Signal Red (2010) by Robert Ryan

Author:Robert Ryan [Ryan, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-01-14T19:08:41+00:00

Commander George Hatherill fell asleep soon after they settled into their seats on the train to Paddington, and seemed determined to snooze all the way to London. Billy Naughton was left to gaze out of the window at an astonishingly verdant landscape. The cold winter had given way to a wet spring and now a damp summer. 1963: The Year of Crappy Weather. Farmers and holidaymakers grumbled, but fields and hedgerows seemed to glow a deep, happy green.

Billy tried to digest all that had gone on while he had been in Cornwall. Hatherill had refused to answer questions about how he obtained the Oxo tin, whether Billy had been personally targeted, or if it was a general sweep. He simply said that the 'old way of doing things' was going to come to an end. He didn't want young coppers like Billy caught up in it.

The TM had admitted that his own record was not without blemishes. Apparently, he had been wrong about the Free French in London: he had reported that they had interrogated one of their own men, suspected of being a spy, who subsequently hanged himself. He now believed that the French had had a torture chamber in St James's and had behaved like Nazis. 'But it was war. And they were our allies. What good would the scandal have done? I wanted to believe them, so I didn't follow my instincts. I have regretted that ever since. They murdered some of their own. I am sure of it now.'

He also lamented some of his persecutions of the queers. 'You don't appreciate how angry Burgess and Maclean made us. Those, those . . . buggers. So we overstepped the mark sometimes, I think. Putting out agents provocateurs, fishing for homos. Not a decent use of police resources, in retrospect. They can't all be Commie spies, can they? The queers, I mean.'

But misjudgements in his own life, he went on, like the

Duke Street torture chamber, meant he always gave coppers such as Trellick a second chance. Never a third, mind. But a good second.

Then he had settled down and fallen asleep, apparently content. Cornwall hadn't given him his Last Big Case, but it had given him the quiet satisfaction of solving a mystery and perhaps that of saving a young policeman's career, too.

Billy had assumed he would be severed from Duke, and said so, but Hatherill had said no. He had to confront temptation and deal with it. Running away was no answer. And Len's turn would come, the day when he had his hand in the wrong till.

Billy took himself off to the dining car for breakfast, treating himself to ham, egg and chips. He felt strangely calm, quietly elated almost. It was as if he, as well as the Cornish PC, had been given a fresh start. From now on, he would be a good copper. From now on, he would do the right thing.

As arranged, Tony dropped off the supplies with Jimmy White, who was acting as quartermaster, storing all the gear they needed in lock-ups across London.

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