occupied the whole basement area. I crept down and down until I was at the right level and began looking for the doors. Bingo!
A sign declared the room the Registry and that only registry staff were allowed inside. The dragon lady in charge enforced that rule with an iron stare and a leather tongue. A little window was cut in the wall alongside the door. This was where the rest of the world accessed the documents. You put your slip through and a registry clerk would deliver the file to your office and pick it up at day’s end. Tough work.
The heavy double doors were of course locked. So I took out my little packet of tools to see if my SOE training had been a waste of time. I shone my torch into the keyhole and squinted into it to see the make-up of the levers.
There are two basic techniques to opening locks: picking and scrubbing. Picking is more subtle and lets you probe and feel each pin and then apply force on the driver pin that’s giving the most fight. When you feel the plug give a little, the driver gets trapped and the lock opens. Scrubbing is for speed and when you don’t care if you leave evidence of your visit. I was a natural scrubber.
I selected a sinuous snake-tipped pick and slipped its double curves into the lock. I eased it backwards and forwards feeling pins move and displace. As I scrubbed, I twisted, hoping to feel movement. I’d forgotten how hard this was.
And I was rusty. I was sweating good and proper now. I put my hat down, took off my coat and jacket and started again. I put on more pressure hoping I wouldn’t bend or break the pick. My fingers were slipping and I took out my hanky and wrapped it round the handle. Suddenly the driver pin went, the others followed and the key turned. I gripped the wood handle, twisted and the door creaked open. I stood panting with nerves before picking up my clothes, slipping in and closing the door gently behind me.
I swung the torch round the long low room. There were floor to ceiling shelves stretching for yards in both directions. A large chunk of them were empty. Damn!
I should have done this weeks ago!
With ebbing hope I started walking down the shelving. Halfway along they began to be full again. I began checking what the files contained. It wasn’t till I’d inspected a dozen stacks of shelves that I ran into the personal files, the agent files.
Come on, please! I found the M series and then the Mc set. Nothing. Wait, wait.
Try Mac. Plenty, but no McRaes. I was panicking now. Cassells hadn’t put it back! It was somewhere in the mounds of loose papers in his chaotic office!
Calm, calm. Think.
A last long shot, the MR set. Thank god. There were three McRae files sandwiched between McRennies and McRackens. I pulled the first one down. Nope. The second was mine. I felt relief then nerves. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what was in here. People should never see what other folk think of them, despite what Rabbie Burns says. But I’d come all this way for the truth.
I sank down on the floor, on top of my coat and jacket and opened the folder.
There was a stack of papers, each with a neat hole punched in the top left corner through which a string tab ran to hold them in place. There was a covering sheet with the sparse details of my background and next of kin. My mum was shown, with her address. Then I got to the second page. It was simple and clear and was probably as far as Cassells got the other day.
Secret The sealed reports in this personal folder are for Executive Head Eyes Only Do not open without express authority.
Under no circumstances is any aspect of the work of the SOE or the personal details of the officers of the SOE to be communicated to Capt. Daniel McRae That set my heart going. What the hell was going on? What the hell was in this file? Maybe Cassells was right; there’s stuff better left forgotten. I turned to the next sheets; just some copies of my discharge papers and pension calculations. The numbers didn’t add up to a comfortable retirement. Then came the sealed envelopes, two of them, with holes in their corners to take the tags.
I carefully removed the sheets above them and examined the first envelope. It was gummed down and bore a blob of sealing wax on the join. But it had been re-sealed. I could see where the earlier wax had been eased off. It was initialled and dated 28 May 1944 in the bottom right corner. It had a big red stamp across the front classifying it Top Secret/Executive Head S.O.E Eyes Only.
I took a little knife from my toolkit, slid it into a corner and sliced along the top fold. I pulled out a single sheet:
MemorandumStaff in Strictest Confidence
To:Colonel Sir Collin Gubbins, Executive Head SOE From:Major P A Caldwell Date:14 May 1944 Subject:Captain Daniel McRae/Avignon incident
Sir,
It is my unwelcome duty to inform you that Captain Daniel McRae, our operative in Avignon, was captured by the Gestapo on 24 May. We have not seen or heard of him since, and it is believed, as with all captured agents, that he has been taken to Gestapo/Vichy headquarters in Rue Saline, Avignon. He will be interrogated there and executed or sent on to one of the concentration camps as happened to agents Hastings and Temple.
However, unfortunate though this is, there is another matter which I must bring to your attention. A young female resistance fighter has been found murdered in one of our safe houses. She had been raped and stabbed in the head and body.
McRae was known to have consorted with the woman in question though she is believed to have spurned his advances. He had an assignation with her on the day of the murder and was seen to leave the safe house shortly before the woman’s body was found.
I was notified of this at midnight on the same evening by the Maquis member who found the girl and who claimed to have seen McRae slipping away. Understandably the Maquis member was outraged and demanded immediate action. I went to McRae’s lodgings and confronted him. I found him sitting in his room drinking brandy.
Clothes were drying in front of the fire. It had not been raining. I accused him of the murder and he denied it. He claimed he had fallen and got his clothes muddy. He had washed them off. I had no further proof against his denial and resolved to leave the matter till the morning when I could interrogate the witness again.
Unfortunately – or perhaps fortunately in some respects – during the night, the Gestapo raided his house and McRae was rounded up. My suspicions are that the Maquis informed on McRae as an easy way of achieving swift justice. In subsequent days, though the anger among the Maquis has been considerable there is an acceptance that McRae has paid for his crimes. Given what we still have to achieve here, I am letting the matter rest.
In the circumstances I am recommending no further action from SOE in this matter. It could tarnish the image of SOE and divert us from the main job. We do not have conclusive proof, and the main suspect, Captain Daniel McRae is captive, presumed dead.
Signed
Major Philip Anthony Caldwell There was a scrawled note: Recommendation accepted. No further action. It was signed Colonel Gubbins.
I read and re-read the memo in a daze. Suddenly all my foul dreams crystallised into the one terrible truth. I had killed a woman. It was why I couldn’t remember, wouldn’t remember. It was why I was obsessed by the murders here in London. It was why they wouldn’t let me have Caldwell’s address. I wanted to scream. I toyed with my screwdriver and wondered if I could kill myself by driving it into my heart. Or open my veins and let them find me drained and dead clutching the evidence of my guilt. I switched off the torch and there, in the darkened filing room, I let great sobs shake me apart.
Slowly I got control. I dried my face on my shirtsleeve. I hadn’t realised I’d been keeping so much locked up inside. The image that haunted my worst nightmares – me standing with bloody hands and bloody weapon – must be a memory.
But why? What had brought out the beast in me? Anger, jealousy, betrayal? I tried to recapture the days running up to this dark one, but nothing came. Just some vague shots of leafy gardens and a path running through it, and drinking in a cafй with a round man called Gregor. I could see his beaming face and huge moustache. It was clear too that Caldwell had been in France with me, but I couldn’t “see” him. He must have been doing the rounds
