Ormerod's Landing Read Online Free PDF

were drifting in the blue sky and a Nazi Dornier had crashed that afternoon only half a mile from where we were. The Brigadier never talked about the war at all (I suppose he was tired of it already) but only about golf and his home and his family in Scotland.
    'After a while he began to ask me about my police work and, almost by accident it seemed (although in my state of mind it was more or less bound to come out, I suppose), I started to tell him about Lorna Smith and my efforts to get the man Smales. The Brigadier was a man who listened intently, I could see that, even when he was playing golf shots, which he did pretty well as far as I could see with an inexpert eye. Then, like the intelligence officer he was, he began to ask me questions about the case and my feelings towards it. It was like a cross-examination in the witness box and I had to think very carefully about my replies.
    '"Where is this man in hospital?" he asked.
    "I don't know," I said. "All I know is he's a prisoner and he's in hospital in France. He's safe for a while anyway."
    'For a quarter of an hour he did not speak. Even I could see he knew how to play the game well and he did not take many strokes over the par. "And you'd still like to get at this man, would you?" he went on eventually, as if we had never interrupted the conversation. It was a statement, quietly put, more than a question. I thought it was just something to say.
    ' "I'd say I would," I answered.
    ' "Why is that?" he asked shrewdly.
    I was a bit shaken. "Well... well to start with, I'm sure he killed that girl," I began. "I want to get him for that. I want him brought to court."
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    ' "But surely there are one or two murderers, maybe even more, running around loose today," he said to me. "And they're get-at-able, here in this country. Why not go after one of them?"
    'I was not sure how to answer. "This is my case, sir." I hesitated. "And I don't like to be beaten. I think crime should be punished. I'm a bit of a puritan like that."
    ' "What about after the war?" he said, putting the ball right into the hole from all of twenty feet. He hardly paused in his talking. "Don't you think that with things as they are you ought to get your mind off it? After all the Germans could be playing this hole in a month's time." He paused again, then decided to go on. "Do you think it's a sort of frustration because you're not serving in the army?"
    ' "A sort of guilt you mean?" I said, knowing he did mean that. "Well it might look like that, I admit."
    'He had played the last hole. He scratched his nose with his putter. "I mean," he said turning away, "how do you feel about the war? Does it worry you?"
    'The questions were confusing me. "Yes sir," I answered. "Of course I worry like everybody else. I read the papers and I hear the news. I mean, I wouldn't like us to lose."
    ' "But you're not actually taking much part." It was funny, I thought, he was so persistent. We were walking towards the club house and he asked me to go in with him for a drink. "Who is taking part at the moment?" I asked, probably a bit rudely because he had touched a tender spot. "As far as I can see we're all sitting here, just waiting."
    ' "Right," he agreed sportingly. "You've got a point Ormerod. Not many of us are fighting just now. Except the chaps up there in the Spitfires. But don't mind my saying so please -it just seems from what you've been telling me that the war itself is a trifle ... well ... remote ... yes, remote, from you."
    ' "You could say that," I agreed moodily in the end. Then I thought I might as well say it. "Albert Smales is my war."'
    Two weeks after his conversation with Brigadier Elvin Clark, Superintendent Lowe of Wandsworth police station called Ormerod into his office and amazed him by telling him that a
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    confidential message had been sent to the division requesting that Detective-Sergeant George Ormerod should report to a department at the War Office on the following day.
    'What have you been