Sowerbutt's Climb

“Russian crown jewels inside, I suppose, guv,” Spaghetti whispered. “Never seen such security - barbed wire, trip wires, electrified wire, broken glass, traps, strips of nails, armed guards. I even spotted a couple of sound detectors, don’t see many of those about. Wonder which of the 20 bedrooms His Gloriousness the Ambassador, Maisky isn’t it, kips in?”

Sowerbutt smiled. The two men watched like hawks as Tipper slipped through the shadows on the manicured lawns of the Italianate mansion in South Kensington. He froze, waiting for a couple of armed guards to pass, then picked his way towards the marble steps leading to the imposing front entrance.
The three men had brought sacking with them to cover the broken glass as they climbed over the high brick wall surrounding the Soviet Embassy. All three were experienced burglars, but it had taken them much longer than usual to get in, past the endless obstacles.
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Sowerbutt's Escape

The crack of the gunshot filled the small bedroom, followed by a deathly silence; Sowerbutt watching aghast as a small black hole with blood welling out appeared in the forehead of the man bound in the chair.  Almost simultaneously, a loud scream came from the back bedroom.

In the flash of the gunshot, Sowerbutt saw a long sausage of a man, wearing a tweed cap, propped up against the bedroom wall, a wisp of smoke rising from his Smith and Wesson. Spinning around, he signalled Tipper to flee. In the helter-skelter across the landing and down the narrow stairs, Sowerbutt glimpsed a stunning woman in her nightdress, standing open-mouthed and pale in the doorway of the back bedroom.
The two men were out of the rear window of the terrace and across the garden wall into the adjacent clothing factory site within seconds.
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Sowerbutt's Revolver

Sowerbutt bent down and squinted through the keyhole of the bedroom door. He could see a table, partly bathed in moonlight and the edge of a chair. He looked again and thought he could see the side of an arm against the chair. And some darker lines on the arm and the chair?  Shadows? From bars on the window? Ropes, that’s what the lines were. Ropes.

He drew the Nagant revolver from his shoulder holster, signalling Tipper to do the same. He insisted on bringing the Russian guns, saying it would confuse the issue if there was any shooting.
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Sowerbutt's Visits

Sowerbutt and his men were regular night-time visitors to numerous fashionable homes across London. As he always said: “We never take risks. But we don’t need to with servants’ doors left open and windows unlatched.”

His best protection was the pampered society set’s eagerness for acquiring valuable items, preferably at knockdown prices; one client unlikely to tell another that he had acquired his friend’s valuable Impressionist painting.

“Redistribution of wealth,” said Tipper on one of their night-time forays. “As long as some of it keeps coming our way,”Sowerbutt smiled.

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Sowerbutt's Adventure

As the aging horse, ribs pushing against his brown and white hide, pulled the creaking cart towards the loading bays, two men clad in khaki battle fatigues, stepped out into the road, barring the way. “Sweet Jesus, of all the luck. We are a day too late,” whispered Sowerbutt. “The LDVs, the Look-Duck-Vanish brigade, have taken over. Or they call them the Home Guard now, don’t they?”

The two grey-haired men, wearing badly-fitting uniforms, had seen many summers. The tall lean one was armed with what looked like a medieval pike, the shorter tubby man with single white stripes on his sleeves was pointing a long-barrel gun at the cart. Sowerbutt feared the weapons were on loan from the Swansea Museum; he was worried about the trembling finger on the ancient musket’s trigger.
“Halt,” shouted the tubby lance-corporal holding up a shaking hand. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Colour-Lemon-Surrender-1940-ebook/dp/B008USR7FA

Sowerbutt's Lesson

The scrawny little man’s legs moved up and down in sequence, his hands twisting his tweed cap nervously. “They all say I should leave the ladies alone, Mr Sorbay. That I don’t know what I’m letting myself in for. But I’ve got a good eye, I know what I’m looking for.”

The two men were sharing a bar table in the Engine, a small pub near the centre of Luton.
 “I spotted this stunner in the Irish Quarter. Beautiful, had long black hair, what a dish. Wasn’t Irish, looked foreign like. She was going shopping with a basket.
“While she was busy in the corner shop across the road, I nipped back the way she came. As she started walking back, I bumped into her. Easy way to get chatting."
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Sowerbutt's Surprise

He turned the key in the door of the Cheapside property as quietly as he could and tip-toed in. At the top of the stairs, he could hear noise, people talking. Inside the first-floor flat was a hive of activity. Three women were sitting at a trestle table, chattering and hand-sewing pieces of colourful material; a couple of large sewing machines stood on top of the table.

“There you are, James. And about time,” Polly smiled, holding a tall toque with a spread of blue feathers. “This is a demonstration of what we can do, great isn’t it? You and I are buying a millinery company which has fallen on hard times."
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Sowerbutt's Champagne

Sowerbutt grinned: "By the way, sir, I have recently acquired a substantial supply of Pol Roger that may interest you. I can let you have a note of the years. I also have some cases of Armenian cognac that you may wish to sample.”

The Prime Minister stared hard at the tall, muscular man, a beam breaking across his animated face. “Splendid man, simply splendid. With France gone, my greatest fear was not the contemptuous Jerries, but that my Pol Roger would run out. Rest assured somebody will be in touch. In defeat I need it, in victory I deserve it.
"I’m also warming to your suggestion of the bounties of little Armenia - straight from the table of Uncle Joe, no doubt.”
Turning back towards his car, Churchill grunted: “I shall remember your kind offers of assistance, Mr Sorbay, I shall remember them. We have a long and hard road ahead of us until our final victory over the Nazi scum. I cannot foretell the future, your country may or may not require your special talents again. I, however, most certainly will.”
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Sowerbutt's Accolade

Churchill beamed: “I like you, Mr Sorbay, and I like the way you get things done. I wish I could put you in my Cabinet. But at least I can say I have met the man who saved the British Empire in its darkest days. However, I am duty-bound to inform you that in this unprincipled game of politics I will take on the role as saviour, if that’s not too sacrilegious a word to use.  Doubtless the sanctimonious Archbishop Lang would frown upon my words as he invariably does. The old misery was schooled in Glasgow, of course. What do you expect?”

Shaking his dusty brown hair from his face, Sowerbutt grinned: “We are always happy to help out the authorities in the war effort and, particularly you, Mr Churchill."
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Sowerbutt's Meeting

Churchill’s bodyguard, who towered over most of the crowd, whispered: “Mr Sorbay, sir, if you remember. He’s just over there.” The former London detective had recognised the face from the restricted police file.

His blue eyes twinkling, the Prime Minister strode across to where Sowerbutt and Spaghetti were standing on the rubble-strewn pavement.
Gripping Sowerbutt’s blackened hand and shaking it vigorously, Churchill chuckled: “I do like to get my own way, Mr Sorbay. Brendan Bracken told me I was not allowed to meet you and now I have at last here in Poplar. I shall look forward to telling him all about our meeting, such a spoilsport."
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Sowerbutt's Good Fortune

Sowerbutt and Spaghetti agreed when they reached the wrecked building that luck was on their side. A week earlier, a misshapen steel drum had left the premises bound for Belfast via Liverpool Docks. An IRA contact had paid in cash 25 per cent of the face value for the contents to finance their bombing campaign in Northern Ireland. After dropping a few suggestions to his mate, the Poplar superintendent, Sowerbutt was confident the consignment of forged pound notes would be traced back to a U-boat off the Irish coast rather than the Gower farm he had recently visited. With his throat slit, the IRA contact, still stretched out in the Poplar mortuary despite the influx of Blitz victims, was no longer in a position to mention Sowerbutt’s involvement.

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Sowerbutt's Loss

After the terrible night, the beef broth at the Tabby was very welcome; Sowerbutt hugging the exhausted pastor in an uncharacteristic show of emotion and slipping a fiver into his jacket pocket.

“When you’ve finished, Spaghetti, we’ll wander down to Queen’s Theatre and check our larder there.”
It was a mess. One of their remaining Poplar larders, an empty shop near the popular music hall, had taken a direct hit. The building was a shell, still standing but badly blasted. The shop was a smouldering wreck, charred goods strewn across the floor and out into the street mixed up with splinters of glass from the shattered windows. The whole scene was lit by yellow and orange flames from a building burning fiercely nearby. The surrounding air was thick with dust. Outside in the street, eerie blue flames from the shattered gas mains flared, died away and flared again.
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Sowerbutt's Longest Night

It was the longest night, visiting the Family’s properties, pushing scared families into the rubble-strewn streets on their way to bomb shelters, comforting terrified children. Dodging craters and exploding gas mains amid the endless crump, crump of falling bombs. The taste of dirt, the stench of burnt timber, the glare of flares and the blazing orange and red skies. The harsh smell of dust and shattered brickwork, the crunch of broken glass everywhere.

Through the billowing smoke and dust, sometimes swept skywards in columns, Sowerbutt and Spaghetti saw houses sliced in half as though cut with a butter knife, the upstairs floors with bed and wardrobe jutting out in mid-air and curtains flapping in the dusty, roaring wind. Rows of bodies on the pavements, covered in stained blankets and torn sheets.
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Sowerbutt's Blitz

Spluttering in the ash and dust, the two men started to walk back to East India Dock Road, only to be almost knocked off their feet by another blast. Clutching each other like a couple of drunks, Spaghetti gasped: “Hardly breathe, guv. Look at that.” The bomb had hit a small laundry on the corner of the street; the fire was out of control, canisters of chemicals exploding in the heat one after the other. The front of the building had disappeared, rubble, pieces of timber and shards of glass strewn across the road. The roof had gone and a burning staircase could be seen, leading to nowhere. The upstairs floor, hanging in space with charred furniture and boxes, was about to crash into the fires below.

Two bodies, obviously dead, were partly covered in bricks. Sowerbutt grabbed a pile of singed clothing and threw it over the bodies. “Nothing else we can do, Spaghetti. No rescue services or Fire Brigade, I guess they’re busy at the Docks. Can’t even hear any of those AA guns they talk about. We’re on our own. Come on, let’s check the other properties.”
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Sowerbutt's Orders

 

 

Sowerbutt feared this was the end game. London could not survive wave after wave of Jerry bombers, there were no defences that he had seen. Churchill would have to do some sort of deal.

Part of a fence had already burnt down and flames were licking up a telegraph pole by the time the two men reached their first house. Kicking open the front door, they pushed the tenants out into the street. “No time to pack your gear,” shouted Sowerbutt. “Get up to the All Saints bomb shelter, you’ll be safe there.”

Pointing to an old man wandering past, his hands outstretched, Sowerbutt said: “And take him with you.”  The dazed man, streaked in black and his collarless shirt in shreds, was muttering: “Lost my house and the missus. All gone, gone. Nothing left, what can I do?”

Huge clouds of black smoke and dust billowed along the street, temporarily blocking out the glowing sky which seemed to get redder by the minute.

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Sowerbutt's Fire

The two men lay flat on their backs in Poplar Rec, as the Recreation Ground was commonly known. The grass was speckled with black, tree leaves and bark were scattered everywhere plus the odd branch ripped off in nearby bomb blasts together with the shattered top of an orange Belisha beacon which had blown in from the road. “Thank God for the all-clear, guv. We’ve lost a couple of houses but our people are alright apart from a few scratches and bruises and one broken arm. A couple of them are missing, but hopefully they’ll be at work.”

Sowerbutt rarely smoked cigarettes, but he was enjoying a Player’s cadged from Spaghetti. “It was a good idea to send them to All Saints and the Tabby. The dog collars will look after them tonight and we can re-house them later. But I don’t know what will happen if there’s another raid.
“I don’t like it, Spaghetti, I don’t like it at all. The Docks are copping it with the fires way out of control. Another Great Fire of London. We can’t go on like this. Let’s get back to the house and clean up.”
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Sowerbutt's Time

“I’ll send a message to Dipper to see what stock he has to hand,” Sowerbutt said wearily, his face covered in white dust and streaks of grime. “You won’t be telling much time with that.”

Spaghetti looked down at the Omega watch that his Mamma had given him some years earlier. The glass was shattered and the hands stuck forever at 8:35, a few minutes after the second wave of bombs started falling. The two men had kicked in the front door of one of the Family’s houses, just off East India Dock Road, seconds after an incendiary bomb had landed in the street outside and exploded into flames. Spaghetti hit his wrist against the brickwork as he pulled some of the terrified tenants to safety.
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Sowerbutt's Home

“Praise, indeed,” smiled Sowerbutt, putting his arm around the waist of the attractive redhead. “I take it you like our new home.” He kissed Polly on the cheek.

“You just behave yourself, James,” Polly said. “I love the fitted kitchen with the hot and cold running water, the brand-new electric cooker and even a refrigerator. Not at all what I expected when you showed me through the door of the blacked-out shop downstairs.”
He grunted as she elbowed him in the ribs. “I love the colour scheme, so fashionable,” Polly said, throwing herself onto the leather settee with red, black and gold cushions. “Pour me a drink, James. You didn’t do this all by yourself. You paid a designer, didn’t you?”

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