Second Violin

by John Lawton

  ‘What am I doing here?’ Siebert said.

  ‘I’m sure the question applies to us both . . . but . . .’

  ‘Me first, eh?’

  Siebert sat on the nearest cot, then stretched out with his hands clasped behind his head on the pile of blankets and pillows. Rod perched, less relaxed, on the edge of the next cot.

  ‘Well . . . you kept your word. Nothing you wrote about Kristallnacht mentioned me by name. All the same, the account you gave had in it a glaring gap that could only be filled by me. I was not the favourite son of the Vienna police to begin with – a non-Nazi in what you rightly observed was pretty much a Nazi organisation to begin with. After Kristallnacht I was suspect. They made no move against me, but I knew it all the same. In the January of ’39 we obtained an extradition order on a jewel thief who had fled to Zürich. It had been my case, naturally I was the one to go and collect him. It was probably the easy solution for everyone. They knew I’d not come back. I abandoned my apartment . . . it was only rented . . . I abandoned all my possessions . . . I crossed into Switzerland, with my extradition order, my warrant and my passport . . . and with the contents of my bank account wrapped around my waist in a money belt. Who knows, perhaps you have heard a dozen stories like this in the last few days? The money belt has replaced clean underpants as the sine qua non of travel. I let a jewel thief go. I let myself go. I was in England by March, and not without difficulties. Being a former policeman helped and did not help. It showed I might be honest, and implied I might be a Nazi . . . hence when the round-up came I was one of the first. I’ve been here since October. Indeed, I count myself lucky not to have been shipped to the colonies, to Canada or Australia.’

  ‘Good Lord, are we . . . I mean they . . . doing that?’

  ‘Yes. That’s why Heaven’s Gate has room for you. They shipped out a couple of dozen only days ago.’

  ‘Poor buggers.’

  ‘Some were innocents, some were Jews, but mostly they were Nazis. An unpleasant crowd. They taunted the Jews, and only the fact that they were outnumbered stopped anything worse. Good riddance was the general feeling. In fact, I rather wish they’d taken them all. We have one left, just the one, and with a bit of luck you’ll never need to have anything to do with him.’

  Siebert stretched and sat up again.

  ‘And you?’

  Back at school, soaking up the imagery of his very English childhood – if only there were a cricket bat parked in the corner, a muddy football boot under the bed, or a dog-eared Kennedy’s Latin Primer on the windowsill – Rod found the phrase that had eluded him for ages now about to burst on his lips.

  ‘I am the . . . I am the ambiguous Englishman. The Home Counties, Harrow and Cambridge . . . a plum in my voice, a striped tie at my neck, the label of a Mayfair bespoke tailor on the inside pocket of my suit . . . but born in Vienna as my parents passed through from Russia, to Paris . . . to London.’

  ‘Ah . . . I had not guessed. Stupid of me. But why were you not naturalised?’

  ‘That’s a long story,’ the ambiguous Englishman said.

  § 111

  Downstairs the lobby was full. The whole house had turned out at the news of new arrivals. He found Hummel listening intently as two men talked at him in rapid German, oblivious to the fact that Hummel was saying not a word. Found Billy, standing on the sidelines, mug of tea in hand, munching on a flaky pastry.

  ‘They really weren’t kidding about the patisserie, then?’ Rod said.

  ‘Nope. I got me cake. In fact I’m on me third slice.’

  Rod heard the silent ‘but’ and uttered it for him.

  ‘But it’s weird. Not just that I don’t speak German . . . I mean they seem to switch between German and Yiddish all the time . . . and my old dad brought me up to speak Yiddish so . . . it’s just . . . I dunno.’

  ‘It’s just that all this . . . otherness, this Mitteleuropeanness, this . . . this Viennese picnic makes you feel English?’

  Billy pulled a face at this as though it were a phrase too far in his thinking.

  ‘No. I don’t feel English. Maybe I’ll never feel English again. Maybe your brother kyboshed bein’ English for me when he and old Stilton come round to tell me I was nicked for a wog. Maybe I never was English. Me with an accent like a gobful of whelks. Maybe the only thing you can be is you. Maybe the only thing to do is look after number one.’

  Rod changed the subject.

  ‘I’ve been allocated a room for four. Are you and Hummel coming in with me?’

  ‘Sure, why not?’

  ‘We’ll need a fourth.’

  ‘Not one of them old buggers. They piss all bleedin’ night!’

  And Rod thought he’d snored through it all.

  ‘I meant . . . Spinetti or Rosen?’

  ‘Rosen. Spinetti talks too much. Bleedin’ wops never shut up.’

  § 112

  Stilton and Troy were dealing with stragglers now. Men so far down the list they were literally last, even if the list itself possessed no logic. Or men who had not been home when they called or not reported when asked.

  Ivor Kempinski fulfilled both categories and added a third by making a run for it when Stilton and Troy turned up at his home during his late evening meal. He had upended his boiled beef and carrots over Stilton, ran for the back door with his napkin still tucked into his collar, clambered nimbly onto the roof of the outside khazi, leapt into the alley and vanished.

  Troy yanked at the yard door, heard Mrs Kempinski say, ‘I wouldn’t bother, if I were you. Ain’t opened in twenty years.’

  Stilton bumbled into the yard, brushing mashed potato from his jacket.

  ‘Legged it? Over the wall?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘How old do the notes say he is?’

  ‘Fifty-four.’

  ‘Fit for his age,’ Stilton said. ‘Well, he runs to fight another day. I’m not chasing him tonight. It’ll be dark in ten minutes.’

  Mrs Kempinski folded her arms under her bosom and looked as though this sort of thing happened to her every day.

  ‘You won’t be wanting yer cup of tea then?’

  ‘Some other time, Hilda. Some other time.’

  They drove back towards Jubilee Street, where Troy had left his car outside Stilton’s house.

  Halfway down Parnell Street, a brewer’s dray had shed half its load and blocked the road. Broken barrels and a sea of ale. Troy stepped out of the car, looked at the dead horse between the shafts, at the patient survivor, ears up, head down, standing bunkered next to the body, and made no argument with the driver. Breweries had worked overtime since the war increased demand. He’d read somewhere that Hitler had raised the level of alcohol in German beer, to boost morale. Blitzkrieg, Pisstkrieg.

  He told Stilton, ‘Let’s cut through Buxton Street, the alley that runs behind the synagogue.’

  ‘Just so long as we don’t meet anything coming the other way. It can’t be six foot wide.’

  Stilton reversed the Riley, then swung right into a long, curving alley. No traffic, no blockages and they’d emerge close to the Mile End Road. It was only just dark now, but with no moon, high walls on either side and the merest glimmer of light from the shielded headlamps, they might as well have driven into hell.

  Stilton said, ‘Ye Gods, it’s black as Satan’s armpit down here. You could –’

  The bump thrust up the passenger side of the car and brought it down with a crash.

  ‘What the –? Must have hit the kerb.’

  The engine died.

  Troy said, ‘There is no kerb.’

  He got out, wished he’d had the foresight to bring a torch, and groped around under the car

  ‘Walter, drive on a bit. There’s something under the back wheel.’

  Troy flattened himself against the wall, Stilton rolled the car on a couple of feet. Troy had a partial sight of the obstacle now, fractionally lit up by the glow of the rear lamps and revised his phrasing. There had been someone under the
wheel. Someone big and black and hairy.

  Stilton came round the other side and handed him a bullseye torch.

  ‘Oh Christ. Is he dead?’

  Troy held one wrist between finger and thumb.

  ‘Yes.’

  Shone the torch on the face.

  ‘It’s Isaiah Borg.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rabbi Borg, from the synagogue.’

  ‘What?’

  Stilton turned, seeking something in the blank appearance of the synagogue’s back wall.

  ‘You mean he just stepped out . . .’

  ‘No. I don’t. He didn’t step out from anywhere. I’d have seen him. You’d have seen him. He was on the ground when we hit him. We went over him, and then he got stuck under the back wheel.’

  ‘What do we do?’

  It sounded more innocent than it was. It seemed an odd question for one copper to be asking of another, but murder was Troy’s business. It wasn’t Stilton’s.

  ‘You’d better drive on. Call in at the London Hospital. Phone the nick from there. I’ll stay here until the ambulance arrives.’

  ‘It’s leaving the scene of a crime, surely?’

  ‘We didn’t kill him, Walter. He was dead when we got here.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  Troy heard a sotto voce ‘Poor bugger’, watched Stilton get back in the Riley and drive off.

  He retraced their route to the head of the alley, walked slowly back towards the body swinging the bullseye torch methodically from side to side. Fifty yards on a fat, black book lay splayed upon the cobbles.

  It was in Hebrew and, from what he had learnt of Jewish life in his time in Stepney, he rather thought it was a teaching bible, annotated for the purposes of instruction. There were a couple of sheets of white paper, scribbled in English, tucked into the end papers. The sort of thing a Rabbi used when preparing boys for rites of passage. Apart from bar mitzvahs, Troy wasn’t at all sure what these were.

  Another hundred yards and he reached the body.

  He waited a quarter of an hour for the ambulance. Stilton arrived with it. But by then he had worked most of it out in his mind.

  ‘George Bonham’s getting in touch with the family.’

  ‘What family? I thought Rabbi Borg was a widower.’

  Troy had met Isaiah Borg a few times during his days on the beat. Although none of those few had been in the last two years. He was affable enough and lacking in the pomposity Troy thought characterised all priests – he even went by the nickname Izzy. But he could recall no mention of any family.

  ‘There’s a daughter somewhere. I knew her when she was a girl. But she’s not had much to do with her father or the East End since she grew up. Got a bit snotty, I heard. Scholarship girl. Educated. Lots of letters after her name. You know. Oxford, Cambridge. That sort of thing.’

  Troy knew. He’d narrowly avoided going there himself.

  As the body was manhandled into the ambulance, Stilton said, ‘I’ve arranged for us to make statements first thing in the morning. Then we can get on with the round-up. Should be our last day at it . . . This thing ought to be open and shut. Accidental death, after all. And being Jewish an’ all, they’ll want him underground as soon as possible.’

  From the moment the car bumped the body and banged to earth it was obvious to Troy that Stilton had been shaken. It made sense – however guiltless, he had been driving the car when it ran over another human being. And no policeman who had never served on the Murder Squad would ever be so matter-of-fact about death as one who had. All the same, it was time to tell him.

  ‘I think I’ll make my statement tonight. I won’t be in till ten in the morning. I have to drive out to Hendon.’

  ‘Hendon?’

  ‘Forensics. I’ve asked for the body to be taken to Forensics. I want a complete examination of everything he’s wearing and a full postmortem.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident, Walter. Izzy Borg was murdered.’

  §

  Under moonlight,

  infectious moonlight,

  a madman dances,

  chanting numbers,

  two, three, five, seven, eleven.

  Smeared in excrement,

  naked as nativity,

  Lord Carsington dances.

  § 113

  Rod had slept. Much to his surprise he had slept. A nudging hand from Billy woke him.

  ‘Roll call.’

  Rod looked up, for a second or two not recognising either the room or the man.

  ‘Roll call?’

  ‘Yeah. They probably want to count us again.’

  Now he knew. Prison. The island. Heaven’s Gate. He looked around. Rosen had dressed and left, Hummel was buttoning his shirt and seemed to be staring at a sketch of a wide-eyed, skinny man he had pinned to the wall opposite his bed. It was the sole decoration in the room. Rod wondered idly if it had been there the night before and he had not noticed or whether one of them had pinned it up. He swung his feet off the bed, looked down at his feet, peeping out from under the white and blue stripes of his pyjamas, which, but for his wife having packed for him, he would entirely have forgotten to bring.

  ‘Don’t ’ang about,’ Jacks said. ‘They say there’ll be breakfast straight after. I could eat a horse. Worse, I could eat Hummer.’

  Alone now, Rod dressed slowly, and as he looked around automatically searching for a mirror – always tied his tie in front of a mirror – he caught sight of the sketch again and went closer. It was Hummel. A Hummel even skinnier than the Hummel he had known for two days. A Hummel looking out at the world as though seeing it for the first time. Big eyes, big ears and something like numb astonishment in his expression. Rod thought it odd Hummel should pin this up, but who else would have? And then a distorted cliché came to mind, memento vivi or would it be vivens . . . whatever, a reminder not of death but of life, another life, another place. And for a moment he could see Hummel as Hummel saw himself. Astonished by the fact of his own life. Looking at this sketch as though it were another version of himself rather than simply himself when younger, thinner . . . and older, oh so much older . . . looking at the world for the first time through old, old eyes. Rod turned away. Did up his shoelaces. He hoped Hummel might take it down soon, for it seemed to him like a form of punishment.

  Out in the yard, standing among the puddles from last night’s storm, they were counted, counted about as efficiently as they had been on arrival.

  A lackadaisical lieutenant in an ill-fitting uniform told them to stand to attention as though he were asking them politely to move along in a bus queue. His voice was scarcely audible above the prattle of German, Yiddish and English and, when no one did, he didn’t even bother to repeat the order. A major appeared. Tall, handsome, but for a brutal moustache, and looking thoroughly bored by the whole business.

  ‘All present and correct, sir,’ the lieutenant said.

  ‘You’ve counted them?’

  ‘As best we can, sir. They’re not used to taking orders.’

  ‘Why do I even bother? Right, Jenkins, on your own head be it. Dismiss them. If they feel like being dismissed that is.’

  With that he was gone.

  Rod was baffled – not by the inefficiency of it all – the last forty-eight hours had taught him to expect that at every turn, muddling through had become bumbling through – but by a hint of recognition.

  He turned to Drax. Drax was coughing into his handkerchief.

  ‘Do you know the major’s name?’

  Drax drew a deep breath and passed the query on to Siebert.

  ‘It is Trench, is it not, Oskar?’

  ‘Ja. Trench.’

  ‘Surely not Geoffrey Trench?’

  ‘No,’ Siebert replied. ‘I too made that mistake on first seeing him. The resemblance to the madman in parliament is amazing. So, I conclude they are twins. This one is Reginald. Geoffrey has not yet seen fit to serve king and co
untry by enlisting. And given his fascist politics, we might wonder which country he would choose to serve.’

  They drifted back into the house, following the older inmates to the refectory.

  ‘Does this Trench share the other’s politics?’

  Drax answered, ‘I do not know. He says so little. This morning’s performance was verbose by his standards. I have known him inspect us without a word or a glance. His utter indifference to us has the benefit of laissez-faire and the hazard of neglect. I could escape. Would he notice? I could be dying. Would he notice?’

  ‘He would rather be elsewhere,’ Siebert added. ‘Like so many stuck in this role he sees himself as a hero, lacking any opportunity to prove himself. The result? A cold bastard, a lazy bastard who leaves the running of his camp and our welfare to his NCOs. Decent enough men, by and large.’

  Breakfast was toast, tea and porridge. Fine by Rod, and plenty of it. But he wondered as he watched Hummel pick at his porridge how Scotland’s national dish went down with Mitteleurope.

  Hummel hesitated too long. A man appeared before them like a jack-in-the-box, popping up from nowhere.

  ‘You haff finished?’

  Hummel stared at the apparition. The newcomer looked like a shabby parody of a banker, the city gent in the striped suit and the carefully knotted tie. But the suit had seen better days. Its owner had seen better days. Fifty-ish, slightly balding, dark hair slicked back from a high forehead escaped in wisps, adding to the overall impression of a stockbroker who might suddenly have thrown his bowler and brolly and caution to the winds and run off to the seaside with the pretty, blonde waitress from the tea rooms. All in all, it was Pooterish.

  ‘You haff finished?’ he said again.

  ‘The burnt bread and the stewed leaves I want,’ said Hummel, teasingly literal. ‘The salted oatmeal paste, you are welcome to.’

  It was snatched away before he could change his mind, and the question repeated at every table in the refectory where a hesitant diner might be seen to linger over his porridge.

  ‘Oatmeal paste,’ Billy said. ‘That’s a good one. Just about sums it up. I always ’ated porridge. He must be starvin’ to want more.’