Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ An elderly man in an expensive suit — perhaps a Jermyn Street tailor — was glaring at Lindsay from the pavement close by. He had his hand at the elbow of a woman who was brushing dust from her skirt. ‘You could have been killed,’ he shouted. ‘You should have been killed.’

Lindsay ignored him and began walking round the car to the driver’s door.

‘Can we talk?’

He bent his face close to the glass. The driver’s eyes were fixed on the buildings on the south side of the square.

‘Here beautiful,’ and he tapped lightly on the glass.

Slowly the driver wound down his window and flicked his cigarette end into the distance.

‘Whatcha want?’ He was a Londoner and his voice was cool and belligerent.

‘Who are you? Special Branch?’

‘What are you talking about?’ He laughed and glanced across at his friend who smiled and shook his head. ‘Mad Scottish cunt.’

‘You’re right, I am,’ and reaching into the car, Lindsay grabbed the driver by the throat and shook him hard. ‘Now stop pretending, you halfwit, and tell me.’

The door on the other side swung open and the passenger got out.

‘Leave it, all right? We don’t want trouble’, the driver croaked. ‘I’m sorry I called you a cunt. I’m even sorry I called you Scottish.’

The other man was beside him now, a hand on Lindsay’s arm: ‘Let him go.’

To make his point more directly he punched Lindsay hard and he punched him expertly, a hammer blow to the kidney that drove him to one knee, gasping for air. Just to be quite sure, he hit him again in the face. And as far as he was concerned, that was the end of the matter. He did not wait for Lindsay to rise but began walking round the front of the car to the passenger side. Then someone beyond Lindsay’s bent shoulders caught the man’s attention: ‘Hello, Officer.’

A policeman was walking towards them.

‘Are you all right, sir?’

‘Yes, fine.’ Lindsay tried to straighten his back. ‘Fine. Thank you.’

‘You don’t look it.’ The policeman was itching to reach for his notebook. ‘Did this car hit you, sir?’

‘No.’

‘This man ran out in front of us, Officer.’ The driver was on his best behaviour.

‘My mistake,’ said Lindsay. ‘I thought I recognised him.’

An apology, a simple explanation and a few frosty pleasantries. The driver straightened his tie and winked as he pulled away. Lindsay stood and watched the Morris brake at the bottom of the square, then turn right into Pall Mall. There was the unpleasant, salty taste of blood in his mouth. He touched his bottom lip and winced.

‘All right now, sir?’

‘Yes, thank you, Officer. Thank you so much.’

Of course, it was not the way a naval interrogator should behave. But he was not an interrogator any more. He was a reserve lieutenant in search of a role. Would anyone notice if he did not present himself for duty? Perhaps his Special Branch minders in the Morris would notify their master. But the red mist had lifted and he knew he would go. What else was there to do?

Fleming had found him a temporary job in the Director’s personal office and was trying to keep him busy with little errands to various parts of the Admiralty. He was writing short radio scripts for the ‘black section’ too. Lurid tales of orgies in the flotilla messes, a well-known captain with the clap, champagne bottles commandeered by the thousand — everything and anything that might appeal to the inner Schweinhund of the German seaman. There was talk of a posting abroad to Gibraltar or North Africa, talk of a mission to capture an enemy E-boat or intelligence papers from a weather station. Talk.

No one in Room 39 expected Lindsay to be there long enough to need a desk of his own. After two weeks he was still camping across the corridor in the office used by the uniformed messengers and those waiting to see the Director. The Admiral ignored him and his personal staff were indifferent too — sometimes downright hostile. It was a question of trust. The ‘unpleasantness’ at Trent Park seemed to cling like stale cigarette smoke.

Only Fleming acknowledged him as he slipped into the room. The Director’s Assistant was standing by the west-facing windows that looked towards Horse Guards and the Foreign Office. Lindsay wanted to talk to him about his confrontation, to ask him if he knew why he was being followed, but not in front of the others.

‘I’ve a job for you tonight. A pick-up. All right?’ Fleming sounded out of sorts.

Lindsay was hoping to meet Mary that evening. She was only corridors and stairs away from him but it was harder to meet than it had ever been. He had seen her only once since the night at his flat. Once in St James’s Park when they had met for lunch. The more he struggled to fill his day, the busier she seemed to be. She did not say why she was busy and he knew better than to ask.

‘Of course Ian, where is the pick-up?’

Fleming leant across an empty desk and ground his cigarette into an ashtray.

‘What have you done to your lip?’

‘A little accident.’

‘I see. Come and see me later. I’ll have the details for you then.’ And he walked over to his own desk by the Director’s green baize door and sat down. Conversation closed.

It was dusk when the taxi dropped Lindsay beside a heap of smoke-blackened bricks on the Commercial Road.

‘You’ll have to walk the rest — second right.’

He felt he was paying for his freedom. The cab driver was a Jonah who took a perverse pleasure in the misery of others and there were tales aplenty to tell. They had driven along East End streets shattered, and some abandoned, after pitiless months of bombing. Almost a third of Stepney’s houses were damaged, the driver said, no water, no power, and rich trippers from the West End who wanted to see ‘the other half’ sheltering in tunnels and beneath railway arches.

‘Are you a tripper?’

It was a respectable question. What else would bring a smart fare in an expensive suit into this broken landscape at dusk?

If he had been able to, Lindsay would have said that he ran errands for a man called Fleming who liked dark corners and that this was just one more. It always seemed to be harder than it needed to be. The Director’s Assistant had asked him to meet ‘a friend’ from the Security Service, MI5. What Fleming’s friend was offering, and why he was offering it in the East End at dusk, he would not say. When pressed, he was evasive and then he was sharp. It was ludicrously cloak-and-dagger and it made Lindsay uneasy.

A little way up the road small groups of men and women were emptying out of a pub and trickling home past half-boarded shops, their windows taped and streaked with grime and pigeon shit. Sad, damaged people in a sad, damaged place. A couple of painted girls in summer frocks tottered uncertainly towards Lindsay, their arms draped about each other for support. They stopped and gave him a bleary look then, one of them — a frowzy blonde — swayed closer and blew him a gin-soaked kiss.

‘Do you like me?’

‘Oh, very much.’

‘Nasty lip. Who’ve you been kissing then?’

They cackled wildly. Lindsay slipped past them, picking his way through the bricks that had tumbled on to the pavement. They shouted at his back. He kept his eyes firmly to the front.

Number 350 was a sooty three-storey building with a shop front on the ground floor. Its windows were empty and the counter, too, but its shelves were coated in a generous layer of dust. No coupons needed. The front door was sloughing off its paint in large green flakes. Loose sheets of the Daily Mirror rustled on the step as a bus swept past in a cloud of fumes. It was not the sort of place the Director of Naval Intelligence would visit in person. Lindsay checked the address he had scribbled on the paper — yes, it was Number 350.