Watcher in the Shadows (3 page)

When we had had a drink together and sung the praises of old friends, I told him the story.

“So it’s obvious that someone who was a prisoner in Buchenwald has waited all these years for his revenge. And I am next on his list.”

“But you can’t be!” he insisted. “You weren’t a jailer. You weren’t involved in any of the brutality and executions. You were a sort of adjutant always in the office. Why you? And why now?”

Why me, I could not answer. Why now rather than long ago was pretty plain. Walter Dickfuss had screamed out some accusation during those three days of torture.

“It’s more likely,” Ian said, “that some crazy ex-Nazi who has just been let out of jail is taking revenge on you for spying on him or Hitler or what-have-you.”

I pointed out that my cover had never been broken. Also I doubted if former enemies ever took revenge on each other when war was long over. It was out of character. They were too tired of it all.

“Yes. I am. Well, we’ll go to Scotland Yard straight away. Somebody there ought to remember who I was. You’ll be guarded as if you were the Prime Minister.”

“So was Hans Weber,” I said.

“But damn it, you shall be!”

I reminded him that no private citizen could be efficiently guarded forever. An assassin ready to wait ten years would be perfectly ready to wait a few months more, taking a look at the setup from time to time to see how careless the victim and the man in the turned-down hat and mackintosh were getting. I wasn’t going to have policemen on my walks, testing my meals, sitting outside the museum. I hated policemen. I’d had enough of them. And I should be executed just the same — not tomorrow or next week, but as soon as we were all convinced that the danger was over.

“Suppose we have your whole story published?” he suggested. “I should think any Sunday paper would jump at it.”

“I am still not prepared, Ian, to look any person in the eyes who knows I was a captain in the Gestapo at Buchenwald. And what is half the world going to say? The blighter betrayed his country to save his neck, and they gave him British nationality for it.”

“Nonsense! Of course they wouldn’t! And what about your Scarlet Pimpernel stuff? There’s no trouble in proving that!”

Perhaps. But then I doubted it. It was true that I had planned escapes — could have planned a lot more of them if the wretched inmates of the camp had been lunatics enough to trust a Gestapo captain. The most spectacular was the rescue of Catherine Dessayes and Olga Coronel from Ravensbrück when they were due for the gas chamber. They knew that Hauptmann von Dennim was responsible but they couldn’t know that he was not just adding corruption to corruption —a Gestapo swine heavily bribed by the enemy.

“I told you at the time you were a fool not to accept your George Cross,” Ian said.

“One does not defile a decoration.”

“Take ‘em a bit seriously, don’t you? And anyway it isn’t fair to your assassin. It would surely make him think twice if he knew you as Graf Karl von Dennim, G.C.”

“Another very good reason why Charles Dennim should handle him gently and deal with him personally, Ian.”

“Oh, my God, you would say that!”

I calmed him down. What I had to propose was really very sensible. I did not want to die in the least — or at least I hadn’t wanted to until all these memories were forced back on me —and I did not believe that month after month any police guard could be effective against a man who was patient and implacable, who had leisure and money and no criminal record.

But if I could recognize him or describe him, the German police would do the rest. I might even be able to reason with him. At the very worst I could kill him, provided self-defense was evident.

“And what I want from you, Ian,” I said, “is to be my secret agent after all the years I was yours, plus a cottage to live in and an excuse for being in it.”

“A neighbor of mine has got two badger setts on his land,” he replied doubtfully. “You could be studying their diet. He says they kill his chickens.”

“Well, you can tell him from me they don’t. If it isn’t a fox — and I suppose he knows — it’s probably a polecat gone wild.”

“Jim Melton turned some of his polecat ferrets loose after myxomatosis killed off the rabbits,” he said. “You could watch the blasted things. Or badgers. The cottage I can manage, though it’s some way from my place. But that is all the better. How are you going to persuade him to follow you?”

“By making it easy. As soon as he sees that the house is shut up he can get my forwarding address from half a dozen different places.”

“That will puzzle him,” Ian objected. “It should be much harder to get your address. If one is going to tie out a fat goat for a tiger, it is essential to let the tiger think he has found it for himself.”

I did not care for the metaphor, though I have since adopted it. But at the first hearing it offended me. It was too typically and heartily English.

“It won’t take him long to decide that I am carrying on my normal life and have no police protection,” I said.

Ian thought it most improbable that his tiger would believe me so unimaginative, especially after the pamphlet with the cross on the officers’ mess. And if he had me under observation, as he presumably did, he must have seen that I had changed my habits and was offering no easy chances. The right move, Ian suggested, was to appear to have bolted from home in a panic and to leave a trail which could be picked up.

“But what about that admirable aunt of yours?”

“I’ve fixed that. She’ll be staying with a dear, old friend of hers who lives near Badminton. All she knows is that I am shortly off on a squirrel-watching expedition.”

“Well, it may work,” he said, showing a first spark of enthusiasm, “though nothing on earth would persuade me to tackle the former Graf von Dennim on ground of his own choosing. All right. First, cottage. Second, a scratch organization to tell you when there is a stranger about and what his movements are. But I reserve the right to call in the police when you are certain of your man — and you’ll be ninety per cent certain if you see a Buchenwald face which you recognize. Is there anything else?”

“An arm. I have only a sixteen-bore. And that’s no good. Nor is a rifle, I must have an automatic.”

“I cannot help there,” he said. “The police require very good reasons before they will issue a certificate. You’ll have to convince them that your life is in danger.”

I impressed it on him again that I was not going to convince the police of anything nor explain to them my past. We argued it all out once more.

At last and rather coldly he declared:

“Very well. I have to admit that this is probably the best way of catching the man. But I can’t be mixed up in it beyond a point. Do you realize that if you are caught with a pistol you will be very heavily fined and there will be exhaustive inquiries where you got it from?”

That seemed to me a comically minor risk. Ian had reverted very thoroughly to civilian legality and probably hoped — by God, I could understand it! — that he would never hear of any of his disquieting wartime friends again. Still, he could have used his influence somewhere to obtain an automatic for me. But did he understand, in spite of his goat and man-eater, how close the parallel really was? Perhaps he didn’t. He was thinking in terms of a police decoy for catching bag-snatchers in the park.

That was all. I left Singleton Court — as a matter of principle —by way of the basement and the dustbins, and came out into Gloucester Road. I felt a little more lonely than when I went in — which was most unfair to Ian but may not have been bad for me. Loneliness was a challenge. It shifted my thinking into a gear remembered but long unused.

The question of an arm. To acquire one illegally was a test of how fit I still was to protect myself. I knew no more of criminal society than any other respectable citizen. The fellows who held up bank cashiers must get their weapons somewhere, but the newspapers did not tell us how.

What to wear. A dirty lounge suit, bought cheap and off the peg just after the war, seemed right. A turtle-necked sweater under it was, at any rate, noncommittal. I could not leave the house in them since Georgina’s curiosity might be aroused. So I carried the clothes in a brown paper parcel and changed in a public lavatory.

My destination was Soho. After wandering around to find a cafe where the customers were neither too young nor too exclusively Italian, I entered a revolting joint just off Wardour Street and sat down, speaking just enough broken English to order a cup of coffee. After ten minutes two scruffy individuals, with a show of heartiness towards the foreigner, got into conversation with me and found that I spoke only German. They cleared off soon and sent me a German-speaking lady of the town. She was a hard-faced rubbery creature of the type to betray her own mother for money. I pretended to be much taken with her and assured her we would have a wonderful time if only I could sell —I swore her to secrecy — if only I could sell a Luger.

The following afternoon I was there again. She introduced me to a large and slimy crook who was an obvious copper’s nark. He may have had a police card in his pocket or merely have been in police pay. I don’t know. And, to be fair, I suppose he might have been entirely convincing to anyone without a sense of smell trained to spot his type. He was living proof that I was wise to undertake my own protection. If I could smell police, so could my enemy. God knew what the tiger’s past had been, but it was safe to assume that he had experience of an underground more deadly than that of London Transport.

My hard-working female friend acted as interpreter. She was disappointed when I denied all knowledge of any Luger. No doubt she had reckoned that a sure couple of quid from the police was a lot better than a mere promise from me.

When the nark had gone she took me to another cafe where I was inspected from various angles and kitchen doors. There was a good deal of mysterious coming and going —Harry fetching Alf, and Alf knowing where Jim might be and so forth. It struck me that in criminal circles far too many people are expected to keep secrets. At last and in a third cafe I met the genuine buyer. He could have been anything from a bookmaker’s runner to a bus conductor. The only quality which one could sense in all that neutral smoothness was contempt for the public.

How was the Luger to be handed over? I put on a show of fear and suspicion, and insisted on a quiet spot where there was no chance of being arrested by the police or set upon by a gang. The rubber lady assisted with a most incompetent translation and made me appear even stupider than the naive, self-confident type of German crook which I was playing. It was perfectly clear to any person of normal intelligence — and he had plenty — that when he brought the money I intended to hold him up with the Luger and grab it. We arranged a meeting at ten-thirty when it would be dark. Curie was to take me to the rendezvous. He explained to her at length where it was — a bombed site off Haverstock Hill.

I telephoned Georgina that I should be home late and bought her a box of chocolates of about the right size to hold a Luger. Then I had some dinner and afterwards picked up my cinematically bosomed sweetheart. I was glad to see that she had been instructed to take me discreetly to Haverstock Hill by bus, not by traceable taxi.

She showed me the bombed site and said she would wait for me. I watched her scuttling off as soon as she believed she was out of sight. It all seemed to be going very well, though I could foresee complications if the buyer brought a companion. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t. His own gun — of course I was praying all the time that he had one —should be quite enough to intimidate me.

I waited for him a quarter of an hour, feeling his presence and once hearing him, while he sensibly satisfied himself that I was alone. After that it was all very quick. He held me up straight away and ordered me to drop my parcel. I whined with surprise and terror. It was quite unnecessary for him to tell me what he would do if I raised my voice. He was most disappointed that the likely box contained only chocolates and came for me, as so many men do when they have lost their tempers, carelessly waving his gun about. I had expected it would be more difficult.

But I really did congratulate myself on finesse — until that is, I examined his automatic. It was a miserable Italian .22, accurate enough for killing but with no stopping power at all. However, it would have to do. I shifted him into the shadow of a wall where he was unlikely to be noticed until he came round, replaced the lid on the box of chocolates, and returned to my suburb and my aunt.

I looked out of the bedroom window of the cottage which Ian had found for me with a rising of spirits that I had not felt for years. Not that the scene was in any way unfamiliar; during my months of field work on the smaller mammals I generally rented a room from some kindly old body who was prepared to make my bed and produce simple meals at irregular intervals. The cause of my temporary content was probably relief at being clear of London.

My vulnerability had been getting on my nerves. There was one duty which I hated: attending as principal witness the inquest on the postman. Since time and place were public knowledge, my presence was detestably dangerous. It did have one advantage. If my follower was among the public or idly — possibly hopefully — watching from a side street, he could satisfy himself that I was in no way guarded and would feel more free to ask questions.

Both Ian and I felt certain that he would not try to trace me by writing a letter. If I were submitting to the police all letters from unknown correspondents, he would give some clue, however slight, to the postman’s murderer for the laboratories to work on.

But he could risk telephoning to Georgina or the museum or a few other obvious places to ask for my address. None of them had it. I told them all that I had not yet decided exactly where I would be staying and would let them know later. That would look to him as if I had hidden myself or perhaps as if the police had hidden me.

What would he do then? Ask discreet questions. Try the milkman, for example. No luck. The firm of builders repairing the damage? That wouldn’t do him any good either. I had made a point of telling the chief clerk that the firm could get in touch with me at any time through the museum.