Comes the Dark Page 8

  ‘No, tonight we are both on the same side.’

  ‘Really? That’s good. I saw you go off with Guy and Sir Howard. Does that mean you are joining our little army?’

  I grinned and put my finger to my lips. ‘Mum’s the word.’ This time a faint flicker of amusement registered in his eyes.

  He held out his hand.

  ‘Ralph Chapman.’

  I shook his hand and nodded.

  ‘Well, John,’ he said conspiratorially, as though somehow we had become old friends in a matter of seconds, ‘I look forward to your first blood.’

  ‘So do I.’

  ‘There’s nothing like it, I can assure you. Gets the old adrenalin going like nothing else.’ He winked and patted me on the arm. ‘See you later, I’ve no doubt.’

  With that he turned and merged with all the other dinner-suited bastards.

  To hell with it, I said to myself, I’m leaving. If I have to play dumb to one more of this crowd, I’m liable to burst or smack someone very hard in the face.

  I had just made it to the door and the flunkey was on the verge of opening it for me, when I felt a tug on my elbow. ‘You’re not going without saying goodbye, are you?’

  It was Eunice.

  ‘I guess I was.’

  ‘You naughty boy.’

  She leaned forward and gave me a long hard kiss on the lips. It did make me feel like being a naughty boy—a very naughty boy.

  ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ she said, her eyes full of wicked promise, then she too melted away into the throng.

  As I hit the street and the cool, refreshing and untainted night air, some words of Sir Walter Scott floated into my brain from I know not where:

  Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.

  15

  The soldier stepped from the train on to the platform, wiped the sleep from his eyes and smiled. He was here, back in London, safe and sound. The great noisy cathedral of King’s Cross station, echoing with the various sounds of trains and travellers, seemed so wonderfully, reassuringly normal to him. One could almost believe that there wasn’t a war on.

  Indeed, he reaffirmed in his own mind that for the next few days or so there was no war, no dead comrades, no unit for him to return to, no guilt. And no bloody Nazis. There was just freedom and as much fun as a reasonably full wallet could secure. He was frightened to look beyond that.

  The shriek of a train whistle made him jump and he smiled at his own nervousness. He shouldn’t be nervous, he told himself, not in London. He was glad he had come back here. There was so much more to do and see than in his adopted home town on the coast, and less likelihood of his being apprehended. It was easier to lose oneself in the teeming capital. And that’s what he wanted to do above all: to be anonymous. Of course, being here also gave him the opportunity, if the spirit moved him, to catch up on the past. But for some inexplicable reason he wasn’t sure that the spirit would move him. Maybe it was because he really didn’t want to reach back. Maybe.

  He would wait and see how he felt.

  The important thing now was to grab a large breakfast with eggs, bacon, the whole lot, to set him up for the day and then find a night’s lodgings before he went off to enjoy himself. To crowd his mind with new sensations in order to blot out yesterday, all those bloody yesterdays.

  With a grim determination he hauled his kit-bag on to his shoulder and made his way up the platform towards the exit, merging very quickly into the vast sea of milling humanity.

  16

  The next morning I woke up with my head in a vice that was slowly being tightened by an unseen hand. Well, that’s what it felt like anyway. I just prayed that my skull would split open and allow my brains to escape, thus putting me out of my misery.

  I’d had hangovers before but not one quite like this. It was, I supposed, the result of too much champagne, not my normal tipple, and too close a contact a with bunch of loony fascists: a deadly cocktail. Even the usual remedy of black coffee and a couple of Craven As failed to release the vice.

  Slowly I rose from my pit, washed, shaved and dressed, each operation being carried out with strained, awkward, painstaking motions. I gave a fair imitation of Boris Karloff as Frankenstein’s monster.

  By the time I’d downed another coffee and consumed a further two fags I sensed that a kind of normality was on its way. While I waited for its return, I cast my mind back over the events of the previous evening. In the cold light of day they made me shudder. It seemed that I had been signed up as an assassin-in-chief for the Britannia Club, an association that secretly organised vigilante groups to harm and indeed kill Jews in London. My immediate instinct was get on the phone to David Llewellyn at the Yard, spill the beans and let him take over, thus letting me off the hook. His men could raid the place and that would be that.

  Only it wouldn’t.

  I knew that I had to have actual proof before I involved the police. Conversations were hardly proof and could easily be denied. I needed concrete evidence in order to make the charges stick. At the moment it was only my word against theirs and I’m sure Messrs McLean and Cooper had enough clout in high places to squash my testimony. And me along with it. No, I was stuck with my role of fascist supporter for a little longer yet. Great.

  I breakfasted on a cup of tea and a couple of stale digestive biscuits; then I moved next door into the room I laughingly call my office. Consulting my appointment diary I was relieved to note that I did have a prospective client due at ten o’clock. It was a bread-and-butter job—something to do with an apparently errant clerk who was helping himself to the petty cash —but it would help to keep my mind off other matters for a while.

  By lunchtime I was feeling almost normal. The vice had evaporated and I could move my head quickly without my vision blurring or my brain hurting. I had dealt with my client, a Mr Goodall, whose problem was, as I suspected, a simple one. I was able to advise him on a course of action to trap the pilfering clerk. All he had to do was mark the notes that went into the petty-cash box, and when they appeared to go missing simply ask the clerk if he would be kind enough to change a pound for two ten-shilling notes from his own wallet. If the exchanged notes were the marked ones, hey presto, he had his proof. That seemed to satisfy Mr Goodall; I was able to extract a small consultation fee and that was that.

  Somewhat at a loose end, I decided to take myself off to the pictures for the afternoon. They were showing Ronald Colman in The Prisoner of Zenda at the Astoria in Tottenham Court Road. I’d seen it before but I thought an afternoon of Ruritanian romance and derring-do was the ideal antidote to murdering fascists and pilfering clerks.

  I was just reaching for my hat and coat when there was a knock at my office door. Surely, not another client? I thought. Two in one day was riches indeed.

  However my visitor was Eunice McLean.

  ‘Hello, darling,’ she said, leaning provocatively against the doorframe. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’

  Before I could reply she came in anyway.

  ‘How did you find me?’ I asked, failing to keep the irritation from my voice.

  ‘I thought you were a detective and would know such things. There aren’t too many John Hawkes in the telephone book. And I sort of knew that “John Hawke—Private Detective” was you. And it was.’

  ‘And why are you here?’

  ‘Now that is a silly question.’ She slipped her coat off and draped it over a chair. She was wearing a tightly fitting black woollen dress that hid no secrets about her figure.

  I was unaccustomed to this sort of attention and I did not have any previous experience to guide me through the minefield which I saw clearly before me. This girl meant business and I was flattered. Under any other circumstances I would have welcomed her advances, but I was not about to get emotionally entangled with the daughter of Sir Howard McLean, an unscrupulous fascist with blood on his hands, and she herself a girl whose own moral outlook was diametrically opposed to mine. No matter ho
w alluring she was.

  And she was alluring.

  ‘Miss McLean, I’m sorry but—’

  ‘Oh, you’re not going to play hard to get, are you, Johnny?’ She pouted and drew so close that I could smell the heady aroma of her expensive perfume.

  I was about to push her away when it struck me that this might be some kind of test. She might have been sent here to find out more about me, to see if I really was suitable material for the Britannia gang. All that stuff her father had spouted about keeping the information regarding the vigilante groups to myself, that his daughter was ignorant of such activities, might well have been a pack of lies. After all he was a specialist in deception.

  I stared into the beautiful face of Eunice McLean, searching for some signs of betrayal. I could find none. She seemed very earnest in her desires. Wasn’t I the lucky boy? Or was I? I really didn’t know, but I was sure that if I did not respond in kind it would seem to be suspicious. Who could resist this creature and why on earth would they want to?

  On impulse, I took her in my arms and kissed her fully on the lips. I felt her body relax into my embrace and she returned my passion in spades. I couldn’t help myself: I really was enjoying the experience. Part of my tired brain was asking me when was the last time a beautiful woman had kissed me in this fashion. In fact I didn’t recall a last time. I didn’t think there was one.

  After a while we paused for breath and Eunice pulled away a little, smiling.

  ‘You’re quite a kisser, Johnny boy,’ she said, her smile broadening.

  ‘That makes two of us.’

  She came close again and we repeated the procedure. I must admit it was a struggle to keep my wits about me. It would have been so easy to give in to the moment, but I had to keep reminding myself while I was holding and kissing this beautiful young girl that I didn’t trust her.

  Eventually I broke the clinch and reached inside my jacket for a pack of cigarettes. I offered her one.

  She shook her head. ‘Why smoke when we can neck?’

  ‘I think I need to come up for air for a while and I’d like to talk.’

  She seemed puzzled. ‘What about?’

  I lit my cigarette and stared at those wide, innocent eyes. ‘Why this? Why me? A pretty girl like you from a privileged background chasing after a poor one-eyed guy like me…it doesn’t make sense.’

  She giggled. ‘You do yourself no favours, Mr Johnny Detective. There’s something dangerous about you that appeals to me. You’re real. You should see some of the soppy individuals my parents try to hook me up with.’

  I could imagine.

  ‘Do your parents know you’re here now?’

  ‘What do you think?’ She pouted her lips and blew me a kiss.

  ‘I think that you could get me into a lot of trouble with your father and I don’t want that to happen. I respect him and his views—’

  ‘You can still respect him and make love to me, too.’

  ‘Whoa, young lady, let’s take one thing at a time here.’

  ‘OK, kiss me again.’

  ‘Not just at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, Johnny ...’

  The real, spoilt immature girl was emerging now, slipping out behind that worldly, confident façade, a girl who was used to getting her own way and sulked when she didn’t. A girl who was allowed to follow her whims and, strange as it seemed, I had become one of those whims—a passing fancy. It would have been so easy to tell her to grow up and not to throw herself at comparative strangers no matter how ‘dangerous’ and ‘real’ they seemed. But she would have ignored me or worse. I knew I had to keep her sweet for the sake of my mission. I didn’t want her turning against me and moaning about me to her dad.

  I took her in my arms again and kissed her. It was a hard job, but I knew I just had to do it.

  ‘Listen, Eunice, you’re a sweet girl and I find you very…very ...’

  ‘Attractive.’

  ‘Yes, but don’t you think we should take things a little more slowly? We hardly know each other.’

  ‘There are ways of changing that…’

  ‘Yes, but not now. I’m afraid you have to go. I have work to do and then I’ve got an important appointment this afternoon.’ I didn’t add that it was with Ronald Colman at the Astoria cinema. ‘Let’s meet up for a drink sometime at the weekend, maybe a meal.’

  ‘You do like me, don’t you?’ She frowned and looked thoroughly miserable.

  I couldn’t help grinning at the sudden change in her demeanour.

  ‘Of course I like you.’ And strangely I did and that worried me. ‘Now run along and I’ll be in touch with you before Saturday to arrange things.’

  ‘You’ll ring me. Promise.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘But you don’t have my number.’ She scribbled it down on the pad on my desk. ‘There. And if I don’t hear from you by Friday evening, I shall come round here and bang on your door until you show yourself.’

  Without another word I helped her on with her coat and guided her to the door.

  ‘I will ring,’ I said, gently pushing her into the corridor. ‘I am a man of my word.’

  She grinned, her beautiful face lighting up again. ‘I knew you were.’ She kissed me on the cheek. ‘I’ll miss you Johnny Detective. See at you the weekend.’

  I nodded and waved her goodbye.

  After she’d gone I stood for some time in kind of trance. Had all that happened, or had I imagined it? I sank in my chair dazed. An encounter like that was so unfair on my emotions and my male urges. The memory of those kisses stirred me. Eunice was an added complication to an already messy situation.

  17

  He stood by the window in his tiny room, holding back the blackout curtain and the shabby, discoloured net curtains so that he could see the sky. Already the day was retreating and the first faint glimmer of the stars had begun to prick the slate-coloured canvas.

  He was eager to start but he had the stoical patience that allowed him to wait until it was time. This restraint gave added pleasure, a sensual anticipation to the night’s deeds. He smiled. Come the dark, and the killing could begin.

  18

  The soldier studied the froth on his pint of beer in an absentminded manner. He was somewhat despondent. His first day in London had not lived up to his expectations. He had not been in the city since before the war and he had been dismayed and shocked at the changes he had seen—the damage and destruction that the blitz had caused. There were now great wastelands of rubble where smart buildings had once stood. Hardly any street or thoroughfare seemed to have escaped some scars of the bombing. Ugly damaged structures were shored up with little hope of surviving the next blast and there was a general dusty atmosphere of gloom everywhere. Even the faces of the crowds that passed him by seemed somehow damaged by the war. Cheery words and flashing smiles appeared to be on ration too. And even good old Eros had been boarded up to protect the little fellow from the Hun. There were hoardings everywhere instructing the populace what to do: ‘Wear or carry something white’; ‘Go through your wardrobe—Make do and mend’; ‘Keep Mum—Careless Talk Costs Lives’; and ‘Dig For Victory’. This was not the lively capital of his youth but a city held in thrall by the conflict.

  He had escaped these reminders of the war by spending the afternoon at the pictures, then, on a guilty impulsive whim, had rung his brother from a telephone box outside the cinema. He knew that he should have got in touch with him earlier—even sent him a letter informing him that he would be in London ‘on leave’, but something, some inexplicable feeling, had prevented him. He hadn’t fallen out with his brother; they had somehow just drifted apart. There was nothing in their separate lives that bonded them anymore. But after such a dispiriting day he had the sudden urge to see him again, to engage with someone who knew him. He had tried to ignore the need to talk to someone about his problems for long enough. His escape hadn’t been successful but he now realised that he couldn’t escape from himself.

>   He stood in the dank call box listening to the telephone ringing and ringing at the other end. There was no reply. Another disappointment in a day of many.

  He grabbed a bite to eat in a dingy café, then wandered the streets for a while until dusk fell and the lights of the Saracen’s Head caught his eye. Well, at least he could get drunk, he thought. No point in being on leave and not getting pie-eyed.

  But here he was, staring at his first pint without much enthusiasm.

  ‘Penny for ‘em, soldier.’

  The voice broke into his reverie. He looked up and saw a slim young woman wearing a saucy beret which was pulled almost over one eye. She looked French but her voice was pure East London.

  He looked puzzled for a moment.

  ‘Your thoughts,’ she added with a wink. ‘Penny for your thoughts.’

  ‘Ah, you wouldn’t want to know.’

  ‘You could always try me,’ she said, dragging up a stool and sitting at the same table. ‘I’m a very good listener…among other things.’

  The girl wasn’t pretty and she was heavily made up, particularly for someone of her young age, but he thought there was something attractive about her and she seemed friendly.

  ‘You on leave?’ she asked.

  He nodded.

  ‘That’s nice.’ She raised her glass as though in a toast to his temporary freedom, then looked dismayed when she saw that it was empty. ‘Oh, dear,’ she said.

  He was sharp enough to know this was part of a well-practised routine to get a free drink, but he didn’t mind. In fact it entertained him.

  ‘What can I get you?’

  ‘Oh, I’d love a large gin and tonic’, she said, apparently surprised and delighted at his offer. ‘And I wouldn’t mind a bag of crisps neither. My tummy’s rumbling a bit.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, strangely charmed by this flighty bit of stuff. He had no delusions about what she was and what she was after, but he didn’t care. She was beginning to brighten up his dispiriting day and that was all that mattered. With a grin he wandered over to the bar to carry out his errand, returning a few minutes later with the drink and crisps.