Eye of the Needle(63)
Meanwhile it was time she started cooking lunch for the men. She had some breast of lamb to make a stew. She got out of the bath and toweled herself gently. Jo was playing with his bath toy, a much-chewed rubber cat. Lucy looked at herself in the mirror, examining the stretch-marks on her belly left by pregnancy. They were fading, slowly, but they would never completely disappear. An all-over suntan would help, though. She smiled to herself. Fat chance of that! Besides, who was interested in her tummy? Nobody but herself.
Jo said, “Can I stay in a minute more?” It was a phrase he used, “a minute more,” and it could mean anything up to a half a day.
“Just while I get dressed,” she told him and hung the towel on a rail and moved toward the door.
The stranger stood in the doorway, looking at her.
They stared at each other. It was odd—Lucy thought later—that she felt not a bit afraid. It was the way he looked at her; there was no threat in his expression, no lewdness, no smirk. He was not looking at her pubis, or even her breasts, but at her face—into her eyes. She looked back, a bit shocked but not embarrassed, with just a tiny part of her mind wondering why she did not squeal, cover herself with her hands and slam the door on him.
Something did come into his eyes, at last—perhaps she was imagining it, but she saw admiration, and a faint twinkle of honest humor, and a trace of sadness—and then the hold was broken and he turned away and went back into his bedroom, closing the door. A moment later Lucy heard the springs creak as his weight settled onto the bed.
And for no good reason at all she felt dreadfully guilty.
20
PERCIVAL GODLIMAN HAD BY NOW PULLED OUT ALL the stops.
Every policeman in the United Kingdom had a copy of the photograph of Faber, and about half of them were engaged full time in the search. In the cities they were checking hotels and guest houses, railway stations and bus terminals, cafes and shopping centers; and the bridges, arches and bombed lots where derelicts hung out. In the country they were looking in barns and silos, empty cottages and ruined castles, thickets and clearings and cornfields. They were showing the photograph to ticket clerks, petrol station staff, ferry hands and toll collectors. All the passenger ports and airfields were covered, with the picture pinned behind a board at every passport control desk.
The police, of course, still thought they were looking for a straightforward murderer. The cop on the street knew that the man in the picture had killed two people with a knife in London. Senior officers knew a bit more; that one of the murders had been a sexual assault, another apparently motiveless and a third—which their men were not to know of—was an unexplained but bloody attack on a soldier on the Euston-to-Liverpool train. Only chief constables, and a few officers at Scotland Yard, knew that the soldier had been on temporary attachment to MI5 and that all the murders were somehow connected with Security.
The newspapers, too, thought it was an ordinary murder hunt. The day after Godliman had released details, most of them had carried the story in their later editions—the first editions, bound for Scotland, Ulster and North Wales, had missed it, so they carried a shortened version a day later. The Stockwell victim had been identified as a laborer, and given a false name and a vague London background. Godliman’s press release had connected that murder with the death of Mrs. Una Garden in 1940, but had been vague about the nature of the link. The murder weapon was said to be a stiletto.
The two Liverpool newspapers heard very quickly of the body on the train, and both wondered whether the London knife murderer was responsible. Both made enquiries with the Liverpool police. The editors of both papers received phone calls from the chief constable. Neither paper carried the story.
A total of one hundred and fifty-seven tall dark men were arrested on suspicion of being Faber. All but twenty-nine of them were able to prove that they could not possibly have committed the murders. Interviewers from MI5 talked to the twenty-nine. Twenty-seven called in parents, relatives and neighbors, who affirmed that they had been born in Britain and had been living there during the ’20s, when Faber had been in Germany.
The last two were brought to London and interviewed again, this time by Godliman. Both were bachelors, living alone, with no surviving relatives, leading a transient existence. The first was a well-dressed, confident man who claimed implausibly that his way of life was to travel the country taking odd jobs as a manual laborer. Godliman explained that—unlike the police—he had the power to incarcerate anyone for the duration of the war, and no questions asked. Furthermore, he was not in the least interested in ordinary peccadilloes, and any information given him here at the War Office was strictly confidential and would go no further.
The prisoner promptly confessed to being a confidence trickster and gave the address of nineteen elderly ladies whom he had cheated out their old jewelry during the past three weeks. Godliman turned him over to the police.
He felt no obligation to be honest with a professional liar.
The last suspect also cracked under Godliman’s treatment. His secret was that he was not a bachelor at all, not by a long way. He had a wife in Brighton. And in Solihull, Birmingham. And in Colchester, Newbury and Exeter. All five were able to produce marriage certificates later that day. The bigamist went to jail to await trial.
Godliman slept in his office while the hunt went on.
BRISTOL, Temple Meads, railway station: