BIGGLES OF THE INTERPOL

by Captain W. E. Johns

4. ROUTINE PATROL (Pages 82 – 88)

“Swinging his flying cap ‘Air-Constable ‘Ginger’ Hebblethwaite strolled into his operations headquarters to find his colleagues busy on the ever-mounting files of world-wide Aviation news”. Ginger has been on one of the regular Air Police coast patrols covering a section of the Highlands of Scotland. “Anything doing?” asked Biggles casually. “I might say no. But following your rule that anything unusual should be followed up, then I must say yes” says Ginger. Over one of the Western Isles, “I don’t know its name but I should recognise it if I saw it again”, Ginger has seen a smudge of smoke from a fire and on going to investigate it, the fire was doused as if “someone had chucked a bucket of water on it”. Ginger looked for a boat but could see neither a boat nor a beach. “Sounds a bit odd,” conceded Biggles. Biggles says “if the chap needed a fire by day he’d need one still more at night” and suggests Ginger goes back that night for “another dekko”, taking Bertie with him. Algy goes with them as well. When they return, it is after midnight and Biggles is still working. “He’s there all right,” asserted Algy. “Had a fire going where it could only be seen from topsides”. Biggles says it might be a smuggling racket and “it’s time we had a closer look”. Algy says the only aircraft that could make a landing is a helicopter. Biggles says he will get the Chief to organize the loan of a service helicopter. “It might be a good thing for us to refresh our memories from the Yard’s list of missing persons. Now I’m for bed”.

Two days later, a little before noon, a helicopter buzzed its way northward over the long string of lonely isles that rampart Scotland’s West Coast against the eternal battering of the Atlantic. “That’s the one,” Ginger told Biggles, who was at the controls. He pointed to a forbidding mass of rock perhaps half a mile long and less than half that distance wide. Biggles lands on the only spot possible. Ginger says the fire was roughly in the middle and they search “until past midday, when a break was made for food. It was then resumed, again to no purpose. Of a human being there was no trace”. Ginger says he is sure someone is there and suggests they leave him there overnight. Biggles tells him “You’ll find it chilly”. “All the more reason for me to find the fire,” said Ginger crisply. “This is my pigeon and I’ll see it through”. The helicopter takes off and goes. Within a few minutes, Gingers sees the fire and a vague silhouette of a man in a kilt, squatting on a stone at the mouth of a cave. He approaches and to his astonishment hears a female voice with a Scots brogue cry out “Come one step nearer and I shoot!”. Ginger says “Take it easy. The plane will be back to-morrow and if I’m not here to meet it the place will be combed until you’re found; so shooting me won’t help you. Mind if I come closer? Its chilly outside”. Ginger sees a woman holding a revolver. “He judged her to be in the early twenties, and good-looking in a wild sort of way”. Ginger explains he is a flying policeman. The girl says she is hiding “from people like you”. She has been there for three months having shot a man. “Ginger looked hard at the face in the firelight. He was of course acquainted with the description of people missing or wanted. He thought he recognised her”. “Are you by any chance Margaret Laretski?” This is confirmed. “You shot your husband – a Pole. Why did you do it?” “He was a devil as well as a crook. I stuck it till he killed my child in one of his fits of temper. He would have killed me too, at the end, so I shot him with his own gun and bolted here”. Margaret Laretski says she has clansmen across the water. “One, who wanted to marry me before I was fool enough to marry that Pole, brings me food when the weather’s right. We were going to keep it up till the murder was forgotten, when were going to Australia”. “What murder?” asks Ginger. “You only knocked him out, and enabled the police to find a man they’d been looking for for years, for the murder of his first wife. He was tried, convicted and hanged under his real name. The one he gave you was an alias”. Ginger explains that “all the police wanted you for was evidence” and asks what she has cooking in the frying pan. “Herring”. “Then get on with the cooking. This breeze gives one an appetite”.