Death In Captivity

by Michael Gilbert

  ‘I wonder if I could have a word with you,’ said ‘Tag’ Burchnall.

  ‘Of course,’ said Goyles. ‘Come in. If it’s about those rugger posts he added, ‘I can only say how sorry—’

  ‘No, nothing like that. It’s just that we heard – it may be quite wrong, but you know how things get about in this camp – we heard there was some scheme on foot for getting Byfold out of clink—’

  That’s right.’

  ‘From what I heard, it sounded rather a sporting thing altogether. I wondered if you wanted any help – Jerry Parsons is quite useful if it comes to a rough-house, and Rollo isn’t such a fool as he looks—’

  Goyles made very little effort to conceal his surprise or his pleasure.

  ‘You’d be very welcome,’ he said. ‘We’d got four already. Anderson and Duncan are helping, but we needed two more. Come for a stroll round the camp and I’ll give you the details—’

  6

  Goyles was on the final tunnelling shift, and after tea he changed slowly into his digging kit, and made his way to the kitchen. He had done it all so many times before that most of his actions were mechanical, and only a quarter of his mind was on the job.

  He had a lot to think about at that moment. It was as if two enormous kaleidoscopes were being shaken before his eyes, forming and reforming their incomprehensible patterns; or two wheels rotating and two films unrolling simultaneously. Sometimes the pictures coincided, but more often they were different. On the one side was Captain Benucci and the Fascist machinery of their captors, and beyond him the ranked Fascist hegemony of Italy itself, with the Duce at the summit, all revolving, in some quite inexplicable way, around the person of Roger Byfold, who was sitting in his cell, waiting for what the day after tomorrow might bring. On the other side was the microcosm, the little world of the camp itself, the cell-like organisation through which its four hundred inhabitants crawled and swarmed. Those who knew you and those who didn’t. Your friends and your enemies – and it was becoming difficult after his surprising conversation with Burchnall that morning to be quite sure which was which. And just as the one pattern seemed to centre itself round the figure of Roger Byfold, so was the other concentrated on the awkward, unlikeable, unforgettable figure of Cyriakos Coutoules who, in that very tunnel, only eighteen days before—

  ‘Wake up, Cuckoo,’ said Long, ‘You’re number one tonight.’

  ‘All right,’ said Goyles. ‘Let’s go. Who’s doing number two?’

  ‘Andy’s two, I’m three. I’ll start the pump going when you reach the bend.’

  Goyles lowered himself on to the truck and started, with the expertness of long practice, to propel himself forward up the tunnel. Anderson crawled more slowly behind him, holding in his hand a rope attached to the truck. It was Goyles’ job, as number one, to do the actual excavating. The sand which he dug was placed in cardboard boxes, six of which fitted on to the trolley. Anderson, from an excavation at the half-way mark, would pull the trolley back, and load the boxes into two sacks. Long, at number three, would then make two journeys to fetch the sacks back to the shaft. It was also his job to keep the pump going. Now that the tunnel was more than a hundred and fifty feet long this system saved time and meant that the man at the face could dig almost uninterruptedly.

  The tunnel was no longer quite the comfortable, all-enclosed affair that it had been. The effect of the half-timbering which the Escape Committee had ordered in the interests of speed was already apparent. To move at all in the last thirty feet was an agonising performance. It was all right as long as you were on the truck itself, but moving on hands and knees was like making your way across a series of diabolical railway sleepers, and the sides of the tunnel, which were naked in every alternate revetment, dribbled a small but increasing shower of sand on to you as you moved.

  Goyles hardly noticed any of this. He scooped and dug mechanically, filling all six boxes at once, and then again. The end of his forty minutes’ turn at the face was nearly up. Whilst he waited for the jerk on the cord attached to his foot which would indicate that the truck was ready for hauling back from the half-way house, his mind reverted once again to its pressing problems.

  The cord jerked.

  Goyles half-turned on his elbow, his leg caught the woodwork of the last revetment, and the next moment he was lying, flat on his face, in pitch darkness. He was pinned to the ground, like a slug under a lawn roller, by the weight of the sand which had fallen on him.

  It was a few seconds before he actually realised that he was unable to breathe.

  But even in that agonising moment, as he arched his back and strained his muscles in a futile effort to raise himself, as the red lights started to flare and wheel behind his eyes, and his heart came bursting outwards from his lungs, even at that moment, in his mind, curiously detached from the agony of his body, a tiny but decisive piece of the puzzle fell into place.

  Chapter 10

  The Put-up Job

  1

  Goyles owed his life to the fact that Long and Anderson were both old hands at tunnelling; to the fluke that they happened to be together, at the half-way post, unloading the last lot of sand, when the fall occurred; and to the fortunate chance that the lights did not fail.

  If any of these things had fallen out differently he would certainly have died.

  ‘Start the pump,’ said Long. ‘I’ll dig him out. You’d better use the trolley to get you back to the shaft.’ Almost before he had finished speaking he was himself moving at reckless speed, towards the face of the tunnel.

  As he moved he calculated the chances.

  The airline of the pump was a series of jointed tins, and it ran in a shallow trench, on one side of the tunnel. It was the first rule of tunnelling that you extended this line scrupulously, tin by tin, as you went, and he prayed that Goyles had not forgotten to do so. Even in a heavy fall the digger’s body might come down across the end of the air line and protect the outlet from the sand, and in such cases experience had shown that enough air could be pumped into the fall to keep the victim alive during the period of his unearthing. The chief danger was that, so long as he was conscious, his struggles to assist might block the airline altogether.

  It was a big fall, and it was obvious to Long as soon as he saw it why it had occurred. The tunnel had run into the footing of the outer camp wall. The soil having already been disturbed from above would be the more likely to collapse when excavated from below.

  Long lay on one side, his head almost on Goyles’ stockinged feet and started to shovel the sand past his own body like a fox-terrier at a rabbit hole. He could hear the wheeze of air under pressure coming out somewhere in the mass ahead of him. He hoped that all the sand which was going to come down had done so already.

  Goyles was showing no signs of life.

  ‘Probably better if he stays that way for the moment,’ thought Long.

  He himself was sweating all over and the tips of his fingers were already raw. There was no time for finesse. He simply worked his way in until he could get his hands hooked into Goyles’ belt. Then he braced his knees against the last intact frame of the tunnel, humped his back and heaved with all the unexpected strength that was in his slight body.

  The frame shifted ominously.

  The sweat on Long’s body seemed to turn cold all at once. He stopped pulling and resettled himself. Then he took a deep breath, and pulled again, less violently, but as strongly. Under this pressure Goyles’ body started to move. Tony pulled him back steadily, shifted his own positon again, and pulled again. Now he had him clear. He disengaged one hand, felt down to the side of the tunnel, and tore open one of the joints in the air pipe.

  The fresh air poured out over both of them, cool and sweet. He was lying there, trying to think coherently, and aware that he had gone dangerously near the limit, both mentally and physically, when he felt a hand on his heel.

  Help had arrived in the form of ‘Brandy’ Duncan.

  ‘I’ve brought the trolle
y up with me,’ said Duncan. ‘Better get him on it. We can’t try any first aid here. There isn’t room. Are you all right?’

  Long was almost as white as the unconscious Goyles.

  ‘I shall be OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s get him moving.’

  Back in the Hut C kitchen they found Doctor Simmonds who, like the stormy petrel, could smell trouble from afar. Under his direction they laid Goyles on the floor and started to work. His glasses had been broken in the fall and in the rescue operations a splinter of lens had dug a long furrow down the side of his nose. This was now bleeding.

  ‘Very healthy sign,’ said Doctor Simmonds. ‘He’ll be round in a minute.’

  ‘We’d better clear up,’ said Duncan. ‘Give us a hand and we’ll get the trap down. And we’d better get some of that sand swept up.’

  At this moment Goyles opened his eyes. He lay for a moment looking at the ceiling and then said, in a conversational tone of voice, ‘You can’t move your hands, you know.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Doctor Simmonds, ‘take it easy. You’d better carry him along to his room.’

  ‘But you can’t move them,’ repeated Goyles. ‘It’s not true. You can’t move them at all.’

  ‘Get him under the legs,’ said Duncan. ‘You take his head, Tony.’

  ‘I’ll be along in a minute,’ said Doctor Simmonds. ‘I’ll mix him a sedative. He’d better stay in bed for twenty-four hours.’

  After they had gone the doctor stood for a moment, a puzzled look on his face. He had just realised what Goyles was talking about.

  2

  Hands. Dozens of hands. Singly and in pairs. A hand, larger than life, dragging itself, like a maimed octopus across the sand.

  Curious, thought Goyles, that he had never before realised how significant was the human hand. It was in its shape that its true secret lay. The broad river of the palm, flowing out to the delta of the fingers. Four fingers, each one with a life and character of its own, four tapering, aristocratic, fingers and a gross plebeian thumb, a bastard connection, sprung from its own root back in the wrist. A distant and disowned collateral to the four beautiful sister fingers. Each one with its sensitive and its sheath of horn.

  A man could live with his hands, by his hands and through his hands, thought Goyles. And, conversely, he could be more truly hurt in them, than in any other part of his body. The stout Elizabethan, John Stubbs, punning at the scaffold when his hand was to be struck off: ‘Pray for me, now my calamity is at hand.’ Gestapo torturers, with delicate precision, plucking off nail after nail from the living flesh, like shells off a ripe filbert.

  It was in the hands of Cyriakos Coutoules that the answer to all the mystery was contained. With the clarity that sometimes comes in a nightmare and disappears within a few seconds of awakening, so that it must be caught instantly or lost for ever, Goyles glimpsed the naked logic behind the mysteries that had puzzled him and it shocked him, so that he cried out, and woke up to find an anxious Tony Long shaking him by the arm.

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘just a nightmare.’

  ‘You’ve been talking to yourself for hours,’ said Long. ‘I could put up with that, but when you started screaming—’

  ‘I shall be all right now,’ said Goyles.

  When he next opened his eyes, it was late morning, and his head was clear. There was no one in the room.

  He groped for his spare pair of glasses and put them on. They rested awkwardly on the thick strip of sticking plaster down the side of his nose. They were a pair which had been issued to him, many years before, in England, for use inside a respirator, and this was the first time he had ever worn them. He took them off, bent them into a more comfortable shape, and put them on again, as the door opened and Corporal Pearce came in with a cup of coffee.

  ‘Thanks very much,’ said Goyles. ‘I’m afraid I’m a fraud, really.’

  ‘Doctor’s orders,’ said Corporal Pearce. ‘I hear you were in a bit of a turn-up yesterday evening.’

  ‘Roughly speaking, yes. Very good coffee, this. By the way, who told you about it?’

  ‘These things get round,’ said Corporal Pearce. He started to brush diligently under the beds.

  Goyles watched him for a bit. Then he said, ‘Stop that for a moment, would you, and come and talk. There’s something I wanted to ask you.’

  Corporal Pearce obediently propped the broom against the bedpost and sat down on the end of the bed. He was a good-looking boy, of about twenty, with the dark black hair and deep blue eyes that sometimes come together in the Celt or the Spaniard.

  ‘How many orderlies are there in this camp?’

  ‘There’s about forty of us now, sir. Used to be more.’

  ‘They sent a lot of you off about a fortnight ago, didn’t they – to do farm work?’

  ‘That’s right, sir.’

  ‘How did they choose the party?’

  ‘There wasn’t any choosing, sir. They just took the first twenty in the queue.’

  ‘Everybody wanted to go, did they?’

  ‘Almost everybody. It was more food, you see, and more freedom, and the chance of seeing a few signorinas—’

  ‘Did you volunteer?’

  ‘No, sir, I didn’t.’

  ‘Why not? Aren’t you fond of food and freedom and signorinas?’

  Corporal Pearce grinned and said, ‘Well – you had to give your parole – I didn’t fancy that – particularly not just now.’

  ‘Are you hoping to escape, then?’

  ‘You never know, sir. There’s sure to be a chance – when things pack up—’

  ‘I’m not arguing with you,’ said Goyles. ‘I just wanted to know. Would that be the general view among the orderlies – or is it just your own idea?’

  ‘One or two of the lads think like I do. It’s difficult to say, really.’

  Goyles pondered for a moment.

  ‘Look here,’ he said. ‘This is something that perhaps I oughtn’t to ask – and you mustn’t pass it on. You say that some of you – you and a few of your friends – are keen to escape. The others, I take it, don’t mind one way or the other. They’re glad the fighting’s over – and as long as they get enough to eat and don’t get pushed around, then they’re happy enough.’

  ‘That’s about it, sir.’

  ‘All right. But does it go any further than that? Would any of them actually help the Italians – if a suitable reward was pushed in their direction?’

  Corporal Pearce looked unhappy.

  ‘They’re a mixed crowd,’ he said. ‘Some of those South Africans are very rough characters – don’t even speak English, some of them – jabber, jabber, jabber, in a lingo of their own, sounds just like German to me—’

  ‘But you don’t know of anyone in particular?’

  ‘Oh, no, sir. It’s just that you can’t answer for them, not knowing them.’

  ‘If any of you wanted to get a word to the Italians, it wouldn’t be difficult for you?’

  ‘Easy as falling down. We’re in and out all day – fatigues, Red Cross carrying parties – odd jobs – like that time I was bringing you your meals in the Punishment Block, remember?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Goyles, ‘that’s rather what I thought. Well, forget all this, will you—’

  An hour later he had another visitor. Colonel Baird came to see him.

  ‘I thought you’d like to know,’ he said, ‘that the tunnel is all right. We had an inspection party down this morning. What fell on you was practically all the sand under the foundations of the outer wall.’

  ‘It felt like quite a lot of sand,’ agreed Goyles.

  ‘We’re not even going to roof it over. There’s no need. In fact we’ll probably develop it into a sort of second “half-way house”. I reckon it pays to have a few sitting-out places in a tunnel of that length. You can get some traffic-control installed when the time comes—’

  Goyles agreed, but absent-mindedly. His interest in the tunnel, at that moment, came second
to more urgent problems.

  ‘Any news of Roger, sir?’

  ‘Nothing reliable.’

  ‘Do you think they mean business – or are they only bluffing. It would be just like Benucci.’

  ‘Very like,’ agreed Baird. ‘I don’t know. One can’t rely on it being one thing or the other. We’re going ahead with this evening’s show, anyway. That was one of the things I wanted to talk about. I don’t think, in your present state, you could quite pull your weight in a show of that sort—’

  ‘But I’m as fit as a fiddle, sir – really—’

  ‘Well, there are plenty of others who can do it. Besides, we needed one more lock expert, so that both cell doors could be opened at once—’

  ‘But really, sir – I’m not—’

  ‘Look,’ said Baird, kindly but firmly, ‘this is just one of those rare cases in this God-damned camp where an order is an order. You’re not going. Now relax.’

  Which was all very well, thought Goyles, as he lay on his bed at six o’clock that evening and looked out of the window.

  He knew that, as originally organised, the riot was due to take place somewhere on the playing field and at about that time. It might, of course, have been changed. No one would have told him anything.

  He could see the usual evening sports programme getting under way. There were games on both of the basketball pitches and a small group of experts were pitching a baseball in one corner, but the chief attraction that evening was the rugger game. The Old Hirburnians appeared to be playing a Scottish team. Goyles could see nothing out of the ordinary, except that Tony Long (neither a Scotsman nor, incidentally, a rugby enthusiast) had apparently been co-opted into the Scottish scrum in which Anderson and Duncan were also performing. He noticed both Burchnall and Parsons in the Hirburnian scrum.

  The Italians, as usual, were suspicious of the whole performance. Ever since an enterprising escaper, under cover of a reconstruction of the rugger pitch, had caused himself to be buried in a shallow trench from which he hoped to emerge after dark, the orders had been that sentries were to exercise an active vigilance during all such games. When it did happen, everything happened very quickly.