I left the house with a small holdall carrying tools and a change of clothes for once I reached Shad Thames. A young man on his first covert mission.
b) Shad Thames, London, 20th December 1963
‘Look at you,’ said O’Dale once I’d pulled my balaclava into place. ‘Mole out of Wind in the Bloody Willows.’
‘If I’m as quiet and attentive as him, you’ll have no cause for complaint.’
‘This is a covert mission, not scrumping for apples.’
‘No need to worry about me,’ I insisted. ‘I’m capable of keeping my end up.’
‘You’d better be. With something like this, you’re only as strong as your back-up. You buckle and I’m up to my neck in it before you can say Borsht. Show me your gun.’
‘Erm…’ This was awkward. I hadn’t thought to sign one out. ‘I haven’t got one.’
O’Dale rolled his eyes and dug around in the pocket of his duffel coat. He pulled out a heavy ex-service revolver. ‘I came with a spare. Look after it – I brought that back from Egypt after the war.’
I held the thing in my hand. It weighed a ton.
‘Please tell me you’ve had some firearms training,’ he begged.
‘Of course I have.’ A rainy afternoon in a stately home in Kent, a bored instructor working his way through a magazine about cars while myself and two others hurled bullets ineffectually at a set of targets twenty feet away.
‘That’s something.’
We were bobbing along in a small row boat requisitioned – from the River Police. Given the location of the warehouse, if we wanted to avoid the front door, our only alternative was the river.
‘Hopefully,’ I said, ‘we won’t see a soul in there anyway. We can just get in, have a snoop around, plant a few recording devices and get back to our beds.’
‘Hopefully,’ O’Dale agreed. He sounded far from convinced.
We had pliers, bolt-cutters and the cover of darkness on our side as we worked along the short row of warehouses towards our destination.
There was a narrow jetty behind the warehouse and I tied our boat up before climbing out and joining O’Dale at the chained-up doors.
‘Give me the bolt-cutters,’ he whispered, having obviously decided that the manly business of cutting through chains was quite beyond me. I didn’t bother to argue.
I held the end of the chain as he cut, to stop it from falling to the jetty or clashing against the door, then slowly uncoiled it and put it to one side.
O’Dale tried the door. ‘Still locked.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ I said, pulling out a set of lock picks from my jacket pocket.
‘Seems you’re a little more prepared than I gave you credit for,’ he acknowledged.
‘Thank you.’ I didn’t enlighten him that I’d bought the set five years earlier when going through a phase of wanting to be Harry Houdini. I might not have fully mastered the arts of escapology but I was more than a match for the door lock.
I opened it and we stepped inside.
It was completely silent. So, either it was as empty as we had hoped, or Krishnin’s men were lying in wait for us. Either way, I decided we might as well turn on our torches.
The open space revealed was all but identical in size and shape to the warehouse I had investigated earlier. But this one was in use. Forty or so crates were stacked against one wall, a set of tables laid out in front of them where someone had stood to pack whatever the crates contained. In the centre of the room there was an operating table. It was rough and dirty, the sort of thing you imagined being knocked up in a war zone. Shining the torch onto its surface, I blenched at the sight of two lotion bowls, stained with dried blood, a pair of scalpels, a syringe and a couple of depressors congealing inside them. ‘Not the healthiest approach to surgery.’
‘Who says they were trying to heal?’ asked O’Dale, looking over my shoulder.
He popped open one of the crates. ‘Some sort of chemical,’ he said, lifting a small bottle out. He unscrewed the cap and took a sniff, the scent making him flinch. ‘No idea what. Alcohol base of some kind but beyond that…’ He screwed the cap back on and slipped the bottle into his pocket.
A set of stairs led up from the ground floor and I was just starting to climb them when there was a clicking noise from above me. My face was suddenly hit by the light from someone else’s torch.
CHAPTER SEVEN: TIME
a) Shad Thames, London
‘I’ll hear the end of this if it kills me,’ Toby sighed, Shining’s story having been interrupted.
They had decamped to a coffee house.
While Toby had queued for the drinks, Shining had made a quick phone call, the result of which was responsible for the interruption.
‘Hello, Leslie,’ a man said, reaching over to shake Shining’s hand. ‘Long time no see.’
He was a giant. Cramming his physique into the tight frame of one of the cafe’s metal seats was like forcing a potato into a thimble. When he leaned forward or back, the chair moved with him, tightly clasping his body.
He mopped at a sweating brow with a neatly folded handkerchief, a strangely delicate object within his oversized fist. ‘Sorry,’ he said, tucking the handkerchief away into the pocket of his coat, ‘I came in a rush as you asked, and I’m not as fit as I once was.’
‘It’s appreciated,’ said Shining, who gestured to Toby. ‘This is my colleague, Charles Berry; he’s working with me on this.’
‘Good to meet you,’ the man said, extending his huge hand towards Toby. ‘Derek Lime, formerly known as the Big Dipper on the professional circuit. I’ve helped Leslie out a few times.’
‘You can say what you like to Derek,’ said Shining. ‘His background check’s as clean as a whistle.’
‘Did a lot of information drops during the seventies,’ said Derek, ‘while touring on the wrestling circuit. I may not blend into the background, but sometimes that’s to a man’s advantage. Who’d think I was a spy, eh?’
Toby smiled but said nothing.
‘Of course, I haven’t worked as a wrestler for thirty years now. I had a rather dramatic career change back in the early nineties.’
‘Security?’ Toby asked.
Derek looked somewhat pained. ‘That’s the thing with being a big lad, see. People can’t imagine you doing anything that doesn’t involve throwing your weight around.’
Toby winced. ‘Sorry.’
‘No problem, everyone does it. Actually I work on the Underground, you know – maintenance and stuff. My main passion though is physics.’
‘Derek’s an inventor!’ said August with a big grin.
‘Aye, I mess about with electronics and that, you know – high-end stuff.’
‘Indeed?’ Toby was still trying to imagine this ageing Hercules working his way through Underground tunnels.
‘Yeah.’ Derek made to stand up, forcing the chair off his hips like a man removing a pair of shorts. ‘But I need to get a bit of a wiggle on if you want to be finished by the start of my shift. Time machine’s in the car. I’ll see you out there, shall I?’
‘Time machine?’ asked Toby once the man had left.
‘You’re the one that said anything goes for Section 37,’ Shining replied.
‘I may have spoken too soon.’
‘Anyway, it’s not really a time machine, not in the sense you’re thinking, so you don’t have to worry.’
‘What is it then?’
Shining held up his hand so that he could concentrate on counting out his change to pay for the coffees. ‘You’ll see soon enough,’ he said, putting the money on the table. ‘Derek explains it much better than I ever could.’