A Gathering of Saints Read online

‘Any attempts?’

  ‘No. Not recently anyway. If it looks to be going that way, he has some excuse for hurrying off.’

  ‘Do you ever… initiate relations?’

  ‘Once or twice. It never comes to much and it makes me feel dirty. I know that’s silly but…’

  ‘It’s not silly, Joanna. We all have needs.’

  ‘Not him. He pets his little furry friends more than he does me.’

  ‘His animals, you mean.’

  ‘Yes. Sometimes I think he cares more for them than me. Or any woman for that matter.’ She let out a long breath, squeezing her eyes closed, trying to keep back the tears.

  ‘Perhaps it’s because they make no demands on him.’

  ‘Then why did he want to live with me? Why did he make me move to that wretched little cottage where I never see him?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  ‘Because he’s bloody well ashamed of me!’ she blurted. The tears came then and there was no way to stop them.

  ‘Or ashamed of himself,’ suggested Tennant. His chair scraped as he stood up. His hand came over the back of the couch, holding a linen handkerchief, touching her shoulder for an instant. She took the handkerchief, her fingers brushing his. She wiped her eyes.

  ‘I feel so selfish,’ she whispered.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘His work. It’s so important. I mean, my God, Charles, we’re fighting a war and he’s fighting harder than anybody and here I am worrying about…’

  ‘The fact that your relationship remains unconsummated.’ The tone was matter-of-fact.

  ‘Yes.’ She sniffed. ‘I must sound a fool.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I mean, really, he’s under so much pressure. From all sides. And now…’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘There’s something new. A problem. He’s very distracted. More than usual.’

  ‘What sort of problem?’

  ‘I really don’t think I should talk about it, Charles. I mentioned—’

  ‘Yes. I’m aware that his work is highly secret.’

  ‘I don’t mean to be offensive.’ Her throat tightened. She didn’t know what she’d do if she couldn’t come to these sessions every week.

  ‘I’m not offended, Joanna, I assure you. But you really do have to understand – I’m bound by my own vow of silence, not to mention the Official Secrets Act. I have my cloak-and-dagger side as well you know.’ Gently chiding.

  ‘Still…’

  ‘To solve your problem I have to know a certain amount about his.’ Tennant’s voice was soft now, not demanding, but still forceful somehow. ‘You know that honesty between us is absolutely essential, Joanna, or we’ll never get to the root of things.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘You mentioned his new problem?’

  ‘There have been several murders recently.’

  ‘Not his responsibility surely.’

  ‘No. Normally that would be true.’ She hesitated. Max hadn’t been very clear himself.

  ‘But now?’

  ‘They’re connected with his work.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’m not sure. A security breach, I think. It must be important; they’ve roped in Spilsbury and a detective inspector from the Yard. All very hush-hush.’

  ‘And you feel this is causing him more anxiety than usual?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure of that. He said if it leaked to the press it would make Dunkirk look like a garden party.’

  ‘I see.’ Not sceptical, but not excited either. Neutral. A good thing, too. She bit her lip and stared up at the intricate designs in the ceiling moulding. She’d said too much already. A small sound rose in her throat. If Max knew…

  ‘All right,’ Tennant said after a moment. ‘Enough of Mr X for the moment, let’s talk about you. I seem to remember that you had some concerns about your mother.’

  Seated behind his desk, Dr Charles Tennant allowed Joanna Phipps’s voice to recede from his conscious mind as she prattled on about some imagined episode from her childhood. Listening wasn’t important; the microphone built into the small cabinet beside the couch would pick up every word and feed it to the wire recorder hidden in his bookcase.

  He picked up a pencil from the table and tapped it gently against his teeth, leaning back in the chair and letting the few small morsels of information swim about in his brain.

  Joanna Phipps, of course, was actually Joan Miller and Mr X was none other than Maxwell Knight, who, according to his entry in the most recent edition of Who’s Who, was an ex-naval officer and author of several rather poorly received crime novels including an abomination called Gunman’s Holiday.

  In point of fact, the resolutely impotent Knight was director of MI5’s Department B5(b), in charge of all counter-intelligence operations in England, and Joan Miller was his virgin mistress as well as an employee of the same department. Through Knight she was also acquainted with Dennis Wheatley and his wife, who was Tennant’s patient as well. It was all a very small circle.

  From his casual investigations over the past three or four weeks, Tennant had come to the conclusion that Knight was suffering from a homosexual neurosis that had almost certainly led to the suicide of his first wife and his separation from the second, not to mention Joan Miller’s unresolved frustrations. A hint from Joan the week before had led him to believe that Knight was carrying on an illicit, and illegal, sexual liaison with his driver, Potts.

  The possibility of a senior intelligence officer being a homosexual was useful enough information but this new ‘problem’ was even more promising. Tennant smiled. His initial intuitions about the beautiful young woman lying a few feet away were being borne out; of the forty or so patients he saw on a regular basis she showed every indication of becoming the most valuable.

  Tennant blinked, held back a yawn between clenched teeth and glanced at his watch. The timepiece was one of his few affectations, a Rolex Oyster Perpetual with a military-style wire-mesh cage over the crystal and a black, lizard-skin strap.

  Glancing over in the direction of the couch, he was suddenly aware that Joan Miller had stopped talking. He wondered briefly if she’d posed a question he was supposed to answer but then he heard the measured rhythm of her breathing and realised that she’d fallen asleep. He smiled; it had happened several times before during their sessions, an indication both of the depth of her anxiety and her trust in him.

  He stood, walked around the desk and stood over her. She really was quite beautiful and an utter waste. What did she see in a man like Knight? His weakness, disguised by the sensitivity he showed his animal friends? Or did she somehow sense his homosexuality and, like so many women before her, assume that she could ‘cure’ him of it?

  Then again it might be something more complex, a Christ scenario, for instance, with herself in the role of Mary Magdalene, ready to bathe her master’s feet and give him aid and succour on the cross as he martyred himself for a great, just cause.

  There was no doubt in his mind that he could have her himself. She was already well into the process of transferring her sexual feelings from Knight to him and had even begun to show some tentative signs of seductiveness. It was tempting of course – she was extremely attractive, and he had no difficulty in seeing it all in his mind’s eye, but it was also out of the question.

  To engage in any sort of sexual liaison at this point would destroy the magic bond between them, the fragile thread of fantasy that promised to reveal far more as the classic unrequited transference of a patient than by any writhing, passionate embrace. Perhaps he could indulge himself when he knew a little more about the murders that were causing her false lover so much anguish; but not yet. Extending a hand, he teased himself by letting it brush gently over her breast before he tapped her lightly on the shoulder. Her eyes flew open.

  ‘Oh dear. I’ve gone and done it again, haven’t I?’ She blushed fiercely and from her reaction he could easily imagine what she’d been dreaming. ‘Fallen asleep, I mea
n.’

  ‘That’s quite all right, Joanna. But I am afraid our time is up.’

  ‘I can come again on Tuesday?’ Her eyes were pleading. An opium addict about to be denied her pipe.

  ‘Come any time you like, Joanna,’ he said, smiling. ‘You know I’m always here if you need me.’

  * * *

  Morris Black sat in the restaurant of the Royal Palace Hotel and gazed out at the bleak, windswept view of Kensington Gardens and the Round Pond, waiting for Liddell to return. On the table in front of him was the remains of their luncheon, including a thick document that included the entire text of the Official Secrets Act, an empty bottle of wine and an overflowing ashtray.

  Before the war such poor service would never have been tolerated in a place like the Royal Palace Grill Room but now it was the norm rather than the exception, like margarine, meatless stew and powdered milk. Waiters were either arthritic pensioners or pimply youths and by the looks of things the cooking staff had been recruited from a Barnardo’s Home for homeless waifs.

  He shook his head; war, it seemed, intruded well beyond the battlefield, reaching into every corner of life. Last night the war had brought him Guy Liddell; today it had given him the Official Secrets Act and a watery minestrone made from tinned vegetables and Oxo broth, three shillings and sixpence, less the wine. His dreams of the previous night had been touched with madness and waking life was just as lunatic in its own bland way.

  ‘Awful weather,’ said Liddell, returning to the table and following Black’s gaze. ‘Can’t come too soon as far as I’m concerned. Our best defence is going to be the weather I think. Keep the bombers at bay.’

  ‘The alert was on all morning.’ There was a long silence. The mediocre seduction by way of the minestrone was done with; Liddell was preparing to come in for the kill.

  ‘You’ve spoken with your people at the Yard?’ he said finally.

  ‘Yes. They confirmed that I’ve been seconded to a Colonel John Masterman at something called B1(a).’ Black paused. ‘I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, Captain Liddell, and I’m not sure I like the idea of working for this mysterious colonel of yours.’

  ‘He’s not a colonel. He’s an Oxford don,’ Liddell answered, a slight note of bitterness in his voice. ‘And by the way, the secondment is just a bit of smoke and mirrors, old man. Masterman works for me, I don’t work for him.’ Liddell paused. ‘He’s another amateur. His only real qualification for the job is the fact that he was captured by the Germans twenty-five years ago and plays a better than average game of cricket. Stupid really.’

  ‘Masterman?’

  ‘No. Far from it. It’s the idea of people like that working in the intelligence game that’s so idiotic.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘You’ve signed the dreaded document?’ Liddell pointed at the sheaf of papers with the stem of his pipe.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well done, that’s over with at least.’ Liddell paused and lit the pipe, tilting his head back and blowing a great billow towards the ceiling. ‘Colonel John Cecil bloody Masterman is director of B1(a) and chairman of the so-called Twenty Committee.’

  ‘Twenty?’

  ‘As in the roman numerals double X, double cross. It’s his job to take German spies dropped into our laps and “double” them. Turn them about so they appear to be working for Uncle Adolf while they’re actually working for us.’

  There’d been some vague rumours emanating from Special Branch about such a group but this was Black’s first confirmation of it. ‘How many has he “doubled,” as you call it?’

  ‘Thirty-odd so far. He has most of them in the Scrubs tapping away like mad at their Morse keys. What our Soviet friends refer to as dizinformation. He’s given them all sorts of code names like Rainbow and Giraffe.’

  ‘They do this willingly?’

  ‘They have a strong incentive,’ Liddell answered, grinning. ‘Remember Tin Eye from last night?’

  ‘Vividly.’ A man better suited to one of those Gestapo leather greatcoats than His Majesty’s uniform.

  ‘After the agents are captured, they get sent to Latchmere for a few days. Bread and water, no heat, foul sanitation, sometimes a bit of rough treatment for good measure. Then Tin Eye screws in his monocle and gives them the gen. Work for Masterman or face a firing squad at the Tower.’

  ‘Guarantees a high success rate, I should think.’

  ‘Umm.’ Liddell nodded. ‘Very impressive so far.’

  ‘Interesting, but I don’t quite see where I fit in or Queer Jack. I told you before, I’m a policeman, Captain, not a spy catcher. And I have no intention of becoming one.’ That was certainly true enough, not to mention that he’d seriously been considering leaving the police force as well. At forty he’d come to the conclusion that every human being has a finite capacity to accept tragedy and he was reasonably sure he was close to the limit, professionally as well as personally. Time to grow roses in Dorset or something equally unassuming.

  ‘I’m afraid the problem is Masterman’s ego. He’s absolutely convinced that B1(a) has managed to capture every single German agent in England. Without exception.’

  ‘Seems a bit much,’ said Black. Liddell was off on another of his roundabout explanations. The only thing to do, it seemed, was sit back and wait for him to get to the point – if there was one.

  ‘Quite so.’ Liddell nodded. ‘But that’s what he thinks – and will continue to think. He really thinks he’s managed to nip each and every one of them in the bud.’

  ‘I gather you don’t agree.’

  ‘No. In the first place it presumes that the German intelligence service is utterly incompetent and naive to the point of idiocy. It also presumes that Masterman and his troop of amateurs has been scrupulously efficient. I have firm evidence that neither statement is true.’

  ‘You think they’ve placed agents Colonel Masterman hasn’t discovered?’

  ‘Yes. At least one. A year or so ago we discovered some serious leakage of information that seemed to be coming from the United States embassy here in London. We had our own source in the German Foreign Office in Berlin, who said the material originated with a mysterious agent outside the regular Abwehr sphere known as The Doctor. At the time we had one of the embassy cipher clerks under surveillance, a fellow named Tyler Kent. We thought he might be our man but it turned out that he wasn’t.’

  ‘I remember the case.’ Black nodded. Kent was still being tried in camera. As he recalled, a Russian émigré woman had also been involved.

  ‘There was even some thought that Ambassador Kennedy might have been The Doctor but that didn’t prove out either. The only thing we do know is that he continues to exist.’

  ‘What does Masterman say?’

  ‘Masterman thinks The Doctor is a figment of my over-fertile imagination.’ The portly man took the pipe out of his mouth and stared into the bowl for a moment. He frowned then looked across the table at Black. ‘The state of my imagination aside, Inspector, I can assure you that The Doctor is an active German espionage agent, probably living in London.’ He used another match and relit his pipe, poking it back between his lips. ‘Masterman thinks looking for him is a waste of effort but he continues to humour me, at least for the time being. I am his superior, at least on paper, although certainly not as much of a “gentleman.”’

  ‘That still doesn’t answer the question of my involvement in all of this.’

  ‘You’re part of the humouring process.’ Liddell smiled. ‘Something to keep me busy and out of Masterman’s hair. Evidence points to the fact that your friend Queer Jack is in possession of extremely important information relating to the war effort. In your opinion the man is a homicidal maniac. That’s quite a volatile combination, don’t you think?’

  ‘You’re afraid The Doctor will find out about him and this “evidence.”’

  ‘Precisely. The Doctor managed to penetrate the hallowed halls of the United States embassy. Presumably Scotland Ya
rd would be as easy as turning the key on a tin of sardines. If we assume that to be the case, it follows that the detective in charge of the investigation should be removed from a potentially vulnerable position. Hence your seconding to B1(a). Masterman thinks it’s all a lot of jiggery-pokery but he’s willing to go along with it for now.’ Liddell smiled again. ‘As I said, the man’s not a complete fool. If I am right about The Doctor…’

  ‘You could end up saving his bacon,’ Black said, finishing the thought. The whole sordid little picture was coming into focus now. This was the kind of thing he’d tried to avoid at the Yard – mixing police work with politics. He was a pawn being played by Liddell for his own ends and Black was under no illusions about his expendability. Whether or not he managed to find Queer Jack and bring him to book was of no concern to Liddell or anyone else. He felt his temper rising and for a brief moment he seriously contemplated getting up from the table and walking away.

  ‘I rather think it’s my own bacon that’s at risk,’ Liddell said finally. ‘Masterman would like nothing better than to prove me wrong.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I have much choice in all of this, do I?’

  ‘Not really.’ Liddell shrugged. ‘But that’s the way of things these days. We all have to do our bit.’

  ‘Ours not to reason why and all that?’

  ‘Umm. I’m afraid Kipling still runs rampant at the War Office, Inspector.’

  The two men stared at each other silently then Liddell looked away. He scanned the table in front of them. Black’s soup bowl was still almost full. Three or four spoonfuls had been enough, ‘Bloody awful wasn’t it?’ said Liddell.

  ‘Umm,’ said Black and smiled.

  Liddell laughed. ‘Come along,’ he said, pushing back his chair. ‘I’ll show you your new digs.’

  Number 6–7 Kensington Park Gardens was a five-storeyed, broad-hipped mansion across from the shadowed wing of the Royal Palace Hotel on the west side of the private road that ran from Kensington High Street north to Notting Hill Gate. The house was surrounded by a rudely constructed plank fence at least fifteen feet high, topped with a scrolling, twisted roll of barbed wire. The gateway was open and Black could see a collection of vehicles parked along the curving driveway leading to the front entrance. According to Liddell, most of the mansions on either side of 6–7 were embassies and legations. A pair of uniformed policemen patrolled the south end of the street and Black spotted the familiar shape of an unmarked, grey Fordson van parked by the curb. It was the only vehicle on the street.