Simon Tolkien Inspector Trave Trilogy: Orders From Berlin, The Inheritance, The King of Diamonds. Simon Tolkien

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       CHAPTER 3

      Trave turned off the light and lifted the edge of the blackout curtain. Thorn came to stand beside him at the window and the two men looked out, transfixed by the sight that met their eyes. A welter of searchlight beams crisscrossed the darkening sky, moving madly from side to side as they tried to pick out the German planes flying overhead – Dorniers and Heinkels with big black crosses marked on their sides. They were dropping flares that hung in the air like Roman candles, exploding chandeliers of phosphorescent light that lit up the park across the road in lurid green and yellow colours. Concealed among the trees were the anti-aircraft guns that had sprung to life as the first bombs fell. The noise was tremendous – the roar of the aircraft; the sound of the AA shells bursting in mid-air; and the fainter patter of the planes’ machine guns firing continuously at the strange-looking otherworldly silver barrage balloons that still floated above the park, tugged this way and that by the wind. Their panoply of wires kept the bombers high in the sky, but as Trave and Thorn watched, one of the balloons took a fatal hit and flamed grotesquely as it fell drunkenly to the ground.

      ‘Come on,’ Trave shouted, pulling Thorn by the arm. ‘We need to get out of here. They mean business tonight.’ It was dark in the room, and he knocked against the desk in his haste, hurting his hip. Thorn turned on the light and Trave found himself looking down at the close-up photograph of Heydrich. The SS leader’s piercing eyes seemed to follow him as he left the room.

      They made it down the stairs without mishap, although the building rocked several times as bombs exploded close by and they both almost slipped more than once on the shards of broken glass that littered the carpet, blown in from the landing windows that had shattered under the blasts. It was worst on the final flight leading down to the hall. There was no light, and Thorn reached out and took Trave’s arm, holding on to it as they descended. Like brothers, Trave thought as they negotiated the final steps.

      There was no one in sight, but they could hear frightened voices coming from the open door leading down to the basement from the back of the hall.

      ‘The residents take shelter there. Do you want to go down with them?’ asked Trave, remembering Mrs Graves, the downstairs neighbour, telling him how the caretaker allowed them the use of the basement during raids.

      ‘What about you?’ Thorn asked.

      Trave shook his head. Off duty or not, it was his responsibility to try to help with the rescue effort, and he was in a hurry to get outside.

      ‘Good,’ said Thorn with a determined smile. ‘I’m coming with you.’

      Outside, the raid was at its most intense. The neighbouring apartment block had been hit and there were fires breaking out all the way down the street, with acrid black smoke billowing from the blown-out windows of the burning buildings. The incendiary bombs dropped at the start of the raid had done their work, and the flames were beacons for the heavier high-explosive bombs that were now finding their targets. They whistled and whined on their way down – some, with tubes shaped like organ pipes welded to their tail fins, actually screeched – and then exploded on impact with vivid white flashes and terrifying thuds that made the ground heave all around as columns of earth and broken masonry flew into the air.

      And shrapnel falling from the ceaseless AA barrage clattered on the pavements, heating the concrete so that it burnt the feet of the rescue workers, while the embers and incandescent particles from the fires pricked their faces and slivers of flying glass cut into their skin. Four fire engines had arrived on the scene with a great clanging of bells just as Thorn and Trave came out of Gloucester Mansions, but the crews were finding it hard to control the flames, which were now being fanned towards the smaller terrace houses in the narrow streets behind the apartment blocks by the strong south-westerly wind. It didn’t help that a mains had been hit further up Prince of Wales Drive, sending up a useless spume of foaming water and leaving little more than a trickle to emerge from the firemen’s hoses. A thick pall of dust and smoke hung in the air, while up above the full moon turned from orange to crimson red, the colour of spilt blood.

      Trave and Thorn crossed over to the park, which provided a vantage point from where they could see what was happening all around. Some of the trees were alight, but the heat was a little less intense away from the burning buildings on the other side of the street. And then suddenly, without warning, the water supply returned. The big hoses reared up like monstrous fat snakes, knocking some of the firemen off their feet, but they quickly recovered and it seemed for a moment that the worst might be over. The drone of the planes began to recede, and the deafening chatter of the AA guns grew more intermittent and finally ceased. It began to be possible to pick out individual sounds – ceilings and walls collapsing; the cries of the wounded and bereaved; and the shouts of firemen and other rescue workers directing residents away from the buildings and towards the park on the other side of the road. Trave went over to offer help but was turned back by an ARP warden in a tin hat who told him to rejoin the throng of residents standing under the trees. Some were in dressing gowns, and most of them were holding handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses, gazing with red-eyed incomprehension at the ruins of their homes across the street.

      And then out of the smoke-filled sky a green parachute appeared, floating down over the trees towards where Trave and Thorn were standing. A shape was hanging down from beneath it – obviously one of the German airmen, trying to save his skin. The crowd cheered spontaneously. The AA guns must finally have struck lucky; downing one of the bombers was better than none at all. Four or five men rushed out into the road, running to intercept the parachutist. It looked as though he were going to land at either the front or the back of Gloucester Mansions, which had remained mysteriously unscathed during the bombing. Trave went to follow them, fearing for the airman’s safety, but then almost at the last moment the smoke cleared and he saw what was attached to the parachute – not a man at all, but a thick black iron cylinder, about six feet long. He knew immediately what it was: a land mine filled with high explosive, the most lethal of all the different bombs that the Luftwaffe had been dropping on London since the start of the Blitz.

      ‘Get down!’ Trave shouted. He pushed Thorn violently to the ground and then followed suit. He pulled his legs up under his chest, put his hands up behind his head, and closed his eyes, waiting for death. And in that last moment before the explosion, he had a crystal-clear vision of his wife, Vanessa – one that he would never forget. They were outside, standing on the postage-stamp lawn in the walled СКАЧАТЬ