‘This music master who does the lessons – he’s very young, wounded in the war and everything, so I wouldn’t like to complain about him,’ she paused, ‘but he was asking the boys a lot of questions, and I knew you wouldn’t like it.’
Douglas was suddenly wide awake. ‘Questions? What sort of questions?’
‘Yesterday afternoon at the music lesson. They have a proper gramophone and loudspeakers, and everything to play the music – it’s music appreciation really – and he has someone to work it, that’s why it costs the extra shilling.’
Douglas nodded. ‘What’s his name?’
‘I don’t know, Mr Archer. Your Doug told me afterwards that the teacher was asking about you – what time you got home and so on. I didn’t want to question Douggie too much about it. You know how sensitive he is, and what with losing his mother…sometimes I could cry for the little love.’ She smiled suddenly and shook her head. ‘I’m probably being a silly old woman. I should never have worried you about it.’
‘You did right,’ said Douglas. ‘Questions, you say?’
‘Oh, nothing like that – rest your mind. He’s not that sort of man at all. I can spot those sort of men a mile off.’
‘What then?’
‘I think he wanted to know if you liked the Germans.’ She stood up and straightened her hair, looking in the mirror. ‘I don’t want to get either of them into trouble. And I know you wouldn’t either. But if something happened to you or your Douggie, how would I be able to live with myself if I’d not told you?’
‘You’re a sensible woman, Mrs Sheenan. I wish I had a few more police officers as sensible as you are. Now tell me more about these two teachers.’
‘Only one’s a teacher, the other just helps with the music. They’re from the war – officers I should think, both wounded; one has lost his arm.’
‘Which arm?’
‘The right one. And he used to play the piano before the war. Isn’t it a terrible thing, and he can’t be more than twenty-five, if that.’
‘I’ll have that bath now, Mrs Sheenan. You get the boys ready and I’ll take you to the school in about fifteen minutes’ time.’
She got the children’s raincoats from the cupboard. One of them was threadbare. ‘Bob’s raincoat was stolen from the cloakroom last week. He’s back to wearing this old one again. I’ve told the boys to take their coats into the classroom in future. There are some terrible people about, Mr Archer, but there, you must know that better than any of us.’
‘This fellow had a false arm, you say?’
‘No, his arm is missing, poor boy.’
When Douglas returned to Scotland Yard, having dropped the others at the school, he sought out a young police officer named Jimmy Dunn, and got permission to use him on plain-clothes duty. PC Dunn was keen to get into CID. He’d proved a good detective for Archer on previous cases.
‘Find out what you can about this music teacher,’ Douglas said. ‘Political? Sexual? Someone with a grudge against coppers? I don’t want to do it myself because it sounds like he’d recognize me.’
‘Leave it to me, sir,’ said Dunn who could hardly wait to get started.
‘Might be just a crank,’ said Douglas. ‘Might be nothing at all.’
Happily, Jimmy Dunn began tidying up his desk. He only tolerated his job with Assistant Commissioner Administration because his office on the mezzanine was so close to the Murder Squad and Flying Squad teams.
‘Oh, and Jimmy…’ said Douglas as he was turning to leave. ‘There’s a million to one chance that this one-armed fellow might be connected with the Peter Thomas murder. I think you’d better draw a pistol from our friends downstairs. I’ll give you a chit.’
‘A pistol?’
Douglas had to smile. ‘Take something small, Jimmy, something you can tuck away out of sight. And keep it out of sight, unless you have to defend yourself. We can’t be too careful nowadays. There are too many guns in this town at present, and there’s the devil of a row if someone loses one.’
In the new office on the other side of the building Douglas found Harry Woods valiantly telling lies to all-comers to cover Douglas’s absence. General Kellerman’s office had been asking for Douglas since nine o’clock that morning.
From Whitehall came the constant sound of workmen hammering. Berlin had announced that, to celebrate the friendship between Nazi Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a week of Kameradschaft would be celebrated in all parts of the two vast empires. It was to begin the following Sunday, when in London, units of the Red Army and Navy, complete with band and choir, were to combine with the Wehrmacht for a march through town.
The whole route was being decorated, but Whitehall and Parliament Square were coming in for special treatment. As well as hundreds of flags, there were heraldic shields bearing entwined hammer, sickle and swastika surmounting a small Cross of St George which had now replaced the Union Flag for all official purposes in the occupied zone.
Hitler had provided the Red Fleet with anchorages at Rosyth and Scapa Flow as well as Invergordon. Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry said that this was a natural outcome of the bonds of friendship that drew these two great peoples together. Cynics said it was Hitler’s way of putting some Russians between him and the Americans.
In spite of all the extra work that the German/Soviet Friendship Week would give Scotland Yard, General Kellerman remained his usual genial unhurried self. Even when he returned from a conference at the Feld Kommandantur with a briefcase loaded with FK-Befehle he was able to laugh about the way these reams of printed orders about the Friendship Week required the full-time attention of a roomful of clerks.
The proliferating orders coming from the Military Commander GB (and the Military Administration Chief GB who supervised the British puppet government and the German officials) were a sign of growing fear that the Friendship Week might become the occasion for violent demonstration. And yet the intense rivalry – not to say hatred – that the German army Generals felt for Himmler’s SS organization, and police affiliates, determined the army to ask from General Kellerman no more than the normal police requirements.
‘What do you think?’ General Kellerman asked Douglas. ‘You can be quite frank with me, Superintendent, you know that.’
Kellerman spread out on his desk that morning’s newspapers. They all headlined the Friendship Week announcement from Berlin. There was a certain irony in the way that the official Nazi newspaper in London, Die Englische Zeitung, did little more than print the official announcement verbatim, within a decorative box on the front page. The Daily Worker, on the other hand, devoted four pages to it – ‘Britain’s Workers Say Forward’ with photos of the Russian and British officials who would be present at the saluting base. Stalin had already penned a suitable message. Those who remembered the congratulations Stalin sent to Hitler after the fall of France found his latest missive no less fulsome.
‘Will there be trouble?’ asked Kellerman.
‘From whom?’ said Douglas.
Kellerman chuckled. ‘The regime has enemies, Superintendent.’ He scratched his head as if trying to remember who they were. ‘And not all of them are on the General Staff.’ Kellerman smiled, enjoying his joke. Douglas was not sure whether he was expected to participate in this gross defamation of the German high command. He nodded as if not quite understanding.
‘There will be a lot of extra work for us,’ said Kellerman. ‘Berlin insists that