’ll get paid for turning up. I agreed with Tommy Chandler that if nothing happens this time, you’ll still get a couple of quid each. The bonus – twenty a man – gets paid when – if – we nail these bastards and stop the thieving.”
“Sounds fair enough to me,” chipped in Stan Berry. We all reckoned Stan’s mom had slept with a Jack Russell. He was five foot nothing, wiry, and kept his hair short and spiky. He couldn’t sit still on his scrawny arse for longer than two seconds. For the last twenty minutes he’d wriggled and twisted like he had fleas. But this was the guy who’d bailed out of his burning Lancaster over Cologne, spent six months in a German POW hospital before escaping on crutches through the lines to France, then Spain, and took the next seat on the next Lancaster to bomb the bastards again. For the crap food, he said.
I would put these three men up against a gang ten times their strength and still bet my house on them. If I had a house. But it was important never to get all four of us in the same pub. Unless they were watering the beer.
“Right. You all know your job. Midge takes one boat, Cyril takes the other. I’ll be with Midge, Stan goes with Cyril. And remember – no killing! This isn’t Jerry. Hear that, Cyril? No knives, no garrotting, and absolutely no guns.”
“What if they’ve got ’em?” asked Cyril, disappointed.
“Or there are ten of them,” chipped in Stan.
“You’ve got surprise and experience on your side.”
“You sound like my old sergeant major just before he sent us out against a Panzer unit,” said Cyril.
“What happened?” asked Stan.
“We lost,” said Cyril dryly.
“Still, we’ve got these.” Midge picked up one of the pickaxe handles he’d brought and thwacked it into his hand with a ringing smack.
“But try not to brain them, fellas, OK? We want to hand them over to the bobbies in one piece, everything in working order. If we can.”
I stared each one in the eye till I got the look that said they understood.
“There’s one other thing. We’ll have a passenger tonight. A reporter who wants a scoop. I’ll take personal responsibility. None of your names will show up.”
“What the fuck, Danny? A passenger? This is no time for a fucking passenger,” said Midge.
“I said it’s my responsibility. OK?”
There were a few more grumbles but no serious objection. I wonder what they’d have said if I’d told them the reporter was a girl? One shock at a time.
At eight o’clock I was walking along the cobbles towards the Anchor Tap, a pub in Horselydown Lane, the
