JERICHO
ROAD
A Nathan Hawk Mystery
Douglas Watkinson
COPYRIGHT
978-1-78003-850-6
© Douglas Watkinson 2017
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
www.douglaswatkinson.com
Cover design by Dunchan Clyde
~ Other titles in the Nathan Hawk series ~
HAGGARD HAWK
EASY PREY
SCATTERED REMAINS
EVIL TURN
For Ashton Orlando Kagayama
Dear Reader,
I was drawn into this case by my friend Doctor Laura Peterson who asked if I would help an elderly patient find his missing pocket watch! To this day I can’t believe I agreed to do it, but once committed I was morally obliged to see it through. It’s as well I did. What began as a petty theft soon showed all the signs of being a major crime.
Even so, I still wonder if my contribution did more harm than good. There was a crime to solve, certainly, but if I’d kept my nose out of it, if I hadn’t tried to play God once or twice, then at least one person involved might still be alive. On the other hand, a great many others might be dead...
Hawk
Before I was even born...
He didn’t realise it at the time, of course, but Finlay MacNair would dine out for the next fifty years on the events which took place in his small corner of the world on Wednesday the 23rd of May, 1945. He would embellish the facts for some, like his grandchildren, pull back on them for others, such as journalists, conscious that he’d signed what passed for The Official Secrets Act in an army barracks in Lüneburg, Germany, at the time.
He would always begin his recollection by referring to the season, a preamble which made most of his listeners roll their eyes, especially if they’d heard it all before. The burgeoning spring, just like the facts themselves, became more vivid, more fulsome as the years passed and the Lüneburg Forest was, at the last telling, alive with flowers and birds, its rich variety of trees heavily budded, ground level creatures were doing ... whatever ground level creatures do. It would have been an idyllic place to be, had it not been for the circumstances. Europe was coming to the end of a six year war. The Third Reich was collapsing, Hitler had shot himself a few weeks earlier, and allied forces were mopping up before dividing the spoils into roughly East and West.
Finlay had never had any real interest in the outcome of the war, or at least its finer details. Sure, he didn’t wanted Nazi Germany to rule in the Scottish lowlands, where he came from, but apart from that he’d only ever had one objective in mind during the four years he’d been a conscript in the Scottish Rifles. He never voiced it to his comrades, he never even mentioned it in letters to his mother, he simply took it for granted that he wasn’t alone in his desire. He wanted to stay alive and was prepared to go to pretty much any length to achieve that. He wasn’t a skiver, a layabout, a shirker, any of those lesser beings his parents once feared he might be. Nor was there anything of the conscientious objector about him. He simply felt there was more to life than laying down your own for King and country. He’d never met the one and was planning to leave the other in favour of Canada...
Since November ’41, when he was called up, his built-in caution had seen him through some pretty life-changing horrors, some of the more personal ones having taken place within the last few weeks, now that the war was drawing to a close. He’d lost a couple of good friends, whose exuberance at the prospect of returning home had made them careless. Sergeant John Crowe, who had spent his entire war safeguarding the lives of the young men in his squad, made the fatal mistake of stepping away from the cover of buildings in Bremervörde’s main street, whereupon he was shot dead by a sniper. Paul Dennis, who was just 18, was mown down by a Russian jeep, again an act of carelessness on Paul’s part. The Russian officer had stopped to assess the carnage and realised there was nothing he could do. He dragged the body into the gutter and drove on. Finlay didn’t blame him for his callous behaviour. War did that to you. The man probably thought, albeit in Russian, what was one more death on top of the rumoured 40 million all told? 40 million and rising, people said.
Finlay’s platoon had been sent to Lüneburg barracks to help guard German prisoners of war. It was an assignment that perfectly suited his plans to stay alive. The Jerries were as pig sick of fighting for a declining big idea, fascism, as Finlay was of defending an inoffensive one, freedom. Either way, they were all going home, it was just a matter of time.
Finlay had planned, loosely, the next six months of his life. He would return to the family farm, near Craigmalloch, and gradually work his parents round to the idea of him emigrating. It wouldn’t go down well and that was a shame, but he was determined. He was also intent on Mary Stewart. She had grown from being pretty to downright beautiful in his mind over the last four years and, if she was still available, he would at least give her the option of going to Canada with him. If she’d been taken, it was probably by an American. The US Airforce had been stationed nearby, he’d discovered, and he knew they were top heavy with cigarettes, nylons, perfume, money and patter. If Mary had fallen to one of them, no grudges, he would work his way down the school class register, in order of prettiness, and take it from there. But six months was the deadline he gave himself.
He wasn’t sure what tempted him and he always told the story with a degree of self-reproach to make it palatable. Perhaps it was a sense of revenge at John Crowe’s death or even the US Airforce thing. They had money, he didn’t have a bean. Reason aside, on the 21st of May, Finlay was part of a detail guarding the main gates, when three German soldiers were brought in. Their papers were placed under immediate scrutiny and, since they appeared to be in order, the men were thrown into the general mix. They were Wehrmacht soldiers, certainly, two of them with an almost copybook German bearing, tall, fair haired and clearly from the military. The third was a slighter man, clean shaven with a patch over one eye. His name was Hitzinger. Finlay thought it odd, but of no significance at the time, that other prisoners had his name and rank drummed into them by his two comrades from the moment they arrived. Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger.
It soon became apparent to those guarding him, Finlay included, that Hitzinger was something more than an average conscript. For a start he had a team of valets, dogsbodies and odd-job men. While Sergeant Hitzinger sat around all day, smoking, chatting, reminiscing, this bunch of lesser mortals attended to his every need.
Soon after his arrival, the very next afternoon in fact, Hitzinger tried to engage Finlay in conversation. His English was almost perfect and he began, in an offhand way, asking the young Scot about his war. Finlay was wary at first, but such was Hitzinger’s manner, authoritative, slightly overbearing but never impolite, that the two men were soon nattering away like old acquaintances catching up. What had his life been back in Scotland? Farming? Hitzinger had been a farmer too and was anxious to return to it now that spring was firing up the land around...
And then for no reason he could pin down, Finlay suddenly became uncomfortable, even a little afraid. He realised the idle chat he’d been having with Hitzinger was no such thing. He was being sounded out, steered towards an objective set by the prisoner. Hitzinger’s one good eye didn’t help matters. It had a transfixing effect, almost daring Finlay to look away
. This was a man, he reckoned as he reclaimed his nerve, who was a past master at interrogation, leading innocents in directions they didn’t wish to go.
Finlay cut the air to finish the conversation and turned to move on, but Hitzinger reached out and touched him on the arm. Finlay swung round, raising the Lanchester strung round his neck. Would Hitzinger turn out to be the first person he’d shot and killed in this war? Hitzinger raised his arms, smiled and stepped back, appealing to his two comrades for a similar attitude. They too found Finlay’s reaction slightly amusing.
“Are you on duty tonight?” Hitzinger asked.
Finlay answered him, even though he’d had no intention of doing so. “Tomorrow night.”
Hitzinger’s voice softened and he became quite the fellow traveller, a soldier in a jam, the only difference between the two of them being they were fighting on opposite sides.
“What would it take for you to leave a door or the shutters at a window unbarred?” Hitzinger asked, with his skewering look.
Finlay stared back at him, then down at his seated comrades. Who the hell were these three jokers?
“Doors are more expensive than windows,” he said. “Even then, there’s a small matter of the perimeter fence beyond.”
Hitzinger smiled again, as cold an expression of warmth as Finlay had ever seen.
“What for the package deal, as the Yanks call it?”
Finlay could never remember, in years to come, whether he actually said the following or imagined some of it, but he told listeners that his words were, “Wire cutters are out, pliers a possibility.”
Hitzinger shrugged his willingness to take whatever was on offer and reached into an inside pocket. He took out a full hunter, suspended on a chain with a lapel bar at the top end. Finlay laughed.
“I don’t need to know the time.”
Hitzinger offered him the watch, in its leather pouch. “Solid gold, 24 carat, the chain, the bar also. Worth more than you earn in a year. And British.”
He made the last point as a dig, a wry comment on Finlay’s reluctance to even hold it, as if fearful that it might explode in his face.
“Who did you steal it from?” he asked. “Some poor bastard on his way to a gas oven? A British Tommy whose luck had run out?”
Hitzinger was shaking his head. “I bought it in London, Hatton Garden, 1933.”
Finlay took the hunter, opened it and examined it. It was a truly beautiful object, a fine example of his fellow countrymen’s craftsmanship. He had even heard of the maker, Castleford & Bowen. He put it in his top pocket.
“I’ll see what I can arrange,” he said, and left.
He did absolutely nothing to further an escape attempt by Hitzinger and his sidekicks, of course, and kept the gold hunter hidden and protected in his own kit, tucked inside a child’s wooden clog he’d found in Holland somewhere and had been using as a good luck charm. His only concern was how to deal with Hitzinger the next time he bumped into him. No truck, he decided. Denial at every turn. What gold watch? What the hell was he talking about? Given the slightest chance, he would have shot Hitzinger where he stood.
His forward planning proved unnecessary. The following afternoon he was on guard duty, again covering the main gate. It was about three o’clock and considering the lull in the day Corporal Harry Meakin looked up at the cloudless sky and suggested to Finlay that he ‘nip and make a brew’. It was a trademark expression, but no sooner had Meakin uttered it than a kerfuffle broke out in a hut behind them, the one Hitzinger was held in. A young German prisoner, 20 years old at most, burst out of the door, followed by others, and ran across the parade ground. He was tearful with horror and broke his run to turn, still moving, and point back to where he’d come from.
“Himmler!” he shrieked to Finlay and Meakin. “Heinrich Himmler!”
Meakin called a handful of guards together, sent one of them for an officer, and approached the hut. He led the way in, followed by Finlay. They’d expected chaos, but found quite the opposite. An orderly silence and stillness prevailed, as much out of fear as anything else. Meakin sought out the German officer in charge who simply nodded down to where Hitzinger rose from a mocked up chair to confront his rank and file accusers. Meakin stared at him. Remove the eye-patch, he thought, replace it with rimless glasses, add a small, trim moustache and the young German’s shrieking made perfect sense.
A British officer arrived and was quickly brought up to speed. He approached Hitzinger and said,
“I believe the identity you’ve given us is false. You are not Heinrich Hitzinger, but Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer-SS.”
It was as bald and simple as that, according to Finlay. Himmler laughed in the officer’s face.
“And you are just a boy, captain,” he said. “Send for your commanding officer.”
As Meakin and Finlay went over to restrain him, one arm each, Himmler clapped a hand to his mouth, bit down and fell to the ground, saying only his name as if to introduce himself at the gates of hell. The smell of almonds, from the cyanide capsule he’d committed suicide with, put Finlay off nuts for the rest of his life, he maintained.
When it was established that the body was indeed that of Heinrich Himmler, Finlay was part of a detail charged with taking it into the Lüneburg Forest and burying it. There followed three days of bureaucratic shenanigans, signing of official documents to pledge his silence. The watch was never missed, never spoken of again and when Finlay was discharged, a few months later, he went home to Craigmalloch and his father’s farm.
He never did emigrate to Canada, but he did marry Mary Stewart.
- 1 -
“An old bonfire, smouldering away, chucking out smoke with no danger of it ever bursting into flames” was how my eldest daughter described my relationship with Dr Laura Peterson. The opinion was unasked for but freely given. Such a generous young woman, Fiona Hawk...
I like bonfires. I much prefer them to getting my fingers burned. Besides, in spite of our low key romance, Laura and I had something far more valuable at the heart of our friendship. We knew each other extremely well and I don’t just mean our likes and dislikes, or standpoints on certain issues, but the ... signs. I wish I could find a better word for it but one won't come. Some would describe it merely as body language, but there’s more to it than reading lip twitches or eye movement. I wouldn't go to the other extreme and call it a sixth sense. I don’t go in for all that airy-fairy stuff. How the hell did I get into this...?
Yes, I hadn't seen Laura for over a week. She'd been attending a medical conference in Southampton and this was the end of her first day back at work. And as she pedalled towards my house, still 200 yards away, the signs told me she had a tricky favour to ask.
“Surgery?” I said, when she reached me.
She’d just come from there, she said, and enquired after my own health before propping the bike against the big beech which gives my house its name. I told her I was well and I think we kissed briefly. Odd how just a few days of separation can cause awkwardness while each partner weighs up the other for signs of change.
"How was the conference?"
She nodded. “Useful." Meaning not very.
She followed me into the kitchen, stooped and made a fuss of the dog, then straightened up and looked around for signs of piggishness as she called it - dirty plates, piles of laundry, paw marks on the flagstones. The place was spotless thanks to a lady in the village who does a spot of cleaning for me.
“Jean Langan’s been?” Laura said.
“Just left. I’m surprised you didn’t mow her down.”
She still hadn’t sat down so I pulled out ‘her chair’ as it had come to be known by those who tried to sit in it. She dumped her carpet bag and jacket on it and went over to the sink, filled the new coffee maker and signalled for me to grind some beans.
“Start with the children,” she said, once the grinding had stopped. "All quiet on the western front?"
“Laura it's only been a week...”
“A week is a long time in domestic politics.”
She reached up to the beam above her and unhooked two mugs.
“Why don’t you just come out with it?” I said. She turned and looked at me. “Whatever it is you want me to do but feel reluctant to ask.”
She closed her eyes. “How do you do that?”
Thirty years of reading villains between the lines, is the answer. I stepped in close behind her and slipped my arms around her waist, hooking my thumbs between her stomach and the waistband of her jeans. As her skin began to twitch she said, without the slightest hint of ‘please do’ in her voice,
"Please don't. At least not right now. An old boy came to see me this morning. Tom Manners?”
She waited to see if I recognised the name. I knew it but couldn’t bring its owner to mind.
“Lives in Chearsley,” she went on. “A cottage overlooking the green called ‘Birds Eye View’, though God knows you can’t see anything from it. There’s a fifteen foot hedge all round the garden, that dreadful leylandii stuff.”
I lowered myself into Maggie’s Dad’s rocker, revered as a kind of totem pole in our family, a cue for fond memories, in spite of being one of the most uncomfortable chairs I’ve ever sat in.
“He came to see me last year, complaining of fading eyesight. I said cut that revolting hedge down and your eyesight will be restored. He was horrified. People will be able to see in, he said.” She shook her head slightly. “Sorry, I’m wandering. No I’m not, I’m wondering. Strange the difference a single vowel makes. Wander wonder...” She glanced across at the whisky bottle on the dresser. “Bells bills, liver lover...”
Jericho Road: A Nathan Hawk Mystery (The Nathan Hawk Mystery series Book 5) Page 1
