Secret Places

Secret Places

Prelude: Yorkshire, August 1940

The sealed van clanked wearily round the lanes to the outskirts of the village, then turned up the track to the rough grazing the villagers called ‘The Coombes’. At that time of night there were few people about. The local poacher, Sam Doble, slid silently through the dark copse by the road and lights were on in one of the barns as the farmer tended a late calving. If anyone noticed the van at all, it was probably to wonder how someone had managed to get their hands on petrol. No one commented. Less than a year into the war, everyone knew better than to poke their nebs where they weren’t wanted.

Its four occupants clambered out at the top of the track and were met by the Rector, exercising his war-time rather than his pastoral role . A quick word with the leader of the team, and the men unloaded their equipment and set to, digging into the side of the ancient chalk quarry wall.

At the end of all the work a new, standard design observation base had been sunk into the hillside. Its curved metal walls and roof were covered in soil until nothing showed; other than the disturbed soil, the hatch at the top of the hill that gave access to the shaft down, and the end of the concrete piping lower down the hill that provided the concealed emergency exit.

The van and its crew disappeared into the night, and were replaced by the Rector’s hand-picked team. They were a mixed bunch, drawn from the only remaining men in the village who were neither ancient nor disabled. Sam Doble was recruited both for his marksmanship and his ability to slide stealthily through the night. Nearly as good was Andrew Jenkins, the neighbouring estate’s junior gamekeeper. Only the most extreme need could have brought members of these two families together. Of the other four men, three were yeoman farmers and the fourth a retired miner with a useful skill in handling explosives.

Swiftly the men transferred their stores into the OB. The wet cell batteries and the limited ammunition were no problem. Sam took a particular interest in the gallon of rum and was sternly reminded by the Rector that it was for emergency use only. Sam and Andrew were despatched to string the aerial for the radio along the thorn hedge that marked the edge of the field, while the others debated the storage of the phosphorus hand grenades. There was a unanimous view that no one wanted to share living space with them and they were moved, with extreme caution, to the village and a pit under the corner of the Rector’s garden shed.

OB 478 and its team of auxiliaries were ready for invasion.

Chapter 1: Yorkshire, June 2015

The day was sunny, light rippling on the ceiling as it reflected from the River Ouse running past the apartment. Music played in the background and Detective Inspector Greg Geldard was not happy. He scowled in the mirror as he shaved, and nearly cut himself as he practised his happy face. He tried again, but it still wasn’t very convincing and he sighed as he turned away, wiping the remaining soap off with his towel. His wife Isabelle was singing as she rushed around the bedroom, collecting clothes together and packing them in the special light case she used for air travel. Her carry-on bag was, as usual, crammed with music. She turned as he came into the room.

‘Oh Greg,’ she said, ‘it is only four weeks. I’ll ring every night.’

‘Yes I know. Take no notice of me. I hope you have a super time and a really successful tour. The time will fly and when you get home we’ll have a special night out in Grape Lane.’

‘That’s something to look forward to. My favourite restaurant.’ She kissed him lightly as she passed through to her music room. ‘Must make sure I’ve everything I need.’

A horn tooted outside and Greg went to the balcony. ‘It’s your car. Bye darling. Have a great time and see you in four weeks.’

He carried the case down to the waiting car and waved her off, the unconvincing smile still on his face, then went back up to the flat to collect his wallet and case for work. Four weeks until she got back from what would doubtless be another highly successful tour for The Byrds in the Midwest of the USA. Four weeks of ready meals in front of the TV and missing her every moment of every day, even when at work. He clattered down the stairs to the basement car park and set off for the police station in Malton.

‘Not a routine week, please God,’ he thought as he drove through the early York traffic. ‘I need some distraction.’

*

Across the Vale of York, Tristan Smith was minding her business and her goats. Coombe Farm clung to a slope carved from chalk by the ice and water of millennia. Rich neighbours in the valley bottom enjoyed deep soils and gentle gradients. Up on the wind-scoured plateau of the wolds were more wide fields with thick crops. Here on the escarpment between, life was different.

Coombe Farm was perched halfway up a hillside overlooking the Vale of York. Depending on your point of view, this meant either spectacular views, or bone-freezing winds. Both were equally prevalent regardless of the season. As successive owners had discovered, many of the fields had a gradient that discouraged any form of land-use by large and expensive machinery. It was just about possible to make hay or silage over most of the farm, but only if the baling operative was both skilled and cautious. Tristan had witnessed the results of a self-confident novice at the controls. The first big round bale had spun off the wrapping machine and barrelled into the adjacent hedge. The second had made a stately but inexorable progress down the field, through the hedge, over the road and into the bottom of the neighbouring dale, whence it was never extracted.

The other drawback to spectacular views was that they were two-sided. Not only could Coombe Farm see much of the Vale of York, but also, as Tristan was ruefully aware, every farmer in the Vale could see every mistake and accident at Coombe Farm. Tip a tractor over, and you would be asked when you were fitting wheels to the roof. Should an animal die in a public place – and they never died unobtrusively under cover – every livestock farmer for miles around noted both the demise and the swiftness of the tidy-up. Miss a strip when spraying off weeds, and the bright red stripe of poppies was visible for fifty miles. Coombe Farm was an agricultural goldfish bowl.

Tristan’s less than traditional approach to farming had therefore been a source of infinite fascination to her neighbours. Many sceptical comments at village events had made this all too clear. She had gritted her teeth at the frequent facetious remarks and smiled, albeit tiredly, at the many old jokes about maiden lady smallholders and their strange preoccupations. It was only in recent years that she had begun to feel a little hard-earned respect. As one of her neighbours had said,

‘Tha stock’s in good fettle missus, tha work ’ard and tha’s paying tha way. There’s a few round ’ere as can’t say that. All credit missus.’ And he’d raised his greasy cap. It seemed she was forgiven her choice of species (goats and alpacas as well as the more usual sheep) and her end products (cheese and rugs) in the light of her success and hard work. She had glowed with the praise.

The fact that many of her livestock had names and were at least halfway to being pets had earned less scorn from her neighbours. Too many hard-bitten Yorkshire shepherds have been embarrassed by the antics of an ex-pet lamb to cast scorn on anyone else. The previous year, one local had been horrified to see his grown pet lamb Terry included in a group of sheep rounded up for a sheepdog trial. Sure enough, once released at the top of the field Terry had ignored her fellow sheep and the hapless dog and galloped down to put her nose in her mortified owner’s pocket. That particular farmer, cover blown forever, had to take refuge in the tea tent to avoid Terry’s persistent efforts at ingratiation.

Tristan stood up and pressed her hand to the small of her back. In her fifties, and built for strength rather than elegance, Tristan was finding some of the work increasingly hard; especially anything connected with bending. Unfortunately, as she often reflected, most jobs on a livestock farm involve bending, especially milking goats. Today, apart from Heidi 4, the newest introduction to the herd, the milking had gone smoothly. The latest Heidi was, however, showing clear signs of her maternal ancestry; a mind of her own being the dominant characteristic. All the Heidis had been bossy and opinionated. Today, the muddy trotter-print on Tristan’s knee was H 4’s protest when the feed ran out. The last of the fifty milking ladies trotted out to the paddock to begin the days hard browsing, except for Noemi 3, who paused for a scratch and carrot.

Tristan pushed her wind-tousled brown hair off her brow, noting that a trim was now over-due if she wanted to continue to see out, and turned into the house for second breakfast. Like a hobbit, she found that farmers were best fuelled on multiple breakfasts, especially when doing the early milking.

She was all set for a morning in the dairy when she was interrupted by the phone. It was not a number she recognised, not even the location code; and she was on the verge of not answering, fearing a spammer. On this occasion she gave them the benefit of the doubt and contrary to her fears there was no computer-induced delay nor trans-Atlantic accent but a real person based in Suffolk.

‘This is Parham Airfield Museum,’ said the voice. ‘Sorry to disturb you, but my name is Roger Field and I’ve been doing some research into the secret World War II stay-behind bases that were set up to resist invasion. Most of the documentation is still restricted, but according to some of the maps, there was one on your land. I wonder if you would be willing for me to pay you a visit and have a look around? It will be just me and one assistant, not a crowd. And we just want to explore the area and perhaps take some photos.’

Only then did the voice pause for breath. It sounded, reflected Tristan, as though he had practised getting his message out quickly before cut off with ‘not today thank you.’

‘I’ve no objection in principle,’ she said cautiously, ‘but I have to say I don’t think there is one on my land. I’ve never seen one anyway. What should I have been looking for?’

‘It may not be obvious,’ replied Roger. ‘They were intended to be hidden after all. It would be underground, and all you’d see from the top might be perhaps a hatch for access, or the end of a tunnel. Or maybe some old ceramic insulators in a hedge—’

‘Oh, I’ve seen some of them,’ interrupted Tristan, ‘I thought they were from an ancient electric fence.’

‘No!’ exclaimed Roger, quite excited. ‘If they are what I think they are, they were used to trail a long cable aerial for the radio. Along a hedge line was much less conspicuous than straight up into the air. If you have an email address I can send you a photo.’

As he spoke, Tristan was having what looked set to qualify as an awful thought. ‘You’re welcome to come and have a look, but I think I need to warn you. What you’re describing sounds very like what we and the previous owners used as a fallen-stock disposal pit. It’s pretty full of dead sheep and goats, although we haven’t put anything down there recently.’

‘No problem,’ said Roger. ‘This is exciting. Can we come tomorrow?’

Tristan’s assistant Chris seemed surprisingly chilled about the news of a secret army base on the Coombes. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I knew there was something down there. My granfer remembers his dad talking about being part of the team, but he never said much. Even years ’n years after the war, he still thought it was secret. The only time it came up was when they found those grenades under the Vicar’s garden shed.’

‘Grenades!’ Tristan was amazed. ‘When was that?’

‘Oh, I suppose that was before your time,’ replied Chris. ‘I were only a nipper myself, but it was reported in the papers. The Vicar found a case of grenades he din’t like the look of when his garden shed fell down in a gale. They spotted something while they were clearing the rubble and had to send for bomb disposal and everything. The papers reported they were phosphorus hand grenades and it could’ve been really nasty if they’d gone off. Come to think of it, they didn’t come as a surprise to everyone,’ he went on. ‘Old man Doble knew something about them too. I s’pose if they recruited the team locally, there might be a few folk still about who knew something.’

‘Old man Doble, was he any relation to Sharon?’

‘Her granfer,’ replied Chris, ‘and a right old rogue he were too. He were the village poacher and suspected of small thefts round the village. If there were any mischief going off, you could bet old man Doble was at the bottom of it. He were a lovable old rogue though.’

‘Not very like his granddaughter then,’ commented Tristan. ‘If there’s any problem in this village you can bet Sharon's gossip is somewhere at the root. I have never known anyone with such an evil mind. It wouldn't be so bad if she made it all up, but there tends to be at least a fragment of truth, which means people believe the whole lot.’

‘She didn't get on too well with your predecessors neither,’ said Chris. ‘She really had the knife out for poor Rachel, and she were the first to suggest that Matthew’d run off wi someone else when he disappeared. She had all sorts of theories about what Rachel had done to drive him away.’

‘And now we're gossiping as well,’ commented Tristan. ‘Perhaps we’d better get on with some work while we're waiting for the archaeologists. I need to sort out yesterday's cheese and package the last batch for the market. Could you check round the sheep please? I haven't done that yet today. They should be okay now they've been dipped but they might need moving to new grazing soon. The eggs haven't been collected either.’

Coombe Farm had what you might call a mixed economy. Most of the income came from the fifty invaluable goats, by way of a soft cheese that was becoming very well known locally and was much favoured by restaurants seeking a ‘Yorkshire gourmet’ aspect for their cheeseboard. The twenty-odd Jacob sheep and four guard alpacas contributed their wool and fibre to the other main enterprise – the hand-woven rugs. Between the cheese, the rugs and the general livestock jobs, Tristan had not had time to turn round until she recruited the young, enthusiastic and inexhaustible Chris to her team. Even now he was jogging steadily over to the sheep paddock and Tristan marvelled at the spare energy that could be used for voluntary running about.

It was late morning when the team from Parham Museum arrived. As promised there were just the two. Roger (excited, lean, greying and, so Tristan estimated, in his sixties) got out of the pickup first and was followed by his young, distinctly hairy assistant, who came over to be introduced. To Tristan, he had the distinct air of an environmental enthusiast, which, she supposed with an inward sigh, only exposed her prejudices.

‘This is Tim,’ said Roger, ‘who’s going to be going down into the observation base.’

‘I hope he knows about the corpses,’ commented Tristan.

Tim, a gangling teenager with wild woolly hair and a wild woolly jumper, added wild eyes to his general ensemble. ‘It shouldn't be too bad,’ said Tristan, ‘it’s years since anything went down there. The rats and bacteria will have cleared it all up long since.’

Tim looked anything but reassured. ‘Rats!’ he exclaimed. You didn't say anything about rats Roger.’

‘You'll be fine,’ said Roger, ‘just remember to tie the baler twine round your knees and they won’t be able to get up your trouser legs.’

The pickup bounced over the grazing land to the far corner of the field and they got out. Tim, baler twine firmly tied around his legs below his knees, pulled the ladder from the back of the pickup and they all went over to the hedge.

‘Here you are,’ said Roger, as he pointed at the old ceramic insulators now half buried in the elderly, overgrown hawthorn, ‘they’re the insulators for the aerial.’

‘They’re the ones I thought were part of an old electric fence,’ said Tristan.

‘No, definitely the aerial fixings I think you’ll find. Look, all along this old hedge trailing from here right the way to the top of the hill. This would have been the line for the aerial.’

Tim had been kicking around among the longer grass by the trees. Tristan pointed to the sheet of plywood held down by breeze blocks that covered the shaft to the old buried Nissen hut. ‘That’s where the bodies went,’ she said. Roger and Tim went to inspect the shaft.

‘Originally there would have been a hinged hatch or trapdoor on the top of this shaft, probably with turf or other material fixed to the top so it couldn't be seen when it was closed. And look, look at the sides of the shaft. You can see the old metal rungs they would've used to go up and down. Some are missing however, and those that are there don't look very safe. I think it's best we use the ladder Tim.’

Tim heaved the ladder over and lowered it down the shaft. Checking the security of his baler twine, he scrambled down. Roger hesitated at the top, but curiosity overwhelmed his concern about the rats and he soon followed. Their voices echoing in the chamber below sounded quite excited.

Roger came to the bottom of the shaft to call up to Tristan. ‘We’ll be here a while. Most of the fittings have gone. There would originally have been wet cell batteries and some other supplies, but I expect they were removed at the end of the war if not before.