Werewolf

by Matthew Pritchard

  ‘We all know you’ve gone cap in hand to the Huns once, Payne. I won’t let it happen again, do you understand? As far as I’m concerned, your involvement with this matter is over. Now, I’d like you to leave, if you don’t mind. We’ve army business to discuss.’

  The conference rumbled on for another twenty minutes while Bassett and Freddy outlined the military response to the situation. An interrogation centre was to be set up in the centre of town and every German male within a five mile radius to be brought in for questioning.

  After the conference, Booth went to find Payne.

  ‘I’m afraid this was always going to happen,’ he said. ‘There’s just no talking to Bassett once he’s got an idea into his head.’

  ‘Can we speak to Toth again?’

  Booth shook his head. ‘Not if he’s at Bad Nenndorf. The security there is very tight. Added to that, Colonel Bassett has muddied the waters for us. I’m afraid it’s absolutely impossible.’

  ‘What about the policeman, Metzger, the one we read about in the newspaper reports? Can we find him? He ran the original Flickschuster investigation.’

  ‘Yes, that’s a possibility. If he’s in one of the civilian internment camps, the security won’t be anywhere near as tight.’

  ‘I’ll head out to the Red Cross camp tomorrow and see if I can discover anything about these travel permits. But we need to find out where Captain Fredrickson found them in the first place.’

  ‘There’s something else we need to know about Fredrickson, Detective Inspector,’ Booth said. ‘We need to understand why the hell he is bending the Colonel’s ear. It’s him that’s pushing this werewolf idea, I’m sure of it.’

  5

  ILSE AND JOHANNES sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, sister and brother together again. For ten minutes, Ilse was genuinely glad to see him. Then she began to notice how different Johannes was now from how she remembered him.

  First, there were the scars: a starburst of livid tissue that crossed his jaw-line and another, thick and red, on the back of his hand. They were only the most noticeable blemishes, though; the whole of his being seemed nicked and notched now, like an old ham bone. And his demeanour was different. He had been sly and cheeky as a boy, but what had once been merely a mischievous air had an undercurrent of genuine malevolence to it, now.

  The conversation came in spits and spurts. They spoke about their experiences at the end of the war. Johannes said he had deserted at the end of April and had been living in the woods ever since. He did not mention where he had been serving or with which unit.

  ‘You look older, sister,’ he said. ‘And you’re thinner. There’s grey in your hair. Just here.’ He reached across the table and brushed dirty fingernails through the hair at Ilse’s temples. She resisted a momentary impulse to flinch. Something about her little brother scared her now, she realised.

  Johannes finished his tea. ‘Haven’t you got anything stronger, my Gräfin?’ he said as he finished his tea.

  Ilse shook her head. She was damned if she would share her whisky with him. It irritated her that he kept calling her Gräfin, duchess: it had been their father’s pet name for Ilse.

  Johannes looked at her, eyes hooded. ‘Are you sure you don’t have any liquor, Gräfin?’

  ‘Oh, certainly, what would you like? Shall I open the bar? And stop calling me that. I’m not your Gräfin.’

  ‘What would you prefer I call you, then? Ilse Hoffman?’

  He laughed at the way the sound of her real name made her flinch. ‘Yes, I’m sure the English solider you’re fucking would love to know all about Rüdiger. Who did you tell him you were?’

  Ilse ignored the question. ‘What do you know about that?’

  ‘You don’t think I would just saunter up to the house and knock, do you? I’ve been watching you for days, waiting for the right moment. And don’t worry, I won’t harm your Englishman. I’ve enough problems as it is. You’ve done well to get one so quickly, though. You were always a little sharp for most men’s tastes. What was it father used to say about you – ‘All thorns and no rose’?’

  ‘He never said such a thing.’

  Johannes shrugged. ‘Believe what you like.’

  More silence. Then Ilse said, ‘Do you know anything about Cousin Ursula?’ as she watched Johannes’s reaction carefully.

  ‘I know quite a bit about her, actually. She used to write to me when I was in Russia. And I used to write back. That was one part of the week the boys really looked forward to, listening to Cousin Ursula’s love letters. They used to help me compose the responses. I think the dumb bitch thought I was going to marry her.’ He laughed, a harsh bark of a sound.

  ‘That was wicked of you, Johannes, to taunt poor Ursula like that. She came here. To this house, I mean. Men at the frontier had raped and beaten her. She died of her injuries a few days ago.’

  If the information meant anything to Johannes, he did not show it. He picked food from between his teeth with a fingernail.

  ‘Where will you stay tonight, Johannes?’

  Again the crooked smile. ‘Do you mean to say I can’t stay here?’

  ‘Of course not. There’s no room.’

  ‘But this is my house, too, now. And I intend to sleep here.’

  Ilse said nothing. Johannes watched her then said, ‘Don’t worry. I’ve no intention of staying here for long. Or in Germany for that matter.’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘Spain. Then on to South America. The Tommies are hanging SS men like me.’

  ‘Well, you would do well not to hang around too close to Eichenrode. Someone might recognise you. And the Tommies are searching houses. They think there are partisans here continuing to fight. People have been murdered.’

  Johannes nodded, as if the information pleased him. ‘I can get going tomorrow. If you’re prepared to help me, that is.’

  ‘Help you? What can I do?’

  ‘There are people here that can get me the documents I need: ID papers and travel permits.’

  ‘And you want me to speak to these people? I have no influence with –’

  ‘I want you to pay. I need some of your money.’

  Ilse laughed. ‘And what makes you think I have any money?’ Her laughter grew as she waved towards the cracks in the wall, the piles of rubble, the fractured roof beam. ‘Oh, that really is wonderful, Johannes. Money? Yes, you’re right, how much would you like? Did you not hear? I really am a Gräfin now and this is my castle.’

  Johannes peeled the skin from another potato and watched her in silence until her laughter faltered. For a moment, fear gripped Ilse. Did he know about the box buried in the garden?

  No, he was bluffing. He must be.

  ‘You can’t really believe I have any money, Johannes,’ she said when the silence became uncomfortable. ‘It was all I could do to get out of the Warthegau with the clothes I wore. You’ve no idea what it was like for civilians when the Russians broke through. It was chaos. I had to run for my life, literally.’

  Johannes held the strips of potato skin in the palm of his scarred hand, crushed them into a single mass and swallowed them. ‘But you didn’t run straight here, though, did you? You said yourself you went to Berlin.’

  Ilse felt her face blush. ‘What of it?’

  ‘Remember when I visited you in the Warthegau? Rüdiger told me about his deposit box at the bank. His escape plan, he called it. Of course, back then he was thinking about what would happen if he ever fell out of favour with the Party, wasn’t he? But I bet that was the first thing you went to collect when you got to Berlin. In fact, I’m willing to bet that was the whole reason you went there in the first place.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Johannes.’

  ‘Yes, you do. Don’t think I can’t spot when you’re lying, sister. And don’t try to hide
your face by looking out of the window. You know we could always read each other.’

  He laughed when she refused to turn.

  ‘What do you need with travel permits, anyway?’ she said, more to fill the silence than anything. ‘You can go cross country. Travel at night. You’re a soldier. Live off the land.’

  Johannes laughed. ‘It’s amazing how quickly those words come to the lips of those who’ve never tried it. Live off the land? Live off what, precisely, when every turnip from here to the Pyrenees is probably already dug up. There are millions of people on the road, now. You must have seen them. They are like ants, everywhere at once, on the roads, in the woods, crossing fields, on the riverbanks. There is no land left to live off.’

  After that pronouncement, Johannes took firewood – more than Ilse would have used for a whole week – and built the fire up to a roaring blaze. Then he took a tattered blanket from his gunny sack, spread it out before the hearth and lay down and slept. Just like that. He had no pillow, but within seconds his breathing slowed and he was deeply asleep.

  The flames cast flickering light onto the gaunt angles of her brother’s face. Ilse watched him sleep, then went to stand on the porch. The moon was nearly full and bathed the countryside with silver-white light. To the east, lights shone amid the dark bulk of the town, serving only to highlight its cracked and irregular skyline.

  Winter was around the corner, the harsh, unforgiving winter of northern Germany. Lord, how would she survive then? She had Booth, but what would happen if he was recalled to England? Would Booth look after her? Marry her? Take her with him?

  That was about the best she could hope for, but what would that be like? If the English here hated Germans, what would they be like in the towns and cities that had been bombed?

  No, there was no future with Booth. He was a pleasant young man. In other circumstances, she could have loved him. But not here, not now. She would not be dependent on a man’s goodwill for her own happiness.

  She stood and smoked a cigarette, weighing the pros and cons of the situation.

  Johannes was right. She had gone to Berlin to get Rüdiger’s box from the bank vault.

  She’d been lucky to get all this way without having the box stolen. When the soldiers took her car at gunpoint she’d thought she would lose the box, but they’d never thought to check her luggage. Ilse had seen in their eyes that all they were thinking of was saving their miserable hides and so she had unloaded her suitcases from the boot, then handed them the keys. It had given her a secret thrill to think of the riches that were right under their noses. All told, she had eight thousand dollars and some jewellery.

  But Johannes knew. She could be sure of that; they could read each other. He knew she had the money here, hidden, just as she knew Johannes would stay until he got his own way. And there was that something more to her brother, now, a part that was deep, dark and different, the part that said, This time I am asking. Next time, I will simply take.

  She looked out at the darkness for a moment longer, then turned and headed inside.

  She sat on the stool beside the fire and shook Johannes. He emerged from sleep with such a sudden jolt that Ilse jumped back, stifling a scream: for a moment, there was no recognition in his eyes, only a leer of bestial aggression.

  ‘It’s me, Johannes. Ilse. Your sister.’

  Johannes’s hand fell from the hilt of his hunter’s knife, but his eyes remained narrowed.

  ‘Don’t ever wake me like that again. What do you want?’

  ‘You can have your money, Johannes. But I have one condition.’

  Johannes yawned. Then he smiled. ‘I would expect nothing less, my Gräfin. Name your price.’

  ‘I want to go with you.’

  6

  PAYNE COULDN’T SLEEP. Each time he closed his eyes he saw the young soldier’s face emerging from the hole in the roof, waving cheerfully and then disappearing from view. By now, the boy’s commanding officer would have written the letter home. Payne could imagine the mother, hair-scarf tied above her head, scrubbing at a washboard, nattering across the fence in the back garden about what she would do when her little Charlie came home.

  He’d had men die before – three of the officers at Payne’s station had been killed during the war – but this was different. Deaths in peacetime held meaning again. In some ways that was a thing good, he supposed. For six years, death had been a mere statistic. Now, when someone died, once again whole communities would grieve, whole countries. A murder would become front page news once more.

  Payne sat in his pyjamas, feeding wood into the potbellied stove, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, listening to the patter of rain outside. It was times like this, in the deep, lonely reaches of the night, that he was best able to think.

  Colonel Bassett’s emergency council had confirmed Payne’s worst fears. Bluster and bullying was all very well in the barrack house, but it was fatal to a police investigation. With his checkpoints and house searches and random interrogations, Bassett was about as subtle as a drunken elephant.

  There was no arguing with the man, though. He’d had two full companies of men mobilised. They were sweeping the woods and countryside around the murder house, knocking on doors, waking Germans, watching roads and generally making a nuisance of themselves everywhere within a five-mile radius of Eichenrode. Tomorrow, they would be rounding up German civilians in order to question them.

  But that was beside the point. There was a killer on the loose, a man who killed to satisfy his own strange needs.

  Payne considered what he knew of the killer’s modus operandi.

  He kept trophies: that was the key. Not just the mask, but the suitcases and clothes, too. But why had the victims been carrying full suitcases in the first place? That was crucial to understanding what had taken place in the murder house.

  Payne thought about the Red Cross travel permits. The old woman in the house across the way had mentioned a lorry arriving and seeing people with suitcases. The victims must have been expecting to travel somewhere, somewhere beyond Europe most likely: that would explain why the killer was able to give them vaccination shots. The travel documents were the key, Payne realised. He needed to discover if Konrad Jaeger, a known war criminal, had also been travelling with Red Cross permits. And he needed to look into Suttpen’s disappearance as well, to determine whether the man had bolted or been silenced.

  Eventually Payne dozed in his chair. The sun woke him, creeping above the horizon, casting the bright, golden light that often follows a night of rain. A little after eight, a soldier knocked at the door with a message from Major Norris: Payne’s new tyres had arrived, sent straight from Army HQ.

  Miracles would never cease.

  Payne borrowed a jack from the army unit billeted across the way and changed the tyres. Then he drove out to the Red Cross transit camp.

  From a distance it looked a little like a military camp; up close, though, you started to notice the people were not soldiers.

  Some sat listlessly by the roadside; others wandered in the shade beneath the trees. There were men, young and old, and women of all ages. Children played on the dust esplanade at the centre of the camp, kicking stones. Everyone was dressed in a curious motley of garments. Some wore suits and shirts and long coats, while others still wore the striped pyjamas that they had been issued in the concentration camp. White DDT powder leaked from trouser legs and shirt sleeves as they walked. A Belgian nurse attended him when he arrived at the camp gates and offered to show him around. Payne said nothing about the travel documents found at the murder house. He wanted to find out how the camp was run before revealing his hand.

  ‘We’ve got all sorts here, Detective Inspector,’ the nurse said. ‘Armenians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Yugoslavs, Greeks, Ukrainians, Czechoslovaks. The first thing we do when they arrive is to register them. Then we classify them accord
ing to their pre-war nationality and sort out whether they are able to return to their own countries. We also check them for signs of disease and malnourishment. Then we try to find information on missing relatives. It’s all very complex and chaotic at the moment. I don’t think humanity has ever had to try and sort out a mess on this sort of scale before.’

  ‘What do you do after you register them?’

  ‘We shower them, dust them down with DDT and try to get them some decent clothing.’

  ‘What about travel permits? Who can get those?’

  ‘That depends on each case. Many of these people were brought to Germany against their will and don’t have any documentation. Others have only the identity papers given to them by the Nazis, which obviously no-one wants to use anymore.’

  ‘But when are these travel permits issued?’

  ‘We try to encourage people to stay put, simply to keep them off the roads. But obviously, people are looking for relatives, so when they’ve tried one camp, they head on to the next. And people of certain nationalities try to stay together. Certain camps get a reputation for having large populations of one ethnic group and then more of the same people arrive at them. They need some form of ID to get them past the checkpoints and across the new internal borders in Germany.’

  They were in the centre of the camp now. Here were neat rows of marquee tents distributing food and outdoor showers. Nurses and volunteers stood behind trestle tables upon which sat steaming vats of porridge.

  Payne paused as something caught his eye. Behind the tables, there was a pile of hessian sacks. Some bore the Red Cross symbol. Others had British Army markings. He walked closer and examined one of the sacks. It bore the markings of the Army depot in Eichenrode.

  ‘Do you know a man called Suttpen?’ Payne said. ‘Jacob Suttpen? He’s quartermaster sergeant here.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ the nurse said. ‘We get some of our supplies from him.’

  Payne nodded. He’d found his link between Suttpen and the camp. He needed to find the quartermaster sergeant. He was certain the man was at the centre of this whole business.