Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

She looked up at Mary and the loose brown curls fell away to reveal a pretty elfin face and dark eyes, rheumy with fatigue and the smoke that hung in a pall over the room.

‘We’ll begin again tomorrow. Leave that with me.’ Mary nodded to the file of signal flimsies between her elbows. ‘And thank you, Joan.’

By ten o’clock she was reading the broken sentences on the signal paper as if through the bottom of a bottle, the convoy numbers distant and opaque. After staring blankly at a signal for five minutes she resolved to finish the file in front of her and go to bed. The rest — there were four more on Hawkins’s desk — would have to wait until the morning. She smoothed the folds from her skirt, then, getting to her feet, raised herself on tiptoe and stretched her arms above her head, enjoying the sense of feeling flowing slowly back into her body.

‘You need some help.’ Rodger Winn was closing the door of his office. ‘I’ll ask Scholey and Childs to join you tomorrow.’

He walked over to the coat rack and lifted his mac from a hook: ‘Bletchley are looking into this for us. It will be a day or so before we hear anything.’

Winn left and she settled to her last batch of signals for the day. But she had read only a couple when, with a small pointed cough, he announced that he was back and standing at her shoulder.

‘You made me jump.’

‘I’m sorry but I thought you’d like to know Lieutenant Lindsay is looking for you. I found him in the corridor.’ There was a studied coolness in his voice that left her in no doubt of his disapproval. ‘It would be better if you went to him. You’ll find him at the entrance to the Admiralty.’

‘I see.’

‘Good night then,’ and after nodding to the night duty officer he shuffled out of the room.

Lindsay was waiting for her in the Mall, his shoulder against the peeling grey-green trunk of a plane tree, an evil-smelling cigarette between his fingers. It was a pleasant evening, the sky a deep indigo and in the gentlest of breezes the late summer scent of cedar and pine. And for just a moment — the taxis racing under Admiralty Arch, a theatre party laughing on the steps beneath the Duke of York — it was possible to forget the Imperial Star and the concrete walls of the Citadel where it always felt like winter.

‘Kiss me.’

‘You found me.’ He flicked his cigarette into the gutter then wrapped his arms around her.

‘Winn told me you were here,’ she said a short time later, her head resting against his shoulder.

‘Yes. He caught me in the corridor outside the Tracking Room. It was after ten so I’d assumed he’d left. He wasn’t pleased to see me.’

‘I’m sorry about your cousin. I know you were very close.’

She felt his body tense.

‘Yes.’

‘How is your mother?’

‘Of course, she’s upset too.’

To pre-empt more questions he bent his head to kiss her.

‘I haven’t seen you for ten days,’ he said when they broke apart at last.

‘I’ve been counting too. Did you get anything from Mohr?’

He shook his head: ‘But I have something to work on.’ And he told her of the bruises on Heine’s face and the Court of Honour, of the fear he could sense in the camp at Stapley and of how carefully those he had spoken to had been schooled.

Then he took both Mary’s hands and rested his forehead against hers: ‘Will you come to my flat tonight?’

‘I can’t. I’m sorry. I do want to.’

He lifted his head sharply away from hers: ‘But not enough.’

‘I have to stay…’

‘But I’m only five minutes walk from this place,’ he said incredulously. ‘For God’s sake, we haven’t seen each other for ten days. You don’t need to sleep in the library too?’

She took half a step back and lifting a hand to her hair, ran her fingers slowly through it, tired and frustrated by his anger.

‘Please?’

‘I do need to sleep, Douglas. You don’t understand there’s something very important I have to do… a ship, the Imperial Star …’

She could not say more because a choking tide of sadness and regret began to well up from deep inside her, shaking her body, and it was so hard to contain. She turned quickly away from him to the Mall and gave a quiet little sob. But he must have heard her or seen her shoulders crumple.

‘Darling, I’m sorry,’ and he was behind her, holding her, kissing her hair and it was impossible, she knew she would surrender, and her chest began to heave with sobs that caught and trembled in her throat. Gently, he turned her to him and she pressed her cheek against his blue uniform jacket.

‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘That’s the second time today.’

And she told him about the Imperial Star , of six hundred men, women and children lost at sea. And he kissed the tears from her cheeks and wiped the corner of her eyes with his forefinger, then he kissed her neck and the palm of her right hand: ‘I love you.’

‘That’s why I have to stay,’ she said. ‘I feel responsible.’

‘It wasn’t your fault. Of course it wasn’t.’

‘Perhaps it doesn’t make sense but I feel responsible and I want to do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again. If our…’

She cursed herself for being so stupid.

‘If our?’

‘Never mind, it’s something I’m working on but I don’t want to talk about it now.’

Lindsay raised a knowing eyebrow: ‘I see. And does this “thing” you are working on have anything to do with our codes?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it, Douglas, please don’t press me.’

He must have recognised the weary note, the pleading in her voice, because he gave her hand a comforting squeeze: ‘All right, but does this “thing” explain why Winn was so unwelcoming?’

‘Perhaps,’ she said with a shrug.

He frowned but only for a moment: ‘Come here,’ and he pulled her tightly to himself again and they stood in silence beneath the rustling canopy of the plane. From time to time a blackout taxi crept past in search of a fare and a night bus rattled under Admiralty Arch into Trafalgar Square but the city seemed strangely empty and still. Mary was in danger of falling asleep on Linday’s shoulder when after many minutes he spoke again: ‘Will you tell me? Not now but later.’

‘Why?’ she asked, taken aback.

‘You know why.’

She groaned wearily, ‘Please.’

‘Well?’

‘…there is nothing to tell. Look, I have to go,’ and she pulled away from him.

She was not going to be bullied and was too tired to think it through clearly. There was nothing yet to justify another breach of Winn’s trust.

It was Geoff Childs who turned up the signal and the ship. He had set about the files with the relish of a natural archivist until two fruitless days blunted even his determination and patience. But at a little after two o’clock on the Saturday afternoon he let out a mighty whoop of triumph that rang round the Tracking Room and the corridor too. All heads swung towards him and for a moment there was a stunned silence. He was half rising from his desk, still bent over the slip of paper.

‘It’d better be good, Geoff.’

He turned to look at Mary: ‘I think it is.’

Lieutenant Childs was older than his thirty years, with a reputation for being something of a dry stick, but he had taken off his glasses and his eyes were shining with boyish enthusiasm.

‘It’s an old signal, sent from U-boat Headquarters to the U-201 on the sixth of May,’ and he stepped out from behind his desk and handed it to her:

1849/6/5 ACCORDING TO SAILING SCHEDULE SHIP WILL BE IN GRID AK22 EAST BOUND AFTERNOON OF 7/5