The Interrogator Read Online Free PDF Page A

canopy.
    It was a glorious spring day. Lindsay was standing by the statue of Cook in front of the Admiralty, enjoying the bright warmth of the sun on his face. Exhilaration, he felt sheer bloody exhilaration and tense too, like an animal caught in the lights of a car at night. Reason and good sense were threatened. Mary Henderson had lit an unruly spark. She had the air of an academic bluestocking, dusty, a little neglected, but there was something reticent and thoughtful in her manner that he found very, very attractive. She was pretty in an unconventional way, with the most striking Slavic green eyes, complicated like jadeite. Quite different from her brother. Chalk and cheese.
    Lindsay had spent his first awkward weeks as an interrogator shadowing James Henderson. It had been enlightening in a way. Henderson spoke barely intelligible German with a thick county accent and he bellowed it at the prisoners as if he was on a Prussian parade ground. Most were either baffled or openly contemptuous of him and not to be shaken from their belligerent silence. For hispart, Henderson felt nothing short of hatred for them. Nor did he care very much for Lindsay. What would he think of Mary’s invitation? It was as intriguing as it was unexpected. She had asked him to her brother’s birthday celebration and he had surprised himself and said ‘Yes’. Since the
Culloden
, he had avoided clubs and parties, and friends and family had given up trying to coax him out in the evenings. Perhaps Henderson’s bash would be a new beginning, some sort of release.
    The sun slipped behind cloud and Lindsay felt the sharp chill of a March breeze on his face. It was a little after one o’clock and he was expected at the Interrogation Centre – a dreary train journey through the north London suburbs to Cockfosters. He glanced over his shoulder at the entrance to the Admiralty, half hoping to find Mary in the traffic at the door, then he set off at a brisk pace along the Mall. In Trafalgar Square, a violinist, a refugee from Middle Europe, was playing Strauss for pennies from civil servants in their lunch break. Some soldiers in greatcoats were smoking and chatting close by, their eyes drawn as one to the legs of a passing shopgirl. The square had become a sad grey place, the fountains empty but for a few dirty puddles. Ugly brick shelters had been built on the north and west sides, their walls roughly plastered with air-raid instructions, and the east side was dominated by a huge soot-stained banner of a convoy sailing under the protection of the white ensign. London was changing, slipping into a dark pocket, a place of wire and rubble, ration cards and wailing sirens.
    Beyond the square, smartly dressed women were beginning to gather on the steps of St Martin-in-the Fields for a service that was to be broadcast by the BBC to the Empire. Lindsay slipped through the crowd and on past the long, patient bus queues in Charing Cross Road. At Leicester Square, the concourse was heaving with shoppers, travellers with cardboard suitcases, blue and khaki uniforms. He joined the queue for the Piccadilly Line and was stepping through the ticket barrier when he heard someone call his name: ‘Lieutenant Lindsay . . . sir.’
    Turning, he saw the slight figure of a young naval officer pushing towards him. It was the
Culloden
’s engineer, Edward Jones, his thin freckled face pink with embarrassment.
    ‘I’m sorry I shouted, sir,’ he said anxiously, ‘I was so pleased to see you. What a coincidence.’
    They shook hands over the ticket barrier.
    ‘Yes. Quite a coincidence,’ said Lindsay quietly.
    The last he had seen of Jones was on the ward of a Liverpool hospital five months before. In the days after the sinking they had said very little to each other. None of the survivors had talked much. A few had gone on drunken benders together in the city but Lindsay had turned inwards, ashamed and guilty, and there were the flashbacks. Every second, every word