Eye Of The Needle

Bloggs looked at the sheet of paper. "An overcoat was stolen and a wet jacket left in its place."



Anthony shrugged. "Could mean anything."



"No cars stolen?"



"Nor boats, nor donkeys," Anthony replied. "We don't get many car thefts these days. Cars are easy to come by; it's petrol people steal."



"I felt sure he'd steal a car in Liverpool," Bloggs said. He thumped his knee in frustration. "A bicycle isn't much use to him, surely."



"I think we should follow it up, anyway," Anthony pressed. "It's our best lead."



"All right. But meanwhile, double-check the burglaries to see whether food or clothing was pinched. The victims might not have noticed at first. Show Faber's picture to the rape victim, too. And keep checking all crimes. Can you fix me transport to Preston?"



"I'll get you a car," Anthony said.



"How long will it take to get details of this third burglary?"



"They're probably interviewing at this minute," Anthony said. "By the time you reach the signal box I should have the complete picture."



"Don't let them drag their feet." Bloggs reached for his coat. "I'll check with you the minute I get there."



"Anthony? This is Bloggs. I'm at the signal box."



"Don't waste any time there. The third burglary was your man."



"Sure?'



"Unless there are two buggers running around threatening people with stiletto knives."



"Who?"



"Two old ladies living alone in a little cottage."



"Oh, God. Dead?"



"Not unless they died of excitement."



"Eh?"



"Get over there. You'll see what I mean."



"I'm on my way."



It was the kind of cottage that is always inhabited by two elderly ladies living alone. It was small and square and old, and around the door grew a wild rose bush fertilised by thousands of pots of used tea leaves. Rows of vegetables sprouted tidily in a little front garden with a trimmed hedge. There were pink-and-white curtains at the leaded windows, and the gate creaked. The front door had been painted painstakingly by an amateur, and its knocker was made from a horseshoe.



Bloggs' knock was answered by an octogenarian with a shotgun. He said, "Good morning. I'm from the police."



"No, you're not," she said. "They've been already. Now get going before I blow your head off."



Bloggs regarded her. She was less than five feet tall, with thick white hair in a bun and a pale, wrinkled face. Her hands were matchstick-thin, but her grasp on the shotgun was firm. The pocket of her apron was full of clothes-pegs. Bloggs looked down at her feet, and saw that she was wearing a man's working boots. He said: 'The police you saw this morning were local. I'm from Scotland Yard."



"How do I know that?" she said.



Bloggs turned and called to his police driver. The constable got out of the car and came to the gate. Bloggs said to the old lady, "Is the uniform enough to convince you?"



"All right," she said, and stood aside for him to enter.



He stepped down into a low-ceilinged room with a tiled floor. The room was crammed with heavy, old furniture, and every surface was decorated with ornaments of china and glass. A small coal fire burned in the grate. The place smelled of lavender and cats.



A second old lady got out of a chair. She was like the first, but about twice as wide. Two cats spilled from her lap as she rose. She said, "Hello, I'm Emma Parton, my sister is Jessie. Don't take any notice of that shotgun-it's not loaded, thank God. Jessie loves drama. Will you sit down? You look so young to be a policeman. I'm surprised Scotland Yard is interested in our little robbery. Have you come from London this morning? Make the boy a cup of tea, Jessie."



Bloggs sat down. "If we're right about the identity of the burglar, he's a fugitive from justice," he said.



"I told you!" Jessie said. "We might have been done in; slaughtered in cold blood!"



"Don't be silly," Emma said. She turned to Bloggs. "He was such a nice man."



"Tell me what happened," Bloggs said.



"Well, I'd gone out the back," Emma began. "I was in the hen coop, hoping for some eggs. Jessie was in the kitchen."



"He surprised me," Jessie interrupted. "I didn't have time to go for me gun."



"You see too many cowboy films," Emma admonished her.



"They're better than your love films, all tears and kisses."



Bloggs took the picture of Faber from his wallet. "Is this the man?"



Jessie scrutinised it. "That's him."



"Aren't you clever?" Emma marvelled.



"If we were so clever we'd have caught him by now," Bloggs said. "What did he do?"



Jessie said, "He held a knife to my throat and said, "One false move and I'll slit your gizzard. I believe he meant it."



"Oh, Jessie, you told me he said 'I won't harm you if you do as I say.'"



"Words to that effect, Emma!"



Bloggs said, "What did he want?"



"Food, a bath, dry clothes, and a car. Well, we gave him the eggs, of course. We found some clothes that belonged to Jessie's late husband, Norman."



"Would you describe them?"



"Yes. A blue donkey jacket, blue overalls, a check shirt. And he took poor Norman's car. I don't know how we'll be able to go to the pictures without it. That's our only vice, you know, the pictures."



"What sort of car?"



"A Morris. Norman bought it in 1924. It's served us well, that little car."



Jessie said, "He didn't get his hot bath, though!"



"Well," Emma said, "I had to explain to him that two ladies living alone can hardly have a man taking a bath in their kitchen..."



Jessie said: "You'd rather have your throat slit than see a man in his combinations, wouldn't you, you silly fool."



Bloggs said, "What did he say when you refused?"



"He laughed," Emma said. "But I think he understood our position."



Bloggs could not help but smile. "I think you're very brave," he said.



"I don't know about that, I'm sure."



"So he left here in a 1924 Morris, wearing overalls and a blue jacket. What time was that?"



"About half-past nine."



Bloggs absently stroked a red tabby cat. It blinked and purred. "Was there much petrol in the car?"



"A couple of gallons but he took our coupons."



"How do you ladies qualify for a petrol rations?"



"Agricultural purposes," Emma said defensively. She blushed.



Jessie snorted. "And we're isolated, and we're elderly. Of course we qualify."



"We always go to the corn stores at the same time as the pictures," Emma added. "We don't waste petrol."



Bloggs smiled and held up a hand. "All right, don't worry. Rationing isn't exactly my department. How fast does the car go?"



Emma said, "We never exceed thirty miles per hour."



Bloggs looked at his watch. "Even at that speed he could be seventy-five miles away by now." He stood up. "I must phone the details to Liverpool. You don't have a telephone, do you?"



"No."



"What kind of Morris is it?"



"A Cowley. Norman used to call it a Bullnose."



"colour?"



"Grey."



"Registration number?"



"MLN 29."



Bloggs wrote it all down.



Emma said, "Will we ever get our car back, do you think?"



"I expect so but it may not be in very good condition. When someone is driving a stolen car he generally doesn't take good care of it." He walked to the door. "I hope you catch him," Emma called.



Jessie saw him out. She was still clutching the shotgun. At the door she caught Bloggs' sleeve and said in a stage whisper, "Tell me, what is he? Escaped convict? Murderer? Rapist?"



Bloggs looked down at her. Her small green eyes were bright with excitement. He bent his head to speak quietly in her ear. "Don't tell a soul," he murmured, "but he's a German spy."



She giggled with delight. Obviously, she thought, he saw the same films she did.



Faber crossed the Sark Bridge and entered Scotland shortly after midday. He passed the Sark Toll Bar House, a low building with a signboard announcing that it was the first house in Scotland and a tablet above the door bearing some legend about marriages which he could not read. A quarter of a mile further on he understood, when he entered the village of Gretna; he knew this was a place runaways came to get married.



The roads were still damp from the early rain, but the sun was drying them rapidly. Signposts and nameboards had been re-erected since the relaxation of invasion precautions, and Faber sped through a series of small lowland villages: Kirkpatrick, Kirtlebridge, Ecclefechan. The open countryside was pleasant, the green moor sparkling in the sunshine.



He had stopped for petrol in Carlisle. The pump attendant, a middle-aged woman in an oily apron, had not asked any awkward questions. Faber had filled the tank and the spare can fixed to the offside running board.



He was very pleased with the little two-seater. It would still do fifty miles an hour, despite its age.



The four-cylinder, 1548 cc side-valve engine worked smoothly and tirelessly as he climbed and descended the Scottish hills. The leather upholstered bench seat was comfortable. He squeezed the bulb horn to warn a straying sheep of his approach.



He went through the little market town of Lockerbie, crossed the River Annan by the picturesque Johnstone Bridge, and began the ascent to Beattock Summit. He found himself using the three-speed gearbox more and more.



He had decided not to take the most direct route to Aberdeen, via Edinburgh and the coast road. Much of Scotland's east coast, either side of the Firth of Forth, was a restricted area. Visitors were prohibited from a ten-mile-wide strip of land. Of course, the authorities could not seriously police such a long border. Nevertheless, Faber was less likely to be stopped and questioned while he stayed outside the security zone. He would have to enter it eventually-later rather than sooner-and he turned his mind to the story he would tell if he were interrogated. Private motoring for pleasure had virtually ceased in the last couple of years because of the ever-stricter petrol rationing, and people who had cars for essential journeys were liable to be prosecuted for going a few yards off their necessary route for personal reasons. Faber had read of a famous impresario jailed for using petrol supplied for agricultural purposes to take several actors from a theatre to the Savoy hotel. Endless propaganda told people that a Lancaster bomber needed 2,000 gallons to get to the Ruhr. Nothing would please Faber more than to waste petrol that might otherwise be used to bomb his homeland in normal circumstances; but to be stopped now, with the information he had taped to his chest, and arrested for a rationing violation, would be an unbearable irony.



It was difficult... Most traffic was military, but he had no military papers. He could not claim to be delivering essential supplies because he had nothing in the car to deliver. He frowned. Who travelled, these days? Sailors on leave, officials, rare holidaymakers, skilled workmen... That was it. He would be an engineer, a specialist in some esoteric field like high-temperature gearbox oils, going to solve a manufacturing problem in a factory at Inverness. If he were asked which factory, he would say it was classified. (His fictitious destination had to be a long way from the real one so that he would never be questioned by someone who knew for certain there was no such factory.) He doubted whether consulting engineers ever wore overalls like the ones he had stolen from the elderly sisters, but anything was possible in wartime. Having figured this out, he felt he was reasonably safe from any random spot checks. The danger of being stopped by someone who was looking specifically for Henry Faber, fugitive spy, was another problem. They had that picture. They knew his face. He feared that before long they would have a description of the car in which he was travelling. He did not think they would set up roadblocks, as they had no way of guessing where he was headed; but he was sure that every policeman in the land would be on the lookout for the grey Morris Cowley Bullnose, registration number MLN 29.



If he were spotted in the open country, he would not be captured immediately; country policemen had bicycles, not cars. But a policeman would telephone his headquarters, and cars would be after Faber within minutes. If he saw a policeman, he decided, he would have to ditch this car, steal another, and divert from his planned route. However, in the sparsely populated Scottish lowlands there was a good chance he could get all the way to Aberdeen without passing a country policeman. The towns would be different. There the danger of being chased by a police car was very great. He would be unlikely to escape; his car was old and relatively slow, and the police were generally good drivers. His best chance would be to get out of the vehicle and hope to lose himself in crowds or backstreets. He contemplated ditching the car and stealing another each time he was forced to enter a major town. The problem there was that he would be leaving a trail a mile wide for MI5 to follow. Perhaps the best solution was a compromise: he would drive into the towns but try to use only the backstreets. He looked at his watch. He would reach Glasgow around dusk, and thereafter he would benefit from the darkness.



Well, it wasn't very satisfactory, but the only way to be totally safe was not to be a spy.



As he topped the thousand-foot-high Beattock Summit, it began to rain. Faber stopped the car and got out to raise the canvas roof. The air was oppressively warm. Faber looked up. The sky had clouded over very quickly. Thunder and lightning were promised.



As he drove on he discovered some of the little car's shortcomings. Wind and rain leaked in through several tears in the canvas roof, and the small wiper sweeping the top half of the horizontally divided windscreen provided only a tunnel-like view of the road ahead. As the terrain became progressively more hilly the engine note began to sound faintly ragged. It was hardly surprising: the twenty-year-old car was being pushed hard.



The shower ended. The threatened storm had not arrived, but the sky remained dark and the atmosphere foreboding.



Faber passed through Crawford, nestling in green hills; Abington, a church and a post office on the west bank of the River Clyde; and Lesmahagow, on the edge of a heathery moor.



Half an hour later he reached the outskirts of Glasgow. As soon as he entered the built-up area he turned north off the main road, hoping to circumvent the city. He followed a succession of minor roads, crossing the major arteries into the city's east side, until he reached Cumbernauld Road where he turned east again and sped out of the city.



It had been quicker than he expected. His luck was holding.



He was on the A80 road, passing factories, mines and farms. More Scots place-names drifted in and out of his consciousness: Millerston, Stepps, Muirhead, Mollinburn, Condorrat. His luck ran out between Cumbernauld and Stirling.



He was accelerating along a straight stretch of road, slightly downhill, with open fields on either side. As the speedometer needle touched forty-five there was a sudden very loud noise from the engine; a heavy rattle, like the sound of a large chain pulling over a cog. He slowed to thirty, but the noise did not get perceptibly quieter. Clearly some large and important piece of the mechanism had failed. Faber listened carefully. It was either a cracked ballbearing in the transmission or a hole in a big end. Certainly it was nothing so simple as a blocked carburetor or a dirty spark plug; nothing that could be repaired outside a workshop. He pulled up and looked under the bonnet. There seemed to be a good deal of oil everywhere, but otherwise he could see no clues. He got back behind the wheel and drove off. There was a definite loss of power, but at least the car would still go.



Three miles further on steam began to billow out of the radiator. Faber realised that the car would soon stop altogether. He looked for a place to dump it and found a mud track leading off the main road, presumably to a farm. One hundred yards from the road the track curved behind a blackberry bush. Faber parked the car close to the bush and killed the engine. The hiss of escaping steam gradually subsided. He got out and locked the door. He felt a twinge of regret for Emma and Jessie, who would find it very difficult to get their car repaired before the end of the war.



He walked back to the main road. From there, the car could not be seen. It might be a day or even two before the abandoned vehicle aroused suspicion. By then, Faber thought, I may be in Berlin.



He began to walk. Sooner or later he would hit a town where he could steal another vehicle. He was doing well enough: it was less than twenty-four hours since he had left London, and he still had a whole day before the U-boat arrived at the rendezvous at six P.M. tomorrow.



The sun had set long ago, and now darkness fell suddenly. Faber could hardly see. Fortunately there was a painted white line down the middle of the road-a safety innovation made necessary by the blackout-and he was just able to follow it. Because of the night silence he would hear an oncoming car in ample time.



In fact only one car passed him. He heard its deep-throated engine in the distance, and went off the road a few yards to lie out of sight until it had gone. It was a large car, a Vauxhall Ten, Faber guessed, and it was travelling at speed. He let it go by, then got up and resumed walking. Twenty minutes later he saw it again, parked by the roadside. He would have taken a detour across the field if he had noticed the car in time, but its lights were off and its engine silent and he almost bumped into it in the darkness.



Before he could consider what to do, a flashlight shone up toward him from under the car's bonnet, and a voice said: "I say, is anybody there?"



Faber moved into the beam and asked, "Having trouble?"



"I'll say."



The light was pointed down, and as Faber moved closer he could see by the reflected light the moustached face of a middle-aged man in a double-breasted coat. In his other hand the man held, rather uncertainly, a large wrench, seeming unsure of what to do with it. Faber looked at the engine. "What's wrong?"



"Loss of power," the man said, pronouncing it "Lorse of par."



"One moment she was going like a top, the next she started to hobble. I'm afraid I'm not much of a mechanic." He shone the light at Faber again. "Are you?" he finished hopefully.



"Not exactly," Faber said, "but I know a disconnected lead when I see one." He took the flashlight from the man, reached down into the engine and plugged the stray lead back onto the cylinder head. "Try her now." The man got into the car and started the engine. "Perfect!" he shouted over the noise. "You're a genius! Hop in."



It crossed Faber's mind that this might be an elaborate MI5 trap, but he dismissed the thought; in the unlikely event they knew where he was, why should they tread softly? They could as easily send twenty policemen and a couple of armoured cars to pick him up. He got in.



The driver pulled away and moved rapidly up through the gears until the car was travelling at a good speed. Faber made himself comfortable. The driver said, "By the way, I'm Richard Porter."



Faber thought quickly of the identity card in his wallet. "James Baker."



"How do you do. I must have passed you on the road back there. Didn't see you."



Faber realised the man was apologising for not picking him up; everyone picked up hitchhikers since the petrol shortage. "It's okay," Faber said. "I was probably off the road, behind a bush, answering a call of nature. I did hear a car."



"Have you come far?" Porter offered a cigar.



"It's good of you, but I don't smoke," Faber said. "Yes, I've come from London."



"Hitchhiked all the way?"



"No. My car broke down in Edinburgh. Apparently it requires a spare part which isn't in stock, so I had to leave it at the garage."



"Hard luck. Well, I'm going to Aberdeen, so I can drop you anywhere along the way."



This was indeed a piece of good fortune. He closed his eyes and pictured the map of Scotland. "That's marvellous," he said. "I'm going to Banff, so Aberdeen would be a great help. Except I was planning to take the high road... I didn't get myself a pass. Is Aberdeen a restricted area?"



"Only the harbour," Porter said. "Anyway, you needn't worry about that sort of thing while you're in my car-I'm a J.P. and a member of the Watch Committee. How's that?"



Faber smiled in the darkness. "Thank you. Is that a full-time job? Being a magistrate, I mean?"



Porter put a match to his cigar and puffed smoke. "Not really. I'm semi-retired, y'know. Used to be a solicitor, until they discovered my weak heart."



"Ah." Faber tried to put some sympathy into his voice.



"Hope you don't mind the smoke?" Porter waved the fat cigar.



"Not a bit."



"What takes you to Banff?"



"I'm an engineer. There's a problem in a factory... actually, the job is sort of classified."



Porter held up his hand. "Don't say another word. I understand." There was a silence for a while. The car flashed through several towns. Porter obviously knew the road very well to drive so fast in the blackout. The big car gobbled up the miles. Its smooth progress was soporific. Faber smothered a yawn.



"Damn, you must be tired," Porter said. "Silly of me. Don't be too polite to have a nap."



"Thank you," said Faber. "I will." He closed his eyes.



The motion of the car was like the rocking of a train, and Faber had his arrival nightmare again, only this time it was slightly different. Instead of dining on the train and talking politics with the fellow-passenger, he was obliged for some unknown reason to travel in the coal tender, sitting on his suitcase radio with his back against the hard iron side of the truck. When the train arrived at Waterloo, everyone including the disembarking passengers was carrying a little duplicated photograph of Faber in the running team, and they were all looking at each other and comparing the faces they saw with the face in the picture. At the ticket barrier the collector took his shoulder and said: "You're the man in the photo, aren't you?" Faber found himself speechless. All he could do was stare at the photograph and remember the way he had run to win that cup. God, how he had run; he had peaked a shade too early, started his final burst a quarter of a mile sooner than he had planned, and for the last 500 metres he'd wanted to die and now perhaps he would die, because of that photograph in the ticket collector's hand... The collector was saying, "Wake up! Wake up!" and suddenly Faber was back in Richard Porter's Vauxhall Ten, and it was Porter who was telling him to wake up.



His right hand was half way to his left sleeve, where the stiletto was sheathed, in the split-second before he remembered that as far as Porter was concerned James Baker was an innocent hitchhiker. His hand dropped, and he relaxed.



"You wake up like a soldier," Porter said with amusement. "This is Aberdeen."



Faber noted that "soldier" had been pronounced "sol-juh," and recalled that Porter was a magistrate and a member of the police authority. Faber looked at the man in the dull light of early day: Porter had a red face and a waxed moustache; his camel-coloured overcoat looked expensive. He was wealthy and powerful in this town, Faber guessed. If he were to disappear he would be missed almost immediately. Faber decided not to kill him.



Faber said, "Good morning."



He looked out of the window at the granite city. They were moving slowly along a main street with shops on either side. There were several early workers about, all moving purposefully in the same direction: fishermen, Faber reckoned. It seemed a cold, windy place.



Porter said, "Would you like to have a shave and a bit of breakfast before you continue your journey? You're welcome to come to my place."



"You're very kind-"



"Not at all. If it weren't for you I should still be on the A80 at Stirling, waiting for a garage to open."



"-But I won't, thank you. I want to get on with the journey."



Porter did not insist, and Faber suspected that he was relieved not to have his offer taken up. The man said, "In that case, I'll drop you at George Street-that's the start of the A96, and it's a straight road to Banff." A moment later he stopped the car at a corner. "Here you are."



Faber opened the door. "Thanks for the lift."



"A pleasure." Porter offered a handshake. "Good luck!"



Faber got out, closed the door and the car pulled away. He had nothing to fear from Porter, he thought; the man would go home and sleep all day, and by the time he realised he had helped a fugitive it would be too late to do anything about it.