Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [78]
‘Well, Five don’t know about von Wer,’ Reed grinned.
‘But they might just have arrested him.’
‘So the arrested man made contact with the known spy?’
‘Yes. They met and they exchanged a code phrase on one of the platforms of Paddington tube station. Neither of them realized that we had been following the woman. Both were arrested. His identity papers were forged.’
Roz nodded. It was straightforward enough. It didn’t sound like the Doctor, either.
‘Did the admiral mention the Granville raid?’ Roz asked.
‘He said it was too early to tell. Bomber Command claim one hundred per cent success, but they always do. If it’s as foggy as this in Granville, we won’t have got any aerial photographs this morning.’ Reed was still sullen. When Kendrick had announced the decision to bombard Granville, George had been shocked. Walking back to his flat together afterwards, Roz had found that she was the one defending the decision. Even though there hadn’t been an air-raid on London last night, they had been in no mood to go out on the town. They had sat together silently in George’s front room.
When she looked into his eyes, she could see raw feelings, the same emotions she felt herself: rage, frustration, a sense of injustice. One of the beliefs they held most dear had been betrayed by a superior officer. Roz had been through all this before. Reed hadn’t. They had needed to do something positive together, something passionate and life-affirming.
But now it was twelve hours later. Thousands of French civilians had died last night, business in London continued as normal.
The car threw itself round Marble Arch. They were ten, perhaps fifteen, minutes away.
Professor Summerfield was in front of Kitzel, the cutlery knife concealed up her left sleeve.
The young nurse struggled to remain calm. It was still very early in the morning, and there was no one around yet.
She had already judged that escape would be impossible.
‘How far is it to the morgue?’ Summerfield demanded.
‘It is the next door down,’ Kitzel said quietly. Summerfield seemed at home in these featureless corridors. There was a spring in the older woman’s step again, even though, as far as Kitzel understood, she now thought that one of her friends was dead. Perversely, the archaeologist seemed almost relaxed.
Summerfield glanced up at the sign. “LEICHENHAUS”.
The morgue?’ Kitzel nodded. Summerfield pushed down the handle and stepped inside, holding open the door for Kitzel to follow.
The morgue was cool and brightly lit. Kitzel had never been in here before, but it was almost exactly the same as the morgue in the Cologne sanitorium where she had done her training. An autopsy table in the middle of the room, cold storage drawers on one wall, a basin and a row of lockers on another. The attendant, a little bespectacled man in his forties, stood as they came in.
‘You’ve brought this one in prematurely, nurse. You want me to arrange something?’ He leered at her. The young nurse recoiled. She had heard stories about this nasty little man, and she believed them.
‘Bolt the door, Kitzel,’ Summerfield ordered. Kitzel did as she asked. The attendant was suddenly worried.
‘Who are you?’
‘I’m the Professor, and this is my friend Kitzel,’ Bernice announced.
‘What’s going on here?’ He looked from Summerfield to Kitzel.
‘Liberation,’ said Summerfield simply.
There was a flash in the morgue attendant’s hand, a lightning-swift response from Summerfield: a slashing motion, a yelp of pain and a clatter as something fell to the floor. The attendant clutched his wrist. Then Summerfield was poised on tiptoes, her knife in hand.
‘In case you missed that, Kitzel,’ Summerfield was explaining, ‘he tried to pull a scalpel on me and I cut open his wrist. Hold this.’ She tossed Kitzel the knife. Before the nurse could react, Summerfield had grasped the back of the terrified attendant’s head and brought it down hard on the edge of the autopsy table. His legs buckled and he fell against the tiled floor. Kitzel felt the weight of the knife in her hand, and decided to lay it down.