Death in Cold Type

by C. C. Benison

  She took a last sip of tea, a cheap commercial blend that had brewed so intensely between hotel kitchen and her room its astringency left her mouth dehydrated. In the bathroom, she swallowed several glassfuls of water and immediately regretted it. The chlorinated taste was vile and she felt swollen. With the only hope of refreshment lying in a long hot shower, she tugged the curtain and adjusted the taps. Perhaps, she thought, removing her bathrobe and stepping into the gratifying warmth of the streaming water, happiness was only an animal response, to food, to warmth, to sex. Human beings could never be truly happy because their needs were so much more complex.

  Nearly an hour later, Liz stood in the newsstand tucked in a corner of the hotel lobby. Feeling marginally better, and sure it was too late to encounter BobRobRonDon, she had decided to eat in the restaurant. Anna Karenina, even in paperback, was a poor dining partner—too bulky to manoeuvre with knife and fork—so she opted instead for a magazine to accompany the tedious task of dining alone. But which magazine? she wondered, surveying the racks. So many magazines, so few worth reading. Lacking an avocation, she found nothing compelling in the innumerable publications on model cars, knitting, or bodybuilding; the newsmagazines were uniformly insipid, the American ones jingoistic. Business magazines abounded but she could never really understand the cultish interest in people who really did little more than buy cheap and sell dear. Neither could she understand the interest in the squalid lives of Hollywood celebrities. She had already read the New Yorker, Harper’s and Atlantic—the only magazines she admired. That left the women’s magazines. The soft-headed, vaguely pornographic chatter of Cosmopolitan was tempting but finally she closed her eyes, waved her hands over the section, and pulled out a Chatelaine. At least, she thought, there might be some story ideas she could pinch.

  A heavily made-up woman of uncertain age was minding the counter. She had been humming noisily since Liz had arrived in her shop and it was only when she went to pay that she realized the woman was accompanying a transistor radio with sound so thin it was barely audible. As Liz fished in her purse for some money, the song faded to an end but the woman continued to hum the refrain absentmindedly in a high quivering voice, quickly losing the melody, and almost drowning the signature tones heralding the CBC hourly newscast. She took Liz’s money without comment and handed back change. Liz turned to go but then her ears pricked. She thought she heard a familiar name in the newscast.

  “Could you turn that up for a moment?” she asked.

  “Sure, honey.” The woman fumbled with the radio. There was a squawk and then the sound of someone speaking in French. “Sorry, I’ve turned the wrong thing. Can’t understand this gibberish. Now let’s see—”

  She peered at the radio, pushed one of the tiny buttons on the side, and the original broadcast was restored. She turned the volume.

  “That help?”

  But the newscaster had turned to an Ottawa story—the election call. Canadians were to go to the polls November 21.

  “No, oh well, that’s all right. I just thought I heard the name of someone I work with at the Citizen.”

  “You work at the Citizen?”

  Something in the tone of the woman’s voice brought a chill of premonition to Liz. “Yes,” she replied haltingly. “Why? Has something happened?”

  The woman regarded her with a mixture of concern and curiosity.

  “Well, I hope it’s not a friend of yours, but there was someone murdered there last night—”

  “What!” Liz groaned. She had heard correctly.

  “—a real common name,” the woman continued, her eyes fixed on Liz’s. “Clark. I remember now. Somebody Clark. Are you okay, honey? It’s someone you know, isn’t it? That’s terrible. I hope you weren’t close.”

  “No, we weren’t close.” To her own ears her voice sounded disembodied. She seemed to be speaking from a well of horror and disbelief. “We weren’t close at all.”

  She had to get to a telephone. She felt the urgent need to talk to someone, to find out more. Perhaps it was just some strange coincidence. But her racing heart told her that it wasn’t. There was no coincidence in this.

  “Dear, don’t forget your magazine.”

  But Liz heard nothing. On unsteady legs, she half walked, half ran across the lobby. Her mind didn’t even acknowledge the man with the hawkish face and the receding hairline stepping out of the elevator as she stepped in.

  34

  Island Episode

  Stevie lifted her eyes from the menu. She’d had tons of terribly trendy Thai in Toronto, and would have settled for Sunday dinner at Skinner’s Hotdogs after a cozy autumn drive down the River Road or something like that, but Leo had insisted on the Wajan. Had, in fact, made a reservation. Which—if one had to be here at all—was wise. Nan had said she and Roger Mellish had been the only ones in the place Tuesday evening. Now it had the elbow room of a sardine tin. “Power of the press,” Leo had remarked after they’d been shoehorned into their seats. He had unfurled the review clipped from Saturday’s Zit and was comparing it to the menu.

  “Satay—yum,” he said. His hand ran down the clipping. “It reminds me of what I ate every day of my life until I was twelve.”

  “Which was?”

  “Peanut butter sandwiches.”

  “Me, too!”

  Leo took her hand absently and kissed it. “We’ll always have Jiffy.”

  He returned to his studies. Stevie glanced around the restaurant’s interior. When she had started with YP in Toronto, she had been part of a small team designing a bistro on Avenue Road, so of-the-moment that a year later, when she went there for dinner with David, she found it depressingly brittle. It looked the same fate for the Wajan. Keep it simple, honour the ethnic roots of the cuisine, be understated. But this was a giddy hybrid of twentieth-century styles. She ran her hand over the surface of the table. It was metal, gunboat grey, complete with rivets, and cold to the touch. The chairs, black and lacquered, had the sinuous curves of art nouveau while the geometric patterns around a tiny bar, mid-room, suggested art deco. The color scheme was sombre; the eye was drawn to a large mural that wrapped three sides of the room—a frenzy of lines and planes, blacks and whites with splashes of blood red in a style vaguely futurist. She gave the Wajan a year. Then someone would put in a new pizza take-out.

  But for now the fashion lemmings were galvanized. From her vantage point facing the door, she noted a stream of disappointed folks who hadn’t thought to make a reservation being turned away. She began to wonder how they were going to squeeze in Leo’s friend.

  She had been at Leo’s in the afternoon, ransacking the house looking for Alvy’s lead, wondering why Leo couldn’t have taken the dog with him to the goddamn monastery. They were both males, weren’t they? Surely they could both have got past whatever device turned females into piles of ash. The phone rang. Thinking it was Leo for her, she lifted the receiver, said, “How’s their cheese?” and was greeted with heavy breathing. Somehow, it didn’t seem like Leo’s idea of a joke, and if it was, it would be the last time he saw her naked. She was about to slam the phone down, when a strangulated woman’s voice asked, “Is that Stevie?”

  It turned out to be Leo’s colleague Liz Elliot. Of course, she wanted to speak to Leo, and she was so insistent and anxious and oddly secretive all at once, Stevie found herself, after telling her that Leo was gone for the afternoon, extending an invitation to join them at the Wajan, which seemed to be the next assured Leo-opportunity.

  Now, sitting in the restaurant, she wished she hadn’t. Or hoped that Liz had changed her mind. Stevie was still trying to wrap her head around all this monastery crap. She didn’t feel like entertaining the problems of a third party.

  “Drink?” Leo asked, interrupting her thoughts. A waiter hovered.

  “Maybe I’ll try this Thai limeade.”

  “Make it two.”

  “Is that Liz?” Stevie noted a tall, dark-haired woman in large sunglasses scanning the room, then elbowing
past an exasperated-looking maitre d’.

  “Hold on a sec,” Leo said to the waiter. He turned and gestured to Liz. “Drink?”

  “Vodka tonic,” she replied in a dull, flat voice, removing her sunglasses. Stevie noted in the restaurant’s pall the dark-rimmed eyes, the white mask of her face.

  “I hope I’m not intruding.” She regarded Stevie tentatively.

  “Hell, no,” Leo replied instead, reaching for a chair that had become vacant at the next table. “Have a seat.” He introduced the two women, then frowned at Liz. “You okay?”

  “Not really.”

  Leo flicked Stevie a puzzled glance. “Missed you at the mall last night,” he addressed Liz as she removed her coat and sat down.

  “How was it?”

  “More fun than a barrel of monkeys.”

  “Was Paul there?”

  “Richter? Yup, sawing the air like it was cordwood. Why?”

  Stevie watched Liz fold her sunglasses into a case, then into her bag. She recognized the ache in the gravity of her gestures. There had been a time in her own life—not that long ago—when motion, too, had seemed unendurable.

  “Anyway,” Leo continued, oblivious, “the real capper came at the end of the evening.”

  Liz looked up. “I heard.”

  The waiter returned with their drinks. “Are you ready to order?” he asked, after settling them on the table. Stevie glanced at the others—Leo scratching his head, Liz worrying the plastic corner of the menu—then at the waiter. He looked like a bright kid. “I think the Roger Mellish special for three.”

  The waiter sighed. “The lunch choices or the dinner?”

  “Oh, right,” Leo interjected. “He always does a lunch one day and a dinner another when he’s reviewing.”

  “The dinner,” Stevie replied.

  Liz reached into her bag and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  “I’m afraid there’s a no-smoking policy,” the waiter intoned, scribbling their order.

  “Damn.” Liz stuffed the cigarettes back into her bag. Her face crumpled as if cigarette-denial was the last straw. An uncomfortable silence ensued. Stevie was suddenly conscious of the drone and clatter of the other diners.

  “Do you want to go somewhere more private?” she asked.

  Liz shook her head. She took a sharp breath. “I think,” she said, looking at neither of them, but somewhere into the dimmer reaches of the underlit restaurant, “I may have been responsible for Guy’s death.”

  “Wow,” said Leo. “I wondered who’d be the first to take credit.”

  Liz smiled weakly.

  “Sorry,” Leo said, taking note of Stevie’s raised eyebrow. “But, seriously, are you—?”

  “No, no. I didn’t…I didn’t do it. But—”

  “But what?”

  Liz sighed deeply, and stirred the ice in her vodka with her straw. “I got a package in the mail at work on Friday.” She looked up and held their eyes for a moment. “From Michael.”

  “He’d been making good use of the post office,” Leo remarked.

  “Mine was a large envelope, really. Like the kind we get at the Zit when someone is doing a big promotion. But it was addressed by hand, which made me wonder—”

  “Hand-addressed always being the first sign of nutbar correspondence,” Leo explained to Stevie.

  “Anyway, I opened it.” She stopped, closed her eyes. “Inside was an ordinary manila envelope,” she continued, speaking through her fingers. “And inside that were photocopies of old documents and copies of photographs. I didn’t know what it was at first, but then I found a long letter from Michael explaining them, as well as explaining why he sent them to me. The package also contained excerpts from a trial…”

  She opened her eyes. The table, like the other tables in the room, was lit by a single halogen spot and in it her eyes were moist, suddenly red-rimmed.

  “… a trial that took place about a year after the war ended. In Germany.” She sighed deeply. “A war crimes trial.”

  Stevie started. “Does this have something to do with that Kushniryk trial that’s been in the paper?”

  “No.” Liz shook her head.

  “That’s to do with crimes in Latvia,” Leo explained.

  “This is something else.” Liz sipped her vodka. “Something that took place near Holland.”

  “Holland?” Stevie echoed.

  “The East Frisian Islands. In the North Sea.”

  “That where Michael sent me the postcard from.” In her mind’s eye, Stevie could see a picture of a lighthouse with a riot of flowers in the foreground.

  “I think the island is called Borkum. I haven’t been near a map. I spent the weekend at a hotel.”

  Leo looked at her askance. “Honeymoon over?”

  “You might say.”

  “What about this island?” Stevie interjected.

  “Sorry,” Liz continued. “Anyway, the summer before the war ended, some Americans crash landed their plane on this island. All of them survived—there were seven of them—but they were forced to surrender to German soldiers.”

  She stopped and again closed her eyes. “You know, I’ve spent all weekend trying to keep this out of my head. I only read the abstract of the trial once—it was an English translation—but the details are burned into my mind. When I think of it now, I see it as though it were a film loop going round and round, these doomed Americans, travelling that little island…” She broke off.

  “You see,” she continued after a moment, opening her eyes, “their plane had crashed on the north side of the island, but the routine apparently was to take the prisoners a few miles to the south side so they could be transported to mainland Germany. And so—” Liz’s voice broke. Her eyes sparkled with tears.

  “Take your time,” Stevie said.

  “Okay, give me a second.” She stared at her glass as if it held some truth. “First of all, the prisoners were taken to be processed at some sea fortress that the Germans maintained on the island. I guess it was some routine procedure. There was a six-man guard detail assigned there to take them to the southern port. Apparently it would have been easiest and quickest to transport them by truck, or some vehicle. But it was decided instead to have them march the distance, and not by a direct route, either, but by a long meandering route through the main part of the only town on the island. This six-man guard detail was led by a seventh, a young officer named Karl Staudt. He could speak English and it seems he led the initial interrogation of the prisoners.”

  Liz lifted the glass and sipped deeply.

  “So they set out,” she continued. “The prisoners were told to keep their hands above their heads at all times. And the guards were told not to protect their prisoners from any attacks by civilians.”

  Leo and Stevie groaned in unison.

  “Yes, it’s a critical detail.” Liz grimaced. “You see, the Germans had been told the Allied bombings of their cities were acts of terror, criminal acts, and, according to the abstract and to Michael’s letter, the Nazis encouraged reprisals against any Allied prisoners of war who came into their hands—”

  “Even though it was against the Geneva Convention or such like, right?” Leo supplied.

  Liz nodded. “That’s why the long route to the port was chosen. The authorities of the town had already begun inciting the local civilians when the soldiers began—” She groped for the expression. “—began their awful trek.”

  “Oh, my god,” Stevie murmured.

  “They started off along the beach,” Liz continued. “You can imagine how exhausted these Americans already were. They had been through an airplane crash, through capture, and through interrogation. But when they fell out of step, or when their arms began to fall from their heads, the German soldiers battered them with their rifle butts.”

  Stevie felt a shiver go up her back.

  “Then came their first ordeal. Some conscripted labourers working on the beach had formed two lines—a gauntlet, in effect—and bea
t the prisoners. The German guards didn’t join in this, but they tolerated it.

  “That changed when the procession moved into town. A crowd had already gathered. There were screams for blood and some of the civilians began attacking the prisoners. It was in the midst of this that Staudt, who had been leading the prisoners, lost his control. There was one American, a small man apparently, whose name…”

  Liz faltered. Her hand went again to her mouth.

  “I’ll never get his name out of my head,” she spoke through her fingers. “Albert Bird. A short sad name. A flier’s name. Little Albert Bird. His pants kept slipping from his waist. And when he lowered his hands to fix them, he was hit. Then, in town, amid this hysteria, he collapsed, or he tripped on his pants, or he was pushed. But he went down and Staudt went crazy. He beat him about the head with his rifle until…oh, god.” Liz’s hands went to her face “…until he was a bloody pulp, shouting all the while that his father and mother, his relatives, had been killed in Hamburg when the city was bombed and that he was their avenger. Finally, while the crowd looked on, he shot Albert Bird, killing him.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Wait, Leo, there’s more. The six remaining prisoners were marched around the town and they endured endless beatings and humiliation. They came very close to the port. In fact, they nearly reached it, and autopsies on the bodies afterwards suggested they would have survived the torment, and possibly even the war. But they didn’t. Staudt and the other German soldiers shot them. Murdered them. And then, of all things, they buried the seven in the local Lutheran cemetery.”