by Len Deighton
‘I’ve got the signed confession,’ said Douglas.
‘You stupid pig. I’ve got a thousand men working on this business. I’ve got inquiries in progress from the heavy water plant in Norway to the Curie Laboratory in Paris. Do you think I’m interested in one scribbled confession about one damned murder! When the murderer is already dead!’
‘You told me to find the murderer,’ said Douglas. ‘I found him. And the other nine hundred and ninety-nine men you keep telling me about, did not find him. Furthermore I even got a written confession. What the hell more do you want?’
There was a short silence. Then Huth said, ‘Oh! That’s better. I didn’t know you had it in you. I hadn’t heard you raise your voice before.’
‘Well, now I know you like it, I’ll shout all the time.’
‘You listen to me, Archer. You’ve made a mess of this investigation. I didn’t want Spode’s corpse. I wanted to find out more about him; what he knew, what he did, whom he spoke with on the phone. And I would have intercepted his mail to get a lead on the rest of this band of outlaws.’ Before Douglas could answer, Huth said, ‘Did he get it out of his pocket, or was it clipped in his mouth…the cyanide capsule, where did he have it?’
‘What difference does it make?’
‘I’ll tell you what difference it makes,’ said Huth with renewed anger. ‘If he got it from his pocket I need more efficient arresting officers. If these people have got the technique of plugging the cyanide capsules into teeth, we’ll have to revise all the arrest techniques. And I’d want it on the teleprinters before morning.’
‘From his pocket. He crossed himself and said a prayer. He could have put it in his mouth then.’
‘And you just stood there and watched him, you dummy?’
‘Yes.’
‘And this half-witted artillery Captain watched too?’
‘Yes,’ said Douglas.
‘And neither of you saw him do it?’
‘No.’
‘Any chance that this army officer passed him the capsule?’
‘No, sir. Of course not.’
‘Don’t give me that no-sir-of-course-not stuff. I’ve heard it all before. I’ve had the Gestapo files in Berlin checked while we’ve been on the phone. Someone’s just put the teleprinter reply on my desk. This Captain Hesse is a Catholic. Did you know that?’
‘We didn’t discuss theology.’
‘Then I wish you had done,’ said Huth. ‘This Spode is a Catholic too. Did you know that?’
‘There are now reasons to think so,’ said Douglas.
‘Don’t be sarcastic to me, Archer, I don’t like it. I’m asking you a simple question, and I want an honest answer. From the moment you arrested Spode, was there even the briefest opportunity for this damned army Captain to pass him anything at all?’
‘No chance at all, sir.’
Douglas heard the rustle of paper, as Huth leafed through the reports on his desk. Finally Huth said, ‘Don’t prepare any written report or even notes, for the time being. We’ll go over this together. If we get this one wrong, Superintendent Archer, you’ll find yourself in Dachau. Do you know what Dachau is?’
‘I’ve heard rumours.’
‘They are all true, believe me.’ Douglas could recognize a note of anxiety in his voice. ‘The Reichsführer-SS might want a personal report from me about it. I’ll want to make sure it’s exactly right. I’ll draft something myself tonight.’
‘Very good, sir.’
There was another long pause. ‘Good detective work, Archer. I’ll admit that.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Douglas, but Huth had already hung up. For a long time Douglas sat in the office that the Captain had provided for him. It was that of the Transport Officer. The German army was almost entirely horse-drawn still, and from the office window Douglas could see lines of prefabricated stables, and smell the dung piled high in the yard. It was almost dark now but Douglas did not put the light on. He looked out of the window. The lamps over the doors of the barrack-huts were reflected in the dark puddles that shimmered in the cold wind. It was deathly quiet. Douglas found it hard to believe that several hundred prisoners – or detainees as the Germans called them – and most of the survivors of 34. Füsilier-Regiment, now assigned to guard duties – were housed in this great compound.
Douglas switched on the desk light and idly looked at the newspapers and magazines that were piled on the blotter. There were postally-wrapped copies of hometown newspapers from Stuttgart and a new copy of Signal.
The cover of Signal magazine was entirely devoted to a full-length photo of General Fritz Kellerman. He was pictured standing under a ‘Scotland Yard’ street sign. The caption said, ‘In the steps of Sherlock Holmes. A German police General is in command at Scotland Yard, London.’
Douglas turned to the inside. The story was splashed across three double pages of pictures. Douglas himself was prominent in the largest lead picture. He was portrayed studying the Angler’s Times with Kellerman, except that a retoucher had lightly air-brushed the cover of it to remove the title. ‘General Kellerman gives orders to the famous Archer of the Yard, Britain’s young master detective, who has been described as “the Sherlock Holmes of the nineteen-forties”. Like most of London’s policemen he welcomes the modern and scientific crime-fighting methods introduced by his new German commander. Superintendent Archer – and his colleagues – speak warmly of their General, and secretly refer to him as “Father”.’
There was plenty more in the same silky journalistic vein. Douglas went cold at the thought that his friends might believe this rubbish. Only now did he understand Mayhew’s strange remark about staying out of the glossy magazines. Of course! And this article was probably what prompted the attempt on his life at Piccadilly Underground station. He closed the magazine and held it flat under his open hands, as if trying to suppress its contents. Damn Kellerman. It was all part of his fight with Huth and the SD. Perhaps it was one more valuable step towards the job of Reichskommissar, if that’s what Kellerman was after. But it put Douglas into a power struggle that he wanted no part of, and it jeopardized his life.
Damn them all, thought Douglas. Damn Scotland Yard and Harry Woods, and Mayhew and all the rest of them. They were all self-seeking. Even Harry seemed to be pursuing some adolescent desire to be a hero. And damn this artillery Captain, who had called Douglas ‘the Gestapo’. Perhaps he shouldn’t have shielded the Captain from Huth’s suspicious questions about passing the poison capsule. Then the young man would have found out what a Gestapo interrogation was really like.
It was only then that Douglas realized what perhaps he’d subconsciously known all along – the Captain had passed the capsule to Spode. It must have been in the cigarette. He’d selected one cigarette for Douglas and passed it with his fingers and then he offered Spode his case. Douglas remembered the remark about the loose tobacco. Was that because he prodded at the end of the cigarette to reveal the capsule that was concealed within that loose tobacco? And the Captain was in a position to get his hands on such sophisticated devices. He’s even admitted that he’d come across them when arresting people in the days after the fighting stopped. An officer commanding an arrest team must have found unused cyanide capsules.
It all fitted together. That nervous complaining about his job, was an anxiety about having a SIPO officer arrive unexpectedly. The Captain had offered to escort him, and then had tried to prevent the arrest by forbidding him to do it on army property. Perhaps it was the officer himself who had got Spode – a fellow conspirator – the pass that allowed him into the depot by the staff entrance.
And it was the Captain who had unwired the pivot from the tin box, to give it to Spode privately. And the Captain who had put Douglas in that seat in the guard hut, and faced him the wrong way while Spode arrived for his appointment, not from the public highway but from the camp side. The long lunch and tipsy behaviour was all a pretence; he’d probably spent the lunch-time scouring the whole place t
o find Spode. Failing to do so, he’d come back to the guard hut and started talking earnestly to Douglas to get his whole attention away from the place where Spode would appear. Even the way he’d left the soldiers at the position of attention was no accident; he’d done it to minimize their efficiency. And when the arrest was made, the Captain grabbed an infantry rifle. Had he intended to shoot his fellow conspirator before he talked?
His cynical remarks about the Geneva Convention, and his harsh handling of Wentworth, had been no more than an act to divert suspicion. But the talk about his faith had not been an act. He’d deliberately taken Spode to the room of a Catholic Unterfeldwebel, so that the sight of the crucifix might provide some solace for the final moments of the boy’s life. And the Captain’s concern for the theological niceties of suicide vis-à-vis murder was not solely on behalf of Spode. Now Douglas understood why the Captain’s voice had held an undertone of agony – for now the Captain had such a sin to live with.
Douglas walked over to the window. It was a flimsy building and he could feel the vibrations caused by the restless horses in the stables below. The yard was wet but the rain had stopped. Between the racing clouds he could glimpse a few stars. Now he could understand the men’s religious anguish because, for the first time in his life, he began to doubt his faith as a policeman.
Douglas heard the engine of a heavy vehicle passing through the motor transport yard on the far side of the stables. It was out of sight but Douglas looked at his watch and decided that it was about time that the ambulance arrived from London.
He found two men on duty in the motor transport office. One was an anaemic-looking clerk, with pimples and an easy smile. The other was a mechanic, a muscular sixty-year-old, with curly moustache and metal-framed spectacles. No ambulance, they reported. Douglas sat down with them and asked them how they liked England, and they asked him where he learned to speak such beautiful German.
‘And you brought that Railton in,’ said the big Oberfeldwebel. ‘Now, that’s what I call a real car. Not like some of the rubbish we have to service here.’ He flicked a nicotine-stained finger towards the lines of old Opel Blitz lorries, commandeered Austins, and brand-new military model VWs, all painted with the fish device that was the Divisional sign. Most of the men of the Division had been recruited from the Schwarzwald and this man’s accent had that sort of sing-song lilt that was so often heard in those villages.
Douglas looked around the office. On the wall there was the usual row of clipboards, and above them an order signed by the commanding officer. It listed those officers on the camp staff who were assigned cars for personal transport. ‘I know your face from somewhere,’ the older man suddenly said to Douglas.
‘It’s not likely,’ said Douglas. He read the list of cars.
‘I never forget a face,’ he said. ‘Do I, Walter? No, I never forget a face.’
‘He’s well known for it,’ said the clerk obsequiously. ‘He never forgets a face.’
‘You’re a policeman…here!’ He gave a huge smile of pleasure. ‘You’re from Scotland Yard. I remember seeing on the sheet when we refilled your car for you. Wait a minute…no, don’t tell me, I’ll get it in a minute…’
The clerk smiled at Douglas, as a salesman might smile while demonstrating an especially ingenious mechanical toy.
‘Archer of the Yard. You’re Archer of the Yard. Where the devil was I reading about you just recently…?’
Douglas did not help him remember.
The Oberfeldwebel shook his head, his excitement bordering on disbelief. ‘You’re the detective who solved the Bethnal Green poisonings, and caught “the Rottingdean Ripper” back before the war.’
That Douglas did not acknowledge the truth of it made no difference to the old man. It did not even slow his narrative. ‘Archer of the Yard! Well, I’m damned. I follow murder mysteries. Fiction as well as true life. In my apartment in Forbach I have a whole room filled with books, magazines and press cuttings.’ He took off his oily cloth cap and scratched his head. ‘I was reading about you…very recently…I knew about you before of course: you’re famous…but I read about you. Where was I reading about him, Walter?’
‘In Signal, Oberfeldwebel,’ said the clerk.
‘Of course,’ said the old man, smacking one huge fist into his open hand. ‘First time I heard of you was that case in Camden Town. The husband killed his wife with bad seafood – crab wasn’t it – and nearly got away with it. Good detective work, that was. That must have been about 1938.’
‘December 1937,’ said Douglas. ‘Not Camden Town – Great Yarmouth.’
‘Great Yarmouth, yes, and you found out, from the wife’s sister, that she had this allergy for seafood.’ He stood back, so that he could see Douglas full length. He looked him up and down and shook his head again. ‘Whoever would have believed that I’d be here, talking to Archer of the Yard like this. Coffee?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Douglas.
The old man took off his spectacles and slipped them into a leather case before putting them into his black overalls. ‘Get three coffees, Walter. Tell the Feldwebel it’s for me, and I want real coffee, not ersatz muck. And a jug of cream if he’s going to want that damned motorcycle overhauled again.’
‘The ambulance should be here by now,’ said Douglas.
‘They’ll stop for coffee on the way,’ said the old man. ‘SS are they? Those people know how to look after themselves, and our Feldgendarmerie don’t dare to pick them up.’ He looked at his pocket watch. ‘Coming to take a body away, I hear. Of course, I should have put two and two together, when I heard you were with Captain Hesse.’
‘Put two and two together?’ said Douglas.
‘To make four,’ he said. ‘You arriving from Scotland Yard, and then spending the day with an officer of the Abwehr.’
‘Captain Hesse is from the Abwehr?’
He chuckled again. ‘You don’t have to keep up that pretence with me,’ he said. ‘I won’t tell a soul. And anyway, dozens of people here know about Captain Hesse.’
Douglas looked at the man trying to see what he meant. The Abwehr was that branch of the army’s Intelligence Service concerned with the foreign intelligence services. ‘What does an officer of the Abwehr do here?’
‘You know that better than I do,’ he said. ‘The Captain – he’s only a Leutnant really, but the Abwehr use any uniform they like – comes and goes whenever he wishes. We have that nice Horch motor-car over there – no unit markings or tactical signs, you notice – for his exclusive use.’ At that moment Walter reappeared with a tin tray and two jugs. ‘Just talking about our Captain Hesse, Walter. I’m telling Superintendent Archer what a nice fellow he is.’
Walter smiled and registered the oberfeldwebel’s claim to be on intimate terms with the policeman. He poured three cups of coffee and they drank it in silence.
‘My wife and my son will never believe this, when I write to them,’ said the oberfeldwebel. ‘They both follow all the big murder cases. Next trip to London I was going to photograph that place in Pimlico, where they found the remains of the girl – the bread-knife murders, you remember.’ He flipped open the lid of the jug and inhaled the aroma of the coffee. ‘Oh, and that reminds me, Walter: Captain Hesse phoned me just before our visitor arrived. He’ll be taking his car tonight, about midnight. Make sure the tank is full and his card is ready for signature. You know how he hates to be kept waiting about.’ He put on his spectacles again to study the list of vehicles on the clipboard marked with the next day’s date. ‘So you’re waiting here until the ambulance arrives, Superintendent?’ He twisted the end of his curly moustache.
‘No,’ said Douglas on a sudden impulse. ‘The arrangements to move the body are all made. I’ll take my car now. I’ll try and get an early night for a change.’
The Oberfeldwebel walked with him across the yard to where the Railton was parked. The conversation now turned to what mileage and speed the detective’s car did. As Douglas got inside the m
an gave the paintwork a loving caress. ‘They knew how to make a car in those days,’ he said.
Softly on the cold night air there came the distant sound of music. The old man saw Douglas cock his head to listen. ‘The choir,’ said the old man. ‘Divisional HQ choir. Kids! Called up since the fighting stopped. They don’t know what a war is. Look at that pimply kid Walter in the office there – they’re tourists, not soldiers.’
‘And they sing in the choir?’ The singing could be heard more clearly now, ‘Silent Night, Holy Night’, two dozen lusty young male voices but it was musical enough.
‘There’s to be a big party for the local English children at Christmas,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised at how much money they’ve collected. It’s weeks to go before Christmas.’ He smoothed his hand on the paintwork. ‘More and more young recruits will come. We old-timers will go home. Soon the fighting will be forgotten.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Douglas.
‘Not forgotten by those of us who did it, but we’ll not be around to talk about it, will we?’
Douglas revved up the engine. ‘Damned good coffee,’ said Douglas.
The old man leaned closer. ‘Any time you want your car overhauled, you come and see me, Superintendent.’ He tapped his nose, to show that such a service would remain confidential.
‘Thanks and good night,’ said Douglas. He drove as far as the barrier that closed off the entrance to the motor transport yard. As he halted there, waiting for the gate to lift, the young clerk came out of the office brandishing what, in the poor light, looked like a huge gun. He poked its ‘barrel’ through the window of the car so that it was pointing at Douglas’s head. Seeing the sudden movement, a sentry in a guard tower turned the light so it blinded him.
‘What?’ said Douglas nervously.
‘Will you autograph it for me?’ said the clerk. The gun barrel was now identifiable as a tightly rolled copy of Signal magazine. With shaking hand, Douglas scrawled his signature across the corner of the magazine cover.