Hoyle said nothing. He clearly hadn’t been planning on showing Booth anything.
‘Box those films up and bring them to my office. And don’t tell anyone else about this.’
It was evening, now. Booth walked outside, enjoying the sensation of cleanliness the limpid air imparted. The sunset tinged the horizon red and backlit the town’s ragged skyline. When Sergeant Hoyle came out with the box of films, Booth said: ‘Now, sergeant, I think you’d better tell me exactly how these films came into your possession.’
10
ILSE SPENT THE afternoon working in the transit camp’s laundry.
She normally tried to avoid this duty, as it was hard work, but there was a particular German woman, a bony old hag with a witchy nose and warts, who never took her eyes from Ilse. When the Tommies divided the women into working parties, Ilse always made sure she wasn’t in the hag’s group. The woman wasn’t mentally stable.
The laundry was set up in a large concrete chamber to one side of the main body of the camp. Ilse was one of six German women working there today, but they were forbidden from talking among themselves. A Tommy with a rifle and a Red Cross nurse watched over them as they stirred huge cauldrons of boiling clothes and hefted sopping baskets through to the drying room.
Ilse thought about Captain Booth as she worked.
Poor Booth had fallen head over heels in love with her, but there was nothing Ilse could do about that. She’d felt a little sorry at having to turn him away again the previous evening. She had come to enjoy his company. It was nice to have at least one Englishman look at her with something other than contempt or indifference, even if he did think her name was Ursula. Physically, Booth was young and fit, two words that could never have been applied to Rüdiger towards the end of their marriage.
But O’Donnell knew about Booth. Would that be a problem? No, Ilse decided, not as long as she did what O’Donnell wanted. But who was this policeman he’d mentioned? And why was O’Donnell so worried about him?
Ilse had heard rumours about the two dead bodies that had been found in the cellar of a house out by the Brunswick Road. Lots of Germans were whispering about it. Rumour had it they’d been murdered by the Tommies. Did O’Donnell have something to do with that? It wouldn’t have surprised Ilse if he did. O’Donnell had that look about him, the look of a man who would smile as he picked your pocket. Say what you like about the Nazis, they knew how to deal with people like that, she thought.
How the hell had O’Donnell found out about her and Booth, though? Ilse thought about this and decided the Tommy soldier called Suttpen must have told O’Donnell. Everyone knew Suttpen and O’Donnell played cards together; and Booth had had to bribe Suttpen to stop Ilse’s farmhouse from being requisitioned.
By late afternoon, the soldier that watched over the laundry had begun to chat with the Red Cross nurse. When he invited her outside for a smoke, Ilse hissed at the woman next to her, a big-hipped Bavarian with ruddy cheeks and her hair sweat-plastered to her forehead.
‘What is it?’ the woman said when Ilse hissed again. ‘We’re not supposed to talk.’
Ilse stole a glance over her shoulder then moved closer.
‘Have you heard about the murders on the Brunswick Road?’
Murder: it was strange the power that word had. Millions had been ‘killed’ in the last five years and nobody seemed to pay a blind bit of notice. But use that word, murder, and the world still caught its breath.
‘They say it was the Tommies,’ the Bavarian woman said, dropping her voice to a whisper, ‘and I believe them. My neighbour works at the Rathaus and she says the man they killed was in the SS.’
‘What about this English policeman who is investigating?’
The woman waved her hand dismissively. ‘I don’t believe they are investigating. What do the Tommies care if Germans die?’
Ilse went to say more but the Red Cross woman shouted something at them and the Bavarian woman blushed and hurried away.
Ilse had to fight not to lose her temper. She wasn’t a schoolgirl to be shushed like that. What the hell were they punishing her for, anyway? What had Ilse ever done? She’d never killed anyone. She’d always been very fair to the Polish girls that served her in the Warthegau. This was so humiliating, being forced to soak and scrub other people’s filthy clothing. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? she thought. It wasn’t enough that the Tommies had won the war: they wanted the German people to know they’d been beaten. They were going to rub their noses in it. Still, it could be worse, she thought. God, if things were like this with the English in control, what the hell must things be like under the Russians? Then she remembered Cousin Ursula. That was how things were under the Russians.
The sun was sinking low in the sky when the Red Cross woman let them leave. Ilse hurried across the camp to the place where she’d hidden the medical kit and the food O’Donnell had given her. She almost cried with relief when she saw that they were still there. She took a nibble of the bread and sausage after making sure she wasn’t watched, then stuffed the whole lot down the front of her dress and headed for the gates.
As always, there was a huge queue outside the factory’s admin building. This was where people queued to obtain the identity documents and travel permits they needed to get home. It always made Ilse happy to see how crowded it was. That was good. The more of them received their wretched documents, the more of them would leave and the faster Germany could get back to normal again.
Close to the gate now, she heard the rumble of a lorry behind her and the tooting of its horn. When she turned and saw the Red Cross symbol painted on the roof, she stole away into the bushes by the side of the road.
So, he was back, was he?
The man who drove the lorry was named Joost. He was a strange fellow, practically the only man in the camp that didn’t ogle the women. In fact, he didn’t really seem to notice anyone; he seemed to look through people. He said he was South African, but Ilse had discovered he wasn’t actually one of the official Red Cross workers. Still, the war had thrown up all types of refugees. There were hundreds like Joost in every transit camp, people willing to help out in order to improve their own status a little. Joost was often gone for days at a time, picking up supplies and dropping people off at different transit camps. He’d given Ilse a lift, once, but he’d begun to take a very roundabout way to get to her house. When she’d asked him where he was going, he wouldn’t reply. In the end, a British patrol had stopped them and made Ilse get out because she didn’t have the right documents. Ilse remembered feeling quite relieved.
When the lorry had passed, Ilse emerged from the bushes. She was nearly at the gates when someone in front of her called her name.
It was the hag woman, the mad one, standing by the gates. Ilse tried to hurry past, but the woman blocked her path, hissing at Ilse as she did so.
‘Who are you?’ Ilse said, pushing the woman away and quickening her step. ‘Leave me alone.’
Ilse ran now, heart racing, but when she reached the bend in the road, she could not resist looking behind her.
The hag stood in the middle of the road, staring straight towards her.
Ilse continued to run. Panic gripped her, but it wasn’t until she was halfway home that she realised why: the hag had called her by name – but not Ursula, the one everyone in the camp knew her by.
She had called her Ilse.
11
SILAS PAYNE WOKE early and busied himself preparing coffee and bacon over the potbellied stove in the police station. As he ate, he considered how to move his investigation forward. He had spoken to Major Norris the previous evening and told him that he thought Mr Lockwood and Quartermaster Sergeant Suttpen knew something about the murder house.
‘Lockwood?’ Norris had said. ‘Little fellow with jam jar specs? You can’t surely think he’s capable of killing someone?’
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��Experience has taught me that anyone is capable of anything, given the right circumstances, major,’ Payne had replied. ‘But I didn’t say I necessarily thought they were responsible for the murders. They know something, though, I’m sure of it.’
Norris sighed. ‘Well, Quartermaster Sergeant Suttpen would sell his own mother if he thought there was profit in it, there’s no denying that. They had problems with him back in England, apparently. And in Holland. But I’m afraid men like Suttpen and his motley crew are in the ascendant at the moment, given the current moral climate.’
Payne had wanted to bring Suttpen in for questioning, but Norris had shaken his head. ‘I’m afraid you don’t have any jurisdiction over army personnel and Suttpen’s got the backing of Colonel Bassett. I’d be more inclined to pursue this Housing Branch fellow first, Lockwood. He’s CCG, so we’ve some leverage with him.’
Payne had agreed, but reluctantly.
After breakfast, Payne washed, shaved, dressed in his suit and went outside – and saw that all four of the tyres on his utility had been slashed.
Payne walked around the vehicle. With its deflated wheels, the car looked like it was sinking into the ground. There was no way to repair the tyres. The vandal had made sure of that, carving ragged slits six inches long in the rubber walls.
Being without a vehicle would severely hamper his investigation. Payne wondered about the timing of the vandalism.
A soldier came over and stood beside Payne, shaking his head. ‘You can’t get tyres for love nor money at the moment. And you need all four.’
Payne wondered whether the soldier had had something to do with the vandalism and was taunting him but decided that, on balance, his irritating sympathy was too artless to be anything other than genuine. Payne went back to the police station and phoned Norris to see if he could get him a new vehicle, but there was no answer.
When Payne returned to the utility, Colonel Bassett was standing in front of it, regarding the slashed tyres with an attitude of suppressed fury. The translator, Fräulein Seiler, stood beside him, jotting down notes as Bassett dictated.
‘. . . Germans perpetrating acts of sabotage will be summarily shot, regardless of age or sex. Regardless, Miss Seiler, do you hear? Regardless. I want that word stressed. The same goes for curfew breakers.’
With his swagger stick and stentorian voice, Colonel Bassett was a ruddy-faced caricature of the retired military type. There were hundreds like Bassett in Germany now, old men that had leapt at the chance to command again as part of the military government of Germany. His staff seemed to regard him as an amiable eccentric, but Payne disliked the man. Beneath his shaggy unkempt eyebrows, Bassett’s eyes were hard and dark, the way stubborn, unimaginative men’s often were.
‘Don’t worry, Detective Inspector,’ he said when he saw Payne, ‘we’ll clear this matter up for you. And we’ll make the Jerries responsible rue the day.’
‘Do you think a German did this?’
‘Who the hell else would it have been? We’ve been plagued with cut telephone lines and smashed windows now for months. Well, not any more, do you hear? They’ll stop this, right now, or I’ll personally see to it that the civilian population is ridden hard and put away wet. It’s the only thing these bloody people seem to understand.’
Payne hitched a ride to the far side of town with some soldiers and had them drop him by the offices of Housing Branch.
A different clerk was on duty. Mr Lockwood wasn’t there, though.
‘No, I don’t know where he is, sir,’ the Housing Branch clerk said, irritably. ‘He should have been here an hour ago.’
‘Is it like him to be late for work?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t suppose the information I requested has arrived yet?’
‘That’ll be another ‘no’.’
Afterwards, Payne left and walked to Lockwood’s billet, a semi-derelict townhouse that Lockwood shared with six other CCG men. He knocked at the door of the house and was shown in by a bare-chested man with a pencil moustache.
‘Nope, I haven’t seen old Lockwood since last night,’ he said, when Payne asked.
Lockwood shared his room, which was upstairs, with a young man who was still asleep. Payne shook him awake and the man turned bleary, hungover eyes towards him.
‘No, I haven’t seen Lockwood,’ he said, moistening gummy lips. ‘But then I was out all night at a party.’
‘Was he here when you got home? Did you hear him leave this morning?’
‘Sorry, old man, I was a bit blotto.’
‘Do you have any idea where he might have gone?’ Payne said, looking towards the immaculately-smoothed sheets on Lockwood’s bed. It had either been freshly made that morning or it hadn’t been slept in at all.
‘Absolutely no idea. But then old Lockwood isn’t the chattiest of fellows.’
The man with the pencil moustache was shaving in front of a cracked half of mirror resting on the bedroom’s mantelpiece. He wiped lather from the razor, then paused. ‘Now that I think about it, someone came to see Lockwood last night. They spoke outside.’
‘Who was he?’ Payne said.
‘You can’t expect me to recognise him, old man. I’ve only been here a week. He was a tall fellow, I think. Heavy set.’
‘Was it the quartermaster sergeant, Suttpen?’
The man laughed. ‘No, it wasn’t old Jacob. I’d have recognised him, don’t you worry.’
Payne looked through Lockwood’s possessions, but there was nothing of interest. He thanked the men and left.
Outside, Payne stood in the shadow of a broken building. Should he be worried about Lockwood? It was too early to say.
Perhaps Suttpen would know something. Payne had checked the duty roster at the Rathaus the night before and he knew Suttpen was off duty today. He thought about what Norris had said about not bothering Suttpen. Payne decided he didn’t care.
He began walking across town.
He had no idea what he’d say to Suttpen, but that didn’t really matter. Payne only wanted a chance to take stock of his opponent. In a perfect world, Payne would have let another officer do the talking while he watched from the sidelines. Often you could learn far more from watching a person’s reactions than by talking to them.
It wasn’t a perfect world, though. He was on his own out here. He would have to do the best he could.
Suttpen and his men were billeted in a beautiful property on the edge of Eichenrode, a place where the urban area began to merge with farms and fields. Outside the house, lines of clothing flapped in the breeze and empty wine bottles, tins and leftover food were littered across the table. As Payne approached, he saw a cat picking through some chicken bones.
A soldier wearing American sunglasses lay on the grass outside the house, sunning himself. When Payne asked where Suttpen was, the soldier pointed towards a pathway that led to a barn.
The barn door opened inwards. Inside, dust motes danced in the shafts of sunlight that came through the gaps between the wall-boards. Goods of every type – lamps, artwork, clothing, silverware, crockery, even a pair of skis and a sledge – were arranged around the walls and floor of the barn. They weren’t stacked or dumped, either. The goods had obviously been set out with a view to impressing prospective buyers.
Jacob Suttpen sat at the back of the barn, eating tinned jam with a spoon. He stopped when he saw Payne and his eyes narrowed. He set the tin on the table and rubbed his hands on his battle-blouse. ‘Can I help you, sir?’ he said in a tone that made it clear helping Payne was the last thing on his mind.
‘My name is Detective Inspector Payne. Of Public Safety Branch.’
‘Pleased to meet you, Detective Inspector. But I think you must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. This here ain’t a public place, it’s a private residence. And it’s totally safe. I make sure of that personally.’
In a single fluid motion, Suttpen swept up a scoped rifle from behind the desk and hefted it in his hand. His smile became broader as he clicked the rifle bolt and put a round in the chamber.
Payne did not move, but he met Suttpen’s gaze and held it.
‘How would I go about getting new tyres for my utility?’ Payne said.
Suttpen drew his breath. ‘Why? Has something happened to it?’
Again, the two men looked at each other in silence.
It was him that slashed my tyres, Payne thought. He wants me to know it was him, too.
‘It’s quite an impressive collection you’ve got,’ Payne said.
‘Not bad, is it? To the victor the spoils. And I for one intend to spoil myself rotten. The Jerries owe me for six years of my life. To say nothing of being bloody shelled in France in the last lot. Did you serve? In the Great War, I mean.’
‘No.’
Suttpen nodded as if some previously-formed opinion had been confirmed.
‘Are you a friend of Mr Lockwood?’ Payne said.
‘Mr Lockwood?’
‘Short man, about our age, wears glasses. He works at Housing Branch.’
‘Oh, yes. I call him Theo. That’s why I didn’t twig.’
‘How do you know him?’
Suttpen had put the rifle down and now played with a pencil. ‘If I were a rude man, Detective Inspector, I’d ask you what bloody business of yours it was. Lucky for you, though, I’m not.’ He smiled. ‘I know everyone. It’s one of the perks of being regimental quartermaster sergeant. Especially in a situation like this.’
‘A situation like what?’
The pencil twirled in the air. ‘This. Eichenrode. Germany. You might not have noticed, but the creature comforts are a little hard to come by at the moment. That’s why people want to get pally with me.’
‘And did Mr Lockwood?’
‘You could say so. He got me these digs. That’s no secret.’
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