by Hylton Smith
Proudfoot’s brow furrowed. ‘Good.’ thought Bella, ‘he doesn’t know what to do’. She decided she’d have to lead him by the nose.
“Good God man, what use would the Home Guard be if we had been invaded, when you can’t deal with a simple decision like this? It’s a football I’m talking about, not spying and secret agents. I only told you out of courtesy, but you’ll have to tell me if there’s a problem or I’ll go higher up the Home Guard Command.”
“No, err no, no it should be ok, in fact it’s better that we don’t bother anyone else with this.”
“Yes, but I have told you about it, and my friend Polly here is a witness, so you can’t deny it.”
“Well, as you said, it was accidently kicked over the fence and you don’t want it back, so that’s the end of it.”
Bella looked at Polly and rolled her eyes. “God help us if we ever do have to depend on these geriatric paper pushers for anything important.”
A couple of days later she took Harry to see the men again. They were all engaged in what she thought to be a friendly football match, but to Bella’s amazement, the continual shouting and ferocity of each tackle conveyed a weird kind of fear, emotionally almost on a par with being free again.
When one of them spotted Harry, he called to the others and all of this tension evaporated, the game was paused. They came to the fence, every one of them had a beaming smile for the little English boy who’d given them a kind of cohesive activity for the first time in this wretched camp. Gunther came to the fore. “Yes, hello, we are pleasing to see you, we are hoping that we will keep the ball some days more. Do you not want this?”
Bella smiled and lifted Harry up into her arms.
“It’s yours now. My grandson Harry says it’s a present to you all.”
“Oh, wunderbar! I am sorry, I mean this is very kind in him. As you see, it helps us to pass the time. We all love him, is this ok to say?”
Bella replied after clearing the frog in her throat.
“Of course, he thinks of you as his friends. He has also come to give the disc back to Karl, where is he?”
“We don’t know,” said Gunther, “he has, how to say it, left us.”
“You mean he has been sent home?”
“No, not home. He is not now in the camp, but the commandant will be looking for him. Ah, now I have the word - he escapes.”
“My God,” muttered Bella, “well, we brought the disc with us and it’s now even more important that we give it back, will you take it?”
Gunther nodded and she threw it over the fence. As it made its way through the air, Harry’s vision clicked into slow motion, each turn of the disc seemed to flash the sun’s reflection, like Morse code, with the potential of revealing secret stories. He wondered if the present he was about to receive could possibly be more exciting than the dog tag of the missing man named Karl.
Harry was having second thoughts about the swap. He wandered along the fence looking for Karl. Gunther picked up the disc and Bella decided not to ask for a replacement gift.
Harry was crestfallen. That is until his grandma told a little fib.
“The men wanted to buy you something because they have nothing anywhere near as exciting as the disc. They asked me to take you to Newcastle and look in all of the toy shops to see if there’s anything you would like. Isn’t that nice of them?”
Harry had only heard of Newcastle, he’d never been there, but he had seen pictures and it fascinated him. All those people, the riverboats, bridges and trains. His little facial expression turned from morose to one of nascent anticipation.
“When are we going Grandma? Today? Are we going on the bus? I need to have a Wee-Wee now.”
A long day in the city wasn’t going to be a wasted day, even though Bella could hardly spare the time. Anyway, the break would do her good, and she couldn’t get the news about Karl’s disappearance out of her mind. She decided to pretend she didn’t know about it, surely the news would break soon and she would look suitably horrified.
The bus journey to the city was an adventure for Harry but the shopping proved to be more expensive than anticipated. The new football and boots took all she could spare and Harry was so impatient to try them out that he temporarily forgot about everything else. He dragged Bella back to the bus station. She put it down to visiting the riverside for an hour, and it not having lived up to his expectations. She was relieved that the present from the men could wait for another day.
When news of the escape became official news it gathered pace like a prairie fire. The little village was locked in indecision. The Home Guard wanted volunteers to conduct a search, but feared it could turn into a lynch mob. Some of the women embroidered the gossip, to liken it to a hunt for a murderer. A curfew was suggested and rejected. The local constable was finally asked to request reinforcements to assist the Home Guard.
It didn’t however stop a growing band of vigilantes conducting their own search. Families began to take sides over the issue. But at least nobody had yet asked about the disc. Bella felt it was only a matter of time before one of Harry’s classmates spilled the beans, and then their parents would take a serious interest in his temporary guardianship of a German identity badge. The waiting was unsettling.
Chapter 8
Hexham, Northumberland
Frank Reichert had prepared the letter to the Abwehr for the appropriately ranked police officer to sign. Maggie read it through and queried his decision one last time. It asked only about the dog tag from the coke works.
“Dad, are you absolutely certain that you want to do this? We all understand how difficult it must be for you.”
“Yes, we’ve been through this already, Maggie, that’s why I’ve drafted this for the police to sign and send to the Abwehr archive. For now at least, I’ve decided to listen to your advice and keep my name out of it, but if your boss allows me to help in drafting any further correspondence, I might be able to judge if I stand any chance of extracting information about my father’s unit.”
“Ok, I’d better get this to D.I. Black, as he wants to justify additional resourcing for this case. Thanks for this, Dad.”
*
Alnmouth, Northumberland
Black eventually succeeded in running Eric Paisley to ground, and showed up at his house in the northeast coastal village of Alnmouth. He was patently annoyed at the police arriving unannounced, something which Black had gambled upon, hence justifying his decision to be accompanied by Freda Collins. She wasn’t often out of her personal, ergonomically-designed office chair, never mind being out of the station.
“If we may come in, Mr Paisley, we can get this over quickly, this is D.C. Collins, and we just need to ask a few routine questions. I must say your ex-colleague Neville Travers has been very helpful, I hope that you can assist us in the same way.”
Paisley, the ex-operations director of the coke works was far braver on the telephone than he was face-to-face. He looked distinctly flustered at the mention of Travers’ cooperation with the police.
“Very well, come in. I have a dental appointment, so I must leave in good time.”
“Excellent,” bluffed Black, “Freda will take notes. We really appreciate you giving up your time to help us, and we don’t want to have to trouble you again. There is some general stuff we would like verification of and one specific item we hope you may be able to shed light upon.”
Freda took out her notepad and maintained an extremely severe facial expression, contrasting well with Black’s affable demeanour. Every word, no matter by whom it was spoken, was recorded, beginning with Paisley’s invitation to sit.
Both police officers were struck by the space and décor of the house. High, corniced ceilings complemented an eclectic mix of antique and modern designer furnishings.
They were seated at present in the family room, which was at least twenty feet square, and it seemed odd because he had no family – they’d checked him out before confronting him. These obs
ervations didn’t match their mental picture of Paisley from the previous phone call. Black had imagined from his telephone voice that he would be a towering heavyweight – not so, more akin to a whiskered rodent. Being so diminutive made the abundance of space seem even more bizarre.
Black spread the plan of the old site next to the one of the post-demolition phase, and then arranged the recently taken photographs of the landslip.
“We have two people who have independently stated that the landslip occurred on the original site of the engineering office. Does this make sense to you?”
Paisley studied the display and saw Freda write something down before he’d uttered a single word.
“Yes, as near as I can tell, without seeing the site itself.”
“And would you be willing to do so Mr Paisley?”
“Of course.” Black was pleased – his tactics seemed to be working.
“That’s very kind of you, sir, tomorrow would be a good time for us, unless you’d like to come after your dental appointment?”
“That’s completely out of the…. Well, perhaps I can rearrange things for tomorrow.”
“Good,” whispered Black, nodding to Collins, before moving on to the next question. “Do you remember exactly when the concrete for the foundation of this office block was started, and how long it took to complete?”
“Oh, well I wasn’t actually working at the plant then, I was brought in to manage Winlaton Mill after a series of mine closures in Yorkshire, all of them were small uneconomic seams. That was in the late seventies. However, there will be records of the foundations being laid. Maybe I can lay my hands on them by asking someone at what was the Northern Mining Federation, they should still have records from which we can retrieve this information, and I still have friends who worked there.
“You have to appreciate, Inspector, that the entire coal industry was nationalised in 1947, so the records may be archived within either the National Coal Board itself, or the defunct Northern Mining Federation. If truth be known, it became official in 1947, but the actual process and the registered name change took at least a couple of years. I’ll make the call when I return from the dentist, and either ring you or bring the exact date with me tomorrow.”
“Wonderful,” enthused Black, as he smiled at Collins, who’d been instructed not to show any emotion whatsoever, “that really would help, and we don’t need to bring up the other points at this stage if you can furnish that date for us.”
This about-face perturbed Paisley somewhat, but before he could relax in the belief that the interview was over, Black threw the dog tag on to the site plan and startled his quarry.
“What do you make of this?”
Paisley couldn’t recall whether or not Black had mentioned this when they had their abortive telephone call, just after the skeleton was discovered. His brow furrowed, he started to say something and then shook his head.
“No, I’m afraid I can’t help you. Where precisely did you find it?”
“That’s not important if you don’t know what it is. We thought it might have something to do with your production at the plant.”
“Well, I can definitely rule that out, because the rail trucks, or wagons as we called them, had open tops and travelled in all weathers, so we used a system of permanent marking of each truck.
“Then the shipment paperwork itemised what was in each of them. One for the customer and one for our records and invoicing department. I can’t even begin to imagine what that object could be.”
“Fine, well that’s us done for now. See you tomorrow.”
*
On the way back they stopped at a roadside coffee shop and mulled over what they’d each made of Paisley’s body language and the opulence of his mansion, which didn’t have the slightest hint of anyone else living there. Maybe he had a cleaner, or a maid, or both. The place was scrupulously clean and tidy, perhaps indicating obsessive compulsive tendency. Freda Collins thought he was even slimier than he was on the phone, and wondered if he had something to hide. Black was more intrigued by his reaction when the Luftwaffe disc was suddenly and demandingly thrown on to the table.
“I got the feeling he was lying when he said he had no idea what it was. I’d like to know what he was going to say before he changed his mind. We’ll have another go at him tomorrow, Freda.”
“Not out of the office two days running!”
“Don’t worry, this isn’t the favour you think you are going to collect for getting my tyre repaired. Now, I’m going to the gents, there’s a phone box over there, can you contact the office to see if Moss has signed off the letter to this German secret service organisation?”
“Yes sir! Then do I get a pee break too?”
“As long as it isn’t more than ten times longer than mine.”
When he exited the men’s room Freda had one of those looks on her face.
“Moss has not signed the letter and apparently wants to discuss it with you. The switchboard also said you were called by a Sophie Redwood, some journalist who wants to talk about the skeleton. Somebody must have blabbed.”
“It was bound to happen, it could have been anyone, the whole village must know by now. The security guys will have seen to that. You’re using up your comfort break talking to me, come on, Freda. Let’s get a move on.”
Black pondered why Moss had specifically left a message - that he hadn’t signed Frank Reichert’s draft letter. It was out of character, he would normally have sat on it, milking the frustration of the applicant, and only then asking for more justification.
A thought flashed into his mind. This journalist, who had tried to contact him, could have been referred to Moss. If that was true, it would probably mean there would be problems ahead. He sensed some kind of interference, the kind which Moss would not dispute. Finally, Freda emerged from the restroom with the good news that she’d decided what favour she would be happy to call on for getting his tyre fixed.
“Don’t go there just yet, D.C. Collins, I want to keep that surprise for a really good day. I need to clear my head before I see Moss. Let’s go.”
On their return journey, the sky became threatening once more, adding to his pensive mood. He broke the silence by telling Freda to ask forensics about the ring which Constance had rescued from the mud-cemented fabrics.
“Ask them when they can release the ring we found, so you can check around the local jewellers to see if there are any marks which can tell us where it was made. It could have been purchased in Germany if it has been under the concrete with the bones since 1945.”
“Another line of investigation out of the office, wow!”
Her cynicism reminded him he’d also promised Connie some ‘reward’ for such diligence in finding the ring. He had to stop these throwaway gestures, or he could expect his soaring reputation to suffer.
*
Newcastle C.I.D.
Black’s apprehension was justified. He could see Moss having a heated discussion in his office with two people he didn’t recognise. He glanced at Freda, who shrugged her shoulders and said she would make some strong coffee. One of the junior C.I.D. trainees nervously thrust a note into Black’s left hand, as his other was still grasping his case file. It was disturbing in its brevity.
‘Can’t sign off on this letter. Instructions from above.’
He tapped on the door and was beckoned to enter.
“This is D.I. Black. Inspector, can I introduce Charles Stone and Marion Wentworth?” said Moss, seemingly uncomfortable with their presence. “I’ll let them brief you on what happens next.” He left the office.
It was Stone who delivered the speech while Wentworth watched every aspect of Black’s reaction.
“It’s more a case of what doesn’t happen next, Inspector. We don’t like this any more than you do, but that isn’t going to change much with respect to how we must proceed.
“First, we need the complete case file on this skeleton you found. We aren’t at liberty
to discuss the content until both Marion and I have read the entire file. The reason for this is somewhat obscure at present and is likely to become convoluted at best.
“My remit is with MI5, and Marion represents MI6. I’m sure you will therefore realise I report to the Home Secretary, whereas Miss Wentworth functions under the guidance of the Foreign Secretary. As I explained to your superior, there’s to be no concessions, we won’t interfere in the detail, but we must oversee the case. Presumably he’s gone to make phone calls which will confirm what I’ve just said. I’m sorry about the abruptness of all this, and I’m sure we’ll get along just fine once we’ve established the next step.”
Marion Wentworth had still not spoken or smiled. Her poker face was lined with years of experience, she was impeccably dressed and looked distinctly undernourished. Black estimated that she looked about fifty, but was possibly younger than that. The severe containment of her ash-coloured hair in such a tight bun reminded him of an old school mistress.
Charles Stone, in contrast, seemed to like hearing the sound of his own voice. He was a little overweight, prematurely bald, possibly in his early thirties, and had overdone the antiperspirant. Black decided to say nothing at all until Moss returned. As he glanced through the window at his own office, he noticed the case file was gone from the top of his desk, presumably taken by his boss.
Chapter 9
High Spen 1945
The hunt for Karl, the German airman, was in full swing, and by disparate groups with different objectives. The news that Harry had possession of the dog tag, even for a few days, had surfaced from his school friends, despite him swearing them to keep his secret. Bella felt there might be trouble ahead. The official search by the police-bolstered Home Guard was purely and simply to return Karl to the camp. Whether or not he had been able to hear about the commencement of repatriation procedures, was a moot point.
