Payne indicated the list of addresses. ‘In that case, I think we should drive out to each of these properties and take a look at them.’
The requisitioned properties were all in secluded locations, well beyond the outskirts of the town. First on the list was the house by the Brunswick Road. The next two houses had been locked up. Payne pressed his hands to the windows at each of them, trying to see in.
‘For storerooms, they look mighty empty inside,’ he said.
Booth nodded. ‘‘It’s as I said before, Detective Inspector. The very idea of having army stores in such a secluded location – and unguarded – is ludicrous. I suppose Mr Lockwood had to put something down though, didn’t he?’
The fourth property was the furthest from the town, an isolated two storey farmhouse hidden behind a copse of silver birch. A wooden placard was nailed to a tree at the end of the driveway. It said, ‘DANGER, TYPHUS’, in English, German, French and Polish. Similar messages had been daubed across the exterior walls of the house, and the windows and doors in the lower storey had been boarded shut.
‘We must have made a mistake,’ Booth said, indicating the signs. ‘No-one’s been here for weeks.’
Payne said nothing. He began checking the boards on the windows one by one, to see if any were loose, but they were all firmly nailed shut.
Booth was looking at the warnings daubed on the walls. ‘That message about typhus could be genuine, you know.’
‘I’m willing to take the risk and enter if it means we’ll get some idea of where Suttpen has gone. He’s the key to all of this,’ Payne said, walking round to the back of the house. The windows and doors were boarded up here, too. Payne stood with his hands in his pockets, looking up at the second storey windows. They were free of boards but they were all fastened shut; the glass in all of the windows was intact.
Booth lit a cigarette. He was thinking aloud. ‘As we know that Suttpen was able to get houses requisitioned on the sly, I suppose it’s possible he might also have had entrées into other bureaucratic channels.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m thinking about the travel documents we found in the suitcases. Supposing they are false, they would had to have come from somewhere, wouldn’t they? Do you think Suttpen might have had something to do with it?’
‘It’s possible,’ Payne said, as he completed his circuit of the house. ‘It’ll certainly be one of the first questions I ask him. I know he was supplying the Red Cross with army foodstuffs, which means he had a few favours to call in. And there’s definitely a market for false travel documents. Mr Suttpen doesn’t seem a man that would pass up on a good business opportunity.’
‘But how does that tie in with these people being killed? Who would go to the trouble of obtaining these travel documents if they just wanted to kill the people for whom they were intended?’
Payne shrugged. ‘I admit that part of the equation doesn’t add up.’
They had reached the far side of the house now. The door here was boarded up. Then Payne saw other doors close to the ground.
He pulled the doors open, revealing a short metal chute leading down into darkness. The chute was black with coal dust but scuff marks were clearly visible on its surface. Payne knelt to examine it. It was wide and high enough for a man to slide down and a rope had been tied to the top of the chute. He thought about the first time he’d seen Suttpen and the black marks on the seat of his trousers. This must have been how he’d got in and out.
With only a brief moment’s hesitation, Payne climbed inside the chute and slid down it.
He found himself inside a small, square chamber. Payne crossed the room, climbed the stairs on the far side of it and tried the handle on the door. It was not locked.
The door opened into the kitchen. Payne pushed it open a crack and looked inside. Gloomy daylight filtered through the boards on the windows. Payne sniffed the air. It was rank with the smell of death. He covered his mouth with his handkerchief.
‘Lord, what’s that smell?’ Booth said when he also came down the chute but then relapsed into silence: he already knew the answer.
As they climbed the steps to the upper storey the low buzz of flies became audible, the smell stronger.
They found Suttpen on the floor of the front bedroom, lying at the centre of a huge pool of dried blood, his throat cut wide open. Payne shone his torch on Suttpen’s face. The skin was marbled blue with decay.
‘How long has he been dead?’ Booth said.
‘It’s difficult to say. I’d guess at least a day.’
‘Why was he killed?’
‘That’s the real question, isn’t it? We know Lockwood procured these requisitioned properties and we know Suttpen was involved. Why did they want these houses in the first place? And for whom did they want them?’
Booth began searching the other rooms while Payne examined Suttpen’s pockets. They were completely empty.
‘Have you found something?’ Payne called, when he heard Booth swearing in the other room.
‘You’d better see this, Detective Inspector. Whatever the murderer’s motive was,’ he added, when Payne entered the bedroom, ‘I think we can rule out robbery.’
Booth gestured towards a hole in the floor on the far side of the room where two of the boards had been prised up. Payne shone his torch at the hole. The light reflected on jewelled surfaces and brightly shining metals.
‘Lord, look at this,’ Booth said, kneeling beside the hole and holding up an ornate silver plate. ‘This must have come from a church.’
They levered up a third floorboard and found rolls of canvas. The tattered edges suggested that they were paintings that had been torn from their frames. Booth unrolled one of the canvases and revealed a portrait of a nobleman in doublet and breastplate. ‘This must be hundreds of years old. Where the hell did Suttpen get all of this stuff?’
‘You told me Suttpen had been looting right across Germany.’
‘Yes, but we’ve never came across anything like this before. Look at this stuff. This must have come from a cathedral or a museum,’ Booth said, fishing out an ornate candle snuffer.
‘It doesn’t look German, either, does it?’ Payne said, examining a square religious icon. Cyrillic lettering was imprinted in the silver lametta that covered its edges. There were more icons among the booty and an ornate Bible written in a language that he thought was probably Polish.
They took Suttpen’s loot and loaded it into the boot of Payne’s utility. Booth said he knew of a unit that was specifically charged with tracking down cultural items looted by the Nazis and returning them to their rightful owners. They would take care of any objects handed over to them.
They left Suttpen’s body where it was. When they returned to the town Payne and Booth drove to the RAMC barracks and arranged for it to be collected by an ambulance.
‘I don’t think Suttpen did loot all that stuff,’ Booth said as they drove back towards his billet. ‘I think that stuff was looted by the Germans when they reached the east.’
Payne nodded. ‘If Suttpen was involved in helping get war criminals out of Germany, the loot could have been part of his payment.’
‘But why were these people killed?’
Payne shrugged. ‘At least we have a good idea how they were killed. They had suitcases and travel documents. They clearly expected to go somewhere. However, at some point in the proceedings they were given a vaccination which contained a barbiturate. Then they were strangled.’
‘Well, I’ve heard about these organisations that are supposedly helping Germans to escape the country. Ratlines, some of the chaps are calling them.’
‘Except that if we’re correct about this, it’s not a ratline that’s operating here,’ Payne said. ‘It’s a rat trap.’
8
THE FIRST THING Johannes told Ilse to do was meet a man named Euge
n. Johannes said he’d already contacted the man through a go-between, a young boy from the town, but that Ilse would have to take over negotiations for the travel permits now.
After she had agreed to do as he asked Ilse made Johannes leave the house and promise not to come back until evening. Piotr would be there soon and she couldn’t risk his seeing Johannes. And she needed time to dig up the box.
When she told Johannes to leave he gave her that sardonic smile of his and picked up his gunney sack and sauntered out of the house and away across the fields towards the copse of trees that stood beside the stream.
When he had disappeared from view, she took the shovel and dug the metal box up. She carried it through to the kitchen table and removed from it the money and the jewellery. She took half the money and hid it inside one of the cracks in the wall. The other half she stuffed inside her knickers. Then she headed towards the town.
There were more checkpoints on the roads than usual. The Tommy soldiers were more suspicious than she’d experienced before: enough to make Ilse wonder what on earth was going on. She made sure she took her accustomed route into town, the way that she walked when she was going to the transit camp. The soldiers on the checkpoints knew her and once they’d looked at her papers they simply waved her through. As she walked along the road she saw lorries rumbling past filled with German prisoners.
Johannes said he had arranged to meet Eugen in the centre of the town at 10 o’clock. Ilse arrived fifteen minutes earlier and waited in the agreed place, hovering in the queue by the standpipe.
She recognised the man long before he sidled over to her. He was a small ferrety-looking fellow who was loitering in the shadows of a ruined building and observing the queue with sharp eyes. When their eyes met, the man nodded and walked around the perimeter of the square, twice. Finally, he walked towards the queue, passed close to Ilse and whispered, ‘This way.’
Ilse followed him out of the square, through the ruins of a building and on to a café, one of the few in the town that was still open for business. Eugen led her to a booth at the back of the café.
She recognised him, Ilse realised when they sat down and she had the chance to look at him properly. His name wasn’t Eugen. He was one of the doctors from the town that was collaborating with the Tommies. What was his real name? Seiler, that was it, Doctor Seiler.
Seiler sat with the fingers of his small hands folded into each other. As he spoke, his thumbs beat together. His attitude was all mock civility and regret but his eyes glittered greedily.
‘How many are you?’ he said.
‘Two. Myself and a man.’
‘And where do you want to go?’
‘To Spain.’
Seiler hissed. ‘That means travelling through France. You will not find many friends along that road. It is far safer to head south, through Bavaria and on into Austria and Italy. There are people along that route sympathetic to Germans. But the route you choose . . .’ He hissed again and shook his head.
‘Are you saying it is impossible?’
‘No, of course not. Anything is possible. For the right price. Regrettably, though, there has been a change of circumstance since last I communicated with your friend,’ he said. ‘Just as the transport of certain goods requires greater precautions – and a corresponding increase in cost – the same is true of our little network. I’m afraid things have become very complicated in the last few days. The British are watching the roads. And for that we must ask more.’
‘How much more?’
‘The price will now be two thousand American dollars. Per person. Plus another thousand for sundry expenses.’
Ilse swallowed. Five thousand? That was more than half she had.
‘And what does that price include?’
‘Everything. Documentation. Road transport to within a few miles of the German border. Vaccinations.’
‘Vaccinations?’
‘If you plan to travel abroad it is advisable. Certain diseases long since controlled in Europe are still rampant in South America. Plus, given the current state of the world, infection is a constant danger. Look what happened after the Great War: the Spanish influenza ravaged the continent.’
‘Five thousand dollars seems an exorbitant price.’
‘Please understand that I am a mere go-between. It is an associate of mine that actually runs the network, so there is no point in trying to haggle with me. And if his price seems expensive, you are welcome to shop around.’
Seiler stood to leave. Ilse put a hand on his arm.
‘Don’t be hasty, sir,’ she said, ‘I was merely checking.’
Seiler smiled and sat back down.
‘A wise decision, Fräulein.’
‘When do we pay?’
‘I want three thousand now. The other two thousand you will pay when my associate collects you.’
Ilse went into the toilet and counted the money out, then returned to their table and slid the money to Seiler under her hand. Seiler counted the money beneath the tabletop, folded the bills and popped them into his top pocket.
He said he could have the travel documents ready for the next evening but that he would need photographs. Johannes already had four passport-sized photos, but Ilse had used all hers when she’d had Ursula’s documents changed. Seiler said he could get her some for one hundred dollars and told her to meet him that evening at a property on the outskirts of the town.
Ilse went home and sat beside the fire, watching the clock. At six, she left to meet Seiler again. She had thought about reburying the box, but decided simply to carry what remained of her stash with her. It was the only way she could be sure it was safe.
As she walked across the fields behind her house, she fancied she saw someone moving among the trees opposite. She called out Johannes’s name, but there was no answer. It was so gloomy beneath the trees that she got nothing more than a glimpse, but nevertheless she drew her scarf tight around her head and hurried across the fields.
Seiler was waiting for her outside the house he had named, tapping his watch. He took her into an outhouse. A white sheet had been hung from the wall. A stool was placed before it and a box camera stood on a tripod. Seiler took the photos using an old camera and a magnesium flash, then hurried her back outside. The flash made dots swim before Ilse’s eyes.
‘What happens now?’ she said.
Seiler handed her a piece of paper and a key. ‘You must go to this address tomorrow evening. There is a door at the back of the house that leads into a cellar. Wait there. My associate will come to meet you, bringing your travel documents. He will also vaccinate you. Then he will drive you to your destination. You should pack a single suitcase each.’
It was dark when she began to walk home. The Tommies were patrolling the main roads with jeeps and lorries, so she took the back roads home, smoking a cigarette as she walked.
It was over. She was going. There was no alternative. She had already parted with more than half her money.
A twig cracked somewhere in the darkness. Ilse quickened her step, looking behind her as she walked through the gloom.
She didn’t see the men until it was too late. They emerged from the trees and surrounded her before she’d even realised they were there, four of them, all raggedly dressed.
‘Who are you? What do you want?’ Ilse said in English, although she already knew the answer as the men grinned and fanned out around her. There was no mistaking the hungry malice in their eyes. They wanted her bag. Then they would beat her. After that, who knew what they might do?
Ilse moved backwards a few steps as the men advanced, seeking the moment to strike. She picked up a thick stick from the ground and waved it at one of them, but the man to her right side stepped forward and punched her hard on the side of the head. The blow sent her tumbling to the ground and made her ears ring.
All four of the men
leapt forward, shouting in a foreign language. Ilse kicked out as one tried to pull the bag away from her and another began to paw at her legs. She felt a hand go up her skirt. One of the men laughed. Ilse could smell his foul breath.
She was now lying on the ground and still trying to keep hold of her bag when she saw a shadow sweep in from the right, coming silently and swiftly towards the men from behind.
Two of them fell in an instant as a blade rose, glinting in the moonlight. Then the shadow struck at the third man and there was a horrid cracking noise as the man fell back, screaming and gurgling. The fourth man tried to run as the sinister new presence turned and threw something. The man fell to the ground.
The clouds moved and Ilse saw that it was her brother pulling his hunter’s knife from the man’s back. The third man lay writhing on the ground, clutching at his face, sobbing and gurgling. Johannes Drechsler strode up to him, raised his boot and twice stamped the heel of it on the man’s throat. There was a horrible silence.
‘Get up,’ he said, staring at Ilse, his expression unnaturally composed.
‘Thank God you were following me,’ said Ilse, panting.
‘I wasn’t following you. I was following our money. Now help me get this shit off the road,’ Johannes said, grabbing the ankles of a corpse and dragging it towards the bushes.
Ilse and Johannes returned to the house. It was now completely dark. Ilse was trembling. Despite all those years of war and all those millions of deaths, she’d never before actually seen anyone killed.
Johannes took bread from the pantry and ate in silence. Afterwards, he lit a cigarette.
‘What?’ he sneered across the table when Ilse’s gaze fell upon a red stain on the outside of the cigarette packet.
‘Did you take that from one of the dead men?’
‘They’re fuck all use to him, now, aren’t they?’ Johannes said. Then he laughed mirthlessly. ‘Why do you look so shocked, sister? What was it you thought I was doing all those years in the east? Learning to play the balalaika?’
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