He fired a third time and this shot hit Clark in the wrist, knocking the gun from his hand. What felt like seconds later, the door to the front vestibule crashed open and Tyler could hear Sergeant Rowell shouting at top volume.
“Don’t move. Don’t move or I’ll shoot.”
The sergeant came into view. Clark was struggling to get to his feet, but Rowell shoved him down, grabbed his arm, and twisted it so he could snap a pair of handcuffs on his wrists. This elicited a yell of pain from the injured man. Two other officers who were right behind the sergeant grabbed Clark by the feet and immobilized him. Somewhere in the background, Polly was yelling.
Tyler had stayed where he was, on his rock. Rowell turned and looked up to the lepers’ window.
“Sir, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, Sergeant,” Tyler shouted back at him. “I’ll be right there.”
When he stepped down from the rock, he almost fell. His legs felt decidedly wobbly.
It was almost midnight by the time things had got sorted out, and Tyler, Sergeant Rowell, and Sister Rebecca were all three sitting in her office.
Rowell was drinking whisky, “given the special circumstances.” Tyler sipped on a glass of brandy that the almoner had produced. She herself had settled for hot milk.
“I didn’t recognize myself,” said Rowell. “I’d never have thought my blood would get up like that. But I swear if he’d moved a muscle, I would have shot him. I could see that poor girl lying in the pew, you see. She looked dead. And that other woman holding what looked like a dead baby in her arms.” He looked over at Tyler. “There was no sign of you. There had been three shots. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead.” He grinned. “Imagine what a relief I felt when I saw your mug – excuse the expression, sir – peering through that window.” He turned to the almoner. “How are the baby and Miss McHattie, Sister?”
“It’s still touch and go for the infant. Polly gave Shirley too much chloroform and his respiratory tract was seriously compromised. We’ll know more within the next couple of days. It’s a little boy, by the way. Shirley herself has recovered consciousness, but that’s all I’ve heard. We sent them to the general hospital. Her mother says she’ll telephone us when she gets a report from the doctor.”
“And Mr. whatever-his-name-is? What has he got to say for himself?”
“Inspector Tyler, you took his statement,” said the almoner. “What did he say?”
“He mumbles slightly because of the jaw injury, but he is most articulate. He learned English as a child from his grandmother and he speaks it better than I do. His real name is Vaclav Kozik. He is Czech.”
Rowell shook his head. “Is he insane? Why did he do what he did?”
68.
KOZIK HAD BEEN TRANSPORTED TO THE GENERAL hospital at Ludlow, where a brusque, unsympathetic doctor had treated his wounds. Tyler’s first bullet had passed through the right shoulder without hitting bone. Even though the third shot had blasted his revolver from his hand, he had suffered no serious injury, only bruising. At the hospital, the doctor stitched up the shoulder wound without using a general anaesthetic, and after a couple of hours, Tyler was able to question the prisoner.
He was offered morphine but refused. He said he wanted a clear mind.
Suit yourself. If you want to be a tough man, be my guest.
Actually, Kozik didn’t look tough. His emaciated face was drawn and grey and he had deep circles around his eyes.
“Unlike most men you deal with, Inspector, I want to tell you what I did and why. I don’t wish to hide anything or hold anything back.”
“It might surprise you, lad, but an awful lot of criminals are keen to present their side of the story.”
Tyler sat across from him at the table they’d set up in the hospital room. Constable Mortimer had revealed yet another talent. She knew shorthand and she volunteered to take notes if Tyler wished. He did wish and she was seated slightly behind him. If she was distressed by what Kozik had to say, she kept it to herself.
Tyler had brought the three letters with him, and he put them on the table.
“I’m assuming you wrote these?”
Kozik nodded.
“I gather they are referring to what happened when Reinhard Heydrich was assassinated? A village was the object of Nazi reprisal.”
“That’s right. The village of Lidice. One hundred and ninety-seven inhabitants, four babies due to arrive any day. The village was burned and razed to the ground. The villagers had nothing to do with the death of Heydrich, but the Gestapo didn’t mind about that. They’d been told that one of the assassins was from Lidice and that many of the villagers had been complicit in the assassination. That was all they needed. You don’t have to have evidence if you’re the Gestapo. You can always get evidence by torture and brutality.”
Kozik had a slight London accent, courtesy of his English grandmother and his summers in England.
He drank some of the water that Tyler had provided for him.
“Was it true?” Tyler asked.
“Was what true?”
“That one of the assassins was from Lidice?”
“Lidice was the village where I was born. Where my family lived.”
“I see.”
“See what, Inspector?”
“I understand you were one of the original commandos from Operation Anthropoid. The object of your training was, in fact, to kill Heydrich.”
Kozik nodded. “I would have been on the mission except that I was injured in a freak crash. A training flight, not even the glory of combat.”
“That must have been disappointing.”
A flash of fury leaped into Kozik’s eyes. “Don’t patronize me, Inspector. It might be difficult for you, a civilian, to understand, but for months that is all we had lived for. For the day when we would accomplish our mission. It is not for nothing that Herr Heydrich was called the blond butcher. And he practised his trade in my homeland.”
“Rudy Pesek was part of Operation Anthropoid, wasn’t he?”
“You are well informed, Inspector. Yes, he was one of the group. We all trained together.” Kozik halted. He looked on the verge of passing out, so Tyler handed him the glass of water. Finally he continued. “We were like brothers, we knew everything about each other. Pesek knew I was betrothed to a girl in Lidice. He knew my parents lived there. He knew my young brother was about to turn sixteen. All of it. He is from Prague and has no family. No family that he cared for at least. He often said he envied me. Then, shortly before we were to embark, he met Shirley McHattie. He talked a lot about her.”
“He knew he’d got her pregnant?”
Another pause. “I’ve never seen Pesek so happy. He said it was what he always wanted. But it was time to launch the operation, so off they go, brave men and true, not knowing they took with them the asp itself.” Kozik lowered his head into his hands. There were beads of perspiration on his forehead. “The operation did not go smoothly. Initially, Heydrich was only wounded. But seven days later, he died. In great agony, I am happy to say. So the hunt was on for the perpetrators of this hideous crime. Herr Hitler would have wiped Czechoslovakia off the map if he’d had his way. He was persuaded that a more sensible way was to kill just a few hundred or so.” Kozik’s tone was ironic. “They began to search for the assassins, killing and torturing innocents in the hope of discovering them. However, they had no success for two entire weeks, until finally the comrades were discovered to be hiding out in a church. Rudy Pesek was not with them; it was he who had revealed their whereabouts to the Gestapo. He claimed he wanted the bloodshed to stop. That’s why he betrayed them.” Kozik chuckled. No mirth in it. “The reward was handsome. Far from stopping, the bloodshed increased. The Gestapo got out of Pesek that one of the original commandos, me, had been from Lidice and there they focused their revenge.” Kozik had to stop again and drank more water. “My father, my brother were destroyed, as were two uncles. My mother and my dearest Anna have been sent off to wh
at they call their ‘camps.’ They will not live.”
“So you wanted revenge on Pesek yourself?”
Both Tyler and Kozik were speaking quietly. They might have been seated at a dying man’s bedside, which, to all intents and purposes, they were. Agnes Mortimer didn’t move a muscle.
“Of course I wanted revenge. Who would not? But more than that … I also want the world to know what happened. What Hitler and his henchmen are capable of.”
“Jock McHattie and his son cannot be held responsible for the massacre. They committed no crime. Nor did Sister Ivy.”
“Neither did the villagers of Lidice commit a crime,” snapped Kozik. “Surely, Inspector, you don’t believe that only the guilty suffer in a time of war?”
Tyler felt a rush of anger. He knew all too well that the innocent suffer. Kozik must have sensed he’d hit a nerve because he waited for a moment before continuing.
“The only person Pesek has shown any real love for is Shirley McHattie. He wanted her family to be his.” Again the ironic tone. “He would’ve had a hard time persuading them he was a suitable husband for their daughter, but that is not my affair. I wanted him to experience even a fraction of what I experienced. So I chose to kill the father. As mine had been killed.”
“Ben was a witness?”
“That was not why I shot him. He would never have known it was me.”
“Why then?”
“He was just sixteen. Like my brother. All the boys of Lidice died who were that age. The other boy, the younger one, I spared.”
Tyler took a deep breath. He would have liked a cigarette but wasn’t about to break up the flow of Kozik’s narrative. He glanced at Constable Mortimer. Her eyes met his and he saw her deep distress. But there was nothing to do but press on.
“You didn’t spare an innocent nun,” said Tyler. “Did she guess you were the killer?”
“Not at all. She suspected nothing. But she was a nurse. The women who came to take the children away were nurses. The children of Lidice were gassed. I gassed a nurse to settle the score.”
Kozik needed another drink. Tyler thought the man was experiencing a great deal of pain, but he asked for no relief.
“I see. You would have taken any of the sisters?”
“Sister Ivy was on duty. It was easier to get to her.”
“You drugged her first, I assume?”
“Yes. I drugged her both nights. As you have surmised, I needed her to be asleep while I got out. She was a creature of habit. Cocoa at a quarter past two on the dot. I doctored her sugar with a little sleeping dust. I had plenty of time to exit and return while she slept. The fire escape made it easy for me. I stored my gun in the bottom of the pigeon seed bin, by the way. I’m sure nobody thought of looking in there.”
No, they hadn’t, thought Tyler ruefully.
“Did you know Sister Ivy was letting Dai Hughes in and out?”
“Of course I knew. I am an observer. We commandos are trained to observe and note the comings and goings of the local population. It is now ingrained in me. Sister Ivy was up to silly shenanigans with the orderly. Unlocking the door so he could tom-cat around with a certain Polly Hutchins when he was supposed to be on duty. She is a girl who, you might say, lacks a sense of morality. She is amenable to most things if you pay her.”
“Sounds like you know her well.”
“Let’s say we became acquainted when I took a short leave in Manchester before I was injured. After the massacre, when I decided what I was going to do, I got in touch with her. She agreed to come to Ludlow, to make certain liaisons as I directed. Polly can be most charming when necessary.”
Tyler was stunned to realize how carefully Kozik had planned everything. Again the man seemed to pick up on Tyler’s thoughts. He smiled. “Human nature, Inspector. One of the best tools in our arsenal as commandos is to understand human nature. Surely this is something both you and I share. You are a shrewd man, I know that about you. And I sense that you, too, feel things deeply.”
Tyler had no desire to be linked to this man and he made no comment.
“You certainly managed to fool some good people.”
“I made myself above suspicion by presenting myself as a man who couldn’t walk properly and couldn’t talk. I was really quite recovered when I arrived at St. Anne’s, but because I didn’t complain or make a fuss, nobody bothered to question the earlier records. People will accept what they perceive as the truth if you are convincing enough.”
Tyler couldn’t help himself. “I don’t know whether to think the world has lost a great psychiatrist in you or a great actor.”
Kozik actually smiled. “Let’s say both professions have been studies of mine.”
“You were the matchmaker for Dai Hughes and your friend, I presume?”
“Quite so. Mr. Hughes was fooled into believing Polly loved him. By the same token, Shirley McHattie thought she had found a best friend. Lonely people are so susceptible. As for Polly, she is eager to have a child. Alas for her, she herself is unable to procreate. Therefore, like the German women who took our children, she needed to take somebody else’s. I introduced her to my scheme. She was only too happy to go along with it if she got what she wanted. Plus a nice sum of money, of course.”
“So you conspired to abduct Shirley McHattie?”
“Precisely. The penultimate act. She is such a gullible young girl. She thought she was going to meet Rudy. Polly knew of a good hiding place – and of course a church was a perfect parallel. My best friends, my comrades, all died in a church.”
“What were you planning to do with the baby?”
“Polly was going to disappear and raise the child as her own.”
“Which meant you would have to kill Shirley, its rightful mother.”
Kozik looked away. “That’s what happened to the mothers of Lidice. They have gone to their deaths.”
The insanity of the words spoken so calmly was unutterably chilling. Tyler tried to keep his own voice under control, but he didn’t succeed. He found himself shouting.
“What happened to your village, to the people in it, was wicked. Nobody denies that! Do you think it helped any of them that you, too, took reprisals? Do you? You have also killed innocent people.”
“I realize that and I have remorse.” Kozik spoke solemnly.
“I don’t believe you,” yelled Tyler. “You’re no better than the Gestapo.”
For the first time Kozik appeared rattled. “That isn’t true. I weep for those I have killed. But I weep more for the men who were stood against the wall and shot in cold blood. I weep for the children who were taken away and gassed. For the mothers whose infants have been stolen from them.”
“You are insane,” cried Tyler. “You try to sound magnanimous, but you are no better than a petty thug who is full of spite.”
Kozik stared at him. “Perhaps it does seem that way. I admit I did what I did so that Rudolph Pesek would know what would never be his and he would suffer. But I also did what I did so that the world would know and also weep.”
He reached beside him for the box containing the contents of his pockets. He removed an envelope. “I was going to give you this last letter, Inspector. The ultimate act. Frankly, I was contemplating imitating the final razing of my village.”
“What! You mean you were going to set St. Anne’s on fire?”
“Precisely. But to tell you the truth, I am bone tired. I could not do it.”
“Thank God for small mercies,” said Tyler sarcastically.
He took the envelope. Kozik leaned back and closed his eyes.
“You’ve got all of it, Inspector. I’m not going to say any more. In your eyes, my crimes are heinous. Do with me what you will. I care not. My heart has been destroyed already.”
69.
SISTER REBECCA AND ROWELL HAD LISTENED WITHOUT comment to Tyler’s recital.
“May God have mercy on his soul,” said the nun.
“What is going to happen to him?” a
sked Rowell.
“He is now in the custody of the SOE. The Special Operations Executive. We will have to work together to see how we are going to prosecute. If we get that far, which I doubt, given the man’s state of mind.”
“And Polly Hutchins?”
“She has been charged with kidnapping and forcible confinement. She will go to jail.”
“What was the final letter about?” Sister Rebecca asked.
Tyler handed her the envelope. “You can read it yourself. In some ways it is the worst.”
She took out the sheet of paper. “I’ll read it out loud, shall I?”
They have been brought from the camp to bury the dead. The trampled grass is slippery with blood and the bodies still lie where they have fallen. The soldiers regard the workers sullenly, ready to pounce at the slightest indication of awareness. Not protest, forget such a thing as protest. Nobody would dare to do so, but the guards are alert for the slightest glance, the mere flicker of an expression that might be construed as judgement.
“Who are you looking at, Juden?” yells one, but he is too drunk to follow up on his question.
All around the killing ground, tossed among the sweet-smelling apple trees, as far as the eye can see, are empty bottles. Rum, cognac, much wine.
Behind them the houses are already on fire and the air is speckled with bits of flaming wood blown on the wind.
The place is razed.
Who will remember what it once was?
Sister Rebecca put down the paper. She reached over and touched Tyler’s arm. “We will remember.”
He clasped her hand in both of his.
“We will. We will indeed.”
EPILOGUE
THE RESIDENTS OF ST. ANNE’S HAD BEEN PROFOUNDLY shocked when they learned the man they had known as Victor Clark had deceived them, and what he had done. It was especially hard on the remaining rub-a-dubs, but in the end it had brought them closer together. When Daisy and Jeremy announced they were getting a special licence so they could marry immediately, even Eddie Prescott approved. “Good idea, kiddies,” Melly had exclaimed. “Carpe diem. Eddie, that means seize the day, in case you’re wondering.”
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