Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

‘Why don’t you tell me?’

Lindsay placed his glass on the mantelpiece and reached inside his jacket for a calfskin wallet. From it, he took a small brown photograph, roughly torn at the edges, and handed it to Mary: ‘Mother. The year my parents met.’

She was wearing a simple dress, hands resting demurely on the top of a high-backed chair. Younger than Mary, perhaps twenty, shorter too, with a pretty, round face and the same thick brown hair swept back into heavy curls. Her eyes were dark and round, and a little sad.

Lindsay’s parents had met just before the last war. His father had visited Bremen to order something small but important for the family’s engineering works. He met and fell in love with Edith Clausen. After a very Low Church wedding, the couple bought a large villa in the west end of Glasgow. A short time later Douglas Alexander Clausen Lindsay was born and then his brother Eric.

‘We spoke German at home. Mother went to church twice on Sunday. We were at school in Scotland at first, then, after some unpleasantness, I finished my education in Germany. That brought me very close to my family there.’

‘Unpleasantness?’

Lindsay hesitated. ‘I was a little too German when I was small. Some boys wanted to fight the Great War again in the playground — some teachers too.’

After leaving school, he had spent a year with his grandfather’s company in Bremen trying to learn something about marine boilers and business. Then he went up to Cambridge to study history: ‘Where I was Secretary of the Anglo-German Society.’

Mary laughed her short, breathless, rippling laugh: ‘Clausen Lindsay, it has a certain ring.’

‘So does Hobhouse Henderson.’

She raised an eyebrow archly: ‘You’ve done some homework.’

‘What else would you expect from an interrogator?’

‘Do you still have close family in Germany?’

He did not answer but stared at her intently until she flushed a little and looked down: ‘Sorry, a question too many.’

The hard core of the party was moving on to whisky and pink gin, the faint-hearted had begun to drift away. Perkins was now snoozing on an elegant but uncomfortably upright eighteenth-century settee. A gramophone had been spirited up from somewhere and James Henderson was bent over a pile of discs. Lindsay took a conspiratorial half step towards Mary.

‘The Navy likes to keep officers with German connections away from intelligence, I expect you know that,’ he said. ‘They took a risk with me — I’m the only one with close family in…’ he smiled his dry, tight-lipped smile, ‘in the Fatherland.’

‘You’re a Scot and you’ve been decorated. Why should the Navy care?’

Only half in jest, Lindsay glanced at the people around them to be sure no one was listening: ‘Security could have been more thorough.’

Without thinking, Mary placed her hand lightly on his sleeve: ‘Tell me. I love secrets.’

‘I have a cousin called Martin, Martin Schultze. And…’ he paused for dramatic effect, ‘he commands a U-boat. A successful one. I’m sure there’s a file on his submarine in the Citadel.’

The gramophone began to crackle to the sound of Joe Crossman: ‘I’ll be glad when you’re dead you rascal, you… ’ James Henderson was beaming at the room. Lindsay was laughing too.

‘What’s funny?’

‘Your expression.’

His gaze followed the quiet sweep of the hand she lifted to her face in one graceful movement.

‘Do you know about my ship?’ he asked.

‘There were a few lines in the bulletin.’

Lindsay looked down. He was turning the stem of his glass slowly in his hand. ‘I used to wonder if it was Martin’s submarine that fired the torpedoes…’

‘That isn’t very likely, is it?’

‘All those ships lost in the autumn to a handful of U-boats — the odds were short enough to trouble me between two and three in the morning. I know now that it wasn’t his boat.’

Lindsay slipped the photograph of his mother back in his wallet then took a silver cigarette case from his jacket. ‘My grandfather gave me this. He served in the Imperial German Navy by the way. Would you like one?’

Mary declined.

He tapped the cigarette against the top of the case. ‘At sea, the war’s very simple. Boom: a torpedo bursts through the side of your ship and that’s it. It’s different in the Division, don’t you think, face to face with the enemy?’

Mary thought of Rodger Winn at the plot table, gazing at his photograph of Dönitz like a monk before an icon. But that was academic interest. The fusty air of superiority in Room 40 sometimes reminded her of the Senior Common Room at her old college.

‘You may find yourself on the opposite side of an interrogation table from your cousin one day,’ she said with a smile.

‘He would get the better of me, he always does…’ Lindsay was about to say more but checked himself.

‘Go on, please,’ she said.

He lit his cigarette and drew a little anxiously on it. ‘Would it shock you to know that I can’t help feeling proud of Martin? We’re close; he took me under his wing as a boy, he’s a little older. People say we are very alike, not just in appearance but in temperament too. You know…’

He stopped abruptly and his face tightened into a frown. Mary’s cousin Gillian was shimmering towards them, blonde and willowy and very elegant.

‘This looks very intense,’ she cooed. ‘James has sent me over to remind you it’s a party — his party. Gillian Neville, Lieutenant,’ and she held out her hand.

‘Lindsay.’ His tone was only a polite degree above freezing. Gillian flushed an awkward pink. ‘Sorry. I’m not welcome. James asked me…’

Mary lifted a gentle, caressing hand to her cousin’s face: ‘I know, darling, but we’re quite happy chatting here. Tell James you’re under fresh orders to sparkle somewhere else.’

‘I was very rude,’ said Lindsay when Gillian had left them.

‘Yes. James was right about that.’

The little ormolu clock struck ten. The room was almost empty. Mrs Leigh was clinking glasses like an East End barmaid at closing time.

‘You two coming with us,’ I’ve got a table at the Havana, Denman Street.’ James Henderson was advancing towards them coat in hand. ‘It’s got a good little coloured band. I was in two minds about asking you really, you’ve been such party poopers.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Lindsay mechanically.

‘No you’re not. Well, are you coming?’

Lindsay looked at Mary who shook her head: ‘I’d like to but I’m whacked.’ The memory of the Café de Paris was very raw.

‘Then I suppose that’s a no from you too, Lindsay?’

‘Well yes, I’m afraid it is, but I’ll walk with you to the bottom of Haymarket.’

Lindsay joined the Havana party in the hall. Gillian Neville was bubbling conspicuously, her back turned resolutely towards him. Mrs Leigh helped him into his coat. The front door opened and the party began to drift on to the street. Lindsay turned to look for Mary.

‘Here.’

Her cool fingers touched the back of his hand. She was standing at the bottom of the stairs, her skin very white in the flat shadow of the hall. ‘I’ve written it down for you. If I’m not at home, Uncle’s housekeeper will take a message. Sundays are good and some evenings.’ She paused for just a second and then laughed: ‘I feel sure you’ve got that maddening, slightly supercilious smile on your face.’

‘And lunch-times?’ he asked.

‘Sometimes.’

He took half a step, reached for her hand and bent to brush it with his lips.

‘Auf Wiedersehen. Ein süsses Schrecken geht durch mein Gebein,’ he whispered.

Mary was still laughing as the door clicked behind him.