Jackdaws

The back door opened and out stepped Paul’s younger sister, Caroline. He grinned with delight. “Well, I’ll be damned!” he said. She stepped into his arms and he hugged her. “What are you doing in London?”

“I can’t say, but I have a couple of hours off, and I persuaded Monty’s office to lend me a car to come and see you. Want to buy me a drink?”

“I don’t have a minute to spare,” he said. “Not even for you. But you can drive me to Whitehall. I have to find a man called a public prosecutor.”

“Then I’ll take you there, and we’ll catch up in the car.”

“Of course,” he said. “Let’s go!”

CHAPTER 14

FLICK TURNED AT the building door and saw a pretty girl wearing the uniform of an American lieutenant step out of the car and throw her arms around Paul. She noted the delighted smile on his face and the force of his hug. This was obviously his wife, girlfriend, or fianc‚e, probably making an unexpected visit to London. She must be with the U.S. forces in Britain, preparing for the invasion. Paul jumped into her car.

Flick went into Orchard Court, feeling a little sad. Paul had a girl, they were nuts about one another, and they had been granted a surprise meeting. Flick wished Michel could show up just like that, out of the blue. But he was lying wounded on a couch in Reims with a shameless nineteen-year-old beauty nursing him.

Percy was already back from Hendon. She found him making tea. “How was your RAF girl?” she asked.

“Lady Denise Bowyer—she’s on her way to the Finishing School,” he said.

“Wonderful! Now we have four!”

“But I’m worried. She’s a braggart. She boasted about the work she’s doing in the Air Force, told me all sorts of details she should have kept quiet about. You’ll have to see what you think of her in training.”

“I don’t suppose she knows anything about telephone exchanges.”

“Not a thing. Nor explosives. Tea?”

“Please.”

He handed her a cup and sat behind the cheap old desk. “Where’s Paul?”

“Gone to find the public prosecutor. He’s hoping to get Ruby Romain out of jail this evening.”

Percy gave her a quizzical glance. “Do you like him?”

“More than I did initially.”

“Me too.”

Flick smiled. “He charmed the socks off the old battleaxe running the prison.”

“How was Ruby Romain?”

“Terrifying. She slit the throat of another inmate in a quarrel over a bar of soap.”

“Jesus.” Percy shook his head in incredulity. “What the hell kind of a team are we putting together, Flick?”

“Dangerous. Which is what it’s supposed to be. That’s not the problem. Besides, the way things are going, we may have the luxury of eliminating the least satisfactory one or two during training. My worry is that we don’t have the experts we need. There’s no point taking a team of tough girls into France, then destroying the wrong cables.”

Percy drained his teacup and began to fill his pipe. “I know a woman explosives expert who speaks French.”

Flick was surprised. “But this is great! Why didn’t you say so before?”

“When I first thought of her, I dismissed her out of hand. She’s not at all suitable. But I hadn’t realized how desperate we’d be.”

“How is she unsuitable?”

“She’s about forty. SOE rarely uses anyone so old, especially on a parachute mission.” He struck a match.

Age was not going to be an obstacle at this stage, Flick thought. Excited, she said, “Will she volunteer?”

“I should think there’s a good chance, especially if I ask her.”

“You’re friends.”

He nodded.

“How did she become an explosives expert?”

Percy looked embarrassed. Still holding the burning match, he said, “She’s a safebreaker. I met her years ago, when I was doing political work in the East End.” The match burned down, and he struck another.

“Percy, I had no idea your past was so raffish. Where is she now?”

Percy looked at his watch. “It’s six o’clock. At this time of the evening, she’ll be in the private bar of the Mucky Duck.”

“A pub.”

“Yes.”

“Then get that damn pipe alight and let’s go there now.”

In the car, Flick said, “How do you know she’s a safebreaker?”

Percy shrugged. “Everyone knows.”

“Everyone? Even the police?”

“Yes. In the East End, police and villains grow up together, go to the same schools, live in the same streets. They all know one another.”

“But if they know who the criminals are, why don’t they put them in jail? I suppose they can’t prove anything.”

“This is the way it works,” Percy said. “When they need a conviction, they arrest someone who is in that line of business. If it’s a burglary, they arrest a burglar. It doesn’t matter whether he was responsible for that particular crime, because they can always manufacture a case: suborn witnesses, counterfeit confessions, manufacture forensic evidence. Of course, they sometimes make mistakes, and jail innocent people, and they often use the system to pay off personal grudges, and so on; but nothing in life is perfect, is it?”

“So you’re saying the whole rigmarole of courts and juries is a farce?”