Part Two

Dispersal

17

Anthony was in a private room in the Woolwich Hospital. His first five days had been spent in the Burns Unit. He had little memory of them and was anxious to forget them. Periods of pain when his flayed arms and legs were being dressed; periods of relief and drowsiness as the morphine injections took effect.

During that time his only visitor had been Sandra. He had an impression of her face as she looked down at him for the few seconds allowed. She had been trying so hard to smile that it had made him smile too and this had seemed to please the nurse who was with her. After that he had hauled himself up slowly, day by day, out of the darkness, into the kindly light. Now he was beginning to get used to the fact that his body belonged to him; was not just a lay figure to be washed in warm saline and painted with mercuro-fluorescene.

“I wanted them to take a colour photograph,” said Sandra. “You looked just like a Red Indian.”

“Photographs be blowed,” said Anthony. “What I want is to get up.”

“In a day or two Nurse Williams said. If you behave yourself.”

“I refuse to behave myself. I want to know what’s happened. What are the police doing? Have they found out what caused the explosion? Is Boy Drummer alive?”

“You’re not to worry about anything until you’re better.”

“It worries me much more being treated like an idiot child.”

“There, you see. You’ve worked yourself into a state. I shouldn’t be surprised if your temperature hadn’t gone up several points. Just wait till I tell Nurse Williams.”

At the door she relented sufficiently to say, “Boy’s still unconscious. But the doctors are pretty sure they can save him.”

On the tenth day he had his first outside visitor. He had been allowed up that afternoon and was feeling cheerful. His cheerfulness increased when he saw who it was.

Mr. Norrie parked himself carefully on the chair beside the bed and examined Anthony.

“Well, Lion,” he said, “I must say you look better than I’d been led to expect.”

“I am better,” said Anthony.

“Like to know what the doctor said about you? In cases of over twenty per cent burns, he told me, the chief enemy is shock. In this case they’ve observed practically no shock symptoms at all. Extraordinary mental resilience apparently.”

“Thank you,” said Anthony. “I did have nightmares to start with. But now I seem to dream about nothing but scrambled egg. Do you think that’s a sign I ought to get up for breakfast?”

“Doesn’t do to rush these things. All the same, we could do with you. Things are moving in a way I don’t like. Don’t like at all. You know Dr. Allpace?”

“The Woolwich coroner?”

“Right. And that’s a very suitable name for someone who tries to exceed the speed limit. The inquest opened last Thursday – that’s just a week after the fire – and if he’d been allowed to have his own way it would have closed the same day. He called only four witnesses. Just four, think of it. Summerson, the Guy’s pathologist, who kept his evidence toned down so as not to upset the families. It amounted only to the undisputed fact that Edward Drummer, Andrew Connors, Norman Younger and Leonard Lofthouse had died, either as the direct result of the explosion or in the fire that followed, more probably the former, and that in either case that death had been instantaneous.”

“My God, yes,” said Anthony with a shudder. He was looking again into the furnace.

“Then we had the fire brigade Site Inspector. He’d been on the scene as soon as the flames were under control. He said that in his view the fire itself had been caused by petrol. There were several gallons of it stored there – illegally, incidentally – in jerricans. Apparently they were for young Robin Drummer’s motorcycle. No one’s been able to ask him, of course.”

“How is he?”

“No change. But the medicos are hopeful that he’ll pull through all right. If the blow on the head hasn’t hit anything vital it doesn’t signify how long he remains unconscious. The longer the better, in some ways. The only thing is, he won’t remember much about the time before the explosion. And the longer he stays under the longer the gap will be. A pity, since he’s the only person left who could tell us what those boys were up to. After the Site Inspector we had the ATO, Major Webster.”

“ATO?”

“Ammunition Technical Officer, ex RAOC. On call to the police in matters involving explosive. Most of them are good chaps, but for some reason I didn’t think this one was very convincing. He seems to have visited the place once, talked to the Fire Brigade man and ducked out as quickly as possible. When the coroner asked him whether the explosion could have been caused by dynamite or opencast gelignite – putting the idea into his head, you see – his answer was that it was quite possible, but in view of the total destruction of the site … and so on and so on. In other words, he didn’t really know. The coroner then brought in a storeman from the Clipstone Sand and Gravel Works, who agreed that they used both these types of explosive. He was then asked if he could identify some detonators.”

“You mean they had survived the fire?”

“Yes. They were in a glass jar, which had fused in the heat, but stayed whole long enough for the contents to be identified. You know what a detonator looks like?”

“No idea.”

“It’s a copper tube, about an inch and a half long, with wires coming out of one end. The wires were outside the jar and had been burnt off, but there was enough left inside the jar for identification. The storeman agreed that they were common-type detonators and could have come from Clipstones. When he’d finished the coroner spent the rest of the morning expressing sympathy for the relatives who were there.”

“Which were?”

“Father Drummer, Sergeant Connors and his wife and Mrs. Younger, who’s a widow. Lofthouse didn’t seem to have produced any parents though there’s talk of an uncle in the north. It’s my opinion that if the coroner had closed the hearing before lunch he’d have got the verdict he was angling for. Boys playing with explosives they didn’t understand. Accidental death. However, he gave the jury the lunch interval to consider their verdict and when they came back it was clear they were unhappy. I think they realised they were being pushed and they didn’t like it. I’ve noticed that before about juries. It’s a great mistake to try to bear-lead them.”

“Thank God for juries,” said Anthony. “But why was he in such a hurry?”

“Because he remembered what happened after the New Cross fire.”

“Yes. I see,” said Anthony. He too remembered the tribulations of the unhappy coroner after that catastrophe. “So what happened?”

“The foreman, a nice little man, simply stood up and said that they weren’t satisfied that the evidence so far produced enabled them to arrive at any verdict at all. Allpace made the mistake of snapping at him. The situation seemed plain enough to him. No need to prolong the hearing. Must consider the feelings of the bereaved. The foreman wasn’t to be shifted. It turned out that he was an assistant in the Royal Arsenal Laboratory and I guess he knew more about explosions than most of the people in court. He said they wanted the opinion of a real expert – a nasty back hander at Major Webster – about what type of explosive was involved. He didn’t believe that the explosive used for quarrying would act in that way. The rest of the jury were solidly behind him and Allpace had to give way. He said that, since the jury seemed incapable of understanding evidence, he would adjourn for fifteen days and see if a witness could be produced who did satisfy them.”

“And that’s where the matter stands at the moment?”

“Until this morning.” Mr. Norrie produced from his pocket a folded copy of the South-east London News. “I thought you might like to see this letter. In fact, it’s been copied in The Times, a rare compliment to a provincial newspaper, but I guess they knew what they were doing. The Wick Lane fire is headline news in all papers.”

Anthony glanced first at the name of the correspondent, Angus McCaskie, a forthright character and a noted controversialist.

As Chairman and Managing Director of the Clipstone Sand and Gravel Company I hope you will grant me the courtesy of your column to make a few points which may be of public interest.

Coroners, as we know, are a law unto themselves. Which is another way of saying that in their courts very little attention is paid to the normal rules of procedure and evidence.

One of the victims of the recent fire in Wick Lane – not, I am happy to learn, one of the four boys who were killed – was Robin Ernest Drummer. Robin was an employee of my firm. We use various types of explosive. On these slender grounds the Coroner, Dr. Allpace, saw fit to make certain suggestions to the jury. Indeed, ‘suggestions’ is too mild a word. To me they sounded more like directions. The jury were to find that Robin had abstracted explosive and detonators from my premises and in playing with them had caused the disaster referred to.

You will perhaps notice that the only witness from my firm that the Coroner saw fit to call was my storeman. I am not criticising Seward. He was asked three questions and answered them as simply as he could. But if Dr. Allpace had followed what you might have considered to be the more normal practice of calling me, as the head of the firm and the party responsible for its overall management, I could have pointed out one or two important facts to him.

Under the Control of Explosives Act 1952, and Regulations made from time to time under that Act, any premises upon which explosives are stored have to be licensed. It is a condition of the licence that the licensees prepare an accurate and up-to-date schedule of those explosives, indicating types and quantities. Moreover, they have to maintain a responsible person in charge for twenty-four hours in the day, so that the police can visit the premises at any hour of the day or night, without warning, to check those lists. Fortunately such a spot-check was made a fortnight ago. Our stores of PE 808, Nobel 704 and Slurry Explosive were all carefully checked and found to correspond with our schedules. Since we have had no cause to use any of them since, they still correspond. I need hardly add that all of them are kept in a proper store, the key to which lives in the safe in my office. It has not been suggested that Robin Drummer was, among other accomplishments, a safe-breaker.

Finally, might I say that I entirely concur with the comments of Mr. Prince, the jury foreman, a respected member of the team at the Arsenal Laboratory. The explosion had none of the characteristics of the explosives we use. The blast they give is powerful, but concentrated. As well as its commercial use I have some experience of its military use. As a young officer in 1945 I was concerned in the blowing up of submarine pens at the mouth of the River Scheldt. Incautiously used it might have blown a hole in the roof, but it would not have caused instantaneous all-round destruction, nor would an immediate fire have resulted, even if ultimately assisted by petrol.

In my view, this explosion was caused by the detonation of a fairly large quantity of cordite. Not many people or institutions have any reason to own or store cordite, so might I suggest that steps be now taken to examine any known local stocks, as carefully as mine were examined two weeks ago. We might then be a little closer to discovering the truth about this appalling tragedy which has cost four young lives. “Well,” said Anthony when he had read through this letter twice, “that’s going to start something, isn’t it?”

Two days later, when he was demonstrating to Nurse Williams that he was ready to be discharged by doing press-ups on the floor, he had a second unexpected visitor.

“My name’s Mowatt,” said the stout and placid civilian. “My friends call me Reggie. We haven’t met, but I’ve heard your voice more than once.”

“You’ve heard—?”

“Or, to be strictly accurate, a tape-recording of it.”

“Oh, I see. Then you’re a spook.”

“That graphic Americanism would be more accurately applied to MI6. I’m in Five. Home security. Just a civil servant, really.”

“Then you know Chief Superintendent Bearstead.”

“Bruno Bearstead? Yes. He’s an old friend. And we’re working together on this operation. I understand he put you in the picture.”

“He told me as much as he had to if I was going to help. What he seemed to want to know was any connection between a local businessman called Arthur Drayling and some Pakistani kids and another lot who—”

He found he couldn’t go on. Putting the horror into words brought it to life again. He wanted to bury it.

“The other lot who were involved in the explosion in Wick Lane,” continued Mowatt smoothly. “Incidentally, I thought what you did was startlingly brave. Fire knocks the guts out of most people.”

“If I’d stopped to think I wouldn’t have done it.”

“All right. I won’t embarrass you. And a small correction. It wasn’t just Drayling’s connection with those two lots of boys we wanted. I’m sure Bearstead made that clear. Anything about him at all. His home life, his business, his character—”

“I didn’t understand that my remit was as wide as that,” said Anthony. “But even if I had done, I’m not sure that I could have helped very much. My acquaintance with him is confined to exchanging trivialities in the club and listening to him laying down the law about modern youth.”

The way in which he said this would have deceived most people, but it did not deceive Mowatt. He was so used to listening to people telling truths, half-truths and quarter-truths that the tiny hint of uneasiness had not escaped him. It was in the tone of voice, not in the words. He does know something, he thought. And he’s not telling us. And it’s not going to be any use bullying him.

He said, “As long as you realise how desperately important this is. I must tell you that we’ve had a certain amount of luck. We’ve succeeded in establishing a system of watching and even given it a useful dry run. But if I was a betting man I wouldn’t put our chance at more than six to four on. If we were at war, it would be different. We could put a fence round this island that I’d defy anyone to break through. But we’re not at war. Or not in the old-fashioned sense of the word. And we have to spend half our time worrying about whether we’re standing on someone else’s toes, or upsetting the public or giving a field day to the opposition press.”

“I do understand that,” said Anthony. “And I’ll do what I can. That’s one of the reasons I want to get out of here.”

When Mowatt left the hospital his chauffeur noticed that he looked pleased. He came across, but did not at once get into the car. He said, “What do you do, Sam, with someone who knows something important, but for some reason won’t spill it?”

“Burn the soles of his feet.”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be practical in this case. No, we shall just have to wait and hope that his conscience does the trick. In Mr. Leone’s case, his conscience is a very powerful monitor, or so I should imagine.”

“Is what he knows connected with the job you’re on?”

“I think so, yes.”

“And it’s important?”

“It could be very important.”

“Then hadn’t someone better keep an eye on him when he comes out?”

“Actually,” said Mowatt, “that’s one of the reasons I came to see him. I suppose we’ve got our usual tail?”

“Well, there’s a man in the passenger seat of that van, parked three back. He arrived after we did and has been doing nothing much since. I suppose that’s why you come out grinning all over your face, so he’ll think that anything the other chap knows has been passed on to you.”

“You read my mind, Sam. It occurred to me that we are more used to looking after ourselves than he is.” He got into the car and shut the door. When they moved off the van pulled out and followed some distance behind. Mowatt was not worried. As head of the Irish Section of MI5 he would have been surprised if, at that juncture, he had not been kept under observation.

Crafty as a waggon-load of monkeys, thought Sam. Probably nothing in it. But when he was putting the car away he got the gun out of the door pocket, unloaded it, cleaned it carefully and reloaded it.

“Something on your mind, Sergeant Major?”

Captain Olbright, who commanded C Company of the 134th Regiment RE had known Sergeant-Major Pearce long enough to detect when he had something he wanted to tell him. The importance of the matter was indicated by the intensity of the frown on Pearce’s normally good-tempered face.

“You read that piece in the local paper, sir. About checking explosives.”

“We all read it.”

“It was what Sergeant Alnutt said to me this morning. You know he’s been in charge of the 3 Platoon guard. It was something he noticed at the time, but he didn’t report it, thinking it wasn’t all that important, I expect. It was between sentry changes. The way they do it – it’s not exactly Brigade of Guards style – the sentry on duty does his two-hour spell, then he comes in and wakes up his relief, who takes over.”

Olbright nodded. This was the way most night guards worked.

“Well, sir, Alnutt happened to be awake when the changeover was being made and he saw the guard who’d come in – Sunley, that was – over at the other side of the room where the ammo shed keys are kept. The guard isn’t supposed to handle the keys at all. They’re kept in the guard-room for safety. So he asks Sunley what he’s up to. Sunley says, ‘I noticed one of the keys had fallen off I was putting it back. Didn’t mean to wake you up.’”

“How long ago was this?”

“Sunley’s in 3 Platoon. They and the other two do a week on duty each. So it must have been a fortnight ago.”

“So what made Alnutt bring it up now?”

“Well sir, he’s not exactly a genius, but he’s got a lot of common sense. And when he was turning it over in his mind afterwards, what he thought was that once a key is hung up on a hook it doesn’t fall off. Really, practically speaking, the only way it could come off its hook is if somebody took it off and it looked as if that somebody must have been Tim Sunley. Well, then he reads that piece in the paper and he begins to think about it some more. And then he remembers something else. The buzz is that Sunley is friendly with a Paki girl, who’s the sister of one of that lot who were in trouble for scrapping with the white lot. So, adding two and two together, he decides he’d better tell me. And I thought I’d better tell you.”

Thus obeying the age-old custom, thought Olbright. If the buck looks awkward, pass it up quick. And if what Sergeant Major Pearce suspected turned out to be true, it might be very awkward indeed. Clearly the first thing to do was to check the stores.

He said, “I take it you’ve got the hand-over schedules?”

“Signed them myself, sir. And checked them. I wasn’t going to sign blind.”

“Then get hold of the keys, quietly. We don’t want to start people talking. Particularly as there may be nothing in it.”

“New guard doesn’t mount until five o’clock. Give us plenty of time to go round.”

“All right. I’ll meet you at half-past two, by the footbridge over Lower Dock Creek.”

At a quarter past three they were standing outside the northernmost of the three store sheds and neither of them were looking happy.

“You’re quite sure, Sergeant Major?”

“It’s not difficult with this lot, sir. They’re charges for the old twenty-five pounder. They’re in different coloured bags so that the loader who was making up the charge knew which to put in. Blue for charge one. Blue and red for charge two and so on. I counted them myself when we took over.”

“And we’re four bags short.”

“I’m afraid so, sir.”

“This must go straight up to the CO,” said Captain Olbright.

When Colonel French understood what his subordinate was telling him he, too, looked unhappy.

“We’ll have to call in the MPs,” he said. “I don’t like it. They’re apt to play a bit rough in cases like this. But I don’t see any alternative, do you?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

“What sort of chap is Sunley?”

“Well, he’s young. Just average, I should have said.”

“He’s not a raving bolshy; I mean, the sort of type to go round blowing people up?”

“Absolutely not, sir. But, of course, that girl may have led him on.”

“I suppose that’s right.”