Gordon Ferris - The Unquiet heart

She handled it well, barely blinked. But I could see her pupils dilate. She forced a smile.

“I’m in! Look, I’m starving. One more of these and I’ll fall over. How about an early dinner? My treat. It’s on the paper. You can tell me all about it.”

She knew an Italian restaurant just off High Holborn. It was one more Italian than I’d ever been in, if you don’t count Glasgow chippies. She told me it had been shut for much of the war after Churchill had ordered the internment of “enemy aliens”. The aliens seemed pleased to see her. I just hoped they harboured no hard feelings as they stirred their pots. We took a corner table, and I had to ask the stupid question: “Do you come here with your boyfriend?”

She looked amused. “That’s very personal.”

“You’re joining my gang. I need to know a bit about you.” It was only half a lie.

“No boyfriend. Too busy. And even if I had the time, not enough good men to go around. Single men. Why aren’t you married?”

Back to her defensive tricks again. “I’ve been busy too.” I tapped my skull.

“Before the war.”

“There were girls.” I shrugged, and thought of the sparky mill lassies in Kilpatrick on a Saturday night, mad for dancing, mad for men. Get a man, get pregnant, get married, get old. Not like the cerebral ones I met at university who were more interested in the meaning of life than living it. “And you?” I asked.

She looked distant for a moment, and I was about to change the subject. “There was a boy. I don’t know what happened to him.” She shook her head.

“Sorry. Any sisters? Brothers?”

“Someone you can invite to the funeral?” she parried.

“It’s not going to be that risky.”

“Shame.” She relented. “No, no family. Only child. Mum and dad both gone.” Her jaw tightened and for a second, I glimpsed a different Eve Copeland. Then the barrier came back up. She picked up her fork and jabbed the back of my hand, hard enough to leave a mark. “This really is a job interview, isn’t it? Next it’ll be hobbies and interests. Then why do I want this job and what my qualifications are, and…”

“OK! Enough! I give in.” I laughed and rubbed my hand.

We broke off the swordplay and ordered some lasagne and a glass each of red wine. I took her lead on the food. The Tally caffs in Glasgow only served fish suppers and ice cream. The wine was better than the camel piss I’d tried in North Africa when I had a forty-eight-hour pass, but not much. I’m a Scotch drinker through and through. But the acid red seemed to mellow her.

“Danny, I’m very boring. I work hard at the paper. Any spare time I have, I read. I read till my eyes bleed. That’s my life.”

“That’s not boring. What do you read?”

“Anything. Everything! There’s so much.” Her face glowed.

“Library?”

She shook her head. “I love being the first to open a book. It is a complete indulgence. But at sixpence a go…”

“Penguins!” Without thinking, I stretched out my hand and laid it over hers. She didn’t seem to notice, just nodded sheepishly as though admitting to a cocaine habit. I left my hand over hers.

“You too?” she asked.

“I’ve had to put up a new shelf. Who do you read?”

“Hemingway, Linklater…”

“Mackenzie, Christie…” I raised her.

She riposted with, “Orwell, Priestley…”

We were showing off. But isn’t that what you do when you find a fellow clan member? In the excitement, our fingers seemed to become laced.

“OK, OK. Here’s the test.” I squeezed her hand. “Steinbeck.”

“Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men…”

“Grapes of Wrath! What did you think of Grapes of Wrath?”

“I wept,” she said simply.

“Will you marry me?”

“And share my Penguins? Never!”

They tried clearing our table and sweeping up around us. Finally they put upturned chairs on the tables, so that we sat in a forest of thin columns. We took the hint at last and I walked her home through Bloomsbury to her digs in Russell Square. It felt companionable and right to hold hands all the way. Her fingers were long and slim and hot. We weren’t sure what to do on the doorstep and ended up with a brush of lips on lips. It was enough to get a taste of lipstick and wine and cigarettes, and I wanted more. But she seemed to blink, as though coming out of a dream. She backed away and slipped inside. Yet something had begun. It was easy to involve her in my business. Easy to get involved with her, period. That’s my excuse.

I woke early, but lay wondering at the turmoil in my mind. Nothing had happened last night. Had it? Why should it? She was my client. I was working for her.

Running a detective agency didn’t put me among the bankers and accountants, but it warranted professional standards. Didn’t it? Besides, if I wanted to pick up a girl who liked books as much as me, I should hang around libraries. And yet… we hadn’t been able to stop talking, comparing notes, trumping each other, flashing our best sides. We were kids showing off, excited by the promise of adventure. That’s all. But I should have kissed her again. Properly.

I got up and dressed and stopped myself three times from lifting the phone and calling her newsdesk. It’s a character defect with me, over-reacting at the merest sniff of a chance with a lively girl. I shoved her out of my head. I pulled my chair up to my desk and switched into SOE planning mode. I had work to do. But as I began to lay out the operation, all I could see were the risks for her. Maybe I should have called her and put her off. I had the phone in my hand when the boys arrived. I put it back in its cradle.

They were punctual: army training. I’d met them in the pub a couple of months ago, and over a few ales we became instant pals. As with Eve, you recognise your own type. I get them to do some stuff for me: recces of hotels and offices, tailing philanderers, that sort of thing. I can trust them. Four of us cloistered in my little office. Four men, two chairs. I took one, Midge the other. Midge Cummin, by common but unspoken assent, was my number two. An ex-sergeant in the Paras, one of the few who survived Arnhem. He was unemployed and living off the pittance of his demob pay supplemented by jobs like this, but his boots shone like he was Honour Guard at Sandhurst.

The other two sat on the floor with their backs against the wall. A pall of smoke already hung from the ceiling and at the rate we were puffing the cloud would envelop us all within the hour. I opened the window and watched the breeze stir and suck at the foul canopy. Maybe Prof Haggarty was right; I should give up the fags.

I went through my analysis of the layout at Tommy’s warehouse and briefed them on the plan, such as it was. There would be a lot of improvisation. I asked Big Cyril what he thought about the timing. He was squatting against the wall tugging at his beard. He was Navy and looked exactly like the bloke on the back of a packet of Players. Cyril Styles was the quiet man who killed with his bare hands, or with a knife or anything that came to hand, in his former life as a platoon leader in Special Boat Squadron.

“It depends on the tide. I’ve checked the tables and we should get floated at 21.35. It’s already dark by then. But you said we’ve no idea what time the raid will happen?”

“That’s true,” I said. “We could be wasting our time tonight, but you’ll get paid for turning up. I agreed with Tommy Chandler that if nothing happens this time, you’ll still get a couple of quid each. The bonus – twenty a man – gets paid when – if – we nail these bastards and stop the thieving.”

“Sounds fair enough to me,” chipped in Stan Berry. We all reckoned Stan’s mom had slept with a Jack Russell. He was five foot nothing, wiry, and kept his hair short and spiky. He couldn’t sit still on his scrawny arse for longer than two seconds. For the last twenty minutes he’d wriggled and twisted like he had fleas. But this was the guy who’d bailed out of his burning Lancaster over Cologne, spent six months in a German POW hospital before escaping on crutches through the lines to France, then Spain, and took the next seat on the next Lancaster to bomb the bastards again. For the crap food, he said.