“Did you say the lady was brought in here with injuries from a bomb explosion?”
“That’s right.”
She became cagey. “We do have a patient coming around that time. But it doesn’t mention that sort of injury.”
Around that time? Maybe Kate got her dates muddled. But wasn’t it her birthday? “What does it say?”
The girl shoved the folder back in the cabinet and shut the drawer firmly. “I’m sorry. We can’t talk about patient’s conditions with non-medical staff.” She put her professional shutters up and I could see I’d get nowhere on this tack.
“Maybe it’s just a misfiling.”
“Perhaps. These things happen.” Her smile was as bright and diamond-hard as her determination to say nothing more. My scars were getting no more sympathy. I put my hat on and left.
One thing I learned in Glasgow was never take anything for granted. Check everything. If you can’t see it, smell it or hear it for yourself, it doesn’t exist. It took me two days and a lot of shoe leather to get round the rest of the hospitals in the centre. I began with the Royal and the Brompton in Chelsea.
I then did a circular sweep that took in King’s in Camberwell, Guy’s at Westminster, over the river to St Bart’s and a big swing round to St Mary’s.
Nothing. Their records weren’t all they might be and there was a bit of reluctance to tell me anyway.
Then I decided to change tack. I’d been looking for two hospital admissions, one unhurt, one probably dead. Dead people get recorded at Somerset House. My heart sank at the prospect; there had been a lot business coming their way in the last few years. Nevertheless I slogged my way back up the Strand and joined the queue for a day to get in front of a harassed clerk. I could see the hysteria in his eyes when I asked if I could track down a certain Mr Caldwell thought to have died about a month ago.
“We’re a bit behind with the filing.” He tugged at his greasy tie. The knot looked like a boy scout had been practising his sheepshanks on a bit of string.
Knotted once two years ago, slackened off every night and tightened each morning.
“How far?”
“You mean how deep?” Definitely a glint of mania.
“Like that, is it?”
“We’ve caught up to June,” he said promisingly.
“I hope you mean June 1945? So, you’ve got a backlog of six or seven months?”
“We’re in October with births though, and marriages are November.”
“So if the man I’m trying to trace had been born three months ago you could have found him?”
He just grinned. I left him to finger his tie. I wondered how long before he’d use it to hang himself. Soon, I hoped. Post-war, and nothing worked. The machine we’d put together to win it had been broken up. All the soldiers back from the front had been offered their old jobs back, but I guess the better ones had lost some of their enthusiasm for the filing department now they’d had a taste of Paris and Rome; red wine and grateful girls.
This was keeping me fit but getting me nowhere. I holed up in my office and began to wait for either inspiration to strike or the phone to ring with an answer to my message at Caldwell’s club. I made a promise to myself if I heard nothing by the end of the week, I’d phone Kate Graveney and offer her the advance back. Maybe half of it.
It was day two and I was like a squirrel in a cage. I paced the floor and nibbled everything I could find: mouldy cheese, fish paste on toast, and fritters I made from the shavings of gangrenous spuds. I didn’t dare go out in case I missed a call. I checked my phone five times in case it was broken, until the operator began to get cranky. On top of everything, Valerie hadn’t shown again and I didn’t know how to find her. As a detective I was a joke. But I kept that thought to myself during discussions with a prospective client.
She must have been 60 or so. My mother’s age. But she didn’t have my mother’s neat white hair and carefully cleaned and pressed clothes. Mrs Warner was on the grubby side of careless; her hat was bashed on to her head and nailed there with a huge bobby pin as though she slept with it on. Instead of an overcoat she wore a worn Paisley-pattern housecoat over a thick calf-length skirt and misbuttoned cardigan. I was surprised not to see old slippers on her feet, but she’d managed to find a pair of scuffed boots with ankle-high laces. Her ensemble was completed with a sorry string bag containing papers of some sort. She sat quivering in my chair while I made her a cup of tea.
“So, tell me Mrs Warner, what can I do for you?” I was treating her as a potential paying customer but knew from looking at her she hadn’t a bean. Still, age deserves respect. And some of these old dears can hardly get to sleep for the lumps of cash under their mattress.
She fixed me with her watery eyes, both yellow with cataracts.
“I want you to find my son, Charlie.”
I pulled my pad closer and poised my pen. “When did you last see him?”
She thought for a moment then reached into her string bag and pulled out a thin sheaf of blue letters held together with three elastic bands. She rummaged again and came up with a spec case and put on some glasses. She gazed at the envelopes for a bit, trying different distances to find a focus that worked.
“Here. That’s the one.” She handed me a well thumbed forces air mail envelope. I knew what was coming. “Go on, open it,” she said.
“Are you sure, Mrs Warner?”
She waved her hand, and I unfolded the single sheet of thin blue paper. It was dated 12 June 1943. The hand was big and childlike. I could almost see Charlie’s tongue gripped between his teeth as his pencil sprawled across the page. It read: Dear Mum, never felt so hot in my life. But they give us plenty of water and tucker so dont you worry none. Cant tell you nothing really but just wanted to let you know I was ok. Hope you and Deke are ok too. Love Charlie. Xxx “Deke?” I asked, stalling for time.
“His dog. Charlie loved that dog. It’s got fat. I can’t walk it much like I used to. Me legs.” She pulled up her thick skirt and I could see the ridges of varicose veins all round her calf and ankles.
“Mrs Warner, this is the last letter you got from Charlie. But didn’t you get a telegram or a letter from the Army?”
“Oh yes. Yes, I did.” She said eagerly, as though I was on to something. “Said he was missing. That’s why I’m here. I wants you to find him.” She stared at me defiantly. “I can pay, you know. I always pays my way.” She rumbled in her string bag again and pulled out a worn purse.
I didn’t know what to say to her. Couldn’t tell her that I’d seen blokes like her Charlie blown into so many pieces there was nothing to put in a coffin. I was as gentle as I could be. But she needed a padre.
“Mrs Warner, I suspect your son was killed in action somewhere in the desert.
See, he says how hot it was. I know where we were then. If he’d been taken prisoner then he’d have come back by now. You see?”
She saw all right. But she wasn’t going to believe it. She was shaking her old head. “Charlie’s dad died in the last one. He never saw Charlie. They can’t take him too. It’s not fair, you see. It’s not fair.” It was a simple statement of faith, as if fairness had a role in deciding who got shot and who didn’t.
No it wasn’t; it wasn’t bloody fair. I gave her more tea and listened to her stories of Charlie as a boy. Then I helped her out and down the stairs and went back to my desk and took a long drink even though it was only mid- afternoon. A little later, I went out for a walk to clear my head.
So I was more than a little pleased to get back just as the phone was ringing. I galloped up the last flight and skidded across the lino in time to take a call from a woman calling herself Mrs Caldwell, Mrs Liza Caldwell, Tony’s wife.
EIGHT
Next day I made an early start. Too early, as it turned out. The straight run up the Northern Line from Kennington to Hampstead took just 35 minutes. But for all that, I popped up in a different world. It didn’t feel like London. It seemed like I’d jumped down a rabbit hole and emerged in a country town from another century. Hampstead village runs up and down a steep hill. The houses are red brick and three or four storeys high with
