The Dark Palace

‘Inspector Qui

‘Ah, yes, please do sit down, Inspector.’ Lord Dunwich’s voice was deep and richly toned. His expression relaxed somewhat as he spoke, as if he too found the sound he emitted reassuring. He closed the folder he had been studying, revealing the official stamp of CLASSIFIED on the front of it. He smiled encouragingly at Qui

‘This is all rather new to us, your lordship.’

‘Please … you may simply call me “sir”. I don’t stand on my dignity here.’

Qui

‘Have you not read Spies of the Kaiser, Inspector?’ Qui

‘That is a work of fiction, is it not, sir?’

‘Is it? Is it really, Inspector? Or is it a polemic?’ Lord Dunwich paused for a moment to give the question due consideration. ‘I think there was a time when that book, and others of its ilk, were dismissed as nonsense. But I have to tell you that they are taken increasingly seriously within the Admiralty.’

‘And so …?’

Lord Dunwich was fingering the classified folder on his desk, as if impatient to get back to it. He looked up at Qui

‘Would it be permissible to ask for more specific instructions, sir?’

‘Instructions? It’s not a question of instructions, I’m afraid. One either has a talent for this kind of work, or one does not. One has to keep one’s eyes and ears open. If I were you, I would start small. Focus on one specific target.’

‘But how do we identify this target?’

‘We’re looking for German spies, Inspector.’

‘I know that, sir.’

‘What do you think a German spy looks like?’

‘I have no idea, sir.’

‘Exactly.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand, sir.’

‘Put aside your preconceptions – your prejudices. You think you’re looking for men in alpine hats with fu

‘Someone like you, perhaps, sir?’

Lord Dunwich’s eyes expanded in astonishment. His expression then dissolved into hilarity. ‘I say, Inspector, that’s rather droll! Priceless!’

‘One of my men wishes to investigate a German barber’s shop off the Strand. He believes that he has witnessed suspicious activity there.’

Lord Dunwich shook his head discouragingly. ‘No, no. A classic mistake. That’s far too obvious. You must do better than that, I’m afraid.’

Qui

‘You need to develop your instincts beyond the superficial.’

It was interesting advice. Qui

At any rate, he sensed that he would learn nothing more from continuing the interview. He nodded and rose from his seat. But before he could leave, Lord Dunwich cleared his throat. His voice when he spoke was hesitant and broken. ‘Inspector, what do you know about … green ink?’

‘Green ink?’

‘What does it say about a man if he uses green ink? It is not a colour of ink you see often, is it?’

Qui

‘Interesting. Thank you, Inspector. Please keep me informed of how your investigation proceeds. You may write to me here.’

‘Of course.’

‘I will have to get someone to show you out, I’m afraid.’ Lord Dunwich picked up a small brass bell which gave an effete tinkle. He then half-rose and offered Qui

TEN

The darkness was hot and damp and scented. He feared it at the same time as he surrendered to it. How stupid he had been, to walk into the enemy’s lair, to place himself utterly at the enemy’s mercy.

He suspected the towels were infiltrated with some kind of narcotic drug. His face felt as though it was melting. The feeling of warmth and physical dissolution began to spread out. He had to keep his wits about him.

How could he have been so careless? Allowing this man, this patent German, to stand over him with a cut-throat razor in his hand. How had it come to this?

Inchball knew this end of the Strand well, from his days in the Vice Squad. Holywell Street was now demolished; the dealers in rare prints, specialist booksellers and suppliers of French goods were long gone. For years it had been the centre of the city’s pornography trade. In some of the upstairs ‘Show Rooms’ an even more dubious trade had been conducted. Inchball had a nostalgic sense of the street, just out of sight, always around the next corner, like a street you might look for in a dream but never find. He sensed too the ghosts of all the generations of men who had congregated there, crowding round the window displays and street wares, blocking the traffic and chesting each other out of the way in their tense eagerness to get to the front.

Happy days, he might have said. You only had to reach out to feel a collar. The punters were so distracted by their appetites that they never saw you coming.

A few echoing footsteps away from the ghost of Holywell Street, the alley in which Dortmunder’s barber shop was located had survived the swing of the wrecking ball. Inchball half-suspected that this was because the demolition team had not been able to find it, not because it didn’t deserve to be torn down. It was as dirty, dark, crooked and claustrophobic a passageway as any you might find in a medieval town. Once you passed through the whitewashed arch that separated it from the Strand, you entered into a squalid underworld begrimed with black soot, the pavement littered with dank scraps, and broken by great standing puddles into which it was unwise to venture, for fear that they might be bottomless sinkholes. Children dressed in little more than rags clustered in the rotten doorways. Too exhausted to beg, they eyed every intruder with sullen, lifeless suspicion.

It was the shop’s location that had first attracted Inchball’s attention. Some of the clientele he had noticed frequenting the shop could safely be classified as ‘toffs’. Foreigners, admittedly, but toffs all the same. Why on earth should such men choose this shabby little barber shop in a god-forsaken blind alley? Unless they had some nefarious purpose in going there.

Whatever the guv’nor might say about his plan, there was method to his madness.

The shop front protruded in a bulbous bay, with an old-fashioned leaded window. The sign above it advertised: FRITZ Dortmunder, BARBER.

Another sign, over the door, read: HAIR CUTTING, SHAVING, SHAMPOOING, SINGEING.

The shop was tiny. If you entered it hoping for relief from the narrowness of the alley, you would be disappointed. However, it was certainly spruce inside. The floor was freshly swept. Every surface was spotless. Gleaming implements were arranged in impeccable order. Mirrors glinted. The metallic components of the adjustable chairs shone as if they had just been polished. The air was scented with talc, hair oil and incense, no doubt burning to disguise the inescapable smell of damp and sewer gas.