Chapter 6: The Black Marketers

Superintendent Fred Bates was chairing a meeting of his senior officers. "I am getting flack from above because of the amount of stolen and smuggled food that is finding its way on to the black market in the London area. We have had several warehouses blitzed recently and it seems that they are managing to get in and out quite quickly with a large amount of rationed goods."

PC Fay Tonks an attractive slim blonde sat at his right hand was the daughter of one of the Deputy Commissioners at New Scotland Yard. She was an Economics graduate from the London school of Economics, and to her dismay, she found herself acting as the Superintendents personal assistant in recent weeks since graduating from the police training school at Hendon. Fay desperately wanted to go out on active Police work, but since foolishly giving in to the Superintendents sexual overtures, she had found herself very much kept in a desk job in the station ... She had remonstrated with the Superintendent several times and was seriously considering resigning from the Police Force.

I have asked Fay here to compile a list all the recent suspected fires and with a list of black market goods that we have found on open sale in the region. There is no doubt that some goods are coming in as private ventures by visiting seaman, but we can do little or nothing about that even if we wished to. The problem is that air raids are acting as cover for these villains who raid warehouses and steal as much as they can and then setting fire to them to cover their tracks"

Fay spoke up. "Excuse me sir I have a list of items that have been sold on the black market quite openly in the last week. I have reports of Sugar, Jam, Butter and Fresh Oranges. In the last three days alone, in addition all of these items were proved to have been in warehouses that have allegedly been firebombed in the dock area.

Superintendent bates said. "Right then can we mount a CID watch on warehouses containing foodstuff in the dock area as from tonight."

On of the inspectors spoke up. "I agree sir, but I think that they have someone on the inside here who is tipping them off about police activities. We seem to be getting led on false evidence trails after every raid which gives the robbers time to get away."

There was a murmur of agreement from several other officers. "Right gentlemen if that is the case then we must find the traitor — it seems gentlemen as well as some cute police work we need a stroke of luck. From now on log every lead, and every countermanded order. Every operation will have an Inspector in charge, and no-one outside this room knows about the logging. "

It was midday in the Horse and Jockey public house where Ray Middleton and his six cronies were drinking their lunchtime pints of wartime beer. Ray was not feeling very happy as he had received his calling up papers that morning for the army. But the meeting had been called to decide on their target for the night. They had a list of eight warehouses which had recently taken in full loads of imported foodstuffs from the USA.

As they were in the middle of their discussions one of Rays mates Dick Money, who was a Sergeant in the Metropolitan Police wandered in and walked up to the bar ... Ray immediately got up and walked to the bar to stand beside the Sergeant and he slipped him a large bundle of pound notes.

"Stop away from the dock warehouses for the next few nights there is going to be a big surveillance operation." Dick said.

"Thanks Dick" Ray murmured as he took his drink back to the table with his mates.

"We have problems for tonight the police are on to our warehouse scam."

One of his colleagues muttered. "Well we knew it was going to happen, but we have other targets don't we?"

"Sure. How about the Co-op warehouse, we move as soon as the siren goes, load up with anything saleable, set the fires and as soon as we hear the aircraft we set the fire,"

After a little discussion the final details were agreed and the party broke up.

It was later that evening as Tony stood in his bedroom looking out on to the road below as twilight fell. There were no street lights and people were hurrying past using shaded torches the little traffic that there was had tin shades over their headlights, which did little to help them find their way. Workers were hurrying home from work wanting to get home with their family before the nightly blitz started. In half an hour or so the bar would start to get busy, and he would start his nightly piano sing song.

If they were lucky they would perhaps get their evening meal before perhaps having to go to the air raid shelter when the sirens sounded their nightly warning. He casually watched Tom Weeks the Caretaker/Watchman lock the gates of the Co-op Food Warehouse opposite, as he too hurried off home for his tea. Tom suffered terribly from rheumatism and would have retired were it not for the war.

Tony hated the blackout curtains they made him feel claustrophobic and he and Kate often would lie on his bed with them drawn back watching the flickering searchlights in the sky, or the nightly pyrotechnics as the AA guns opened fire, and sometimes from his bedroom window he could see the barrage balloons being pulled down and then being relocated into slightly new positions.

He knew that as darkness fell the road below would soon be busy with taxis pulling auxiliary fire pumps and the Air Raid Wardens appearing for their nightly duties. The bar downstairs would soon be getting busier as some of the auxiliary firemen and the ARP wardens popped in for a quick one or two from their local depot nearby, depending on whether the Luftwaffe were early or late arriving that night. As the nights got shorter the raids tended to get shorter as the bombers did not like to be caught over England or the channel in daylight hours.

The daylight raids were becoming few and far between now. It had now been 58 consecutive nights of raids on London. The Luftwaffe had taken a terrible toll from the RAF fighters in the day time raids and had increasingly switched to the nighttime sorties. They liked the bright moonlight nights with a full moon. It was called a 'bombers moon' which provided the ideal conditions the bombers enjoyed for their nightly raids. They could follow the Thames to their target in dockland which mad navigation much easier. Despite the moonlight the RAF Hurricane night fighters had an almost hopeless task in the dark against the German bombers, even though their escorts had long left them over the coast and had returned home before they ran out of fuel. Radar for night fighters was very basic and did little at this time to help them.

Sometimes the night fighters were lucky and shot down one or two bombers down. But Tony knew that as they returned to France the Spitfire squadrons would scramble to catch them over the coast, and the massacre would start. The returning bombers would hope to see their ME 109 escorts waiting for them if they got their timing right. Despite the cover of darkness the Luftwaffe were taking enormous losses from returning bombers and many of the planes that did make it back to the airfields in France were beyond repair, or had injured crew members.

Very often they were unlucky as the escorting ME 109's only carried enough fuel for ten minutes over England and the English Channel and if the bombers were early or running late they would be sitting ducks for the RAF and coastal AA batteries