It had only been four stories, but four was enough with a flagstone terrace at the bottom of the drop. Tadeusz had put an end to his torture, and as much as I had wished he could see things through, I couldn’t blame him. The only thing worse than being executed and buried in the Katyn Forest was to witness the executions and burials, then be thrown into a secret police prison, where fear and memories ate away at your mind until reality and sanity decayed beyond repair. Then to be sent back out into the world through a bureaucratic mistake, silent and withdrawn, adrift among people who wanted only to draw you out, stand you up, use you, and watch you relive the nightmare visions at their bidding. For the greater good.
Funny, but with all the sacrifices in this world for the greater good, I had to wonder where it had gotten to. That greater good. Just around the corner, like prosperity? Hoarded somewhere, stockpiled in a warehouse for after the war? Or had it been spent in payoffs, kickbacks, bribes, sweetheart deals, promotions for the incompetent but well connected? I don’t remember seeing any greater good in Sicily, at Salerno, or along the Volturno River. Just death, snafus, and suffering. So good for you, Tadeusz.
All this ran through my head as I stood at attention in front of Colonel Harding’s desk the next morning, Kaz and Big Mike a step behind me. I kept my mouth shut, which I had learned the hard way was the best defense when Harding had that look: lips compressed, jaw muscles clenched, the vein above his temple throbbing. It was like waiting for a hand grenade to go off.
“You,” Harding said, pointing a finger at Kaz, “were supposed to be lying low somewhere.”
“I-,” Kaz began, drawing a dark look from Harding.
“When I want to hear from you, Lieutenant Kazimierz, I will let you know. You,” Harding said, moving the accusing finger in my direction, “were supposed to be in Dover, talking to the Russians while they had their tour. And you, Corporal, were supposed to be driving him there. Instead, the three of you end up north of London, at a top-secret facility, standing by while a valuable asset jumps out a window. That wouldn’t have had anything to do with your presence there, would it?”
“Tadeusz Tucholski,” Kaz said. When Harding didn’t snap at him, he continued. “That was his name. Tadeusz was very valuable, it is true. He was also very, very fragile. I don’t think we understood how fragile. If we hadn’t gone, he might not have killed himself, not that day. But some other day, certainly.”
“It’s true, Colonel,” I said. We’d agreed that it didn’t make any sense to reveal Radecki’s use of his laudanum. He’d had the best of intentions, and it had nothing to do with what happened yesterday. Unless you counted the fact that we’d withheld it from Tadeusz. All around, a truth better not told.
“He was in real bad shape, Colonel,” Big Mike said. “It’s a wonder he held together this long.”
“That may be, but it still doesn’t tell me why you two went up there, when you should have been on your way to Dover.”
“I came by here early yesterday morning, to read the file on Topper Chapman that Cosgrove had sent over. I called Scotland Yard to check something and heard that Scutt wanted me over at the Rubens, where a body had been found. It was Eddie Miller, the kid I saw with Sidorov. Apparently Kaz had been seen handling the murder weapon, a Polish Army bayonet, the day before, and Scutt was suspicious of him. Thought he might be taking his revenge on the Russians by killing one of their informers, something along those lines.”
“Especially after that comment at the Russian Embassy,” Harding said.
“Yes, sir,” I said, eager to display the proper military courtesy, which sometimes had a calming effect on Harding. “We went to search Eddie’s flat, and ran into a girl from the hotel, Sheila Carlson. She gave us a sob story about getting married to Eddie, and how she’d found Eddie’s body but ran away because she thought the killer might be after her.”
“But she was the killer?”
“Yes,” I said, thankful that Big Mike must’ve filled him in last night. And now I knew what the smaller cake pan had been for. “She used poison, from an oleander plant. Left a note for Eddie, met him in the alley, gave him a piece of cake that he was probably happy to eat. That poison is fast acting, and in no time he was on the ground, with Sheila thrusting a blade into his heart. But first she’d given Captain Radecki a poisoned apple cake to take to Tadeusz.”
“And you think MI5 put her up to it?” Harding said, in a tone of disbelief.
“We know she was an informant for Scotland Yard. And we know that the British government wants this Katyn Forest affair hushed up.”
“We, Lieutenant Boyle? Do you mean SHAEF, Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force? General Eisenhower? How about FDR?”
“Sorry, sir. I mean Lieutenant Kazimierz.”
“Suspect it, you mean,” Harding said. I glanced at Kaz, unsure if I should mention the stolen memo.
“We-I mean the Polish Government in Exile-have a memo from the British Foreign Office, stating that the investigation into the Katyn Forest Massacre should not be allowed to succeed,” Kaz said.
“Let’s see it then” Harding said.
“It can’t be released,” Kaz said. “It would endanger the person who obtained it.”
“Oh,” Harding said, throwing up his hands. “So we have two lieutenants with absolutely no proof, accusing His Majesty’s Government of murder.”
“Two lieutenants and a corporal,” Big Mike said. “And only MI5, not the whole shebang.”
“Well, then, let’s call in the press. The fact that there’s three of you clinches it.” He fumbled with a pack of Luckies, struck a match, and lit one. He threw the wooden matchstick in the general vicinity of an ashtray, but it missed and fell at my feet, trailing a thin line of gray smoke.
“I was worried about Kaz, Colonel Harding,” I said as I leaned down to pick up the burned-out match. I laid it in the empty ashtray and couldn’t get the image of Tadeusz at the window out of my mind. Harding swiveled in his chair and stared out the window, toward a small patch of St. James’s Square, blowing blue smoke that curled against the window and came back at him.
“Understood, Boyle. And you lucked out, once again. The whole Home Guard tour for the Russians got put off by a couple of days. The Germans lost two bombers near Dover, the new Heinkel 177 type. Home Guard units from Maidstone to Dover have been out hunting for survivors. The RAF is eager to interrogate them, so it’s top priority. Get down there today and see what you can find out. The Russian delegation is already at Dover Castle. Big Mike has the details. Now get going and don’t stop until you hit Dover.”
“Sir, I need to stop at Scotland Yard. I still have some evidence I need to deliver to Inspector Scutt.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“An envelope full of money. What Sheila and Eddie had been supposedly saving up, from what she got from MI5 and what he got from the Russians. She had it on her when we ran into her at Eddie’s place.”
“How much money?”
“I haven’t counted it, sir.” I pulled the envelope from my jacket pocket, and Harding nodded in Big Mike’s direction, so I handed it over. Maybe he thought Detroit cops were a less sticky-fingered bunch than their Boston brothers.
“Lieutenant Kazimierz, you stay away from Scotland Yard. I don’t want you thrown in jail unless I order it. Big Mike, you are responsible for getting Boyle here to Dover today. Got it?”
“Sure, Sam,” Big Mike said, heaving a sigh. He’d taken a seat on one of the chairs facing Harding’s desk, counting out pound notes between licks of his thumb, while Kaz and I still stood ramrod straight. Harding looked at him, tapped his ashes, shook his head, and returned to his paperwork. Big Mike was a bluecoat down to his bones, and he’d never be a real soldier, not the spit-and-polish type anyway. Harding seemed to know it wasn’t worth his breath trying to make him one, and I think part of him liked Big Mike’s lack of proper military formality. It gave him a chance to let his guard down, to be human behind the closed doors of his office. Big Mike knew when to toe the line, but at any time he could tire of the whole thing, take a load off, and call the colonel by his first name. He did it with such sincere innocence that Harding never took offense. Or did Big Mike do it on purpose, to defuse a tense situation, and draw Harding’s ire away from his intended victim? He finished counting, whistled, and gave the envelope back to me. “One thousand one hundred and ten pounds.”
“That much?” I said. With everything that had happened, I hadn’t given the envelope a second thought. Loose cash usually focused my attention, but it had been a helluva day.
“Yeah. You gave her the five-pound notes from the top, but the rest were all tens, twenties, and fifties. Over forty-four hundred bucks, Billy.”
“That’s a lot of dough. I don’t think Eddie gave Sidorov anything worth half this much, and Sheila sure didn’t get rich snitching for Scotland Yard.”
“Maybe it was a down payment on an apple cake,” Kaz said.
“You think that money came from MI5?” Harding said. “And stand at ease, both of you.” Kaz shrugged, not wanting to get into another discussion of proof versus suspicions.
“Listen, Colonel,” I said, leaning on his desk. “All we know for sure is that somebody paid Sheila to kill Tadeusz. There’s no personal motive we know about, and no other explanation for her making a getaway with this much cash.”
“You’ve spoiled her payday, Billy,” Big Mike said. “If that was the down payment, she’s got to get the rest of it quick, and disappear.”
“We could make that difficult for her,” Kaz said. “I called Major Horak last night, but he was unavailable. I decided not to leave a message about Tadeusz, and that I would tell him in person this morning.”
“So no one else knows,” Harding said.
“No. I spoke to the doctor at St. Albans, whom I’d met when we arranged for Tadeusz to be admitted. He will submit a written report, but I expect that since I was there in person, he has no need to inform anyone else directly. So I will go to the Rubens Hotel and tell Major Horak, and everyone else, that Tadeusz is much better and is ready to return.”
“She’s bound to have friends at the hotel who will pass that information on to her,” I said.
“Lieutenant Kazimierz,” Harding said, “are you prepared to lie to your superior officer?”
“Only since he is my former superior officer, Colonel.”
“All right. Try to flush her out, as long as you stay clear of Scotland Yard, and as long as Big Mike gets Boyle to Dover by nightfall. Dismissed.”
We went to the motor pool, where I had to sign out a jeep for an extended trip outside of London. Then we dropped Kaz off at the Rubens on our way to Scotland Yard, to spread the rumor of Tadeusz’s impending and vocal return. Big Mike drove along the Embankment, where a cold breeze churned the fog rising from the Thames, creating an eerie, gray wall of nothingness. He parked the jeep as I grabbed my musette bag and went inside. I found Inspector Scutt at his desk, on the telephone, nodding his head and mumbling, Yes, sir and No, sir in a way that told me his boss was on the other end. Or his boss’s boss.
“Tell me some good news, Lieutenant Boyle,” he said as he hung up. He looked frail, and the bags under his eyes were dark and heavy. His face was creased with weariness, and white stubble on his cheeks told me he’d been on duty all night. “The Air Ministry is on the commissioner’s back, and he in turn is on mine.”
“Kraut aircrew, right?”
“Indeed. They’re eager to chat with them about some new bomber we’ve shot down. I’d like to tell them to blast them all and be done with it. What are they going to do, fire me? I’d welcome it. Well, enough of my troubles. Sit down, and tell me yours.”
“It’s about this,” I said, tossing the envelope full of cash onto his desk. “One thousand one hundred and ten pounds.” Scutt looked at the envelope, staring at the embossed Rubens Hotel logo.
“What’s this then?” His forehead narrowed, as if he didn’t recognize cold, hard cash.
“Some small part of it is what you paid Sheila Carlson as an informant. Another part is what the Russians paid Eddie Miller for similar services, although I don’t think it’s much. It’s the rest that interests me. My guess is that the lion’s share came from MI5.”
“For the moment I will ignore the reference to the Metropolitan Police paying informers. What exactly has MI5 to do with this, and why do you have their money?”
“It’s not theirs anymore. It was Sheila Carlson’s,” I said. I recounted what had happened when Big Mike and I went to Eddie’s place. How we came by the envelope, the visit from Brown and Wilson, and even how we’d been taken in by Sheila’s poor-girl sob story, giving her cash and a ride to the railroad station on top of letting her go.
“Did you carry her bags to the train?” Scutt said, not even trying to hide his laughter.
“If you think that’s funny, you’ll find this hilarious,” I said, pulling the biscuit tin out of the musette bag. I popped the lid to show him the crumbling apple cake. “Poisoned. Baked by Sheila as a gift for a Pole who saw too much before he got out of Russia. She even managed to have Captain Radecki deliver it.”
“Are you quite certain?” Scutt sniffed the cake, careful not to touch anything.
“Have your lab boys check it out. She had an oleander plant, and there were cut-up leaves and stems in the kitchen.”
“It appears no one ate any, thank goodness,” Scutt said as he signaled to a constable. “Watkins, take this to the laboratory to be analyzed. Put a note on it that it may contain poison, and be damned careful with it, man.”
I didn’t tell Scutt that it had done its work, eaten or not. Tadeusz had seen too much death in his short life, and it was my bet that an apple cake was what finally pushed him over the edge. It was the shock of the unexpected; the domestic and comforting turned deadly and corrupt. Everywhere I go, death follows. I knew what he meant.
Scutt pulled a pipe from his desk drawer, along with a red tin of Old English pipe tobacco. He went through the pipe smoker’s ritual, filling the bowl halfway, tamping it down, filling some more, tamping harder. He glanced at me a few times, as if to assure me he knew I was there, but he didn’t say a word. He struck a wooden match, let the sulfur burn off for a second, and then passed the flame back and forth over the tobacco, drawing slowly until it gave off a glow and he exhaled the first draw.
“Now then,” he said, giving me his full attention. “Time for us to talk.”
“OK,” I said.
“First, I’m pleased you turned over the money. A man with fewer scruples would have kept some of it, if not all.”
“No, a man with only a few less scruples than me would have kept it all. I figure you know how much you paid Sheila, and probably what the Russians paid Eddie. And if you know about her working for MI5, well, then you’d have a good guess as to the whole amount.”
“You’d make a smart criminal, Lieutenant Boyle. But in this case, you give me too much credit. Yes, she did pass on a few things to us, nothing important, really. I do know about this fellow Tadeusz Tucholski,” he said, consulting a notebook. “Fairly important to the Poles and their cause, isn’t he?”
“Very,” I said.
“And Captain Radecki, he brought the cake with him when he went to visit St. Albans, yes?”
“You are well informed.”
“A guess. Sheila Carlson did tell us about Mr. Tucholski’s condition and where he’d been placed. That was the sort of thing she passed on to us and the Special Branch. She was good at picking up gossip, as well as the comings and goings of senior personnel. This is serious, certainly, but you should remember two things.”
“Such as?”
“There’s only been one murder other than that of Egorov. Edward Miller, with a knife to the chest. And I don’t think Miss Carlson did that. Many women, when they kill, use poisons of one sort or another. Very few use the knife.”
“I think she fed Eddie a piece of cake when she met him in the alleyway. Do you remember the crumbs at his feet? That would have taken effect very quickly, and put him on the ground. All she’d have had to do was press the bayonet in, using her own weight. There wouldn’t have been a struggle.”
“No, I don’t recall seeing crumbs,” Scutt said, riffling through a stack of files on his desk until he found the one he wanted. “But the constable who searched the place found the mess she’d left in the kitchen, and noted the plant materials. Garden gloves also. Careful girl, this Sheila.”
“What’s the other thing I should remember?”
“While I don’t doubt Miss Carlson’s capability with poison, I am not convinced she killed Edward Miller.” He puffed, blew smoke, and inspected the pipe bowl. “Why? For this envelope? She had full access to his flat, she could have run away with it at any time. I still want to talk to Lieutenant Kazimierz about Miller’s death.”
“Kaz had nothing to do with it,” I said.
“How do you know? Have you spoken to him about it?”
“I don’t know where he is,” I said, avoiding the question and Scutt’s eyes at the same time.
“That is unfortunate. A Soviet official was beaten and nearly killed last night. Apparently, it was late, after that dreadful opera film. I’d like to know where Lieutenant Kazimierz went after he left the embassy. After he made his threats.” Scutt eyed me, working his cheeks, sucking in smoke and blowing it out, leaving a haze hanging over the files and papers on his desk.
“He was back at the hotel when I got in,” I said, remembering him sitting in the dark, liquor and pistol close by. “He was gone when I got up. Who took a beating?”
“Osip Nikolaevich Blotski, listed as an economic attache, but certainly a security operative. Someone used a length of pipe on him, one blow from behind, then went to work on his legs. Both broken in several places.”
“Where? Why did they wait so long to report it?” I wanted to say Kaz wouldn’t have done such a thing, but I knew that was what any friend would say. Scutt was looking through cop’s eyes, and I knew what that meant. Proof, not faith.
“Apparently Mr. Blotski went for a walk in Kensington Gardens after the opera, where he was set up by capitalist hooligans, or a rogue Polish emigre, or an economist of the Keynesian school.”
“Pardon?”
“Please excuse my little joke. Keynes is a British economist. No reason you should know him, and I doubt our Russian economic attache would either. He called for help, and another Russian, also out for a stroll, found him.”
“Sounds fishy,” I said.
“Indeed. But I saw the poor fellow a few hours ago, encased in a lower body cast, his head bandaged. They have him at the embassy. He was treated at a hospital and they brought him back before the plaster dried. His injuries are real, but I doubt they were inflicted in Kensington Gardens, as they told the story. We found no traces of blood or a struggle.”
“He was probably somewhere he shouldn’t have been. Or somewhere they didn’t want to admit to.”
“Yes, I agree. They took their time to get him under lock and key and come up with this story, cock and bull as it is.”
“Did anything else happen? Any more delivery trucks hijacked, anything like that?”
“Deliveries for the embassy, you mean? No, nothing’s been reported. They’re angry enough about this beating, following on the murder of Egorov. The Soviet ambassador, Ivan Maisky, complained directly to the foreign minister. That’s Anthony Eden, who has Churchill’s ear. So I must investigate, and Lieutenant Kazimierz is needed for questioning on this matter and the death of Edward Miller.”
“Are you seriously considering him a suspect?”
“I am seriously interested in speaking to him, Lieutenant Boyle. And I am growing increasingly interested in why he’s become so hard to find.”
“I’ll tell him when I see him,” I said as I stood, pushing the chair back with a harsh scrape. “And you ask MI5 what they paid Sheila Carlson to do.”
“I’ll ask them when I see them,” Scutt said, giving me my own back. He drew on his pipe, but the fire had died out. He fussed with it as I walked away. Glancing back, I saw him nod to someone, the pipe stem pointed at my back.