The Interrogator

‘The Admiralty wanted to hand out medals and it wanted photographs and newspaper copy, something to deflect public attention from the losses, and I was one of the chosen. Someone decided I’d shown the necessary presence of mind on the wreck — enough to justify a Distinguished Service Cross. And to my eternal shame I accepted it. Here…’

Lindsay opened the drawer of the bedside table. The decoration seemed to draw the thin light from the window, swinging silver at the bottom of its ribbon.

‘A silver cross.’

He put it back on the bedside table.

‘Some time after the sinking, I was asked to identify the body of a sailor washed up on a beach in Ireland, naked, torn, four weeks in the water. And I recognised the man, at least, I recognised his red hair. Short, good- humoured George Hyde, married with a daughter. And I cried for him.’

Lindsay’s voice cracked with emotion but when Mary tried to kiss him, he stopped her, taking her face in his hands.

‘No sympathy. I’ve told you all this so you know. I have a duty to Parker and the others to speak my mind. I don’t just follow orders any more.’

Mary leant forward again and this time he did not stop her. She kissed him long and tenderly and stroked his hair, pressing herself tightly against him. She felt so sorry for him, she wanted to say, ‘Don’t blame yourself, what could you do?’, but she knew it would sound trite. What could she say? His judgement was clouded by mad destructive guilt. It was the root of his troubles, Mohr, the codes, as if he needed to expiate what had happened to the Culloden. She knew she should end this nonsense. It was just that she had given her word to people she respected, people who trusted her and, yes, she would be breaking orders — breaking the law.

‘What are you thinking?’

‘You said you’d found out more about our codes?’

Lindsay looked at her closely: ‘Do you really want to know?’

He told her of his conversation with Samuels and the note he had been given on British codes: ‘Our codes have been broken before. It played a major part last summer when we lost so many ships…’

There was an almost indecent note of satisfaction in his voice.

‘Who is this friend of Samuel’s?’

‘Why do you want to know?’

‘He should know better.’

Lindsay pulled away from her a little: ‘We’re on the same side, remember? Perhaps Charlie’s friend felt we were on to something.’

‘Does Samuels think so?’ she snapped.

‘No. But if they’ve been broken once…’

‘Leave this, Douglas. You’re wrong. Believe me.’

‘…they may very well have broken them again.’

‘Didn’t you hear me? You’re wrong. I know you’re wrong.’

He was staring at her, trying to gauge her expression, collecting his own thoughts. She wondered if he was angry. But when he spoke his voice was quite calm.

‘What do you know?’

Mary took a long deep breath. This was a betrayal, no matter the reason, the person.

‘I know our codes are secure. Naval Cipher One was changed after Norway and the Germans haven’t broken Cipher Two,’ she said quietly.

‘You know?’

‘Yes. I know.’

Lindsay lay there in silence for a moment, then rolled away from Mary and off the bed. She watched him walk across the room and take his dressing gown from the hook on the door.

‘Where are you going?’ She pulled the sheet a little higher, suddenly conscious of her nakedness beneath it. He was standing with his back to the window.

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

‘Come back to bed then.’ She knew he wouldn’t.

‘How do you know, why are you so sure?’

It was impossibly hard to answer, and she thought for a moment of Lindsay stepping over the side of the Culloden into the storm. She curled into a tight anxious ball beneath the sheet.

‘Well?’

‘There are some things I know that you don’t,’ she said at last. ‘Of course there are.’

Lindsay said nothing. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness.

‘I tried to tell you.’

‘Tell me what? You didn’t try very hard,’ he said coldly.

‘I couldn’t tell you, Douglas.’

‘You couldn’t?’

‘No.’

‘But you’ve changed your mind.’

‘Yes. Because I love you and this obsession with our codes is dangerous — it’s damaging you.’

‘I see.’

Seconds slipped by and she watched him stiff and silent against the window as he pressed the last pieces into place. And she was afraid and full of regret and wanted to deflect his thoughts: ‘Come back to bed, please come back to bed.’

‘We’re reading their signals, aren’t we? Aren’t we?’

It tumbled out of her: ‘Yes.’

And for a moment the room itself seemed to be alive and physical like an animal breathing heavily, its heart thumping in the darkness. She spoke quickly and nervously as if to hold it at bay: ‘Our code people at Bletchley Park — Station X — have broken their Enigma ciphers — everything, well almost everything. We can decipher and read their signals, sometimes only hours after they’re sent. Donitz’s orders, the reports the submarines sent to headquarters — the fuel they need, the ships they’ve attacked, course and position. When the wife of the engineer on U-552 had her baby we were among the first to know. Do you see? If our codes had been broken we would know, believe me.’

And now Lindsay was moving away from her to the door and the room filled with blinding light.

‘That was cruel,’ she said.

‘No more than you deserve.’ He clearly meant it. She heard him drawing the blackout curtains.

‘Have you a dressing gown I can borrow?’

‘No. Yes, there’s another one on the back of the door.’

Then she heard him leave the room. She opened her eyes and glanced at her watch on the bedside table: it was four o’clock. She felt weary and very weak at the prospect of the questions, the conversation to come. Slipping from the bed, she walked quickly to the door and wrapped herself in Lindsay’s dressing gown. It was a burgundy colour like the flock wallpaper in the hall and she wondered if it was a gift from his mother. Lindsay was in the kitchen, she could hear the kettle and the chink of china being loaded on to a tray. He had turned the lights on in the sitting room. ‘That must be where he wants me,’ she thought.

On the couch, feet curled beneath her, Lindsay’s dressing gown pulled comfortingly tight, she waited in tired silence. It was such a long night, a mini melodrama, like one of the baroque mysteries her mother enjoyed, drawing people’s motives and the threads of their lives together. Stories that always seemed to end so neatly.

‘Tea? I haven’t any milk.’

Lindsay put the tray on an occasional table and knelt beside it. As she watched him there, bone china cup in hand, ancient green dressing gown, tousled blond hair, she felt a pang of love and longing, a need to be close to him again. She wanted to lean forward and touch him, but before she could move he turned to offer her the cup. How small and fragile it looked in his hand.

‘Thank you.’

He did not look up but turned to the tray to pour another. She knew what he must be thinking.