The Automobile Association by M J Porter
Erdington, September 1944
As events in Europe begin to turn in favour of the Allies, Chief Inspector Mason of Erdington Police Station is once more prevailed upon to solve a seemingly impossible case.
Called to the local mortuary where a man’s body lies, shockingly bent double and lacking any form of identification, Mason and O’Rourke find themselves at Castle Bromwich aerodrome seeking answers that seem out of reach to them. The men and women of the royal air force stationed there are their prime suspects. Or are they? Was the man a spy, killed on the orders of some higher authority, or is the place his body was found irrelevant? And why do none of the men and women at the aerodrome recognise the dead man?
Mason, fearing a repeat of the cold case that dogged his career for two decades and that he’s only just solved, is determined to do all he can to uncover the identity of the dead man, and to find out why he was killed and abandoned in such a bizarre way, even as Smythe demands he spends his time solving the counterfeiting case that is leaving local shopkeepers out of pocket.
Join Mason and O’Rourke as they once more attempt to solve the impossible in 1940s Erdington.
About the author
MJ Porter is the author of many historical novels set predominantly in Seventh to Eleventh-Century England, as well as three twentieth-century mysteries. Raised in the shadow of a building that was believed to house the bones of long-dead Kings of Mercia, meant that the author's writing destiny was set.
As part of the blog tour I have the pleasure of sharing an extract with you.
In which Mason and O’Rourke discover how many AA sentry boxes are close to Erdington, the fact that their numbers are all in a pickle, and encounter the Patrolman, Grant, who’s reported a problem with the sentry box he patrols and maintains.
“And when you’re done, I’m taking all the signs down. Better that than word getting back to head office that we have incorrect signs on our sentry box. It’s all the new man in charge needs.” Mason furrowed his brow. Of course, he knew that Stenson Cooke had died two years before, the man who’d been in charge of the Automobile Association since its inception, but what he couldn’t quite work out was why his successor would be so concerned with this small matter in Mile Oak, miles away from London.
The men and women who worked for the organisation had far more critical things to concern themselves. They’d played an essential part in the war effort, even going so far as to be asked to retrieve the cars of those members who’d abandoned them in France in 1939 when war had been declared. Some of the stories had made it into the local and national newspapers.
Mason also knew that the local patrolmen and women had been assisting the army with their detailed knowledge of local areas.
“Tell me, where else are there sentry boxes close to here? Is there a box number forty-one and a forty-three?” Mason had noticed the number forty-two on the front of the sentry box. He was sure that an organisation such as the Automobile Association would have been logical in assigning its numbers.
“Well, now. I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that. Not at all. The sentry boxes all have numbers, but the numbers you’re asking about aren’t close by; they’re in the south. Many miles from here.”
“So, there aren’t any other sentry boxes close by?” Now Mason thought about it, he wasn’t entirely sure whether or not he knew of any others apart from this one, here, at Mile Oak. Well, maybe there was one, but he couldn’t place it, not right now.
“Well, yes, there are, but not in numerical order. The one numbered one hundred, and fifty-four is close to Warwick, the three hundred and thirty-five at Moxhull and the three hundred and forty-one at Appleby Fields Crossroads on the way to Ashby. Oh, wait. The seven hundred and eighty-three is also close to Warwick. Sorry, I almost forgot that one. And,of course, there’s the three hundred and fourteen at Beech Lanes, where the A456 meets the A4123, close to the centre of Birmingham.” Sam didn’t think to ask how Grant could remember the locations and the numbers. It somehow seemed only natural that he would know them.
“And these sentry boxes aren’t on your route?”
“No, not those ones. Sorry. Why?” Grant thought to ask, but Mason distracted himself with helping O’Rourke as she handed back down her supplies from where she’d been seeing if there were any fingerprints left on the roof of the sentry box or on the signposts that were still up there, all be it, the wrong way round, according to Grant.
“I’ve finished,” she announced cheerfully to Grant, but Grant hardly heard her. His gaze was fixed only on the signs.
“So,” Grant eventually asked. “Do you think you’ll find the culprits?” The words sounded like a question but were more an accusation.
“We’ll certainly do our best to do so,” Mason assured the other man, thinking that as much as Grant annoyed him with his officious manner, if not for him, these perplexing signs wouldn’t have been found at all.
“Check in at the police station in a few days, and I’ll ensure an update is left for you.” Grant muttered an agreement but was already climbing the ladder to remove the offending road signs.
“And, of course,” Grant said this as an afterthought. “If you could keep the regional office informed as well, that would assist me.”
Mason made hurry-up motions with his hands so that he and O’Rourke could be long gone before Grant thought to ask anything else, but as he walked away, Mason thought to poke his head into the now open sentry box. As he’d thought, it contained little more than a black telephone, the number written on it, Tamworth 2044. He also saw a small container, which he suspected must contain some emergency petrol for motorists and motorcyclists. He wasn’t sure where the local garage was but imagined it was some distance away.
“What are you thinking?” O’Rourke asked as she successfully steered the Wolseley back onto the road to return to Erdington once she and Mason were inside. They’d left Grant trying to remove the signs, even while saluting the members who drove past. He needed to be careful, or he’d fall into his precious roses. Mason wondered whether one of the members would write to head office about Grant’s antics.
“I don’t really know. It could be something, but equally, it might not be.”
“I think we should probably check the other sentry boxes,” O’Rourke announced as Mason nodded in agreement.
“I do as well, but first, I’m going to run it by Smythe, make sure we’re not barking up the wrong tree, as it were.”
O’Rourke concentrated on driving carefully along the road on the way back, and Mason made a decision.
“But that one, the three hundred and thirty-five sentry box, that’s almost on the way back to Erdington, at Moxhull. We should go there first, just to see if we can find anything strange.”
