Pilgrim Soul (33 page)

‘Don’t think about it!’

I kept up my momentum and when I reached him, I grabbed him and forced him on to his knees. I put the muzzle of my gun against his head. His face was strained with fear. I grabbed his jacket collar and forced him lower so that his head was under the table.

‘Crawl.’ I said. He did. ‘Stop. Stay there.’ I turned to the door and nodded to Danny. The music was still blasting out. The Ink Spots by the sound of it. Danny grinned and took a run. He hit the door with enough force to smash it open and carry him through. I was right behind him with my gun high and looking for targets. What we saw when we crashed inside pulled us up short – and explained the noise.

It was like a scene from the Gestapo manual. A wireless was blasting from a side mantelpiece. Dead ahead, a man sat bare to the waist in a chair. His arms were tied behind him and his head lolled on his chest. Blood poured from wounds and bruises on his face and torso. A man in shirtsleeves was wiping a blade with a cloth. A second was playing with what looked like a heavy cable. They were the two men Mal had brought the other night to one of our platoon meetings. Paulus and Emmanuel. Hungarians supposedly. Irgun or Stern Gang more like.

They’d frogmarched Langefeld from the bridge. They had the solemn air of professionals practising their art. The one with glasses looked quite professorial, his Ph.D. in applied mechanics.

Mal himself was sitting to one side, slumped in a heavy armchair, rubbing his eye patch. His face was haggard and pale. He didn’t seem surprised to see me.

‘Ah, Brodie. You’re just too late.’

I looked at the slumped man. His chest wasn’t moving. I walked over to the mantelpiece and swept the wireless off it. Its cable snapped and the Bakelite smashed to fragments on the floor. Silence filled the room. I turned.

‘Oh,
shit
, Malachi! What have you done?’

He stirred himself. ‘I’ve killed a filthy Nazi, that’s what. And we’ve learned a lot about the others. That’s what I’ve done.’ Defiance was trying to replace despair in his face. I wasn’t going to help. The consequences of Langefeld’s death raged through me in a mix of terror and anguish.

‘Look at you. The three of you. No better than the man you’ve just murdered! I hope you think it’s worth it. And come to that, who the hell are you two?’

I pointed my gun at the silent pair either side of the dead man. The torture professor had been edging towards a low table next to Malachi. It held three pistols.

‘Oh, go for it, pal. The mood I’m in, I’d shoot you out of hand. Who are you?’

Professor moved back to be closer to his friend.

‘Who are they, Mal? Where did you find them?’

Mal tried a death’s head grin at me. ‘They are the new Jews, Brodie. Jews that fight back.
Israelis
.’

‘There’s no such place. Not yet.’

Mal tapped his head. ‘In here. And when we throw your troops out of our country, our nation will come alive again.’

Danny stepped forward and spoke to them in what I now realised was Hebrew. I caught only some of the words:
Irgun Zvai Leumi
.

The professor shrugged. I wasn’t surprised, except by the reach of this Jewish terror brigade.

I heard the words
Ava Kaplan
. Danny frowned and swung his gun round to point at the man slumped in the chair. The exchange grew more heated. I heard words for murder and stupidity. Danny was clearly haranguing them for their brutality.

I’d had enough. ‘Danny, skip it. We’ve no time for this.’ I walked over to the table and picked up the three guns. I stuffed them in my coat pockets. ‘Did you tell them about Shimon and Isaac?’

‘No.’

I faced Malachi. ‘They’ve taken my friend, Isaac Feldmann. And Shimon Belsinger. Taken them hostage.’ As I said it, I thought:
And now they’re going to kill them. Now they’re going to kill Isaac
.

Malachi lurched forward. ‘What?’

‘Langefeld was living with a woman. We assume another Nazi. She got away. She and her cronies kidnapped our men. We had a phone call this morning.’

He asked, ‘What do they want?’ But he knew. He knew.

My voice was flat, defeated. ‘You know what they want, Mal. What they
wanted
.’ I nodded at the man in the chair. ‘We were to deliver Langefeld – presumably breathing and in one piece – back at the bridge by six o’clock this evening.’

He glanced at his watch.

‘Too late for that, Mal. Unless you’re any good at resurrections.’

‘Wait. Wait! We can find them. Find the others!’

‘Do you have names? Addresses?’ There might be some hope.

His face dropped. ‘No. Not quite. Not . . .’

‘Then what
did
you get?
For the lives of our friends
?’

Mal sank back in his chair and held his face in his hands. After a moment he took them away.

‘He told us he was stuck here in Glasgow. Just like you said. Like Mandel. Like Dragan. They had enough gold to last for a while but were waiting for the go-ahead from their controller. He arranged for their passage to New York or Boston or sometimes straight on to South America. By plane or sometimes by boat.’

‘Did he say why they were stuck?

‘No.’

‘Did he give the name of the controller?’

Mal shook his head.

‘Did you find out where Suhren is holing up? Or any of the others? Are they together?’

He waved his hand.

‘Anything?
Any
clues at all?’

‘He mentioned Prestwick. But that’s obvious, I guess.’

‘Where do you think
you’re
going?’ I asked, turning my gun on the two Israeli gunmen. Both were putting on their jackets and heading to the door.

The professor spoke in English. ‘We are finished here. We are going.’

‘No you’re bloody not!’ I stood in front of him aiming at his chest.

The professor said something. Danny tensed and lowered his gun. ‘Let them go, Brodie. They’re no use to us.’

He was right. But I was just ready to shoot
somebody
for
something
. I nodded and dropped my gun. The two men brushed past me and were gone.

‘How come you know Hebrew?’ I asked.

‘University of Dachau. A specialised vocabulary, mind.’

‘I can imagine.’

He looked hard at me. ‘I doubt it, old pal. You get a different perspective, inside.’

‘What did he say, Danny? I heard them mention Ava Kaplan. Your girl.’

He looked at me with anguish. ‘They know of her. He said:
If you love her, you’ll let us go
.’

FIFTY-TWO

We found a phone box.

‘Duncan, it’s Brodie.’

‘I hope you’ve some good news.’

‘Mostly bad, some good.’ I told him where to find Malachi and the dead man, and that there were two Jewish gunmen on the run. When I finished there was silence for a long moment.

‘You mentioned good news? Were you lying to make me feel better?’

‘We took their guns.’

‘Brodie. This city’s awash wi’ bloody guns. If they’ve got cash, they’ll have guns before the night’s oot.’

‘Any news from the kidnappers?’

‘Nothing. Not a damn thing. Rabbi Silver and Shimon Belsinger are looking after Isaac’s family but all we can do is wait.’

I checked my watch. Two o’clock. Four hours to the deadline. I left the phone box and joined Danny. It was getting darker. The temperature was dropping and it had begun snowing again. I felt I was drowning in a rising tide of bleakness. Danny must have seen it on my face.

‘There’s nothing we can do about it.’

‘Story of my life.’

‘I’m saying it’s not your fault, Douglas.’

‘Does that make it better?’

‘No, but you don’t have to take the blame. You might as well tell it to stop snowing.’

For want of anything smarter to do, I called Maurice Silver and asked him to round up our gang and get them out on the frozen streets to see if they could see or hear anything. Danny set off to find Bathsheba. I trudged back to Sam’s to await calls. All thought of going after Suhren and company had been pushed out of my head. All I could see was Isaac.

All I could think about was the years of friendship and comfort. After my own father had died and I’d first come up to Glasgow University, Isaac and his wife Hannah had filled a hole. I hadn’t realised how large the hole was at the time, or how needy I must have appeared. In my first year studying German I’d been drawn to the babel of accents in the Gorbals. My stumbling attempts at communicating with this gruff tailor led to my first cup of coffee. Then soup. Then being gathered into his family’s embrace as if I’d know them since birth.

I sat in the kitchen watching the clock arms swing round. Finally it struck six and I was left with no sensation of whether Isaac and Shimon were alive or not. Surely a wound would open in my heart if they’d killed him? I clung on to the notion that no news was good news. That it would serve no useful purpose killing either man. They were just bluffing and, having now called it, there was no point in following through with their threat.

Sam came home and I told her the situation. She took my hand and sat quietly with me.

It was nearly eight in the evening when Danny himself summoned me from a phone box. I left Sam to mind the phone in case there were any more developments and plunged out into the bleak night. It wasn’t just the cold that now numbed me.

Danny and Bathsheba met me just south of the People’s Palace. She had her arm in a sling. We didn’t speak as they walked me down between the high banks of ploughed snow towards the St Andrew’s suspension bridge that flew out across the frozen Clyde, into the Gorbals.

Ahead, Lieutenant Lionel Bloom and his five old warriors were standing on the path, smoking and stamping their feet. Their breath swirled above their swaddled heads. They nodded towards a line of footprints cutting through the high snow bank and leading a short way into the deep drifts. I followed their eyes and saw a dark bundle framed by the white. I walked towards it.

I kneeled down beside Isaac. He was flat on his back, gazing sightless at the echoing sky. The snow was trampled round about him. There was a black halo round his head where his hot blood had melted the snow. The remnants of a huge icicle lay shattered by his ear. His smart jacket and waistcoat were shredded and torn where knives had entered. To finish the job? Anger at losing Langefeld? Or just for the fun of it? I pulled the jacket over his bare chest and tried to close his eyes but they were stiff and unyielding.

I looked back at the path. Danny McRae was clasping Bathsheba to his thick coat. Under his hat-brim his eyes were filled with pity. For Isaac and perhaps also for me.

Bathsheba’s face seemed twisted by sorrow and anger, as though she couldn’t believe the horror of it. I certainly couldn’t. For four months now I’d been chasing my own phantoms while people died around me. People I was being paid to protect. I’d been too slow or too dumb to prevent their murder. Now my friend had joined their ranks.

‘Any sign of Shimon, Danny?’ I called.

‘He’s safe though not very sound. They beat him up pretty badly then dumped him on Rabbi Silver. And before you ask, he says they wore caps, and scarves round their faces.’

‘How many?’

‘Three or four. And a woman.’

Some flashing lights caught my eye, back towards the People’s Palace. Soon I could make out a hurrying group of policemen. As they drew closer I could see they were led by Duncan and Detective Chief Inspector Walter Sangster. They stopped in a panting group by the path and played their torches on me.

Sangster called out. ‘Brodie! Get yoursel’ over here and stop messing up a crime scene!’

I took a last look at my old friend, stood up and walked towards the path. Duncan just shook his head at me as I got close.

‘Late as usual, Sangster,’ I got in, before he started on me.

He stood in my way, his sharp eyes seething with bile. He hissed, ‘I don’t give a shit if you are pally with the Chief, Brodie. I’ve a bloody good mind to put you under arrest.’

‘For what? Doing your job for you?’

‘If we find a single fingerprint of yours on that body, I’ll see you swing, Brodie, so help me God.’

I stepped closer, my hands coming up. Danny pressed between us and faced me. ‘Come on, Douglas. Let’s go. Say nothing else.’

‘Oh, Christ! McRae too!’ Sangster had spun Danny away from me and was nose to nose with him. ‘Trouble comes in pairs. And they don’t get any more troublesome than you twa! The same goes for you, McRae. If I find you’ve been involved in this in any way, you’re for the high jump. Now, bugger off and let the real police do this properly.’

I took Danny’s arm and marched him away. Bathsheba scampered after us. The others caught us up. I clasped the old lieutenant’s shoulder.

‘Lionel, can you get the word round the others? Tell them I want a full turn-out for him.’

‘Yes, sir.’ They picked up speed and by the time we’d left the park, they’d disappeared into the frozen alleys of the city.

We hauled ourselves back to Sam’s house. We brought Bathsheba with us to thaw her out and to work out what to do next. Sam was home and drew us in and held me for a while when I told her about Isaac. I felt her weeping softly against my chest and didn’t care about my own tears.

We hung our dismal coats and hats on the hall stand and piled down into the kitchen. I brought through some coal from the cellar and stoked the fire up on the range. We sat round its life-giving glow while steam rose from our trousers and Bathsheba’s skirt. Sam pressed tea on us, and cut up some Dundee cake, another Izzie Dunlop special. The trappings of a wake.

I thought about the times I’d sat with Isaac in the back room of his shop, and how, before the war, his wife Hannah used to fuss about us and force-feed me spiced honey cake and kugel. I kept going over and over in my mind what I could have done differently. How I could have saved him. But it’s hard to counter sheer malevolence. Why Isaac? Why my friend? Was he deliberately chosen because of that? In that case who would have known?

My thoughts were derailed by Sam sticking a large glass of Scotch in my hand. Danny received his like a sacrament, and drank deep. The girl wouldn’t indulge but guzzled down two bowls of hot broth under the mothering attentions of her hostess. She’d been shy at first with Sam, gazing about her at the high ceilings and splendid staircase. By the firelight, her eyes glowed like huge pools of oil. Danny couldn’t take his gaze off her. Sam noticed and shared small smiles with me.