The Unquiet heart

NEXT TIME IT WILL BE HER HEAD. FORGET HER!!!

I checked the box outside and in. Nothing else. I walked round to my chair and sat down and touched her hair, clinging to the notion that she was still alive.

Why else would have they sent the warning? Did it mean I was getting close? I picked up her curls in both hands and buried my face in it, inhaling her perfume and the faint tang of tobacco.

What the hell did I do now?

It was ten o’clock and the pubs were closing. Drinkers poured out of the bars, joshing and singing: displays of bravado before facing the wife with a schoolboy excuse for the dent in the pay-packet. I’d had a couple of pints at the King’s Head down at the Elephant, and found myself wandering down towards the river. My empty flat didn’t appeal. The pantry was bare and I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime. I knew a good chippy, a van on a bomb site near London Bridge.

They had one cod left. It had my name on it, in a cone of newspaper with a mountain of chips all doused in salt and vinegar. Only a woman’s nape smells better. I walked over to the railings by the river and gazed out over the water, thinking it was time to go the police. I wolfed down the sodden batter and salt-encrusted chips, chucked the paper in the river and watched it float off downstream. I licked my fingers and began to walk back towards Borough High Street through one of the many alleyways that ran round Southwark Cathedral. My shadow ran in front of me as I dipped between rare pools of light.

That’s when I heard the steps. At first I wasn’t sure. A drunk passing, the faint echo of high heels running for the last bus, a dog on his night prowl. I slowed and listened. The streets were quiet. I stopped, listened again. Nothing.

I started again, this time walking faster. I suddenly did an about turn and walked smartly back the way I’d come. No one. I turned down a side street I hadn’t intended taking, slid into a door well and waited. If he was following me he was good. I gave it five long minutes. Still nothing. I glanced down the side street and saw it led nowhere. I pulled my hat down over my face and tiptoed to the corner feeling daft. I peered round.

He was standing with his back against the wall, hands in his pockets, waiting. I didn’t recognise him at first. He was big, but his coat hung loose on his frame like he’d borrowed it from a bigger brother. I walked up to him, slowly. I still didn’t recognise him. Then he grinned, and bile choked my throat. He was the last person I wanted to meet down a dark alley, away from witnesses.

“You’ve lost weight,” I said.

“Thanks to you.”

“Any time. Why are you following me, Wilson? Revenge?”

He shook his head. “Why didn’t you leave me to die?”

The last time I’d seen Detective Inspector Herbert Wilson, he was lying on the bare floor of one of Mama Mary’s flats. I’d lured him into a confrontation with the lovely but spoiled Kate Graveney. Wilson was groaning. Hardly surprising. He was bleeding his life out from a wound in his stomach, clawing at the splintered leg of the chair on which he’d impaled himself. It seemed a fitting but unintended revenge for his bestial plundering of nameless Soho girls including Kate herself. Not to mention the pasting he’d given me in the nick. I’ve known bent coppers in my time, but Wilson’s brand of bullying sadism made them look like wide-eyed cherubs.

“It wasn’t for your sake, believe me.”

“Oh, I believe you, McRae. I believe you.”

“Is that all you wanted to know? You could have phoned me. Or ambushed me in my office like everybody else does.”

“I can do you a favour.”

I laughed. “In return for what?”

“Helping us.”

I took out my cigarettes. I didn’t offer him one. Bad for his health. I lit up and watched my smoke drift through the street lamp.

“Us? Who’s us, these days, Wilson? Thought they’d pensioned you off.”

His grin widened. Even in the poor light his teeth looked brown. “Us is the Yard. Scotland Yard. CID.”

“God help us all,” I said with feeling. “Why would the Yard want to help me?”

“Eve Copeland. She’s not who you think she is.”

Her name in his mouth was like a blasphemy. I flicked my fag away. It spiralled into the dark and kicked up sparks when it hit the pavement.

“Oh? And who might she be?”

He put his head to one side and looked at me for my reaction. “A German spy.”

Can your whole body flinch? I laughed. “You’re daft, Wilson. Off your trolley.

They let you out of hospital too soon.”

His face lost the steady smile. “As I recall, you’re the one with the hole in your head, McRae. Are you going to listen?”

“Why the hell should I listen to a madman talking shit at midnight?” My mind was rotating like a whirligig. All I could see was her notebook with its encoded messages in German script and shorthand. But what did that prove? She was a linguist, OK? “Prove it, Wilson. Bloody well prove it.”

His smile widened. He was loving this. I should have let him bleed to death.

“Meet us at her flat tomorrow. Ten o’clock. Don’t be late. You’ll miss the party.” He tipped his hat at me, turned and walked away. I could have jumped him, given him a good kicking. We were alone. Instead I stood like a dummy looking after him. Then I lit another cigarette and walked home, my brain numb.

I got to her flat at quarter to ten. A policeman was standing on the front steps. I walked up to him, my mind dragging me back to the first night she sneaked me in and up to her bed. German spy indeed! “Sorry, sir. No one’s allowed in today.”

“I’m here to see Wilson. Detective Inspector Wilson.” The title stuck in my craw.

The bobby’s face changed. “Your name, sir?”

“McRae. Danny McRae.”

“You’re expected, sir. And it’s Superintendent Wilson now, sir.” He winked at me, turned and opened the door. “The Super and the other gentleman are with the landlady. Downstairs.”

The Super? So if you really screw up you get kicked upstairs. I walked down the hall, not on tiptoe this time. Voices drifted through the open door, and I recognised the landlady’s nagging tones.

“I knew she was up to something funny. I just knew it. All those late hours. Not right for a young woman. But who am I to say? It’s all different these days. No respect and no morals neither. And as for…”

“That’s fine, Mrs Gibson.” A man’s voice hurriedly cut in. Not Wilson’s, but familiar. It was a Kafka moment: my enemy and my friend allied against me. “I think we have all we need for the moment. We’ll just finish our search upstairs, if you don’t mind.” I heard rustling and a clatter of teacups.

“I don’t know what I’m going to tell the neighbours…”

“Well, actually, nothing for the moment, if you don’t mind,” went the familiar posh tones.

I stood rooted in the hall waiting for him. He still had the moustache and the floppy hair, but now he was in civvies like the rest of us. It made him seem lesser.

“Hello, Gerry,” I said. My old boss, Major Gerald Cassells, SOE retired, had the grace to look sheepish as he emerged from the vocal clutches of Eve’s landlady.

“Hello, old boy. Funny old world.”

“Hilarious, Gerry. Wilson.” I nodded to the smirking figure filling the doorway behind him.

“Shall we go upstairs, Daniel?”

“Oh, let’s. After you, Gerry.”

We trooped upstairs and straight into Eve’s room. It looked tiny and shabby in daylight without her in it. Not helped by having the contents of her drawers and wardrobe tipped on to the floor. The bed itself was pushed against the wall and the covers were in a heap. The floorboards under it had been ripped back – or rather laid back; they’d clearly been made to lift up. Between the joists sat a metal box. I recognised it. It wasn’t identical to the one I’d used in France, but radio transmitters have certain features in common, whether British or German.

I walked over to Eve’s only chair, the one she flung her clothes over before she dived under the sheets with me in hot pursuit. I sat down, took my fags out and lit one. My hand was surprisingly steady.

“Shall we take it from the top, Gerry? Assume I know nothing. Like what you’re doing here? And why you’re with Wilson? And what you think happened to Eve Copeland?”

Cassells and Wilson exchanged looks, as though having brought me here, they were suddenly unsure about what to tell me. He took a seat on the edge of the bed.

Wilson leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece and stared at me. I blew my smoke at him.

“It’s like this, Daniel. I’m with the Security Services now. A natural progression, I suppose. Bert, here, is our link man in the Yard.”

I couldn’t resist smiling at Wilson. Bert, was it?

I thought back to my hospital bed, after Wilson gave me a serious going over in Charing Cross nick. I could hardly speak, and moving hurt – a lot. Major Gerald Cassells, who’d summoned the coppers after finding me rifling his files in SOE HQ, was bent over me, being very solicitous. Referring to Wilson’s treatment of me as animallike. His face then was full of contempt for someone so prepared to abuse his power.

He seemed to have got over that.

“So you and Bert are like that, Gerry?” I crossed my fingers to show how close they’d become. “Glad to see there’s no hard feelings between you.”

Wilson growled. “That’s enough of the cracks, McRae.” He turned to his new best friend. “I told you he’d play the smart arse.”

Cassells tugged at his moustache. “Look, I know there’s no love lost between you two, but we have business to attend to. Shall I continue?”

I shrugged. Gerry took it as a yes.

“Very well. The girl you call Eve Copeland has been known to us for some time.

She first came to the attention of the Security Services back in ’42. We had a tip-off from one of our agents in Germany. We did some checking. Her real name is Ava Kaplan. She’s German. She spent some time here before the war – college, that sort of stuff, so she speaks excellent English.”

With a posh accent, I thought. I was going to make a stupid comment about that not proving she was a spy, but the transmitter sat among us like an unexploded bomb.

“If you knew she was working for the Germans, why didn’t you pick her up?”

“It was before my time, of course, but apparently we found her useful. In her position as a reporter she got close to a number of senior chaps – civil servants and military – got them talking. We made sure that what she heard was duff gen.”

“You fed her false info?”

Cassells nodded. “SOE did it all the time, if you recall. Worked a treat.

’Specially with D-Day. Jerry didn’t know where the landings were going to take place till after we got there.”

I needed to get away from that smug bastard watching me from beside the mantelpiece. I stood up and looked out of the window, pulling back the net curtains. It was any view in London; rows of straggling fences enclosing little allotments, some still with Andersen shelters, some with washing hanging out.

How could Eve – Ava? – look out on this scruffy evidence of humanity and plot to bring it all down? I didn’t believe it, couldn’t believe it. I turned back to them.

“Is she alive?”

Cassells hesitated. “We think so.”

“Do you know where she is?”

He shook his head.

“Were you the ones following her?”

“No. We didn’t need to.”

I raised my eyebrows. “We knew where she was, knew what she was up to,” he explained.

“Why didn’t you pick her up after the war?”

He shrugged. “It was a mess. Europe was in chaos. Still is. We had agents all over the place that we needed to bring back. Frankly, old boy, we had more important things to do than pick up a minor agent of a defeated enemy.”

It all sounded rehearsed.

“Any idea who was following her?”

Wilson shifted his stance. “We thought you might have a better idea, old boy.

You and your gangland pals.”

I wished I had a golf club handy; a mashie niblick would do, with plenty of follow-through. He was still taller than me, but he’d lost a hundredweight or two. I reckon I could take him now. I spoke to Cassells.

“She upset people. Bad people. It goes with the job. The reporter job, that is.

But I guess her disappearance had nothing to do with East End villains.” I pointed at the transmitter. “What have you found?”

“That she was still using it up till a month ago. We picked up her signal. Part of our routine sweep.”

I was stunned. “She was still operating? Who with?”

“We don’t know. But there was an answering signal. All in code. But look here, Daniel…” He looked down at the toecaps of his brown brogues; they gleamed like polished brass. Old soldiers might fade away, but not their shoes. “Miss Kaplan… was sighted two weeks ago. She caught the ferry from Dover to Ostend. A woman matching her description – but not her passport – got on a train going east. To Antwerp.”

I found I wasn’t breathing. I inhaled and waited.

He went on. “Any idea where she was going, Daniel?”

I knew. I knew exactly where she was going. Her notebook left me in no doubt.

There’s a connecting train at Antwerp. One a day. Started running again in January. It was all in her notebook. I’d read the entries as journalist’s notes for some article. Not as travel plans.

“I think she’s gone to Berlin.” I sat down again and took out a fag. I played with it while I waited for my brain to catch up. Cassells exchanged glances with Wilson.

“That’s our guess too, Daniel. How did you know?”

“Just some things she said. And now this.” I pointed at the transmitter.

“Any idea why?” Cassells probed.

“She was being followed. Maybe she panicked,” I suggested.

“Maybe she went home, McRae. Back to her master.” Wilson held my gaze for an age, watching me digest this.

I counted to ten. Then twenty. “So, what now?”

They looked at each other. “Are you still… interested in her?” Cassells asked.

Was a bird interested in flying? I kept my face smooth. “Depends.”

Cassells took a deep breath. “We’re curious about who she was in contact with.

And why. Things are pretty fluid over there. What with the Russians and all that.”

All that was a considerable understatement. Why couldn’t the bloody English ever say what they really felt? From what I could gather, Berlin was a wild west town with four competing sheriffs – Russians, Americans, British and French – lording it over a starving populace of ex-Nazis and current criminals. What the hell was Eve doing there? If it had been her on that ferry, and if she had been heading to Berlin.

“Why don’t you ask your agents there?” My collar was beginning to feel tight.

“You know her. And she’s more likely to be persuaded to return with you.”

I looked at him.

“You’re an old SOE hand. We’d like you to go to Berlin and bring back Ava Kaplan.”

That night I lay on my bed thinking about Cassells’ request. I’d promised to give him my answer the next day. I felt rushed, pressured. The disclosures about Eve were so totally unexpected that I couldn’t marshal my thoughts. What I couldn’t puzzle out was Cassells’ interest. Why did the British Secret Service want her back if she was the ‘minor agent of a defeated enemy’? He said they didn’t want to punish her; the war was over, she was doing her duty as a German citizen no matter how misplaced her loyalty. But they wanted to know why she was still transmitting to Berlin. And who was on the receiving end. Why did she flee to Berlin? To get away from her pursuers or to join up with her old network? If so, what were they up to? Was this some last-gasp Nazi group that wouldn’t surrender? Cornered SS trying to flee the country?

Cassells had appealed to my sense of duty, without realising that I’d worn my allegiance down to the stub. I was sick of the lot of them. Tired of rationing and restrictions, fed up to the back teeth with secretive bureaucrats meddling in people’s lives. Sickened by wars and their aftermath: refugees and orphans, innocents raped and killed. God help us, we were already talking of the new threat; our former allies had opportunistically stolen half of Europe while we were otherwise engaged. Uncle Joe was beginning to look as bad as Adolf when it came to grabbing land that wasn’t his.

I hated my job: the petty crimes and jealousies, the rages and brutality, the infidelities and lies that made up my daily diet. They didn’t pay me enough to absorb all their frailties and transgressions.

And it seemed I was pretty useless at picking women. Falling for a ghost six months ago, carrying a torch for a snooty accomplice to murder, and now fixating over a German spy. Eve had lied to me; had she been using me too? Had she been faking what I saw in her eyes and the way her body responded? Had I been on the receiving end of the artifices of a consummate Mata Hari? Why pick me? I had nothing to tell her, no secrets to be revealed on her pillow.

A few weeks ago I had found an old map of Scotland sticking out of a pile of rubbish left out for the dustbin men. I dusted it down and bought a cheap glass frame for it. It now hung on my office wall to remind me of my roots. I walked over to it and scoured the empty spaces of the Highlands and the Outer Hebrides.

Maybe I should buy a one-way ticket to the Shetlands and take up poteen-making?

Wrapped in a tartan plaid, striding the glens with my faithful collie bounding over the heather, rounding up my sheep. A hard pure life, living off mutton and tatties, washed down by my own hooch. Bliss.

Who was I kidding? I’d go mad within a fortnight. And what about Eve? Could I forget her that easily? How would I live without knowing what happened to her?

Whether she was dead or alive. Whether she was a spy – and why. And of course, finally and selfishly, whether she loved me. That’s all that really counted. I couldn’t give a toss whose side she was on, as long as it was mine. And I had to find out.

Next day I phoned Cassells and told him I’d do it. He seemed less enthusiastic than I expected. But he agreed to put the wheels in motion to get me into that divided city, to pick among the ruins for my lover, the German spy.