Death In Captivity

by Michael Gilbert

  Goyles was sure, therefore, that any help he might require would be forthcoming to the limit of human endeavour.

  Nevertheless, he was far from sure as to what exactly his first move ought to be. He lay on his bunk and devoted his quite considerable mental powers to the problem. He imagined that the soundest plan was to begin at the beginning. Accordingly he turned his thoughts to the evening of July 1st, and ran through in detail, first his own movements, then the movements of everyone whom he had encountered: lastly anything that he had heard of the movements of others.

  He meditated until the lunch bugle blew.

  It was that evening that his first informant appeared. He was a subaltern in the Royal Engineers; his name was Tim Meynell, and his subterranean activities, as has already been mentioned, had gained him the unkind nickname of the Sewer Rat. He was a thin, stringy, serious person, with the faraway look in his eyes of one who works with blind forces and knows that the cube root of the function of a power of seven may make all the difference between inertia and oblivion.

  ‘I say,’ he said. ‘I believe you are the person who wants to know about anything out of the way which anyone has seen or heard. Is that right?’

  ‘Well,’ said Goyles, ‘in a way I suppose it is. Come for a walk.’

  They started on a circuit of the camp.

  ‘I don’t know if this is going to be any good to you—’

  ‘Any detail, however small,’ said Goyles, feeling like all the detectives of fiction rolled in one body.

  ‘It isn’t anything really to do with the evening Coutoules disappeared, but it was so funny, I thought you might like to hear it. It was about four weeks ago. I was down the main drain – it goes along about ten yards this side of that path there’– he pointed to the path which bisected the camp and ran out at the main gate – ‘I must have got a good way along it – further than the dividing wire, I should think—’

  ‘You must have been almost under the carabinieri quarters.’

  ‘Yes, I think I must have been. I was under some sort of living quarters – you could see the inlet pipes and so on—’

  ‘If you’re right about where the drain runs, it must have been the Italian huts,’ said Goyles. ‘It’s just playing fields this side of the wire.’

  ‘Yes, well, that’s what made it so funny.’

  ‘What was funny?’

  ‘I could hear voices – you can, sometimes, you know, quite a long way underground. They carry along the pipes—’

  ‘What was funny about that?’

  ‘One of them was speaking English.’

  ‘It might have been Benucci,’ suggested Goyles.

  ‘Oh, no, it wasn’t Benucci’s sort of voice at all. You can always tell an Italian speaking English, however good he is. This was quite different.’

  ‘Might it have been Coutoules?’

  ‘Well, that did occur to me, but I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, although I couldn’t hear the words, the sort of general rhythm of them and the accent was quite plain.’

  ‘Well?’ said Goyles.

  Meynell looked unhappy.

  ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that it sounded like a colonial. Either that or an American.’

  ‘I see,’ said Goyles thoughtfully. ‘Well, thanks for telling me.’

  Later that evening, Baierlein found time for a word with him.

  ‘I can’t tell you much,’ he said, ‘about what actually happened on that night, because, as you know, I was in jail, with Grim and Tony, for my sins. But there’s one thing which did strike me – I may be making a mountain out of a molehill.’

  ‘Let’s have it,’ said Goyles.

  ‘It was the wireless. I’ve never heard it before that night, and I’ve never really heard it since, but that night it was terrific.’

  ‘What wireless?’

  ‘The wireless in the carabinieri block. Some band or other. It really was making a terrific shindy. It almost blew us out of our beds. Tony remarked on it, too. He found it very helpful when he was scrambling up on to the roof. About five minutes later it stopped altogether.’

  ‘What was your idea about that?’ said Goyles. He knew Baierlein was no fool.

  ‘It did occur to me to wonder whether it had been turned on loud to hide some other noise.’

  ‘I suppose it might,’ said Goyles. ‘But wasn’t it a bit late? I mean, the camp was all shut up by then. The Italians could hardly have got in and kidnapped Coutoules at that hour of the night without attracting some attention.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ said Baierlein. ‘It was just a thought.’

  Goyles hesitated for a moment. He very much wanted to discuss with someone what Meynell had told him. He supposed, however, that it was the duty of an investigator to listen to everybody and confide in nobody.

  As soon as Baierlein had left, a further thought struck him.

  Was it not highly probable that the two pieces of information which he had received, intriguing though each of them was, might cancel each other out? The more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. What Meynell had heard from underground had been a wireless set. One of the Italians had been secretly listening to an American station – that, of course, would account for the accent.

  Goyles dismissed all thoughts of the problem from his mind and stumped off angrily down the passage to keep a bridge date. He was an enthusiastic if over-scientific player.

  Next morning, after breakfast, he sought out the Camp Quartermaster, Captain Porter, a wily old regular soldier, on the whole sympathetic to escapers, but inclined to stand on his dignity.

  ‘You have most to do with the Italians of anyone here,’ said Goyles. ‘You see them every day about parcels and that sort of thing, don’t you?’

  ‘I suppose I do really,’ said Porter cautiously. ‘If it’s Red Cross boxes you want you’re out of luck. I gave the last lot to the Sports Committee.’

  ‘I don’t really want anything,’ said Goyles. ‘Except information. I was wondering if you could find out for me which sentries were on certain posts on certain nights.’

  ‘I expect I might,’ said Captain Porter. He knew the power of a tin of Red Cross butter in fat-starved Italy. ‘Which one had you particularly in mind?’

  ‘I wanted to know who was on duty on the north-east guard platform round about midnight on July 1st.’

  Captain Porter looked out of the corner of his eye at Goyles and said, ‘That would be the night—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Goyles. ‘That was the night when Coutoules bought it.’

  ‘Funny thing that,’ said Captain Porter. ‘I’ll see what I can do. Come back and see me after lunch.’

  After lunch, however, the Quartermaster’s room was empty, and Goyles was lying on his bunk before tea when Porter came in.

  ‘It’s a damn funny thing,’ he said, ‘I’ve never known them so sticky. Usually a little thing like that you can get for the asking. Someone’s been scaring the pants off them. I had to blow a whole Red Cross parcel and fifty cigarettes. I hope it was

  worthwhile. The two you want are Private Biancelli and the carib who was with him was called Marzotto.’

  Goyles wrote down both names, and said, ‘Do you think you could possibly get Biancelli into the camp?’

  ‘I can’t get him into the camp if he doesn’t want to come. What I can do is give you the tip when he next shows up. There’s a big fatigue coming in tomorrow after tea with new beds for Hut E. If he isn’t actually on guard he might be on that.’

  Goyles thought for a moment.

  ‘If he is on the fatigue,’ he said, ‘could you get him away from it for five minutes, to the cookhouse, say?’

  ‘It’ll be as much as my job’s worth if I’m caught tampering with an Italian detail,’ said Captain Porter. ‘However, I’ll do what I can. I suppose you know what you’re up to.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Goyles. ‘I’m not doing it just for my own amusement, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘So I
understand,’ said Captain Porter. ‘I had the tip from Colonel Baird this morning. I’ll do what I can.’

  A message at five o’clock the following afternoon told Goyles that the Quartermaster had been as good as his word. He accordingly made his way to the cookhouse and was waiting when Biancelli came in. He was escorting two British orderlies who were carrying rations, but as soon as the door was closed the orderlies made themselves scarce and Goyles was left alone with his man. He recognised him as one of the sentries who had often stared down from the walls at him; a small, duck-like person with a sallow face and an ill-fitting uniform.

  ‘Please sit down,’ said Goyles, in passable Italian. ‘Have a cigarette.’ He passed over a whole packet, which Biancelli pocketed unopened and without comment.

  Goyles tried one or two of the normal conversational openings: the hardness of the war; the shortness of food; the separation from family and children. None of these evoked any response at all and Goyles found this, in itself, curious. Always before when he had made the opportunity to talk alone with Italian soldiers he had found them sympathetic – almost child-like in their anxiety to please. Why, he wondered, was Biancelli suddenly acting the strong, silent man? Was he trying to put the price up? He did not look naturally strong or silent.

  He found the answer suddenly.

  Far away across the barrack square, Captain Benucci’s voice was raised in anger.

  Biancelli shot to his feet, and scuttled towards the door.

  Goyles got in front of him.

  ‘Look here,’ he said urgently, ‘there’s nothing to be frightened about. Do you want to earn a hundred pounds—? ’

  ‘I cannot say anything,’ said Biancelli. Nevertheless he had stopped moving and his eyes looked interested.

  ‘You know as well as I do,’ said Goyles, ‘that Italy will be out of the war before many months are passed. The carabinieri and all Fascists will be in hiding for their lives and honest people will come into their own.’

  ‘Speriamo,’ said Biancelli.

  ‘It is not a hope. It is a certainty.’

  ‘You mentioned one hundred—’

  ‘One hundred pounds in British gold.’ He wondered, as he said it, where on earth he was going to get it from.

  ‘We cannot talk here and now, but I have an idea. Can you arrange it so that you are one of the guards on the walk tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes. That could be done.’

  ‘I will get myself put on the walk. I will be in the last file. There should be plenty of opportunity to talk at the halts, if we are careful.’

  ‘It shall be arranged.’

  ‘Tomorrow then. And death to all Fascists.’

  ‘May they dine together for eternity on their grandmothers’ tripes,’ agreed Biancelli.

  Goyles was on his way back to his hut when he stopped because he noticed that something out of the ordinary was happening.

  A crowd of prisoners had gathered in the middle of the sports field, and all the hut windows looking on to the main gate were crowded with faces.

  Goyles found Baierlein standing by himself.

  ‘New prisoners,’ said Baierlein.

  ‘What’s the excitement?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Baierlein. ‘There’s something up though. Have you ever seen prisoners arriving here in that state? This isn’t a reception camp.’

  The little group of prisoners in the forecourt showed even at that distance a battered and disreputable look. Their clothes hung from them, they were carrying practically no kit, and they looked as if they had spent the last three nights in a coal truck.

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ said Goyles. ‘They’re straight from the front line.’

  The excitement in the crowd was growing. If new prisoners were being brought direct to a camp as far north as 127, the implications were obvious.

  ‘Looks as if the guards are expecting trouble,’ said Baierlein.

  A third man had appeared on each of the guard platforms and a line of carabinieri had stationed themselves on the inner wire between the forecourt and the main camp. In the forecourt Benucci and the Commandant were talking together, and eyeing the growing crowd of British officers on the playing field.

  ‘I don’t believe they’re going to let those chaps in here at all,’ said Baierlein. ‘They’re putting them in one of the Italian blocks.’

  As the little group of new prisoners started to move, an officer on the sports field cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, ‘Where are you from?’

  Benucci screamed out an order and two of the machine guns on the wall turned quietly in the direction of the crowd.

  Goyles suddenly went hot and cold.

  ‘I hope no one starts anything,’ he whispered to Baierlein.

  ‘Get flat on your face if there’s anyone starts shooting,’ said Baierlein. ‘Whatever else you do, don’t run for it.’

  The little file of prisoners was moving off now. Then something rather exciting happened. There was a moment when the last of them, a small dark man, was out of sight of the guards on the head of the file. He jumped round towards the group in the camp, his back against the wall of the guard hut.

  His arms rose and fell about a dozen times, quickly.

  Goyles was unable to read it, but more than one of the prisoners was expert enough in semaphore to take the message.

  ‘Sicily invaded.’

  Chapter 6

  Colonel Lavery Makes a Speech and Goyles Practises Ventriloquism

  1

  ‘I have called you together, gentlemen,’ said Colonel Lavery, ‘because, in my view, this may be the last opportunity we shall have to think matters over calmly, and to plan, so far as we are able to plan, our own future actions. Things should start moving fairly soon.’

  He looked down at his audience of four hundred officers gathered in the Theatre Hut. He was well aware that they were four hundred individualists, and that his authority over them was tenuous. He sometimes thought that the only real reason that any of them obeyed his orders was that they came, most of them, from a people to whom order and discipline were as natural as breathing. A people, moreover, who had learned, in the hard school of history, that in a crisis it pays to hand over authority to one man and to follow his orders. As he looked at the faces in front of him, Colonel Lavery felt all this, without perhaps precisely thinking it out; and he chose his words very carefully.

  ‘It’s no news to you that the Eighth Army is in Sicily. That fact, which was first passed across to us by one of the new prisoners, has been confirmed from other sources. I can’t suppose that they intend to stop at Sicily. The Straits of Messina are no great obstacle. It is quite certain that they will land, rather sooner than later, in Italy. When that happens, so far as I can see, one of three things may happen – or perhaps a mixture of them.

  ‘The Italians may go on with the fight. Or they may give it up, in a straightforward and orderly way, doing the best they can by their present allies: in which case one of the things they will be sure to do is to hand us over intact to the Germans. Or they may chuck in the sponge at a moment’s notice, without consulting the Germans at all, in which case a pretty fair period of chaos is liable to ensue. I imagine a lot will depend on Mussolini. I understand, from guarded references which our “I” people in camp here have deciphered from the daily press, that the two ends of the axis may not be revolving at quite the same speed just now.

  ‘However, please let no one deceive himself. Whichever of those three things happen, our course is not going to be easy or straightforward.

  ‘If there is chaos, then we will take what advantage of it we can. If, on the other hand, it seems that we are going to be moved further north, under Italian control, or handed over lock, stock and barrel to the Germans, then a very awkward decision may face us. I don’t want to make too much of it, because it may never happen. But in such circumstances, we might have to face the fact that it would be our duty to rush these walls regardless of cost.’


  Colonel Lavery paused for a moment and looked round at his audience, which had fallen strangely silent. He himself was thinking of Benucci’s words to him a week before – on the night, in fact, that Coutoules had disappeared.

  He repeated, ‘Regardless of cost. If the British Army was in Italy and advancing towards us fast, through a friendly or at any rate a neutral countryside, then it might be our plain duty to go over those walls on the calculation that if sixty or seventy per cent of us got clear we should have taken a justifiable chance. As I said before, I am not stressing this, because we are working now on certain alternative methods which may be available when they are required.

  ‘Meanwhile, I intend that the whole camp – I include the orderlies – they are not here at the moment but they will be told later – the whole camp will be organised on an infantry basis into companies and platoons, so that a proper chain of command will exist, and anything which has to be done can be done promptly and efficiently. Details will be given out later, by Hut Commanders. Two or three other things. I have noticed that army boots, of which a fair number have been issued lately, are being cut down and made into walking shoes. This will cease. All boots will be carefully preserved, also all Army clothing, particularly overcoats, raincoats and mackintoshes. Everyone should see that he is equipped to the best of his ability for a long, hard, cross-country march. Secondly, the issue of additional Red Cross food parcels, which has been possible lately from our accumulated stocks, will stop. Lastly, since it is particularly his province, I have asked Colonel Baird to have a word with you about security.’