Page 46 of The Berlin Agent (John Cook #2)

Margaret drove. We rocketed downhill, losing altitude as we left the Forest behind us. Through the tight bends of Duddleswell, opening up for the long straight down past Fairwarp, past Palehouse Lane.

‘I don’t understand,’ Margaret shouted over the din from the engine and rushing wind. ‘Why are only certain places picking up the transmission? Why not every bit of barbed wire in the country?’

Margaret was a careless driver at the best of times, and as she looked back to Miriam in the back seat, jammed in next to me, the car swerved.

‘Drive,’ I said. ‘Questions later.’

The car sped past Fairwarp church, Margaret peering into the darkness, driving faster than she could see. She’d masked out her headlights according to regulations, only a tiny slit of light allowed, and it turned what was already a hair-raising experience into a pure gamble.

Miriam leant in to me, her mouth to my ear. We were like sardines in a tin, so she didn’t have to lean far.

‘If we can gather as much information as we can about the receivers,’ she shouted, ‘in this case your fence and Vaughn’s fence, we can make some assumptions about the distance and direction to the source of the radio -transmission.’

I turned to her. She was still facing me and now we were inches apart. I leant past her face to shout into her ear, our cheeks brushing.

‘Seems like a lot of trouble. The chap on the transmission said he was on the French coast. What’s the value in pinpointing it further?’

She grabbed onto me as Margaret swerved suddenly.

‘Bloody deer!’ Margaret shouted. ‘Think they own the road!’

‘He’s not in France,’ Miriam shouted into my ear. ‘He’s here, in Sussex.’

Suddenly it was clear why she was so interested. A waveform expert from Cambridge arriving in Sussex on the eve of the invasion, putting herself in harm’s way. Dragging us out to listen to enemy propaganda in the middle of a dinner party. This wasn’t a party trick.

‘He’s somewhere nearby. And if he’s louder for us than for you, that means he’s either north of us both, between us and London, or he’s somewhere between us.

We rocketed past the turning to Palehouse Lane, where only a few days ago I’d been driving Mrs Leckie home from the station.

‘We think he’s hiding out on the Forest somewhere,’ Miriam shouted.