12
The look on Tibbot’s face as he entered the house was serious. He came close. ‘Do you know all your neighbours by sight?’
‘All the immediate ones, yes.’
‘Seen anyone new?’
‘No.’
We went into the parlour. ‘Your husband is still in Great Queen Street,’ he said. ‘They’re accusing him of killing his ex-wife.’ I felt the air rush out of me. I wanted to cry out that it wasn’t possible, but he wasn’t finished. ‘I’m sorry to say that’s worse than you think.’
My voice caught in my throat. ‘How?’ I stammered.
‘Do you remember when I saw you at the location of the incident, your husband told me he had been on a call at a patient’s house when the death occurred?’
‘Yes.’ I could tell what was coming. Nick had lied. He had been at Lorelei’s after all. Somehow I hadn’t seen him.
‘Well, you see –’
I heard Hazel’s door open. Tibbot halted abruptly.
‘Hazel?’ I called up the stairs.
‘Yes?’
I went to the foot of the staircase. She was on the landing above. ‘Someone has come to see me, to help make sure your dad is OK,’ I told her. ‘It’s very important that I speak to him. Could you do something for me?’
‘Could you stay in your room while he’s here? It won’t be for too long.’
‘All right,’ she said, although she looked unhappy as she went back to her room.
‘Is that his daughter?’ Tibbot asked when I returned.
‘Yes,’ I said.
He paused in thought for a moment, then shook himself out of it. ‘Well, as I was saying, I checked with the man concerned, Comrade Taggan, this morning just after I called you. NatSec hadn’t spoken to him. He claimed that Dr Cawson came for over an hour, conducted his consultation and left. No one else was there.’
I couldn’t understand what he was saying. Nick’s story was true – he hadn’t been with Lorelei and he had had nothing to do with her death. And yet Tibbot looked severe. ‘But that’s good,’ I insisted. ‘It proves it, doesn’t it?’
He hesitated. ‘No, I’m afraid that’s the problem. Because your husband told NatSec exactly the same thing. And they haven’t bothered to check.’ It slowly dawned on me what he was saying. ‘It means that they want him to be found guilty whether or not he actually did it.’
I gasped. Despite the fire, the room was freezing. ‘But why?’
He cleared his throat, uncomfortable with having to bear such news. ‘There could be ten different reasons: they think somehow he did it; or they’re under pressure to find someone – anyone – to blame for it and he’ll do; or just incompetence. But I don’t think it’s any of those. I think it’s because they want him for something else they seem to think he has done. Mrs Cawson, NatSec investigates crimes against the state.’ His voice dropped and his eyes found mine. ‘You know what that means.’
I did. It meant a military court and the rope. I groped for the chair and felt Tibbot’s hand under my shoulder, holding me and leading me to it. I fell on to the seat and wiped the sweat from my brow. ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled.
‘You’ll be all right. Do you have anybody you want to contact?’
I thought of my parents, long gone. ‘No.’
I couldn’t understand what was happening. I had hoped, when I rang the station earlier, that he would tell me that Nick was coming home in an hour or that the Secs were dragging their heels and it might even be a day or two before he was back, but that he would come. The idea that Nick might actually be charged, and that NatSec were after him because they believed he and Lorelei were involved in crimes of subversion, was devastating. ‘Maybe he’s innocent,’ I insisted. ‘They must be wrong.’ But there was what I had found at Lorelei’s house.
He sat down and looked at me closely. ‘Mrs Cawson, are you political?’
I knew what he meant. It was a very dangerous question to be asked by any official: did we harbour ideas that the state deemed troublesome? ‘No. We’re not.’ There was a pause.
‘All right.’
Without wanting to, I pictured life without Nick – sitting alone in the house, Hazel in one of the awful communal schools for the children of dissidents. And I thought of the family I would never have with him. Such a sterile and bleak existence, devoid of the brightness and excitement and the hard-to-explain sense of things to come that he had brought to my life just half a year ago.
‘What can we do?’ I asked. Maybe there was a way to show that Nick had had nothing to do with Lorelei’s death; and that, even if she had been subversive, he hadn’t. Tibbot looked uncomfortable. I realized I had said ‘we’ as if he were going to help me. There was no reason that he would. ‘Thank you for coming. You’re putting yourself at risk just being here,’ I said. ‘If they found out you had been talking to me like this, it wouldn’t be good for you, would it?’
‘No, not good.’ He stood up and went to the drinks cabinet. There was a bottle of vodka and a small bottle of scotch. ‘Whisky. Don’t often see it. May I?’
‘Please. I think it was a gift from a patient.’ It was very early to be drinking.
He poured himself a small glass and drank it thoughtfully. There was something melancholy about the way he did it. ‘His daughter,’ he said into his glass.
‘Hazel.’
He kept staring into the drink. ‘How old is she?’
‘Fourteen.’ Forgive me for hoping that her vulnerability would help turn his mind.
He rubbed his brow and drank again, before staring back into the glass. I began to understand his air of sadness. ‘Do you have –’
‘She died.’ There was a long silence before he went on. ‘In ’47. When things weren’t like now. Less stable.’
‘What happened?’
He shook his head and poured a little more into his glass. It looked like an action he had performed many times. ‘If he’s gone, what happens to her?’ he asked.
‘I have no idea,’ I said, truthfully. ‘Lorelei’s mother is alive, but she’s old. She can’t look after a child.’
He drank for the last time and put down the glass. He remained quiet for a while. ‘If we find that he is working against the state, will you drop it?’ he asked.
There was a long pause while I thought of what it would be like if that turned out to be true. ‘Yes. I suppose I would have to,’ I said. There would be no point going on. He would be lost no matter what I did and it would only make things worse for Hazel and myself. I hoped to God it wouldn’t come to that. ‘They questioned me too, last night,’ I said.
He stopped. ‘The Secs?’
‘Yes.’
I described how they had shoved me into a wire cage in the back of one of their foul vans.
‘You got off lightly,’ he said, after thinking it over. ‘I’ve heard some of what goes on in their HQ. The cells below.’ He shook his head. ‘Though that officer, Grest, I’ve come across him before. From what I hear, if you’d given him a tenner he would’ve let you walk. I would try that next time.’ He sat down. ‘Does your husband often make house calls?’
‘Sometimes. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing. Just that this Comrade Taggan went into work that day, after your husband went to see him.’
‘So?’
‘Well, I thought doctors only make house calls for people who are too ill to get out.’
‘I expect if they’re very important, Nick will go to them.’
‘Yes, you’re probably right. Could anyone else verify your husband’s whereabouts? His secretary?’
‘I doubt it. Charles doesn’t go on calls with him.’ I gazed at him. ‘Do you know yet how she died?’
‘The force medical officer said at the scene that it looked to him like drowning – no injuries on her – but he couldn’t be certain until he had the body back at the morgue.’ I shivered at the harsh image.
‘And what did he say then?’
‘Nothing. By then NatSec had taken over. So I don’t know any more than you on that score.’
‘Wasn’t it just an accident?’ I appealed to him. ‘There was that Champagne bottle next to her. So she was drinking and slipped in the bath.’ If someone could prove that it had been just an accident, they would have to release Nick – unless, that is, they could find evidence that he had been involved in subversion. If he had been involved with a dissident group – maybe even one of those encouraged by the Americans – it would be a very serious situation.
Tibbot sounded sceptical. ‘Well, it happens – someone falls and knocks their head. But there wasn’t a mark on her. And her eyes open like that … Strange.’
‘So what do you think?’ I was just desperate for something to hold on to. It was like he was playing with me, holding out the prospect of an innocent explanation that would give Nick his freedom, then pulling it back.
‘Well, I think we need to know two things: first, why NatSec want your husband, and, second, why his former wife died. You can put money on it that one will tell us the other. Was she political?’
‘I don’t think so, but I only met her once.’
‘Did she make any political statements?’
‘No, nothing like that. Not that I heard, anyway.’ That evening I had met her, and the letters of hers that I had read, had left me with the impression that she was, by nature, interested in little more than her own world, floating above the rest.
‘Can you remember anything else about the scene of death that you didn’t say before?’ Tibbot asked.
‘No.’
‘There must be something. Think.’
‘There isn’t!’ And in a moment it all hit home. I needed air.
I ran out of the room, out the back door, and stood sucking in the air, damp as it was, in an attempt to cool my brain. In a neighbouring garden a little boy was kicking a football around, shouting to an unseen friend about the tally of goals between them. The friend yelled back at the same childish volume.
I calmed myself down and looked towards the house. This man, Tibbot – I knew nothing about him. Should I be telling him so much? For all I knew, he would report it all straight back to NatSec. It was a risk. But I thought it over a hundred ways and each time I decided that, no matter how dangerous it was, I had little choice. I needed to help Nick and I couldn’t do that alone, I needed someone who had been in such a maze before and could guide me through.
Still, I hadn’t yet told him about the book and carton I had found at Lorelei’s house, and I decided to hold off for now until I was a little bit more certain about him.
The boys nearby shouted again as one of them seemed to score a goal and, after another minute getting my breath back, I returned.
The second I stepped back inside, however, a sight made me stop dead. Tibbot was standing with the hall telephone in his hand. I imagined the line running straight to NatSec. ‘Who are you calling?’ I demanded.
‘No one,’ he replied, taken aback by my tone. ‘Someone’s called you.’
I snatched the receiver out of his hand. ‘Nick?’ I said urgently.
I glanced up the stairs towards Hazel’s room. The sound of the radio news was drifting down: ‘… since the Republic erected a barrier to prevent residents of north-west London from looting our stores for low-priced but excellent-quality food …’
‘Mrs Cawson?’ came the cautious reply. ‘It’s Charles O’Shea.’
It wasn’t Nick. Shattered, I dropped the receiver and walked away. I didn’t care how I must have appeared to Tibbot as he picked up the handset from the floor. ‘Can I help you?’ he muttered into it. I leaned against the wall as Charles’s voice buzzed from the other end. Tibbot looked over at me and covered the mouthpiece. ‘He wants to speak to you.’
I reached for it. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, recovering a little. ‘Hello, Charles.’
‘Who was that?’
‘A policeman.’
‘You’re with a policeman?’
I glanced at Tibbot. He went into the parlour. ‘It’s fine. You can speak.’
‘Dr Cawson is still where he was?’ he asked.
Tibbot had warned me that there were certain things you didn’t talk about on the telephone and Charles too was being guarded. ‘Yes. It doesn’t seem to be changing.’
‘Is there any more information? Regarding his former wife?’
‘No.’
‘I understand.’ He paused. ‘I tried my contacts in the Party; they are looking into it for me.’
‘Of course.’ I suspected now that if he really did have any friends in the Party, they were on the lowest rung of the ladder.
‘I’ll continue to keep the practice running as best I can. I would, of course, appreciate it if you could keep me informed about any developments.’
‘I will.’ I slipped the receiver back into its cradle. ‘Why did you answer that?’ I called out to Tibbot.
He came back into the hallway. ‘You were outside; I thought it might be about your husband and you wouldn’t want to miss the call. Mrs Cawson, you asked to speak to me. I can go if you don’t want me here.’
I relented. ‘No, I’m sorry. Please stay.’ But I couldn’t shake off the fact that I knew nothing about where his loyalties lay.
‘Can I ask who that was?’ Tibbot said as we went back into the parlour.
‘Is it important?’
‘It could be.’
‘Charles O’Shea. Nick’s secretary.’
‘Right,’ he said. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was nearly half past nine. ‘Well, there’s something else we have to think about.’
‘What’s that?’
He brushed something unseen from his brow. ‘It’s that I’m not sure how much time we have. You see, I don’t know how to put this, but NatSec … sometimes people hang themselves in those cells.’ My heart thumped and he paused as I struggled with the idea. ‘If that were to happen, the case would be closed with his name on it. It’s a tick in their records.’ I had been picturing Nick before a military tribunal. Now, in a moment of panic, I saw him buried.
I couldn’t be sure that I could trust this man. I didn’t know why he was helping me. But I had to know what Lorelei had been involved in.
‘There’s something I need to show you,’ I said.
‘Cryptography,’ Tibbot muttered, flicking over the pages of the book I had retrieved from Lorelei’s house. The white box I had found sat beside it on the table; it had meant nothing to him, and I hadn’t let him into my suspicion that it had contained rifle rounds, for fear that he would immediately wash his hands of us. ‘From the Greek krypto, meaning “hidden thing”. It’s NatSec’s department, really, not the police’s.’
I was surprised by his knowledge of Greek. He was a working-class Londoner and not many of them had been to the sort of school that taught Classics. Maybe I had been jumping to conclusions.
‘So do you know anything about it?’
He scratched his white-bristled chin. ‘We’ve had a few pointers in CID. There’ll be a key – a set of numbers or letters. If you have it, it’s easy to decode. If you don’t, you have to look for patterns.’
‘I don’t think we’ve got it.’
‘No.’ We peered at the book again. The strings of letters and numbers varied only occasionally between its twenty-odd sections. ‘Might as well start here,’ Tibbot said, tapping the final section. I slid my finger down the page through the first column of two letters followed by a series of numbers.
| DD2261033445298 | wfn |
| VN1081209994632 | str cor |
| TW3284408109028 | pro wfn |
| AM7126026369346 | cor |
| VN4653310089328 | cor str |
| DO5574301038201 | wfn pro |
| TL2159414038033 | nor |
Two of the seven strings began with VN. ‘That’s a start,’ I said hopefully. ‘A way in.’
‘Possibly,’ he said. ‘Our best shot, anyhow.’ He didn’t sound very positive.
We tried making phrases from the letters, turning them around and thinking of names for which they could be the initials. But half an hour later we were no further on. ‘What if we’re going at this the wrong way? What if it’s not a code?’ I said.
‘I’ve been thinking about that. They could be identification numbers, say, but for what? Phone numbers are seven digits, including the exchange code. Identity cards have three letters at the beginning of the number.’
‘Bank notes?’ The new decimal currency still felt strange to many of us.
He pulled a pound note from his wallet and examined it. ‘No. Nothing like it.’
‘They’re much shorter.’
We sat reading the numbers backwards and forwards. I saw them spinning in the air, but it did no good. It drove me mad to think that these marks on a page might tell us who was responsible for Lorelei’s death and – more importantly – why it wasn’t Nick. But no matter how much I stared at them, all they did was mock me with their impenetrability.
Then, as Tibbot went to the kitchen to draw a glass of water, I suddenly had a thought. ‘I know where I’ve seen something like this,’ I said, jumping up. ‘At school.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said, coming back in.
I was overjoyed at the thought that we might now have it – we might be able to decode what she had been writing. ‘Library codes. To identify books.’
He nodded thoughtfully. ‘Library codes. Yes. Could be. Where’s your nearest library?’
‘Southwark.’
‘Better get there soon. If it’s open at all, it’ll probably close early for Liberation Day,’ he said.
We copied the codes on to a small slip of paper and put the book back in its hiding place. I had a hurried word with Hazel – with what was going on now, I thought it best if she went to a friend’s house and she reluctantly agreed to go. She had a key and could let herself back in for supper that evening.
Leaving the house after seeing her off, I saw a figure at the window of the house next door. She was perhaps twenty-two and dressed in a plain blouse and trousers cut like those you had to wear in the army, and her appearance made me suddenly very nervous. It must have shown, because Tibbot discreetly asked who she was.
‘Patricia. Our neighbour. She’s in the Party.’
‘Serious about it?’
‘Very. Nick told me to watch what I said around her.’ This slip of a girl could be as dangerous as the men who beat on your door in the night. So strange that raw muscle power – the power of men – was being quietly supplanted by the power of a whisper behind hands, a force that we women were better at employing.
Tibbot took my arm. ‘Well, try to keep calm,’ he said. ‘Don’t attract attention. Smile. Look around you. Stop to button up your coat. Just think of it as a normal day.’
He was right, of course: what we were undertaking was dangerous enough without doing anything to signal that we were engaged in something that made us nervous. After all, we were probably the only people in the city that day not happily getting ready to celebrate the arrival of the ship that had fired the first Soviet shot against the Germans.
‘Right. Yes,’ I said, and I did my best to smile.