Chapter 26

The manager at Chapter Road Health Centre, a new building on the corner of a leafy road on the outskirts of the North Yorkshire market town of Thirsk, was turning off the lights in the waiting room at the end of another busy day at the surgery. Busier, even, than usual, Mabel Harris reflected, since Dr Lawrence had been off that morning and hadn’t returned until around 2.30pm, leaving his partners to deal with his regular patients. Even then, he’d told her, curtly, that he wanted the rest of the afternoon kept free – an extra inconvenience for her to manage. She supposed that he might be catching up on paper-work. Now, she noticed, he was still in his room, a thin slip of light showing from under the door: she’d have to let him know she was locking up.

The people who truly liked Dacre Lawrence were few. He was popular with a certain type of patient – the elderly, in particular, seemed to revel in his slightly superior, off-hand manner: perhaps because that was what they had been brought up to expect from a doctor. He could be brusque and dismissive of patients and colleagues alike and, as the senior partner in the practice, he commanded due deference from the staff working there. She took a deep breath as she knocked on his door.

There was no response. She wondered whether to knock again, and risk his wrath for seeming so intrusive. She waited a few seconds, realizing she had no choice and gathering herself before rapping on the door, more loudly this time. Still nothing. He must have left without her knowing, she thought – typical! What if there’d been a fire, and the building had been evacuated? It would have been down to her to explain Dr Lawrence’s absence to the firemen. Her imagination had taken hold, now, and she pictured a huddled crowd of staff and patients in the car park outside the building, wondering if Dacre Lawrence was trapped inside his room. Firemen rushing down smoking corridors, risking their lives to find him, when all the time he was out with his golfing buddies.

She turned the handle, slowly, and pushed open the door. Inside, she saw Dr Lawrence, sat with his back to her, his computer screen still flickering away in front of him.

“Oh … I’m sorry, Dr Lawrence!” She was blushing, expecting him to turn around and give her a dressing down for so rudely entering his room, uninvited. Instinctively, she pulled back But there was no response – not a movement – from Lawrence. Mabel screamed.

*

Harry ordered the drinks, and stood at the bar while waiting for them to be poured. Danny was still at the table by the window, looking calm enough, Harry thought. So … innocent little Laurel McFry had been two-timing him: she’d had someone else working on the case of her missing family, and she hadn’t thought it necessary to tell him. He wondered whether Danny Longhurst had, like Harry, offered his services for free – probably not: he was smarter than that.

There were still a few things Harry needed to know before things went any further. Who was the old woman in Shropshire Danny was working for? How come he’d ended up with the medals – and he wondered, briefly, how Stan Redfearn was faring in finding out more about them – and then sent them to Harry? And what about those phone calls he’d had? Nothing seemed to add up, and Harry wasn’t sure if he could take everything Danny told him as gospel. He took the drinks over to the table.

“You’d better tell me about the phone calls, before we take this any further,” he told the boy.

Danny took a quick drink of his vodka, and started again:

“There’s more to this than just missing data on a census, Mr McFry,” he said.

“You’d better call me Harry, son,” McFry said, tiring of Danny’s formality.

“And you can call me Danny – and I’m 19, Harry, so less of the ‘son’, if you don’t mind,” and he’d fixed a stare on Harry that said ‘don’t underestimate me’, even if there was a slight smile accompanying it.

“What I think has been happening is that someone, for some reason I don’t yet know, has been systematically altering census pages held by all the major genealogy companies. I think it may have something to do with Laurel McFry’s inheritance.” Danny waited for Harry’s reaction, which was swift.

“Wait a minute, son” – Harry checked himself – “sorry, I mean Danny. Are you telling me that someone’s been able to alter on-line census records? How is that possible?” Somewhere deep in Harry’s brain, someone was sticking a post-it note: ‘Must try to get more up-to-speed with IT’.

“It’s not difficult. I had a go myself. I took a digital image of a page from the 1881 census at random. I cut and paste a few lines here and a few lines there, swapped them around. By the end, no-one would have guessed they weren’t original images.”

Harry was sceptical. It was one thing to play around with a few images.

“OK, OK, I’m with you so far. But how does this end up on a server for Ancestry.com, and what about the LDS index?” The Church of the Latter Day Saints had indexed the entire 1881 census, and it was freely available for reference by anyone with a PC.

“That’s the technical part – but I can’t believe it’s not possible. With enough money, you could hire any one of a thousand techno-geeks who had the skill to hack into those companies’ servers. They’re secure, but they’re not the CIA, “ Danny said, smiling, but then suddenly serious again. “There’s a flaw in all this, obviously.”

Harry tried to pretend he’d spotted it. “Obviously,” he said, taking a swig of his drink. But he waited for Danny to continue.

“This only accounts for the digital data. There are thousands of sets of microfiche out there, all copies of the original census. Whoever is behind this wouldn’t have been able to alter those. Or at least, not all of them. My guess was, if they did anything, they’d target the half a dozen records offices where McFry descendents were living. And that’s exactly what they’ve done.” Danny sat back and waited for a response from McFry.

Harry was rubbing his chin, ruminating. “So whoever is behind all of this is taking it seriously?” he asked. He had to admire the kid.

“So seriously, that if you were to go to the Birkenhead or Shropshire records offices, you’d find their microfiche copies were no different from the one’s now up there in cyberspace. I’m betting that the same would hold true for the North Yorkshire ones, as well,” Danny said.

“North Yorkshire? What’s that got to do with it?” Harry asked, wondering now whether Danny Longhurst had already solved Laurel McFry’s case: he seemed to know a lot more than Harry had imagined.

“That’s where my portfolio comes in,” Danny replied, but Harry was conscious he hadn’t answered his original question, and fired back:

“Before we move onto the portfolio, you were going to tell me about the phone calls…”

Danny, looking sheepish again, cleared his throat. “You see, McFry,” he said, his voice now two octaves deeper, the same as the voice that was on Harry’s answerphone, and the same as the one that had warned him off going to the library, “it’s like this,” and the voice returned to it’s teenage self. “I knew Laurel McFry was going to meet you at the library. She told me so. But I couldn’t be certain you would take her seriously. So, I thought if I gave you a warning – ‘put the frightners on’, so to speak – you’d take the whole thing a little more seriously. And it seemed to work, as far as I can see.” He was looking more confident again, Harry saw. This was definitely one very smart kid. Harry didn’t like the idea he’d been fooled, but he had to admire the manner of execution. ‘So far, so plausible,’ Harry thought, though he was still processing how someone might switch census data on a computer server and get away with it.

“And what about the medals?” Harry challenged.

Danny paused before replying, and emptied his glass. “Lillian McFry, the woman from Shropshire who hired me to ‘find’ Laurel McFry, gave me those medals. I let a couple of days go by after I met her, then called to let her know I’d found her. She asked me to go back down, as she thought I’d be able to find a way of getting the medals to Laurel without her knowing where they’d come from. They’re quite valuable, I believe.”

Harry had caught up with the plot. “So, you thought if you sent them to me I’d realize they were connected to Laurel McFry, and pass them onto her?”

“Basically, yes. But then I saw you going into the shop this lunchtime. I got worried then, thought you might be … selling them.” Danny looked embarrassed as he said this, but not as embarrassed as Harry felt. Did the whole world know how much Harry McFry needed money? He remembered the youth on the bench in Hamilton Square – that had been Danny Longhurst, he now realized.

“As a matter of fact, Mr Longhurst,” Harry getting formal to re-assert some authority, “I took the medals there to get an idea of their value, and to find out a little more about them. There’s not much Stan Redfearn doesn’t know about military memorabilia. They’re still there, but it’s too late to pick them up today.”

“That’s OK”, Danny said, realizing how the implication of having accused Harry of wanting to sell the medals had wounded him. “Maybe we can work on this case together, Harry?” His request was tentative, and he wasn’t sure how Harry would take it.

Harry thought for a moment. By instinct, he was one of life’s loners. He wasn’t sure how it would work, partnering up with someone else, but he also figured that young Danny Longhurst, working alone, already knew more about Laurel McFry’s missing family than he would have done after a week of research. Harry McFry wasn’t stupid.

“Sure, kid. Let’s do it,” he found himself saying. And if they were going to be working together, he might as well know the truth about Harry: “I think it’s your round, Danny,” he said. “Mine’s a double whiskey sour.”

Chapter 25

By the time Jonathan Harcourt had finished his account of his exploits in the Spanish Civil War, the little clock on the kitchen wall had quietly ticked away three hours. On the table in front of him lay a dozen or so sheets of foolscap paper, covered on both sides in Colin McAllistair’s tiny, cursive script. Harcourt, Colin remembered, had looked exhausted. At a distance of a quarter of a century, he wondered (for the first time) whether, when he had arrived to interview Harcourt on that sunny afternoon in North Yorkshire, his host had perhaps only just returned from a shift in the factory where he was then working.

Now, McAllistair was trying desperately to decode those same notes on smudgy, shiny fax paper laid on the desk in his study. When had Harcourt first mentioned the medals? It must have been towards the end of the interview. He flicked towards the back of the notes, his mind awash with emotion.

McAllistair had been a typical student from the provinces, while at Oxford. His life in a small town in the west of Scotland had seemed like pages from the biography of a stranger, so successfully had he infiltrated academia. Money had been tight, of course – that went without saying. It took a certain income to maintain life in an Oxford college. He remembered how his parents would send him a crisp, five pound note in the post each week, ‘just to keep you going’. It wouldn’t have been easy for them: his father, a miner, and his mother, working in a canning factory in the town. Yet, that five pounds a week had been a lifeline for him, arriving just when he had run out of cigarettes, or sometimes when he had been invited to join a group of fellow-students for a drink. Of course, for most of the other students, there had been no need to look out for the post in the porter’s lodge with quite the same keenness. They had allowances from ‘pater ’ that permitted a more lavish lifestyle. Perhaps if he had enjoyed a similar income, he would have been less tempted to do what he did with the medals? He was suddenly haunted by the words of Benjamin Franklin: ‘He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else’, and he wondered, even as he tried to suppress the guilt welling up inside of him, whether these were words that ever crossed the mind of Cyril Galloway.

Listening to Harcourt’s account had been like watching an epic movie unfurl. One moment, you were on a balcony overlooking the central Post Office in Madrid, the plaza a frenzy of activity as armoured cars, open-backed lorries decked in the red and yellow of the Republic and carrying smiling soldiers, and a constant mill of people – where had they all come from? – passed along below you. The next, you were at the back of a huge hall, listening with thousands of others to the passionate speeches of Dolores Ibarruri – the passion flower – as she rallied her fellow Madrileños to fight against the Nationalists. Moments later, you would be in a small bar, somewhere near the bullring, watching earnest men fight their corner in arguments with their equally earnest companions. But wherever you were, Colin had noticed, Lillian was beside you. He remembered envying Jonathan Harcourt that love. From that chance meeting near the Montana barracks, the two were inseparable. She had traveled to Spain with her lover, Thomas McFry, both members of the Independent Labour Party in England, both committed to the anti-fascist cause and both intending to join the International Brigades. Thomas had signed up first, and had been drafted to the north of Spain where a training camp had been set up to equip the new recruits with the skills they would need if they were to pick up a rifle, aim it at a stranger, and shoot them. Lillian, meanwhile, found herself pressed (protesting) into service at a large hospital in the centre of Madrid. She had been taking a coffee between grueling shifts when she had noticed the square-jawed man by the window, and had thought to smile at him, just briefly, as he had glanced in her direction. What force propelled her to walk across to him, she never knew. Maybe it was the slight innocence in his face, or the way he seemed to struggle with his pen? He was younger than her, but not much. She had wondered, idly, whether he might be an author: she had heard how many had flocked to Spain on news that ‘something’ might be in the offing. Thoughts of Thomas McFry were far from her mind.

One night together in the sweet, moonlit expanse of the Parque del Buen Retiro, their own private retreat until sunrise, had sealed the twin fates of Jonathan and Lillian. Harcourt told how they woke to the mellow flute of a blackbird, perched on the branches of a nearby bush. They had discovered, improbably, that they were both born within ten miles of each other, their lives never crossing until a common cause had pulled them both to Spain. “We were meant to be here. Meant to be together,” Lillian had told him, and Jonathan had smiled, wondering at the great, unwritten script that had brought them there, now, lying arm in arm as the sun began to heat the damp grass on which they had made their bed. Then, they had both determined to pledge themselves to the Republican cause: not as writer or nurse, but as fighters. Within a week, they had walked into the recruitment office for the International Brigade and enlisted – Jonathan arguing with the young, bespectacled clerk who seemed intent on refusing Lillian’s application until, finally, he had relented.

The sun was starting to set outside McAllistair’s north London home. He reached across to switch on the desk-lamp, its light flooding across the last page of his notes. Jonathan Harcourt had been awarded the highest distinction it was possible to receive for his actions in the Spanish Civil War: the Medallion of Supreme Honour, and its companion pieces for individual battles in which he had excelled. Colin recalled the pride with which the old man had told him this and how, when he had asked him if he wanted to see them, he had disappeared upstairs for a few minutes. On his return he was clutching a simple, cardboard box, which he handed to Colin. “You know, there were only two people in the world who received these medals,” Harcourt had said. “Myself”, (and here he had paused – McAllistair was sure – for effect) “and Lillian Blyth.”

Chapter 24

Harry had already drunk his first whiskey sour, and was ordering another when he noticed a young man entering the pub. The place was comparatively empty, just a few hardened drinkers propping up the bar, and a couple of kids playing a fruit machine. Danny Longhurst was carrying, perhaps a little too obviously, the magazine: Harry had his tucked in his coat pocket, its masthead nevertheless visible to anyone who needed to see it.

“Drink?” he said, as Danny ambled across, slightly hesitantly, to stand beside him. Harry reached out his hand, an open gesture, and his new companion shook it. A surprisingly firm grip, Harry thought.

“Yes, thanks. I’ll have a vodka.”

Harry added the vodka to his order, and when the barman had served up the drinks he carried them across to a table by the window, Danny taking the signal to follow him. He sat side-on, so he could see the door to Meldew Buildings out of the corner of his eye, Danny sat opposite. He tried to get a sense of the young man, who looked bright enough: anyone who had written two historical reference books by the age of 19 would have to be, Harry thought. He could see he was nervous, though. The portfolio, he noticed, was tucked under the magazine that was now resting on his lap.

“Well, I suppose I better ask what this is all about,” Harry said.

Danny Longhurst shifted a little in his seat, and took a drink. ‘This is going to be complicated, Harry – I can tell’ – the voice at the back of Harry’s head, alerting him to concentrate.

“About two weeks ago, I got a call from a woman in Shropshire. I don’t know if you know, but I do a little amateur genealogical research for people as a sideline to my writing,” and he’d reached into his jacket and pulled out a card. Harry read it: ‘Danny Longhurst, Author, Family History Researcher’ and the same mobile number he’d rung earlier. “She’d seen an advert I placed in a couple of local newspapers down there, and wanted help finding her grand-daughter”. Harry smarted a little inside, but didn’t show it. ‘That’s the way to drum up business,’ he was thinking – maybe if he’d done a little more plugging of his own, Harry McFry Genealogical Private Investigations would be on a sounder footing.

“I arranged to go down to see her. A sweet old thing – quite a sharp mind for someone her age. She had some medals that she particularly wanted to pass down to the grand-daughter. No other surviving relatives, you see. The curious thing about it was she knew the grand-daughter would know nothing about her. She’d never even met her. That was sad, to think she’d lived her life never having met her own grand-daughter.”

Harry was warming to Danny. The boy had a sensitivity rarely found in people of his age.

“She gave me a few details, a name, approximate age, place of birth, and left me to get on with it. She asked me to call her when I found her.” Danny was getting into his flow, but Harry had a question.

“How come she knew all about her if she’d never bothered to even see her?” Danny’s response was quick,and to the point: “Families can be strange, Mr McFry. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that”. Danny took another drink from his vodka which, Harry noticed, was nearly all gone.

“The thing is … and I am a little bit embarrassed to say this … I already knew the woman she was looking for,” but Harry could see from his sheepish look that he was quite a bit more than a ‘little bit’ embarrassed. “I decided not to tell her that, though – if I’m honest, I needed the money.”

There were worse motives, for worse deeds, Harry thought. It was a hard world out there in family history research: too many people chasing too few commissions. He’d have done the same in the boy’s shoes, he was sure.

“And I take it that the grand-daughter is Laurel McFry?” Harry asked – already knowing the answer.

“Yes. You see, as soon as she said the name, I remembered I’d met Laurel at a family history group meeting in Birkenhead last year. In fact, just a month ago she asked me to help her find some of her family on the census. I tried my best, Mr McFry, but they weren’t there. That’s when I told her to contact you.”

Sometimes, Harry thought, it would help if a client gave you the whole picture. He needed time to think this through. Rising from his seat, he took Danny’s glass and said: “Another?”

The young man protested – it was his turn at the bar, and he wasn’t about to be patronized. Harry over-ruled the protest. For his part, he wasn’t about to let Danny Longhurst know he needed a double.

Chapter 23

Colin McAllistair ended his call with Cyril Galloway with a whole mix of thoughts spinning in his head. He remembered the last time they met, and it brought to mind an episode in his life he would rather have forgotten.

His interview with Jonathan Harcourt had gone well. Once Colin had got over his initial surprise that the gentle, careworn old man sat over the table from him in the kitchen of a small, terraced house in North Yorkshire was in fact the same man who had penned such brilliant articles on the early months of the Spanish Civil War, he knew he had found a rich seam of memories of the period. For his part, the writer seemed to relax almost by the minute, as if the very telling of his story was a catharsis.

He described vividly his arrival in Madrid, and the chaos of a city starting to fracture under the unstoppable pressure of social upheaval and political division. He had made his base in a small hotel off a side street on the Gran Via, the main artery that pulsed through the city, sharing it with a clutch of foreign journalists from America, Italy and France. He remembered long and bitter, late-into-the-morning, arguments in the local bars: a melting-pot of communist, socialist, trotskyist and anarchist ideas that were vying for support in the capital, leavened by the views of nationalists from, Catalonia and northern Spain. This was a period like none he had witnessed before, nor since: a Popular Front Government trying desperately to cohere against a National Front opposition, following a wafer-thin victory in elections in February 1936. Chaotic general strikes two or three times a week, assassinations (by both sides) more frequent still. Churches ransacked by crowds, clerics hiding in basements, fearful of their lives.

Colin had been mesmerized. He had read so much about the Spanish Civil War, and Harcourt was by no means the only survivor he had interviewed, but rarely had he heard such a vivid and moving account of what life was like at the epicenter of a social revolution. He found himself astonished that his subject had not published a memoir of his time in Madrid.

Harcourt had explained how he had filed weekly reports for six months or so, encouraged by an editor who fired back telegrams describing the effect his writing was having on his paper’s readers. He had tried to remain objective – to explain the background to the rising social tensions. Then, in July, a calm voice had been broadcast across the radio in Spain: “Over all of Spain, the sky is clear.” Many who heard that phrase would have had no idea of its significance – but for Nationalists, it was the agreed signal to start a military uprising, the start of a protracted and bloody Civil War.

In Madrid, the rebel forces soon found themselves beleaguered, forced to retreat into the safety of the Montana Barracks, where within a day or so they fell victim to superior Republican force. Harcourt had watched the slaughter from the window of a bar across the street, strangely detached and yet witness to it. He remembered how he had tried to write an account of the battle, but at each attempt his words dried up. In his mind, he was already determined that he couldn’t any longer stand on the sidelines: the Republic, which he so admired, was under threat.

He told McAllistair how he noticed, suddenly, that a woman was watching him from in the corner of the small bar. He had caught the touch of a smile when he glanced across to her, his pen held in his hand seeming, suddenly, like an instrument of cowardice. He smiled back, and she took his signal as an encouragement to walk across to him. “I’ve watched you writing,” she said: she was English. “I never saw a more beautiful woman in my life,” Harcourt had told Colin. “She had the loveliest, palest complexion you could imagine. I suppose I fell in love with her at that very moment…” and his voice had trailed off, as his mind tried to catch the echoes of his first meeting with Lillian Blyth.

Chapter 22

Danny Longhurst was sitting having a coffee, reading through the notes he’d taken that day, when he felt his mobile phone vibrate in his jacket pocket. He left his notes and the cup of coffee on the table of the library café – it wasn’t busy, and they’d be safe enough – and stepped into a quiet alcove to take the call.

The voice at the other end was all he expected: cool, unruffled. “You asked me to call you. About the medals.” It was McFry. Danny collected his thoughts, quickly. “Yes, that’s right, Mr McFry. Seems I might have some explaining to do. I wondered if we could maybe meet up and compare notes?”

McFry was puzzled. This wasn’t the same voice that had left the message – it was younger sounding, more hesitant. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Who is this?”

“My name is Danny Longhurst, Mr McFry. If you were expecting someone older, I can explain that, too, when we meet. It’s absolutely imperative you see me. I hope you don’t think I’m being over-dramatic here, but it could even be a matter of life or death”.

McFry was quick in his response: “Yours, or mine?”

“Neither. But someone’s going to die soon enough, so time is of the essence.” Danny liked the legal ring of that phrase. “When can we meet?”

Harry checked his watch and did a quick calculation. He didn’t think he’d be able to do much about Laurel McFry’s little problem – he’d have to fess up and admit to her that he needed more time, or else wheel Doris out as part of some lame excuse. In any case, he knew the medals were somehow connected to her, and just now it seemed important to try to tie this particular loose end up.

“How about now?” he said.

“That’s great. Should I come and see you at your office?” Danny said, watching, out of the corner of his eye, a waitress passing by his table, wondering whether she should take the half-empty cup away. Harry thought for a moment. He needed a drink. “No – meet me in the Brass Balance in half an hour. I’ll be carrying a copy of Your Family Tree magazine, so you should have no trouble recognizing me.”

Danny smiled – he might have known that Birkenhead’s foremost genealogical sleuth would subscribe to Britain’s best family history periodical. “I’ll do the same – see you in half an hour, then?” Danny was about to hang up, but a thought occurred to him: ”And I’m sorry about the portfolio, Mr McFry. I wasn’t sure you’d ring me, so I thought it best to get it back. I’ll bring it with me, though – you might find it interesting.”

Harry replaced the receiver and sat back in his chair. Danny Longhurst. He knew that name, but he couldn’t remember exactly where from. It nagged at him, even as he pulled on his overcoat, lit a cigarette and made his way out of his office for his appointment.

He was still thinking about Danny when he left the building, crossed the road and entered the little newsagents just a few doors up from the pub. Behind the counter, an elderly woman bustled about tidying newspapers and magazines. She looked up as Harry entered, a cheery smile erupting on her face: “Harry! Where’ve you been these last few weeks? I’ve seen you coming in and out of your office almost every day, but you haven’t called in to see old Elsie”. She narrowed her eyes a little. “Anyone would think you owed me money!” She was still smiling.

Harry remembered, with a jolt, that owe her money he did. He reached for his wallet, pulled out a note and handed it to her, saying “Sorry about that, Else. You know how it is. A man gets busy, and things slip his mind.”

“I’ve got this month’s here, Harry. You want to take it now?” She fished a magazine from a pile under the counter.

“Yes, thanks. I’ll try to be a little more organized in future. It’s Doris, you know – I ask her to remind me, but she never does!”

“I’d get a new secretary if I were you, Mr McFry. She doesn’t deserve a nice man like you as her boss. There are plenty of people out there who would die for an interesting job like that. My niece is always saying she’d like a change of jobs. You could do worse, Harry.”

“I’ll bear it in mind, Else. Thanks.” As he scooped up the magazine and turned to leave, he caught sight of a book on the top shelf, beside the magazines. Wild Wirral Women – a history of rebellious women who’d made a name for themselves on the Wirral peninsula - and he remembered, now, where he knew the name 'Danny Longhurst'.

Author's Note

Readers are invited to pause a moment, and to reflect that today is the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Jamara.

May those who gave their lives be remembered.

THJnr

Chapter 21

Colin McAllistair was feeling pretty pleased with himself. The fax from Professor Pickfield had arrived, as promised, and his notes from all those years ago were more detailed than he remembered. He’d spent the time waiting for the fax refreshing his memory about the Battle of Jamara. He knew, of course, how critically important the battle had been in the history of the Spanish Civil War. In just one day, almost 300 members of the Saklatvala Battalion – the British volunteers fighting with the Republican army – had fallen casualty. He tried to imagine the sheer bloodiness of the battle, and what had inspired so many thousands of men and women from overseas to go to Spain to fight for a cause that was ultimately a lost one.

He scanned his notes carefully. Jonathan Harcourt had been a fascinating individual. Born in 1908, he’d been too young to see service in the First War (although he had lost two older brothers in France), and had started work straight from school on the Daily Herald, a left-leaning paper that had a huge circulation between the wars. Within five or six years, he had made a name for himself as a columnist of some note, so that when his editor was scouting around for a talented writer to cover the Spanish elections in 1936, Harcourt had been an obvious choice. He was single, and this was his first foreign posting. Harcourt had told McAllistair how, after only a month or two in Madrid, he knew that he’d have to swap his pen for a gun.

Thinking back to the interview, he recalled how Harcourt seemed an incongruous figure, not at all the kind of intellectual writer he’d expected to find. In fact, when he’d turned up to the tiny, terraced house where Harcourt lived, now, alone, he’d imagined he must have somehow got the wrong house. Yet, there had been a quiet dignity about the man: he was still working, at the age of 62, in a local factory. It hadn’t been easy to track him down, three decades or more after he’d returned from Spain. To all intents and purposes, Jonathan Harcourt seemed to have disappeared, and Colin had wondered at one point whether he might even have died in Spain. His reports in the Daily Herald – vivid and moving accounts of life on the frontline of the war – stopped suddenly in 1937. Only an encounter with another survivor of the Battle of Jamara, who had fitfully kept in contact with Harcourt, led to his door. He’d been given a ‘last known address’ for him, and had wanted to ring in advance to arrange their interview: but his call to directory enquiries drew a blank. In the end, he thought a speculative visit north might be worth it.

The research for his thesis on the International Brigades – the loose name for the estimated 30,000 foreign nationals who had fought for the Republican cause in Spain - had been going well. There were still plenty of eyewitness survivors alive, but there was something about the power of Jonathan Harcourt’s writing that drew Colin to drive his battered old Austin two hundred miles to Yorkshire, to track down the man who had penned those columns all those years ago.

If he was slightly hesitant when he opened the gate and walked up the short path to knock on the door of the address he had, that was nothing to what he felt when, just a few seconds later, the door opened. Could this tired, bent old man in front of him really have been the writer of articles that shook the British establishment, and were the cause of many of his fellow-countrymen rushing to the aid of the Republicans?

For his part, ‘Jonathan Harcourt’ was, at first, almost as hesitant as his visitor. Who had sent him here? How did he get his address? Why did he want to see him? He guarded the door, uncertain whether he should let the stranger come in. Then, McAllistair had mentioned a name, someone he remembered dimly from his time in Madrid, and it was enough to make him decide that the stranger was sympathetic. After all, Harcourt reasoned, if Harry Bell had trusted him – Harry Bell, who once killed a sniper who had threatened not only himself, but the other comrades who had been sheltering in a dug-out on the hills outside of Madrid – then perhaps it would be alright.

Settled in the small back kitchen of Harcourt’s house, the two men took a moment or two to develop their trust in one another. Colin had looked again at the man – it was clear he had ‘lived’, had experienced life and its harshness. But could this old man, in his shirtsleeves, braces and (even) his flat cap, really be the person he’d come to interview? For Harcourt’s part, he wanted to know what research Colin had already undertaken.

“Are there many of us left?” he asked, with a sadness that was unexpected.

“Well, fewer every year. But it’s not so long ago. Enough of you to make sure your story is told,” Colin had replied.

“'Not so long ago'…” Harcourt had repeated. “Sometimes it seems like a different lifetime.”

Colin had pulled out his notepad, and started to piece together the fragments of Harcourt’s life that would make (he hoped- in the event, quite rightly) a substantial chapter in his thesis.

So engrossed had he become in his notes, that he didn’t immediately hear the telephone ringing. He reached across to answer it.

“Mr McAllistair?” The voice was strangely familiar.

“Yes?” he replied, trying to work out where he knew it from.

“Cyril Galloway” – a pause, while the caller waited to see if Colin remembered him - “Telford Auction Rooms. You might recall that we handled some err … medals … for you. It was some time ago, Mr McAllistair, but I’m sure you might remember them.”

McAllistair was struck, temporarily, speechless. Here he was, re-reading the notes he’d taken of an interview with a veteran of the Spanish Civil War, and then a call comes through from the only other person who knew about Jonathan Harcourt’s medals. Something was very wrong here. Very wrong, indeed.