He had traversed halfway around the perimeter fence when he realised that his dog was no longer following him. He glanced behind him to see the Labrador twenty strides back, where it was presently digging into the soft, peaty soil, at the same spot that he had dragged the animal away from earlier.
‘Oscar!’ he hissed, but the animal took no notice. Blackman scanned the horizon. The ground on that side of the fence was a few feet lower than inside the compound, affording him some cover. He scrambled back to where his Labrador was excavating a hole. ‘Oscar, stop it, goddammit.’
And then he saw what his dog had found.
The unmistakable shape of a human hand, the skin waxy, old, like grey leather, shrunken tight around the bones. He knelt down, pulled the dog back by its collar, and examined the remains. The body had been left in a shallow grave barely six inches beneath the surface, wrapped in what looked like a thick rug. Blackman dug at the soil with his fingers to expose more of the unfortunate individual. It was wearing what looked like a thick flannel shirt. Or a jacket. It had deteriorated somewhat, but the colours remained discernible in places - a red chequered pattern.
36
¡No pasarán!
Police Station, La Mesita Blanca.
All Saints’ Day, 1970.
3:29pm.
Inspector Jesus Garcia had been downing a glass of water when Harry Blackman had dropped his bombshell. He choked, coughed into the glass, sending water droplets splashing across his trousers. He wiped his face with the back of his hand. ‘You are certain?’
‘I know a dead body when I see one,’ Blackman replied.
‘Yet you did not report it? You did not come to me?’
The Englishman replied with a simple, questioning stare.
Garcia’s gaze dropped to his notepad. ‘Ah, I see. You did not think I would have acted upon it.’ And there it was. The first time he had ever verbalised the lie to another. The spoken confirmation that theirs was a place where one did not speak out. Did not question. Would not. Could not.
“Cover it up. Destroy any evidence. It never happened. You saw nothing. Do not speak out, or you and your family will suffer.”
“¡No pasarán!” the banners had proclaimed. But they had passed.
He pictured his Rosa Marie. A good soul, a pure spirit born for another era; a different time, free from tyranny. And he thought about how he had plunged her into his sea of acquiescence and shame.
He peered at his notebook. At the date. The 1st of November.
All Saints’ Day. All Souls’ Day. A day to pray for the souls that have departed. For if you fail to do so, they cease to exist. Fail to have ever existed.
He lept to his feet with the vitality of a man half his age, bashed on the cold steel door. Officer Ramos opened it. ‘There’s a one to twenty-five thousand scale map of the valley in the cupboard behind the reception,’ Garcia said in a hurried tone. ‘Bring it to me.’
The junior policeman rushed to do as he was told. Garcia looked back from the open door at Blackman, who remained sitting on the edge of the cell bed looking back at him, a hint of surprise evident on his face.
When the Inspector had investigated the journalist’s disappearance two years earlier, he had been told that the young man had been meddling in the Germans’ affairs, but he had assumed that they had simply scared him away. Had they really killed him? He stared at the concrete floor, shaking his head. If he was dead, if the Germans had murdered him…it could change everything.
If someone did the right thing. If they spoke out.
Officer Ramos stood next to him, holding the map. ‘I found it.’
‘In there. Lay it on the bed.’
The policeman did as he was told, then stood by the door.
Garcia looked at Blackman, nodded at the map. ‘Show me where.’
Blackman shuffled forward, peered at the map for a moment, then placed his finger on a point immediately west of the old compound. ‘It’s on that side, about one third of the way along the fence. There’s an old security light on a pole almost adjacent to it inside the grounds. The body is about six metres from the fence. I covered it up and placed several stones on top to mark it.’
Garcia turned to Officer Ramos. ‘Call Alonso and Gomez. Tell them to get up there with shovels and a radio. As fast as they can. They must call me the moment they find anything, understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Ramos spun around and hurried away.
Garcia looked at his watch. It was now approaching four o’clock. ‘And hurry,’ he shouted at the departing man, before closing the door once more and sitting back down on the bed opposite the Englishman. ‘It will not take them long to get there. And if what you say is true…well…’ He let his head sink into his hands, thought for a while, then looked back up at Blackman. ‘Okay, please continue. What did you do next?’
37
Who are you?
Three months earlier
It was nearing ten o’clock in the morning when Blackman arrived back at the front gate to his villa, his weary dog in tow. The images of the corpse he had uncovered at the German compound had consumed his thoughts for the entirety of the return journey back along the valley wall, through the dense forest.
Someone’s relative. Someone’s child.
But how could he report it without explaining his presence there? And his purpose? He shook his head, forced the grim imagery away, whereupon he noticed that the entrance gate was wide open. He had locked it behind him; he was certain. And neither the gardener nor the housemaid were expected on a Saturday.
He stepped into the yard, peered inside. All was quiet. There was no sign of Johansson’s car. Maybe she had gone out for provisions, forgetting to close it behind her?
As he yanked the steel gate shut, his mind cast back a few days earlier to what had happened in his bedroom, and to what he had told Johansson about his past. He shook his head, stomped towards the house. They had barely spoken since that mad, passionate moment. Why had he allowed that to happen? He had been so careful up to that point, invested so much time and no little money into building this elaborate cover story. And now the Norwegian woman, practically still a stranger to him, knew part of the reason he was here in La Mesita Blanca.
He slid his key into the side entrance door, pushed it open, then beckoned to his Labrador to hurry inside. He heard movement. Perhaps the housemaid had come to drop off his laundry after all?
He released the dog’s leash, turned to hang it up on the hook by the door. He was stronger and fitter than most men his age, yet he was completely ill-prepared to resist the powerful hands that wrapped around his neck in a silent, deft manoeuvre, hauling him backwards into the house, cutting off the oxygen supply to his brain.
Rendering him unconscious.
He awoke to hear whispered, urgent conversations close by. He lifted his head towards the voices, but realised that he had been blindfolded. His first reaction, to grab at the material, was immediately thwarted; his hands were also bound behind his back. His heart racing, he tried to stand up, only to find that his legs, too, were restrained. He felt a soft breeze across his chest, felt the coarse wood of the chair against his back, his thighs, realised he was naked. And suddenly he understood the situation. He was a prisoner and about to face an interrogation.
The whispering stopped.
‘Who are you?’ he shouted.
Footsteps creaked on timber floorboards. He let his fingers explore the shape of the wooden chair to which he had been tied, feeling the distinctive carved shape. He shifted his head towards the light to his left. An open window. The one next to his office desk? The portal that looked out onto the front of the house and the sweeping valley beyond?
He listened for a moment.
Tick - tock - tick, tick - tock.
The old wall clock with the annoying rhythm that the previous owner had left in the house. He was in his upstairs office, a prisoner in his own house. But who were his captors? Had he been spotted at the old compou
nd? Had he been followed?
A man’s voice, ‘He’s awake.’ The accent hard to place. Eastern European perhaps?
More movement, then another male calling to alert those downstairs. Hurried footsteps coming up the wooden staircase.
He sensed the presence of at least four people now. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded.
More whispering.
He leaned forward as much as his bindings would allow, angling his head towards the sound.
A powerful arm wrapped around his throat, a hand across his forehead, yanking him backwards.
A hushed command from across the room. Not in English. Not German. A language he did not understand, but one he recognised, one that he had first heard in those horrific camps at the end of the war. The language of the Jewish prisoners.
Someone approached him, their bulk blotting out the diffused light from the open window.
‘You are Captain Harry Blackman?’ The man’s voice was assertive. Professional. Knowing.
‘I’m Blackman, yes. And who the hell are you?’ He demanded.
The man shifted his position, standing behind him, his face very close to the side of the Englishman’s head. ‘You don’t need to know who we are. You just need to know what we want’. The assailant’s tone was cordial, his accent almost Home Counties English. But not quite. Whoever this man was, he had not managed to eradicate his Middle Eastern heritage.
‘And what does an Israeli agent want?’
The man chuckled and stepped behind Blackman - the floorboards creaking once more - then grabbed at the Englishman’s head, forcing it to the right. ‘I want to know why you are here,’ the man said, his tone now laden with menace.
‘I live here,’ Blackman retorted.
A heavy fist hit him in the belly less than a second later. He recoiled in shock, spluttering, struggling for air.
The man behind Blackman spoke again. ‘Let’s try that again, shall we?’ He was so close, Blackman could feel his breath on his ear. ‘You are helping the Germans. Why?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Blackman sensed the hulk of a man in front of him readying to unleash another punch, but the man to his right issued a command in Yiddish.
‘We know what you did in the war.’
‘If that were true, then why am I tied to my own chair, blindfolded?’
‘You helped them escape.’
‘The Germans? If you think that then you clearly have no idea what I did back then.’
‘You worked for British Intelligence. You were part of Operation Roundup.’
‘I’ve never heard of that.’ Blackman turned his head towards the sound of a chair being placed down before him.
The man sat down, the tip of one of his leather boots nudging the Englishman’s bare toes. ‘My colleague here, the one that just hit you in the stomach. He is very big and very strong. He can hurt you for hours and never get tired.’
‘Be that as it may, I still don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘Operation Roundup was a British initiative in 1945 and 1946 to locate, secure, then spirit away hundreds of prominent Germans. Scientists, engineers, industrialists, and even senior Nazi party officials. Gestapo. SS Men. The objective was to make use of their expertise, their skills, their knowledge. To protect them.’
‘That’s ridiculous. I hunted those bastards.’
‘But they never faced justice, did they? They never faced trial.’
‘Some did. Some of them went to the gallows.’
‘A token few. The ones you had no use for, or the ones who refused to collaborate. The rest, however, they just slipped away. To places like this one. To La Mesita Blanca.’
The man leaned forward, his boots now either side of Blackman’s right foot, his hand gripping the Englishman’s knee. ‘They never paid for what they did.’ His voice wavered. He cleared his throat.
‘My job was to catch them,’ said Blackman. ‘It was for others to punish them.’
The interrogator released his grip on Blackman’s leg and stood up. ‘Why are you here in Spain?’
Blackman hesitated. It was obvious that the Israeli knew who Blackman was. He remembered his commando training; if captured, play dumb. Tell them what they already know. ‘Look, I sold my business in England. I’d always wanted to get away from the weather. From the hustle and bustle. Is that so hard to understand?’
‘Why this village? Why this place, of all places?’
Blackman had recovered from the initial shock of finding himself tied to a chair, and the pain in his gut was receding.
Be placid, don’t antagonise your captors. Convince them you want to help them.
‘You mean, because of the Germans?’
‘Of course, that’s what I mean. We know that you were in a specialist British unit that hunted these people. Men and women who, twenty-five years later, are living here in big, fancy houses. Wealthy. Comfortable. And out of all the villages in Spain, you just so happened to choose this one?’
‘How do you know so much about me?’
‘Answer my question.’
‘If you know what I did during the war. If you know me, if you truly know me, then you will know that I hate these bastards.’
The interrogator stood up once more, shifted to Blackman’s side again. ‘Then why are you here, living among them?’ he snarled.
His head still blindfolded, Blackman turned his head to face towards where he presumed the Israeli’s face was. ‘Quite probably, my reasons are very similar to yours.’
His interrogator and his companions fell silent for a moment. Blackman could hear nothing except the unseen men’s breathing, the breeze blowing the net curtain. Birdsong among the trees in the fields outside.
The interrogator stepped away, and the assailants left the room, congregating in the hallway outside. They pulled the door closed. Blackman heard them conferring, speaking in hushed tones. It was clear that their opinions differed.
And then he heard the woman’s voice. Faint, also speaking in Yiddish. Her accent was not like that of his interrogator. He strained to lean forward, desperate to focus. The woman spoke only a few words, but he felt sure he had detected a north European inflexion. Dutch? Danish, perhaps? And then he realised. A cold chill ran down his neck, shoulders, and arms.
Several minutes seemed to pass before Blackman heard multiple footsteps approaching. He braced himself, fingers gripping the wooden chair arms.
The interrogator stood before him. ‘A word of advice, Mr Blackman. If you know what’s good for you, steer clear of this business.’
In an instant, Blackman found two immense arms wrapped around his torso, clamping him into the back of the chair. Someone else gripped his right wrist and elbow.
‘What are you doing?’ he shouted.
‘Don’t worry. When you wake up, we will be gone.’
He felt a sharp pin prick, and a needle being inserted into the crook of his arm. Within seconds, his head became heavy, his body weak. He felt the needle being withdrawn. The hands that had gripped him released, and he slipped into a delicious, deep unconsciousness.
38
The hole truth
Police Station, La Mesita Blanca.
All Saints’ Day, 1970.
4.47pm.
‘Tell me.’ Inspector Garcia stood leaning over the front desk, the police radio receiver to his ear with its coiled wire snaking across the desktop.
The desk sergeant sat in his chair opposite, peering up at the Inspector, his arms crossed.
‘We found the place he described,’ Officer Miguel Alonso replied on the radio.
‘And?’
‘There’s no body.’
‘You are quite sure?’
‘Yes, but there could have been. The soil was fresh. It looks like someone filled a hole in very recently. Wait…hang on, Gomez has found something.’
The receiver to his ear, Garcia glanced back to the locked cell door, then at the desk sergeant. The other man’s eyes d
ropped to the desk upon which the Inspector was tapping repeatedly with his fingernails.
Officer Alonso’s voice returned to the radio. ‘It’s nothing, sir,’ he said. ‘Just a piece of cloth.’
Garcia shook his head, looked back at the cell door. ‘Describe it.’
‘Well, there’s not much. Just part of a coat sleeve, by the look of it. It’s very grubby, but there’s definitely a pattern. I can see stripes.’
‘Stripes? You mean like in one direction?’
‘No, they are horizontal and vertical.’
Garcia took an intake of air. ‘So, it is chequered?’
‘Yes, sir. Chequered.’
‘Miguel, is the material red?’
‘How the hell did you know that, sir?’
Garcia handed the radio receiver back to the desk sergeant. ‘Tell them to get back here with what they found. Tell them to be as fast as they can.’ He strode to his office, sat down behind his desk, yanked one of the drawers open and removed a blue cardboard folder, dropping it onto the desk.
A white sticker had been fixed to the folder upon which a name had been scrawled in a thick pen.
DAVID ROSENBAUM
39
Secrets
Three months earlier
When Harry Blackman woke up, he found himself lying on his bed. He was naked. He could not recall how he had gotten there. He squinted at the clock on the wall. It was approaching midday. His hands moved to his rib cage, groaned at the pain as he tried to move.
And then he remembered.
He thrust his legs over the side of the bed, attempted to stand up, only to reach out in a panic to steady himself against the wall, his legs as jelly. He stood there for a minute, took several breaths, waiting for the dizziness to diminish, then stumbled towards the bathroom. He ran the water, splashing it over his face, then gulped at the cold liquid from the tap.
The Dark Place: A historical suspense thriller set in the murky world of fugitive war criminals, vengeful Nazi hunters and spies Page 19