Eye Of The Needle

"Like what?"



"A U-boat, that's what."



"Bollocks," Smith said. The others merely laughed.



Slim dealt another hand. Smith won this time, but everyone else lost. "I'm a shilling up," Slim said. "I think I'll retire to that nice little cottage in Devon. We won't catch him, of course."



"The deserter?"



"The prisoner of war."



"Why not?"



Slim tapped his head. "Use your noddle. When the storm clears we'll be here and the U-boat will be at the bottom of the bay at the island. So who'll get there first? The Jerries."



"So why are we doing it?" Smith said.



"Because the people who are giving the orders are not as sharp as yours truly, Albert Parish. You may laugh!" He dealt another hand. "Place your bets. You'll see I'm right. What's that, Smithie, a penny? Gorblimey, don't go mad. I tell you what, I'll give odds of five to one we come back from Storm Island empty-handed. Any takers? Ten to one? Eh? Ten to one?"



"No takers," said Smith. "Deal the cards."



Slim dealt the cards.



Squadron-Leader Peterkin Blenkinsop (he had tried to shorten Peterkin to Peter but somehow the men always found out) stood ramrod-straight in front of the map and addressed the room. "We fly in formations of three," he began.



"The first three will take off as soon as weather permits. Our target," he touched the map with a pointer "is here. Storm Island. On arrival we will circle for twenty minutes at low altitudes, looking for a U-boat.



"After twenty minutes we return to base." He paused. "Those of you with a logical turn of mind will by now have deduced that, to achieve continuous cover, the second formation of three aircraft must take off precisely twenty minutes after the first, and so on. Any questions?"



Flying-Oflficer Longman said, "Sir?"



"Longman?"



"What do we do if we see this U-boat?"



"Strafe it, of course. Drop a few grenades. Cause trouble."



"But we're flying fighters, sir there's not much we can do to stop a U-boat. That's a job for battleships, isn't it?"



Blenkinsop sighed. "As usual, those of you who can think of better ways to win the war are invited to write directly to Mr Winston Churchill, number 10 Downing Street, London South-West-One. Now, are there any questions, as opposed to stupid criticisms?" There were no questions.



The later years of the war had produced a different kind of RAF officer, Bloggs thought, as he sat on a soft chair in the scramble room, close to the fire, listening to the rain drumming on the tin roof, and intermittently dozing. The Battle of Britain pilots had seemed incorrigibly cheerful, with their undergraduate slang, their perpetual drinking, their tirelessness and their cavalier disregard of the flaming death they faced up to every day. That schoolboy heroism had not been enough to carry them through subsequent years, as the war dragged on in places far from home, and the emphasis shifted from the dashing individuality of aerial dogfighting to the mechanical drudgery of bombing missions. They still drank and talked in jargon but they appeared older, harder, more cynical; there was nothing in them now of Tom Brown's Schooldays. Bloggs recalled what he had done to that poor common-or-garden housebreaker in the police cells at Aberdeen, and he realised: It's happened to us all.



They were very quiet. They sat all around him: some dozing, like himself; others reading books or playing board games. A bespectacled navigator in a corner was learning Russian.



As Bloggs surveyed the room with half-closed eyes, another pilot came in, and he thought immediately that this one had not been aged by the war. He had an old-fashioned wide grin and fresh face that looked as if it hardly needed shaving more than once a week. He wore his jacket open and carried his helmet. He made a beeline for Bloggs. "Detective-Inspector Bloggs?"



"That's me."



"Jolly rood show. I'm your pilot, Charles Calder."



"Fine." Bloggs shook hands.



"The kite's all ready, and the engine's as sweet as a bird. She's an amphibian, I suppose you know."



"Yes."



"Jolly good show. We'll land on the sea, taxi in to about ten yards from the shore, and put you off in a dinghy."



"Then you wait for me to come back."



"Indeed. Well, all we need now is the weather."



"Yes. Look, Charles, I've been chasing this fellow all over the country for six days and nights, so I'm catching up on my sleep while I've got the chance. You won't mind."



"Of course not!" The pilot sat down and produced a thick book from under his jacket. "Catching up on my education," he said. "War and Peace."



Bloggs said, "Jolly good show," and closed his eyes.



Percival Godliman and his uncle, Colonel Terry, sat side by side in the map room, drinking coffee and tapping the ash of their cigarettes into a fire bucket on the floor between them. Godliman was repeating himself. "I can't think of anything more we can do," he said.



"So you said."



"The corvette is already there, and the fighters are only a few minutes away, so the sub will come under fire as soon as she shows herself above the surface."



"If she's seen."



"The corvette will land a party as soon as possible. Bloggs will be there soon after that, and the Coastguard will bring up the rear."



"And none of them can be sure to get there in time."



"I know," Godliman said wearily. "We've done all we can, but is it enough?"



Terry lit another cigarette. "What about the inhabitants of the island?"



"Oh, yes. There are only two houses there. There's a sheep farmer and his wife in one-they have a young child-and an old shepherd lives in the other. The shepherd's got a radio-Royal Observer Corps-but we can't raise him... he probably keeps the set switched to Transmit. He's old."



"The farmer sounds promising," Terry said. "If he's a bright fellow he might even stop your spy."



Godliman shook his head. "The poor chap's in a wheelchair."



"Dear God, we don't get much luck, do we?"



"No," said Godliman. "Die Nadel seems to have cornered the market."



Lucy was becoming quite calm. The feeling crept over her gradually, like the icy spread of an anaesthetic, deadening her emotions and sharpening her wits. The times when she was momentarily paralysed by the thought that she was sharing a house with a murderer became fewer, and she was possessed by a cool-headed watchfulness that surprised her.



As she went about the household chores, sweeping around Henry as he sat in the living room reading a novel, she wondered how much he had noticed of the change in her feelings. He was very observant: he didn't miss much and there had been a definite wariness, if not outright suspicion, in that confrontation over the jeep. He must have known she was shaken by something. On the other hand, she had been upset before he left over Jo discovering them in bed together... he might think that that was all that had been wrong.



Still, she had the strangest feeling that he knew exactly what was in her mind but preferred to pretend that everything was all right.



She hung her laundry to dry on a clothes-horse in the kitchen. "I'm sorry about this," she said, "but I can't wait forever for the rain to stop."



He looked uninterestedly at the clothes. "That's all right," he said, and went back into the living room.



Scattered among the wet garments was a complete set of clean, dry clothes for Lucy.



For lunch she made a vegetable pie using an austerity recipe. She called Jo and Faber to the table and served up.



David's gun was propped in a corner of the kitchen. "I don't like having a loaded gun in the house," she said.



"I'll take it outside after lunch. The pie is good."



"I don't like it," Jo said.



Lucy picked up the gun and put it on top of the Welsh dresser. "I suppose it's all right as long as it's out of Jo's reach."



Jo said, "When I grow up I'm going to shoot Germans."



"This afternoon I want you to have a sleep," Lucy told him. She went into the living room and took one of David's sleeping pills from the bottle in the cupboard. Two of the pills were a heavy dose for a 12-stone man, so one quarter of one pill should be just enough to make a 3-stone boy sleep in the afternoon. She put the pill on her chopping block and halved it, then halved it again. She put a quarter on a spoon, crushed it with the back of another spoon and stirred the powder into a small glass of milk. She gave the glass to Jo. "I want you to drink every last drop." Faber watched the whole thing without comment.



After lunch she settled Jo on the sofa with a pile of books. He could not read, of course, but he had heard the stories read aloud so many times that he knew them by heart, and he could turn the pages of the books, looking at the pictures and reciting from memory the words on the page.



"Would you like some coffee?" she asked Faber.



"Real coffee?" he said, surprised.



"I've got a little hoard."



"Yes, please!"



He watched her making it. She wondered if he was afraid she might try to give him sleeping pills too. She could hear Jo's voice from the next room: "What I said was, 'Is anybody at home', called out Pooh very loudly. 'No!,' said a voice... and he laughed heartily, as he always did at that joke." Oh, God, Lucy thought, please don't let Jo be hurt... She poured the coffee and sat opposite Faber. He reached across the table and held her hand. For a while they sat in silence, sipping coffee and listening to the rain and Jo's voice. "Dow long does getting thin take?" asked Pooh anxiously. "'About a week, I should think.'



"'But I can't stay here for a week!'"



He began to sound sleepy, and then he stopped. Lucy went and covered him with a blanket. She picked up the book that had slipped from his fingers to the floor. It had been hers when she was a child, and she, too, knew the stories by heart. The flyleaf was inscribed in her mother's copperplate: For Lucy, aged four, with love from Mother and Father." She put the book on the sideboard.



She went back into the kitchen. "He's asleep."



"And...?" He held out his hand. She forced herself to take it. He stood up, and she went ahead of him upstairs and into the bedroom. She dosed the door, then pulled her sweater off over her head.



For a moment he stood still, looking at her breasts. Then he began to undress.



She got into the bed. This was the part she was not sure she could manage: pretending to enjoy his body when all she could feel was fear, revulsion and guilt.



He got into bed and embraced her.



In a short while she found she did not have to pretend after all.



For a few seconds she lay in the crook of his arm, wondering how it was that a man could do what he had done and love a woman as he had just done.



But what she said was, "Would you like a cup of tea?"



"No, thank you."



"Well, I would." She extricated herself and got up. When he moved, she put her hand on his flat belly and said, "No, you stay there. I'll bring the tea up. I haven't finished with you."



He grinned. "You're really making up for your four wasted years."



As soon as she was outside the room the smile dropped from her face like a mask. Her heart pounded in her chest as she went quickly down the stairs. In the kitchen she banged the kettle on the stove and rattled some china, then began to put on the clothes she had left hidden in the wet laundry. Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly button the trousers.



She heard the bed creak upstairs, and she stood frozen to the spot, listening, thinking, Stay there! But he was only shifting his position.



She was ready. She went into the living room. Jo was in a deep sleep, grinding his teeth. Dear God, don't let him wake up. She picked him up. He muttered in his sleep, something about Christopher Robin, and Lucy closed her eyes tightly and willed him to be quiet.



She wrapped the blanket tight around him, went back into the kitchen and reached up to the top of the Welsh dresser for the gun. It slipped from her grasp and fell to the shelf, smashing a plate and two cups. The crash was deafening. She stood fixed to the spot. "What happened?" Faber called from upstairs.



"I dropped a cup," she shouted. She couldn't camouflage the tremor in her voice.



The bed creaked again and there was a footfall on the floor above her. But it was too late now for her to turn back. She picked up the gun, opened the back door and, holding Jo to her, ran across to the barn. On the way she had a moment of panic: had she left the keys in the jeep? Surely she had, she always did.



She slipped in the wet mud and fell to her knees. She began to cry. For a second she was tempted to stay there, and let him catch her and kill her the way he had killed her husband, and then she remembered the child in her arms and she got up and ran.



She went into the barn and opened the passenger door of the jeep. She put Jo on the seat. He slipped sideways. Lucy sobbed, "Oh, God!" She pulled Jo upright, and this time he stayed that way. She ran around to the other side of the jeep and got in, dropping the gun onto the floor between her legs.



She turned the starter. It coughed and died.



"Please, please!'



She turned it again.



The engine roared into life.



Faber came out of the back door at a run.



Lucy raced the engine and threw the gearshift into forward. The jeep seemed to leap out of the barn. She rammed the throttle open.



The wheels spun in the mud for a second, then bit again. The jeep gathered speed with agonising languor. She steered away from him but he chased after the jeep, barefoot in the mud. She realised he was gaining on her.



She pushed the hand-throttle with all her strength, almost snapping the thin lever. She wanted to scream with frustration. He was only a yard or so away, almost even with her, running like an athlete, his arms going like pistons, his bare feet pounding the muddy ground, his cheeks blowing, his naked chest heaving.



The engine screamed, and there was a jerk as the automatic transmission changed up, then a new surge of power.



Lucy looked sideways again. He seemed to realise that he had almost lost her and flung himself forward in a dive. He got a grip on the door handle with his left hand, and brought the right hand across. Pulled by the jeep, he ran alongside for a few paces, his feet hardly touching the ground. Lucy stared at his face, so close to her; it was red with effort, twisted in pain; the cords of his powerful neck bulged with the strain.



Suddenly she knew what she had to do.



She took her hand off the wheel, reached through the open window and poked him in the eye with a long-nailed forefinger. He let go and fell away, his hands covering his face. The distance between him and the jeep increased rapidly. Lucy realised she was crying like a baby. Two miles from her cottage she saw the wheelchair.



It stood on the cliff top like a memorial, its metal frame and big rubber tyres impervious to the unending rain. Lucy approached it from a slight dip, and saw its black outline framed by the slate-grey sky and the boiling sea. It had a wounded look, like the hole left by an uprooted tree or a house with broken windows; as if its passenger had been wrenched from it. She recalled the first time she had seen it in the hospital. It had stood beside David's bed, new and shiny, and he had swung himself into it expertly and swished up and down the ward, showing off. "She's light as a feather-made of aircraft alloy," he had said with brittle enthusiasm, and sped off between the rows of beds. He had stopped at the far end of the ward with his back to her, and after a minute she went up behind him and she saw he was crying. She had knelt in front of him and held his hands, saying nothing. It was the last time she had been able to comfort him. There on the cliff top, the rain and the salt wind would soon blemish the alloy, and eventually it would rust and crumble, its rubber perished, its leather seat rotted away. Lucy drove past without slowing.



Three miles further on, when she was halfway between the two cottages, she ran out of petrol.



She fought down the panic and tried to think rationally as the jeep shuddered to a halt.



People walked at four miles an hour, she remembered reading somewhere. Henry was athletic, but he had hurt his ankle, and even though it seemed to have healed rapidly, the running he had done after the jeep must have hurt it. She must be a good hour ahead of him, she calculated.



(She had no doubt he would come after her; he knew as well as she did that there was a wireless transmitter in Tom's cottage.)



She had plenty of time. In the back of the jeep was a half-gallon can of fuel for just such occasions as this. She got out of the car, fumbled the can out of the back and opened the tank cap.



Then she thought again, and the inspiration that came to her surprised her by its fiendishness.



She replaced the cap and went to the front of the car. She checked that the ignition was off and opened the bonnet. She was no mechanic but she could identify the distributor cap and trace the leads to the engine. She lodged the fuel can securely beside the engine block and took off its cap.



There was a spark plug wrench in the tool kit. She took out a plug, checked again that the ignition was off, and put the plug in the mouth of the fuel can, securing it there with tape. Then she closed the hood.



When Henry came along he was certain to try to start the jeep. He would switch on, the starter motor would turn, the plug would spark and the half-gallon of petrol would explode.



She was not sure how much damage it would do, but she felt certain it would be no help.



An hour later she was regretting her cleverness.



Trudging through the mud, soaked to the skin, the sleeping child a dead weight over her shoulder, she wanted nothing more than to lie down and die. The booby trap seemed, on reflection, dubious and risky: gasoline would burn, not explode; if there was not enough air in the mouth of the can it might not even ignite; worst of all, Henry might suspect a trap, look under the bonnet, dismantle the bomb, pour the petrol into the tank and drive after her.



She contemplated stopping for a rest but decided that if she sat down she might never get up again.



She should have been in sight of Tom's house by now. She could not possibly have got lost even if she had not walked this path a dozen times before, the whole island just was not big enough to get lost on.



She recognised a thicket where she and Jo had once seen a fox. She must be about a mile from Tom's home. She would have seen it, except for the rain.



She shifted Jo to the other shoulder, switched the shotgun from one hand to the other, and forced herself to continue putting one foot in front of the other.



When the cottage finally became visible through the sheeting rain she could have cried with relief. She was nearer than she thought-perhaps a quarter of a mile.



Suddenly Jo seemed lighter, and although the last stretch was uphill-the only hill on the island-she seemed to cover it in no time at all.



"Tom!" she called out as she approached the front door. "Tom, Tom!" She heard the answering bark of the dog.



She went in by the front door. "Tom, quickly!" Bob dodged excitedly about her ankles, barking furiously. Tom couldn't be far away; he was probably in the outhouse. Lucy went upstairs and laid Jo on Tom's bed.



The wireless was in the bedroom, a complex-looking construction of wires and dials and knobs. There was something that looked like a Morse key; she touched it experimentally and it gave a beep. A thought came to her from distant memory, something from a schoolgirl thriller-the Morse code for S.O.S. She touched the key again: three short, three long, three short.



Where was Tom?



She heard a noise, and ran to the window. The jeep was making its way up the hill to the house.



Henry had found the booby trap and used the petrol to fill the tank. Where was Tom?



She rushed out of the bedroom, intending to go and bang on the outhouse door, but at the head of the stairs she paused. Bob was standing in the open doorway of the other bedroom, the empty one.



"Come here, Bob," she said. The dog stood his ground, barking. She went to him and bent to pick him up. Then she saw Tom.



He lay on his back, on the bare floorboards of the vacant bedroom, his eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling, his cap upside down on the floor behind his head. His jacket was open, and there was a small spot of blood on the shirt underneath. Close to his hand was a crate of whisky, and Lucy found herself thinking irrelevantly, I didn't know he drank that much. She felt his pulse.



He was dead.



Think. think.



Yesterday Henry had returned to her cottage battered, as if he had been in a fight. That must have been when he killed David. Today he had come here, to Tom's cottage, "to fetch David," he had said. But of course he had known David was not there. So why had he made the journey? Obviously, to kill Tom. Now she was completely alone.



She took hold of the dog by its collar and dragged it away from the body of its master. On impulse she returned and buttoned the jacket over the small stiletto wound that had killed Tom. Then she closed the door on him, returned to the front bedroom and looked out of the window.



The jeep drew up in front of the house and stopped. And Henry got out.



Lucy's distress call was heard by the corvette.



"Captain, sir," said Sparks. "I just picked up an S.O.S. from the island."



The captain frowned. "Nothing we can do until we can land a boat," he said.



"Did they say anything else?"



"Not a thing, sir. It wasn't even repeated."



"Nothing we can do," he said again. "Send a signal to the mainland reporting it. And keep listening."



"Aye, aye, sir."



It was also picked up by an MI8 listening post on top of a Scottish mountain. The R/T operator, a young man with abdominal wounds who had been invalided out of the RAF, was trying to pick up German Navy signals from Norway, and he ignored the S.O.S. However, he went off duty five minutes later, and he mentioned it to his commanding officer...



"It was only broadcast once," he said. "Probably a fishing vessel off the Scottish coast-there might well be the odd small ship in trouble in this weather."



"Leave it with me," the C.O. said. "I'll give the Navy a buzz. And I suppose I'd better inform Whitehall. Protocol, you know."



"Thank you, sir."



At the Royal Observer Corps station there was something of a panic. Of course, S.O.S. was not the signal an observer was supposed to give when he sighted enemy aircraft, but they knew that Tom was old, and who could say what he might send if he got excited? So the air raid sirens were sounded, and all other posts were alerted, and antiaircraft guns were rolled out all over the east coast of Scotland and the radio operator tried frantically to raise Tom.



No German bombers came, of course, and the War Office wanted to know why a full alert had been sounded when there was nothing in the sky but a few bedraggled geese. So they were told.



The Coastguard heard it too.



They would have responded to it if it had been on the correct frequency, and if they had been able to establish the position of the transmitter, and if that position had been within reasonable distance of the coast. As it was, they guessed from the fact that the signal came over on the Observer Corps frequency that it originated from Old Tom, and they were already doing all they could about that situation, whatever the he11 that situation was.



When the news reached the below-deck card game on the cutter in the harbour at Aberdeen, Slim dealt another hand of blackjack and said, I'll tell you what's happened. Old Tom's caught the prisoner of war and he's sitting on his head waiting for the army to arrive and take the bugger away."