SS-GB

by Len Deighton

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Murder. I’m from Scotland Yard and I warn you that anything you say may be taken down and used in evidence against you.’

  ‘Oh, for murder,’ said Spode sadly.

  Douglas kicked the cardboard box. It tipped over, and inside it he saw the separated pieces of the false arm. Douglas picked it up, bending awkwardly with the prisoner fastened to his wrist. The Captain walked over to them. ‘What were you saying about arresting people on army property, Captain?’

  The Captain looked at cuffs and prisoner and back at Douglas again. ‘What do you want now, Superintendent?’ he said. ‘A round of applause?’

  Douglas had outwitted the Captain and all his regulations. The only way he could prevent the police officer taking his prisoner back to London was by holding Douglas too. He had no way to be sure that he was carrying the key to the self-locking cuffs, and to search his person would mean assault or arrest, and even the Captain baulked at that.

  ‘I need a room suitable for interrogation,’ said Douglas.

  ‘Yes, and I was wondering how you’d be able to drive your car,’ said the Captain. He smiled. ‘We’ll compromise,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll be present at the initial interrogation. If you convince me that you have a prima facie case for your charge, I’ll provide you with a driver and armed escort back to London.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Douglas. The prisoner gave no sign of understanding the German they spoke but as they moved away he seemed to know where they were headed. The three men went through the distributing hut, and through the narrow passages of the stock shelves. Douglas noticed that the tin box of pivots was still there on the counter, open and empty the way he’d left it. But someone had unwired the sample from the outside of the tin, and taken it. Doubtless it was all ready for Spode’s appointment, thought Douglas. There were times when he sincerely admired the resource of his fellow countrymen.

  The Captain led the way over to one of the creosoted timber huts. There was little change from when it had been used by the RAF; the same thirty metal bedframes, fifteen dented lockers, two plain wooden tables, four hard chairs, one stove and a metal box for its coke. Except that no RAF occupants, in those times before the armistice, had polished the cracked lino to reflect like mirror, burnished the metal stove like chrome, scraped the wooden table until the air smelled of sap, or folded blankets with such precision.

  Above each bedspace, a small wooden frame held a carefully lettered rectangle of paper; and each one named a British General. The Captain went to the room at the end of the hut, which in former times had housed the NCO in charge. Douglas noticed that faintly, under the paintwork, the name of some long-forgotten RAF corporal could almost be discerned. Now, fixed over that place, a brass frame held an engraved calling card. In Gothic lettering it read, ‘Dieter Scheck, Unterfelderwebel 34. Füsilier-Rgt.’

  ‘Scheck is one of my people,’ explained the Captain. ‘An ex-artilleryman. He’s home on leave. We can use this room.’ He opened the door for them.

  It was a tiny room but this German had done his best to make it comfortable. On the wall there was a small antique crucifix, the taut and angular Christ unmistakably German in its stylized agony. Hung above the metal bed there was a coloured postcard of a Giotto Madonna and Child. Douglas glanced at the bookshelf; a biography of Wagner, Wordsworth in translation, a Bible, some German detective stories and books about chess. On the bedside table there was a box of chessmen, a folded board, some Feldpost letter-forms and a bill from a cloth merchant in Oxford.

  ‘Will it do?’

  It was too small but Douglas said it was good enough. ‘Are you staying?’ he asked the Captain, hoping that he might have changed his mind.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Captain. Douglas turned the key in the lock and put it into his pocket.

  ‘Are you armed, Captain?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  Douglas simply wanted to know if there was a gun in the room but he just shrugged without replying. He hated explaining things. He never had to explain anything to Harry. Douglas unlocked Spode’s handcuff. ‘Don’t do anything silly, lad,’ he said.

  Spode smiled. He was baby-faced, the sort of man who can still pass himself off as sixteen when he’s thirty, except that such people do not enjoy the visage of youth that red cheeks and curly hair endows. He was not handsome in the way that actors are handsome, he had no presence, no deep voice and no distinguished features. And yet he had the innocent manner and calm of a child and it was difficult to disregard this quality.

  ‘Is your name Spode, and are you the brother of…’

  ‘You needn’t bother with all that,’ he said. He smiled. ‘Do you mind if I…’ he pulled the coat off his shoulders. It was an awkward action without the use of one arm but he managed it all right. He put the cotton coat, damp from the fine rain, over the back of his chair. Under it his clothes were old but of good quality and Douglas noticed that his hand was white and soft, like the hand of a young child. ‘Tell me how you got on to me?’ he said. There was no whining, no bitterness, no recriminations. There were few arrested men at peace with themselves as this man was at peace.

  ‘The pivot of your false arm. I found it in the flat at Shepherd Market. It had rolled under the chair.’

  ‘I knew it was risky to come here today but it’s damned difficult to manage without it.’

  ‘It was bad luck,’ said Douglas sympathetically.

  ‘It was, wasn’t it?’ He seemed comforted by the remark. ‘I knew there was a chance it had fallen off in the flat but it was a million to one chance.’

  ‘A million to one,’ said Douglas. ‘You’re employed in the camp here, are you?’

  ‘My discharge is all in order! And I’m not liable for compulsory labour service in Germany; that’s only for fit men between the ages of 18 and 40. You were expecting me to come down the road, eh? I nearly got past you, didn’t I?’

  ‘Very nearly.’

  ‘And I gave you the slip at Beech Road School?’

  ‘I was careless,’ said Douglas.

  ‘I only wanted a chance to talk to you. He’s a nice boy, your son. I asked him when you were at home, so I could come round and talk to you.’

  ‘To give yourself up?’

  ‘They say you are a decent sort. You always catch your man, that’s what they say in the papers, don’t they? Looks as if the papers are right.’ Spode smiled.

  ‘Did you kill your brother?’

  ‘Yes, I did,’ he said but now he was no longer smiling.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Has anybody got a cigarette?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Douglas but already the artillery Captain had produced a heavy cigarette case of the sort that mothers hope will protect the heart against bullets.

  ‘Why don’t you both try mine?’ said the Captain. ‘What do you prefer, Superintendent? I have French, I have Turkish and I have American.’

  Douglas looked at him for a moment without replying. Then he said, ‘It’s a long time since I tasted a French cigarette.’ The Captain passed one to him and lit it for him before saying, ‘And you permit the prisoner to smoke?’

  ‘Very well,’ said Douglas.

  Spode was sitting on a small upright chair, with its back close to the door of the room. The Captain held the case open for him. ‘Turkish on the left…here are the French, always the tobacco falls out…American on the right.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Spode. The Captain lit the young man’s cigarette too. After he’d exhaled a cloud of sweet-smelling blue smoke, Spode said, ‘I loved my brother…more than anyone else in the world.’ He looked out of the window to where the red afternoon sun was dropping into a furious boil-up of rain clouds. ‘My brother wanted me to be a musician.’ He stopped as if that was sufficient to make Douglas understand why he loved his brother.

  ‘My father had no faith in me. He loved me but he had no faith, not in me, not in God, and not in anything else.’ He was looking at his cigarette now as if his thoug
hts were far, far away. ‘I feel sorrow for my father – may God bless him.’ Still preoccupied, he raised his cigarette to his mouth delicately, and drew deeply upon it.

  ‘So why did you kill your brother?’ Douglas intended it brutally and so it sounded.

  Spode was not so easily provoked. He smoked and smiled. ‘I did it. Isn’t that enough? Would you like a signed confession too?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Douglas.

  Spode used the only writing paper available, a Feldpost letter-form from the table. He took a pencil from his pocket and scrawled across the paper that seemed to evade the clumsy white fingers of the one-armed man. ‘I killed my brother,’ he wrote, and signed it. He passed the paper to the German Captain. ‘Witness that, Captain, would you?’

  The Captain scribbled his name, rank, number and the date under the pencilled confession, and passed it to Douglas. ‘Thank you,’ said Douglas, ‘but I still want to know why?’

  ‘You’re really like someone out of an old detective story,’ said Spode. ‘A detective has to look for the means, the motive and the opportunity. Isn’t that what they tell detectives at their training schools?’

  ‘No,’ said Douglas. ‘It’s only what they tell them in whodunnits.’

  ‘This is the best cigarette I’ve tasted in an age,’ said Spode. ‘Is yours good too, Superintendent? They have no cigarettes in prison I suppose.’ There was no provocation in his words. He was like a simple boy, never devious or scheming. Douglas found it easy to understand why so many people were ready to protect him from the law.

  ‘Were you in the army?’ Douglas asked him.

  ‘My brother and I worked in a laboratory together. But when the German tanks came I tried to set light to one with a bottle of petrol. Molotov cocktails they called them in the Home Guard. The instructor made it all sound easy but the one I used failed to ignite. Were you in the fighting too?’

  ‘No,’ said Douglas. ‘The first Germans I saw were a military band marching down Oxford Street, and I was told that London had been declared an open city sometime during the night.’ Douglas hadn’t intended to sound apologetic but the task of arresting someone who’d lost an arm fighting a tank single-handed made it difficult to be otherwise.

  ‘You didn’t miss anything,’ said Spode. ‘It was all over before it began. Only a bloody fool tries to jam the sprocket wheel of a Mark IV with a tyre lever. He went past me without even noticing – and took my arm with him.’ He sighed and smiled. ‘You being there wouldn’t have made much difference, Superintendent, believe me.’

  ‘But still…’ said Douglas.

  ‘Is it a confession you want – or absolution?’ He smiled.

  The Captain took off his uniform cap and wiped the leather band. He was prematurely balding, and the thin lank blond hair did little to conceal the pale skin of his scalp. The removal of his hat seemed to age him by twenty years, for his eyes were not those of a young man. This was not the place for a proper interrogation, thought Douglas. Spode did not seem to be taking his arrest seriously.

  ‘Your brother had been burned by radiation,’ said Douglas. ‘Do you know what that is?’

  ‘I’m a physicist,’ said Spode. ‘Of course I know.’

  ‘You worked with him?’

  ‘We were in Professor Frick’s team.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In a laboratory.’

  ‘Don’t be a fool, lad,’ said Douglas. ‘You’ll have to tell me sooner or later.’

  ‘What is radiation?’ said the Captain.

  ‘It’s some kind of emission from unstable atomic nuclei,’ said Douglas. ‘It can be fatal.’

  ‘It was the first time we’d ever argued,’ said Spode. ‘My brother always looked after me. He helped me with my homework, saved me from the bullies, took punishments himself, rather than let me take the blame for things. I admired him and I loved him…we’d never quarrelled until we began working on this damned atomic bomb experiment. I never wanted to work on the bomb. I told him it would be the death of us, and it was.’

  ‘A bullet was the death of him,’ said Douglas.

  Spode reflected on this for a moment, then he nodded agreement. ‘Have you got the elbow pivot with you?’ he asked.

  Douglas reached into his pocket and found it. He showed it to Spode who examined it as though he’d never seen one before. ‘You found it at the flat?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Douglas. Spode treated the alloy component as if it was a thing of great wonder. This didn’t surprise Douglas, he’d known other men just as fascinated by the evidence that finally betrayed them into forfeiting their life. It was only after putting the piece back in his pocket that he felt the hard shape in his other pocket. Douglas realized that he’d shown him the lighter-weight model without a strengthening tube, and not the one he’d have to produce in evidence. But Douglas saw no reason to tell him of this. At the time it seemed of no importance.

  ‘I got there early,’ said Spode. ‘I knew he always left the doorkey under the mat. I let myself in, and waited for him to come home.’

  ‘With a gun?’

  ‘He had the gun, Superintendent. He bought it in a pub near Euston railway station. Three pounds he gave for it.’ The little room grew darker and there was a sudden patter of rain on the window. The dull light from the narrow window shone on the table-top and picked out the shape of the crucifix.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was in great pain. And he had a medical qualification as well as his physics. He knew it was all up with him.’

  ‘Are you saying it was suicide?’ Douglas asked.

  ‘It’s difficult to explain,’ said Spode. ‘We both knew the risks. Once you start on a thing like that, the neutron flux starts to rise and before you know what’s happening you’ve got a chain reaction.’

  ‘But you’d quarrelled?’ said Douglas.

  ‘He had no shield but I did have one.’ Spode crossed himself. ‘We quarrelled because I was worried for him, for him and for his soul.’

  The Captain put his cap on. ‘Is that murder, Superintendent?’

  ‘Murder is killing with malice aforethought – express or implied.’

  ‘So it’s not murder?’

  ‘That’s for the court to decide,’ said Douglas. ‘Come along, lad. Get your coat on again.’ Douglas stood up. He looked out of the window. It was still raining.

  ‘Eleazar,’ said Spode. ‘He delivered himself to death to save his people.’

  ‘Who is Eleazar?’ said Douglas. As he turned back to Spode, he saw that he was kneeling in prayer. He waited awkwardly, embarrassed, as so many are in the presence of intense devotion. Spode’s soft prayer was almost inaudible through the hand that he held close to his face. Then he toppled gently forward against Douglas’s knees. He rolled on to one side, and crashed face-down to the floor with a crunch.

  Douglas leaned down and grabbed Spode by the collar, his fingers probing into the slackened mouth. He smelled the acrid and unmistakable odour of bitter almonds. ‘Cyanide,’ said Douglas. ‘He’s taken poison!’ He rolled the body over, and looked around for water to wash out Spode’s mouth. ‘Phone your medical section,’ he told the Captain. ‘Get cardiac stimulants. We might save him.’

  The Captain picked up the phone. ‘He’s done for,’ he said calmly. ‘I saw the effect of those cyanide capsules when the arrest teams were picking up War Criminals for the first few days of the Armistice.’ He clicked the telephone rest. ‘Come on, come on,’ he said to the unanswered phone.

  Spode’s limp body did not respond to Douglas’s attempt to make him vomit. The eyes were glazed over and there was no pulse.

  The Captain replaced the still unanswered telephone. ‘Bloody telephone operators,’ he said. ‘The army is going to the dogs, now that the war is over. All they can think about is how quickly they can become civilians again.’

  ‘Poor kid,’ said Douglas. He closed Spode’s eyes.

  ‘You’re not a Catholic are you?’

  ‘N
o,’ said Douglas. ‘I’m not anything.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said the Captain.

  ‘Try me.’

  The Captain studied Douglas thoughtfully and then looked at Spode’s body. ‘Thomas Aquinas argued that suicide is a sin because it is an offence against society. By taking one’s own life a man deprives society of something that rightfully belongs to it. And modern technology has extended compassion to men who give their lives for the greater good…physicians who deliberately risk their lives during epidemics, men of the Church who risk the persecution of a Godless state. And there are holy virgins, who killed themselves rather than be violated. These are now venerated as martyrs.’

  ‘Eleazar, I heard him say Eleazar.’

  ‘Who exposed himself to death in order to deliver his people. Yes, for the suicide all is not lost. The essence and beauty of the sacrament is, and must always remain, reconciliation. And if we have charity enough to believe that we saw repentance before death, he could even be granted ecclesiastical burial.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘He killed his brother. A Catholic would not wish to live long with such a thing on his conscience.’

  ‘I should have searched him.’

  ‘What do you care?’ said the Captain. ‘You’ve got your confession, and your written scrap of paper. You can close the file now, can’t you?’

  Chapter Twenty-two

  ‘I should have you shot for this,’ Huth told him as soon as he’d pressed the scrambler button.

  Douglas didn’t reply.

  ‘You go off on your own, without leaving a contact number, or telling me or Sergeant Woods what you are up to. Then you force your way into an army establishment…’ Huth stopped, as if at a loss for words. ‘Those army bastards are always trying to find something wrong with us, and you’ve given them a perfect chance to complain. Do you realize that I’ve spent the last ten minutes apologizing to some bloody little army Colonel…I hate your stupid face, Archer. Why the hell don’t you say something? Have you been struck dumb?’