Rennie Airth_John Madden 03 Page 2

  wandered about the house switching on lights, Maurice went

  over the plans he’d made, plans which had grown in complication

  as the situation around him became more unstable.

  With sailings from Le Havre suspended, he’d been obliged to look further afield and had managed to book passage on a

  liner leaving Lisbon for New York in a week’s time. This had

  still left him with the problem of getting to the Portuguese

  capital, and having considered – and discarded – the idea of

  trying to find a seat on the by now overcrowded trains

  heading south from the city daily, he had decided instead to

  make the long journey by motor car.

  Dugarry’s last job before departing to join his wife and

  children in Rennes had been to service the Sobels’ Citroen

  cabriolet and to ensure that the tyres were in good condition

  and reserve supplies of fuel stowed aboard. Even so, Maurice

  might have felt daunted by the thought of the drive ahead apart

  from the odd Sunday outing it was some years since

  he had driven a car – had it not been for a stroke of good

  fortune that had come his way a few days earlier. An acquaintance

  of his, a Polish art dealer called Kinski, long settled in

  France, had rung him out of the blue to ask, if it was not

  prying, if it was not an indelicate question, whether what he

  had heard was true – that Sobel was intending to quit Paris

  and would be travelling to Spain in his car? Before Maurice

  had time to get over his surprise – he had discussed his plans

  with only one or two people – Kinski had revealed the reason

  for his enquiry.

  'I’ve been asked if I can help a young man whom the

  Nazis would like to get their hands on. A Polish officer.

  Jan Belka’s his name. He joined the resistance soon after the

  Germans occupied Warsaw, but unfortunately his group was

  betrayed and he had to get out in a hurry. He’s been in Paris

  for some time, without papers, of course, and now he’s in

  danger again. He’d like to get to London, but Spain would

  be a start. I was wondering . . . would it be possible . . . ?’

  While Kinski was speaking, Maurice had had time to

  reflect on the fact that it was not so surprising after all that

  his help should have been sought in the matter. The Sobels

  were Polish by extraction. They made no secret of it.

  'You want me to take this man with me?’

  'If possible. And his companion, a young woman, also

  Polish.’ Kinski had hesitated. He said delicately, “I understand

  she is Jewish.’

  Ignoring the momentary prick of anger he felt just then as

  if the fact that the girl was Jewish might sway him, as if he

  might be less inclined to help a mere gentile – Maurice had

  responded without hesitation.

  'Of course, my dear fellow. I’d be happy to take them.’

  He’d spoken honestly. 'In fact, you’re doing me a favour. I’d

  rather not make this trip alone.’

  “I can’t thank you enough.’ Kinski’s relief had been plain.

  'Give them my address. Tell them we’ll be leaving two

  days from now, on Thursday. I want to make an early start,

  so I suggest they spend Wednesday night with me. The house

  will be empty during the day – I’m paying off the staff – but

  I’ll be home by six. I’ll expect them then.’

  He looked at his watch now. It was a few minutes after

  the hour. He reminded himself he must check the bedrooms

  on the floor above to make sure that the maids had prepared

  them as instructed before departing. Maurice had no idea

  whether his guests were a couple or not and had decided to

  offer them a room each and then leave it to them to settle

  their sleeping arrangements. For his own part he would be

  glad to have them as company on this last evening. The

  house was full of ghosts for him; full of memories. Although

  some of the furniture had already been dispatched across

  the Atlantic and other pieces put in storage, there were

  enough reminders of the life he and his family had shared

  here to weigh on his spirits and fill him with a sense of loss.

  But he knew these were thoughts he must put behind him.

  The future was what concerned him now, the immediate future. Pausing by his desk to gaze dreamily at a photograph

  of his wife, which he’d not yet packed, Maurice delivered

  a silent reproof to himself. Leonie Sobel was a woman of

  character and her dark, emphatic features showed a strength

  he had come to rely on over the years. He knew very well if

  she were here now she would tell him to leave off woolgathering.

  To focus his mind on the business in hand. In

  particular, there was the problem of the diamonds, which

  he’d taken out of the attache case and placed on the desk

  beside his wife’s photograph, to be resolved. How best to

  transport them? He’d be crossing two borders in the coming

  days, and quite possibly his luggage would be searched. It

  might be as well to remove temptation from the gaze of

  customs officers who’d be only too well aware of his predicament:

  of the threat that had driven him, and others like him,

  to take flight.

  Even as he considered the question, weighing the velvet

  bag in his hand, he felt the beginnings of despair take hold of

  him, a feeling of hopelessness not rooted in the moment – he

  knew he could deal with the immediate problems facing him – but rather in the sense of destiny as a curse from which

  there was no escape. Despite the years of prosperity, his

  family had not forgotten their past. Dealers in furs for

  generations, the Sobels had fled the Pale of Settlement before

  the turn of the century, leaving behind them the bloody

  pogroms that had racked the western borders of the Tsar’s

  empire. How many times, Maurice wondered, had he heard

  his grandfather, dead now these twenty years, tell of the night

  he had seen his parents’ neighbour, a watchmaker, beaten to

  death in the street before a watching crowd while their own

  house went up in flames? Now, once again, the blood was

  flowing. Was there no end to it?

  With a growl, he broke the spell. Enough! The dark street

  his thoughts had wandered down led nowhere. Frowning, he

  stared at the soft velvet bag resting in the palm of his hand,

  and as he did so an idea came to him. It concerned his

  street coat, which he’d taken off and hung up in the hall

  when he came in. Another Savile Row creation, its elegant

  folds contained an ample expanse of silk lining, and it had

  occurred to him that this might be put to some practical use

  as a place of concealment. It would require some skill in

  sewing, he saw that, but surely this young woman who was

  about to arrive could help him there. He didn’t doubt he

  could trust her, she and her companion both, these brave

  young people, who even if they were fleeing with him now,

  surely meant to continue the fight against the loathed enemy.

  London, Caspar Kinski had said. That was where they meant

  to go, and Maurice won
dered if he might not be able to help

  them achieve their aim. With money, certainly, but perhaps

  in other ways, too, once they had reached Spain. He had

  business contacts in many capitals.

  Cheered by the thought – he was relieved to have

  shrugged off his dark mood – Maurice went out into the

  entrance hall where his coat was hanging. As he reached for

  it, he heard the creak of the garden gate followed by the

  sound of footsteps on the gravel path. Smiling a greeting,

  he opened the door to what he thought were his guests and

  received instead a blow to the jaw that sent him staggering

  backwards and then, before he had time to react, a second to

  the side of his head that knocked him to the paved floor.

  Crouched on his hands and knees, spitting out blood from a

  cut lip, he was aware only of a pair of trousered legs which

  moved swiftly around him and out of his blurred vision. Next

  moment his throat was encircled by something so thin it

  seemed to have no substance, but which burned like fire as

  it cut its way into his flesh, deeper and deeper. The pain was

  intense, but it lasted for only a few moments. Then sight and

  consciousness faded and his agony ceased.

  PART ONE

  1

  London, November 1944

  Hands in pockets, Bert huddled deeper in the doorway.

  Crikey, it was cold!

  The wind that had got up earlier was still blowing, but

  not in gusts like before; now it was steady. It had force, and

  the power of it cut clean through his coat and overalls,

  and the jersey he was wearing underneath that, and went

  straight to his bones. And though his tin helmet, with the W

  for air-raid warden painted on the front, was safely settled on

  his head and hardly likely to fly away, even in the gale that

  was blowing, he clutched at it automatically.

  'You’ll catch your death, Bert Cotter, going out on a night

  like this,’ Vi had warned him earlier when he’d been preparing

  to set off from the small flat in St Pancras where they

  lived. She’d insisted he put on an extra vest. 'And what’s the

  use anyway? It’s no good telling people to put their lights

  out. It don’t make no difference to a buzz bomb.’

  The advice was wasted on Bert. Hadn’t he been saying the

  same thing himself for weeks? There hadn’t been a proper

  raid on London since the summer. The Luftwaffe – the

  bloomin’ Luftwaffe to Vi – had finally shot its bolt, or so

  they were assured. Now there were only the flying bombs

  to worry about. Those and these new V-2 rockets, which

  the government had finally admitted were falling on the city,

  though most people had already guessed it. After all, how

  many times could mysterious explosions be put down to gas

  leaks before people started asking questions?

  'What do they take us for?’ Vi had enquired of him in all

  seriousness. As though she thought he might actually know

  the answer. 'Bloomin’ idiots?’

  Fishing out a packet of fags from his coat pocket, Bert

  chuckled. She was right about the blackout, though. The

  whole of London could be lit up and it wouldn’t change a

  thing. The bombs and rockets fell where they fell, and all you

  could hope was it wasn’t your head they came down on.

  He lit his cigarette and then used the flickering flame of

  the match to check his wristwatch. He was close to the end

  of his three-hour tour of duty and anxious to get home. Too

  old to enlist – he’d done his bit in France in the last shindig Bert

  had opted to serve part time in civil defence, and since

  he worked in the area, being employed as a carpenter and

  general handyman at the British Museum, he’d joined a squad

  of wardens assigned to the Bloomsbury district. There’d been

  a time, back in ’40, during the Blitz, when Jerry bombers had

  come over night after night, turning whole areas of the city

  into cauldrons of fire, when the job had been one to be proud

  of.

  But now Bert wasn’t so sure. The excitement he’d felt at

  the start of the conflict had long since faded. Truth to tell he

  was sick of patrolling the night-time streets, fed up with

  blowing his whistle and bawling up at people to 'put that

  bloody light out’. It was a feeling shared by many, and not

  least by his fellow wardens, if that evening’s performance was

  anything to go by. When Bert had turned up at their rendezvous

  point a little earlier – it was a pub in the Tottenham

  Court Road – he’d discovered that no fewer than four of the

  dozen-strong squad had rung in to excuse themselves. Two

  had bad colds (they said), one had twisted his ankle (a likely

  story) and the fourth had referred to some unspecified family

  crisis that prevented him from leaving home. Vi was right.

  Only a muggins like yours truly would venture out on a

  night like this.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the wail of a siren. It

  sounded close by, coming from the area of Covent Garden,

  he guessed, and instinctively he glanced upwards, searching

  for the telltale finger of flame that would signal the approach

  of a flying bomb. During the summer they arrived day and

  night from across the Channel, and Londoners had learned

  to recognize the sinister drone of their engines and to dread

  the moment when the noise ceased and the craft, loaded with

  explosives, plunged to earth. Fewer fell now, it was true: the

  advance of the Allied armies in France and Holland had

  forced the Jerries to move their launching sites. But the threat

  was far from over. Only a few weeks before, returning home

  from work, crossing Tavistock Square, Bert had seen one pass

  overhead and heard its engine cut out. The tremendous

  explosion that followed had made the windows in the square

  rattle, and seconds later a huge buff plume of smoke had risen

  from the vicinity of King’s Cross like a pillar into the grey

  October sky. Ears pricked, he waited now, but after a minute

  or so the noise stopped and the silence of the night was

  restored. A false alarm.

  Bert put out his cigarette. It was time to get moving. The

  doorway where he’d taken refuge was in Little Russell Street,

  near the corner of Museum Street, and he needed only to

  walk over to Tottenham Court Road to reach the boundary

  of his allotted territory, a patchwork of narrow roads

  bounded to the north by Great Russell Street and to the

  south by Bloomsbury Way. The wardens usually patrolled in

  pairs, but because of the absentees that evening he was on his

  own and had already decided to shorten his route. Not two

  minutes from where he stood now, at the top of Museum

  Street, his place of employment loomed large and lightless,

  and although it seemed deserted he knew very well that the

  museum’s doors would be unlocked and a squad of volunteer

  firemen would be on duty inside. (They’d been posted there

  as a precaution ever since a night back in 1941 when dozens

  of
incendiary bombs had come through the roof during a

  Jerry raid and several of the rooms had been burned out.)

  What he planned to do was pop in there for a cup of tea, get

  the cold out of his bones, and then leg it home to St Pancras.

  (And two nights from now when he was next on duty he

  might just come down with a cold himself.)

  As Bert slipped out of the doorway he heard footsteps,

  and next moment a dark figure came swinging round the

  corner from Museum Street.

  'Whoops . . . I Sorry, miss.’

  If it hadn’t been for the cry the figure let out as they

  collided Bert might not have known it was a young woman.

  She was wearing a coat which had a hood attached to it and

  was walking with her head down.

  'It’s this blinkin’ blackout.’ Seeing her shrink back, he

  tried to reassure her. 'You never see anything until it’s too

  late.’

  “I am sorry. It was my fault.’ Breathless from haste, she

  spoke with a foreign accent. “I should have looked where I

  was going.’

  The face beneath the hood was a white blur. Bert noticed

  she had a bag in each hand.

  'Bitter night,’ he remarked, drawing his own coat closer

  about him, resettling the helmet on his head.

  'Yes, isn’t it?’ The relief in her voice made him wonder if

  she’d felt nervous walking through the blackout on her own.

  She’d put down one of her bags for a moment, and he saw

  now that in fact it was a basket, heavily laden, its contents

  covered by a cloth. He tested its weight and then held it

  ready for her while she wiggled her fingers to get the circulation

  back.

  'Thank you so much.’ She took the basket from him.

  “I hope you haven’t far to go with those.’ He nodded at

  her burdens.

  'No, it’s only a short walk.’

  'I’ll give you a hand if you like.’

  She looked over her shoulder. 'No, really. It’s not necessary.’

  He caught a glimpse of her smile in the shadow cast by

  the hood. 'Goodnight, and thank you for your help.’

  She plodded on, and as he watched her figure disappearing

  into the darkness Bert wondered if he shouldn’t have insisted.

  She seemed like a nice girl. But his bones ached from the cold

  and whatever faint impulse he felt to follow her faded at the

  thought of the hot cup of tea awaiting him.

  She would manage, he told himself as her figure grew faint