14

Southwark Library was only a fifteen-minute walk away, so Tibbot and I reached it by ten thirty. It stood at the end of what had once been a small parade of greengrocers and tobacconists and was now a large Closed Shop for Party members. The little windows were hung with curtains to prevent your seeing inside, but everyone knew that its shelves were always stocked. You could get bacon and legs of lamb all year round, and, in summer, strawberries. French wines for the price of beer. The stories got bigger all the time, so if you asked some people you would hear of whole pigs roasted on spits in the centre of the shop or whisky sold by the gallon. Others would tell you that their sisters’ friends worked there and they were allowed to take home a kilo of sausages each day. You never knew whom to believe.

A group of Teddy Boys were standing around outside, smoking. The Teddies had arrived about a year ago and seemed to be everywhere now, wearing their grandfathers’ Edwardian clothes, dressing like dandies in velvet frock coats and narrow-legged trousers, but in their pockets they carried flick-out knives and brass knuckles. They were harassed by the police, told to move on from their pavements and milk bars, and sometimes there would be a scrap between them but rarely anything serious. Secretly, many people admired them and their refusal to conform.

When we got to the library door, we were met with a sign saying that it was already closed, but Tibbot spotted movement inside and banged on the door. It was opened by a fidgety young man who, I noticed, was holding a collection of T. S. Eliot’s new work as National Poet – verses lauding our leaders that I couldn’t help but think were pretty thin.

‘Sorry, we’re closed,’ the young man said.

‘I know, I’m terribly sorry,’ I said, being as polite and friendly as I could. ‘We need to find a book. A particular book. Please. It will only take a second.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Please, it’s for my daughter’s homework. Just one second.’

‘I –’

‘She’s going to get in trouble if I don’t.’

He relented. ‘Oh, all right, come this way.’ He led us to his desk.

‘All we have is the long code,’ I said.

‘The decimal?’ he said, going to a thick hardback catalogue. ‘Well, unless it’s a common book, there’s no reason why we would have it ourselves. And, in that case, I won’t know which one it’s for.’ I felt deflated. ‘Now, let’s see.’ I handed him the note with the code. He tapped his finger on the first string in the column, DD2261033445298, and counted them with his finger. ‘Thirteen numbers. It can’t be the Dewey at all, then,’ he said. ‘On the Dewey system, three digits will tell you the subject quite precisely. This one, two-two-six, would place a book in’ – he checked down the list in his catalogue – ‘religion; then the Bible; then the Gospels. The following three digits would narrow it down further on the shelf if need be – if you have a lot of books about the Gospels, say – but the rest of the digits in this number wouldn’t mean anything. You can only have six in total. And these letters at the beginning, well … Sometimes you can put letters at the end of the sequence to denote the author’s surname, but not at the beginning.’

I was crushed, I had been sure we had made progress. ‘Are there other systems?’ I asked.

‘None that look like this, I think.’

‘Let’s put the code to one side for a minute,’ Tibbot said, back in our parlour. ‘Let’s say it’s nothing to do with her death. And let’s say that her death wasn’t an accident either. Who might have wanted to do her harm?’

‘I hardly knew her,’ I said. Did anyone really know her?

‘Most killings are just domestic,’ he mused. ‘Someone gets angry, drunk. It’s the boyfriend or husband.’

‘Nick’s not –’

‘I know. Did she have a boyfriend?’

‘I have no idea.’ I wanted to get back to what I was sure was the way in. ‘But this, this code. She was doing something secret, something NatSec wanted to know about. That has to be it, doesn’t it?’

And yet, if she had been involved in subversion, as NatSec’s presence seemed to suggest, what could have brought her to it? Her friend George Orwell had been through one of the re-education camps at Ian Fellowman’s behest. Had there been other friends who had suffered? Perhaps that had hardened her feelings and pushed her to make contact with people who thought as she did. After all, during the War, we had seen acts of extraordinary courage from people one wouldn’t have expected to act that way – housewives who had joined SOE and lived in occupied France with the prospect of Ravensbrück hanging over them; quiet family men who, when the time came, led battalions into the teeth of the German guns. I suppose we all have the capacity within us – it’s only a question of circumstances.

‘We’re stuck there,’ Tibbot sighed. ‘Unless we can get into this book of hers, we’re blind.’

I had a thought. ‘There was something else I found,’ I said.

‘Go on.’

‘Stay here.’ I went to my room and fetched the photograph of Nick, Lorelei and the dark-haired woman. I had put it from my mind because the book had seemed far more important.

‘The car isn’t theirs, I think, so it’s probably that woman’s,’ I said, handing the photograph to him.

‘Probably,’ Tibbot said. ‘But I can’t see that it means anything.’

‘But it’s how I found it – it was hidden at the bottom of a drawer, covered in a sheet of paper.’ I was trying to convince myself as much as him.

‘So? I’ve got photographs in my desk under paper. It protects them from dust.’

‘Well, yes, but I thought,’ I hesitated, not wanting to tell a police detective his job. ‘It’s Nick and Lorelei together. How many men keep photographs of them with their ex-wives? It’s strange.’ And at the back of my mind was the thought that it was also disturbing – was it something that I wouldn’t want to know? ‘And she’s written on it, “To a brighter future!” That must mean something, mustn’t it? It’s something we can try.’

He looked unconvinced. ‘Jane, it’s something to look into, but please don’t get your hopes up. Most of these kinds of … odd things, turn out to be nothing to do with what you’re investigating; they’re just a distraction. The truth is, nine times out of ten, it’s just a nasty little domestic incident. No big crime.’ He sat back in his chair and pointed to a badge on the car’s front grille. ‘Nice machine. Sunbeam. I remember them.’ He closely examined the woman in the driver’s seat holding a glass of wine. ‘So who is she?’

At least he was taking an interest. ‘I don’t know. Hazel says she recognizes her a little but doesn’t know who she is.’

‘Is there anyone else who might know? Someone you can trust to keep all this to themselves – you understand?’

‘Yes. I suppose I could try Charles. I’m not sure it will help, though.’

‘Give it a go.’

I knew he was right. I went to the telephone. My call was answered as immediately and efficiently as I had come to expect.

‘The consulting rooms of Nicholas Cawson, Charles O’Shea speaking.’

‘Charles, it’s Jane Cawson.’

‘Oh, Mrs Cawson. Has Dr Cawson been released?’

‘No. Not yet.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said.

‘Could you do something for me?’

‘I will try.’

‘Could you come here? There’s something I want you to look at.’

‘Mrs Cawson, I am at work, running the surgery.’ He sounded irritated.

‘I fully understand that, Charles. Please come here.’ I was firmer with him than I had been before.

‘Very well.’

‘You put him in his place,’ Tibbot said, as I returned to the parlour.

‘Yes, I suppose so. He can be very difficult.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh, nothing much. He’s just very off-hand. Nick says it’s because Charles went to Harrow and resents having to take orders from a grammar-school boy, let alone from me.’

‘I’m sure that’s quite the comedown in his world.’

After twenty minutes, Charles stood in the hallway, brushing down his jacket and muttering about the cost of having come by cab. Tibbot was waiting out of sight upstairs. On the way to the parlour, Charles tripped over the paraffin lamp that Nick used when the smog was heavy or when the electricity to the house cut out, refilling it from one of the nearby bottles of oil that also went into our heaters. He swore in annoyance.

‘Do you remember this photograph being taken?’ I asked when we had sat down.

He glanced at it. ‘No.’

‘You weren’t the one holding the camera?’

‘No, I don’t believe so.’

‘What about this woman?’ I said, pointing to the driver of the car.

‘No idea. A friend of your husband, I presume. And his wife.’

‘You’re positive you don’t know?’

He took out one of those foul Soviet cigarettes, tapped it on the packet and lighted it. ‘Yes.’

‘Do you know when it was taken?’

Charles looked at it again briefly and shrugged. ‘Pre-War?’

‘Pre-War? Nick doesn’t look that young. A few years younger, perhaps. And, look, there’s bomb damage to the street.’

‘If you know yourself, why are you asking me?’

‘Charles,’ I soothed my own voice. ‘Nick is in trouble. I think we can help him. But I need to know who this woman is.’

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’ He shifted in his seat. ‘But, Mrs Cawson, one thing I do know is that if you do anything that the Secs don’t like, such as poking around or talking to people about his arrest, it won’t go in Dr Cawson’s favour. Or in anybody else’s. If Dr Cawson has done nothing wrong, as I am sure is the case, he will soon be released and we can go back to how things were. It’s not worth the risk.’

He was being cagey and I knew why. I had once asked Nick why Charles didn’t get another job if he disliked being a secretary so much. ‘Frankly, no one else would give him one,’ Nick had replied. ‘His parents ran off to Northern Ireland with the Royals, you see – I believe his father’s from Dublin and was supposed to be some sort of envoy to the Irish government – and they’re up in Edinburgh with the new Queen now. So no one wants to touch him for fear of being tainted by that. But he was in my regiment on D-Day and when you’ve gone through that together, well …’ He drifted off and his face took on a troubled, faraway expression that I saw from time to time when the War came up. All I could do was place my hand on his arm and hope he understood.

‘Charles,’ I said, ‘I appreciate what you’re saying.’

‘I’m glad,’ he replied coldly.

‘I know your parents are in Edinburgh with the Queen –’

He jumped up. ‘What does that have to do with it?’

‘So you don’t want NatSec knocking on your door, but –’

‘I am not responsible for what my parents do.’ He angrily stubbed out his fag on the grate. My eye was drawn to the livid clutch of little blisters on his hand.

‘Of course not. I only meant –’

‘Are you responsible for what your parents do?’ he demanded.

Damn it. I had wanted to reassure him, but all I had done was to alienate him more. I was losing what little help he had been giving me. ‘I was saying that –’

‘Will there be anything else, Mrs Cawson?’

I gave up. I couldn’t think of anything worth asking and he probably wouldn’t have answered anyway. ‘No.’ He glared at me for a long time before he went to the front door. Just as he was about to open it, however, he whirled around and dashed up the stairs. ‘Who are you?’ he said angrily. He was staring at Tibbot. Tibbot didn’t reply.

‘A friend of mine,’ I said.

‘A friend? Just waiting up here?’ His tone wasn’t pleasant.

‘It’s none of your concern.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No,’ Tibbot replied.

‘Well, I’m going to ask you again.’ He stabbed his finger at Tibbot. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Look, mate, do you really fancy your luck?’ the old policeman replied. ‘Only that pricey bit of schmutter you’re wearing won’t look very nice ripped apart.’

Charles twisted around to look down at me. ‘I don’t know what this is about, but you had better stop it.’ Realizing that he would get nowhere, he looked icily at Tibbot once more and stomped out to the street.

‘He’s not very happy, but that doesn’t matter,’ Tibbot said as he descended the stairs. ‘It’s a bigger problem that either he doesn’t know who this woman is or won’t tell us.’

‘So what do we do?’ I replied, annoyed not by Charles’s attitude – I couldn’t have cared less about what he thought of me at that moment – but by the fact that it had been a waste of precious time.

He rubbed his jaw. ‘I can try a friend in the Transport Division. It might be Liberation Day, but if I know Kenneth he’ll be in the office enjoying the peace and quiet while everyone else is out jumping up and down for Comrade Blunt. He never really goes in for Liberation Day, if you know what I mean. Always prefers to be the one minding the shop.’

‘Will he help us?’

‘I think he’ll try. That might not be enough, though. A lot of the records went up in smoke thanks to the Luftwaffe. Of course the Party has more than made up for it with those new files in Somerset House.’ It was strange to hear a policeman talk that way. The scepticism was almost dissident. I knew what sort of files he was talking about. ‘But we might have a record of the registration plate.’

‘The telephone is in the hall,’ I said.

‘Better from somewhere else.’

A vagrant sat sleeping inside the call box across the road from our house, slumped against the glass walls. His legs, which were bare below the knee, were covered in a damp film of soot, and he had strange bumps under the skin on his nose and cheeks. ‘Wake up, mate,’ Tibbot said. The man stirred and, without a word, hauled himself up and staggered away.

‘What was wrong with his skin?’ I asked.

‘See it quite a lot with the vagrants. Caused by a social disease they have. One of the ones that doesn’t exist.’

He reached into his pocket and drew out a little leather-bound notebook. Inside, in tiny slanted handwriting, there were lists of telephone numbers and he ran a stubby finger down one page, then the next, until he found what he was looking for. He picked up the receiver and gave the operator the number.

‘Hello, Kenneth?’ he said, once connected. ‘It’s Frank Tibbot. Oh, not so bad. Not so bad. Getting old and doddery. Yeah. And tell me, what was your lot up to on Saturday? Two against Portsmouth? I could beat Portsmouth meself. Yeah, you can try. That’s right. Anyway, work call. I’ve got an old reg for you. Can you check it? Well, just do your best. Ta. It’s YXA 998. Old Sunbeam. Got that? Good. How long, do you think? And Ken, do you want to meet for a drink – you can give it to me then? You got it in one. All right. No, you’re right. Yes. Cheerio.’ He hung up. ‘He has to get the files from storage – if they still exist.’

‘You’re meeting for a drink?’ I said, amazed. ‘It’s urgent.’

‘You never know who’s listening, even to police lines,’ he explained calmly. ‘Especially to police lines. You don’t want to raise any suspicion, so you keep things social.’ I regretted my naivety. ‘He’s in Somerset House. I’m meeting him at two, at a pub round the corner from there.’

‘Are you sure it’s safe to go anywhere near the Strand?’ I asked. ‘Today of all days.’

He shrugged. ‘No worse than anywhere else today.’