Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

‘What on earth…’ and he pulled a face at her. She began to laugh. And for a time she could not stop, short breathless infectious laughter. He hugged her and she made him dance a little circle as the rain fell in a drenching sheet in the empty road.

They drove the steamy car through the city in search of a tea-room and found one close to the station. Its sympathetic owner showed them to a table close to a heater, then served tea and a biscuit. Lindsay held her hand across the table:

‘Thank you for today. I feel calmer. You know sometimes I worry I’m imagining those men in the car outside my home. They are there but perhaps they have nothing to do with Special Branch. They may be thieves going quietly about their business. Am I going mad?’

She smiled and gave his hand a squeeze: ‘Stark raving.’

He laughed and rolled his fingers over his bottom lip like a halfwit.

But in the car on the way home, silent except for the rhythm of the road, she wondered if he was right — was he a prisoner of his own imagination? In their secret world of possibilities and lies, wild thoughts would perhaps come easily to a fevered mind. They reached St James’s Square at dusk and there was no sign of a black Morris Eight or men in soft hats and raincoats.

‘Will you come in? I’ll drive you home later,’ he said tentatively. ‘If you have to go, I mean.’

She did not feel able to refuse.

There was a letter from the Admiralty waiting for him in the hall.

‘It’s from Fleming. The Director wants to see me first thing tomorrow.’

‘Good. You can sort things out.’

‘And he’s sent a cutting from today’s Sunday Times .’

It fluttered to the floor and he picked it up without glancing at it and put it in his jacket pocket. ‘I’ll read it later.’

In the apartment, he drew the blackout curtains, then switched on the sitting-room lights while Mary made some tea. She was loading his mother’s bone china on to a tray when he shouted through to the kitchen:

‘Hey, come here.’

He was standing at his desk holding the newspaper cutting beneath the lamp. It was only a short piece, no more than the length of his index finger.

‘Listen to this:

A prisoner is reported to have committed suicide at a camp for enemy officers in the North Country. Camp guards found the body of the nineteen-year-old U-boat officer hanging from a pipe in the washroom last Tuesday. The camp for captured German naval and flying officers is known locally as ‘the U-boat Hotel’ because the prisoners enjoy special privileges. An MP who recently visited it described the rooms as ‘luxurious’ and claimed the prisoners were better fed than his own constituents. Military Police officers are still interviewing prisoners but are understood to be satisfied that the dead man took his own life.’

‘And that’s it,’ he said, looking up at her.

‘Why has he sent you that?’

He turned slowly away from her and drew back a curtain to look down into the square.

‘I don’t know. Perhaps because I interrogated him.’

‘Who?’

‘The dead man, of course.’

He held his fist to his mouth, tapping his lip thoughtfully with his knuckles, and when he turned to her again his eyes were their brightest blue: ‘Do you think this is something to do with Mohr?’

She slammed the tray on the table so hard that a cup jumped on to the rug: ‘Would that make you happy?’

‘Yes,’ he said and there was the old smile again, dry, a little supercilious, ‘I’m afraid it would.’

The Director of Naval Intelligence was in no hurry to see Lindsay the following morning. He was directed to a hard wooden chair next to the kettles and milk bottles in the messengers’ room and left to slide up and down it for an hour. The whispers, the grim faces and sideways glances suggested it was common knowledge that he was in for a ‘roasting’. No secret travelled faster.

He was shown into Room 39 at the Admiralty a little before nine. A meeting of Section heads had just broken up and a small group of officers was chatting and smoking around the large marble fireplace. There was no sign of Fleming and he stood there for a moment unsure whether to wait or knock at the Director’s door.

‘Sit down, Lindsay.’

It was Commander Drake, the Admiral’s slow-moving, easy-tempered doorkeeper, except that this morning he sounded uncharacteristically brusque.

‘Admiral Godfrey will be with you shortly.’

Lindsay took a chair by the baize partition in the corner of the room and watched the traffic come and go. After a few minutes the door to his right opened and Ian Fleming came out holding an Admiralty docket. He nodded curtly: ‘Step inside, Lieutenant.’

Rear-Admiral John Godfrey was sitting at his large mahogany desk. He did not speak, he did not smile, not a muscle in his face moved as Lindsay walked smartly across the carpet to pre-sent himself in front of it. He was a distinguished-looking man, fifty-three, severe, with a lantern jaw, thin lips and the bright eyes of a hawk. They did not leave Lindsay’s face. Fleming took up a position on his right, his arm resting on the black marble mantelpiece behind the Admiral’s desk. He looked as if he was at a funeral. When the Director spoke at last his voice was clipped and cool:

‘Do you want us to win this war, Lindsay?’

‘Yes, sir. I am a…’

‘“Yes” or “No” will suffice.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then it is hard to understand your behaviour. You put our codes at risk, disobeyed a direct order from a senior officer and you have been hiding your family’s connections to the Nazis.’

‘The Kriegsmarine, sir.’

‘Don’t fence with me,’ he barked. ‘If it weren’t for Commander Fleming you would be shovelling coal on a trawler somewhere between Rockall and St John’s.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The Admiral leant back in his chair and picked up a thin cardboard file marked ‘EYES ONLY’ in red.

‘You’ve seen this, haven’t you?’ He waved it lazily at Lindsay. ‘Commander Fleming says you opened it, although you didn’t have the authority.’

‘Yes, sir, but I was sure Commander Fleming wanted me to read it.’

‘So you know that both Military Counter-Intelligence and MI5 recommend your immediate transfer from the Division.’

He glared at Lindsay for a few seconds, then tossed the file back on to the desk.

‘Can you give me a good reason why I shouldn’t transfer you?’

Lindsay hesitated. His heart was bumping furiously.

‘Well?’

‘I am good at my job, sir.’

‘You haven’t proved that,’ he snapped.

‘No, sir.’

‘Thank goodness, humility at last.’

The Admiral looked at him closely, hard wrinkles about his eyes. Someone was giving orders on the parade ground below his window. A clock ticked lamely on the mantelpiece.

‘All right, sit down.’

And he pointed to the leather library chairs on the other side of his desk. Picking up the file again, he took out a closely typed sheet of foolscap.

‘This is the transcript of Mohr’s letter in full.’ He pushed it across his shiny black desk. ‘Read it.’

It was in German, unremarkable but for the references to Lindsay’s cousin and the evening at the jazz club with Mary and Lange. Mohr asked his friend to reassure his family that he was in good health and he wrote of shared memories, of days sailing on the Wannsee in Berlin, of walks and dinners. At the end of the letter he had added a few awkward words of love, dry and conventional, nothing that would offer comfort to a lonely sweetheart. Lindsay slid the paper back across the Admiral’s desk.

‘The jazz club, sir.’ He took a deep breath before continuing. ‘Dr Henderson left as soon as she was aware I was with a prisoner.’