Princes Gate Read online

  PRINCES

  GATE

  A FRANK MERLIN NOVEL

  MARK ELLIS

  Copyright © 2011 Mark Ellis

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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  ISBN 978 1848766 570 (paperback)

  ISBN 978 1848766 563 (hardback)

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Typeset in 11pt Gemerald by Troubador Publishing Ltd, Leicester, UK

  Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

  Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall

  To Mair Ellis

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I would particularly like to thank Jon Thurley and Patricia Preece for their extensive advice on this book. My mother and my good friends Keith Ross, David Deane and Ian James read early drafts of the manuscript and gave me useful comments and encouragement, while John Collis helpfully cast his professional eye over my work. Kate Ellis helped with the choice of cover and, together with Victoria, Claudia and my family and many friends, provided strong support. Audrey Manning coped heroically with the typing of the manuscript’s many drafts. I thank them all. Finally, I am grateful to all at Troubador Publishing Ltd. who have helped with the production of this book

  PROLOGUE

  London – January 1940

  It was lunchtime and the Lyons Tea House was doing a lively trade as usual. A pungent fug of cigarette smoke, stewing vegetables and body odour hung above the crowded, clattering tables of a restaurant whose drab decor accorded well with the general dowdiness of its customers. Just after one o’clock, on what was a particularly chilly winter’s day, a sudden burst of colour enlivened the scene as a pretty young woman, her flowing, golden hair capped by a bright red beret, hurried through the entrance and looked into the room, big blue eyes darting around anxiously.

  “Is there an upstairs here? I’m meeting someone, you see, and I can’t see him.”

  The busty, peroxide blonde waitress nodded brusquely towards the back of the room.

  “The way up’s over there, love.”

  Muttering her thanks, the young woman began to make her way through the press of tables. She ignored a leering young soldier who pursed his lips theatrically into a kiss, to the amusement of his colleagues, and reached the foot of the stairs. Then she saw her luncheon companion leaning back casually at a small, out-of-the-way table reading a newspaper. Her heart sank. He had caught her unawares that morning when he had bounced up from nowhere, flashing his perfect teeth as she sat miserably at her desk, and she’d said yes without thinking. Now there he was, his paper set aside, grinning and waving to her. She put her head down and pushed her way past the tables with their prattling customers and headed, with dread, to join him.

  When he had calmed down, after paying the bill, he suggested a walk in the park and she told him to go to hell.

  “Suit yourself, then.”

  An icy gust cut into her face and she shuddered as she watched him stride jauntily away. He had had the gall to suggest a re-run. When she’d refused he had lost his temper and made threats. The meat pie, which he’d ordered for her, churned in her stomach. Tears, which had been building below the surface throughout the meal, began to trickle down her cheeks.

  A grizzled old man, rolling himself a cigarette at his pitch outside the tube station, paused to watch her as she turned and ran down the street. He took a couple of puffs and resumed his patter. “Mr Chamberlain’s speech to the House. New rationing regulations. More German atrocities in Poland. Read all about it!”

  The blackout was particularly dense and all-enveloping that night. The man hunched his shoulders as he leaned into the biting wind whistling down the invisible Mall. He wore a mackintosh which hung to within an inch of the ground and a homburg hat one size too small. In his right hand he carried a heavy, old black briefcase. In his left, where his arthritis was playing him up tonight, he carried an umbrella. He turned a corner and made his way slowly across Horse Guards Parade. A distant searchlight provided the faintest glimmer of background light. No matter. For once he had remembered his torch, which he held in the same hand as his briefcase. The beam led him over the road into the park, then on into Birdcage Walk. Cars drove past sporadically, groping their way through the treacly darkness with blinkered headlights. His teeth were chattering, but soon he would reach the station. It was a straightforward journey from there.

  The annoying meeting he had just concluded at the Ministry replayed in his mind. Why wouldn’t they listen to him, those pinstriped idiots. Ach! Why did he bother? He could feel his blood pressure rising. “Count to twenty. Be calm. Count to twenty.” That’s what his friend Spinoza had always said to him when he could see the temper flaring. He was too old to have such a short temper. He started counting. He had reached the end of his second twenty when he stumbled on a crooked flagstone and the torch and the briefcase fell to the ground. The torch rolled to the edge of the pavement and its light dimmed as it settled against the briefcase. As he bent down he heard an engine revving in the distance. He grasped the torch and stood up, feeling his knees creak, then bent again for the briefcase. The engine sound grew louder and louder, before all at once there was a high-pitched screech of brakes and he felt a massive thump on his shoulder. A searing pain scorched his spine and he fell forward into the gutter. Briefly he heard doors bang and the sound of footsteps. Then nothing.

  The pigeons squawked and fluttered their wings in irritation as the two men hurried across Trafalgar Square before crossing over to the Strand. They turned right past the station and headed towards the Embankment. The drunks and tramps sleeping under the arches made little complaint as the men nimbly picked their way through them. The Wiseman brothers, still known to many down the Commercial Road as “The Knockout Twins” in memory of their youthful prowess in the ring, had found some easy pickings down here before Christmas. It was dangerous, of course, with Scotland Yard so close at hand and the roaming river defence searchlights to watch out for, but they had been working Kensington and Mayfair for the past couple of weeks with surprisingly little success and had agreed easily on a change of scene.

  They were both over six feet but Stan was the burlier of the two. He led Sid across the road and leaned over the river wall. The searchlight beams were concentrating on the City and the east, and their chosen patch was dark enough.

  “Hush. There’s someone.”


  The sound of steps and muffled laughter came to them from fifty, perhaps a hundred, yards away. A man and a woman. Stan squeezed his brother’s arm. “Let’s do it.”

  Keeping their heads down they slipped silently along the pavement. A half-moon dipped in and out of the clouds above. A few yards ahead a match was struck. They could see the glow of cigarettes. The couple had stopped under a tree and were looking out over the river.

  “I’ll take the man, you do her.” Stan whispered.

  He found the cosh in his pocket as he ran towards the couple. His arm flashed through the night air. The man fell heavily to the ground as Sid put his arm round the woman’s shoulder and clamped one hand on her mouth. His other hand held a knife with which he stroked her neck. “Keep your mouth shut darling and everything will be alright.”

  The woman squirmed and he nicked her. The clouds parted and he could see the thin scarlet trickle on her pale skin. She became still.

  Stan knelt down beside the unconscious man and, in businesslike fashion, went through his pockets. A thick wallet, several notes and coins and a pocket watch emerged. He chuckled as he rose to his feet, pulled the woman’s handbag from her hands and looked inside. “Our lucky night” – he removed more notes and coins, a compact and a cigarette lighter – “and look at this.” A pearl necklace was roughly torn from her, as were her rings and bracelets. Stan stuffed his own pockets and Sid’s with the takings. The man on the ground was breathing heavily and clouds of steam rose into the frozen air about him.

  “A big one, isn’t he? Good job I caught him proper.” Stan turned his attention again to the woman. He unbuttoned her coat and ran his hands over the smooth fabric of her dress. “This one’s quite a sweetheart. Perhaps we’ve got time for a bit of fun before we go. Her boyfriend’s going to be in the land of nod for a while. Let’s…”

  The sound of a car’s brakes screeching nearby interrupted him. He thought he could see a car up towards the bridge. The moon came out of the clouds again and now he could see figures at the side of the car. There was a flash of red and then of white. He could hear a man’s voice shouting and a woman’s responding. Then a man’s voice again. Was it the same man or another? He couldn’t tell and he couldn’t make out any words. A woman’s voice started again, a strained and anxious voice. Sighing, he turned back to his female victim and stroked her cheek. “Better not push our luck, eh, dear? You’d have enjoyed it, though.” He patted her bottom. “Let’s hop it.”

  Sid released his grip on the woman, pulled back his fist and hit her hard in the stomach. As she slipped to the ground they ran off as fast as they could, their pockets jangling with their takings. They didn’t stop until they reached the gardens in front of the Savoy. They fell onto a bench and, when they’d recovered their breath, they could hear nothing except the light snoring of a tramp in the bushes behind.

  CHAPTER 1

  Monday January 22nd 1940

  Patches of snow covered the riverbank and small ice floes drifted along in the river. The sky was a brilliant blue and the Colonel wished he’d brought along his old military goggles to shield his eyes from the glare. His next-door neighbour, Thompson, a city broker, had told him over a friendly sherry the night before that his office colleagues were running a book on it proving the coldest winter of the century. The freezing weather meant that his regular morning walk had been brisker than usual and, by his reckoning, as he approached Barnes Bridge he was probably ten minutes ahead of schedule.

  The ugly metal latticework of the bridge sparkled in the sun as he strode along the river path, thinking happily of the bacon and eggs awaiting him at home. When he was almost under the bridge, a large boat chugged by creating a wake, which flowed rapidly towards the shore. It was high tide and, before he had time to take evasive action, several waves splashed over the bank and onto his best tweed trousers. Swearing loudly he turned to wave his walking stick uselessly at the boat, a working barge heading up river. He bent down to mop his trouser legs with a handkerchief. As he rose stiffly, having made little improvement to the sodden state of his turn-ups, his eyes roved over the flotsam gently pushing up against the riverbank. There was the usual mixture of empty tin-cans, beer bottles, newspapers, wrapping paper, sticks and branches. However, in an area of water near the bridge, at the point where the sharp glare of the daylight became subsumed in the dark shadow of the bridge, the Colonel’s attention was caught by an object which, because of the intermittent dazzle, appeared as if caught in the flashing beam of a semaphore light.

  He reached out with his stick and poked the whitish object a few times but couldn’t get it to move towards him. Edging closer to the water’s edge, he was grasping a stanchion of the bridge for support when he heard the engine of another boat. He scrambled back up the bank and watched a small cruiser pass under the bridge on the far side of the river. There were no waves to worry about this time and his gaze returned to the floating object. His heart pounded as he realised with horror that he was looking at a human hand, attached to a body which was slowly rising to the surface. He took a couple of very deep breaths. The body appeared to be female and clothed in pale pink underwear, but he didn’t have the stomach for close analysis. The empty eye socket was enough for him. He took another deep breath and headed for the police station, which was just a short distance up the road.

  Detective Chief Inspector Frank Merlin stared angrily out of his window at the barrage balloon drifting aimlessly above the London County Council headquarters. He had timed his discussion with Assistant Commissioner Gatehouse badly. As he had entered his boss’s office he should have realised that something was amiss from the deep red tinge of the A.C.’s cheeks.

  “May I have a few words with you, sir?”

  “Yes, but ‘a few’ means ‘a few’ and be sharp about it.”

  “I wondered if you’d given any further thought to my request of the other day?”

  “Request? What request? Oh, you mean your request to leave me in the lurch and enlist?”

  “Er – yes sir. I would like to volunteer to join up as we discussed.”

  “Merlin, I have just come from a deeply unpleasant meeting with the Commissioner and the Home Secretary. Sir John may appear in public to have the animation of an elderly Scots Presbyterian undertaker, but I can tell you that in private he has a little more vim about him. I have just been berated for over an hour on the numerous failings of the part of the Metropolitan Police under my command.

  “Sir John Anderson tells me that while our nation currently stands at perhaps its greatest ever peril, he would sleep better at night if we, or rather I, would get off my backside and get a grip on, in no particular order of importance, Irish republican bombers, pilfering dockers and factory workers, Mosleyite fifth columnists and the numerous ruffians and thieves taking advantage of the blackout, not to mention the rocketing accident statistics caused by the murderous driving habits of most after-dark drivers. This I am required to do when I have already lost, or am about to lose, large numbers of my brightest youngsters to the forces, and several of my best senior people have been seconded to the Government for security purposes. At this moment you, probably the finest detective I have, having already done a good bit for King and Country in the last show, want to bugger off and get your head blown off with the British Expeditionary Force.”

  “But sir …”

  “No. The answer is no. Your country and, more specifically, I need you here and that’s final. Don’t think I don’t appreciate the sentiments but if all my best officers disappear, chaos will ensue – and chaos, Frank, is worth a hundred divisions to Herr Hitler. Just think of it that way. Anything else?”

  “No, sir.”

  Merlin fumbled in his jacket pocket for the packet of Fisherman’s Friends. He had become strangely addicted to these powerful menthol lozenges over the past year. As he took his fix his eyes refocused on his reflection in the glass of the windowpane. A lock of jet-black hair hung over his forehead. He needed a haircut. Hi
s dark green eyes stared back at him. His hand rose to his cheek. A few more creases there. Eight years to go till he was fifty. His father had been an old man at that age. Still, he didn’t look so bad. He had a long, narrow, rather elegant nose and a full mouth. His laughter lines remained despite his recent tribulations. There was no fat on his face and he had the same collar size as when he was eighteen. He had a trim, lean figure on which his suits hung well, as Alice had often remarked.

  Behind him in the reflection, he could see the office which had become his second home. He’d had it since his promotion just over three years ago – that would be just six months after he got married. There was the solid oak desk he’d picked up for nothing on the Portobello Road to replace the rickety Scotland Yard standard issue. The desk was always swamped with papers. Tidiness had never been his strong point. His comfortable battered leather chair sat behind the desk, facing two less comfortable companions on the other side. In the corner was a small table and another chair mostly used by his trusty Sergeant – someone else whose military ambitions had been thwarted, though for different reasons. When he’d moved into the office, the walls had been a dreary green colour and he’d insisted, to the irritation of the A.C., on having them repainted off-white. On the wall facing the window was a large-scale map of London, beside an ornate cuckoo clock acquired on a fraud goose-chase in Switzerland a couple of years earlier. Behind him was a picture of a 1924 police football team, featuring a blurry picture of him at the back right-hand corner. On the wall facing his desk were two Van Gogh prints – he loved the post-Impressionists and the mad Dutchman most of all. He had a print of a Goya painting too – a firing squad in action somewhere in Spain, or was it Mexico? He’d never found out. This was to the left of the office door which, half-paned with frosted glass, was in turn to the left of the London map. The floor was linoleum but he’d put down a couple of intricately patterned red Persian rugs to liven things up a little – again modestly-priced acquisitions from the Portobello Road.