‘Good.’
‘Might have to watch him, though, his cousin’s a senior civil servant, close to the junior Minister of Health. That could give him some clout if we piss him off.’
‘Yes.’ Gunther smiled. ‘I know. Kid gloves. Now, when we talk to Dr Muncaster, please say I am your sergeant. I will say nothing. I lived in England for five years but my German accent might be picked up.’
‘Yours is hardly noticeable.’
‘Thank you. I was at university here and for a few years after the Treaty I worked as an adviser with Special Branch. I knew the present commissioner.’ He paused. ‘He approved this operation.’
Syme nodded slowly, impressed; his hands twitched slightly in his lap. He lit another cigarette.
‘What do you want me to ask him?’
‘I have a list of questions we could go over now. Can you arrange a car, by the way?’
‘We can go in mine. Afterwards we can go to where Muncaster lives. It’s a flat. His keys will be held by the hospital. The local boys will provide a locksmith, I’ve already been onto them.’
Gunther nodded appreciatively. ‘Thank you. You have been very efficient.’
‘Yeah, well, we English aren’t completely useless, you know.’
They spent the rest of the evening going over the plans, the questions Gunther wanted asked of Muncaster. He stressed several times how the Gestapo appreciated Syme’s co-operation. They finished at about ten.
‘Time I got home.’ Syme stood up and stretched his long arms.
‘You have a wife waiting?’
Syme shook his head. ‘No, I live in my parents’ old house. Inherited it when my mother died last year.’
‘Where is that?’
Syme hesitated, then said, ‘Wapping. My dad owned it himself, though,’ he added proudly.
Gunther nodded. ‘What did he do?’
Syme paused. ‘He was a docker. Got squashed flat when a crate slipped off a crane and fell on him.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It happens in the docks. I’m well out of that.’ As he spoke, the underlying Cockney twang was gone again. He looked Gunther challengingly in the eye.
‘My father was a policeman,’ Gunther said. ‘Dead too now, sadly.’
As they moved towards the door Syme said, ‘We thought we had a lead on Churchill last week, living as a guest of some distant Marlborough relative at a big house in Yorkshire. But if he was there, he was gone by the time we arrived. He moves around all over the place.’
‘He must be nearly eighty now.’
‘Yeah, the old bastard can’t last much longer. And we caught and shot his sidekick Ernie Bevin last year.’ At the door Syme turned to Gunther and said, ‘Lot of Jews down our way. At least they’re kept in their place now. Used to be a cocky lot.’
‘Yes. They are an alien element.’
A look of ferrety curiosity appeared on Syme’s face. ‘People here often ask, what have you done with them? There were millions in parts of Europe, weren’t there, milling around like beetles? I know you say they’ve all been resettled in the East, but we hear things sometimes, in the Branch. Big gassing plants.’
Gunther smiled and shook his head. ‘So far as I know, Inspector, they are all in camps in Poland and Russia. Safely secured, taken care of, made to work hard.’
Syme smiled and winked.
When he had gone Gunther sighed deeply. He hadn’t liked Syme. But he had been very efficient, prepared everything well. He remembered what he had said about the Jews. Like everyone in his section of the Gestapo, Gunther knew exactly what had happened to those Jews deported to the East; they were all dead, gassed and cremated in the huge extermination camps of Russia and Poland. Some of the smaller camps had closed now, though others remained open for any Jews and social misfits who had not yet been swept up, and for Russian prisoners of war. Some of the senior camp personnel had come back to staff jobs at Gestapo HQ; they tended to be reliable, efficient men, though a lot were prone to drink. But what else could Germany have done, with the war in Russia raging? They couldn’t be burdened by millions of hostile, dangerous Jews in the ghettos of the East. By express order of Himmler himself, though, the subject was never mentioned outside Gestapo offices.
He thought again about his hostile reaction to Syme. He knew himself well enough to wonder whether his dislike might be linked to his unease at what Gessler had told him at the end of their interview earlier: ‘If the English policeman finds out anything about the secrets Muncaster may hold, he is to be disposed of. There and then. We will deal with the Home Office afterwards.’ What Gessler said had been in the back of Gunther’s mind all night. He had been shocked. Policemen didn’t kill their own.
Chapter Fourteen
NEXT MORNING, SUNDAY, David left the house shortly before nine. He was to take the tube to Watford, meet Geoff and Natalia there and drive to Birmingham. Sarah was still asleep when he got up; he dressed in a sober suit. Downstairs, he ate some cereal and toast, several slices. It would be a long day. He remembered Sarah was going into town again, for another meeting. He hoped she would be all right.
He had a little time before his train, so he went into the garden and stood smoking a cigarette. It was cold, a light rime of frost on the grass, the sky milky-white. His eyes felt sore and gritty. He had lain awake most of the night. David admitted to himself that he was frightened. He knew he was not a physical coward, his service in Norway had shown him that, and it had needed courage to spy at the Office. Yet in a curious way, although what he did there was treasonable, he had still somehow felt enfolded, even protected, by the Civil Service. What he was about to do now was utterly different and he felt exposed. He looked at his watch. Time to go.
Natalia and Geoff were already in the car park when David arrived at Watford, waiting in the front of a big black Austin. Church bells sounded somewhere nearby as he went up to the car. Natalia wore a white trenchcoat with a scarf, a jumper underneath. For the first time since David had met her, her face was carefully made up; she looked like an ordinary middle-class woman driving her boyfriend and his friend on a weekend mission of mercy.
‘Is everything all right?’ Her manner was even more practical and direct than usual.
David answered a brusque yes. ‘Sarah believed the story about my great-uncle. I left her asleep.’
‘Remember both your identity cards?’ Geoff asked, with heavy-handed humour. He, too, was dressed quietly and formally.
‘Yes, the false one for the hospital and the real one for anything else. Though no-one’s likely to stop us, are they?’
‘You never know,’ Natalia said. David saw now that she, too, was tense, perhaps even afraid.
‘There’s going to be fog in the Midlands later,’ Geoff said. ‘According to the forecast.’
Natalia said, ‘After we visit your friend remember that we are going on to Birmingham to look at his flat, see if there is anything of interest to us there, any papers. Our man at the hospital is getting the key.’
David didn’t answer. He felt uncomfortable at the thought of breaking into Frank’s flat.
They pulled out onto the new M1 motorway to the North, modelled on the German autobahns. Natalia drove smoothly, maintaining a steady pace. There was little traffic, a few family cars and some lorries. Outside Welwyn Garden City an army truck passed them. The tarpaulin flaps at the rear were open, a row of khaki-clad soldiers looking back. Seeing a woman driving the Austin they made obscene gestures, then the truck, moving fast, sped away.