Gordon Ferris - Truth Dare kill

Five minutes later the toilet door crashed open and two men walked in, laughing.

“Quick, man, we can still catch them if you hurry up.”

“You can’t rush a pee, Freddy. And the bints’ll keep. You seen that Brenda the way she was looking? I reckon we’re in there.”

“Shhh,” said the first one. I think they spotted the closed cubicle door and my feet and trousers. They were silent apart from a suppressed guffaw. I could have been a senior officer for all they knew.

They ran the water in the sink and crashed out. I heard their laughter and wild talk as they dived down the stairs. If only I could be that carefree. I waited, and waited. At six o’clock I edged out of the toilet, listening for doors and footsteps. It had quieted down. Through the glass panel nobody was to be seen down either side of the corridor. There was one light on in an office half way down on the right. I had to risk it.

I opened the door, gritting my teeth as it creaked, and took a good look right and left. I eased the door closed and began to tiptoe to the left. The first office was locked. Same with the next. Suddenly there were voices behind me as the door of the lit office opened and two people began to emerge. I flattened myself between two head high piles of boxes and stopped breathing. The voices – a man and a woman – were walking this way.

“Stairs or lift, Miss Beacontree?”

“Exercise will do us good, sir.”

“It certainly keeps you trim, Juliette.”

“Shh, Cecil. Not here…”The fire door creaked open and their voices tailed away as they descended. I breathed again. I started my search again. Up ahead I saw it. An open door to a darkened room. I pulled out my torch and switched it on.

The slim beam picked out boxes on one side and a stack of chairs on the other.

Perfect. I shut the door behind me, lifted down a chair and switched off my torch. I made myself as comfortable as I could for the long wait that lay ahead.

I must have dozed. An old soldier trick. Grab a nap anywhere you can. I carefully switched on my torch. My watch said twenty to eight. The place should be deserted apart from the patrolling security guards. I began to pick my way down through the now quiet building, trying not to use the torch in case even its slender beam was detected. Moonlight came in through some of the windows that faced into the inner courtyard. I took a good look down into the well to see if I could spot an alternative escape route. There looked to be a wooden double door, about twelve feet high and scalable.

If memory served me right – not something I would have taken short odds on recently – the registry section occupied the whole basement area. I crept down and down until I was at the right level and began looking for the doors. Bingo!

A sign declared the room the Registry and that only registry staff were allowed inside. The dragon lady in charge enforced that rule with an iron stare and a leather tongue. A little window was cut in the wall alongside the door. This was where the rest of the world accessed the documents. You put your slip through and a registry clerk would deliver the file to your office and pick it up at day’s end. Tough work.

The heavy double doors were of course locked. So I took out my little packet of tools to see if my SOE training had been a waste of time. I shone my torch into the keyhole and squinted into it to see the make-up of the levers.

There are two basic techniques to opening locks: picking and scrubbing. Picking is more subtle and lets you probe and feel each pin and then apply force on the driver pin that’s giving the most fight. When you feel the plug give a little, the driver gets trapped and the lock opens. Scrubbing is for speed and when you don’t care if you leave evidence of your visit. I was a natural scrubber.

I selected a sinuous snake-tipped pick and slipped its double curves into the lock. I eased it backwards and forwards feeling pins move and displace. As I scrubbed, I twisted, hoping to feel movement. I’d forgotten how hard this was.

And I was rusty. I was sweating good and proper now. I put my hat down, took off my coat and jacket and started again. I put on more pressure hoping I wouldn’t bend or break the pick. My fingers were slipping and I took out my hanky and wrapped it round the handle. Suddenly the driver pin went, the others followed and the key turned. I gripped the wood handle, twisted and the door creaked open. I stood panting with nerves before picking up my clothes, slipping in and closing the door gently behind me.

I swung the torch round the long low room. There were floor to ceiling shelves stretching for yards in both directions. A large chunk of them were empty. Damn!

I should have done this weeks ago!

With ebbing hope I started walking down the shelving. Halfway along they began to be full again. I began checking what the files contained. It wasn’t till I’d inspected a dozen stacks of shelves that I ran into the personal files, the agent files.

Come on, please! I found the M series and then the Mc set. Nothing. Wait, wait.

Try Mac. Plenty, but no McRaes. I was panicking now. Cassells hadn’t put it back! It was somewhere in the mounds of loose papers in his chaotic office!

Calm, calm. Think.

A last long shot, the MR set. Thank god. There were three McRae files sandwiched between McRennies and McRackens. I pulled the first one down. Nope. The second was mine. I felt relief then nerves. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see what was in here. People should never see what other folk think of them, despite what Rabbie Burns says. But I’d come all this way for the truth.

I sank down on the floor, on top of my coat and jacket and opened the folder.

There was a stack of papers, each with a neat hole punched in the top left corner through which a string tab ran to hold them in place. There was a covering sheet with the sparse details of my background and next of kin. My mum was shown, with her address. Then I got to the second page. It was simple and clear and was probably as far as Cassells got the other day.

Secret The sealed reports in this personal folder are for Executive Head Eyes Only Do not open without express authority.

Under no circumstances is any aspect of the work of the SOE or the personal details of the officers of the SOE to be communicated to Capt. Daniel McRae That set my heart going. What the hell was going on? What the hell was in this file? Maybe Cassells was right; there’s stuff better left forgotten. I turned to the next sheets; just some copies of my discharge papers and pension calculations. The numbers didn’t add up to a comfortable retirement. Then came the sealed envelopes, two of them, with holes in their corners to take the tags.

I carefully removed the sheets above them and examined the first envelope. It was gummed down and bore a blob of sealing wax on the join. But it had been re-sealed. I could see where the earlier wax had been eased off. It was initialled and dated 28 May 1944 in the bottom right corner. It had a big red stamp across the front classifying it Top Secret/Executive Head S.O.E Eyes Only.

I took a little knife from my toolkit, slid it into a corner and sliced along the top fold. I pulled out a single sheet:

MemorandumStaff in Strictest Confidence

To:Colonel Sir Collin Gubbins, Executive Head SOE From:Major P A Caldwell Date:14 May 1944 Subject:Captain Daniel McRae/Avignon incident

Sir,

It is my unwelcome duty to inform you that Captain Daniel McRae, our operative in Avignon, was captured by the Gestapo on 24 May. We have not seen or heard of him since, and it is believed, as with all captured agents, that he has been taken to Gestapo/Vichy headquarters in Rue Saline, Avignon. He will be interrogated there and executed or sent on to one of the concentration camps as happened to agents Hastings and Temple.