6 This instrument of surrender is written in German and English. The German version is the authentic text.
7 The decision of the German Command will be final if any doubt or dispute arises as to the meaning or interpretation of the surrender terms.
‘Himmler’s got the king locked up in the Tower of London,’ said Harry Woods. ‘But now the German Generals say the army should guard him.’
The other man busied himself with the papers on his desk and made no comment. He thumped the rubber stamp into the pad and then on to the docket, ‘Scotland Yard. 14 Nov. 1941’. It was incredible that the war had started only two years ago. Now it was over; the fighting finished, the cause lost. There was so much paperwork that two shoe boxes were being used for the overflow; Dolcis shoes, size six, patent leather pumps, high heels, narrow fitting. Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer knew only one woman who would buy such shoes: his secretary.
‘Well, that’s what people are saying,’ added Harry Woods, the elderly Sergeant who was the other half of the ‘murder team’.
Douglas Archer initialled the docket and tossed it into the tray. Then he looked across the room and nodded. It was a miserable office, its green and cream painted walls darkened by age and the small windows heavily leaded and smeared by sooty rain, so that the electric light had to be on all day.
‘Never do it on your own doorstep,’ advised Harry now that it was too late for advice. Anyone other than Harry, anyone less bold, less loquacious, less well-meaning would have stopped at that. But Harry disregarded the fixed smile on his senior partner’s face. ‘Do it with that blonde, upstairs in Registry. Or that big-titted German bird in Waffen-SS liaison – she puts it about they say – but your own secretary…’ Harry Woods pulled a face.
‘You spend too much time listening to what people say,’ said Douglas Archer calmly. ‘That’s your trouble, Harry.’
Harry Woods met the disapproving stare without faltering. ‘A copper can never spend too much time listening to what other people say, Super. And if you faced reality, you’d know. You may be a bloody wonderful detective, but you’re a shocking bad judge of character – and that’s your trouble.’
There weren’t many Detective Sergeants who would dare speak to Douglas Archer like that but these two men had known each other ever since 1920, when Harry Woods was a handsome young Police Constable with a Military Medal ribbon on his chest, and a beat littered with the broken hearts of pretty young housemaids and the hot meat pies of doting cooks. While Douglas Archer was a nine-year-old child proud to be seen talking to him.
When Douglas Archer became a green young Sub-Divisional Inspector, straight from the Hendon Police College, with no more experience of police work than comes from dodging the Proctors in the back streets of Oxford, it was Harry Woods who had befriended him. And that was at a time when such privileged graduates were given a hard time by police rank and file.
Harry knew everything a policeman had to know and more. He knew when each night-watchman brewed tea, and was never far from a warm boiler house when it rained. Harry Woods knew which large piles of rubbish would have money under them, never taking more than a third of it, lest the shopkeeper found some other way to pay the street-cleaners for their extra work. But that was a long time ago, before the generosity of the publicans and barmen of London’s West End had provided Harry with his ruddy face and expanded his waistline. And before Douglas Archer’s persistence got him into CID and then to Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad.
‘C Division have got a juicy one,’ said Harry Woods. ‘Everyone else is busy. Shall I get the murder bag ready?’
Douglas knew that his Sergeant expected him to respond in surprise, and he raised an eyebrow. ‘How the devil do you know about it?’
‘A flat in Shepherd Market, crammed with whisky, coffee, tea and so on, and Luftwaffe petrol coupons lying around on the table. The victim is a well-dressed man, probably a black-marketeer.’
‘You think so?’
Harry smiled. ‘Remember that black-market gang who killed the warehouse manager in Fulham…they were forging Luftwaffe petrol coupons. This could be the same mob.’
‘Harry. Are you going to tell me where all this information comes from, or are you going to solve the crime without getting out of your seat?’
‘The Station Sergeant at Savile Row is an old drinking pal. He just phoned me. A neighbour found the body and told the police.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ said Douglas Archer. ‘We’ll move slowly.’
Harry bit his lip. In his opinion Detective Superintendent Douglas Archer never did otherwise. Harry Woods was a policeman of the old school, scornful of paperwork, filing systems and microscopes. He liked to be talking, drinking, interrogating and making arrests.
Douglas Archer was a tall, thin, thirty-year-old. He was one of a new generation of detectives, who’d rejected the black jacket, pin-stripe trousers, roll-brim hat and stiff collar that was almost a uniform for the Murder Squad. Douglas favoured dark shirts and the sort of wide-brimmed hat he’d seen on George Raft in a Hollywood gangster film. In keeping with this, he’d taken to smoking small black cheroots as often as his tobacco ration permitted. He tried to light this one for the third time; the tobacco was of poor quality and it did not burn well. He looked for more matches and Harry threw a box across to him.
Douglas was a Londoner – with the quick wit and sophisticated self-interest for which Londoners are renowned – but like many who grow up in a fatherless household, he was introspective and remote. The soft voice and Oxford accent would have better suited some more cloistered part of the legal profession but he’d never regretted becoming a policeman. It was largely due to Harry, he realized that now. For the lonely little rich boy, in the big house on the square, Harry Woods, without knowing it, became a surrogate father.
‘And suppose the Luftwaffe petrol coupons are not forgeries; suppose they are real,’ said Douglas. ‘Then you can bet German personnel are involved, and the case will end up with the Feldgericht der Luftwaffe, Lincoln’s Inn. Waste of time our getting involved.’
‘This is murder,’ said Harry. ‘A few petrol coupons can’t change that.’
‘Don’t try to re-write the laws, Harry, there’s enough work enforcing the ones we’ve got. Any crimes involving Luftwaffe personnel, in even the smallest way, are tried by Luftwaffe courts.’
‘Not if we got over there right away,’ said Harry, running his hand back over hair that refused to be smoothed down. ‘Not if we wrung a confession out of one of them, sent copies to Geheime Feldpolizei and Kommandantur, and gave them a conviction on a plate. Oherwise these German buggers just quash these cases for lack of evidence, or post the guilty ones off to some soft job in another country.’
For Harry the fighting would never end. His generation, who’d fought and won in the filth of Flanders, would never come to terms with defeat. But Douglas Archer had not been a soldier. As long as the Germans let him get on with the job of catching murderers, he’d do his work as he’d always done it. He wished he could get Harry to see it his way.
‘I’d appreciate it, Harry, if you’d not allow your personal opinions to intrude into the preferred terminology.’ Douglas tapped the SIPO Digest. ‘And I’m far from convinced that they are soft on German personnel. Five executions last month; one of them a Panzer Division Major, with Knight’s Cross, who did