Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

‘I’ve only met her once,’ said Lindsay. ‘She wants to talk to me about the prisoners.’

‘If you say so,’ said Henderson sceptically. ‘She has some academic friends, of course, but she doesn’t invite them to parties. One of our neighbours in Suffolk took a shine to her but she frightened him away. Too bloody clever. I don’t suppose you’ll have that problem.’

The car scrunched to a halt between the puissant stone lions that flanked the gates to the Park, showering the guards with loose gravel. A cross-looking sergeant waved them on to the Cockfosters Road. Lindsay was struggling to think of something to say; for once, Henderson’s imagination was faster than his car: ‘She’s quite religious, you know. Much better than me, goes to church every Sunday. Are you religious?’

‘No.’

Pinstriped commuters brandishing copies of the Evening Standard were pouring out of the dull brick station. Heads turned as the car came roaring to a halt. Lindsay squeezed out of his seat and on to the pavement.

‘See you later, old boy,’ Henderson boomed.

Rattling through the gloom towards the city, Lindsay’s thoughts turned again to Prisoner 530. It was typical of the Navy. If you stepped out of your box into someone else’s you were jumped on. An interrogator with something to say about codes was trespassing and no one in the Admiralty was interested. Lindsay had listened to the disc they had cut and there was something in Oberfunkmaat Peter Zier’s voice, a quiet assurance, that suggested he knew what he was talking about. It had been more than just a throwaway remark. Zier had refused to answer any questions about codes but the truth was there in his eyes, in the movement of his body and the little catch in his voice. A good interrogator had a sixth sense for when a prisoner was trying to hide something — Checkland had taught him that much.

‘Excuse me. You shouldn’t be reading that.’

A full-looking middle-aged woman in a heavy purple coat was leaning across the carriage towards him, her turkey neck and face flushed with indignation. She was pointing at the magazine that lay open on his lap.

‘Did you hear me?’

Adolf Hitler was spread across the centre pages under the eighteen-point Gothic headline ‘Die Mannschaft der Scharnhorst begrüssen den Führer’. The crew of the battleship Scharnhorst was cheering for dear life and the crooked cross flew proudly from the quarterdeck.

‘That sort of thing is upsetting.’ She was barking down the carriage now, demanding the attention of a dozen or so bored-looking passengers. Lindsay closed the magazine and reached for his briefcase.

‘I’m obliged to read this.’

The woman twittered something about being more ‘sensitive’ but his thoughts were drifting away. He had rather sheepishly looked up the Henderson family in Debrett : traditional squirearchy with roots in the fifteenth century, a coat of arms and a short address in Suffolk. At the bottom of a half-page entry, Mary Victoria Hobhouse Henderson, born 1916, and a brother called James, born 1911. He tried to conjure a picture of Mary in his mind, her thick black loose-curled hair, the broad smile that scrunched and wrinkled her face, her sandy-green eyes. She had been sitting behind her desk in a ghastly tweed suit but she was tall, perhaps five foot seven, and appeared to have a good figure.

‘Are you listening to me?’

The large purple woman was still blustering.

Ting. The ormolu clock on the mantelpiece at Mary’s shoulder struck half past eight. The little panelled drawing room was thick with smoke and noise, a press of navy blue and bright evening silk. She could see her Uncle David’s grey head bobbing towards the door, slipping from one outstretched hand to the next with all the effortless charm of the experienced politician. James Henderson had invited an odd assortment of naval officers, his club cronies and family friends from Suffolk. Mary recognised a good number of the men, but only one of the women. Her cousin Gillian was holding court in a corner of the room, shimmering seductively in a silver dress. She was some way through an anecdote that seemed neither interesting nor funny but her audience of junior officers was smiling devotedly none the less.

Mary was capable of party conversation too but it was sometimes a trial. A little charm, a little make-up, a dark green evening dress, and conversation never seemed to rise above the commonplace. Dr Henderson became just one of the girls. The more trouble she took with her appearance, the less she seemed to enjoy an evening. But she had made an effort for James’s party.

It had been forward of her to ask Lindsay to the party, uncharacteristically so, and she flushed with embarrassment as she remembered the look of surprise on his face. But things moved quicker in war, they had to, and she had sensed that Lindsay was intriguingly different, a little intense but clever and funny.

‘Your glass is empty, Miss Henderson, may I?’

A blotchy, thin-faced sub-lieutenant with a drunken stoop was brandishing a bottle at her.

‘Just a little.’

He swayed forward and the neck of the bottle clinked sharply against Mary’s glass.

‘Forgive me. Bill Perkins. I’m with Commander Henderson at Cockfosters,’ he bellowed above the party noise. Mary could smell cigarettes and her uncle’s good Bordeaux on his breath.

‘Wonderful party.’ Perkins lifted his glass. ‘Wonderful.’

She glanced impatiently at the open door and the dark hall beyond. Her uncle’s housekeeper, Mrs Leigh, was taking a coat from someone in the shadows at the bottom of the stairs.

Perkins was fumbling in his jacket pocket: ‘May I show you this? It’s from The Times or perhaps the Telegraph .’ There was something in the way Perkins unfolded the newspaper cutting that suggested it was a trusted substitute for conversation when imagination failed or drink rendered him incapable.

‘Spare Dr Henderson, please.’

Lindsay was hovering at her shoulder with the dry smile she remembered so well from their first meeting. He looked younger out of uniform, handsome in charcoal grey, perhaps a little more Germanic.

‘Oh it’s you,’ said Perkins coolly.

‘Yes, me. Look, Commander Henderson asked me to find you. He’d like a word.’

‘With me?’ Perkins was surprised and pleased. He paused to empty the last of a bottle into his glass, then, without excusing himself, began to weave unsteadily across the room.

‘Did my brother really want to talk to him?’

‘No.’

‘That was cruel.’

‘I think your brother will cope, don’t you?’

Mary tried to stop herself smiling. ‘James doesn’t like you very much.’

‘Really?’ Lindsay’s voice and casual smile suggested that he cared not a fig.

‘Let’s see: “standoffish”,“arrogant”,“foreign”.’

‘How nice to feel welcome.’

‘I’m sorry. I am direct. Don’t you like people to be direct?’

‘Wasn’t that one of the words James used to describe me?’ Lindsay reached over to the mantelpiece for a bottle Perkins had missed and poured a little red wine into both their glasses: ‘“standoffish”,“arrogant”, you must judge for yourself. “Foreign”?’ His head dropped a little wearily: ‘You shouldn’t be fooled by the west of Scotland in my voice, Dr Henderson. My mother tongue is German.’

‘Yes. I know. Winn mentioned it.’ She lifted the glass of wine to her lips for a moment but lowered it without drinking. ‘Please don’t call me Dr Henderson.’

Lindsay smiled and raised his glass in salute. ‘I’m surprised your brother didn’t tell you himself, he’s very interested in my family.’