The Unquiet Heart

Gordon Ferris

• Publisher: Corvus
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780857895554
• eBook ISBN: 9780857894953
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Crime & Mystery Literature
• Index: Literature

LONDON AND BERLIN, 1946 The perfect partnership - gang-busters by day, lovers by night... Danny McRae, private detective scraping a living in ration-card London.
Eve Copeland, crime reporter, looking for new angles to save her career. It's an alliance made in heaven. Until Eve disappears, a contact dies violently and an old adversary presents Danny with some unpalatable truths. His desperate search for his lover draws him into a web of black marketeers, double agents and assassins, and hurls him into the shattered remains of Berlin, where terrorism and espionage foreshadow the bleakness of the Cold War. And Danny begins to lose sight of the thin line between good and evil...

ELEVEN

What I learned convinced me I didn’t want the police trampling over her life – or mine. Not yet. I slipped the notebook into my pocket and gave my farewells to Jim. He eyed me suspiciously from under those great grey brows but didn’t probe. I left the building just as a squad car drew up. I pulled my hat down and walked up Fleet Street and into the Strand with the book burning a hole in my pocket. I crossed Waterloo Bridge, not pausing as I normally do to watch the coal barges trundling up and down river. I should have got a bus. My leg was aching. But I needed to walk. And the physical pain was oddly comforting. It took my mind off the one fact: She knew she was being followed. Why did she keep it from me?

I reached home in a lather. I threw off my jacket, undid my tie and made myself comfortable at my desk. I guessed it wouldn’t take long before I had visitors, and I needed to read enough to decide if I was keeping the notebook or handing it over.

The inside page had her name on it: Eve Copeland. She’d underlined her first name and written her office address underneath. The ink was black and was already fading to brown in the early entries. I had seen the fountain pen she used: a gold-nibbed, green lacquered tube, capable of producing elegant calligraphy in the right hand. A present, she said.

She seemed to be using three different scripts: plain English, some kind of jagged scrawl which included some English lettering, and a type of shorthand.

In the early pages – the pages in clear – Eve had jotted her thoughts down in a fine script, all leaning neatly to the right in flowing loops. My old teacher would have given her five gold stars. It was a feat beyond my talents; somewhere between dipping my nib in the inkwell and transferring it to the page, my hand would be taken over by the school poltergeist. Even the threat of the belt across my trembling palms was never enough to stop the inky havoc.

Eve’s pages were lined but unnumbered. She’d turned it into a kind of diary by putting dates at the start of every new item no matter where it began on the page. The entries began in mid ’45. Some pages had several short notes; some in plain English, some in “squiggle” as I called the indecipherable scrawl, and then the coded shorthand. Some items went on for several pages as she drafted a column or took down notes of a long interview. It also seemed to serve as an appointments book, with follow-up observations about some event or person she’d met: no doubt he’s a con man… mind like a sewer (I hoped she wasn’t talking about me!); sweet gentle lady… love to be friends; big disappointment compared to voice; great picture… wish I had legs like Cyd Charisse!!

It was uncomfortable; like dipping into her mind. But how else was I going to find out what happened to her? That’s how I’d explain it when we next met. When. If had no room in my thinking. I was chewing my nails as I got to the later stuff covering the last few weeks, our weeks. What would I find about me? My anxiety rose when I identified the dates, but found the comments themselves in squiggle or shorthand.

I should have been able to read some of the shorthand, albeit slowly; it had been part of our SOE training. There were many forms but usually enough of an overlap to get the gist. But I was stymied by hers. The secret of Pitman is it’s phonetic; there are hundreds of symbols each with its own sound. The thickness of the strokes distinguishes vowels and consonants. All you have to do is memorise them and put them together in your head to make words. With daily practice you can become competent – in a year or two.

I tried saying some of the shorthand out loud, the ones that bore a vague resemblance to what I’d learned. Nothing. Gibberish. In fact with the ochs and achs I was making they sounded a bit like the Ayrshire dialect – Lallan Scots, the language of Burns.

The idea hit me. I grabbed the notebook and a pad and a pencil from my drawer. I ripped my jacket from its peg and ran down the stairs. The cat exploded at my feet.

I was out and running, gammy leg forgotten. A double-decker was trundling away from the stop. I sprinted and caught the pole and hauled myself inside, vowing to give up the fags sometime soon. A change at Elephant and I was in Bloomsbury within half an hour.

I’d never been inside the British Library but had once stood outside peering through the glass doors. To me it was a sort of shrine. Kilpatrick’s old Victorian library and museum, with its stuffed lion guarding the top of the stairs, held what I thought of as the world’s biggest collection of books. I would raid its shelves every week. But the British Library! Where Marx and Dickens sat. Too much for me before. Now, I needed to get in.

I explained my errand to the girl behind the desk. She said that it was impossible. I said I was a private detective. She said she shouldn’t. I said my girlfriend had been kidnapped. She said only if you’re quick and don’t let the Super see you. She led me to a little seat in front of a long brown desk. High overhead soared the great dome, and under it the wooden gallery that followed its curve. Around me and above me were miles of aisles holding books from every corner of the English speaking world. It was better than the echoing vacuum of St Paul’s. This was religion enough. A few minutes later the girl came back with a small heap of books. She laid them on my desk, gave me a stern look from behind her glasses and then a wink. I blew her a kiss and she shot off, red as a tomato.

I took the first book; it was Pitman’s standard shorthand dictionary. That was my benchmark. I then set out in front of me the other three books: versions of shorthand dictionaries for the German language. In the Lallan Scots and north of England dialects you can hear the last throaty vestiges of the language roots. I placed Eve’s notebook alongside and opened it at the first page of hieroglyphs. I propped up the three German dictionaries in front of me and began to scribble on my pad. It took me five minutes to be certain: Eve hadn’t been writing in English shorthand. It was Gabelsberger’s system, which looked a little like proper writing with its flowing cursive style. Simple. But why?

Then I noticed something else. In the appendix of one of the dictionaries, was a set of squiggles that looked remarkably like the third form of entry Eve had used. The heading explained that I was looking at Suetterlin script, the standard form of German handwriting taught in all their schools until just before the start of the war. How did my ace reporter come to be able to write like a German and use a German shorthand? I put the obvious conclusion to one side while I grappled with the problem of turning both scripts into English.

I decided to tackle the shorthand first. It was closer to what I’d learned in spy school. The trouble was that the shorthand would translate into German words. Prof Haggarty had tricked me into revealing that I’d picked up some of the language while I was sunning myself in Dachau. The language student in me had learned enough to obtain a workaday if specialised vocabulary. The camp held some pretty bright people – doctors, engineers, teachers, musicians – and conversations sprawled across culture and philosophy as well as the mundane details of living and dying behind the barbed wire. But I never saw written material except on official signs. Arbeit Macht Frei for example. It wasn’t the sort of place to order your copy of Die Zeitung to be served with breakfast.

At the rate I was going it would take me a month to translate all her codes. But it didn’t take me long to spot the sign that meant Danny, a sort of lower case d with a tail and circle. So I confined myself to the last two months and wherever I saw my name.

Translating shorthand is an inexact science at the best of times. But now I was having to rely on getting a set of sounds and symbols on the page then listening in my head for the German word to pop up that most closely resembled it. I couldn’t write down the word because I didn’t know how it was spelled in German. I had to make the leap straight to English, and see if some meaning emerged from the jumble.

As I struggled with my silent battle the receptionist came over looking anxious. She asked me in a whisper if I was all right as someone had complained about me making faces. I pointed at the dictionaries and made some mouth shapes. She seemed to get the message but gave me a frown to keep my funny faces to myself. Like other women in my life, she was already regretting her kindness.

I worked away for an hour or two until I had a page of jottings. Some of it was guesses, some inspired analysis, but sitting back and taking it from the top, I could get the gist of recent events from the day she invaded my office and my life:

22 May: d very red very scot, funny sarcastic, hates my paper, bastard, d needs money, hook?

23 May: d called, caught fish!!!!

25 May: mary prostitute, d very close ???? , first mention PG, d offer more?/deeper? action for me, d interest me/him?

28/29 May: tommy chandler warehouse job, big thrill, big time, big risk, showed?/ revealed??? gun, no choice, PG upset?,

29 May: d bed, tired lonely excuse? not love just warmth, stupid stupid

3 June: love? D soft hard, funny sarcastic, why not? Stupid time

There were several more entries along these lines, each a seeming debate with herself about how to avoid falling in love. In three of them the word watcher or follower appeared with a query after my name. She knew, didn’t she? Then…

15 June: mother dress, Savoy, mother!!! Big night, big mess, beautiful couple, wrong time!!!! PG gate crash, mad, mad. D saw watcher, too late, always too late, must stop!!!

Then in clear English a week later:

23 June: Horrible day. Danny saw the watcher again and attacked him. I pulled him off and denied everything. Told Danny we had to break for a while. But it’s over, has to be. How did we get here? What am I doing? So sad…

Then back in code again except for the Latin:

25 June: saw midge saw stan, d watcher now!!! Quis custodiet!!!

30 June: all gone. All quiet, waiting. Alone again. Waiting for them.

That was her last entry a week ago. She knew something was about to happen to her. I could see her sitting in her room in a period of quiet before the storm hit. It tore my heart out. Why did she hide it from me? Why couldn’t she turn to me? All her notes seemed to be telling me she was trying not to fall in love with me, but she wasn’t succeeding. So why did she lie about the watchers? I could have helped. I could have saved her. Maybe.

Did she want to be taken? Was she protecting me? I’m certain the reference to PG was to Pauli Gambatti. That was more than coincidence. I flicked back through her notes. I was right; there were other PG references before my time. She’d feared him and decided that he was having her followed. But why would he? An East End thug? If he wanted to harm her, why didn’t he send one of his hoods round to her flat and pick her off there? And why did she walk into the lion’s gambling den? Did her nerve snap and she had to confront him, face her fears? Like the mad bastard who storms a machine gun nest?

My head was reeling. I’d had enough. I needed time to digest it all. I handed back my books to the librarian and made her blush just by smiling at her and saying how sweet she’d been. I needed her on my side; there was more to uncover in this book, much more. For the moment it was time to act. In the absence of any better target, I wanted Gambatti in my sights. But before I could pull the trigger I had to flush my bird. There was no returning to Carlyle’s; they wouldn’t let me within a hundred yards.

Over the next three days – more exactly, nights – I put the word out. It was easy enough. I went on a pub crawl. I was careful to drink only in the East End and only in Gambatti’s patch. Wherever I went I bought a half of bitter and began asking questions. I would smile at the landlady and ask if Mr Gambatti ever frequented her fine establishment, and watch her face crumple in fear or irritation. Sometimes they flat out denied everything. Never heard of him. Sometimes I was told to drink up and piss off. Sometimes they asked why I wanted to know. When I explained I had a bone to pick with him, they were as likely to laugh in my face as to tell me to clear off. Whatever their reaction I made sure they knew my name and I always used my loudest voice. Drunks have big ears.

I made a particular point of buttonholing Fast Larry when he slid into the George on night three. The lads were as startled as Larry was when I called him over to our corner of the snug.

“Let me buy you a drink, Fast Larry.”

He looked at me like I was dispensing hemlock. “I’m fine, Danny. You want to place a bet?”

“Sit down. I want a word in that shell-like of yours.” I ignored his protests and made the boys move over so that he could sit by me. He was twitching like a diviner’s rod, his eyes rolling everywhere except near mine.

“I want to talk to Pauli Gambatti.”

Fast Larry’s eyes stopped swivelling and he looked at me. “You’re fucking mad, Danny. Why d’you want to get your balls cut off?”

“I’m mad all right. Mad as could be. It’s his balls I’m after unless he has a cast iron alibi for his whereabouts at the time of the disappearance of a dear friend of mine.”

Fast Larry’s eyes were whirling again. “This bint of yours?”

“How do you know about that?” I asked sharply.

He shrugged. “It’s in the paper.” He tapped his shiny jacket pocket.

“Show me!”

He drew out a distressed copy of today’s Racing Mirror rolled inside a copy of the Trumpet. He disentangled them and laid the Trumpet out on the table, trying to flatten its folds in the pools of beer.

“Give me that!” I grabbed it from him. Her photo was on the front page. TOP REPORTER MISSING! was the headline, and underneath glowing words of praise and speculation about a gangland kidnap. Fearless reporter Eve Copeland abducted by very men she’d named and shamed. I read it twice. It said nothing I didn’t know, except they were offering a reward for news of her. I prayed someone was already phoning in to collect. In the meantime…

“Fast Larry, I want you to get a message to your mate, Gambatti. Tell I’m coming after him, and I’ll wreck his whole bloody organisation just like I wrecked his team at the warehouse job. Got that? Now bugger off and tell him.”

Fast looked at me pityingly for a long moment then got up, refolding his papers like a bad example of origami. “You’re round the twist, Danny McRae. Fucking doolally.”

The lads thought so too when I explained my plan.

A couple of days later my madness paid dividends. Of a sort. I walked into my office, wiping my forehead from the heat and the climb, and found a man sitting at my desk with a gun trained on my belly button.

I didn’t think he was going to kill me. Not right away. In my experience, if someone sets out to shoot you, they just do it; they don’t hang around and discuss it. That only happens in movies when they want the killer to reveal why he stole the falcon. And killers don’t usually sit in your chair with their feet on your desk, drinking beer from a bottle. Your beer. They wait behind the door and shoot you from behind. Much smarter and safer. For the killer.

But that didn’t mean that this guy wouldn’t kill me; it just wasn’t the first thing that was going to happen. I stuffed my sweat-stained hankie in my trouser pocket. My jacket was over my arm – the hottest day of the year, they reckoned – and I reached out and hung it on the coat rack behind the door. I ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Author biography
• Dedication page
• Contents
• ONE
• TWO
• THREE
• FOUR
• FIVE
• SIX
• SEVEN
• EIGHT
• NINE
• TEN
• ELEVEN
• TWELVE
• THIRTEEN
• FOURTEEN
• FIFTEEN
• SIXTEEN
• SEVENTEEN
• EIGHTEEN
• NINETEEN
• TWENTY
• TWENTY ONE
• TWENTY TWO
• TWENTY THREE
• TWENTY FOUR
• TWENTY FIVE
• TWENTY SIX
• TWENTY SEVEN
• TWENTY EIGHT