Big Ben rang out across the night sky, and told Rossett it was two thirty in the morning.
Another day down.
Another one on the horizon to get through.
The streets were empty except for the sound of distant traffic. He turned into the road where he was renting his latest room and stopped for a moment to stroke a tortoiseshell cat that was sitting on a wall.
The cat dug its head into the palm of his hand. It danced on tiptoes and twisted its body as it closed its eyes and pushed harder. Its fur was smooth and damp with dew. Rossett started walking again, checking over his shoulder to see if the cat was going to follow him.
It didn’t.
It sat on the wall, golden eyes watching him walk away. Another lonely soul that didn’t want to form a bond, for fear of being let down by life again.
His alarm clock went off at 6:30 a.m.
He knocked it off the table and it continued ringing and rattling on the floorboards, spiteful in its rejection. The bells finally petered out and Rossett rolled onto his back, shielding his eyes with his hand.
He groaned. It was still dark. There was only a hint of yellow light from the streetlamp outside his window. He got out of bed and waited for a thirty-second coughing fit to pass. His body ached, his head ached, and his stomach ached. He stared at the rung-out clock on the floor at his feet, listening to its quick tick echo off the wooden boards.
The view out the window wasn’t much, just the streetlamp, his old battered Austin Seven car, and a terrace of sooty brown houses staring back like a solid wall of misery through the early-morning fog.
He crossed to the sink, flicked on the light that was hanging over it, and stared at the fresh bruises on his chest and arms from the fight the day before.
He remembered Hall.
He turned on the tap, and the pipe in the wall rattled with a choking airlock before coughing some water into the sink. He drank from his hand and spat before staring into the mirror again.
Hall had had to die.
Rossett had had no choice.
Kill or be killed.
Rossett filled the dented metal kettle and dropped it onto the two-ring stove in the corner of the room. As the stove hissed some warmth into the bedsit, he did some push-ups to get some heat into his body and some ache out of his muscles.
By the time the kettle had boiled he was blowing hard, lying on his back on the floor staring at the stained ceiling. He was slowing down, he knew it. A life of drinking and smoking, coupled with old wounds, was working against him now. The shootings, the stabbings, the scars on his back and on his front made him feel like he was wading through water.
He wondered when he would be swept away.
The top deck of the bus was empty except for two office cleaning women on their way to work. They didn’t stop talking from Battersea to Vauxhall Bridge, where they got off, their wide backsides bouncing off alternate seats as they headed for the stairs. When they were gone Rossett sat in silence, gently rocking his way to Scotland Yard as the bus rattled down the early-morning streets.
At Scotland Yard he sat alone in the canteen. He drank another cup of tea and pushed the cooked breakfast he had ordered around the plate. He finally settled on hiding the food under a piece of toast, same as he always did, and slid the plate away across the empty table.
The canteen was filling up with early-rising and late-to-bed coppers. Some chatted, some sat alone, but none of them acknowledged him.
Rossett looked at the Rolex and then up at Harding, the admin sergeant who telephoned him once a week to complain about his poor paperwork skills. Rossett had gotten good at avoiding Harding, but obviously not good enough.
“Sergeant.”
It was the best Rossett could manage as a greeting.
“Sir.”
“What?” Rossett asked, even though he knew what was coming next.
“Sir, this is very difficult for me.”
“Say what you’ve got to say.” Rossett tried to sound friendly, failed, and realized it was something he should maybe work on.
“Sir . . . your paperwork. It is late and it is causing a backlog.”
“I know.”
“You’re a month behind.”
“I know.”
“I’m under a lot of pressure, sir.” Harding wrung his hands together as Rossett sipped his tea, all the while staring over the top of the cup. “I know you don’t want to be dealing with admin, sir. I know it isn’t what you . . .” Harding glanced around. “It isn’t what you are good at, I know that.” Harding dropped his voice and bent forward a little at the waist. “I respect you, sir, despite what people say. I genuinely respect you. Maybe I can help you?”
“What people say?”
Harding held up a hand.
“I didn’t mean to . . .”
Neumann appeared next to Harding, who looked ready to kiss him for helping him out of the hole he had just dug for himself.
“Good morning,” Neumann said in his excellent English.
Rossett held up a hand to cut Neumann off so he could continue interrogating Harding. “What do people say?”
“They don’t say anything, sir.”
“What?” Neumann looked confused.
Rossett held up his hand again. “You said—”
“I didn’t mean anything, sir. I only wanted to—”
“What did he say?” Neumann again.
“I didn’t, sir.” Harding looked like he was going to faint. “I just wanted to know about the paperwork.”
“Paperwork?” Neumann smiled.
“Please?” Rossett looked at Neumann and then back at Harding. “You said ‘despite what people say.’ What did you mean?”
“Please, sir, I just wanted—”
“Have you seen the paperwork on his desk?” Neumann flicked a thumb toward Rossett. “You’d be better off with a box of matches than a filing system.”
Harding forced a smile and took a step back from the table. “I’d better be leaving.”
“What did you mean?”
“I really must be getting on.” Harding nodded at Neumann and headed for the door almost at a run.
Rossett watched him go as Neumann pulled out a chair and sat down opposite Rossett.
“Friend of yours?” he said as he inspected what was left on Rossett’s plate.
“No.”
“Colleague?”
“No.”
Neumann looked up from the plate.
“You’re not hungry?”
“No.”
Neumann smiled.
“So have you given it some thought?”
“What?”
“About working with me.”
Rossett stared at Neumann, then at the door through which Harding had run.
“How much paperwork is there?”
“I don’t know . . . I have a secretary, so not much, I suppose.”
Rossett paused before answering. “I’ll work with you.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“Good, because we’ve just got our first job together.”
“Already?”
“Already.”
“I’ll need to give some notice, tidy stuff up admin-wise before—”
“You don’t. You’re coming with me.”
Rossett tilted his head.
“I made a call yesterday. It mustn’t have trickled down to your friend yet.” Neumann waved in the direction of the exit.
“But I hadn’t decided what I was going to do.”
“No, but I knew which way you would go.”
“You knew?”
“I’m a good judge of people.”
They stared at each other over the table for a moment until Rossett finally spoke again.
“So anything I have outstanding?”
“My department will make it go away.”
“I’ve a prisoner in the cells, from yesterday.”
“Poof.” Neumann looked u
p at the ceiling as he blew out his cheeks, and then smiled at Rossett. “He just went away.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Rossett considered his options. It didn’t take long.
“So what’s the job?”
Neumann smiled.
“We’ve got a dead consul in Liverpool.”
“Liverpool?”
“Up north, you know it?”
“Yes, I know it, I just didn’t expect to be dealing with jobs up there.”
“We go where the work is. Besides, the change will do you good.”
Rossett found it hard to argue with that, so instead he asked for more detail.
“Dead diplomat?”
“Consul. American. Report says he was shot by a captain from the SS.”
“What for?”
“That’s what we are going to investigate.”
“What else do we know?”
“From what little we have, some British police heard shooting, went to investigate, and arrested the German carrying a rifle.”
“They arrested a German with a rifle?” Rossett couldn’t hide his incredulity.
“Apparently the officer concerned was on his own, and out of uniform.”
“So?”
“There was an old sergeant there who insisted on making the arrest.”
“Is he mad?”
Neumann shrugged.
“Maybe he is just one of the old school who thinks being a policeman means enforcing the law.”
Rossett felt his face flush.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Either way, they heard shooting, searched the area, found a German with a gun and a consul with a hole in his head. The SS officer wouldn’t speak to them, and with it being a U.S. citizen, they had no choice but to notify us. All the German had to say was that he thought the consul went for a gun after being challenged. He would have been back in the barracks before the body was cold.”
“Indeed.” Rossett lifted the piece of cold toast, thought about taking a bite, then tapped it a few times on the edge of the plate, then dropped it back down to cover the food it had been hiding once again.
“So what do we do?”
“We go solve our first case.”
Their footsteps echoed in the stairwell as they descended toward the car park at the back of Scotland Yard.
“The local police up there want him out of the cells as soon as possible; they have enough trouble on their hands as it is.” Neumann was speaking over his shoulder as he led the way.
“With what?”
Neumann slowed slightly, so they were walking side by side.
“Haven’t you heard?” he lowered his voice.
“What?”
“About the north, the way things are?”
“I don’t read the papers.”
“It isn’t in the papers.” Neumann stopped, rested a hand on Rossett’s elbow, and eased him into a corner on the stairwell landing. “My job—our job—requires a lot of traveling up and down the country. We hear things and see things that aren’t in the papers. Do you understand?”
“Like what?”
“Not all of Great Britain is as safe and well run as the southeast and London. The rest of the country isn’t much of a priority to the government outside of maintaining the coal fields, the docks, and a few bits of industry here and there.”
“So?”
“It’s in a bad state, John.” Neumann leaned in close. “People are hungry, money is scarce. Most of the young men have either been moved to work on the continent or have volunteered to fight out east. Times are hard, so the families that don’t have work mostly live on what their young men send back from abroad.”
“Is there unrest?”
“There were food riots last year in a few places. It got pretty bad here and there, so much so that the government had to ease rationing to calm things down.”
“Doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not just rioting. Some pockets of the resistance cause problems. Bombs, assassinations, occasional kidnapping, and all that. From what I’ve heard, though, support can be thin on the ground for them, what with the reprisals.”
“Reprisals?”
Neumann paused and listened to some footsteps on the stairs a few flights above them. Once he was sure they weren’t coming closer, he drew close and continued.
“Local commanders can be pretty brutal when they want to impose order. Local government is also having problems with running things—electricity and gas, distribution of food, pretty much everything. Some cities have imposed curfews, but most don’t really have a functioning police force to make sure people obey them. The occupying army is spread pretty thin up there as well, so they mostly rely on HDT.”
Rossett frowned.
The Home Defense Troops were mostly made up of ex-criminals or old fascists from before the war. Many had simply signed up for the extra rations and the chance to beat people up and throw their weight around. They were the dregs of society given a uniform and a big stick to go with it. They were disliked by most Germans and despised by most British.
“You could have told me this before I took the job.” Rossett started to descend the stairwell again.
“It shouldn’t affect us,” Neumann said, following. “We go in, do what we have to do, and if we need to, bring the prisoner back with us. In and out, simple as that.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
When they entered the small courtyard car park the overnight fog had lifted. In its place was a soft sheen of drizzle. The sun was behind clouds, unable to make a dent in the late-autumn gloom.
Several cars were parked around the edge of the courtyard, all of them black, except for a dark blue SS Jaguar 2.5 saloon.
Neumann headed for the Jaguar.
“We’re going in this?” Rossett stopped short of the long hood.
“We can’t go in a Mercedes or an Opal, we’d stand out a mile. And there is no way I’m using your Austin, it’s ridiculous.”
Rossett pointed at the hood, which actually looked longer than his Austin’s.
“You don’t think this stands out?”
“It won’t be a problem in Liverpool, we’ll park it somewhere secure and use a local car if we have to. Do you need to pick anything up from home?” Neumann tossed Rossett the keys.
“We go now?”
“You have other plans?”
“No, but—”
“So we go now.”
“How long for?”
“A night at the most. Like I said: in and out.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.” Neumann smiled.
Rossett shook his head and climbed into the Jaguar. The red leather interior smelled new. The seats were deep and comfortable, and the caramel walnut dash was polished to within an inch of its life.
“It belonged to an army general of cavalry. He donated it, just before he went home last year.” Neumann got into the passenger seat.
“Donated?” Rossett looked down at his feet, then fired up the engine. It grumbled and settled down to a purr, like a cat that had been woken up and then discovered it was lying in the sun.
“The general had been embarrassed in a brothel in Oxford. As a result of that embarrassment, a significant amount of German stores had been diverted to the black market.”
“Speak English.” Rossett was fiddling with the controls.
“He was being blackmailed and gave away eight tons of army field rations to keep things quiet.”
“All that just for sleeping with a prostitute?” Rossett looked at Neumann. “Pretty much every German over here does it.”
“Not with male prostitutes.”
“Oh.”
“Indeed.” Neumann reached around to the backseat and pulled a brown leather briefcase onto his lap. He opened the case and Rossett saw a Luger 9mm pistol on top of some papers. Neumann picked up the pistol, checked the safety, and passed it butt
first to Rossett. “You’ll need a weapon.”
Rossett took the Luger. “Then why didn’t you get me one?”
“What?”
Rossett released the pistol’s thin magazine from the grip. He checked the breech and started to thumb the rounds out of the magazine into the palm of his hand.
“What are you carrying?” he looked at Neumann.
“A Walther.”
“PPK?” Rossett dropped the rounds into his lap and started to disassemble the Luger.
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
Neumann started to sort through the paperwork in the case while Rossett worked his way through the pistol. After half a minute Rossett dropped the parts of the pistol and the loose rounds onto the paperwork in the case.
“It’s rubbish.”
“It’s a good pistol,” Neumann protested.
“It’s unreliable and difficult to work with.”
“I would have thought you were made for each other.”
“I’ll take my Webley.”
“An old revolver?”
“It’s big and simple.”
“Like I said, made for each other.”
Chapter 4
Liverpool
Sturmbannführer Theo Dannecker had a hangover.
He’d first started drinking to help himself sleep about four years ago, and at first, it had helped. Lately, though, it seemed to throw him into a dark tunnel from which he emerged the next morning blinking like a tramp stumbling out of a thicket after being mugged.
He squeezed his temples with both hands, then wiped his hands down his face, aware that his driver was watching him out of the corner of his eye.
Dannecker wasn’t a happy man, and it wasn’t just the hangover that was making him sad. He was tired. Tired of everything. Tired of being in command, tired of being in the SS, tired of his men, tired of the resistance, the fighting, the uniform, the length of time since he’d been home, the chance that he might make a mistake and end up on the end of a length of piano wire, but most of all, he was tired of the sheer pointlessness of what he did for a living.
He’d served in the Waffen SS for eleven years. First as an enlisted man and then as an officer. He’d been promoted in the field after excelling on the battlefield, then on the streets of occupied Europe.
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