A Necessary Hell

by Nigel Price

  Ingrid got out. She leaned into the car to say goodbye and presumably something about ‘nice meeting you’, and ‘thanks for the lift’. That kind of awkward goodbye stuff. Harry suddenly realised this was it. Their road ended here.

  “Can I pick you up after work?” he blurted out. The words sounded clumsy. Like a portrait painter or landscape artist had just bodged the final stroke completing his masterpiece, tripping, the wet paintbrush going Oh shit! right across the canvas.

  He saw it register on her face. Was she revolted? Scared? All of those rushed through Harry’s mind. She must have been.

  She smiled. Harry thought she actually looked a tiny bit pleased. Just a tiny bit.

  “Well …”

  “I can get away from the airport at any time to suit you.”

  “Are you sure? I’ve already made you late.”

  “Just say a time.”

  So she did and they settled on it. On a pick-up place too. She stood back from the car and watched it pull away. Harry watched her too, in the mirror. He waved. She waved back. And then he grinned. The same stupid, crooked schoolboy grin as when he’d fired up the Jaguar.

  It was only because he kept looking after her in the rear-view mirror as she walked away, that he caught a glimpse of something else. He wouldn’t have seen it otherwise. Edging round the far corner, coming from the direction of the school, the way they had just come, was a grubby white Skoda.

  Five

  He drove south along Arnsberger Strasse, heading for Bundesautobahn 44. As the road left behind the old centre of Soest, it went through a suburban landscape. Then, when that ran out, industrial sites flanked the broad dual carriageway, increasingly miserable as with so many towns across the continent and beyond. There were a couple of drive-in fast food outlets, and all the usual suspects of chain stores and the like.

  He went at a steady pace, mostly because that was all you could do without getting flashed by one of the many speed cameras that punctuated his route.

  He kept checking his tail. The Skoda was still there, always a few cars back. Either they weren’t very good at their job, or they thought he was too stupid to notice. Perhaps they simply didn’t care. So were they police? It was likely since they had been at the farm, presumably responding to the farmer’s call. But why follow him when they could just pull him over and ask him whatever dumb questions they wanted?

  He thought it was time to put it to the test. At the next intersection he turned right. He ensured the lights would give the Skoda plenty of time to follow. No point trying to lose them. That would just piss them off and leave him none the wiser.

  Sure enough the grubby white Skoda turned right as well.

  Next, Harry did a left turn. Then another left, completing a square and bringing him back to Arnsberger Strasse which he rejoined with a right turn, heading south again. The Skoda followed. They really were crap.

  He found this comforting. If things got nasty he had a better idea of the sort of people he would be dealing with.

  At last the road hit Route 44 at a right angle. Harry drove under it and took the left hand filter which brought him up onto the autobahn, heading east. There was lots of checking of mirrors and glances over his shoulder as he pulled out onto the autobahn. It was busy and he was never sure if there was a maximum speed limit or not. On most stretches you could go as fast as you liked. German drivers all thought of themselves as Formula One champs. Your rear-view mirror could be clear one moment, but by the time you were ready to pull out, something sleek and shiny and expensive could fire past as if trying for the land speed record.

  He made it into the inner lane, happy to cruise for a while until he got a feel for the new dynamics. A quick check showed the Skoda faithfully behind him, several cars back. With clear space behind them, Harry could make out two square-shouldered silhouettes. They were big men squashed into seats that looked too small for them, like adults on a children’s fairground ride.

  The drive to the airport was barely twenty minutes. Less if Harry wanted to play with the Jaguar. Which of course he did. He depressed the accelerator and went for it. The engine responded and he exulted in the gentle pressure in the small of his back as the car took off.

  A moment later he heard the noise of a siren behind him. A glance in the wing mirror showed the grubby white Skoda closing, blue lights flashing from parts of it that, on a normal Skoda, shouldn’t be flashing blue. Harry was relaxed about it. No bad thing to clear the air and confirm who they were.

  He checked the other cars whizzing around him, signalled, and drew onto the hard shoulder. Before he could stop, the Skoda came alongside and the man in the passenger seat jabbed his finger in their direction of travel. Putting the gesture together with the contemptuous sneer on a jowly pink face, Harry translated it as Not here, you arsehole. Up ahead in the proper parking lay-by.

  Sure enough, a little way on there was a notice alerting drivers to the fact that a lay-by was five hundred metres along the road. Harry gave a cheery thumbs up and a mouthed Up You to the policeman, and pulled out again for the last short drag.

  It was a simple stop for those wanting a pee break. There were trees, a smattering of benches, a brick shit-house, and that was it. No other facilities. Just a short stop. Harry hoped it would be nothing more than that.

  There were two other cars already there. A small child was suspended over the kerb stone, trousers round its ankles, peeing into the gutter. At the other car, a driver had the bonnet open and was topping up his windscreen washer reservoir. All nice and ordinary.

  Harry wondered whether he should get out but decided not to. He kept the engine running, in gear, foot covering the pedals in case he needed to show a clean pair of heels. The Skoda drew in behind him. The blue lights went off. Harry noted that the parent holding the peeing toddler over the kerb made a hasty switch to the brick convenience, an awkward waddle which the toddler thought great fun, peeing all the way.

  Harry lowered his window as one of the two men walked towards him. The man took out a notebook and jotted down the registration number. Rather than stooping to the window, he stood a metre back and raised his voice.

  “Führerschein, bitte,” he said.

  Harry produced it with a smile. “I’m English,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  “Nice car,” the policeman commented.

  Harry sighed. This was going to get tiresome. “It’s hired.”

  “I can see.”

  Harry wondered if he imagined it, but he thought he caught a malicious satisfaction on the man’s face.

  Details from Harry’s licence were copied into the notebook.

  “Is anything the matter?” Harry asked.

  “You were speeding,” the policeman replied.

  “I didn’t think this stretch of road had a speed limit.”

  “It does. One hundred kilometres an hour. Approaching the exit for Soest East. There are a lot of accidents on this piece of road.”

  “Oh.” There wasn’t much else to say. He could have apologised but didn’t feel like it.

  “What are you doing in Soest?” the man asked.

  A thought occurred to Harry. “Sorry to have to ask, but can I see some identification, please?”

  The man stared at him, unimpressed. “There are blue flashing lights on my car.”

  “There’s an air freshener shaped like a pine tree in mine,” Harry replied nicely.

  He was left to wait a sufficient time for regret to blossom, but at last a fat wallet was produced from a back pocket and an ID card was flashed at him. It was gone before he could see it clearly. Harry thought it churlish to ask for a closer look.

  “I am working at Soest Erwitte airport. Disaster planning. I’m running an exercise there.”

  The policeman raised his eyebrows. “So.”

  “So,” Harry echoed.

  “And what was your interest in the item found at Herr Müller’s farm this morning?”

  “I knew it was you!” H
arry said cheerfully. “Wasn’t that strange?”

  “Your business there?”

  “I was passing and saw him. He was waving it at anyone going by. The other car crashed because of it. You probably noticed.”

  “The other driver was …?”

  “You must have been able to trace them from the registration plate on the car. It was in the ditch.”

  “Do you know the driver?”

  “No,” Harry said almost truthfully. Though he was hoping to change that in the fullness of time. Instead he added, “I thought you stopped me for speeding?”

  “We did. The other business is of no concern to you.”

  “Then why ask me about it?”

  “Where are you staying?”

  Harry considered that. Perhaps it wasn’t too unreasonable for the police to ask. In any case, he suspected hoteliers had to register a guest’s identity with the local police. If so, then they already knew. If not, they could easily find out.

  “Haus Fischer in Körbecke,” he replied.

  The policeman scribbled it down. He closed his notebook and returned it to his jacket pocket. As he did so, Harry caught sight of a holstered pistol hooked on his belt. Why not? This was Germany after all. Police were armed. Harry thought it was a Heckler Koch P7, rather than the newer Glock. So these two munchkins were old school rather than cutting edge. Who’d have guessed? Or it could just mean the man knew what he liked and wasn’t for changing.

  “No more speeding, Herr Brown. I’ll let you go this time.”

  “Thank you,” Harry said. “What happens to the hand?”

  The policeman stared at him levelly. “That will be investigated, of course. But nothing for you to worry about.” He made a poor attempt at a smile.

  Harry toyed with the idea of offering his own explanation. It was pretty obvious to him. But the policeman was already walking back to his car. Harry put up his window and set off, pulling out onto the autobahn and heading east towards his destination. A few moments later his rear-view mirror showed the grubby white Skoda behind him. This time they weren’t bothering to try and hide. They sat on his bumper.

  The road ran towards Lippstadt and soon the Erwitte exit loomed ahead. Harry’s. He swung right, leaving the autobahn, then right again, looping back under the motorway. Another sharp right completed a full loop, and he was on the last short stretch to Soest Erwitte airport.

  The grubby white Skoda followed him all the way until he turned left for the terminal, whereupon it carried on past, heading in the direction of Paderborn. Harry was tempted to send them off with a wave. Instead he pulled into the car park and stopped. He turned off the engine and sat for a moment, thinking. He checked his watch. Not too late. He’d have some catching up to do.

  He thought ahead to the evening when he would meet up with Ingrid. He realised he hadn’t asked for her mobile number. No matter. She didn’t have it with her, and they had agreed an RV and time. Everything should be fine, in the normal course of things.

  A pity though. He would have liked to tell her about his encounter with Skoda Man. On second thoughts, perhaps not. It might alarm her. And what had he really seen? Two cops going about their business. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.

  He got out of the car and clicked the fob to lock it as he walked away. He had a meeting to chair, then a couple of one-to-one debriefings to enable him to complete his post-exercise report. At some point he thought he might nip up to the control tower. He wanted to check the arrival schedule for flights that had landed that morning. To see who had flown in, and from where. Just idle curiosity. To do with the hand. Assuming the creature had told the truth, the wheelbarrow was way too far from the road for someone to have lobbed it in while driving past.

  Harry was pretty sure it was frozen, so it can’t have been there long. How long did it take a piece of meat to defrost? To him it seemed most likely that it had fallen out of the sky. Which meant, perhaps, someone hiding in the undercarriage of an overflying aircraft. It was worth considering.

  Of course if there had been a stowaway squidged up in the wheel wells of any of the aircraft that had landed that morning, he would hear about it soon enough. It would be the talk of the airport. Assuming they’d found it. If not, then it was either still in there defrosting, or spread over the German countryside somewhere. Presumably missing a hand. Which had ended up in farmer Müller’s asparagus.

  And there was one other thing. The de-gloved finger. Harry had a theory about that, but to check it he would have to stop by the farm again. So perhaps it was best to leave the whole thing alone. After all, it was nothing to do with him, so why bother? He had his project to wind up. Then go home.

  Six

  Harry looked up at the low grey sky. The wind that had troubled the lake earlier that morning, was still sweeping across the north German plain. Great banks of cloud scudded overhead, rolling westwards. He pushed open the door to the offices tacked onto the terminal building.

  The airport of Soest Erwitte was a comfortable, pocket-sized affair. Domestic flights operated out of it, and a few international ones that enabled German tourists to spread their towels on poolside loungers in the more popular Mediterranean holiday resorts. That was pretty much it.

  Things had run smoothly since its opening in 1973. Growth had been careful and considered. Harry had found its terminal a delight. Clean, bright and efficient.

  The contract to run the exercise had fallen to Harry because Delaney’s had been told there was an urgency about it. Something to do with renewal of some licence or other. Harry had been the only consultant available. He had only just tied up his last assignment in North Africa and had been about to take some leave. Old man Delaney still chided him about calling it ‘leave’, not ‘holiday’. Delaney said he needed to forget his military past. He said it made civilians nervous. Which made Harry do it all the more.

  So fresh out of one exercise, he had been thrown straight into another. Testing the airport’s procedures. He had been impressed. Strategic management, operational coordination, crisis communications, humanitarian assistance – all had worked like a dream. The existing aircraft emergency response plan had been exposed to a simulated emergency. Now, as the whole process was drawing to a close, he found himself scrabbling around for pertinent comments to flesh out his post-exercise report.

  Exercise Control had been set up in the conference room that had been a feature of the airport for the past dozen years. Taking the stairs two at a time, he approached the entrance to it when someone hailed him.

  “Good morning, Harry. You’re late. That’s not like you. Is everything okay?”

  Polizeihauptkommissar Ernst Hafner had acted as Police Liaison throughout the exercise. Harry had been pleasantly surprised by his ‘can-do’ attitude that saw no problem as insurmountable. Flexible and courteous, he had been the perfect man for the job. Quite apart from his official capacity, he was well acquainted with the airport, being a member of the local flying club that operated out of it. He had promised to take Harry up in his little Cessna 172, a treat Harry had so far not had time to experience.

  He and Harry arrived at the door together. There was a genial scuffle as each tried to usher the other through first.

  “I got waylaid,” Harry replied. He was about to tell him the story, but found the room already full. Which surprised him. The meeting he had called had not been due to start for another hour, before which he had intended doing other tasks. He went towards his usual seat. One of the others was in it. They got up and moved.

  “Thanks,” Harry said. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked the room at large. “We were scheduled to meet at …” He looked at his watch.

  “I know. Something else came up,” someone chipped in.

  Harry felt the smug warmth of a hunch proving correct. “Or down.”

  Hafner took a seat opposite him. He pulled some papers from his briefcase and shuffled through them. “Meaning?”

  Harry looked around the tab
le. The variety of expressions was a wonder to behold. They were shit actors. “A stowaway?” he said. “I’m guessing you’ve found a stowaway in the undercarriage of one of the incoming flights. No?”

  The group communicated silently with one another like ants. It was as if a chemical signal had been transmitted around the table, imparting new information to all those present. Expressions changed. Though no one spoke at first, their faces replied Oh … that stowaway.

  Hafner took the lead. The others were looking for him to do so. “Yes. It was most unfortunate. But it’s all been taken care of.”

  “Right,” Harry said. “I see. Well that’s good to know. What happened? Does anyone have any idea who it was?”

  There was some fidgeting and a few blank stares. Hafner again. “No. It will take some time to sort it all out. The Kripo are dealing with it.” Harry had heard the term before. The Kriminalpolizei. Detectives. “How did you hear about it?”

  Harry briefly recounted the story of the hand in the spargel. The heads around the table became nodding dogs. “I assume the poor devil was dead?”

  “Yes. A tragedy,” Hafner said.

  “And he or she was missing a hand?”

  “He. And yes. The left hand. He was probably using it to hang on, and the landing gear must have severed it.”

  “Oh.” Harry pondered. “Did you see the body, or did someone tell you?”

  Hafner looked confused.

  “I mean, as the first port of call for police liaison, I suppose you were the first copper on the spot.”

  “Actually I wasn’t. And no, I didn’t see the body. It was removed off site before I got there.”

  “Oh. That’s odd, isn’t it?”

  More puzzlement on Hafner’s face. “Harry, what’s this got to do with our exercise debrief?”

  “Maybe quite a lot. Part of the exercise was testing chains of command. And communications, vertical and horizontal. Passage of info and all that. I’m just a bit surprised that as police liaison you weren’t involved before the body was removed. That’s all.”