First thing on Tuesday morning Jago had received a phone call at the station from Dyers, thanking him for their drink on Sunday evening. He would have phoned yesterday, Dyers said, but he’d had a busy day – the Luftwaffe had attacked RAF Hornchurch. He added swiftly that no damage had been done. Jago took this assurance at face value and said he was pleased to hear it, but almost immediately found himself questioning in his mind whether what his old friend had told him was true. It sounded too much like the official reports of air raids in the press and newsreels – always more positive than the evidence of his own eyes.
That was the problem these days – what could you be sure of? He thought of Dorothy, and was troubled once more by what he’d seen at the dance and by what it was making him think. He braced himself in his seat as the underground train rattled deafeningly round a bend in the tunnel, and tried to put the picture out of his thoughts. He needed to keep his mind clear, especially today.
He wondered whether he was becoming too secretive himself. Dyers had wished him a good day today, but Jago had said nothing about what he was doing. He hadn’t told Cradock either – he’d just said he’d be out. Perhaps he would tell Cradock later, but it would depend on how things went.
He leafed through the morning paper. Today’s news was mixed. RAF bombers had attacked Hitler’s invasion bases overnight again, and the special invasion weather forecast said the Channel was calm. The king had broadcast on the wireless from an underground shelter during an air raid to announce a new medal, the George Cross, for civilian bravery. Goebbels had told his own radio listeners that Londoners were running about helplessly in the streets and screaming because of the air attacks. French and British warships had fought each other off the coast of Dakar after the local French authorities refused to surrender to General de Gaulle. J. Edgar Hoover had said there was a Fifth Column already at work in America. Two Japanese consular staff in Singapore had been arrested on spy charges. Local authorities were going to issue free ear plugs to people being bombed. Petrol was up by a penny a gallon from today, and West Ham were playing away to Clapton Orient on Saturday.
He closed the paper. At least no one could say there was no news these days. It was a far cry from the four-line reports on the local magistrates’ court proceedings that he’d been learning to write as a boy at the Stratford Express before the previous war took him away to be a soldier.
The train came to a screeching halt at Westminster tube station, and Jago got off. The wooden escalator rumbled and clanked its way to the surface and he walked out onto the street, catching the familiar rank odour of the Thames blown off the river by a light breeze. The weather was dry, and the fog that he’d seen when he woke four hours earlier was clearing. No doubt Dyers would be disappointed – he might have been hoping a touch of fog would keep the German bombers away.
It was a short walk to Jago’s destination, the distinctive building on the Embankment that had started out as one man’s vision for the largest opera house in Europe but had ended with him bankrupt after sinking forty feet of concrete and most of his funds into the foundations. Jago’s father had told him how grieved he felt as a singer – no opera tenor but a humble music hall performer – when in 1888 the project finally failed and the uncompleted theatre was demolished. How ironic it was that those costly foundations were the only part to survive, and upon them was constructed a very different establishment – and doubly ironic that while his father’s profession had never taken him into the original building, his own had brought him on many occasions into its successor. From what he had heard, the original visionary must have had a sense of irony too – the bankrupt Mr Mapleson had said that with such solid foundations, at least the cells below New Scotland Yard would be dry.
The headquarters of the Metropolitan Police hadn’t pleased everyone. According to one member of parliament, in architectural terms it was inferior to the Crosse & Blackwell jam and pickle factory on the opposite side of the river. Soon, however, it had become one of the sights of London. To Jago it seemed a solid and reassuring presence only yards from the heart of government. At the same time, those eye-catching horizontal bands of red brick and white Portland stone gave the building its own separate and unique identity, even through the London grime that coated them, while the round turrets at its corners added a whimsical hint of medieval romance.
There was nothing romantic about the inside of the building. The North Building, where Jago was heading, was a warren of unremarkable offices, many of which had seen better days. Within a few minutes he was at the door of one of these rooms, just in time for his meeting. He tapped on the door, turned the cheap-looking Bakelite door handle, and went in. The room contained several filing cabinets and racks of box files, and in the middle of it was a desk with a telephone, a perpetual calendar, a double inkwell, a desk lamp, and the usual two wooden trays – “in” and “out”, the former brimming with papers and the latter less full. Behind the desk Jago recognized the familiar figure of Detective Superintendent Arthur Ford of the Special Branch.
“Ah, welcome, John. Do come in and take a seat, make yourself at home. It must be a couple of years since I last saw you.”
“Nearer four, I think: my secondment to the Branch was in 1936.”
“It was that arms smuggling business, wasn’t it, on the French–Spanish border?”
“Yes, I was acting as liaison with the French police.”
“That’s right,” said Ford. “I can remember being jolly pleased that we’d found you – and that K Division was prepared to release you for six months. We were very stretched then, and there aren’t that many coppers in the Metropolitan Police Service who can speak French – not properly, that is. It didn’t tempt you to consider a permanent transfer to us, though? We’d have been glad to have you.”
“No, sir. It was interesting, but it wouldn’t be my first choice for the rest of my career.”
“But you helped stop weapons being smuggled into a civil war across the border. You probably saved lives by doing that. That’s something to be proud of.”
“Yes, I suppose I thought so at the time, but from today’s perspective it all looks a bit different. Whatever that Non-Intervention Agreement may or may not have achieved, the end result was that Franco won the war, and we all know how his friends have turned out. If anything I did helped Hitler and Mussolini to get what they wanted back then, I’m not so sure it’s something to be proud of after all.”
“The important thing is that you served your country and defended its interests.”
“And as Lord Palmerston said, ‘We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.’”
“Yes, it’s a question of being realistic, pragmatic.”
“But Palmerston also said, ‘The real policy of England is to be the champion of justice and right.’ Sometimes that’s not the pragmatic route to take.”
“Quite, but we have to live in the real world, John. You must know that.”
“Yes, I know that only too well, and it’s about the real world that I’ve come to see you. There’s a few things I’d like to check with you. I’ll understand if you don’t want to comment, but you may be able to help.”
“Of course, John, you know you’re trusted here. What is it you want to know?”
“First of all, I wonder if you can tell me anything about the Radio Security Service. I’ve heard it mentioned, but I don’t know what it does.”
“Yes – as far as I’m concerned you’re still one of us, and I don’t need to remind you you’ve signed the Official Secrets Act. The whole thing’s rather hush-hush, so do please keep it to yourself. The powers-that-be are obviously worried there might be German agents in the country sending secret messages back to Berlin, so our colleagues in Military Intelligence have people looking for suspicious wireless signals – but it’s a huge job, so they’ve set up a network of radio amateurs to help.”
“These are the sort of chaps who used to rig up aerials in their back gardens and talk to other amateurs all over the world in the middle of the night, yes?” said Jago.
“That’s right,” replied Ford. “Of course they had to stop doing that last year because we impounded their transmitters, but they were allowed to keep their receivers. Anyway, discreet approaches were made to them – sometimes through the local police, as I expect you know – asking if they’d be willing to do some radio work for the government in their own time. It’s on a voluntary basis, so they’re called voluntary interceptors, although you won’t read about them in the papers. Their job is to check the airwaves and report anything that might be a coded message. Then if we think someone’s making a suspicious transmission we can investigate. Mind you, as far as I know we haven’t caught anyone yet. Anyway, the whole set-up’s part of the Radio Security Service. I’ve an idea the intelligence chaps run it from Wormwood Scrubs, of all places – nice strong prison walls to keep the bombs out, I suppose. Don’t tell anyone I told you that, by the way. But what’s your interest in the whole business?”
“It’s just that I’ve got reports that someone is claiming to be one of these people and threatening to report a member of the public unless they give him money.”
“Well, when you find out who he is, let me know, and we’ll check whether he’s a genuine interceptor and get him dealt with. If he isn’t, he shouldn’t know about it, which will mean someone’s been talking, so thanks for the tip.”
“I’d like to ask you a question about a chemical too.”
“By all means. Which one?”
“Hydrogen peroxide.”
Ford laughed.
“Thinking of changing your hair colour, are you?”
“Surprising as it may seem, I’m not,” said Jago, “although I’m impressed to discover there seems to be no subject on which you’re not well informed. As it happens, I was interested in hydrogen peroxide’s other uses. A pal of mine in the RAF told me the Germans had been working on using it as fuel for some kind of rocket plane.”
“True enough, as I understand it. I don’t think they’ve got close to anything operationally viable, though. The big potential of hydrogen peroxide is that if it’s used in the right way it can release large amounts of energy, because it decomposes into hot steam and oxygen.”
“But it can also blow up, right?”
“Exactly, so they’ve still some way to go.”
“I’ve got a local engineering company that’s had some of its hydrogen peroxide go missing. I’m assuming it must be just plain pilfering, but is there any way that this substance could be useful to an enemy?”
“Not if it’s just the chemical itself, and in small quantities. What might be of more interest to the enemy is what the company’s doing with it.”
“I see. They haven’t told me that, of course.”
“Quite right too. What’s their name?”
“Everson Engineering.”
Ford nodded.
“Does that mean you know them?”
Ford simply smiled, his facial expression indicating that he was waiting for Jago’s next question.
“If they’re doing secret work for the government, is there any way it could be significant that hydrogen peroxide is going missing?” said Jago.
“On the face of it, that seems unlikely. If a design or a component for a device using hydrogen peroxide as a fuel went missing it would certainly look suspicious, but it’s difficult to imagine what the enemy might be able to infer from a sample of the substance itself. After all, as far as I know, hydrogen peroxide is the same compound here as it is in Germany. Unless…”
“Unless what?”
“No, I’m letting my imagination run away with me. Just keep me informed of any further developments in your investigation, will you?”
“Of course.”
“Is that all?”
“No, I’ve got one more question. It’s about valves – as in wireless valves.”
“Right, those are much more interesting. They’re crucial in radio location work, for example.”
“Locating radios?”
“No, it’s a way of detecting enemy aircraft before they get here.”
“Ah, you mean those big concrete ears I’ve seen down in Kent?”
“No, those are sound mirrors – they’re meant to pick up the engine noise of approaching enemy aircraft. Radio location is quite different and far more efficient.”
“How does it work?”
“That I can’t tell you, but I do know that it depends on valves, and that a lot of work’s being done to develop new types of valve. It’s essentially about making them smaller and more powerful. If we can do that, one day we might be able to put the equipment in the aircraft itself.”
“Which would be an obvious advantage, I suppose.”
“Yes, and I’ll tell you something else. Before the war started we were having trouble manufacturing a particular part for a new type of valve, and we had to import them from a big manufacturer in Holland.”
“I think I can guess who you mean.”
“Maybe you can. But then it became clear the Germans were going to invade Holland, and it looked like we’d lose the supply. At the last minute, just hours before the Nazis overran the country, we managed to load the valves and the machines for making them onto a truck and got it back here. Now they’re being made in this country.”
“Are you saying Everson Engineering could be making these valves?”
“I’m saying nothing of the sort. I have no idea where they’re being made.”
Jago eyed him suspiciously. Here was someone else who might be leading him up the garden path.
“The thing is, you see,” he said, “they’ve had valves go missing too.”
“It may mean nothing,” said Ford. “I think it’ll depend on what kind of valves they are. If they’re just for domestic wireless sets they might make someone a few bob on the black market but they won’t be of any military importance – they’re too big and too weak. But if they’re some of the more advanced kind, a sample or two could be of great interest to the enemy. And in that case your investigation would in turn become of great interest to the Branch.”
Jago decided it was time to be on his way. He stood and extended his right arm to shake Ford’s hand.
“Thanks very much,” he said. “You’ve been a mine of information. But if it’s not a silly question, how do you know all this stuff?”
“That’s easy,” replied Ford. “How do you know every crook in West Ham who’s ever robbed a till? Because it’s my job to know. The government believes we face a major threat from Fifth Column saboteurs, so we need to know what their potential targets might be, and that takes us down all sorts of unexpected alleys.”