The Interrogator

nine there was the telephone conference with the Staff at Western Approaches in Liverpool.

‘We’re looking for anything that might suggest U-boat Headquarters knew the Imperial Star was leaving the convoy on an independent course. Then see if you can find a list of ships travelling alone that have been attacked by the enemy. Anything in the last three months that strikes you as strange.’

Mary was a little irritated by Winn’s cool, detached tone, as if it was some sort of academic exercise. So many lives were at stake, like those poor people in the Imperial Star’s boats. But she knew she was excited too. It reminded her of how she had once felt in a muddy hole in Wiltshire when, after crawling down a tunnel, her torch had flashed round a stone chamber hidden for thousands of years.

‘Please be discreet.’ Winn must have read the excitement in her face. ‘Perhaps it was an appalling twist of fate, just the worst sort of coincidence, so we don’t want to cause a general panic — not yet anyway.’

Her lips twitched with amusement, a provocative little smile she was sure he would not be able to resist.

‘I know why you’re smiling: you’re thinking of Lieutenant Lindsay.’

‘Yes.’

‘Don’t. This must stay inside the Citadel. If our codes are compromised then he may be able to help us but it’s too soon to say.’

‘And Mohr?’

‘Well, he isn’t begging to tell his story, is he?’

There was a polite knock at the office door. It was Freddie Wilmot with some tea. A large, ruddy, genial- looking regular was standing behind him — Commander Dick Hall of the Trade Division.

‘One of the clerical assistants can help you, Mary. Hawkins seems bright enough. I’m sorry about the tea. I expect it’s cold by now anyway,’ and he shot Wilmot an unfriendly look.

Mary got to her feet and was on the point of turning to leave when he leant forward a little and said in a confidential voice: ‘And you? Are you all right? You’ve been working very hard…’

It was a little late and a little clumsy but well meant and Mary smiled warmly at him: ‘No harder than anyone else. I’m fine now, Rodger, really.’

‘Good.’

Mary left him to the business of the day, U-boats gathering for a pack attack, a convoy sailing into danger, the battle fought hour by hour in the Atlantic, and as she watched him at the plot with Hall she felt something close to gratitude, even affection. She felt embarrassed too, cross with herself for losing control of her feelings. Own up to the loss, yes, acknowledge some responsibility, yes, but fight on, fight on. If she was not able to keep a cool head in the face of adversity she was no use to anyone. This was her life now, her mission.

‘All right, Hawkins. I want every signal sent by U-boat Headquarters since the beginning of May.’

‘Dr Henderson?’

‘And I want them now.’

At a little after midday the Germans broadcast a crowing report on the sinking of ‘a troopship’ called Imperial Star. There was no mention of the survivors. Winn sent Geoff Childs to tell her.

‘Schrecklichkeit.’

‘What do you mean, Geoff?’

‘A terror sinking, don’t you think? Beastly Huns — it was the same in the First War — only the uniforms have changed.’

By then Mary had worked her way through two days of decrypted signals and found nothing. But Joan Hawkins was busy collecting more and Trade was pulling together a list of the independently routed ships sunk that summer. Then at six o’clock in the evening Winn came to see her with news that a lifeboat had been found more than two hundred miles from the last known position of the ship.

‘Thirty-eight people, four women and two children.’

‘And do they think there’s a chance of finding more?’

Winn shook his head. They stood in silence for a few seconds, unable to look each other in the eye, then he gave a wry smile:

‘Oh and I forgot to tell you, the Ministry of Shipping have complained to the Director. The minister wants to know why such an important ship was permitted to sail alone, unescorted, beyond the protection of a convoy.’

There was nothing to report at seven o’clock and nothing at eight and by nine Mary was convinced she must have missed something and would have to begin again. Joan Hawkins’s slight shoulders were bent over a desk, her head resting in her hands, her hair an unruly curtain in front of her face.

‘Go home, Joan.’

She looked up at Mary and the loose brown curls fell away to reveal a pretty elfin face and dark eyes, rheumy with fatigue and the smoke that hung in a pall over the room.

‘We’ll begin again tomorrow. Leave that with me.’ Mary nodded to the file of signal flimsies between her elbows. ‘And thank you, Joan.’

By ten o’clock she was reading the broken sentences on the signal paper as if through the bottom of a bottle, the convoy numbers distant and opaque. After staring blankly at a signal for five minutes she resolved to finish the file in front of her and go to bed. The rest — there were four more on Hawkins’s desk — would have to wait until the morning. She smoothed the folds from her skirt, then, getting to her feet, raised herself on tiptoe and stretched her arms above her head, enjoying the sense of feeling flowing slowly back into her body.

‘You need some help.’ Rodger Winn was closing the door of his office. ‘I’ll ask Scholey and Childs to join you tomorrow.’

He walked over to the coat rack and lifted his mac from a hook: ‘Bletchley are looking into this for us. It will be a day or so before we hear anything.’

Winn left and she settled to her last batch of signals for the day. But she had read only a couple when, with a small pointed cough, he announced that he was back and standing at her shoulder.

‘You made me jump.’

‘I’m sorry but I thought you’d like to know Lieutenant Lindsay is looking for you. I found him in the corridor.’ There was a studied coolness in his voice that left her in no doubt of his disapproval. ‘It would be better if you went to him. You’ll find him at the entrance to the Admiralty.’

‘I see.’

‘Good night then,’ and after nodding to the night duty officer he shuffled out of the room.

Lindsay was waiting for her in the Mall, his shoulder against the peeling grey-green trunk of a plane tree, an evil-smelling cigarette between his fingers. It was a pleasant evening, the sky a deep indigo and in the gentlest of breezes the late summer scent of cedar and pine. And for just a moment — the taxis racing under Admiralty Arch, a theatre party laughing on the steps beneath the Duke of York — it was possible to forget the Imperial Star and the concrete walls of the Citadel where it always felt like winter.

‘Kiss me.’

‘You found me.’ He flicked his cigarette into the gutter then wrapped his arms around her.

‘Winn told me you were here,’ she said a short time later, her head resting against his shoulder.

‘Yes. He caught me in the corridor outside the Tracking Room. It was after ten so I’d assumed he’d left. He wasn’t pleased to see me.’

‘I’m sorry about your cousin. I know you were very close.’

She felt his body tense.

‘Yes.’

‘How is your mother?’

‘Of course, she’s upset too.’

To pre-empt more questions he bent his head to kiss her.

‘I haven’t seen you for ten days,’ he said when they broke apart at last.

‘I’ve been counting too. Did you get anything from Mohr?’

He shook his head: ‘But I have something to work on.’ And he told her of the bruises on Heine’s face and