by John Dean
‘Bastard!’ he hissed through gritted teeth as Cranmer started to run across the field.
‘You OK?’ asked Blizzard, rubbing his ear and shaking his head to clear his thoughts.
‘Yeah,’ said Colley, his face twisted with pain and blood dribbling from a gash on his cheek, ‘never been better.’
He reached out a hand to the chief inspector and the two men hauled themselves shakily to their feet. Breaking into a run after Cranmer, the detectives noticed that over to their left, sprinting along the hedge, were several uniformed officers followed by Fee Ellis, who was catching them up rapidly. Behind her was the toiling, more rotund, figure of Dave Tulley.
‘Check the grave!’ shouted Blizzard, pointing.
One of the uniform officers raised a hand and veered off in the other direction. Ahead of the two detectives, Cranmer halted and stood and surveyed his pursuers for a moment before plunging into the copse, disappearing in the gloom beneath the interlocking branches of the trees. Running unsteadily, Blizzard and Colley were the first to follow him into the woodland, stopping and looking about wildly for a moment as they tried desperately to spot him. Then the sergeant gave a cry as a movement caught his eye.
‘There!’ he shouted as Tommy Cranmer appeared on the far side of the copse.
It was then, on the edge of the next field, that the big man caught his foot in a creeper, stumbled and fell.
‘Come on!’ shouted Blizzard.
They crashed through the undergrowth, ignoring the grasping barbs of branches and bushes as they closed in on their man. Now only a few metres ahead of them and having scrabbled to his feet, Tommy Cranmer turned and wielded his club again.
‘That’s enough,’ he rasped, ‘or I promise, I’ll kill the both of you.’
Blizzard, still catching his breath, and Colley, acutely aware of the stabbing pain in his head and the dull ache of his arm, eyed him for a moment, pondering their next move.
‘Let me deal with it,’ said the chief inspector, stepping forward.
Behind them, there was the noise of Fee Ellis and other officers entering the woodland, and further in the distance, the sound of more police sirens drifting across the morning air.
‘Come on, Tommy,’ said Blizzard, ‘there’s nowhere to run.’
Tommy glanced past the chief inspector and saw that the perspiring Tulley had also reached the copse. Over to his left, he was vaguely aware of other shapes running across the field to cut him off. Blizzard held up a hand and all the pursuers ground to a halt, waiting for the chief inspector to make the next move. Cranmer eyed Blizzard, eyes a mixture of fear and fury. In the distance, the chief inspector could hear the sound of a tractor.
‘I ain’t going to let you take me,’ said Tommy.
‘We are going to have to,’ said the chief inspector, holding out a hand. ‘Give me the club. It’s over.’
‘War ain’t never over,’ said Cranmer, mud-streaked face twisted with anguish, fighting to keep back the tears, but grasping ever tighter to the weapon until his knuckles glowed right. ‘And I ain’t going to prison. I’ll end it here if I have to.’
‘It’s already ended,’ said Blizzard softly.
‘It ain’t,’ rasped Cranmer.
He turned and ran out of the copse, out across the bare field, having spotted a gap between the closing uniforms who had run round the far side of the copse.
‘Shit,’ gasped Blizzard.
‘I’ll get him,’ said Colley and set off in pursuit.
From the edge of the field, over to their right, there appeared a red tractor, driven by Robin Harvey. Spotting the fleeing figure of Tommy Cranmer, he changed direction and drove towards the running man, accelerating all the time, engine roaring. Cranmer turned and gave an alarmed shout and, as the tractor neared at speed, he stumbled and fell. It was enough for David Colley and he hurled himself onto Cranmer and tried to wrench the club from his hand. Cranmer swung a punch but Colley, releasing the pent-up anger from the blows he had received a few minutes earlier, struck out, his fist catching Cranmer clean on the jaw. Cranmer fell backwards but leapt to his feet and advanced on the sergeant, which was when Blizzard reached the scene. Robin Harvey had jumped out of his tractor and run to Colley’s defence. Cranmer looked as if he were about to launch yet another attack when Blizzard intervened.
‘If you keep running,’ said the chief inspector, harsh edge in his voice, ‘it will leave your grandfather to take the rap for this alone. Is that you want, Tommy, for him to die in a prison cell after all he has done for his country?’
Cranmer stopped and eyed him uncertainly for a moment.
‘A cheap shot, Chief Inspector,’ he said at length, defeat in his voice, ‘but no, that is not what I want.’
‘There you are. Besides…’ Blizzard looked at him shrewdly. ‘Men from the Hafton Regiment don’t run out on their comrades. You stand side by side in the face of the enemy, don’t you? Wasn’t that the regiment’s motto – Stand As One? Isn’t that what this is really all about, Tommy?’
Cranmer looked at him in silence for a moment then hung his head.
‘Yeah,’ he said in a voice so quiet they struggled hear.
‘Give me the club,’ said Blizzard, taking a step forward and holding out his hand again.
Cranmer let the weapon drop from his grasp and Colley darted forward to pick it up and produced a set of handcuffs from his pocket, nimbly clipping them around Cranmer’s wrists. The big man did not resist; the fight had gone out of him.
‘Did you really think you would get away with it?’ asked Blizzard, walking up to him.
‘A promise is a promise, Mr Blizzard,’ said Cranmer, sounding calmer now as he stared at the chief inspector.
‘Yes, but it wasn’t your promise, was it?’ said Blizzard.
‘It was my grandfather’s promise,’ said Cranmer. ‘And that made it my promise. He said he did it for Harry Crooks.’
‘Tell me about him,’ said Blizzard. ‘Tell me about Harry Crooks.’
‘Private Harry Crooks, Hafton Regiment.’ Tommy sounded proud to say the words, before his expression clouded over. ‘Died when his troop ship went down.’
‘The Clarissa,’ said Blizzard.
‘Yeah,’ said Tommy with a crooked smile. ‘My grandfather sailed on the Clarissa with your grandfather. And he died with him.’
‘I know,’ said Blizzard. ‘I know, Tommy lad.’
‘So you see,’ said Cranmer, ‘it was my promise.’
‘There are other ways.’
‘No.’ There was hatred spitting through Cranmer’s voice this time. ‘No, this was the only way. And you needn’t look like that, Mr Blizzard. I did it for Frank just as much as the others. I did it for you.’
‘That I doubt,’ said Blizzard firmly.
One of the uniformed officers emerged from the copse and walked towards them with heavy step.
‘Did you find Elspeth Roberts?’ asked Blizzard, noting the constable’s grim expression.
‘Yeah, she’s battered and bruised but she’ll be OK.’
Blizzard nodded and turned to Cranmer, noticing the look of savage pleasure on his face.
‘No, Tommy,’ he said wearily. ‘You didn’t do it for Frank and you didn’t do it for me. Take him away, Sergeant.’
‘Yeah,’ said Colley, as the chief inspector started to walk across the field. ‘Hey, where are you going?’
Blizzard made no reply. Staring out over the misty fields, he was transported to a wild place, the man’s place, and heard again the roar and clatter, felt the panic as the man fought for his life, heard the death rattle of his final breath. Saw the pain in his face – many faces. Blizzard glanced skywards and noticed that the pale winter sun had vanished behind the clouds. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, he thought, we will remember them. And in that moment, John Blizzard remembered them. Remembered them all.
And mourned.
Chapter twenty-five
As the SS Clarissa sailed t
hrough the clear Atlantic waters on a night in September 1942, the moonlight creating a golden causeway to mark her way, her passengers were blissfully unaware that they were taking part in her last hours. Most of them were asleep, the only exceptions the bored crew members standing watch. None of them knew that by the first streaking light of dawn, their bodies would be floating still and noiselessly in the tide.
Such a fate did not await Private Edward Cranmer, of the Hafton Regiment, the only man who would survive the sinking of the Clarissa. Perhaps his fate was worse than those who died that night, because for every day of his remaining life, he would relive those terrible events and hear the screams, his nights tortured by grotesque nightmares of the friends he left behind in the cold waters of the Atlantic. At least they only experienced it once. In his dreams, he would reach out as if he could touch them, but they were long gone and each time he awoke, it was with a sharp stabbing pain in his chest. His doctor blamed angina, Edward Cranmer knew it was guilt.
* * *
Sitting in the interview room at Abbey Road Police Station as dusk fell on another winter’s evening outside, Edward Cranmer stared into the middle distance and recounted in quiet words the scenes that his mind had re-run every night, heard again the explosions and the rending of metal, the screams and the frantic thrashing in the water, the sizzle of the bullets strafing the surface of the water. Then the silence, broken only by the gentle lapping of the ocean as the bodies floated still and lifeless around him, their grey eyes appearing to mock the only man left alive in the dead sea. Shoulders bowed, eyes sunken, lips hardly moving, Edward Cranmer told his story in a voice that was hardly audible to the two detectives sitting opposite him.
John Blizzard and David Colley listened without speaking. For Blizzard, this was as much the story of his grandfather’s last hours, and for the first time he was able to hear it from someone who was there. And as he listened, Blizzard was transported to a wild place, Frank’s place. Colley, also deeply moved by what he was hearing, said nothing but listened in silence to Cranmer’s testimony, occasionally glancing at the chief inspector with concern.
The SS Clarissa was a 17,300-ton ocean liner, constructed for a passenger line and launched amid much fanfare in 1913. Within a year, though, optimism had turned to something darker. Pressed into action as a troop ship during the Great War, Clarissa plied her trade between the English east coast and France, taking excited and optimistic soldiers to the trenches and bringing them back, wounded of body and broken of mind. Several times, she came close to being sunk but each time the U-Boat torpedoes fizzed harmlessly wide and, somehow, Clarissa survived unscathed. Some said she was charmed. Other, more experienced, mariners, said nothing. Perhaps they sensed her time was yet to come. Perhaps they knew that the sea always claims its own.
When peace returned to Europe, Clarissa went back to her life as an ocean liner, hosting parties in her dining room, witnessing cheery deck games, defying mighty storms and huge seas to ensure that her passengers reached their destinations in safety and comfort. And even though other liners sank to the bottom of the sea from time to time, Clarissa sailed on. She was, some said, a lucky ship. The mariners still kept quiet.
Then came 1939 and the advance of Hitler’s Nazi war machine across Europe. Clarissa was once more pressed into service as a troop ship and in August 1942, she was berthed at her home port of Hafton for several days at the end of which 485 men of the Hafton Regiment trooped aboard ready for the journey to the desert battlefields of the conflict with Rommel and his Africa Korps. Slipping noiselessly out of the port on the evening tide, Clarissa sailed down the English Channel and joined a convoy that headed past France, Spain and Portugal, bound for North Africa, evading all the time the U-Boats which criss-crossed the sea in search of prey. Veering slightly more west than her captain would have wished to avoid a ferocious Atlantic storm, Clarissa found herself separated from the convoy and in The Azores when her time came.
Her nemesis was a proud-eyed young U-Boat captain called Martin Schwere. Unbeknown to Clarissa’s crew, she had been tracked for six hours by his vessel which had slipped noiselessly through the dark waters unseen and unheard, its captain eagerly watching Clarissa’s every move like a hawk as he ensured he kept well out of detection range. Martin Schwere was a ramrod-straight blond young man with Arian features and piercing blue eyes that hid a dark secret. In another life, he was a criminal called Martin Hasse and war came as a golden opportunity for him to evade increasing police attention so he changed his name and joined the U-Boat service. It was not just about escaping the police, though. Martin was a patriot, a German who believed in Hitler’s dream and who was prepared to lay down his life for the fatherland.
The young Schwere, a keen sailor before the war, soon distinguished himself as an able mariner and rapidly worked his way up the ranks, eventually being given his first command of a U-Boat. His commanders’ faith in his abilities were well placed and that night, as he tracked Clarissa across the Atlantic, Schwere should have been a satisfied man. His submarine had already claimed several British vessels, three troop ships and a couple of frigates, sending them to the bottom of the sea with unerring aim. Many hundreds of men had died, many more were rescued more dead than alive from the cold waters by Allied ships. Schwere had watched the carnage with satisfaction, knowing that he was serving the Führer.
Each kill added to his growing reputation but also to his growing trepidation. Martin Schwere was a worried man. Word had reached him that his exploits had not gone unnoticed by the high command and that a medal ceremony was planned the next time the U-Boat docked, his picture due to be widely circulated as part of the Nazi propaganda effort. That was bad news for Schwere, whose dreams of an anonymous war were under serious threat and who feared that the police would arrest him next time he docked.
But all this was for the future and, as he eyed the ship through his periscope, he knew that the time had come to move in for the kill. On board the Clarissa, the troops and the crew were unaware how close the U-Boat was. Among them was newly-married Private Frank Robinson ready to join the North Africa campaign, he was allowed leave to return to his native Lincolnshire to see his new bride.
Now, Frank was on board Clarissa in his bunk, also asleep, dreaming of summer fields and village cricket matches. His was not to be as peaceful slumber, though, because shortly before midnight, Schwere gave the order to move in and the hunter-killer slipped smoothly towards the vessel, releasing two torpedoes when she was within range. The first one smashed into the bow, the second struck amidships and Clarissa lurched, throwing the sleeping men from their beds and causing widespread panic throughout the decks. Although crippled, Clarissa was still afloat, listing badly to one side, and her captain desperately rapped out orders from the bridge in an attempt to get her moving away from the U-Boat, which had now surfaced. Clarissa’s gunners trained their fire on the German vessel but without effect and twenty minutes later, Schwere lost patience. Alarmed at reports that a British warship was in the area and had been alerted to the incident, he ordered two further torpedoes to be fired. Fizzing across the still sea, they found their target with deadly accuracy. Not for nothing had Martin Schwere and his crew won the respect of the fleet.
One of the torpedoes slammed into the side of the ship and with a mighty roar, a great wall of flame lit up the night sky. Clarissa, scarred and ruined, lurched even further to one side and started to tip over, and her captain ordered his men to abandon ship. He did so with a heavy heart; it was the second vessel he had lost to U-Boats on this treacherous run to North Africa. On the first occasion, he had drifted for fifteen hours before being picked up. Not so this time. Within minutes, he would be dead. All but one of them would be dead.
Martin Schwere watched with grim satisfaction as the panic-stricken crew and troops rushed for the lifeboats being lowered down the side of their ship. Those unable to scramble aboard hurled themselves into water soon foaming with their frantic thrashing, and the air was filled
with the terrible cries of drowning men, many already horribly burned from the explosion. Further blasts rent the night air and the ship groaned and cried out in her pain; with a final sigh, Clarissa sank beneath the boiling waters, sucking many men down to their deaths with her. It was then that the U-Boat moved in. The survivors watched in horror as, the moonlight glinting off her sides, she moved noiselessly, majestically, grotesquely, towards the bobbing lifeboats. Standing atop the conning tower, Martin Schwere looked down on the sailors’ plight, allowed himself the thinnest of smiles – and gave the order.
Cranmer paused.
‘What order?’ asked Colley.
Cranmer shook his head. Words were beyond him.
‘The order,’ said Blizzard quietly and looking at the broken man old man sitting before him, hunched over the table, ‘to open up with the guns.’
‘Jesus,’ breathed Colley, looking at the chief inspector in horror.
There was silence as Cranmer fought back the sobs now racking his body. After a few moments, he looked up at with haunted eyes. Ghost eyes. The eyes of a dead man walking.
‘Was Frank one of them, Edward?’ asked Blizzard softly. ‘Was he one of the men who were machine-gunned?’
‘I really don’t know,’ said Cranmer. ‘I could not see anything except…’
His voice tailed off.
‘Except the U-Boat,’ said Blizzard, finishing the sentence.
