Bottled Spider Read online

  ‘We’ve got to keep an eye on that area,’ Big Toe told them. ‘Next week, for instance. Next Wednesday we should mount a little operation to catch these buggers.’

  ‘We could call it Operation Dark Horse,’ Richards offered.

  ‘Put out a stalking horse,’ Magnus suggested.

  ‘More a tethered goat I should’ve thought.’ Big Toe looked solemnly at Suzie. ‘For instance, if Sergeant Mountford here could be persuaded to hobble along Linden Road, then across Elm Way, disguised as an elderly bridge player, we might just catch these jokers in the act.’

  ‘How d’you disguise yourself as a bridge player?’ asked Mortimer, who was pleased with himself, having just arrested a pair of dodgy grocers for knocking off a lorry load of tinned goods. ‘That was good old-fashioned police work,’ Big Toe had told Suzie. ‘Jimmy Mortimer spent hours nosing around every small grocer in the area and discovered these two clowns popping tinned peas into people’s shopping baskets and winking at them. It was the customers gave it away, gossiping about the tinned peas, beans and carrots they were getting at rock-bottom prices and off the ration.’

  ‘Those tins weren’t just for buying and selling then?’ Thomas smirked.

  ‘You want to be a bit careful. David. You’re getting so sharp you’ll cut yourself.’ In answer to Mortimer’s query about disguises he had no suggestions.

  ‘I once took a girl to a bridge party.’ said Sammy Richards. ‘Her mother caught us under the bridge.’

  ‘And you’ve been listening to Max Miller again, lad.’ Harvey showed not a flicker of amusement. That was Big Toe all over: laughed at his own jokes but rarely smirked at other people’s wisecracks.

  It was finally decided that they would put Suzie out as a decoy on the following Wednesday. But that night bombs fell on the Camford Hill area and by the middle of next week far more deadly things would have happened involving Suzie. By then the attacks on elderly bridge players were relatively small beer.

  The warning sirens sounded just after seven that evening — a good hour earlier than normal — just as Suzie was getting ready to wrap up the day’s work and head back to Upper St Martin’s Lane. Nobody in CID was aware of the aircraft noise or the incendiaries coining down. Then the high explosive bombs dropped and everybody knew what the target was.

  Five Heinkel 111s were involved, one flying some five minutes in advance of the other four, dropping flares and incendiaries. When the main force made their appearance over the target the flares still burned and several tires were taking hold. The ornamental bandstand in Revellers Park was half consumed and a steady blaze had begun in the building that had once been the printing factory. Worse, some houses deep in the Cut were well alight, as were two sections of trucks on the railway lines. One of these was an ammunition train loaded with mortar bombs, hand grenades and boxes of .303 rounds standing adjacent to Number Three Bay: the other had four wagons stacked high with thick rubber aircraft tyres and an additional four trucks contained tea. These trucks had come up from Portsmouth only that morning, having been delayed by the raids earlier in the week. They had only just been shunted to the far end of Number Five Bay.

  Six incendiary bombs hit the Earl of Uxbridge public house at the corner of Oporto and Barrosa Streets. These shattered the roof tiles and smashed their way into a dry, dusty attic where only two exploded, bursting into searing white flame and igniting a couple of old suitcases and bits of furniture. In seconds the fire drove its way through the top storey of the pub.

  Then the high explosives began to rain down.

  Suzie Mountford came out of the main doors of the police station and winced in the glare of the white lights hanging in the sky, the orange and red glow away to her right and the singe of burning in her nostrils.

  She had been called up with the others, by the station sergeant, ‘Loamy’ Lomax, and she was conscious of the throbbing note of desynchronized aircraft engines, her stomach turning over, rippling with the familiar butterfly roll of alarm. Some of the bombs screamed as they came down. All of them produced a terrible jarring of the ground and a strong blast of air. She felt the pressure from the soles of her feet and the physical thump up her spine.

  The first bombs straddled Revellers Park: others, including a further stick of incendiaries, dropped directly on the old Revelton Printing Factory. More high explosives fell on houses in Barrosa Street and another three plunged into nearby Oporto Street.

  Altogether twenty-five houses were affected, not counting the blazing Earl of Uxbridge. The remaining bombs fell, as if by design, into the Railway Yard, ripping up tracks, obliterating Number Five Bay and destroying a shed in which eight men were having a tea break before going back to load more tyres on to trucks standing ready in the bay. The balance of the incendiaries fell across a mile-and-a-half stretch, setting light to buildings within the Goods Marshalling and Shunting Yards, igniting the wooden trucks and wagons loaded with aircraft tyres and tea.

  Close to Number Three Bay, several dozen incendiaries dropped in a line along the length of the ammunition train.

  Everything began to burn like dry tinder.

  The explosions in Revellers Park ripped up the neatly laid paths, the rose garden, several benches, the two big arbours at the far end across from the old printing works and part of Queen’s Walk, the northern boundary of the park, uprooting trees and killing a stray dog.

  Camford Hill Police Station lay only two hundred yards from the point where the High Street became the wide, tree-lined Queen’s Walk on the edge of Revellers Park.

  The deserted printing works was cut in half by the bombs, while those that landed at the northern end of the park sent shock waves funnelling back up Camford High Street.

  Even as far as the police station.

  You imagine it’s just the impact of the noise. You think it’s the explosion battering your ears, Suzie thought. Then she felt the rumbling, quivering thumps, and saw the wide panels of glass on the doors catch in the safety mesh, crazing over so the adhesive netting was all that kept it from falling, or being hurled, splintered, from the doors. Even here at the top of the police station’s steps she felt the pressure around her ears and the thump as the blast almost knocked her off her feet.

  The entire building seemed to move and wallow as, with both hands, she clung to the edge of one of the doors as though she was on a bucking ship or a fairground ride. For some inexplicable reason she thought this was what sex must be like.

  When things returned to normal she was standing in front of the doors looking at Loamy Lomax who had followed her out and appeared to be dazed, shaking his head as though trying to clear it, like a boxer who’s just taken a hard knock.

  She heard odd sounds, like tin cans being dropped down in the street, and a roar as though she was on a beach at the seaside with her mum and dad in the good old days.

  ‘Sarge? Here, Sarge?’ Somebody yelled, ‘Sarn’t Mountford!’

  Pip Magnus and Dougie Catermole were shouting, while Shirley beckoned to her from the bottom of the steps. Down in the street, they were clustered around an open truck drawn up by the kerb.

  Catermole yelled, ‘C’mon Sarge. They need help down the Cut.’

  Suzie’s mind worked slowly. Her legs felt unsteady and she was conscious of light-headedness as she went down the steps. Coming to Catermole she muttered, ‘Don’t ever call me “Sarge” again.’

  Close proximity to the Blitz was not a new experience. From the start of those nightly attacks, Suzie had travelled from New Scotland Yard to Upper St Martin’s Lane through the bombing. Because she had worked in uniform she had sometimes been called to help on her way home. One night, a group of ARP wardens and a team of rescue workers had made her go with them up to Belgravia where she helped clear a house that had suffered a direct hit; another time she stayed with some casualties on the Embankment until ambulances arrived. But on this Friday evening in Camford she found herself with Shirley Cox in the thick of it.

  They had cadged a lift
on the ARP truck, and for twelve hours worked together, in the eye of the storm that came to the Cut. Later when she thought of that night it became a kaleidoscope of events and horrors punctuated by explosions, the stench of smoke dry and clinging at the back of her throat and in her eyes. She tasted the tangy savour of explosives, and the terrible cloying scent of burned pork: the sweet smell of violent death. And on that night everything appeared to be lit by red and blue dancing flames and the occasional white glare of burning magnesium. Around her there were shouts, cries, the sound of pumps and engines and the crackling of blazing buildings — a horrible, frightening incidental music to the scene.

  The air about them sizzled heavy with the charred smell of scorched earth and brickwork. People stood around in the narrow streets between the little terraced houses; there were broken windows and small children crying, others standing silent and cowed as though waiting for some horror not yet identified in the symmetrical streets.

  In Oporto Street about ten fire-fighters battled to save the Earl of Uxbridge. Two engines were pulled up on the corner with Corunna Street, their ladders extended with men at the top hosing water into the burning red and white cauldron that had been the roof. The bare beams were black and shrivelled as the fire ate its way through the building, cracking tiles and sending showers of sparks down the bulging front walls.

  On the ground floor more hoses played into the public and private bars, trying to dampen the threatened building.

  As their truck slowed in front of the pub someone shouted to Shirley, and Suzie saw a young fireman turn towards them, his face shining with sweat and grime.

  ‘How’s it going?’ Shirley’s voice croaked, nearly drowned by the noise and roar of the flames.

  ‘Like pissing at a thunderstorm.’ the fireman shouted back. ‘You’ll be more help along there.’ He pointed up Corunna Street, where a huge gap and piles of rubble signified the destruction of three or four of the houses, with more further away in Barrosa Street.

  ‘That was Bernie. My auxiliary fireman.’ Shirley smirked a shade too proudly.

  Suzie nodded. Lovely command of English, she thought, and for the next three hours they worked, digging in the rubble, dragging out bodies, and people who were miraculously still alive.

  Eventually, weary and bone tired, Suzie and Shirley trudged up Corunna Street where they could just make out more figures working ahead of them. Already they felt filthy, their faces burning from the heat of the fires, their hair soiled by the charred remains of material and wood that floated with the dust like obscene dark and poisoned snow.

  Further up the street there was an ambulance pulled to one side of the bruised and shattered buildings, and as Suzie paused she felt something tug at her sleeve. Turning, she realized a little straggle of children had shuffled up behind her and a boy of about ten or so had pulled at her sleeve.

  He was dressed only in a long striped shirt, much too big for him with tails hanging down to his ankles. His hair was tousled and white with dust and he led a small girl by the hand. The girl walked with him, unprotesting, occasionally looking up at him searching for reassurance. The pair were followed by three other children: a boy and girl of around seven or eight and another little girl in a torn blue dress covered by a cheap fawn coat with little velvet tips on the lapels. This last child carried a small teddy bear dressed in a dark coat with brass buttons.

  ‘Please miss,’ the boy began. ‘Please miss, they’ve taken my mum away.’

  Suzie dropped a hand on to the boy’s shoulder, asking him if the girl was his sister. ‘Yes, miss. It’s my sister Vi-let, but they’ve taken my mum away.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure they’ll bring her back.’ she said automatically.

  ‘What?’ His eyes opened wide. ‘What? From the fucking mortuary?’

  For a moment she was more shocked by the language coming from a child than the chaos around them.

  A nurse picked her way towards them, around the edge of the crater from the ambulance.

  ‘You local?’

  ‘Detective Sergeant Mountford. Suzie Mountford. Camford Hill nick.’

  ‘Staff Nurse Pilbeam — Hannah. I don’t know what we do with the kids. We pulled nine people and the kids out of there,’ she said, inclining her head towards the ruined houses. ‘Could you, perhaps, move them up to the Martha Revelton Hall? We’ve got to get them out of here.’

  Together, Suzie and Shirley organized the children. The little boy, whose name was Jack, was put in charge of a rag, tag and bobtail group of small kids.

  ‘Right. Jack, do you know where the Martha Revelton Hall is?’ Shirley asked him.

  ‘Bottom of the ’igh Street, innit?’

  ‘That’s the one. Where they have the scouts meetings. You a scout, Jack?’

  ‘Nah. Scouts’re for poofters, my Dad says. For fucking goodie-two-shoes.’

  ‘Enough of the language, Jack. There’re ladies here.’

  ‘You’re not a lady — you’re the filth en’cher?’

  ‘Maybe, but the nurse and my sergeant are both ladies. And the other girls. Well, they’re —’

  ‘Wat’cher want me to do, then?’

  ‘Take charge, Jack. You’re to take these smaller children to the Martha Revelton Hall. It’s the rescue centre. There’ll be nice ladies there. They’ll give you tea and something to eat. See you’ve got somewhere to sleep — in the warm.’

  ‘They’ve taken my mum away ... in another ambulance,’ he repeated. Violet still cried.

  ‘I know, Jack, but you’ve got to be brave. You’ve got to think of these kids. Now, will you do it? Take them to Martha Revelton Hall?’

  ‘Yea, awright.’

  She told the children that Jack was their leader. ‘He’s taking you up the Hall. Will you do that, listen to him?’

  There was a mumbled affirmative response. ‘Off you go then,’ she said sharply. ‘Quick as you can and, Jack, no matter what, you go straight there, right.’

  Jack nodded bravely. ‘Right you lot, follow me.’ He seemed to have taken to authority, and the children went off uncertainly in the direction of the park, the boy leading them, fussing and giving orders like a tiny drill sergeant. ‘Keep up can’cher, Vi-let, and you two little buggers, keep up. I’m re-bleedin-sponsible for yer, so keep up.’

  I just hope young Jack’ll keep them together, she thought. They’re so small. Vulnerable. Christ, how can all this happen? Suzie wondered.

  Then the young nurse asked if they could help with a particularly unpleasant job. Many of the dead had lost limbs and other parts of their bodies. These were marked where they had fallen and now needed to be retrieved.

  They had no option but to assist. Someone had to walk around the crater and look under the bits of red and bloodstained blanket that covered the sliced and decimated bits of humanity, dropping them into specially lined sacks. Afterwards, they both felt it was the most unpleasant half-hour of their lives. That was to change, but this was more than normally bad: they collected parts of several legs, arms and a hand, all jaggedly ripped from the bodies. Suzie even had to handle a decapitated human head, a woman, henna-haired, so that it was difficult to distinguish what was dyed hair and what was blood. When she picked up the head she found it unbelievably heavy, as though it was made of solid metal. She thought of what a bloodthirsty young nun, the history teacher at St Helen’s, had told them when they were doing the French Revolution. Sister Mary Innocent had gone into bizarre details about the guillotine and said that the executioners learned to wait several seconds before scooping the severed head from the basket. The brain, she said, can remain active for up to half a minute or so in a severed head, and could reason that when deprived of all other means of defence it would use the only thing left — its teeth, snapping and biting at anything that came dangerously close until the blood stopped pumping and life drained away. All this had given her a couple of unpleasant nightmares.

  ‘Not as bad as some,’ Shirley Cox said later. ‘My uncle was there when t
hey had that direct hit on Sloane Square Underground station last month. There were two girls stripped naked hanging by their feet, trapped somehow in what was left of the roof. Took two days to get them down.’

  The light was bad, only a steady glow now coming from the Yard, reflected off the clouds. But even that glow was soon damped down by a thick pall of dark smoke rising from the tracks, making a slow, engulfing sooty shroud over the buildings.

  ‘What the hell d’you think that is?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘Burning rubber.’ Shirley glanced up. ‘I’ve seen it before. It’s certainly what it smells like, and the smoke’s thick enough. You could cut that cloud into slices and serve it on a plate.’

  ‘That nurse okay?’ Suzie asked, gulping air.

  ‘Didn’t bat an eyelid.’

  ‘Hard-hearted Hannah.’ She straightened up, and as she did so a brilliant flash lit up the sky from the direction of the railway tracks. The flash was followed by a thunderclap explosion that made the ground ripple and sent a double shock wave slamming through the streets.

  The silence after the explosion was eerie and seemed to go on for a long time, followed eventually by grating noises and more faint shouts and cries from the area of the railway lines.

  ‘Jesus!’ Shirley straightened up. ‘You think we should ...?’

  Suzie’s ears pulsed, as though she had just come up from a deep dive. For a second she was back at St Helen’s, in the big swimming pool that smelled of unidentified disinfectant. Summer, childhood and little in the way of responsibility. She heard the calls, echoed shouts and splashes of girls enjoying themselves, slicing to the bottom, leaving silver plumes of water behind them. Then she was back in the present, listening for the sound of the aircraft that had dropped that last bomb.