The Eagle Has Flown. Jack Higgins
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there is someone who could confirm the truth of that file,’ she said. ‘Liam Devlin. You said in your book he was still around, operating with the Provisional IRA in Ireland.’
‘Last I heard,’ I said. ‘Sixty-seven he’ll be now, but lively with it.’
‘Well, then.’ She smiled again. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.’
She went down the steps and walked away through the rain, vanishing in the early evening mist at the end of the street.
I sat by the fire and read the file twice, then I went back into the kitchen, made myself some more tea and a chicken sandwich and sat at the table, eating the sandwich and thinking about things.
Extraordinary how events coming right out of the blue can change things. It had happened to me once before, the discovery of that hidden memorial to Steiner and his men in the churchyard at Studley Constable. I’d been researching an article for an historical magazine. Instead, I’d found something unlooked for that had changed the course of my entire life. Produced a book which had gone round the world from New York to Moscow, made me rich. Now this – Ruth Cohen and her stolen file, and I was filled with the same strange, tingling excitement.
I needed to come down. Get things in perspective. So, I went to have a shower, took my time over it, shaved and dressed again. It was only eight-thirty and it didn’t seem likely that I’d go to bed early, if I went at all.
I didn’t have any more whiskey as I needed to think, so I made even more tea and settled on the chair again by the fire, lit a cigarette and started to work my way through the file again.
The doorbell rang, shaking me from my reverie. I glanced at the clock. It was just before nine. The bell rang again insistently and I replaced the file in the folder, put it on the coffee table and went out into the hall. It occurred to me that it might be Ruth Cohen again, but I couldn’t have been more wrong, for when I opened the door I found a young police constable standing there, his navy-blue mac wet with rain.
‘Mr Higgins?’ He looked at a piece of paper in his left hand. ‘Mr Jack Higgins?’
Strange the certainty of bad news so that we don’t even need to be told. ‘Yes,’ I said.
He stepped into the hall. ‘Sorry to trouble you, sir, but I’m making an enquiry relevant to a Miss Ruth Cohen. Would you be a friend of hers, sir?’
‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘Is there a problem?’
‘I’m afraid the young lady’s dead, sir. Hit-and-run accident at the back of the British Museum an hour ago.’
‘My God!’ I whispered.
‘The thing is sir, we found your name and address on a card in her handbag.’
It was so difficult to take in. She’d stood there at the door where he was such a short time before. He was no more than twenty-one or -two. Still young enough to feel concern and he put a hand on my arm.
‘Are you all right, sir?’
I said, ‘Rather shocked, that’s all.’ I took a deep breath. ‘What is it you want of me?’
‘It seems the young lady was at London University. We’ve checked the student accommodation she was using. No one there with it being the weekend. It’s a question of official identification. For the Coroner’s Office.’
‘And you’d like me to do it?’
‘If you wouldn’t mind, sir. It’s not far. She’s at Kensington Mortuary.’
I took another deep breath to steady myself. ‘All right. Just let me get my raincoat.’
The mortuary was a depressing-looking building in a side street, more like a warehouse than anything else. When we went into the foyer, there was a uniformed porter on duty at the desk and a small dark man in his early fifties standing at the window looking out at the rain, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. He wore a trilby hat and trenchcoat.
He turned to meet me, hands in pockets. ‘Mr Higgins, is it?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
He didn’t take his hands out of his pockets and coughed, ash falling from the tip of his cigarette on to his coat. ‘Detective Chief Superintendent Fox. An unfortunate business, sir.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘This young lady, Ruth Cohen, was she a friend of yours?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I only met her for the first time earlier this evening.’
‘Your name and address were in her handbag.’ Before I could reply he carried on, ‘Anyway, best to get it over with. If you’d come this way.’
The room they took me into was walled with white tiles and bright with fluorescent lighting. There was a line of operating tables. The body was on the end one covered with a white rubber sheet. Ruth Cohen looked very calm, eyes closed, but her head was enclosed in a rubber hood and blood seeped through.
‘Would you formally identify the deceased as Ruth Cohen, sir?’ the constable asked.
I nodded. ‘Yes, that’s her,’ and he replaced the sheet.
When I turned Fox was sitting on the end of the table in the corner, lighting another cigarette. ‘As I said, we found your name in her handbag.’
It was then, as if something had gone click in my head, that I came back to reality. Hit and run – a serious offence, but when had it merited the attention of a Detective Chief Superintendent? And wasn’t there something about Fox with his saturnine face and dark, watchful eyes? This was no ordinary policeman. I smelled Special Branch.
It always pays to stick as closely to the truth as possible, I found that out a long time ago. I said, ‘She told me she was over from Boston, working at London University, researching a book.’
‘About what, sir?’
Which confirmed my suspicions instantly. ‘Something to do with the Second World War, Superintendent, which happens to be an area I’ve written about myself.’
‘I see. She was looking for help, advice, that sort of thing?’
Which was when I lied totally. ‘Not at all. Hardly needed it. A Ph.D., I believe. The fact is, Superintendent, I wrote a rather successful book set during the Second World War. She simply wanted to meet me. As I understood it she was flying back to the States tomorrow.’
The contents of her handbag and briefcase were on the table beside him, the Pan Am ticket conspicuous. He picked it up. ‘So it would appear.’
‘Can I go now?’
‘Of course. The constable will run you home.’
We went out into the foyer and paused at the door. He coughed as he lit another cigarette. ‘Damn rain. I suppose the driver of that car skidded. An accident really, but then he shouldn’t have driven away. We can’t have that, can we?’
‘Good night, Superintendent,’ I told him and went down the steps to the police car.
I’d left the light on in the hall. When I went in, I carried on into the kitchen without taking my coat off, put the kettle on and then went into the living room. I poured a Bushmills into a glass and turned towards the fire. It was then that I saw that the folder I’d left on the coffee table was gone. For a wild moment I thought I’d made a mistake, had put it elsewhere, but that was nonsense of course.
I put the glass of whiskey down and lit a cigarette, thinking about it. The mysterious Fox – I was more certain than ever that he was Special Branch now – that wretched young woman lying there in the mortuary, and I remembered my unease when she’d told me how she had returned that file at the Records Office. I thought of her walking along the pavement and crossing that street in the rain at the back of the British Museum and then the car. A wet night and a skidding car, as Fox had said. It could have been an accident,