Over and Out

by Michael Gilbert

  Luke asked no questions. He knew that Tom would explain, sooner or later, what he had been up to. Joe, who had accompanied him for some of the time would only say, ‘It was rough going to start with. But Tom’s what you might call a diplomat. Give him rime and he’ll wriggle his way in anywhere.’

  When Tom did eventually open his mouth it seemed that he had been devoting more time to history and ethnology than to their immediate problems.

  ‘Were you aware,’ he said, ‘that the great majority of the people of West Flanders and Zeeland are, and have been for centuries, very staunch Protestants?’

  Luke admitted that he was unaware of this interesting fact and after a long moment of silence, added, ‘So what?’

  ‘The importance of this lies in the way that it colours their view of history. In their eyes the enemy was, and still is, Spain, not France. And their main ally in their religious struggles—bitter, bloodstained, unceasing struggles—was England. This inclined them, for instance, to take rather a different view to that of the average Englishman of such a figure as Francis Drake.’

  Feeling on more solid ground, Luke said, ‘Drake he was a Devon man and ruled the Devon seas’.

  ‘Indeed. Do you know anything else about him?’

  ‘Certainly. He singed the King of Spain’s beard and commanded the fleet that defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588. And what are you grinning about?’

  ‘I was smiling,’ said Tom, ‘to hear you cramming three misstatements into two sentences. Drake was not a Devon man apart from the accident of birth—he was a Kentish man—and the seas he ruled were the ones that lap the north coast of Belgium. And in 1588, by the way, he had only a subordinate command under Lord Howard of Effingham.’

  ‘All right,’ said Luke patiently, ‘nought out of ten for those answers, but I still can’t see the relevance of your dip into history.’

  ‘I’ll try to explain. Drake’s true claim to fame in these parts has got nothing to do with the Armada. It rests on his youthful exploits in the fetching trade.’

  Since Tom paused, Luke obliged him by saying, ‘And what was the fetching trade?’

  ‘It was fetching poor souls—Flemishers and Dutch, and some French as well—out of the Low Countries, and taking them to England, where they’d be safe from the Inquisition. And cruel hard work that must have been. Beating backwards and forwards, on nights as dark as the nether pit and the wind howling like a kite over that same stretch of water you can see from the mole at De Panne. In a year, he is said to have rescued more than a hundred men, women and children too. You can figure for yourself that he would feature as a five-star hero in the history books of any educated Flemisher.’

  ‘And you were banking on Marc Cellier being an educated Flemisher.’

  ‘That’s what I had hoped. And not, as it turned out, in vain. Because I earned his goodwill right off by mentioning that he, personally, greatly resembled Drake. Which was true enough, as you’ll see when you meet him. He’s the same spade-shaped beard and the hell-and-high-water eyes.’

  ‘A truly diplomatic move,’ agreed Luke.

  ‘After that I improved my position further by telling him that I’d got two reports that he might find interesting: Routley’s report on the footprints, and the pathologist’s report on the body having been moved a considerable way after death. We may not have understood at once what they signified, but he understood all right. If the body had been left in the lake, and Mother Klotz had said her piece, it would have been directly connected with the two Der Zirkel goons who had visited the house. They didn’t want that, so what did they do? They took the body along and dumped it where it would incriminate the boat people—and Marc Cellier.’

  ‘He is their leader then?’

  ‘They’re an independent crowd, and they don’t openly acknowledge a leader. But I’d say that Marc and his brother, Louis, are two of their top men.’

  As Luke thought about it, elements of the puzzle were falling into place. It seemed that the organisation which had been moving deserters across the line was not a single body, but two somewhat loosely connected crowds. The Belgian strong-arm lot picked up a potential deserter located by the sisterhood and carried him to the coast in one of their carts. Probably underneath a load of potatoes or turnips. The boat people then took him over and shipped him by the difficult and dangerous inshore route to the neighbourhood of Ostend where they handed him over to the Germans. A practicable arrangement, as long as the two ends of the axis were working in harmony. But it seemed quite possible that this was no longer the case. Certainly the boat people wouldn’t have approved of Marianne’s body being maliciously deposited in their back yard.

  He said, ‘Do you think they might start fighting among themselves. Or is that too much to hope for?’

  ‘At the moment I’d call it a state of uneasy neutrality. And it might stay that way. Only there’s one festering sore that keeps the wounds open: money’

  ‘Nothing divides old friends more sharply than money.’ agreed Luke.

  ‘The point is that Der Zirkel pick up the cash at both ends. They get half of the initial sum that the deserter brings with him and the whole of the German contribution at the far end.’

  ‘Which leaves a quarter for the boat people.’

  ‘Right. A division which didn’t seem in any way fair to Cellier. The boat trip is the only really risky and difficult part of the journey. If anyone was going to collar three-quarters of the cash it should be him and his friends. Or so they thought.’

  ‘Might this lead to what I believe diplomats call a causa causans belli?’

  ‘Open warfare. It might do. But bear this in mind, Der Zirkel have got all the real muscle. If there was a fight they’d win.’

  ‘That wouldn’t necessarily be to our advantage,’ agreed Luke. Though he reflected that any crack in the opposition must be useful. He said, ‘There’s one thing still puzzles me. If what you tell me is true—and I see no reason to doubt it—I mean, if the object of moving Marianne’s body was to distance Der Zirkel from her killing, and to shift the blame for it to Marc Cellier and his fisher friends, doesn’t it strike you as odd that the discovery of the body should have been first trumpeted abroad by Cellier’s own boys?’

  Tom said, smiling unkindly, ‘It will, perhaps, answer that question if I tell you that when I met Emil and Bo this morning they were both walking with care and were disinclined to sit down. From which I deduced, remembering my own school days, that they had been the recipients of a real, number one, leathering from their father.’

  ‘For locating Marianne’s body?’

  ‘No. For telling the world about it. Though one can understand the temptation. They hear that the lake is being dragged for Marianne. What a triumph to be able to stroll down and announce, “Oh, by the way. If it’s Marianne you’re looking for we can tell you where to find her”.’

  ‘Understandable,’ agreed Luke. ‘They may even have thought it was worth the lambasting they were asking for.’

  ‘You realise that if they had kept their mouths shut and told their father and only him, about their discovery, then as soon as it was dark enough to do it safely he would have had the body out of that shrimping pool, weighted it suitably, taken it out in his boat and dumped it in mid-Channel.’

  ‘More than likely,’ said Luke.

  It seemed to him that in their previous thinking they might have been unduly blinkered in concentrating on the beginning and end of the deserters’ escape route. Certainly it had a beginning somewhere in the northern outskirts of Béthune or Arras. His conviction on this point was hardening. And it had an end at some point on the Channel coast. But it also had a middle section.

  And he was becoming increasingly convinced that this middle section was the piece of the puzzle that demanded their immediate attention.

  Chapter Eleven

  ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken,’ announced Tom the following morning, ‘something’s up.’

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Luke.


  ‘Meaning that trouble of some sort—bad trouble—is looming in the coastal sector. I’m being kept up to date by Marc Collier, now very friendly and communicative, particularly since he can see a moment coming when he’s going to need our help. He gets his news from his brother Louis, who’s a sort of unofficial mayor of De Panne with a watching brief over Saint-Idesbold and Koksijde Bad. There’s been trouble at all these little ports between the local fishermen and the Belgian goons, who swagger up from their hideout, somewhere in the swamp area, to buy food and fuel and throw their weight about generally.’

  ‘Serious trouble,’ said Luke hopefully.

  ‘Not yet. A few bloody noses and black eyes. No bones broken. But three days ago, getting tired of having foreigners poncing about on their doorsteps, a group of fishermen threw two Belgians into the sea at Oostkoksijde, and weren’t in any hurry to pull them out. When they finally extracted themselves, wet and furious and facing the better part of a seven-mile walk home, they sloped off, threatening reprisals. And behold, at dawn today the Liebling appeared.’

  ‘And who the hell is she?’

  ‘She’s a thirty-foot motor cruiser, the property of one Rudi Naroch who operates from Ghent in Eastern Flanders, and bosses a small, but efficient, private army of thugs.’

  ‘Yes. Bernardin told me about him. A man of power, he called him.’

  ‘Too bloody powerful by half. He’s been hand in glove with the Germans ever since they arrived. In return for the help he gives them in running forbidden material through the British naval cordon, he’s been allowed the freedom of the north German and Dutch ports. Now he’s sent in Liebling to pick up the party who were camping out in no man’s land.’

  ‘You mean that he’s removing the whole of that parry, and permanently? That’s nothing but good news.’

  ‘Just what the fishermen thought. But they were disillusioned. No. It seems the parry’s been called back for a couple of days for talks on future moves. Rudi is not happy about the way things are going. The last thing he wants is trouble.’

  ‘Because trouble interferes with money-making.’

  ‘In a nutshell, yes. All the same, he’s not going to put up with being trampled on. If he’s provoked too far I guess he’ll fight, and if he wins he’ll take over all the fishing boats and maybe the fishermen as well. Then he can handle the whole of the desertion line and pocket all the cash.’

  ‘They can’t imagine they’re going to be allowed to keep what they’ve laid hands on by force.’

  ‘No?’ said Tom. ‘If Germany wins the war they’ll keep anything they’ve got. The land as well, maybe.’

  Luke stared at him blankly. He had never previously considered such a possibility and refused to do so now. Before he could put his opinion of defeatist talk into words, Tom said, ‘Don’t worry. It probably won’t happen. When I was discussing it with Bernardin—I don’t mean the possibility of Germany coming out on top at the end of the day—I was looking at what might happen here if Rudi called in his reserves and went over to the attack. Could he be held? It’s the old story, manpower. Neither side would want to call in soldiers. It would be an admission of weakness. Bernardin’s view was that if he borrowed men from other police forces in the area he could probably hold his own, but the last thing he wants is a head-on collision. Particularly since he suspects that he might be out-gunned.’

  ‘Not an entirely happy situation,’ said Luke, ‘whichever way you look at it.’

  Early the following morning, he set forth on his battered, but still serviceable, motor cycle. Mindful of the army dictum about personal reconnaissance, he circled Saint-Omer at Arques, passed the seven windmills, and rode on and up to the little town of Cassel with its red brick and glazed tiles, perched on its hill like an Ascot hat on a smiling woman.

  The view from the top was spectacular.

  The weather being unusually clear – a weather breeder, local wiseacres would have said – you could see the whole of the front line, stretching away to the south from Nieuwpoort down to Armentieres, and along the coast from Nieuwpoort as far as Boulogne.

  The devastated area lay spread out like a map at his feet.

  It was a quadrilateral of low-lying land, bounded by the current front line on the east, the Channel on the north, an east-west line from Bailleul, through Cassel to Saint-Omer and a northern line from that point to the coast at Gravelines. Faced with the possibility of an attack on that flank, the French had, sensibly, decided to narrow their front by flooding this area, so as to render it useless to the mechanical warfare in which the Germans specialised.

  They had performed this operation simply and effectively.

  The land in question had once been part of the sea-bed. At the end of the previous century it had been drained, and made available for agriculture by cutting the Canal de la Haute Colme and a criss-cross of smaller canals. Now, the destruction of the dams on the main canal had raised the water-level of the others sufficiently to turn the whole area into a single large swamp. Only the high-lying main road along the coast between Calais and Ostend had been preserved, as being too valuable to be dispensed with. It had, however, been mined in more places than one, in case the tide of battle called for its speedy destruction.

  Luke was guiltily aware that he was now doing something he should have attended to long ago, and from which he had been diverted by an uncomfortable feeling that the area in question might be easier to get into than to get out of. With the Belgian thugs in the offing, the possibility of disaster had been only too apparent. Now fate had offered him an unexpected chance of a trouble-free run.

  Using field-glasses he was able to examine the few relics of civilised life that remained.

  Judging by the cattle and sheep penned alongside them, a few of the farms were still occupied, but these all lay on the northern fringe of the area. The only buildings in the swamp which looked to be in use were a group of three in the middle. There was no sign of movement and no smoke from their chimneys, but their occupation was suggested by the fact that the road to them – more a pathway than a road – had been carefully built up with boulders and slabs of stone to raise it above the general level. A similar and wider pathway led up from the back in the direction of Bray-Dunes.

  That’s their home from home, said Luke to himself. And while the cat’s away—

  Coming down from the hill he continued along the Poperinge road as far as Steenvoorde and north to Haut Kerque where he knew he could park his motor cycle with a friendly farmer. He then set off northward along the made-up track. A long trudge took him to the group of buildings he had spotted.

  Though he was convinced, by now, that they were empty, he stood for a hill ten minutes listening, before he ventured up the path and tried the front door.

  It was unlocked.

  He pushed it open and looked for something to wedge it with. He was already thinking of the possibility of a speedy retreat. The hall was unfurnished, but there was a pile of logs under the staircase. He picked out the largest, which made an adequate door stop. Then he examined the rooms, one on either side of the hall, on the right, a sitting-room, furnished with a table and chairs, on the left, a kitchen.

  They all bore the signs of bachelor occupation. Unwashed floors, a jumble of food in opened and unopened jars and tins, two dirty towels lying on the floor. On the other hand, he noticed that some cups and dishes had been washed and stacked away neatly, and on the table there was a parcel which turned out to contain newly washed underclothes, socks and handkerchiefs.

  Luke assumed from this, that the men were being looked after by a woman from one of the farms he had spotted. She probably came in two or three times a week and tried to cope with the male disorder. No doubt she was well paid.

  Upstairs, he found two small rooms with an unmade bed in each, a small bathroom and a lavatory which he refrained from examining.

  Returning downstairs, he left the building by a door at the other end of the passage which he also propped ope
n with a log. From it, a path, which forked, led to the other two buildings. These were unfurnished downstairs, but in each he found an upstairs room with three untidy beds in it.

  So; a total force of eight.

  On his way out, while standing in the open space between the three buildings, it occurred to Luke that the set-up would give eight armed defenders a considerable advantage over their attackers. Riflemen in the back buildings would command the approaches to the front one and would be difficult to dislodge before the front one had been cleared. Hedgehog defence.

  Back in the sitting-room he settled down to making a careful sketch plan of the three buildings, with a detailed description of what he had found. As he was finishing it, he noticed that the light was fading. Odd, he thought, since a glance at his watch showed him that it was not yet three o’clock. Looking out of the window, he saw that it was mist rising from the swamp that was bringing on a premature dusk.

  Time to get out, thought Luke.

  It was when he was shutting the front door that he noticed the end of a piece of black cotton hanging from the door jamb. The other end must have been fastened across the opening, but so low down as to be easily overlooked. He must have snapped the cotton when he came in.

  He wondered if the front doors of the other two cottages, and even the room doors, had been treated in this way. The thought that he might have left a trail behind him showing exactly where he had gone was an uncomfortable one. Could he go back and replace any of the tell-tales he had broken? He decided that he had neither the time nor the means to do this. The growing darkness added to his discomfort.

  He was so absorbed in thinking about this that when he stepped out of the gate onto the built-up way, he did so carelessly, taking a first long step across the path without looking where he was putting his foot.

  He realised his mistake, but before he could stop himself he was sliding off the path and sinking slowly, but steadily, into a deep hole full of liquid mud.