SS-GB

‘This music master who does the lessons – he’s very young, wounded in the war and everything, so I wouldn’t like to complain about him,’ she paused, ‘but he was asking the boys a lot of questions, and I knew you wouldn’t like it.’

Douglas was suddenly wide awake. ‘Questions? What sort of questions?’

‘Yesterday afternoon at the music lesson. They have a proper gramophone and loudspeakers, and everything to play the music – it’s music appreciation really – and he has someone to work it, that’s why it costs the extra shilling.’

Douglas nodded. ‘What’s his name?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Archer. Your Doug told me afterwards that the teacher was asking about you – what time you got home and so on. I didn’t want to question Douggie too much about it. You know how sensitive he is, and what with losing his mother…sometimes I could cry for the little love.’ She smiled suddenly and shook her head. ‘I’m probably being a silly old woman. I should never have worried you about it.’

‘You did right,’ said Douglas. ‘Questions, you say?’

‘Oh, nothing like that – rest your mind. He’s not that sort of man at all. I can spot those sort of men a mile off.’

‘What then?’

‘I think he wanted to know if you liked the Germans.’ She stood up and straightened her hair, looking in the mirror. ‘I don’t want to get either of them into trouble. And I know you wouldn’t either. But if something happened to you or your Douggie, how would I be able to live with myself if I’d not told you?’

‘You’re a sensible woman, Mrs Sheenan. I wish I had a few more police officers as sensible as you are. Now tell me more about these two teachers.’

‘Only one’s a teacher, the other just helps with the music. They’re from the war – officers I should think, both wounded; one has lost his arm.’

‘Which arm?’

‘The right one. And he used to play the piano before the war. Isn’t it a terrible thing, and he can’t be more than twenty-five, if that.’

‘I’ll have that bath now, Mrs Sheenan. You get the boys ready and I’ll take you to the school in about fifteen minutes’ time.’

She got the children’s raincoats from the cupboard. One of them was threadbare. ‘Bob’s raincoat was stolen from the cloakroom last week. He’s back to wearing this old one again. I’ve told the boys to take their coats into the classroom in future. There are some terrible people about, Mr Archer, but there, you must know that better than any of us.’

‘This fellow had a false arm, you say?’

‘No, his arm is missing, poor boy.’

Chapter Nine

When Douglas returned to Scotland Yard, having dropped the others at the school, he sought out a young police officer named Jimmy Dunn, and got permission to use him on plain-clothes duty. PC Dunn was keen to get into CID. He’d proved a good detective for Archer on previous cases.

‘Find out what you can about this music teacher,’ Douglas said. ‘Political? Sexual? Someone with a grudge against coppers? I don’t want to do it myself because it sounds like he’d recognize me.’

‘Leave it to me, sir,’ said Dunn who could hardly wait to get started.

‘Might be just a crank,’ said Douglas. ‘Might be nothing at all.’

Happily, Jimmy Dunn began tidying up his desk. He only tolerated his job with Assistant Commissioner Administration because his office on the mezzanine was so close to the Murder Squad and Flying Squad teams.

‘Oh, and Jimmy…’ said Douglas as he was turning to leave. ‘There’s a million to one chance that this one-armed fellow might be connected with the Peter Thomas murder. I think you’d better draw a pistol from our friends downstairs. I’ll give you a chit.’

‘A pistol?’

Douglas had to smile. ‘Take something small, Jimmy, something you can tuck away out of sight. And keep it out of sight, unless you have to defend yourself. We can’t be too careful nowadays. There are too many guns in this town at present, and there’s the devil of a row if someone loses one.’

In the new office on the other side of the building Douglas found Harry Woods valiantly telling lies to all-comers to cover Douglas’s absence. General Kellerman’s office had been asking for Douglas since nine o’clock that morning.

From Whitehall came the constant sound of workmen hammering. Berlin had announced that, to celebrate the friendship between Nazi Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a week of Kameradschaft would be celebrated in all parts of the two vast empires. It was to begin the following Sunday, when in London, units of the Red Army and Navy, complete with band and choir, were to combine with the Wehrmacht for a march through town.

The whole route was being decorated, but Whitehall and Parliament Square were coming in for special treatment. As well as hundreds of flags, there were heraldic shields bearing entwined hammer, sickle and swastika surmounting a small Cross of St George which had now replaced the Union Flag for all official purposes in the occupied zone.

Hitler had provided the Red Fleet with anchorages at Rosyth and Scapa Flow as well as Invergordon. Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry said that this was a natural outcome of the bonds of friendship that drew these two great peoples together. Cynics said it was Hitler’s way of putting some Russians between him and the Americans.

In spite of all the extra work that the German/Soviet Friendship Week would give Scotland Yard, General Kellerman remained his usual genial unhurried self. Even when he returned from a conference at the Feld Kommandantur with a briefcase loaded with FK-Befehle he was able to laugh about the way these reams of printed orders about the Friendship Week required the full-time attention of a roomful of clerks.

The proliferating orders coming from the Military Commander GB (and the Military Administration Chief GB who supervised the British puppet government and the German officials) were a sign of growing fear that the Friendship Week might become the occasion for violent demonstration. And yet the intense rivalry – not to say hatred – that the German army Generals felt for Himmler’s SS organization, and police affiliates, determined the army to ask from General Kellerman no more than the normal police requirements.

‘What do you think?’ General Kellerman asked Douglas. ‘You can be quite frank with me, Superintendent, you know that.’

Kellerman spread out on his desk that morning’s newspapers. They all headlined the Friendship Week announcement from Berlin. There was a certain irony in the way that the official Nazi newspaper in London, Die Englische Zeitung, did little more than print the official announcement verbatim, within a decorative box on the front page. The Daily Worker, on the other hand, devoted four pages to it – ‘Britain’s Workers Say Forward’ with photos of the Russian and British officials who would be present at the saluting base. Stalin had already penned a suitable message. Those who remembered the congratulations Stalin sent to Hitler after the fall of France found his latest missive no less fulsome.

‘Will there be trouble?’ asked Kellerman.

‘From whom?’ said Douglas.

Kellerman chuckled. ‘The regime has enemies, Superintendent.’ He scratched his head as if trying to remember who they were. ‘And not all of them are on the General Staff.’ Kellerman smiled, enjoying his joke. Douglas was not sure whether he was expected to participate in this gross defamation of the German high command. He nodded as if not quite understanding.

‘There will be a lot of extra work for us,’ said Kellerman. ‘Berlin insists that the army line the entire route with soldiers. I should think there will be precious few left to march in the procession.’ He chuckled again. There seemed to be nothing to compare with the German army in trouble to put General Kellerman in a light-hearted mood. ‘And they plan to have Gendarmerie units every three hundred metres. How will they manage?’

‘And the Metropolitan Force?’

‘Normal police duties except for the issuing of movement passes.’

‘How will that work, sir?’

‘London Outer-Ring residents will be permitted to come into Central London each day for that week only. Local police stations will be issuing the passes, I’m afraid. Daily passes.’

Douglas nodded. It was easy to imagine the chaos that was going to descend upon suburban police stations. Half London had close relatives they could not visit because of the travel restrictions. ‘It would cut the work by half if the police stations could issue some passes for the whole week.’ Kellerman looked up and stared at him. Douglas added, ‘They would only be issued in the case of proved compassionate necessity.’

Kellerman looked at him for a long time before his face relaxed into a slight, inscrutable smile. ‘Of course, Superintendent. Only in the case of…what was it – proved compassionate necessity.’ Kellerman picked up the FK-Befehle and found the paragraphs referring to the issuing of passes. ‘I see no reason why I couldn’t introduce that provision into the orders.’ He smiled at Douglas. They both knew that this would provide a loophole, by means of which the local police stations would cut their workload drastically.

‘And the passes would make such splendid souvenirs,’ said Kellerman. ‘I’ll have a designer from the Propaganda Department work on it. Lots of decorations, with only the barest minimum of printing on the counterfoil.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Douglas. That would be a way of preventing the Wehrmacht doing any proper analysis of the counterfoils.

‘None of this should affect you personally, of course, but I always value your views on these matters.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ said Douglas.

‘I know that your work with the Standartenführer is of special interest to the Reichsführer-SS. I’ve therefore taken it upon myself to excuse you all other duties.’

‘That’s very considerate, General.’

‘You look tired, Superintendent. I suppose you got to bed rather late?’

‘I haven’t been to bed at all, sir.’

‘Well, that’s dreadful! I can’t allow that. Not even a brilliant young officer such as Standartenführer Huth can be permitted to totally exhaust my officers. Especially one of the most able officers I have in my entire command.’

‘The General is most gracious and generous.’

Kellerman walked over to the tiny turret appendage of his room. ‘Have you seen that?’ Douglas followed him. They looked at Westminster Bridge; gangs of painters were colouring it gold. Red flags and swastikas were being fixed along a scaffolding some three metres tall. Douglas guessed that this was a means of concealing bridge, river and roadway; probably because it would be used to concentrate mobile Gendarmerie units on both road and river, ready to move to any trouble spot.

‘Do you like it?’ said Kellerman. Douglas recalled a quotation from the Classics about building for your enemies a golden bridge but decided against mentioning this to Kellerman.

‘I’m a Londoner,’ said Douglas. ‘I like things to stay the way they always have been.’

‘I like an officer who speaks his mind,’ said Kellerman. ‘I want you to remember, Superintendent Archer, that you are an important man here at Scotland Yard. Any suggestion, any complaint would carry a lot of weight with the people at the top.’ Kellerman got his humidor and opened it. This time he didn’t go through the ritual of lighting a cigar for him. Douglas had the idea that Kellerman was treating him differently from the way he’d been treated at all their previous meetings.

Kellerman waited while Douglas selected, cut and lit his own cigar. Then, when it was well alight, he said, ‘More influence than perhaps you realize, Superintendent Archer. Berlin congratulated us on the crime figures. You played a major part in those, you know.’

‘Only the homicide,’ said Douglas.

‘And who do you think reads beyond the murders? Police forces, and their commanders…’ he grinned and scratched his pink cheek, ‘are judged according to the proportions of murders solved. No one worries about the really important crime – fraud, sabotage, arson, robbery, blackmail and so on. No, they concern themselves with murder, the only crime seldom committed by criminals. So you chaps in the Murder Squad are damned important, and that’s why cunning old foxes, like me, make sure that the best detectives are assigned to homicide cases.’

‘I see, sir,’ said Douglas doubtfully.

‘The point I’m making, Superintendent, is that I will back you through thick and thin. Remember that. If you are happy working with this new fellow Huth – fine. But if any difficulties arise, come and see me and I’ll give him another officer.’

‘Thank you, General. I’ve no complaints.’

‘You’re not the sort who complains, Superintendent. I know that well enough. But my door is always open…Open to you, that is.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

Douglas reeled out of Kellerman’s office, lightheaded from the loss of sleep, sweet cigar smoke and the rich diet of flattery.

Harry Woods was snowed under by paperwork when Douglas returned to the office. The Gendarmerie had had no idea that the Peter Thomas murder might come into Wehrmacht jurisdiction until Harry Woods had arrived with a handful of Luftwaffe petrol coupons, and a written statement mentioning the Feldwebel and his black-market activities.

The military police and their civil counterparts were usually able to come to terms with this sort of crime, and in the usual course of events this matter would have probably been handled by the police unit best able to investigate the most serious part of the crime. In this case the Metropolitan CID would have been asked to investigate the murder.

But then came the top priority teleprinter message from Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Berlin, instructing, with lots of Streng Geheim, Chef Sache and so on, that all files, documents and memoranda should be passed to SS-Standartenführer Huth at Scotland Yard.

Everyone informed of this new development knew that to deny that they had any files, documents or even memoranda would be interpreted at best as an indication of sloth and incompetence, at worst as a wilful refusal to obey this order from the most exalted levels of command.

In the circumstances it was unreasonable of Harry Woods to curse the men who were transferring to him virtually empty files, blank filing cards and meaningless dockets, every one of which was registered as very secret and so required faultless paperwork that the sender could produce, should the subject be raised again.

Douglas helped Harry Woods sort out some of the most difficult ones. Many of the forms, printed in German, were new to both men. Douglas had one of the porters bring them tea and sandwiches, and they worked through the lunch time. They always got on well together when they were working, and Harry Woods was, for a time, his old self. There was no sign of Huth. A message said he was in conference, but Harry said he was probably in bed and asleep.

It was two-thirty that afternoon when the phone call came from PC Jimmy Dunn. ‘I’ve seen the man, sir,’ Dunn told Douglas. ‘I didn’t speak with him of course but he met his friend the music-teacher for lunch today at the school. He’s due to be at the music class there this afternoon, the headmaster said. John Spode his name is.’

‘Good work, Jimmy,’ said Douglas.

‘He’s not a teacher, he just got himself a temporary job there on a day-to-day basis. I got his address from the school. I said I was from the Education Authority but I’m not sure they believed me. Then I went to look at his rooms. It’s a broken-down old place in Mafeking Street, Marylebone, not far from the school. No proper locks on the doors, and the caretaker was out, so I walked in and looked round.’

‘And?’

‘Two rooms, and share a bathroom. Not bad really, considering the way things are. It’s a bit grubby but there is a lovely little inlaid desk and some pictures on the wall that look as though they are worth a bit of money. I mean, art and antiques are not in my line, sir, but these things are old-looking but in very good condition. And I think that’s usually a sign things are worth something.’

‘But he’s clean?’

‘Well I haven’t turned him over, sir. But he’s clean I’d say: clean but not kosher.’

This had become the English policeman’s way of describing offences to which he would turn a blind eye.

‘Stay there, Jimmy,’ said Douglas. ‘I’ll come over and have a look round myself.’

Chapter Ten

The top storey of the house had been burned out by incendiary bombs, and Douglas could see through empty spaces that had once been windows, to charred rafters crisscrossing the sky. The ground floor windows were boarded up, the high price of glass made that a common sight in this neighbourhood. The suspect’s rooms were on the second floor. Jimmy Dunn led the way.

He’d rightly described the furniture as valuable. There was enough in this room to keep a man for a decade, a choicer selection by far than the items for sale in the Shepherd Market antique shop.

‘Still no sign of the caretaker?’ said Douglas.

‘There’s a bottle of milk outside his door. Looks like he’s been out all night – missed curfew and stayed overnight perhaps.’

‘Douglas nodded. Breaching German regulations –which required special permission for anyone, except the registered occupiers, to stay in a house overnight – was common enough.

‘Is there something funny about this place, Jimmy? Or am I just getting too old?’

‘In what way, sir?’

‘Valuable antiques in this room, and a cracked soap-holder in the bath; priceless carpet on the floor and dirty sheets on the bed.’

‘Perhaps he’s a miser, sir.’

‘Misers don’t buy soap at all,’ said Douglas. It was a silly answer but he knew this wasn’t the squalor of the niggard. ‘Smell the mothballs?’ Douglas got down on his hands and knees, and sniffed the carpet, but that had not been wrapped with mothballs. ‘It’s been in a storeroom,’ said Douglas, getting to his feet and brushing his hands to remove the dust. ‘That would be my guess.’ Douglas began going through the small chest of drawers, turning over a few shirts and underclothes, most of them British army issue. ‘There must be something more personal here,’ said Douglas as he rummaged, ‘…ration books, discharge papers, pension book or something.’

‘A lot of people carry all those sort of things with them,’ said Dunn. ‘There’s so much housebreaking. And it takes so long to get papers replaced.’

‘And yet he leaves all these valuables, without even a decent lock on the door?’ Douglas opened the next drawer, and went through it carefully. ‘Ah! Now what’s this?’ Under the newspaper that lined the drawer, his fingers found an envelope. Inside it he found half-a-dozen photos; Spode’s parents standing in a suburban garden somewhere, with two young children. A child on a tricycle. ‘A man finds it difficult to throw these kind of souvenirs away, Jimmy,’ he told the Constable. ‘Even when his life is at stake, it’s difficult to throw away your family.’ The next photo depicted a bride and groom. It was a snapshot, slightly out of focus.

Douglas looked through all the pictures. The largest one was an old press-photo; sharp, contrasty, and well printed on glossy paper. It was of a group of laboratory workers, in white coats, standing round an elderly man. He turned the photo over to read the caption. Rubber stamps gave the date reference number and warned that the photo was the copyright of a picture agency. The tattered typewritten caption-paper said, ‘Today Professor Frick celebrated his seventieth birthday. With him at his laboratory were the team who worked with him when, last year, his experiments brought him worldwide acclaim. By bombarding uranium with neutrons to form barium and krypton gas, he proved previous theories about the disintegration of the uranium nucleus.’

It was hardly the stuff of which newspaper headlines are made. The names of the scientists were also listed. They were meaningless except for the names ‘Dr John Spode and Dr William Spode’. Douglas turned the photo over to study the faces of the men squinting into the sun on that peaceful day so long ago. ‘Is that our man?’ he asked Dunn.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Dunn. ‘That’s him all right.’

‘Christ! This one next to him is the dead man in that Shepherd Market murder!’

‘Shall I ask the photo agency if they have a record of anyone buying an extra print of this photo?’ said Dunn. ‘It’s been sent here to this address.’

‘It’s worth a go,’ said Douglas. He made another circuit of the room; walls, cupboard, floorboards, all without marks of recent disturbance. Nothing hidden in the cistern of the WC, only accumulated filth on the cupboard tops, and dust under the carpet.

Douglas looked at the big kitchen table that had been pushed into a corner to make more room. He felt underneath to be sure that nothing was hidden there by means of sticky tape. Then he knelt down and looked under it too. ‘Look at that, Jimmy,’ he said.

Like most kitchen tables it had a cutlery drawer, and this one was concealed by the way the table was pushed against the wall. Together they heaved the heavy table aside until there was enough room to open the drawer.

It was a big drawer. In it there were a few spoons and forks, and a broken egg beater, but occupying most of the space there was an arm. It was a right arm made of lightweight unpainted alloy that had come to pieces after a nut and bolt had loosened. Douglas knew exactly the part it needed, and, with the stagecraft of an amateur conjurer, he took it from his pocket and held it in place.

Dunn gave the low appreciative whistle that was obviously expected of him.

‘That’s enough for me,’ said Douglas. ‘That came from the scene of the murder. I wonder if it was loosened in a struggle?’

‘The Peter Thomas shooting?’

‘We can start calling it the William Spode shooting from now on, Jimmy.’ He put the piece back into his pocket and replaced the false arm in the drawer. There was a paper bag there too. He looked inside it and found a well-worn, but well-cared for, Leica camera. There were some accessories too; extension rings, filters, lens hoods and a set of four legs, tied together with string to which was also tied a large ringlike holder for them. ‘Worth a few pennies, that lot,’ said Douglas. They replaced the things and moved the table back against the wall.

‘Leica cameras have become a second currency,’ said Dunn. ‘I know a man who’s invested his life savings in a couple of dozen of them.’

‘Sounds like a dangerous investment,’ said Douglas.

‘But so is paper money,’ said Dunn. ‘So you think the dead man was misidentified?’

‘We’ll never prove it was deliberate,’ said Douglas. ‘They’ll all insist that they did it in good faith. But I’d bet my month’s tobacco ration that they were lying.’

‘Why, sir?’

‘Too many witnesses telling me the same thing, Jimmy.’

‘Perhaps because it was the truth, sir.’

‘The truth is never exactly the same thing,’ said Douglas. ‘You say this fellow Spode is at the school this afternoon?’

‘Should be,’ agreed Dunn. ‘Are we going round there?’

‘I’ll phone Central first,’ said Douglas. ‘I think my new boss will want to get into the act.’

Douglas Archer’s prediction proved correct. Standartenführer Huth, in the words of Harry Woods, provided ‘a typical example of SS bullshit’.

Chapter Eleven

Beech Road School was the same sort of grim Victorian fortress in which so many London children spent their days. On one side there was a semi-derelict church, a paved part of its graveyard provided the recreation yard for the school. What a place to consign a child to waste away a precious youth, thought Douglas. Poor little Douggie.

A teashop faced the school. In other times it had been a cosy little den, smelling of Woodbine cigarettes, buttered toast and condensed milk. Douglas remembered it from when he was a young detective, its counter buried under slabs of bread pudding; heavy as lead and dark as thunder. Now the tea-urn, its plating worn brassy, provided only ersatz tea, and there wasn’t enough warmth in the place to glaze its window with condensation.