In the early hours, Juliet Vanderberg awoke from a fitful sleep and knew she was losing her younger son. He was burning up in her arms.
The dinghy seemed to sink an inch lower in the water with every hour that passed, and must sink soon, for they were no longer able to bail fast enough and by now the sea was lapping about their feet and ankles. The waves were getting up and tossing them about, pushing them with the current towards who knew where. The fog had lifted, but that was no help. If a freighter or a warship ploughed its way through these waves, it would cut them in half without even noticing what it had done. In the vastness of the sea, their three lives were nothing.
‘Oh, my God.’ Joyce Harman paused her bailing. ‘Do you see that, Mrs Vanderberg? Rocks. Right ahead of us.’
*
Tom Wilde had lost all track of time and direction of travel. Having been freed from the leg cuff, his hands had been locked together and he and Marfield had set off walking across the fields. Wilde wondered if he was being kept alive for some purpose – as a hostage perhaps – but it was hard to imagine circumstances in which Marfield would need one.
He thought they had been walking for two or three hours and had covered five or six miles, perhaps more. Crossing a rail track Wilde felt an insane surge of hope, but instead they pushed on across the flat black earth. They skirted two villages, and found a bridge over a river – the Ouse or the Cam perhaps? Sometimes they had difficulty traversing ditches and boggy fens. For a while they seemed to be going north, then eastwards, usually without light though every few minutes Marfield switched on the torch to get the lie of the land. At about one in the morning, a few hundred yards from a hamlet of a dozen houses or so, he stopped. What looked like a small windmill loomed out of the dark.
Marfield pushed Wilde inside through the low doorway, and secured him with the cuffs to some rigid part of the winding mechanism. Then he played the torch around the space, turned and left, leaving Wilde alone in the pitch dark.
Wilde had seen mills like this before. They were used as drainage pumps, a familiar part of the flat fenland landscape. This one, like so many of the others, had fallen into disrepair with the collapse of the peat and turf industries. And yet even in their dilapidation, they retained a certain charm in an otherwise bleak terrain. Tonight, it was a prison.
Twenty minutes later, Marcus Marfield returned. He shone the torch into Wilde’s eyes.
‘What now?’ Wilde asked.
‘We wait.’
‘What for?’
‘You’ll see. Or perhaps you won’t.’ Marfield pulled two beer bottles from his pocket and removed the tops. He handed one to Wilde. ‘Here, don’t say I don’t do anything for you.’
‘Thank you.’ Even handcuffed, Wilde found he was able to drink the beverage. It was cool and welcome to his parched throat. ‘That’s good. The best beer I’ve ever tasted.’
‘There’s a little pub along the way. Dozen or more crates of beers outside. Shame not to take what’s offered.’
‘I’ll go along with that.’
They drank in silence. Then Wilde ventured a question. ‘Why haven’t you killed me?’
‘Guess.’
‘Because you have some use for me?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Or because you are looking for something and you think I might know where it is? But you’ve already found the film and burnt it.’
‘The other film. You know exactly what I mean – and you know where it is. But there is time enough for that. You will give it to me.’
Wilde tipped some more beer down his throat. ‘Why is it important to you that no one suspects you are a fascist? Were you worried that you had revealed yourself to Dr Charlecote under hypnosis? Is that why he died? Were you worried about Rosa? Was that why she was killed?’
‘I didn’t kill her.’
‘I know that because I was there. But you know who did it. Someone is assisting you in whatever it is you are up to. Why would someone kill that poor young girl?’
Marfield took another sip of his beer. ‘You know, Professor Wilde, I always rather admired you. I thought you had an intellect well above the common herd. Perhaps I was wrong.’
‘What happened in Spain? Did you switch sides? Did you become disillusioned with the International Brigades? I know there were mass executions, instant justice, on both sides. I can understand that someone might feel they had chosen the wrong cause.’
‘God damn it, Professor – this country!’ Marfield almost spat out the words. ‘Britain ignored Spain, and then tottered into a war against Germany like – well, like what? A mouse threatening a cat? Hopeless. The real war, the war against Bolshevism, has been going on for years, and Britain has simply stood by and ignored it. Now they’re caught up in it, and our country is on the wrong side of history. And if America isn’t careful your country will be too. Because we all know what Roosevelt wants, don’t we?’
‘I had no idea you felt like this. Why didn’t you talk to me when you were in college?’
‘Really? And say what? Oh, Professor Wilde, won’t you come to Spain with me and kill some Commies? How would you have reacted to that?’ He spoke contemptuously.
‘That wasn’t what I was thinking.’
‘No, you just wanted to talk. Like that trick cyclist at Addenbrooke’s. Because it’s all so far away and Cambridge is so cosy. Nothing bad can happen there. All the dons in all the colleges – well most of them – have their CPGB cards or they do a little dirty work for the local Comintern agent, all the time believing that Communism is never going to threaten their comfortable little lives here in the heart of good old England. Well, they’re wrong.’
Wilde had never expected such a tirade from Marcus Marfield. Misguided, wrong-headed, perhaps, but there could be no denying his passion. Did that make him more dangerous, or less?
‘I have seen National Socialism in action, Professor. I spent two summers there with the Hitlerjugend. National Socialism works.’
‘But you agreed to spy for British intelligence.’
Marfield laughed. ‘What was I supposed to say? Ah, I fed them some guff at first, but then I couldn’t be bothered.’
‘So how did you end up in Le Vernet with the International Brigades? Why weren’t you in Madrid toasting victory with Franco and your friends in the Condor Legion?’
Marfield was leaning against the wooden interior frame of the windpump, torch dangling from one hand, bottle in the other. ‘You’re asking too many questions. Drink your beer and get some sleep. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.’
‘I can’t lie down or even sit properly handcuffed to this winding gear,’ Wilde said. ‘Won’t you at least allow me a little comfort?’
Marfield took a long hard look at Wilde. He was in an awkward position with his hands attached to the machinery at head height. Down below there was some sort of hook bolted onto the mechanism. Marfield tested it to satisfy himself that it was secure.
‘I’m going to release you briefly and you will immediately lie face down with your arms outstretched right here.’ Marfield removed the pistol and the key from his pocket and patted the ground to indicate what he wanted.
‘I’m not going to do anything stupid.’
‘You know,’ he said, ‘I did join the International Brigades. I was an idealistic young leftie, like Cornford or Bell. And no one will ever know otherwise.’
‘You still haven’t explained why that is so important to you.’
He released Wilde cautiously, then secured him at a lower position on the winding gear. Marfield smiled enigmatically in the fading light of his torch, then switched it off. Wilde could hear him making himself comfortable on the dusty wooden floor of the mill and listened as his breathing evened out. Wilde gritted his teeth; he would have no sleep this night.
*
Claire Marfield had seen enough glimpses of the cold depths in her husband to shy away from venturing too close. There were his silences, the way he refused to engage in argument when there was any dispute. When he said he was going away to the war, he hadn’t asked her opinion or apologised for deserting her, and she had said nothing to dissuade him. The truth was, she had always been afraid of him.
So why had she wanted Marcus? Why had she given herself to him, married him, given birth to his child? The answer was straightforward: because everyone else wanted him. He was beautiful and talented and, at first meeting, utterly charming. No one could take their eyes off him. He was the glittering prize, and she had won.
But the gold veneer on the trophy was leaf thin.
She might sleep tonight, but it would be fitful. Even in her dreams she would be listening, waiting for his footfalls. He would guess that she was here and would come for her. She was in no doubt about that. But where could she hide with a small child? Her husband was relentless.
And so she was here in Hertfordshire at her parents’ house, close to the school where her father was deputy headmaster. Where else could she go to? She had no friends onto whom she could foist herself and Walter. Not without some very difficult explanations.
It had been hard enough trying to think up some excuse to satisfy her father. Mummy hadn’t given her sudden appearance a second thought, merely put on the kettle and fussed over her grandson, but Daddy kept fishing for information. As always, he asked after Marcus; had she heard anything?
For a brief moment, she considered telling them the truth, but she knew what Daddy’s reaction would be. He’d call the police immediately, as though this was some minor burglary or ABH they were dealing with. Daddy always believed that there was right and wrong and that the bobby on the beat was there to sort out anyone who stepped out of line.
If only Marcus didn’t know about this house.
When the Spanish woman turned up at Histon univited, Claire’s instinct had been to turn her away. But Rosa was insistent. She must hear her story, she must watch her film and see the evidence for herself. Claire had so wanted to slam the door in her face, but that would merely have been a matter of denying what she already knew.
Now she knew too much.
Would he kill her if he thought she posed a threat to him? Oh yes. Without a moment’s hesitation. But in her heart she had always known it, hadn’t she? It was all part of the thrill, like driving a racing car or skiing down a couloir. You did these things knowing that death waited around every corner. Marcus had always been like that.
Her mother had told her it was the curse of some women to fall for dangerous men. Well, no one had fallen harder than Claire.
*
Somehow he managed to doze on his knees, slumped against the machinery, his hands above him, chained to some sort of shaft. It wasn’t a real, restful sleep, because he was aware of the discomfort, the pain of the sharp metal cutting into his wrists, the enveloping dark and the cold that bit into his bones.
The first thing he knew was the key in the lock, the handcuff slipping from his right wrist. He recoiled in shock, falling backwards.
‘Keep still.’
But Wilde didn’t keep still. He was a fighting man, with all the reflexes and instincts of a boxer. There would be no second chance. He had one hand free, his right hand, and that would have to be enough. He pulled the left hand and the loose cuff free of the winding gear and lashed out in the dark. It didn’t connect, swung wildly in the air, but the follow-up punch with his right hand, low, belly-height, did connect. Hard.
He sensed soft flesh against the firmness of his fist, and then a grunt of pain. Marfield was winded. Wilde had no idea whether he had hit him in the stomach or the balls, but he knew he had made contact.
A flash and explosion rent the air as the gun went off. Wilde was already diving for the little doorway, but in the darkness he didn’t quite judge it right and slammed his left shoulder against the jamb. The wood was rotten and fell away, and Wilde tumbled out into the darkness. A second gunshot sounded behind him and he heard the thud as the bullet smacked into timber.
He fell down the step from the mill, unsure of exactly where he was. The first vestiges of light had turned the horizon from black to dark grey and he ran straight towards the trees. Behind him there was a third shot. Marfield must be at the mill door. In the gloom, he must be able to see something of his quarry, if only a vague outline. Wilde swerved, zig-zagged, heard a fourth shot, and then the ground gave way beneath him and he was plunging.
He hit a damp, marshy morass, and the impact took his breath away. For a second or two, he lay gasping. But he couldn’t wait even two seconds because Marfield would be right behind him, at the edge of the incline, gun in hand, peering down. At least there was cover here – reeds, sedge, mud and, just beyond, the jagged horizon of a half-submerged woodland. Wilde crawled and scrabbled forward as fast and as silently as he could. He wanted to live.
*
Elina Kossoff had been summoned to the telephone at 1.15 a.m. When she heard Marfield’s voice on the line, her body tensed. What in God’s name did he think he was doing calling her here?
‘It’s all right,’ he told her. ‘I told the flunkey I was your brother and that your mother had been taken ill.’
‘Just say what you have to say.’ This was bad, very bad. If the servant ever mentioned this telephone call, it would be quickly established that she had no brother and that her mother was in America. Was such a call traceable? Was MI5 listening in?
‘The first film . . .’ he began.
‘You’ve found it?’
‘She took it to Claire.’
‘So Claire’s seen it? Where is she?’
‘The only place she’d go: Longrow Cottage, village called Whipham, Hertfordshire. Her parents’ place.’
‘Leave it with me. What about the films?’
‘One destroyed. One to go.’
‘God in heaven, Marcus! What’s been going on up there? Where are you now?’
‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘And Wilde, what are you doing about him?’
‘It’s all being taken care of.’
Elina carefully replaced the receiver, then picked it up again and listened for any signs that the device was tapped.
The serving man was at the door. ‘Everything all right, Miss Kossoff.’
‘Family crisis. What’s the time?’
‘One twenty, madam.’
‘Well, I have to go. If Mr Kennedy asks where I am, just tell him I will be back later this morning and that all the arrangements are in hand.’
‘Of course, Miss Kossoff.’