James Benn - Rag and Bone

“Especially after that comment at the Russian Embassy,” Harding said.

“Yes, sir,” I said, eager to display the proper military courtesy, which sometimes had a calming effect on Harding. “We went to search Eddie’s flat, and ran into a girl from the hotel, Sheila Carlson. She gave us a sob story about getting married to Eddie, and how she’d found Eddie’s body but ran away because she thought the killer might be after her.”

“But she was the killer?”

“Yes,” I said, thankful that Big Mike must’ve filled him in last night. And now I knew what the smaller cake pan had been for. “She used poison, from an oleander plant. Left a note for Eddie, met him in the alley, gave him a piece of cake that he was probably happy to eat. That poison is fast acting, and in no time he was on the ground, with Sheila thrusting a blade into his heart. But first she’d given Captain Radecki a poisoned apple cake to take to Tadeusz.”

“And you think MI5 put her up to it?” Harding said, in a tone of disbelief.

“We know she was an informant for Scotland Yard. And we know that the British government wants this Katyn Forest affair hushed up.”

“We, Lieutenant Boyle? Do you mean SHAEF, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force? General Eisenhower? How about FDR?”

“Sorry, sir. I mean Lieutenant Kazimierz.”

“Suspect it, you mean,” Harding said. I glanced at Kaz, unsure if I should mention the stolen memo.

“We-I mean the Polish Government in Exile-have a memo from the British Foreign Office, stating that the investigation into the Katyn Forest Massacre should not be allowed to succeed,” Kaz said.

“Let’s see it then” Harding said.

“It can’t be released,” Kaz said. “It would endanger the person who obtained it.”

“Oh,” Harding said, throwing up his hands. “So we have two lieutenants with absolutely no proof, accusing His Majesty’s Government of murder.”

“Two lieutenants and a corporal,” Big Mike said. “And only MI5, not the whole shebang.”

“Well, then, let’s call in the press. The fact that there’s three of you clinches it.” He fumbled with a pack of Luckies, struck a match, and lit one. He threw the wooden matchstick in the general vicinity of an ashtray, but it missed and fell at my feet, trailing a thin line of gray smoke.

“I was worried about Kaz, Colonel Harding,” I said as I leaned down to pick up the burned-out match. I laid it in the empty ashtray and couldn’t get the image of Tadeusz at the window out of my mind. Harding swiveled in his chair and stared out the window, toward a small patch of St. James’s Square, blowing blue smoke that curled against the window and came back at him.

“Understood, Boyle. And you lucked out, once again. The whole Home Guard tour for the Russians got put off by a couple of days. The Germans lost two bombers near Dover, the new Heinkel 177 type. Home Guard units from Maidstone to Dover have been out hunting for survivors. The RAF is eager to interrogate them, so it’s top priority. Get down there today and see what you can find out. The Russian delegation is already at Dover Castle. Big Mike has the details. Now get going and don’t stop until you hit Dover.”

“Sir, I need to stop at Scotland Yard. I still have some evidence I need to deliver to Inspector Scutt.”

“What kind of evidence?”

“An envelope full of money. What Sheila and Eddie had been supposedly saving up, from what she got from MI5 and what he got from the Russians. She had it on her when we ran into her at Eddie’s place.”

“How much money?”

“I haven’t counted it, sir.” I pulled the envelope from my jacket pocket, and Harding nodded in Big Mike’s direction, so I handed it over. Maybe he thought Detroit cops were a less sticky-fingered bunch than their Boston brothers.

“Lieutenant Kazimierz, you stay away from Scotland Yard. I don’t want you thrown in jail unless I order it. Big Mike, you are responsible for getting Boyle here to Dover today. Got it?”

“Sure, Sam,” Big Mike said, heaving a sigh. He’d taken a seat on one of the chairs facing Harding’s desk, counting out pound notes between licks of his thumb, while Kaz and I still stood ramrod straight. Harding looked at him, tapped his ashes, shook his head, and returned to his paperwork. Big Mike was a bluecoat down to his bones, and he’d never be a real soldier, not the spit-and-polish type anyway. Harding seemed to know it wasn’t worth his breath trying to make him one, and I think part of him liked Big Mike’s lack of proper military formality. It gave him a chance to let his guard down, to be human behind the closed doors of his office. Big Mike knew when to toe the line, but at any time he could tire of the whole thing, take a load off, and call the colonel by his first name. He did it with such sincere innocence that Harding never took offense. Or did Big Mike do it on purpose, to defuse a tense situation, and draw Harding’s ire away from his intended victim? He finished counting, whistled, and gave the envelope back to me. “One thousand one hundred and ten pounds.”

“That much?” I said. With everything that had happened, I hadn’t given the envelope a second thought. Loose cash usually focused my attention, but it had been a helluva day.

“Yeah. You gave her the five-pound notes from the top, but the rest were all tens, twenties, and fifties. Over forty-four hundred bucks, Billy.”

“That’s a lot of dough. I don’t think Eddie gave Sidorov anything worth half this much, and Sheila sure didn’t get rich snitching for Scotland Yard.”

“Maybe it was a down payment on an apple cake,” Kaz said.

“You think that money came from MI5?” Harding said. “And stand at ease, both of you.” Kaz shrugged, not wanting to get into another discussion of proof versus suspicions.

“Listen, Colonel,” I said, leaning on his desk. “All we know for sure is that somebody paid Sheila to kill Tadeusz. There’s no personal motive we know about, and no other explanation for her making a getaway with this much cash.”

“You’ve spoiled her payday, Billy,” Big Mike said. “If that was the down payment, she’s got to get the rest of it quick, and disappear.”

“We could make that difficult for her,” Kaz said. “I called Major Horak last night, but he was unavailable. I decided not to leave a message about Tadeusz, and that I would tell him in person this morning.”

“So no one else knows,” Harding said.

“No. I spoke to the doctor at St. Albans, whom I’d met when we arranged for Tadeusz to be admitted. He will submit a written report, but I expect that since I was there in person, he has no need to inform anyone else directly. So I will go to the Rubens Hotel and tell Major Horak, and everyone else, that Tadeusz is much better and is ready to return.”

“She’s bound to have friends at the hotel who will pass that information on to her,” I said.

“Lieutenant Kazimierz,” Harding said, “are you prepared to lie to your superior officer?”

“Only since he is my former superior officer, Colonel.”

“All right. Try to flush her out, as long as you stay clear of Scotland Yard, and as long as Big Mike gets Boyle to Dover by nightfall. Dismissed.”

We went to the motor pool, where I had to sign out a jeep for an extended trip outside of London. Then we dropped Kaz off at the Rubens on our way to Scotland Yard, to spread the rumor of Tadeusz’s impending and vocal return. Big Mike drove along the Embankment, where a cold breeze churned the fog rising from the Thames, creating an eerie, gray wall of nothingness. He parked the jeep as I grabbed my musette bag and went inside. I found Inspector Scutt at his desk, on the telephone, nodding his head and mumbling, Yes, sir and No, sir in a way that told me his boss was on the other end. Or his boss’s boss.