‘Apparently not. Neither do the top Russians. It’s power, you see: the top dogs have never exercised so much of it before, and they’re loving every minute of it.’
‘You sound like Hitler.’
‘That’s why Hitler was so dangerous: he sounded just like us.’
‘. . . and like Stalin.’
‘Yes: and like Uncle Joe. Sad, isn’t it? Have another?’
I was ready for one. The New World Order was beginning to sound too bloody much like the old one.
The other inconsequential question was about Grace. Why did they think that she was in Europe?
‘I’ve spoken to her ATA people,’ Cliff told me, and asked, ‘You know that she couldn’t make up her mind whether or not to have the kiddie?’
‘She’d done it before, apparently,’ I said, and fixed Sir Peter with my best Iron John stare. Sir P wouldn’t meet my eye. ‘So, yes: I knew.’
‘She lay around here for a few days. Then she went to London for a break. Has some friends there; in all of the Services.’
‘I would never have guessed.’
Cliff gave me the look: something was hurting him.
‘Apparently she was driving a borrowed car down some street in West Ken when a building next to her was hit by an A4.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A rocket bomb fired from Germany: big things that arrive and explode before you hear them coming. The first you know of it is waking up dead. The Ministry of All-Things-to-All-Men is telling the people that they are gas boiler explosions, or some such nonsense, but the Daily Mirror knows what they are.’
‘I’ve heard of them: I just thought that they were called something else. We were supposed to smash them up at Peenemünde last year.’
‘Grace was OK, but she was either brave then, or disoriented, because when she climbed out of the car she walked towards the bomb site.’
‘Is this the bad bit?’ You sense some things coming.
‘I think so. It had been a primary school. There were bits of children everywhere. Someone saw her standing there with a child’s arm in her hand. Just the arm.’
None of us spoke for what seemed an age. Peter Baker splashed the last of the whisky into our tumblers. His hand shook. Finally I said, ‘Poor Grace.’
Baker finished the story.
‘It gets thinner from then on. She met some American tank crew men, who were in London for a few days’ leave after a bad patch in the Ardenne. She disappeared at the same time they returned to Belgium. She’s not in London with anyone she knew. There’s no evidence that she’s living down a hole somewhere with the rubble rats, and no dead body so far remotely matching her description . . . although that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. She hasn’t contacted anyone in the ATA, and she hasn’t turned up at an airfield.’
‘Who told you this?’ I asked him.
‘A Sergeant Fabian. Metropolitan Police. He investigated it for us.’
‘Is he reliable?’
‘Very, we’re told. Hunts spies, murderers, that sort of thing. Very good at it. He says that his instinct tells him she’s not alive in London.’
‘You trust him?’
‘I trust you, Charlie. Enough to ask you to try to find her.’
I got up and walked over to one of the library windows. It looked out over a gently sculptured hill, lined by trees, which Crifton called the Long Ride. It was scarred where a B-17 had smacked it a year before.
I said, for no one in particular, ‘I hate my life at the moment.’
And Grace’s father said, ‘Thank you, Charlie.’
Four
I met the man Goldie had referred to as Driver Raffles for the first time in my room at Tempsford the day I returned from Crifton. When I walked in on him I thought I was being burgled. But he was sharp: he spoke first.
‘Mr Bassett, would it be, sir?’
That’s the first time I noticed his joint services uniform, tank jacket and the Sten gun on a piece of rope around his neck. By joint services uniform I mean that he had a Navy battledress blouse, Army trousers, a small black beret without a badge and the high lace-up boots with canvas tops that the Germans wore in the desert. I noticed the Sten first.
‘Yes. Who are you?’
‘Private Finnigan, sir: Major England’s man. I was taking the liberty of getting your things together, sir. We won’t have a lot of time.’
‘For what?’
‘Stowing your spare gear at the Major’s club, sir, getting you kitted out, and getting over to France.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Funny you should say that, sir. I saw a comedian just last week who used that as his new catchphrase.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Can’t make my mind up, sir. He’s either effing useless, or an effing genius: sometimes it’s hard to tell.’
Private Finnigan was a small man, in the vertical – like me – but he had a prize fighter’s shoulders and arms. His face was a bit bashed up, and topped by an unruly thatch of curly light brown hair. I thought I could place his accent within a few miles. I said, ‘You’re from somewhere south of London, say Morden or Sutton.’
‘Not bad, sir; you’ve obviously an ear for it. I was brought up at Belmont, like in The Merchant of Venice. That’s near Banstead, in Surrey.’
I said, ‘I come from Surrey myself. You don’t sound like a Finnigan to me.’
‘And you, sir, if you forgive my saying so, ask too many bleeding questions.’
‘Sorry, Private.’
Finnigan nodded, and carried on packing my gear. Everything I owned fitted into an RAF kitbag, and an old leather suitcase I’d inherited from Pete. Then there were the two US kitbags I was stashing for Tommo, the Yank. I pulled them from under the bed. Finnigan hefted one of them. He asked, ‘What’s in here, sir, War and Peace?’
‘Would you believe me if I said I didn’t know? I’m minding them for an American pal who has just been shipped back to the States, and has promised to get back to Germany before it’s all over. He
