The Eagle has Flown Read Free

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, but I knew that was hardly likely, not with the file missing. 'Which raised the problem of my own continued existence.
     
     
Time to move on for a while, but where? And then I remembered what she had said. There was one person still left who could confirm the story in that file. I packed an overnight bag and went and checked i the street