His companion was a pretty girl in her mid-twenties. Her hair was still wet from her last swim half an hour or so before. Detective Chief Inspector Frank Merlin himself had not been in the water. He had joined Sonia on this seaside expedition at short notice when he’d realised he wasn’t going to get anywhere with the backlog of paperwork he’d hoped to get to grips with. The task facing him the following day was too distracting. On the spur of the moment, he’d left Scotland Yard, grabbed a taxi and hurried round to Sonia’s place in Marylebone. They quickly decided on a seaside outing and she threw her swimsuit and a couple of towels into her shopping bag and jumped into the taxi. Merlin knew there was a train for the Sussex coast at 10.35 and he hadn’t wanted to waste any time going back to his place for his swimming trunks. In fact, he hadn’t been sure that he still had any trunks. He’d had a black swimsuit a few years ago, but he doubted it had survived his various moves.
And so he stood on Brighton beach in the clothes he had worn to work early in the morning. He had taken off his dark-brown suit jacket and his tie, and was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, but all of that only provided slight relief in the baking heat of the day. It was well into the eighties, although it had just gone six. Their train was at 6.40 and Sonia was right to hurry him. It was a good half-hour walk to the station from where they were on the beach.
It had been a blissful day. Merlin hadn’t had a proper day off work for four weeks and he’d really needed one. In Sonia’s company, he’d managed to forget almost all about his work at the Yard. They had a jolly lunch at a pub on the seafront and then had gone for a long walk through the Brighton Lanes. After looking in the windows of the antique shops, they had enjoyed some ice-cream cornets and Sonia had laughed as Merlin’s had dribbled onto his trousers. Then they’d found their spot on the beach. With much laughter, Sonia had manoeuvred herself into her swimsuit behind a towel held for her by Merlin, who averted his eyes. When she had discarded the towel and stood in her bright green swimsuit, Merlin had caught his breath. How had he been so lucky as to snare this beautiful creature? Sonia Sieczko was Polish, the daughter of a Jewish mother and a Catholic father. She had shining, auburn hair, which just reached her shoulders, large, blue eyes, a neat, straight nose and a full mouth. A few freckles were scattered charmingly around her cheeks. She was of medium height, perhaps five or six inches shorter than Merlin, who was just over six feet tall, and had a full figure, which her green swimsuit displayed to great advantage. As she carefully picked her way, giggling happily, over the pebbles on the way to the sea, Merlin sighed with pleasure. She shouted to Merlin as she splashed around in the waves and he clumsily made his way towards her, removed his shoes and socks, rolled up his trousers and paddled cheerfully at the water’s edge.
Frank Merlin had a heavy caseload of his own and in addition supervised the work of several other officers. As the ranks of those Metropolitan policemen dealing with domestic crime had been steadily depleted during 1940 in consequence of the demands of the war, so Merlin’s free time had diminished to almost nothing. Thank God Sonia Sieczko had come into his life to provide some relief.
“Come on, Frank. We’ll be late.”
Merlin stared out to sea briefly and then up at the sky where he saw that the British and German fighters appeared to be disengaging from their dogfight. Several planes headed rapidly back across the Channel while the rest turned and disappeared in the opposite direction. “Yes, alright, Sonia. I was having a very peaceful dream, you know, when you so rudely interrupted me.”
As Sonia smiled, her pert little nose crinkled disarmingly. “Come on now, Mr Policeman. I have work to go to tomorrow, as do you.”
“Yes, of course, my darling, neither of us can afford to miss the train.”
Sonia smoothed out the creases in her white summer dress as she rose to her feet. She gave her left hand to Merlin and pulled him towards her. As she did so, he felt a stab of pain from the wound in his right shoulder, which reminded him of his miserable task the following morning.
“Are you alright, Frank?”
“Yes, thanks. Just a little ache.”