Simon Tolkien - Orders from Berlin

‘I don’t want to name names, but maybe you should ask Mr Seaforth here what he’s doing in this flat and why he broke into that desk over there,’ said Thorn, pointing over at the bureau.

‘All right,’ said Quaid in a mock patient voice like that a schoolmaster might use to a misguided pupil. ‘Perhaps you can answer those questions for us, Mr Seaforth.’

‘Certainly,’ said Seaforth. ‘I’ve been worried about Mrs Brive since I met her at her father’s funeral because of what you told me on the phone, Inspector, about her husband. That’s why I’m here now. And then when I arrived, Mrs Brive asked me to help her look for evidence against her husband, so I unlocked his desk so that she could search it. She was the one who found the cuff link.’

‘Is that right, Mrs Brive?’asked Quaid, turning to Ava.

‘Yes, it was in the top drawer,’ she said.

‘Can I see it, please?’

Ava handed the cuff link to Quaid, who took a small plastic packet containing the other cuff link from his pocket and then went over to the kitchen window to compare the two in the light. ‘They’re an exact match,’ he said, sounding pleased.

Thorn had watched this procedure with growing impatience and now couldn’t stay quiet any longer. ‘Can’t you see what’s happening?’ he burst out. ‘Seaforth must have put it there when Ava wasn’t looking. He’s planted the damned thing.’

‘That’s absurd,’ said Seaforth, shaking his head. ‘Why would I do that?’

‘To frame Bertram, to make him take the blame for murdering Albert. I know what you did, Seaforth, and I’m going to make you pay for it. I swear I am!’ said Thorn, speaking through gritted teeth.

‘That’s enough,’ Quaid said sharply. ‘I won’t tolerate any more of this, Mr Thorn. Do you hear me? Bertram Brive has got some important questions to answer, and I’m not going to allow you to compromise my investigation. Constable Relton here will escort you back to the railway station,’ he ordered, indicating the taller of the two constables he’d brought with him. ‘Mr Seaforth, you’re free to go. Thank you for your cooperation.’

‘Damn you,’ said Thorn, turning back as he followed the policeman out of the flat. ‘You haven’t heard the last of this, I promise you.’ It wasn’t clear whether he was talking to Quaid or Seaforth or both of them, but his final words were clearly addressed to Ava: ‘I thought better of you,’ he said. ‘It seems I was mistaken.’ He slammed the door behind him.

Once Thorn was gone, Seaforth said goodbye to Ava in the hall outside.

‘Don’t worry about Thorn,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ said Ava, shaking her head.

‘Well, you surely can’t believe that nonsense he was saying about me in there,’ said Seaforth, looking outraged.

‘No. No, I don’t.’ She leant back against the wall behind her and closed her eyes. She looked as though she’d had enough.

‘Can I see you again?’ he asked, softening his voice. ‘I know you’re going through hell at the moment and I’d like to know you’re all right.’

‘I don’t know,’ she said. But looking over Seaforth’s shoulder out into the empty street, she felt she needed something to look forward to. She remembered what he’d said at the Corner House: ‘People need to feel alive. They have a right to it, I think, particularly in wartime.’ Her life was a war zone, imploding all around her. Surely to God she had the right not to stay buried in the rubble.

‘Just to talk, that’s all. It doesn’t have to mean anything,’ he said, leaning his head to one side, trying to catch her eye.

‘Everything means something,’ she said with a wan smile, meeting his look. He was so confident and self-possessed, which was what made him so attractive. Yet he was detached too, as if he were a cinema-goer, watching events unfold like films from behind his bright blue eyes. There was something opaque about them, she thought, as if they gave no clue to the man inside.

She remembered how he’d seemed to enjoy provoking Thorn in the flat, as if he were a matador playing with a crazed bull, and she remembered the other things that Thorn had said about her father’s death. Coincidences happen, but it did seem strange that her father’s visit to St James’s Park should have had nothing to do with his murder, and in Bertram’s absence she felt a little less sure of her husband’s guilt. She didn’t believe it, but Seaforth could have put the cuff link in the desk drawer.

And why had he shown up out of the blue and shown such an interest in her these last few days? That was the question she kept coming back to. Was it just concern for her well-being, as he had told the inspector, or was it something more? People did things for a reason, and she needed to find out what made Seaforth tick. And the only way to do that was to see him again; the fact that she found him attractive had nothing to do with it. There would be no risk if she was careful, and she might learn something.

‘Well?’ he asked. ‘Will you?’

‘Yes,’ she said simply. ‘Call me.’ And then she turned away and went back inside the flat to await her husband’s return.

Seaforth crossed to the other side of the street, and after checking back to see that no one was watching from the window of Ava’s flat, he slipped into an overgrown, disused garden and took up position behind a thick ash tree that he had previously selected as an observation point. The windows of the house behind him were boarded up, and the garden had descended into rack and ruin since the owners’ departure. Brambles and vines choked the tree’s branches, providing a natural tent through which he quickly hollowed out a gap, giving him a perfect view of Ava’s building.

An hour passed and then another, but he showed no signs of losing patience. Quaid’s big black police car sat empty by the kerb, with the morning sunlight glittering on its silver headlamps. Seaforth smiled as he pictured the scene inside the flat, with the two policemen going meticulously through Bertram’s desk, building a case against the ridiculous doctor for a crime he didn’t commit.

Seaforth wasn’t proud of the murder, not because he regretted the taking of Albert Morrison’s life, but because he’d made such a mess of it. He’d done a better job of cleaning up afterwards, but that didn’t justify his earlier ineptitude.

It had been a bad day. Not that that was any excuse. He’d been thrown off balance by the shock of hearing at the morning conference at HQ that the communications boffins had decoded Heydrich’s radio message to him about the assassination plan. And then he’d stayed later than usual at work, worrying about whether his own messages were secure — unnecessarily, as it turned out, as he’d used a different code to his spymaster in Berlin.

It was pure luck that he ran into Albert as the ex-chief of MI6 came hurrying up Broadway that evening, and it didn’t take him long to put two and two together and realize that Thorn must have taken Albert the decoded message. Albert had been Thorn’s mentor, and if anyone was going to know the identity of the mysterious German C who’d signed the message, then it was going to be Albert. And it was pretty obvious from the old man’s excitement that he’d worked out the answer. C was Heydrich, and once that information got out, finding the Gestapo chief’s agent in England would become a national priority. Seaforth couldn’t let that happen.

‘I have to see Alec Thorn. It’s extremely important,’ Albert declared in the doorway of HQ, making it sound like an order, as if he were still in charge.

‘He’s been called away out of London for the night. He’ll be back tomorrow,’ Seaforth lied. ‘Is it something I can help you with?’