The fog had barely lifted all day. Soon it would be dark again and hope was slipping fast. They had enough food but there was little water left. Juliet Vanderberg held William in her arms and tried to soothe him. He was seven years old, big for his age, a healthy all-American boy. But here, in this small boat in these vast, grey seas, he was in a bad way.
‘Ma, I’m thirsty.’
‘I know, honey.’ She put the flask to his lips. ‘Take small sips, baby, we’ve got to make it last a while longer.’ She felt his forehead: he seemed feverish.
‘Are we going home?’
‘Soon. Very soon.’
Juliet had always thought of herself as a stoical practical woman, but here in the fog-shrouded Atlantic, somewhere west or north of Ireland, she felt utterly helpless. To think that she had embarked on this voyage to protect William and Henry from the bombs that were expected to fall on London. She had had no fear for herself and no wish to be separated from Jim, but she had a strong instinct that she must put her children first. Now William was hot and shivering and she had no idea what had become of his brother. The bitter irony was not lost on her; in the very act of trying to protect her children she had put them in danger.
Even now she could feel the tremendous shudder and explosion as the torpedo hit. She and Willie had just emerged from their cabin on D Deck on their way to one of the dining rooms on C Deck when they were thrown from their feet and ricocheted off the bulwark. They had not been injured but were left shocked and dazed. They carried on, unsure what had happened, but one of the sailors told her they had been hit by a torpedo or shell and that she must return to her cabin to collect their lifejackets, then go to the assembly point on deck until the extent of the damage could be ascertained.
She understood that they needed their lifejackets, but her immediate concern was for Henry. Where had he got to?
At first everything was orderly. But then, as they hurried through the gangways, came the black smoke, the stench of oil, the flames and the terror as she called and called for Henry. Nor had she seen Mrs Ballantyne, the woman whose cabin she was sharing, or her maid, Emmy. She had to pray the three of them had found their way to a lifeboat.
In the end, in the dark, she had made her way to the muster deck and had taken Willie in her arms and climbed down to the lifeboats. But as the lifeboat was lowered one of the davit ropes snapped or got tangled and the lifeboat turned turtle as it fell into the dark sea. She remembered nothing then, except that somehow she had ended up in this rowing dinghy with Willie and another woman, drifting. Juliet had scrabbled about for oars, but there were none; no way of steering or making headway. They had called out, but a lot of people were calling out, and in the darkness and the chaos they had drifted away.
Their fellow passenger was an elderly woman named Joyce Harman, from upstate New York. She had brought a hamper full of food and two flasks of water. ‘Well, dear,’ she said. ‘I had bought the hamper from Fortnum’s for my niece in Manhattan and it occurred to me that my need might now be greater than hers. The water was almost an afterthought.’
Juliet Vanderberg had been grateful for the woman’s foresight, but some of the food was a little rich for Willie. He spat out the tinned fois gras and now the water was almost gone. Soon they would have to turn to one of the alcoholic beverages from the hamper. The port maybe. Willie might like its sweetness. Any port in a storm, Joyce had said, and Juliet had laughed, but Joyce was wearing thin. Her constant refrain of ‘If only this fog would lift’ did not help one bit.
But it was true. The fog that kept coming and going was a curse. There were no flares, no oars, no compass and no radio. No supplies save the Fortnum’s hamper. It was impossible to tell if they were drifting back towards land or further out to sea. And who would ever see them in this infernal fog, or at night? At the moment it seemed they were more likely to be mown down by a passing ship than rescued by it.
Gently, Juliet laid William aside, so she could get back to work. She picked up the two tin cups that were all she had, and resumed the task of bailing water from the bottom of the boat. The leak was slow, but she was slower.
*
It was almost dusk when Wilde arrived back in Cambridge. He wanted to see Lydia and he needed to report to Philip Eaton, but first he wanted to explore another option. Surely Claire would have a picture of her husband? And if Claire was away, what harm could it do to have a quick look around her house. Breaking and entering was becoming a habit.
The light was fading as he arrived in Histon. He took a flashlight from his saddlebag and approached the back of the property. The garden door was unlocked; Claire really had left in a hurry, just as Lydia had said. Not even enough time to bolt a door. Once inside, he went from room to room, downstairs and upstairs, drawing the blackout curtains before switching on his torch.
He found what he was looking for in the sitting room: a picture of Marfield taken by a commercial photographer, well lit, handsome and kitted out in a smart jacket and tie. Wilde slid it from its silver frame and slipped it into his pocket.
Just as he was about to leave, he paused, turned back and went up the stairs. There had been something he had seen in Claire’s bedroom that he wanted to look at more closely. A Kodascope 8mm film projector, with a spool of film attached, on a bedside table that had been moved to the middle of the room.
In the beam of his torch Wilde saw that the film was on the receiving spool as though it had just been played, and that the projector was still plugged into the mains socket. It had been wedged on a slim book to adjust the height. It was facing a white wall, in lieu of a screen.
Wilde was familiar with projectors like this from his lectures. Putting down the torch so that its wide beam threw light on his work, he slotted the end of the film from the full bottom spool into the top reel and flicked the rewind switch. It ran smoothly. When the top reel was full, he switched off the machine.
Now he threaded the film through the cogs so that the teeth locked into the sprockets on the edge of the film, then he fed it down in front of the projector’s lamp, secured it in place and clicked film sprockets into the lower teeth, mirroring those on top. Finally he slipped the end of the film into the empty reel and wound it tight. It was ready to roll.
The picture on the wall was slow and blurred, but he quickly adjusted it to an even speed and brought it into focus. The image was small, but good quality and sharp, if a little jerky: filmed using a handheld camera, not a tripod.
In the opening frames, all he could see was clouds. Then a plane appeared, a speck in the distance, which fell into a dive: a German Stuka bomber. The only sound was the clatter of the projector, which was a little ancient and had seen better days, but he knew that the Stuka – Junkers 87 – would have been emitting a high-pitched scream as it went into its dive, terrifying those below.
The plane was so far away and the image so small that it was not easy to see what happened next, but it was easy to deduce that it had dropped its bomb, pulled out of the dive and crawled into its ascent. The film shuddered and a plume of smoke filled the central section of the image.
The camera panned back to reveal Marcus Marfield in the foreground, sitting alone on a broad, smooth rock. He had a beret on his head and a scarf around his neck and was laughing. In his left hand he had a burning cigarette, in his right a long-barreled pistol. His index finger was inside the trigger guard and he twirled the weapon like a cowboy, before he held it up and pointed at whoever was behind the camera. His mouth opened and closed as though he had said ‘bang’.
Behind Marfield the landscape was barren and dusty. The camera slowly panned left and a low white building came into view. Six figures were ranged alongside it, with their backs against the wall. Two were young men in working men’s clothes, one was an older man in peasant garb. Beside him, a woman of a similar age. His wife? And then, at the end of the line, was a young woman holding a baby.
Wilde watched with growing foreboding. The reel was nearly a quarter the way through and he had been watching for half a minute. Marfield was still in camera shot and was now pointing the gun at the people outside the farmhouse, no more than thirty feet from him. He drew on his cigarette, squinted down the gunsight on the pistol and pulled the trigger. The old woman’s mouth fell open; her hands went to her belly. Even in monochrome, even in this small format, Wilde could see blood seeping through her fingers as her knees wobbled and she fell forward on to the hard, unforgiving ground.
Marfield smiled, rose from his rock, dropped the cigarette and strolled over. The camera followed him and as it came closer to the wall, Wilde saw that the three men’s hands were all bound in front of them. In quick succession, Marfield shot each one of them in the head.
He then turned his attention to the young mother clutching her child. She was shaking, saying something, pleading.
Please God, no, thought Wilde.
Marfield stood in front of her. The camera had moved around now so that their faces were in profile. The woman was dark and small and looked familiar. Her child was no more than three months old. Marfield reached out and touched the woman’s face, then stroked the baby’s head. She held the child out, as if beseeching him not to harm it.
Smiling, Marfield took the baby and squatted down to put it gently on the ground. He stood up and pointed the gun at the woman’s head. She closed her eyes, bracing her muscles for the shock of the bullet and death. Instead he tapped her face with the hot black barrel so that she opened her eyes again.
His gun hand dropped and, with barely a glance, he shot the baby through the top of the head.
The woman’s neck arched back and her mouth flew open in an anguished, silent scream.
Marfield thrust the gun barrel into her gaping mouth and pulled the trigger again.
As the woman fell, he stood back. With the side of his dusty boot, he kicked the baby away, turned with a look of exultation, something close to rapture, and the camera panned again to reveal three more men.
They wore black SS uniforms and they were clapping their hands in appreciation. One of them stepped forward and put an arm around Marfield’s shoulder, like a cricket captain congratulating his opening batsman.
And then the film ran out and all that was left was the burning light of the projector lamp and the incessant clattering of the turning spool and cogs.
Wilde flipped the switches and the projector ground to a halt. He sat on his haunches beside the machine and took a deep breath. Nothing could have prepared him for the sight that had just assailed his eyes.
The silence was broken by the staged clearing of a throat.
Wilde turned slowly. Marcus Marfield filled the doorway, his left shoulder against the frame, his right hand holding the butt of a pistol loosely at his side.
‘Professor Wilde.’
‘Is it real? Did this happen?’
‘You decide.’
‘You bastard, Marfield.’ Wilde looked at the beautiful face that had won so many hearts and saw only putrescence and depravity. It was as if the skin had been drawn back and the crawling insects and worms just below the surface were visible.
Marfield stepped into the room and raised the weapon. Wilde knew there was nothing he could do to prevent his own death. All the tricks he had learnt in the boxing ring, all the muscle honed into his arms, none of it would help him now.
‘Lie down flat, on your belly, arms above your head.’
‘And make it easier for you? Why would I do that?’
‘I’m not going to kill you,’ Marfield said. ‘Not unless you force me to.’
Slowly, Wilde obeyed. He was computing the possibilities. Every second of life might bring an opportunity. An upward kick that dislodged the weapon, a careless moment by Marfield.
From outside there was a screech of tyres, a car pulling to a halt. Marfield tensed.
‘The police. I left word that I was coming here,’ Wilde lied.
Marfield pulled the reel of film from the projector and thrust it into his jacket pocket. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘You will stand up slowly. No sudden movements.’
Once again, he obeyed, and rose to his feet, his arms still above his head.
Marfield picked up Wilde’s flashlight and went to the window, shielding the beam of the torch as he carefully pulled back the blackout curtain an inch, then replaced it almost immediately.
He shone the torch on his captive. ‘You were right. There’s a police car. I don’t know why it’s here, but we are going to leave, quickly, by the back door, and you are going to help me. You know the alternative.’
Wilde understood. Marfield didn’t want a body found here. Nor did he want to shoot police officers. A murder now would only intensify the hunt for him and compromise his plans, whatever they were. Once they were away from here, of course, it would be another matter altogether.
*
Lydia had been worried all day. In the evening she called Eaton at the hotel and he told her that he’d asked Wilde to drive to Ipswich to try to get a photograph from Marfield’s mother.
‘Why not ask Claire?’
‘Who is Claire?’
‘Claire Marfield. Marcus’s wife. But she’s away.’
‘Ah.’
There was silence.
‘Oh – you didn’t know about her, did you, Mr Eaton? Tom didn’t tell you . . .’
‘But you will. And the sooner you do, the better. I’ll come around.’