Enigma

his watch. Twenty minutes had passed since breakfast. It was time to go. He slipped the cryptograms behind the picture, reassembled the frame and replaced it on the mantelpiece, then opened the door a fraction. Mrs Armstrong's regular guests had all come in from the night-shift. He could hear their murmured voices in the dining room. He put on his overcoat and stepped out on to the landing. Such were his efforts to seem natural, Mrs Armstrong would later swear she heard him humming to himself as he descended the stairs.
    'I see you smiling in the cigarette glow
    Though the picture fades too soon
    But I see all I want to know
    They can't black out the moon ....'
    From Albion Street to Bletchley Park was a walk of less than half a mile—left out of the door and along the street of terraced houses, left under the blackened railway bridge and sharp right across the allotments.
    He strode quickly over the frozen ground, his breath steaming before him in the cold sunshine. Officially it was almost spring but someone had forgotten to pass the news on to winter. Patches of ice, not yet melted from the night before, cracked beneath the soles of his shoes. Rooks called from the tops of skeletal elms.
    It was well past eight o'clock by the time he turned off the footpath into Wilton Avenue and approached the main gate. The shift change was over; the suburban road was almost deserted. The sentry—a giant young corporal, raw-faced from the cold—came stamping out of the guard post and barely glanced at his pass before waving him into the grounds.
    Past the mansion he went, keeping his head down to avoid having to speak to anyone, past the lake (which was fringed with ice) and into Hut 8, where the silence emanating from the Decoding Room told him all he needed to know. The Type-X machines had worked their way through the backlog of Shark intercepts and now there was nothing for them to do until Dolphin and Porpoise came on stream, probably around mid-morning. He caught a glimpse of Logie's tall figure at the end of the corridor and darted into the Registration Room. There, to his surprise, was Puck, sitting in a corner, being watched by a pair of love-struck Wrens. His face was grey and lined, his head resting against the wall. Jericho thought he might be asleep but then he opened a piercing blue eye.
    'Logie's looking for you.'
    'Really?' Jericho took off his coat and scarf and hung them on the back of the door. 'He knows where to find me.'
    'There's a rumour going around that you hit Skynner. For God's sake tell me it's true.'
    One of the Wrens giggled.
    Jericho had forgotten all about Skynner. He passed his hand through his hair. 'Do me a favour, Puck, will you?' he said. 'Pretend you haven't seen me?'
    Puck regarded him closely for a moment, then shut his eyes. 'What a man of mystery you are,' he murmured, sleepily.
    Back in the corridor Jericho walked straight into Logie.
    'Ah, there you are, old love. I'm afraid we need to have a talk.'
    'Fine, Guy. Fine.' Jericho patted Logie on the shoulder and squeezed past him. 'Just give me ten minutes.'
    'No, not in ten minutes,' Logie shouted after him, 'now!'
    Jericho pretended he hadn't heard. He trotted out into the fresh air, walked briskly round the corner, past Hut 6, towards the entrance to Hut 3. Only when he was within twenty paces of it did his footsteps slow, then stop.
    The truth was, he knew very little about Hut 3, except that it was the place where the decoded messages of the German Army and Luftwaffe were processed. It was about twice the size of the other huts and was arranged in the shape of an L. It had gone up at the same time as the rest of the temporary buildings, in the winter of 1939—a timber skeleton rising out of the freezing Buckinghamshire clay, clothed in a sheath of asbestos and flimsy wooden boarding—and to heat it, he remembered, they had cannibalised a big cast-iron stove from one of the Victorian greenhouses. Claire used to complain she was always cold. Cold, and that her job was 'boring'. But where exactly she worked within its warren of rooms, let alone what this 'boring' job entailed, was a mystery to him.
    A door slammed somewhere behind him and he glanced over his shoulder to see Logie emerging from around the corner of the naval hut. Damn, damn. He dropped to one knee and pretended to fumble with his shoelace but Logie hadn't seen him. He was marching purposefully towards the mansion. That seemed to settle Jericho's resolve. Once Logie