‘You have a reputation as a man that can get things. If I wanted something, could you get it for me?’
Suttpen’s eyes became wary. ‘Depends whether you were asking me as a copper or not. There’s rules against entrapment, aren’t there?’
‘Say I wanted medicines. Vials of vaccine, for example. Could you get me those?’
The momentary confusion on Suttpen’s face seemed genuine. ‘Probably. But you’d have to tell me first what the hell you wanted with it.’
‘What about barbiturate? Can you get that?’
Suttpen laid his hands flat on the table and leant towards Payne. ‘Want to know what I think, Detective Inspector? I think you’re testing me. You’re not asking me about medicines because you want some. You’re asking me to see how I react. So let me tell you, nice and clear, that I don’t have the foggiest idea what you’re going on about. I’ve bought and sold just about everything you can imagine in my time, but I’ve never sold vaccines. And if you find who is selling barbiturate, send ’em my way. We can do some business. Now, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you went now and let me enjoy my day off.’
Payne turned. There was no point in staying. As he reached the door, Suttpen called out to him.
‘You’re going to be watching me, I know that, Payne. But I’ll be watching you, too. This here is mine, do you understand? I earned it.’
Afterwards, Payne walked back to Housing Branch. There was still no sign of Lockwood, so Payne did what any good policeman would have done. He began knocking on doors and stopping people in the street, describing Lockwood to them. He worked methodically along each side of the roads closest to Lockwood’s billet, speaking to Army and CCG personnel, DPs and German civilians. Someone always knew something. That was the thing to focus on as the hours of tedium slid past and the endlessly repeated words seemed to be wearing a groove on your tongue.
Persistence paid off. Yes, people did remember the little man with the glasses from Number 26 hurrying along the street the previous evening. People had noticed him because he looked so self-conscious.
Over the course of the afternoon, Payne pieced together Lockwood’s movements. Two people had seen Lockwood heading out of town by the north road, hurrying along as if he were late to meet someone, but that was where the trail went dry.
Payne followed the road to the last place anyone had seen Lockwood, then walked a hundred yards out into the countryside. It was nice to breathe air that was free from brick dust, to see the rills the wind blew across the rainwater in the roadside ditches.
Payne paused by an oak tree, looked out across the fields and watched the haze growing within the dells as evening drew in. Then he turned and started to walk back towards the town. As he did so, the cloud cover shifted and the day’s last sharp sunlight lit the road.
Payne paused as he walked, wondering what it was that had caught his attention. And then he saw it, a pair of thick-rimmed glasses that lay at the bottom of a ditch, sunlight glinting on the one remaining lens.
12
THAT MORNING, BOOTH took his jeep and drove east out of Eichenrode for fifteen miles, until he saw the divisional signs for Wolffslust prison.
It had taken him thirty minutes of cajoling the previous night to discover where Sergeant Hoyle had obtained the films. Hoyle initially claimed to have forgotten who had brought in the film canisters so Booth had the sergeant begin the laborious process of searching through all the receipt stubs for the information the Field Intelligence unit had received. Curiously, it then took Hoyle only ten minutes to find the correct stub.
‘I remember now, sir,’ Hoyle had said, brandishing the paperwork. ‘It was a corporal from the Devonshires brought us the films, Corporal Peaver. He’s part of the forces looking after Wolffslust prison.’
Booth hated Wolffslust. The map listed it as a castle and the first time Booth had gone there, he’d expected a picturesque Schloß. What he found instead was a brick bastion built in a blunt and ugly style that rose from the damp tangle of forest that surrounded it like a toad’s head from mud. The wartime watchtowers and wire did nothing to improve its aspect. Much of the prison was below ground and the cell doors opened off stone corridors filled with moss and watery echoes.
Booth read the official report on the occupation of the prison as he drove, balancing the document on the steering wheel. The British advance guard had overrun the prison in late April and found it to be seriously overcrowded – the German authorities had been using Wolffslust to house prisoners from other institutions that had been damaged in air raids. The prison governor and most of the gaolers had fled the day before the British troops arrived, leaving the whole institution in chaos. Many of the prisoners in the overcrowded medical ward had been suffering from malnutrition and some had died. Most of the prisoners belonging to Allied nations had been immediately released, and now the remaining prisoners at Wolffslust were nearly all Germans.
The report was incomplete, though. There was no information on which unit had first found the prison and the report lacked an officer’s signature.
Ten minutes later, Booth drew up outside the prison. The British soldiers on duty at the gate were sitting inside the guardhouse drinking tea and smoking. They waved Booth through without looking at his papers. Inside, groups of prisoners lazed in the prison courtyard, playing cards and smoking. One group was cooking a pine marten over a campfire while British soldiers joked with them.
Booth found Corporal Peaver in the mess hall, hands wrapped around a steaming mug of tea. It was clear Sergeant Hoyle had spoken some word of warning to the corporal, as the man began with an apology.
‘If I’d known what those films were, sir, I’d have turned ’em straight in to an officer. I didn’t realise they were so important.’
‘That’s quite all right, corporal. I’ve checked the records. You’ve done nothing wrong.’
Corporal Peaver was a big, rosy-cheeked man with a Hampshire accent, probably a good fifteen years older than Booth. Booth told him to stand easy, then said, ‘What I really wanted to ask is how you found these films. And where. I don’t know if you saw the inside of the canisters, but it said something in German about military research. Given the subject matter of the films, it could be important evidence for the lawyers at Nuremburg.’
Corporal Peaver scratched his cheek. ‘Where I found them? That’s going to be difficult, sir. It was a terrible mess when we got here. The German guards had scarpered and there were prisoners wandering loose all over the place. By the time I got here, they’d ripped most of the admin wing apart and thrown the filing cabinets out of the window. And my unit wasn’t the first British one to get here. There’d been other units here before us.’
‘How had so many prisoners got free of their cells?’
‘Well, some of them were Allied POWS, British and French. Plus, there were a lot of the Germans’ forced labourers in here, too, locked up for petty stuff. Apparently, the first British officer on the scene ordered the POWs and the workers released. They in turn went round letting all the others out.’
‘Who was this officer?’
‘I’ve no idea, sir. He was long gone by the time I arrived. It was all a bit chaotic back then.’
Booth frowned. ‘Do you mean to say this officer released prisoners without first checking what their crime was?’
‘I suppose so. Is that a problem, sir?’
‘Of course it’s a problem, corporal. There might have been serious criminals inside the prison.’
‘I hadn’t thought of it like that before, sir. But if they were locked up by the Nazis, that sort of makes ’em on our side, doesn’t it?’
‘Criminals are on nobody’s side but their own, corporal. You’d do well to remember that. Logic dictates Nazi Germany must have had its murderers and rapists, the same as any other society.’
‘I thought most of them were in the SS
, sir.’
Booth ignored the quip. He was thinking of something else. ‘If the prison was thrown open, why didn’t all the prisoners escape?’
‘To be honest, sir, some of ’em did, but most came back when they saw what things were like outside. I think most of the German lads were sharp enough to realise they were far safer inside a prison than they were out wandering the streets. They’re not a bad bunch, actually. I’ve found they’re pretty well behaved as long as they get three meals a day and we don’t shout at ’em too much.’
Booth lit a cigarette. Something about the situation worried him, though he couldn’t put his finger on it.
‘Let’s get back to the films. Try and think where it was that you found them. It could be important.’
Peaver nodded. ‘Come to think of it, sir, it could well have been down in the cellar, in one of the corridors leading up to the dungeon.’
‘Dungeon?’
‘Sorry, sir, that’s what me and the lads have named it on account of it looking like a dungeon.’
The corporal was right: it did look like a dungeon. The corridor was obviously from the original 17th century Schloß. Bulbous stones protruded from the walls and the floor was patched with puddles; electric lights flickered in brackets on the wall. The corridor ended in an enormous slab of a door studded with iron bands.
Booth dropped his cigarette in a puddle of water and placed his hand on the gnarled wood.
‘What’s on the other side of this?’
‘No idea, sir. It can’t be opened.’
‘Good God, man, do you mean to say this door hasn’t been opened since May?’
‘Begging your pardon, but it’s a prison door, sir. It’s not meant to be picked. Or opened, for that matter, once it’s closed.’
‘But there could be prisoners on the other side.’
‘With respect, sir, if there were prisoners in there, there won’t be none left now,’ Peaver said without any hint of sarcasm. ‘Plus, I don’t think there are any cells down there. Not according to the prison blueprints. I checked that when I realised we didn’t have the key.’
‘I want this door opened, corporal. If you can’t open it yourselves, get a detachment of engineers up here and blow the damned thing off its hinges.’
The engineer detachment promised to be up at Wolffslust by the afternoon. There was no point driving back to Eichenrode, so Booth ate lunch in the mess then spent a few hours trying to impose some semblance of order on the prison.
The first thing he organised was a roll-call of the prisoners. It took forty minutes to establish that there were 314 men currently at the prison but the count had to be redone twice when Booth noticed prisoners who had been outside in the forest sneaking back in. However, even a cursory look at the fragmented documentation that had survived the prison’s liberation showed 314 was fewer than half the amount of men the prison had held in April.
Booth told Corporal Peaver to gather up all the prison’s remaining paperwork, which actually consisted of a dozen postal bags stuffed with crumpled files, ledgers and ripped, dirty pieces of paper. Booth emptied the first postal bag onto a table.
‘Right,’ he said, looking at the mess in front of him. ‘First of all, I want to know exactly who was in this prison and why. Once we’ve done that, we can start on the most important part.’
‘What’s that, sir?’ Peaver said.
‘Finding out whether the blighters are still here.’
13
LITTLE OTTO TOOK the ring of keys from his pocket and rattled the big silver key into the lock. The door creaked as it opened and stale, dusty air wafted out to greet him.
This was Otto’s other house, the one he had kept back for emergencies. It did not please him as much as the property on the Brunswick Road – Otto loved to sit in that house’s garret, playing with his treasures as the moonlight shone through the hole in the roof – but it would have to do.
Otto put the key ring back in his pocket and rested the packet of quicklime on the kitchen floor. Then he went back outside to where the little man lay on the ground. He checked the bindings that held the man’s ankles and wrists together were still tight. Then he took him by the ankles, dragged him inside and sat down to wait for Mr Lockwood to awake.
Otto donned his Mask of Many while Lockwood was still unconscious and made sure that the first thing Lockwood saw as he came round was Otto pushing his masked face towards him and running his fingertips across the loops of twine that bound the lips together. Otto wanted to show the bastard exactly what it was that he valued most in others: silence and compliance.
Lockwood didn’t understand. He began whimpering and crying almost immediately, the sound quickly rising to a hysterical crescendo, despite the gag. Otto kicked his head until the man quietened down. He was standing over Lockwood now, staring down at the man’s smooth skin that had become streaked with grime and tears.
Should he add him to the mask?
No, Otto had another idea. Lockwood had lost his nerve. He would give the game away. It was only fair that he help to hide Little Otto.
Otto crossed the room. Behind him, Lockwood continued to snivel and weep. Otto took the black pennant from his pocket and rolled it into a blindfold.
Then he reached for the quicklime.
14
EARLY IN THE night, Cousin Ursula began screaming. The sound wrenched Ilse from sleep. She lit the paraffin lamp and went to her cousin’s bedroom. Ursula’s body was totally rigid as she loosed her banshee wails into the darkness. Only her mouth moved, opening so wide it seemed hinged far behind her jaws.
The medicine had served only to make Ursula worse. Ilse had started off applying ointment to some of the cuts and bruises on her cousin’s arms and legs, but Ursula had begun to writhe and gasp as if she were lying on hot coals. In the end, poor Ursula had seemed to be suffering so much that Ilse had injected her in the thigh with a syrette of morphine, following the instructions inside the medical kit. That had seemed to quieten her, although Ilse still hadn’t been able to part her cousin’s legs and examine the damage.
Ilse crossed the room, making soothing noises. Ursula calmed a little when Ilse sat next to her, but she wouldn’t stop trembling and her eyes bulged.
Ilse opened the medical kit, took another of the syrettes of morphine and jabbed the needle into Ursula’s upper arm. The prick of the needle made Ursula jolt upright, but then she let out a long slow breath and sank back onto the bed, her crumpled love letters clasped between her hands.
Ilse sat stroking Urulsa’s hair until she fell asleep again, but the sound of the mucous rattle in her chest seemed to have doubled in volume. It was as if something had worked itself loose and was banging around inside her. Ilse held the lamp up and took a good look at Ursula’s clammy, jaundiced skin.
Ursula wasn’t going to get better, Ilse realised suddenly. She was going to linger there on the cusp of death forever, rattling and shrieking and stinking.
Ilse stood up, trembling herself now. She couldn’t take any more. She’d done her best with the medical supplies, but how could you help someone who became hysterical every time you touched her? This whole situation was so unfair. Why did bloody Ursula have to come here of all . . .
Ilse turned away from the bed, swept by sudden shame. How could she have thought such selfish thoughts? It must be because she lacked food.
She was exhausted, yet she knew there was no way she would get back to sleep again. She went downstairs to the kitchen, poured herself a tot of O’Donnell’s whisky and lit a cigarette. She drank the whisky, then poured another, larger this time, and leant against the wall, allowing her thoughts to drift towards happier times, back when they had first moved to Berlin . . .
She and Rüdiger had hosted such wonderful parties. All the best people had attended. Magda Goebbels had even come one night and stayed two whole hours. For a moment,
it seemed to Ilse that she could smell the perfumed scent of those wonderful evenings again, see chandelier light dance on silverware, hear the purr of the conversation. The men had looked so smart in their uniforms. And the flags, red, white and black, fluttering against the walls. Give the Nazis their due, no-one in history had known how to create pageantry quite like they could.
Of course, she’d never taken them too seriously. There had been a brief moment when she’d felt the stirrings of genuine devotion – who hadn’t in those heady early days of the war? – but the Nazis were only ever a means to an end for Ilse. After all, it was all such a lot of garbled nonsense. Anyone that took a moment to look behind the uniforms and histrionic speeches could see that, surely?
Trust an idiot like Rüdiger to take it all so seriously. She could picture him now, sitting in bed, trying to learn the words to his SS oath like some huge idiot child preparing for catechism. And to think that she’d had to exert all her influence at one point to stop him joining the SA. He’d have been in his element there, shoulder to shoulder with all the other bullies and bores. Anyone with any intelligence could see those knuckle-draggers’ goose was cooked the moment Hitler took power.
But that was the problem: Rüdiger was not intelligent. That was how they’d ended up in the Warthegau, as the Nazis had named the southern portion of the territory reclaimed from the Poles.
What the hell had Rüdiger known about coal mining? He’d studied Law. But once one of his damned SS chums had filled his head with nonsense, he’d accepted charge of that wretched mine quicker than you could say Lebensraum and forced them both to move to some rural hellhole close to Posen. Ilse had made a point of never even visiting the mine the whole time she’d lived there.
She finished her whisky and went upstairs to get a blanket. It was the first time since summer she’d felt the need for a blanket at night. It wouldn’t be long now before the cold weather came. God, how was she going to survive the winter?
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