A Coin for the Hangman

by Spurrier, Ralph

  “You’d look good in that, Mavis, that’s for certain.”

  The music grew louder and more tense.

  “Give us a kiss.”

  Mavis genuinely thought she had misheard. She turned to Victor. “What?”

  “We’re on our own. No-one will see. Quite cosy like, up here.” He bent towards her.

  Mavis leant away. “Er, Mr Watson, no. Please.”

  On the screen Joan Fontaine parted the light gauze curtains, moving away from Rebecca’s bed.

  Mavis felt Victor’s hand on her thigh. “Come on, Mavis, you know you’d like it.” Victor pressed harder and moved his hand up to her groin.

  “Please! Please!” Mavis whispered in desperation, pulling at his hand. His fingers were pushing between her thighs. Panic made her stand up. “I have to go. Please let me pass.”

  “Oh, come on. Be a sport.” Victor seated, blocked Mavis’s exit. “Look, I promise I’ll be good. Honest.” He looked at her, a smile playing at his lips, his hands splayed outwards.

  Mavis wanted to get out of the cinema, away from this crude man. “Please. Let me get by.”

  Victor Watson shrugged and swivelled his knees to one side into the gangway. Mavis had no choice but to sidle past the seated Victor, her back to him. She felt a hand slide across her backside as she passed but she said nothing. She didn’t look back and stepped towards the curtains by the door. At first she panicked when she couldn’t find the parting but thankfully, just as on the screen Joan Fontaine slipped out through the door of Rebecca’s bedroom, Mavis found the gap in the curtain and went through and out the balcony door.

  Anne Midgeley, still in her ticket booth in the cinema foyer, was startled by the sound of footsteps running down the stairs and the sight of Mavis Eastman, obviously in a state of some distress, crossing the foyer and out through the door into the late afternoon sunshine. While Mavis Eastman’s fate was, perhaps, always likely to be tragic, it can only be deemed unfortunate that Anne Midgeley was to die from a fall in 1952, just a few months before the events of early 1953. What she had seen that September afternoon – and any testimony she might have given if she had been called – would undoubtedly have given the jury something extra to add to the scales of justice.

  Tuesday May 19th 1953

  Reg Manley & George Tanner (& Steffi)

  Reg settled into the seat next to the window of the carriage, his back to the engine. His brief-case, heavy with files he was bringing home from the office, lay in the stringed netting of the shelf overhead. The day that had begun with clear blue skies had gradually clouded over and now, by evening, threatened rain.

  The first drops hit the windows just as the train picked up speed after leaving the station, forcing the water tracings to waver at first and then slide backwards across the panes of glass. Reg was happy to look out of the window for the half-hour journey while others in the carriage flicked through the evening papers or read books. He noticed the young woman on the opposite seat was half-way through a green crime Penguin, her eyes running rapidly back and forth across the page. Reg tried to read the title but her hand hid most of the front cover. All he could see was the author’s name: Carter Dickson, a name he didn’t recognize. His eyes fell to the woman’s lap and then down to the hem of her skirt which lapped against the curve of her knees. The soft sheen of stockings that stretched over her lower legs was marred by a short but disfiguring run over her right shin. He looked up to see the woman had stopped reading. Their gaze met momentarily before Reg returned to looking out the window. The woman crossed her legs, hiding the right shin under the left.

  Reg’s home station sat just beyond a short tunnel that burrowed through a fold in the land. Once it had been covered in trees – Reg could remember walking the family dog along the edges of the tunnel escarpments when he was a teenager – but now new houses, already greying with flaking paintwork after just three years, had been built around the station to cater for the growing band of commuters. As the train entered the tunnel, Reg stood up and reached for his brief-case. Smoke from the engine rolled and furled back down the length of the train, trapped and squeezed between carriage and tunnel lining, depositing a fine film of smut onto the wet panes. He had just pulled his brief-case down from the rack when the emergency brakes were applied, flinging him sideways into the carriage divide. The woman opposite tumbled forwards out of her seat, as did all those who were facing the engine, and she ended up lying on top of Reg. The train shuddered to a halt, bringing Reg’s carriage to a stop just outside the tunnel and just a few yards from the station platform.

  “Bloody hell! I wonder what’s happened.” Reg took hold of the woman’s arms as she struggled to get to her feet. “You alright, love? Everyone OK?” He addressed the whole carriage as people retrieved cases and bags that had fallen from the racks. One man held his nose, streaming with blood, but otherwise Reg could see that there were no serious injuries.

  As there was no corridor in the train, Reg pulled the strap on the window and let it drop down. Leaning out and looking forward he could see other heads beginning to appear at windows. Somewhere ahead and out of sight a woman had begun to scream.

  “What can you see? What’s wrong?” The woman who had been reading the crime novel was trying to peer around Reg’s head. The sound of the woman screaming unsettled them all.

  “I’ll go and see. Wait here. I’ll let you know.” Reg reached out of the window and turned the outside handle of the carriage door. It swung open, revealing a lengthy drop to the trackside. For a moment Reg hesitated, wondering if he should be doing this. Jumping out of a train even if it was stopped in an emergency felt wrong. Ahead of him someone else had already exited from a compartment and was beginning to walk towards the head of the train. Taking courage from not being the only one, Reg lobbed his case onto the grass that lay just beyond the track shingle. Calculating the drop to be about six feet, he jumped, remembering to bend his knees as he landed on the ground. Even so he pitched forward ungainly and slipped on the shingle, landing painfully on one knee and two hands. Cursing for making himself look stupid in front of the woman, he picked up his brief-case and, without looking back at the carriage, set off for the front of the train.

  The woman’s screams were relentless and as Reg moved towards the engine he became increasingly uneasy about what he was about to see. Grouped around the head of the train were the driver and his fireman, a fellow passenger and the woman who was doing the screaming, her hands alternately clutching her hair and going to her mouth. They all stared towards the wheels of the engine, from which protruded a pair of feet. With a sickening lurch, Reg was instantly transported back eight years.

  April 20th 1945

  This was the day that Reg Manley and George Tanner saw the dead whale. It lay hidden in a large barn, in a camp, one hundred miles from the sea.

  It was not the first time Reg had seen a whale, dead or otherwise. That had been many years before and it was lying on the beach in his home town. He was eight and his friend Frankie had come rushing into school that morning with the news that a huge sea monster had landed up just beyond the jetty.

  “It’s the size of the Titanic!” he gasped. “Bloody huge!”

  He opened his arms to their full extent, standing on tiptoes to try and give some measure to the grand size. Reg could recall Frankie, almost as if he was standing there in front of him: the fray of his shorts just above the knees and the short tear of his jacket pocket which made the pocket flap down like a spaniel’s ear.

  “We’ve got to get down to the beach, Reggie, before they cart it away or cut it up or whatever they’re going to do with it.” Frankie whispered to him during the school roll-call. He could see his friend was just itching to get away and so they planned their escape. Frankie and he skipped off school, taking a chance that as it was only PE that afternoon and reckoning that even if they were missed they wouldn’t get more than a light cuffing from the PE teacher.

  By the time they got to the sea front
they could already smell it – a putrid stench being blown inland by the breeze of the sea.

  Reg pinched his nose between his fingers. “Blimey, something’s pongy!”

  “It’s on the other side of jetty.” Frankie pointed forward, towards the tackle sheds and small fishing boats pulled up on the shingle. “Come on. Quick!”

  It was only when they rounded the last tackle shed that they saw the monstrous dappled carcass heaved up on the beach like a gigantic cow’s tongue hanging off a butcher’s slab. The smell of the seeping rot was overpowering. Putting their jacket sleeves up to their noses and breathing through their open mouths, they climbed down the jetty stairs and trod onto the damp shingle. From down there the carcass looked even bigger.

  “It’s a whale.” Reg said. “Look there’s its mouth.”

  They had crunched out over the shingle to the head of the beast and stood by the gaping slit that led to the whale’s innards. On the dome of the whale, seagulls flapped and flustered, landing and dancing, their web feet unsure on the surface of this beached monster. A few pecked at the skin and twisted the meat away in their beaks. More and more gulls were flying in from the leaden sky. Reg picked up a stone from the beach and threw it towards the gathering flock. Frankie did the same. The gulls scattered, circling the beast, waiting their turn once more.

  “Dare you to touch it.” Frankie had turned to Reg. “Go on, dare you.”

  He looked at the glistening whiteness of the underbelly flopped onto the stones, the pocked and mottled blackness of its upper body. Stepping closer, he realized the overwhelming cold tonnage of the whale, the dense weight of the thing, rearing above him, blocking out the sky, shadowing him in its intense size. It looked as high as his Nan’s house and at any moment it could topple over, rolling onto him, burying him in the solid, sickening darkness of its putrid folds. The smell was making both of them retch. Here and there, pocks of skin had come away, skewered or scoured by the gulls, and oily mucus was beginning to slither down the sides. Pools of fouled sea water sat in the gullies and dips made by the whale’s weight. As Reg moved closer he could see scuttling crabs moving around the fringes, picking and fretting at the skin. The beast was disintegrating before his eyes, minutely looted and emptied.

  “Go on, Reggie, give it a poke!” Frankie had picked up a stone and chucked it at the gulls that had parachuted on to the top of the whale. They wheeled away, crying into the sky. Reg moved closer and finally stood right next to the whale. He sensed rather than felt a movement, an exhalation almost inaudible, fluttering, fluttering, from somewhere deep within the beast. He reached forward and touched, his hand looking infinitely small against the huge canvas of the whale. He could still remember the shock of that touch and the damp coldness running up his fingers, seeping into the very core of his body.

  And almost thirty years later he saw that whale again.

  The tank on which Reg Manley and George Tanner were riding was the second through the barrier gate. They had passed several signs warning of typhus before they finally came to a halt beside some simple wooden huts erected on each side of the roadway. George peered around the side of the tank and watched as the colonel, who was in the leading armoured car, stepped down and spoke to a group of German officers. George couldn’t hear what was said but the arrival of a second British colonel seemed to electrify the group. Pulling his pistol from his belt the British officer waved one of the Germans towards the armoured car, making him stand on the running board. The barrier was raised and the convoy continued its journey down a track bounded by high trees on both sides. As they broke out of the trees they were faced by a high wooden gate crisscrossed by wiring and a wire fence that stretched outwards on both sides as far as the eye could see.

  Reg was crouched on the back of the tank, leaning on the turret mantle. “Jesus fuck in the morning. What the fuck is that stink?”

  The other soldiers instinctively pressed the back of their hands to their noses.

  “It’s a bleedin’ zoo, isn’t it? Got to be.” George peered towards the huts that sat inside the wire and saw figures rush towards the fence, hurling themselves hopelessly against the steel mesh. They were humans but hardly recognizable, with their shaved heads and the peculiar striped pyjamas. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, what’s all this?”

  The leading car pushed against the camp gates which broke open to reveal a long roadway that divided the camp in two.

  Reg could hear a loudspeaker van sounding out: “Ihr seid frei!”

  As the convoy travelled down the road, hundreds of prisoners flocked to the wire perimeters that separated the two sides of the camp, pushing their hands through every available space and gap, shouting and pleading. From his vantage point on the tank, Reg saw more figures detach from the edges of the huts like so many flies lifting off the carcass of a dead horse and run and stumble towards the wire. They stood five deep, pressing towards their liberators.

  Reg and the others watched as the colonel jumped out of the turret and clambered down the front of the tank before disappearing through the door of what looked to be an administration hut. They hadn’t been told what to expect and to judge by the reactions of the officers, Reg guessed they had no idea either. He was to say afterwards that no-one could imagine that place if they hadn’t seen it for themselves. It felt as if his eyes had been scraped and scoured, the images burnt forever into the retina. Around the hut he could see naked and partly clothed bodies strewn on the ground as if they had been thrown out of a giant toy box. One in particular slumped up against the wire, its mouth wide open and the eyes so sunken into the head that at first glance he thought it wore sunglasses and was stretched out to catch the April sun.

  Daffin looked around, his normally ruddy face drained of colour. “Oh Lord, Sarge. What the hell’s been going on here?”

  “Don’t care to think, Daphne. Guess we’ll find out soon enough. Here comes the colonel. Looks like he’s got the Kraut camp commander.”

  The colonel had his pistol out and was pointing it at the back of the German who had been on the running board of the armoured car. He was being pushed and shoved along the path towards the rest of the company. Whereas before he had been walking beside the colonel in a fairly relaxed manner, now his hands were raised above his head and all vestiges of rank had been stripped from his uniform. The colonel addressed a lieutenant who had been on the same tank as Reg.

  “Lieutenant Turner, I want this bastard in custody. If he makes a run for it, shoot him.” The colonel waved his pistol agitatedly towards the German. “Or I might just do it now and to hell with him.”

  The colonel’s pistol hand shook and he turned backwards and forwards, looking at the bodies lying around the camp square and muttered, “Bastards, murdering bastards.” He lifted his pistol towards the German but the lieutenant quickly grabbed the man and took him to the back of the tank. Suddenly, the sound of firing came from an area behind the nearest huts and all but the German instinctively ducked.

  The colonel pointed to Reg, George and Daffin. “Come with me.” He called out to the officer: “Lieutenant, take the prisoner back to Captain Philpotts and tell him to hold, awaiting further instructions. We need to assess what’s been going on here.”

  He set off at a brisk jog towards the sound of the firing, slowing as he reached the edge of the huts. George, Reg and Daffin followed up behind and pressed against the hut wall. The smell had grown worse. The colonel peered around the edge of the hut and then walked out, deliberately and without hesitation. The others followed and what they saw, as George said later, was “un-fucking-believable”. At the far end of the gap they saw four soldiers in German uniforms walking among bodies, firing at point-blank range – but they weren’t shooting in the head. They were firing into groins.

  “What the hell are they doing?” Daffin spoke first.

  “Shooting their bollocks off, that’s what they’re doing – the bastards!” George swung his rifle off his shoulder and quickly drew back the bolt to bring a s
hell into the chamber.

  “Wait!” The colonel gave his soldiers the order to cover him and then walked towards the Germans, his pistol raised.

  “Halt!” The colonel’s voice had caught the German soldiers unawares, so intent on their task that they had been oblivious to his approach. Now they quickly dropped their guns to the ground. Four sets of hands rose into the air.

  The colonel’s body blocked George’s aim. “Lads, spread out, quick! I can’t get a good shot if this goes tits up. Me and Daphne’ll take the right two, Reg you take the left two. If they do anything naughty, just pop ’em! No questions.”

  They fanned out and watched as the colonel closed in on the Germans. His pistol raised and then the sound of four shots in quick succession and, one by one, the soldiers fell to the ground.

  “Fuck me!” George lowered his rifle.

  They watched, astonished, as the colonel emptied his pistol into two of the bodies on the ground, fumbled for more bullets from his waist belt, reloaded and fired more into the recumbent figures.

  “He’s lost it, Sarge! We best go and grab him before he does himself any damage.” Daffin headed off towards the colonel and Reg quickly followed. He had seen so many men – officers as well as ordinary ranks – fall apart over the nine months they had been in Europe that he wasn’t completely surprised at the colonel’s reaction. As they neared he turned and faced them, placing his pistol back in the holster. His hand shook.

  He let out a huge breath and hesitated. “Their camp overrun, the commandant arrested and still the bastards are killing. What is wrong with them?”