Eye of the Needle(42)

They met a section of the search party under a railway bridge. Harris welcomed the opportunity to get off the bicycle. “What have you found?” he said. “Bodies?”

“No, a boat,” said a policeman. “Who are you?”

They introduced themselves. A constable stripped to his underwear was diving down to examine the vessel. He came up with a bung in his hand.

Bloggs looked at Harris. “Deliberately scuttled?”

“Looks like it.” Harris turned to the diver. “Notice anything else?”

“She hasn’t been down there for long, she’s in good condition, and the mast has been taken down, not broken.”

Harris said, “That’s a lot of information from a minute under water.”

“I’m a weekend sailor,” the diver said.

Harris and Bloggs mounted their cycles and moved on.

When they met up with the main party, the bodies had been found.

“Murdered, all five,” said the uniformed inspector in charge. “Captain Langham, Corporal Lee, and Privates Watson, Dayton and Forbes. Dayton’s neck was broken, the rest were killed with some kind of a knife. Langham’s body had been in the canal. All found together in a shallow grave. Bloody murder.” He was quite shaken.

Harris looked closely at the five bodies, laid out in a line. “I’ve seen wounds like this before, Fred,” he said.

Bloggs looked closely. “Jesus Christ, it looks like—”

Harris nodded. “Stiletto.”

The inspector said in astonishment, “You know who did it?”

“We can guess,” Harris said. “We think he’s killed twice before. If it’s the same man, we know who he is but not where he is.”

“What with the restricted area so close,” the inspector said, “and Special Branch and MI5 arriving on the scene so quick, is there anything else I need to know about this case?”

Harris answered, “Just that you keep very quiet until your chief constable has talked to our people.”

“Found anything else, inspector?” Bloggs asked.

“We’re still going over the area, and in ever-widening circles; but nothing so far. There were some clothes in the grave.” He pointed.

Bloggs touched them gingerly; black trousers, a black sweater, a short black leather jacket, RAF-style.

“Clothes for night work,” Harris said.

“To fit a big man,” Bloggs added.

“How tall is your man?”

“Over six foot.”

The inspector said, “Did you pass the men who found the sunken boat?”

“Yes.” Bloggs frowned. “Where’s the nearest lock?”

“Four miles upstream.”

“If our man was in a boat, the lock-keeper must have seen him, mustn’t he?”

“Must have,” the inspector agreed.

Bloggs said, “We’d better talk to him.” He returned to his bicycle.

“Not another four miles,” Harris complained.

“Work off some of those Sunday dinners,” Bloggs told him.

The four-mile ride took them most of an hour—the towpath was made for horses, not wheels, and it was uneven, muddy and mined with loose boulders and tree roots. Harris was sweating and cursing by the time they reached the lock.

The lock-keeper was sitting outside his little house, smoking a pipe and enjoying the mild air of afternoon. He was a middle-aged man of slow speech and slower movements. He regarded the two cyclists with some amusement.

Bloggs spoke, because Harris was out of breath. “We’re police officers,” he said.

“Is that so?” said the lock-keeper. “What’s the excitement?” He looked as excited as a cat in front of a fire.

Bloggs took the photograph of Die Nadel out of his wallet and gave it to the man. “Have you ever seen him?”

The lock-keeper put the picture on his lap while he held a fresh match to his pipe. Then he studied the photograph for a while, and handed it back.

“Well?” Harris said.

“Aye. He was here about this time yesterday. Came in for a cup of tea. Nice enough chap. What’s he done, shown a light after blackout?”

Bloggs sat down heavily. “That clinches it,” he said.

Harris thought aloud. “He moors the boat downstream from here and goes into the restricted area after dark.” He spoke quietly, so that the lock-keeper would not hear.

“When he comes back, the Home Guard has his boat staked out. He deals with them, sails a bit farther to the railway, scuttles his boat and…hops a train?”

Bloggs said to the lock-keeper: “The railway line that crosses the canal a few miles downstream—where does it go?”

“London.”

Bloggs said, “Oh, shit.”





BLOGGS GOT BACK to the War Office in Whitehall at midnight. Godliman and Billy Parkin were there waiting for him. Bloggs said, “It’s him, all right,” and told them the story.

Parkin was excited, Godliman just looked tense. When Bloggs had finished, Godliman said: “So now he’s back in London, and we’re looking for, in more ways than one, a needle in a haystack again.” He was playing with matches, forming a picture with them on his desk. “Do you know, every time I look at that photograph I get the feeling I’ve actually met the damn fellow.”