SS-GB (27 page)

Douglas heard the engine of a heavy vehicle passing through the motor transport yard on the far side of the stables. It was out of sight but Douglas looked at his watch and decided that it was about time that the ambulance arrived from London.

He found two men on duty in the motor transport office. One was an anaemic-looking clerk, with pimples and an easy smile. The other was a mechanic, a muscular sixty-year-old, with curly moustache and metal-framed spectacles. No ambulance, they reported. Douglas sat down with them and asked them how they liked England, and they asked him where he learned to speak such beautiful German.

‘And you brought that Railton in,’ said the big Oberfeldwebel. ‘Now, that’s what I call a real car. Not like some of the rubbish we have to service here.’ He flicked a nicotine-stained finger towards the lines of old Opel Blitz lorries, commandeered Austins, and brand-new military model VWs, all painted with the fish device that was the Divisional sign. Most of the men of the Division had been recruited from the Schwarzwald and this man’s accent had that sort of sing-song lilt that was so often heard in those villages.

Douglas looked around the office. On the wall there was the usual row of clipboards, and above them an order signed by the commanding officer. It listed those officers on the camp staff who were assigned cars for personal transport. ‘I know your face from somewhere,’ the older man suddenly said to Douglas.

‘It’s not likely,’ said Douglas. He read the list of cars.

‘I never forget a face,’ he said. ‘Do I, Walter? No, I never forget a face.’

‘He’s well known for it,’ said the clerk obsequiously. ‘He never forgets a face.’

‘You’re a policeman…here!’ He gave a huge smile of pleasure. ‘You’re from Scotland Yard. I remember seeing on the sheet when we refilled your car for you. Wait a minute…no, don’t tell me, I’ll get it in a minute…’

The clerk smiled at Douglas, as a salesman might smile while demonstrating an especially ingenious mechanical toy.

‘Archer of the Yard. You’re Archer of the Yard. Where the devil was I reading about you just recently…?’

Douglas did not help him remember.

The Oberfeldwebel shook his head, his excitement bordering on disbelief. ‘You’re the detective who solved the Bethnal Green poisonings, and caught “the Rottingdean Ripper” back before the war.’

That Douglas did not acknowledge the truth of it made no difference to the old man. It did not even slow his narrative. ‘Archer of the Yard! Well, I’m damned. I follow murder mysteries. Fiction as well as true life. In my apartment in Forbach I have a whole room filled with books, magazines and press cuttings.’ He took off his oily cloth cap and scratched his head. ‘I was reading about you…very recently…I knew about you before of course: you’re famous…but I read about you. Where was I reading about him, Walter?’

‘In
Signal
, Oberfeldwebel,’ said the clerk.

‘Of course,’ said the old man, smacking one huge fist into his open hand. ‘First time I heard of you was that case in Camden Town. The husband killed his wife with bad seafood – crab wasn’t it – and nearly got away with it. Good detective work, that was. That must have been about 1938.’

‘December 1937,’ said Douglas. ‘Not Camden Town – Great Yarmouth.’

‘Great Yarmouth, yes, and you found out, from the wife’s sister, that she had this allergy for seafood.’ He stood back, so that he could see Douglas full length. He looked him up and down and shook his head again. ‘Whoever would have believed that I’d be here, talking to Archer of the Yard like this. Coffee?’

‘Yes, please,’ said Douglas.

The old man took off his spectacles and slipped them into a leather case before putting them into his black overalls. ‘Get three coffees, Walter. Tell the Feldwebel it’s for me, and I want real coffee, not ersatz muck. And a jug of cream if he’s going to want that damned motorcycle overhauled again.’

‘The ambulance should be here by now,’ said Douglas.

‘They’ll stop for coffee on the way,’ said the old man. ‘SS are they? Those people know how to look after themselves, and our Feldgendarmerie don’t dare to pick them up.’ He looked at his pocket watch. ‘Coming to take a body away, I hear. Of course, I should have put two and two together, when I heard you were with Captain Hesse.’

‘Put two and two together?’ said Douglas.

‘To make four,’ he said. ‘You arriving from Scotland Yard, and then spending the day with an officer of the Abwehr.’

‘Captain Hesse is from the Abwehr?’

He chuckled again. ‘You don’t have to keep up that pretence with me,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell a soul. And anyway, dozens of people here know about Captain Hesse.’

Douglas looked at the man trying to see what he meant. The Abwehr was that branch of the army’s
Intelligence Service concerned with the foreign intelligence services. ‘What does an officer of the Abwehr do here?’

‘You know that better than I do,’ he said. ‘The Captain – he’s only a Leutnant really, but the Abwehr use any uniform they like – comes and goes whenever he wishes. We have that nice Horch motor-car over there – no unit markings or tactical signs, you notice – for his exclusive use.’ At that moment Walter reappeared with a tin tray and two jugs. ‘Just talking about our Captain Hesse, Walter. I’m telling Superintendent Archer what a nice fellow he is.’

Walter smiled and registered the oberfeldwebel’s claim to be on intimate terms with the policeman. He poured three cups of coffee and they drank it in silence.

‘My wife and my son will never believe this, when I write to them,’ said the oberfeldwebel. ‘They both follow all the big murder cases. Next trip to London I was going to photograph that place in Pimlico, where they found the remains of the girl – the bread-knife murders, you remember.’ He flipped open the lid of the jug and inhaled the aroma of the coffee. ‘Oh, and that reminds me, Walter: Captain Hesse phoned me just before our visitor arrived. He’ll be taking his car tonight, about midnight. Make sure the tank is full and his card is ready for signature. You know how he hates to be kept waiting about.’ He put on his spectacles again to study the list of vehicles on the clipboard marked with the next day’s date. ‘So you’re waiting here until the ambulance arrives, Superintendent?’ He twisted the end of his curly moustache.

‘No,’ said Douglas on a sudden impulse. ‘The arrangements to move the body are all made. I’ll take my car now. I’ll try and get an early night for a change.’

The Oberfeldwebel walked with him across the yard
to where the Railton was parked. The conversation now turned to what mileage and speed the detective’s car did. As Douglas got inside the man gave the paintwork a loving caress. ‘They knew how to make a car in those days,’ he said.

Softly on the cold night air there came the distant sound of music. The old man saw Douglas cock his head to listen. ‘The choir,’ said the old man. ‘Divisional HQ choir. Kids! Called up since the fighting stopped. They don’t know what a war is. Look at that pimply kid Walter in the office there – they’re tourists, not soldiers.’

‘And they sing in the choir?’ The singing could be heard more clearly now, ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’, two dozen lusty young male voices but it was musical enough.

‘There’s to be a big party for the local English children at Christmas,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised at how much money they’ve collected. It’s weeks to go before Christmas.’ He smoothed his hand on the paintwork. ‘More and more young recruits will come. We old-timers will go home. Soon the fighting will be forgotten.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Douglas.

‘Not forgotten by those of us who did it, but we’ll not be around to talk about it, will we?’

Douglas revved up the engine. ‘Damned good coffee,’ said Douglas.

The old man leaned closer. ‘Any time you want your car overhauled, you come and see me, Superintendent.’ He tapped his nose, to show that such a service would remain confidential.

‘Thanks and good night,’ said Douglas. He drove as far as the barrier that closed off the entrance to the motor transport yard. As he halted there, waiting for the gate to lift, the young clerk came out of the
office brandishing what, in the poor light, looked like a huge gun. He poked its ‘barrel’ through the window of the car so that it was pointing at Douglas’s head. Seeing the sudden movement, a sentry in a guard tower turned the light so it blinded him.

‘What?’ said Douglas nervously.

‘Will you autograph it for me?’ said the clerk. The gun barrel was now identifiable as a tightly rolled copy of
Signal
magazine. With shaking hand, Douglas scrawled his signature across the corner of the magazine cover.

‘Thanks, and happy hunting,’ said the clerk in a salutation that he’d obviously prepared carefully.

‘Good night,’ said Douglas as the barrier was raised.

Douglas drove down past the ‘Barley Mow’ and over the narrow bridge that leads to Clifton Hampden. It was the only permitted route after dark, when the camp’s other gates closed. There was a German army checkpoint at the bridge. Once through it, Douglas found a disused side entrance in the village, and drove the Railton off the road. He switched off the lights and settled down to wait for Captain Hesse and his unmarked Horch four-door convertible.

It was not long in coming. It turned right at the T junction over the bridge, and then on to the road that led through Shillingford, Wallingford and eastwards to London.

The moon was on the wane, and it was too cloudy to permit more than fitful snatches of moonlight. Douglas was no expert at such jobs but it was not difficult staying behind the Horch. There was only official traffic at that time of night; a long convoy of horse-drawn army wagons, a short convoy of Luftwaffe lorries, a few motorcycle despatch riders, a civilian bus taking shift workers to and from home. All these made it possible for Douglas to keep out of sight.

There were half-a-dozen checkpoints but neither car got more than a perfunctory glance at the windscreen stickers. Captain Hesse appeared to know London well. At Shepherd’s Bush he turned off down Holland Road, and followed a maze of side roads. Douglas fell back, lest his quarry noticed him on these dark empty streets. But Hesse showed no sign of suspicion. His destination was the Vauxhall Bridge Road and the clutter of seedy hotels and sleazy boarding houses on the Westminster side of Victoria railway station. It had never, in Douglas’s memory, been a salubrious district, but the arrival of the Germans had helped it to become one of the most notorious districts in the whole of Europe. But it wasn’t only the women that attracted the soldiers here – the official Wehrmacht brothels were cleaner, cheaper and more attractive to all but the most perverse – it was the trading. Here you could buy anything: men, women and children, heroin by the kilo, a factory-fresh P38 automatic pistol still in packing grease, false papers, real papers even. In spite of the regular patrols and severe penalties soldiers still came here. It was as if, in the absence of a battlefield, they needed some alternative hazard.

Hesse parked his car in the ruins of what was once the Victoria Palace Music Hall. Douglas’s parents had taken him there when he was a child. Now tall weeds and flowers grew from the orchestra pit, and a row of seats tilted drunkenly from the last remaining section of the Royal Circle. He waited until Hesse reappeared from the shadows of the remains of the auditorium arch. He crossed the road, first to the forecourt of Victoria station, where gigantic portraits of Hitler and Stalin, together with flags and bunting, rippled and roared in the cold wind. Douglas stayed where he was while a Feldgendarmerie patrol marched
along Victoria Street. The commander ignored the long figure of Hesse. His long civilian overcoat with its fur collar, the soft felt hat worn at a sober angle, black leather gloves and unhesitating stride marked him as a German officer.

Douglas let the Captain get well ahead, as he walked down Vauxhall Bridge Road illuminated by garish signs of lodging houses and hotels and the lights from an all-night coffee shop. A man in a tweed overcoat came from a doorway, lurched towards the Captain but, deciding that he was not the type for pornographic photos, stuffed the envelope he was holding back into his pocket. Hesse quickened his pace and turned up the fur collar as if to hide his face.

He’d been here before. Douglas didn’t doubt that, for the Captain looked neither to right nor left, nor raised his eyes up to where an amateurly painted sign said ‘Hotel Lübeck’ over a narrow entrance. A few slivers of broken glass – dark green and curved, from a bottle – lodged in the cracks of the dirty linoleum. The floorboards creaked as Douglas followed him inside. The Captain did not look back as he ascended the stairs. His hand reached out for the light switch and, unerring, found it in the dark. Another low-wattage bulb came alight on the first floor landing above them.

‘All right, sport, what can we do for you?’ A pale-faced man, belted tightly into a raincoat, stepped out of the gloom and barred Douglas’s way.

‘I’m going upstairs,’ said Douglas softly, so that he would not attract attention.

‘All private here,’ said the man. ‘Private hotel – all the rooms taken – just guests and staff allowed in here.’ He put a flattened hand on Douglas’s chest. In spite of his reputation for being a policeman of tact and patience, Douglas felt a strong inclination to hit this man. But he did not do so.

‘A German officer just went upstairs,’ said Douglas.

‘I’m quite aware of that, my friend,’ said the rain-coated man in the pedantic syntax favoured by bureaucrats and bullies. ‘But you, I regret, must remain outside.’

‘I’m the Captain’s driver,’ said Douglas. ‘He forgot to tell me what time he wants to be collected.’

The raincoated man’s shifty eyes flickered over Douglas’s clothes and then came back to his anxious face. ‘You’re his driver?’

‘Yes,’ said Douglas. There is a natural bond between these pimping strong-arm men and the drivers and doormen who send them their clients.

‘Be quick,’ he said grudgingly. Douglas went past him, and up to the first floor, in time to hear the Captain’s footsteps still ascending past the second floor. Again a landing light came on.