The Interrogator

by Andrew Williams

  ‘We’ve spoken often of the days to come,’ he said with quiet authority, ‘but I must remind you again. We still have a part to play in this war. Carry on fighting for your Fatherland.’

  He had warned them time and again: be silent, be strong. They would be separated and questioned. It was vital they kept their discipline and the details of the mission locked tight. The British would work away at the smallest crack, prising it open until they knew all there was to know of the 112’s mission.

  There were voices in the passage and someone began to turn the handle of the wardroom door. Mohr got to his feet and picked up his white commander’s cap: ‘Remember, do your duty. Be vigilant. Victory is certain.’

  11

  I

  t was still coppery bright when the sirens began to wail again, the last of the sun diffused in the warm haze of smoke rising from the city’s smouldering streets. Within minutes, a ragged tide of humanity was surging along Lime Street: travellers with suitcases, servicemen with their girlfriends, the very old and the very young. No one panicked or protested. They moved with hunched, weary resignation. Lindsay stepped from the shelter of a doorway into the street and looked up to a skyline of broken brick pillars and roofless gables. Liverpool was being stripped to its core. The sirens began to die away. Lime Street was almost deserted now. He turned and followed the stragglers to the corner of Hanover Street where a patient queue was filing down steps into a large underground shelter. A stout old woman hobbled past him on swollen feet, a basket of food on one arm, a bundle of blankets beneath the other. It was going to be oppressively close inside the shelter. Lindsay lit a cigarette and walked a little way along the empty street. Beyond a telltale mound of brick and broken plaster he could just make out the domeless silhouette of the old Customs House. The city was black now and almost silent as if it were holding its breath.

  He had been five hours late into Lime Street, the platforms lined with ‘trekkers’, the anxious and the homeless waiting for trains to carry them to the safety of draughty church halls in the suburbs. By the time Lindsay had fought his way out of the station it was after six o’clock. But he was pleased he had missed the White’s quayside welcome, the little triumph orchestrated for the newsreel cameras. The hacks would have been given their instructions. Mohr was certainly a catch. A celebrity commander never out of the papers, a holder of Germany’s highest decoration – the Knight’s Cross – famous for his dash and style, or what passed for it in the Reich.

  From the west, the distant drone of approaching aircraft, slow and heavy. Searchlights began to sweep in sinister arcs above him and soon the horizon was peppered with the smoky flash of anti-aircraft shrapnel. He stood and watched as if in a dream. The first enemy flares were dripping on to the rooftops of the city, followed moments later by what sounded like a rattle of iron bedsteads thrown from a great height. There was a flash and a tongue of flame – incendiaries.

  Then he heard someone shouting at him from across the street.

  ‘What’s the matter with you . . .?’ The man’s words were lost in a rising scream.

  Lindsay instinctively hunched his shoulders. His feet were knocked from under him and his mouth was full of dirt. He looked up. A policeman was gesticulating wildly: ‘Run you bloody fool.’ Suddenly aware of the mad danger he had placed himself in, he covered the distance to the shelter at breakneck speed. He was just feet from the entrance when the ground rose, throwing him forwards against the sandbags. For a moment everything was a blur. Then someone was pulling his arm, dragging him down rubble-strewn steps towards the door.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he shouted as he scrambled to his feet.

  The door clanged shut behind him.

  By the half lantern-light he could see a score or more of frightened faces. His rescuer was shouting something but it was impossible to hear above the scream and crump of bombs. He collapsed on to a bench and rested his chin in his hands. The air was thick with dust and the shelter shook and heaved, the explosions reverberating along its length like a blow on a tremendous kettledrum. The bedlam continued for eight or nine minutes then lifted almost at once. Nobody moved, but the darkness was full of whispering voices and the whimpering of small children.

  ‘That’s just the start – take my word for it . . .’ Lindsay’s rescuer had leant across and touched his knee. He looked as if he was in his fifties although it was difficult to tell because his round, amiable face was caked in dust.

  ‘You were lucky, weren’t cha?’ he wheezed with a scouse accent you could cut with a knife. ‘Feckin death wish . . .’

  ‘You can stop that, George Barnes.’ A blowsy-looking woman in a fake-fur wrap elbowed George so hard he nearly toppled off the bench: ‘Just mind your language – there are ladies and children in here.’

  The shelter smelt of piss. Some of the children were being settled under blankets on the floor; everyone else was preparing to make the best of the narrow benches for another night. Bundled and patched-up people, smart alecks and quiet ones, some knitting, some playing cards. The bombs were still falling. Like a storm on a distant shore, the low rumble of high explosives seemed to break and retreat. From time to time one fell close enough to send a shudder through the shelter and everyone held their breath and wondered where the next would fall. Then the weary murmur would begin again as if no one in the shelter wanted to be left with their thoughts for long. One of Lindsay’s neighbours, the large woman with the sharp elbows, began to work her way through the streets that had been hit:

  ‘Fountains Road, Chancel Street, Endborne Road and Newman Street. The shelter was destroyed in Newman Street and three small children from the same family were killed. My cousin Gertrude’s husband was badly hurt on fire-watch down at the docks . . .’

  A wizened old man swaddled in a khaki greatcoat many sizes too big for him leant across the shelter and spoke to Lindsay:

  ‘My son’s in the Navy. On a battleship.’

  Lindsay nodded.

  ‘Just a rating. Your ship an escort? We’ve got lots of ’em ’ere.’

  ‘My old ship was a destroyer.’

  ‘Did you sink one of their submarines?’

  ‘No,’ said Lindsay.

  ‘Shame. I hate ’em you know, hate ’em. Don’t you?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Who d’yer think? Germans. Nazis. Fuckin’ hate ’em.’ The old man spoke in staccato bursts as if he was in danger of being overwhelmed by his own anger. ‘Look at this – women and children. It’s murder. There’s a German lives near us, his name’s Fetteroll. Says he doesn’t want to fight because his father’s German. Don’t understand why they haven’t locked him up in that camp at Huyton with the other Krauts. Shoot the bastard.’ The old man gave a short gasp. There were tears on his face. He wiped them away with the back of his hand. It was some time before he spoke again and then in little more than a whisper.

  ‘Sorry. Things get on top of you don’t they? You know, my wife . . .’ He left the sentence hanging there uncertainly and slumped back against the wall of the shelter, lost again in his coat and his misery.

  Lindsay tried to think of Mary Henderson. He had seen her twice since the party, a few hours snatched from Naval Intelligence here and there. They had spoken with the same warm frankness, a frankness entirely natural to her but a little foreign to him. There had been other women before, drunken encounters of the sort familiar to most sailors, and two brittle affairs with ‘nice’ west-of-Scotland girls, but never a meeting of sympathetic minds. Mary was challenging, he loved her bright intelligence, her cool expectant eyes, her smile, her strange gasping laugh, and he loved the joy, the hope, he felt when he was with her. There was a sort of stillness, a grace, in Mary that was wholly captivating. Her world was built on sure foundations, faith its cornerstone, unshaken by war. He envied her a little and with her, his life seemed less empty.

  The rude clatter of hobnailed boots on the steps dragged Lindsay back to the rumbling, shuddering world of the shelter. The do
or opened, the blackout curtain was brushed aside and a small boy in pyjamas and a coat was gently propelled across the threshold. He was followed by a burly fireman with a smoke-stained face: ‘Room for one more? Found this little bugger in the street on his own.’

  There was a good deal of clucking and fussing as the boy was settled with a blanket and a biscuit. Someone handed the fireman a canteen of water and he emptied it without pausing for breath.

  ‘What’s it like out there?’ asked Lindsay’s rescuer, George Barnes.

  The fireman wiped his chin with a dusty sleeve: ‘The city’s on fire. Hell, that’s what it’s like, hell.’ He seemed remarkably cheerful for one who had just escaped from the other side. ‘Lewis’s Store, Kelly’s and Blackler’s – a couple of the Navy’s ships are on fire, I was on my way there . . .’

  On an impulse, Lindsay got to his feet: ‘I’ll come with you.’

  The fireman turned to look him up and down. ‘Why? You’d best leave well alone.’

  ‘I don’t want to sit here. Let’s go.’ He pushed past the fireman to the door and stepped through it into a strange flickering half-light. The sky was the colour of a blood orange and smoke was rising thickly as far as the eye could see. He could feel the heat on his face and hands and small pieces of burnt paper swirled about him like leaves on an autumn day. A gas main had been hit and a jet of yellow flame was rising from the pavement like a geyser. At the end of the street, a four-storey building was burning fiercely and on the road in front, half buried by bricks and charred timber, a naked body, stiff and white. It was a sickening sight. Lindsay could not tear his eyes away. He took an uncertain step closer and relief began to wash through him: it was a dummy, just a shop’s dummy.

  The fireman was tugging at his arm: ‘We’ll have to go this way.’ They set off down a side street at something close to a trot, their boots crunching across a carpet of broken glass and slate.

  It was only a short distance to the river. Strand Street was a shambles. The front of a large warehouse had collapsed, spewing masonry across the road and exposing the blasted shell behind. A clanging ambulance was weaving uncertainly towards the quay where a thick pillar of acrid black smoke was rising from within the great brick walls of the outer dock. A short distance away, half a dozen exhausted firemen were standing round their engine waiting for instructions. Lindsay’s companion roused them with an angry stream of four-letter words. High-explosive detonations flashed and rumbled down the river; people and history were being wrenched from the streets of the city.

  Lindsay jumped up alongside the fire crew and the engine began to bump across the quayside cobbles. The inner dock was dark and strangely still but for orange light shimmering across the water. Then they passed between two towering warehouses and a world of noise and smoke and fire opened before them. It was as if they were being painted into some grisly medieval Day of Judgement. Firemen and sailors in smoke hoods were scurrying about with stirrup pumps and cutting tools, and pulling at the coils of hose that snaked around the dock. An auxiliary ship was listing badly, straining at its mooring ropes, its deck shrouded in a filthy choking cloud. Through the smoke Lindsay caught a ghostly glimpse of a second ship, an old-looking destroyer, its bows blackened and twisted.

  ‘Get that fucking thing round the other side double quick.’

  A Chief Petty Officer, his face and uniform black with oily smoke, was gesturing wildly across the dock. As the fire engine growled past, he jumped up beside Lindsay. ‘Sorry, sir, didn’t see you there. Brown, sir.’

  ‘Is that your ship, Chief?’ Lindsay pointed into the smoke.

  ‘The old destroyer, sir, she’s a mess, a fucking mess.’ Brown’s voice was trembling with emotion.

  ‘Explosion’s wrecked the whole for’ard part of the ship. The mess deck’s a fucking shambles. We can’t get on to it.’ He paused, struggling to compose himself. ‘There’re lads trapped. Can’t this fucking thing go any faster?’

  ‘Is the Captain there?’

  ‘No, sir, everyone was celebrating.’

  There was no need to ask but Lindsay did: ‘Your ship, she’s the White?’

  ‘Just back from Gibraltar. We sank one of their submarines. Funny, isn’t it? We won’t be sinking any more.’

  The fire engine pulled up some thirty yards short of the White and the firemen were soon busy laying hoses and struggling into breathing hoods. Brown led Lindsay towards the stern of the ship. A dozen or so wounded sailors with haggard, sooty faces were limping back along the quay, hands on shoulders like something from the trenches of the Great War. By the warehouse wall there was another line: four or five pairs of highly polished run-ashore shoes protruding from a mound of blankets.

  ‘I’ve got a bomb in this bucket, Chief.’ A gangly-looking seaman, his face and uniform streaked with blood, was standing in front of them, his bucket at arm’s length. An incendiary was fizzing like a firework in the bottom of it, a small bottle of white-hot metal.

  ‘Bloody cover it in sand,’ said Brown with exasperation.

  They forced their way through the press of sailors at the bottom of the ship’s gangway and up on to the deck. The swirling smoke tasted of fuel oil. Figures were drifting through it in ghostly motion, appearing and just as suddenly disappearing. Brown led Lindsay like a blind man across the ship to the starboard side where the smoke was a little thinner. A small party of sailors was gathered about a very young sub-lieutenant. He was clearly relieved to see Brown:

  ‘Thank God. We need a whaler over the side, Chief.’

  And he explained that half a dozen men had managed to slip down a rope into the dock but there were still more trapped below.

  ‘The first lieutenant has given me this . . .’ He coughed hard in an effort to disguise the emotion in his voice. ‘Morphine. All right? You’re to pass it through the scuttles.’

  He thrust the box at a puzzled-looking Brown.

  ‘Anything else, sir, you know, dressings and stuff?’

  ‘No, Chief, that’s not important now. Make sure they get the morphine. And get going, for God’s sake.’

  Brown and his party set off along the deck and were soon busy swinging one of the ship’s boats over the side. Lindsay caught hold of the sub-lieutenant just as he was disappearing into the smoke. ‘Can I help, Sub . . .’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. God, it’s a mess. She was to have been fitted with a forward escape hatch – bit bloody late, isn’t it?’

  He stalked off without waiting for a reply. Lindsay stood at the rail, unsure what he should do. Smoky rain from the hoses on the quayside was pattering in heavy drops on to his uniform. He could hear Brown issuing orders to the boat crew aft. Then there was a blinding white flash and the sharp smell of cordite. He felt a hot rush of air like a desert wind and was thrown sideways as the ship shuddered. There had been another explosion for’ard. Pulling himself to his feet, he turned and staggered along the deck towards the stern.

  The whaler was in the water but still alongside. It took just a moment for Lindsay to slip down the falls into her bow. An arc of water from the ship’s hoses was cascading pink on to the burning deck and pouring smoky black down her side. The hull was hot to touch and the heat had shattered some of the starboard ports. They edged into the billowing smoke, the sailors resting at their oars, one hand for the boat, the other held firmly to nose and mouth. Lindsay’s eyes were streaming so badly he could barely see the length of the whaler. Then he heard someone shouting, screaming with fear, and through the smoke frantic hands were waving from two of the mess-deck ports. One of the young sailors in the whaler began to whimper. The heat and smoke were almost unbearable. As they pulled closer to the open scuttles, they were showered with small fiery pieces of matting stripped from the deck above. There was another deep rumble inside the ship and for just a second the shouting, the pleading, stopped. By standing on one of the thwarts Lindsay was able to reach up with his hand to the porthole. An unseen, unknown man grasped it and held it tightly as if his life
depended upon it.

  ‘Morphine, we have some morphine for you,’ Lindsay shouted, but he found it difficult to make himself understood. The whaler began to rock as more hands reached up.

  ‘John, is that you, mate . . .?’

  ‘Hang on in there, Taff, we’re on our way . . .’

  These were bonds forged over many months at sea, dangers, mess tables and hammocks shared. They were family. And as Lindsay stood there holding an unknown sailor’s hand he thought of another crew, another ship, and of the desperate helplessness he had felt as she slipped into the darkness. Sleeping, waking, the memory was there, the same cold seconds, whistling sickly through his mind, the white faces contorted in a scream that would last for eternity.

  ‘Sir, look . . .’

  Through the smoke he could see shadowy figures on the quay, jumping, waving, and although it was impossible to hear what they were saying the panic in their voices was unmistakable.

  ‘Get this morphine up . . .’ he shouted.

  They began to press small boxes of the drug into outstretched hands. At his side, Brown was shouting, ‘For the wounded, mate . . .’ and, ‘Just in case.’ Should he explain ‘Just in case’? But it would be obvious soon enough, and he cursed the staff, cursed them for not fitting that escape hatch.

  They began to slip away from the ship and there was a new note of despair in the voices of those they left inside her. Hope was leaving too. At their oars the sailors were grim-faced, heads bent, pulling hard. One of the older ratings in the stern was shaking. Then, above the roar of the fire, the grinding of aircraft engines very close and the rolling thunder of ack-ack.

  Lindsay had just made the top of the steps when he was thrown to the ground by a tide of water from the dock. He lay there, face pressed to the wet cobbles, legs stretched helplessly behind him. Barely a second later and another explosion drenched him again. The third must have landed a little way up the quay because the ground heaved and he was showered with dirt and stones. Later he remembered being gripped by the blind, terrifying certainty that his legs would be blown off – they seemed so very far from his head and hands. But the fire storm swept over the dock in seconds and on into the city. Even before he raised his head, he could sense the injured close by. Slowly, painfully, he lifted himself to his knees. The shattered bodies of five – or was it six – men were lying just a few yards away like so much human wreckage.