Well of the Winds Page 32
‘I know I am – have to be, really. It’s half my job.’
‘Try not to do it to me, if you don’t mind.’
‘No, no, that’s not why I’m here. I know what you know, you see, and I think it’s fair to say that you know a lot.’ Harris smiled benignly and took a sip of the whisky.
‘I must admit, I’ve discovered things in the last few days that I would never have thought possible.’
‘Oh, Jim, you know as well as me, anything is possible. How many times have you found that the least likely scenario is the one you were looking for? Maybe it doesn’t happen so much in the police, but it does in my line of work.’
Daley picked up the bottle from the table and poured another two generous measures for himself and his guest.
‘So, then, what’s the least likely scenario here?’
‘Apart from your DS and chief super’s little cabal? Well, as always, there is one truth, but two ways to go.’
‘The truth being?’
‘You tell me, Jim. I know you solved the Urquhart mystery, and the result is lying in the morgue at Kinloch hospital now. Strange thing, death by cyanide. Looks instantaneous, but apparently it’s agonising.’
‘I won’t ask how you know that.’
‘No, best not. You know us chaps from the Security Service – waterboard you at the drop of a hat, we will. Worse, too.’ He grinned wolfishly.
‘Okay. I know that Urquhart was killed by a group of Nazi sympathisers, a group of influential locals. I know that the Bremners – the Bremers – were spies, then became part of something called the Hearts of the Heroes, as Nazis were spirited away at the end of the war. I’m certain that our friend Feldstein was from some Israeli spooks’ network and lost his life because of what he knew, as did poor old Glenhanity and her father before her.’
‘Yeah, all good. You’ve heard the phrase “collateral damage”. There always is some, Jim. I wouldn’t feel too sorry for Feldstein. He’s laid a few to rest by less than judicial means. The old woman, well, I feel more sorry for her. She was harmless. But, tell me, what else do you know?’
‘Well, I suspect a German submarine got into difficulties, just out there, behind the island, delivering more customers to the Bremers on Gairsay.’
‘Interesting.’
‘These people were taken to Gairsay, and those who transported them there – the sailors – had an unfortunate accident not long after. Maybe hit a mine, who knows? Possibly because they knew too much. There’s nothing in the records about it, but Urquhart did find a body, and wreckage, come to that. It’s in his journal.’
‘And your reasoning behind this theory?’
‘The lighters – the silver ones being used by people whose currency was worth nothing, to barter for their freedom, or for help. One was found on the body of a drowned German merchant sailor, just across from Gairsay, as it happens.’ He paused, taking a sip of the malt and savouring it. ‘But I don’t think they were just being used instead of currency.’
‘Hmm.’
‘I reckon they were more like a calling card – like a Masonic handshake, though much more secure, as only those and such as those could have them in their possession.’
‘It’s an interesting theory, Jim.’ Harris smiled knowingly.
‘My question is: why carry on this charade? The war is long gone. And in any case, it’s been conveyed to me that we’ve known about people like the the Bremers for years. Well, your people have, at least.’
‘How very insightful, as an old boss of mine would say.’ It was Harris’s turn to savour the fine whisky. ‘It’s a complicated time, as you’ll be well aware. Perhaps we should just leave it at that . . . The problem is, if this was all to be revealed we may well be thrown back into the horrors of the past more easily than you imagine. Things are in a fragile enough state as it is, especially regarding Europe. You know how sensational things become, what with social networking and all. We all spend our lives only seeing part of the picture – and sometimes that’s for the best.’
‘And that’s all there is to it? People have devoted their lives to a cause long gone, and continue living in the shadows, even though everyone knows the game was up a long, long time ago.’
‘As I say, nobody knows the full picture.’
‘Indeed. Just as well, as we know that some have lost their lives because of it – recently, too, as far as the Bremers are concerned.’ He searched Harris’s features for the truth. ‘But it all just has to go away?’
‘As away as it’s going to get. I truly believe it’s time for us all to move on. I have to say, Jim, you’re wasted in the police. Seriously, give me a call when we’ve resolved this little mess – if resolution is forthcoming. You’ve done so much better at joining the dots than half the Oxbridge boffins I have to deal with every bloody day.’
‘Well, I had a little help from Inspector Urquhart.’ Daley stared levelly at Harris. ‘But, one last thing: why did they use this route?’
‘Quite simple. It was the last place anyone was looking. Most of the Nazi officers were escaping from the west coast of France, or Spain. Who would ever have thought of making a run for it from dear old Blighty?’ Harris eyed Daley. ‘Don’t worry, Jim. It will come out one day – nearly did during the Falklands War, but that’s another story. No doubt, in time, we’ll get the full, well-spun, sanitised tale.’
‘Yeah, when nobody cares any more. Men like Urquhart – their sacrifices – all forgotten.’
Harris shrugged his shoulders. ‘What can I say? Here’s to him.’ He raised his glass.
‘To William Urquhart, to them all,’ echoed Daley.
The two men fell into a companionable silence, as though allowing what they had discussed to drift away on the breeze.
‘I’d better go, Jim. Early start. I’ll see myself out. Nice night for a walk, too,’ said Harris eventually, draining his glass and offering his hand. ‘It’s been a pleasure. I mean it.’
Daley accepted the Welshman’s hand. ‘Likewise.’
‘Don’t be too hard on your DS. He’s a loyal man. But beware of those with ambition – that’s all I’m saying. Goodnight, Jim.’
50
Daley remained on the decking, with only his whisky and the fading view for company. The lights of Kinloch still twinkled beneath him.
He kept looking at his mobile phone, knowing he had to make the call, but dreading it too much to follow the act through.
He remembered Scott’s face when he’d come to tell him about Mary. He felt the pain in his heart, he felt it every day. All those who had gone – all the familiar, much-loved faces in his life.
He thought about Symington. Young, personable, approachable, but he had detected her steely ambition from the start. He knew he’d probably never get to the bottom of what had happened between her and Brian on Gairsay, but reasoned that he knew too many things that burdened him already, so what was the point in adding to the misery?
He thought of his son, his wife, the tatters of his personal life. Was he too old to start up the treadmill again, or were lonely nights like this all that there was in store? Maybe he should get in contact with Harris. Perhaps it was time his life took a different direction.
He must have dozed off, because he was startled back into wakefulness by the buzz of his phone.
Seeing the caller’s number, his heart sank. It was the hospital.
‘Jim Daley,’ he said, a slight waver in his voice.
There was an agonising pause.
‘It’s yourself, Mr Daley.’ Hamish’s familiar tones were unmistakeable.
‘Hamish, you’re on the phone!’ Daley felt a huge weight lifted from his shoulders.
‘Aye, well, I know that fine since it was me as called you. Well, wae the help o’ my wee friend here, Nurse Hogan. Did you think I was deid or something?’
‘No, don’t be daft,’ replied Daley, having thought exactly that only moments before. ‘I’d heard you had a fall – a wee bit poorly, that was all.’
&nb
sp; ‘I gied myself a dunt, right enough. Och, but once I got a wee rest and a few o’ they magic pills doon my throat, I was back tae normal. Takes a lot tae knock an auld seadog like me on the heid. Anyway, this insna a social call. I’ve found something you might be interested in.’
‘Really, what?’
‘Dae you mind that auld Mr McColl gave me a book on the fishing? It’s been in my jacket a’ this time.’
‘Yes, I remember. But there’s something I need to tell you about him—’
‘Jeest haud your horses,’ said Hamish resolutely. ‘Here was me fair enjoyin’ a story aboot the ring-net fishermen, when something fell oot the book.’
‘Oh, what?’
‘A photo. I have it here. Must have been pasted inside the cover, by the looks o’ things. Mr McColl must have forgot a’ aboot it. Quite interesting tae see him young again – aye, an’ his faither. I only mind him as an auld, auld man.’
‘Right,’ said Daley, frantically thinking how to tell Hamish that McColl was no more.
‘Remind me o’ the number o’ this fancy phone o’ yours. The nurse says she’ll send you a photo o’ it. They come oot wae such terms these days.’
Suppressing a smile, Daley did as he was bid and gave Hamish his number, which he heard the old man repeat painstakingly to the nurse at his side. He was so relieved that his friend was in the land of the living, he would have happily listened to his voice all night.
‘Right. She’s sending it noo,’ declared Hamish triumphantly.
‘Now, I’ve got something to tell you on this subject,’ said Daley, deciding it best he break the news of McColl’s death, rather than have Hamish hear it from some gossip. As he listened to the old man mumbling something to Nurse Hogan, he idly clicked on the image she had sent him. As the old black-and-white photograph was revealed, his jaw dropped.
‘Wow!’ he said, astonished. The faded image revealed three adults. There was McColl, slightly younger than the last picture Daley had seen of him with Urquhart – no more than a young teenager, in fact. And there was an older man whom Daley assumed was Mr McColl senior, as Hamish had just described, and a woman holding a baby. She was instantly recognisable, her hair falling over one of those distinctive hooded eyes. The broad smile on her pretty face looked strained, however, as though she was posing with this father and son for the sake of the picture, nothing else. The smile was a false one.
‘Are you still there?’ asked Hamish.
‘Yes, yes, I am. Can I ask you a question, Hamish? Is there anything written on this photograph?’
‘Aye, there is. Can you read that out, Nurse?’
There was a pause, then Daley heard the woman’s voice. ‘With Unity Mitford, Inch Kenneth, 1940.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Aye, that’s it,’ replied Hamish. ‘Tell Mr McColl I’ll bring this back hame wae me. He’ll likely be wantin’ tae keep it, whoot wae his faither in it, an’ a’.’
Daley knew he should have told Hamish of McColl’s fate there and then, but, after telling his friend how glad he was that he was on the road to recovery, he hastily ended the call, claiming there was somebody at the door.
He’d found the woman in the painting. It was Unity Mitford.
He stared in disbelief at the laptop on his dining-room table. He had been prepared for the fact that Britain had harboured more traitors than he’d ever thought possible – Harris had confirmed that – and of course neither was he surprised that McColl and his father were amongst their number.
As he read on, though, he could hardly believe the story that was emerging.
Unity Valkyrie Mitford, one of six sisters from that famous family, had first travelled to Germany in 1933 where she witnessed the Nuremberg Rally. Having become infatuated with Adolf Hitler, she made it her objective to meet the man himself; they did, in fact, become close companions and she was widely regarded as being his lover, much to the exasperation of Eva Braun.
After the declaration of war with Germany in September 1939, it was reported that Unity, distraught, had shot herself in a Munich garden. Surving the suicide attempt, she returned to Great Britain under safe passage from the heart of Nazi Germany to recuperate from her injuries at home. During a visit to the family’s home on the remote island of Inch Kenneth, she collapsed and eventually died in Oban in 1948.
He read on.
Early in the new millennium, a journalist had uncovered evidence pointing to the possibility that on arrival back in Britain, rather than being taken to a hospital for the treatment of her wounds, she was taken to a remote Oxfordshire house normally used as a private maternity clinic. The assumptions were obvious.
Though missing any hard evidence, the idea that the young woman who had been painted so carefully by Glenahinty senior, and now stared out at him from his mobile phone, had been pregnant with the child of Adolf Hitler made Daley gasp.
Glenahinty senior was well read – Symington had told him that. Had he actually recognised this woman who had been splashed all over the papers, and taken the time to record what he had witnessed?
He thought of the Bremers; of their child, Randolph, who had been brought by a friend to safety in Gairsay, and educated by a German tutor. The quiet, lonely boy, who had turned into a sullen, awkward adult. He recalled the painting; the windswept scene where a little boy held the hand of Unity Mitford.
Daley sat back in his chair and slammed down the lid of the laptop. Somehow all the questions that had plagued him had now been answered. He felt sick to his stomach. Now, and certainly not for the first time, he wondered if he truly knew anything about the world, if everything was just a web of lies and deceit.
Had McColl really handed over the book, forgetting about the image concealed within? It was plausible, given his age. Or, as Daley now suspected, had the events at the end of the war weighed so heavily on him for decades that he knew it was a chance as he neared the end of his life finally to unburden himself?
No wonder they had been unable to trace the youngest member of the Bremer family. He hadn’t just left after a family rift; he’d been spirited away.
The big detective lurched from the table like a parched hero staggering from a bone-dry desert, desperately searching for the water of life, despite being sickened by its darkest, hidden secrets.
Afterword
Present-day Vienna
The bright lights shone on the young man’s black leather jacket and slicked-back dark hair as the unruly crowd in the hall roared its approval.
‘We can no longer stand by and watch our nations being destroyed from within by those to whom we have given safe harbour!’ His voice boomed through large speakers on either side of the stage. ‘For us, all that is left is to rise, to rise against the tide that threatens to drown us all. One people, one Europe!’
Alois Bremer stepped back from the microphone and drank in the cacophony of adulation that greeted the speech from the country’s most promising young star of the far right.
As he looked around the room, nodding his approval, he swept back a strand of hair and folded his arms.
The crowd bayed for more.
A Note from the Author
Campbeltown at war
Like many, I have an interest in the history of World War Two. As with the fictional Kinloch in this book, the real Campbeltown played its part in the conflict. As discussed in previous notes, the town makes for a perfect port. It is sheltered from the fury of the Atlantic by its location on the east side of the Kintyre peninsula, in the natural haven of the loch, itself protected from heavy seas by Davaar Island at its head. Many have been fooled by the calm of Campbeltown Loch only to find much more restless waters in Kilbrannan Sound beyond. Add to this easy access: to the Atlantic approaches (where much of the naval war played out); the great shipbuilding River Clyde; the Hebrides and north in the direction of the Baltic; as well as the ports to the south in England and beyond. It is no surprise that the Royal Navy was so prominent there between 1939 and 1945.
In the main, despite its strategic significance, the distance between Campbeltown and Nazi-occupied Europe meant it was difficult for enemy bombers to range, though many heard the ranks of Luftwaffe planes as they made their way to blitz Belfast – part of the Nazis’ attempt to disrupt shipbuilding there. Occasionally, the Luftwaffe would attempt to drop mines on Campbeltown Loch and just beyond in an attempt to hamper naval movements, but these efforts were mercifully few and far between, and occurred mainly in the early part of the conflict. However, on one such raid the mines missed their target, hitting houses on the shore at Low Askomil. One of the casualties was the local procurator fiscal.
In the most conspicuous raid on Campbeltown in November 1940, a lone German aircraft set about its savage business, causing damage to the Royal Hotel and destroying the clock tower of the Victoria Hall next door. Indeed, bullet holes can still be seen in the sandstone brickwork of the hotel, damaged as the pilot strafed the seafront and Main Street with bullets, sadly leading to a small number of fatalities.
One tall tale as to why this single plane set upon Campbeltown has it that the pilot, having been schooled in the area in the 1930s, fell in love with a local girl who rebuffed his advances. He bore such a heavy heart that he decided to wreak vengeance on the town. This story, amongst others, has been discredited. It is more likely that this aircraft formed part of a squadron attacking a secret installation on Rhum that same day, and the pilot became disoriented. As related by Campbeltown native and now BBC journalist Jamie McIvor on the online Kintyre Forum, a mention by the infamous Lord Haw-Haw the next evening of damage to Kinloch Castle was taken by locals as being a reference to the attack. However, the damage was done to the castle on Rhum and had nothing to do with Campbeltown and its long association with the name ‘Kinloch’.