Eye of the Needle - Ken Follett [31]
She went, disappointed.
“Hello, Super. This body’s got a knife wound and a suitcase radio.”
“What’s the address again, Sarge?”
Sergeant Canter told him.
“Yes, that’s the one they’ve been watching. This is an MI5 job, Sarge. Go to number 42 and tell the surveillance team there what you’ve found. I’ll get on to their chief. Off you go.”
Canter thanked the woman and crossed the road. He was quite thrilled; this was only his second murder in thirty-one years as a Metropolitan Policeman, and it turned out to involve espionage! He might make Inspector yet.
He knocked on the door of number 42. It opened and two men stood there.
Sergeant Canter said: “Are you the secret agents from MI5?”
BLOGGS ARRIVED at the same time as a Special Branch man, Detective-Inspector Harris, whom he had known in his Scotland Yard days. Canter showed them the body.
They stood still for a moment, looking at the peaceful young face with its blond moustache.
Harris said, “Who is he?”
“Codename Blondie,” Bloggs told him. “We think he came in by parachute a couple of weeks ago. We picked up a radio message to another agent arranging a rendezvous. We knew the code, so we were able to watch the rendezvous. We hoped Blondie would lead us to the resident agent, who would be a much more dangerous specimen.”
“So what happened here?”
“Damned if I know.”
Harris looked at the wound in the agent’s chest. “Stiletto?”
“Something like that. A very neat job. Under the ribs and straight up into the heart. Quick. Would you like to see the method of entry?”
He led them downstairs to the kitchen. They looked at the window-frame and the unbroken pane of glass lying on the lawn.
Canter said, “Also, the lock on the bedroom door had been picked.”
They sat down at the kitchen table, and Canter made tea. Bloggs said, “It happened the night after I lost him in Leicester Square. I fouled it all up.”
Harris said, “Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
They drank their tea in silence for a while. Harris said, “How are things with you, anyway? You don’t drop in at the Yard.”
“Busy.”
“How’s Christine?”
“Killed in the bombing.”
Harris’s eyes widened. “You poor bastard.”
“You all right?”
“Lost my brother in North Africa. Did you ever meet Johnny?”
“No.”
“He was a lad. Drink? You’ve never seen anything like it. Spent so much on booze, he could never afford to get married—which is just as well, the way things turned out.”
“Most have lost somebody, I guess.”
“If you’re on your own, come round our place for dinner on Sunday.”
“Thanks, I work Sundays now.”
Harris nodded. “Well, whenever you feel like it.”
A detective-constable poked his head around the door and addressed Harris. “Can we start bagging-up the evidence, guv?”
Harris looked at Bloggs.
“I’ve finished,” Bloggs said.
“All right, son, carry on,” Harris told him.
Bloggs said, “Suppose he made contact after I lost him, and arranged for the resident agent to come here. The resident may have suspected a trap—that would explain why he came in through the window and picked the lock.”
“It makes him a devilish suspicious bastard,” Harris observed.
“That might be why we’ve never caught him. Anyway, he gets into Blondie’s room and wakes him up. Now he knows it isn’t a trap, right?”
“Right.”
“So why does he kill Blondie?”
“Maybe they quarreled.”
“There were no signs of a struggle.”
Harris frowned into his empty cup. “Perhaps he realized that Blondie was being watched and he was afraid we’d pick the boy up and make him spill the beans.”
Bloggs said, “That makes him a ruthless bastard.”
“That, too, might be why we’ve never caught him.”
“COME IN. SIT DOWN. I’ve just had a call from MI6. Canaris has been fired.”
Bloggs went in, sat down, and said, “Is that good news or bad?”
“Very bad,” said Godliman. “It’s happened at the worst possible moment.”
“Do I get told why?”
Godliman looked at him intently, then said, “I think you need to know. At this moment we have forty double agents broadcasting to Hamburg false information