He shook his head. ‘Karen needs someone to teach her English. The other children are teasing her.’
That hadn’t told her very much, thought Hilary, but asked, ‘Will you pay?’
Startled, it was his turn to look curiously at her, he laughing at himself as he said, ‘Yes, of course. Within reason, you can name your price. It’ll only be until the end of term. During the holidays she’ll be with me. I might even take her to the States.’
And a long way from here, but an American and a schoolmaster—yes, now that she looked closer, thought Hilary, she could see a bit of Mr. Chips, but the resemblance ended as swiftly as it had come.
Saddened by something she didn’t define, she said, ‘I work in the mornings until one or two, so anything after that is fine. Why not let her come and have a try, then we can settle on the fee.’
‘I have to go back tonight. I only came down to see how she was. Would a fiver a fortnight do until we can talk again?’
Five pounds! ‘Six. If you can let me have six, I won’t need to sell the boat.’
Late on Monday, the car was there again, thought Ruth, it swung thoughtlessly in beside the playing field, but all banged up and dented, and Ash out there scrumming with the boys.
Anthony was standing on the sidelines watching them with Mr. Telford at his elbow and old George Crawley keeping his distance. The wind, the beastly wind, tugged at their gowns, threatening their mortarboards, they patently ignoring it. Talk was cheap, and talk into the wind, why nothing at all. He’d get off again—scot-free as usual. Ash could do anything he pleased. But had he and Tony ever been lovers? she wondered, as she had before. There had never been a hint of such a thing, of course, not from Ash, but some men did go both ways, hiding it from their wives, their mistresses or both.
The game broke up at last, and he came towards them with the gaggle all round him. One of the other boys ran out with a clean towel—Hamilton, it was that Hamilton boy, Bill.
Ruth leaned over the steering wheel and read the milometer—87373.4 and the second time round, or the third. He had driven well over five hundred miles that weekend. There were two holes punched as if by a cold chisel in the passenger’s door, Telford’s voice breaking her thoughts. ‘I say, Ashby, old chap. What happened to the motor?’
The towel was wrapped round Ash’s neck, he feigning surprise and nudging his eyeglasses back on the bridge of his nose as he said, ‘What? Oh, the windscreen, Arthur. Got into a tangle with a hay wagon. Didn’t see the blessed thing until it was too late. Went right under it and clear out the other side. Why, hello, Ruth. How are you?’
Wounded, Telford drifted off, muttering to himself and to Crawley probably, thought Ruth. Anthony just stood there looking futile. Ash could even ignore him and get away with it. A hay wagon, but he would have to be told. ‘A woman was here asking for you,’ she said. ‘I told her you had been dismissed, but of course you haven’t, have you?’
A woman … Christina? he wondered, but said, ‘Who? What was her name? Did she …’
Stung. That had positively stung him, thought Ruth, the hand with the towel falling uselessly to his side. ‘Did she what?’ she asked, deliberately not sparing him.
He looked to the gates and the road beyond, then back to herself, he asking, ‘Did she say what she wanted?’
‘You, as I’ve only just said.’
‘Why, then?’ he asked, throwing a questioning glance at Anthony, making her wonder if there still wasn’t something between them, something dirty.
Her gaze empty, she said, ‘Why does any woman want a man?’
It would go on like this, as it always had, thought Ashby, Ruth baiting him if she could, he forced into a defensive position until silenced. ‘Look, I don’t know what you’re implying, but I think I’ve a right to know who it was.’
‘Daisy Belamy, that barmaid down at the Dogs of War, as if you didn’t know. She’s either pregnant or you’ve forgotten to pay your bill.’
Daisy? wondered Ashby. Why had she come to the school of all places? She didn’t know anything of Karen and Christina, nor of the breakup of his marriage, didn’t even know he was legally still married.
‘Please, sir, what happened to the car?’
Ashby turned to find Bill waiting for his towel, the others now all gone. ‘Do you know Bodmin Moor, Bill? Do you know it when the fog comes creeping in and the light of day leaves you wondering?’
‘N-No, sir. I-I can’t rightly say that I do.’
‘Well, it happens to the best of us, Bill. Ended up on the moor. Pitch-dark it was. Couldn’t see for piss and splashed my trousers. Then I heard it, crashing at my car and snorting wildly.’
‘Wh-What, sir?’
‘Some old duffer’s prize bull—as for whose, I never did discover or I’d have had the creature shot for assault and battery!’
The horns … By crikey, they must have punched clean through the metal, even the gash in the petrol tank that was all bunged up with a rag, a wine cork and some moss. ‘Mr. Telford said you had run under a hay wagon.’
Ashby lifted disappointment from the boy’s shoulders. ‘I did, but that was later. Look, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything about the moor. The accident was bad enough. You know how it is.’
2
Kapitän Joachim Burghardt heaved a sigh and gritted his teeth. Mondays were never his best and here it was 23 May already. The house on the Böttcherstrasse, in Bremen, was gabled, invoking art nouveau at every turn, the location a well-guarded secret. Some outsiders knew of it, of course, but with the way things were going, it would be best not to tell the world.
Wealth and privilege had always crept under his skin, no more now than in the days of the Kaiser. ‘Ach, I should be flattered by your visit, Fräulein von Hoffmann.’ He gave a grimace, indicating the functional bareness of the office. ‘But as you can see, you have me at a distinct disadvantage.’
The house had been ‘bought’ from its Jewish owners. ‘AST-X Bremen is not to be comfortable, Kapitän. The harder the chairs, the harder you and your people will work.’
Leaning over the desk, he nudged rolled-up sleeves above his elbows, plunking brawny forearms atop the morning’s signals and dispatches. ‘Then perhaps, mein liebes Fräulein, you would be so kind as to tell me why AST-X Bremen, which does not even exist to citizens such as yourself, should undertake to rescue your daughter?’
‘Have they not even gone over to England?’ she asked.
Burghardt caught the flash of dismay, the toss of that tawny mane, a general’s daughter. ‘They?’ he asked quietly.
The woman brushed the hair back from a temple, then smoothed the pleated off-white skirt over crossed knees. Again she asked if they had not gone over and he let her ask it, tempering the relish he felt with the caution of her connections.
‘Werner was looking after it,’ she said.
The crimson cardigan with gold buttons was just right for this season and the chic shops of the Damm, in Berlin, he noted. The knotted silk scarf—a Hermès from Paris, and perhaps a leftover from that husband of hers—gave the desired air of casualness, the plain gold earrings, that of the demureness of a schoolgirl, something she definitely wasn’t, those honey-brown eyes of hers, something else again.
AST-X Bremen ran the Abwehr* agents in the British Isles now that the confusion of past years had all but been eliminated by reorganization under the iron fist of one desk, Bremen and himself.
‘Werner Beck, ah yes,’ said Burghardt. ‘A promising young man, one might have said, “they” being the two Herr Beck took it upon himself, Fräulein, to send after that daughter of yours without, I must add, having consulted his superior officer, myself.’
The windy old bugger! ‘I want my daughter back, Kapitän. That “husband” of mine had no right to steal her from me. The Gestapo were inept, the Abwehr also. Both should have stopped him
at the border last Easter and never let him get near her.’
Liebe Zeit, heads were going to roll, was that it? ‘Ach, bitte, Fräulein, a necessary correction. Stolen, I understand, from the house of your father on the outskirts of Brühl while you and Herr Beck were shacked up in the Jardelunder studying each other and the Danish frontier, am I not correct?’
‘Mein Gott, Berlin will …’ she began.
Burghardt wagged the stump of a cautioning finger. ‘Some coffee, I think. Kaffee, Frau Dorst!’ he shouted. ‘Und some of that marvellous Apfelstrudel of yours for the general’s daughter. The Strudel won’t hurt your figure, Fräulein. It’s good to eat a little now and then throughout the day. Besides, you will have missed the day’s most important meal, your breakfast.’
His grin was there, she uncrossing her legs to sit straight upright and let that gaze of hers fall directly on him. A sea captain, she’d be thinking, thought Burghardt. Methodical, plodding, a bit of an organizer perhaps, since Admiral Canaris, head of the Abwehr, was often heard to say such a thing. A natural, also, one who knew both how to choose good men and to delegate authority, but she would, of course, have none of it.
An old sailor who looked the part, thought Christina acidly, even to the unkempt, thin grey hair, the wind-burned cheeks and empty dark-brown eyes, they giving him the look he had nurtured all his life, that of the anonymous. ‘You spied for the Kaiser,’ she said.
‘As I was ordered,’ he countered.
‘And now you spy for the Nazis, but is it, Kapitän, that I must see to your orders?’
Verdammt, she would even threaten him again with that influence of her father’s, and of her own, he reminded himself. ‘Fräulein von Hoffmann, let us make a little peace. You have your coffee—I assure you it will be to your liking—me, I’ll check over what has come in.’
‘Just don’t forget what I said.’
Ach, how could I? he asked himself, but must loyalty to the party higher-ups always be used? He knew she had taken a shot in the dark by coming here, and when he chanced a glance at her, he saw the light of laughter touch those lovely bedroom eyes and thought Ashby must have been a fool to have let go of her, yet Ashby had had very sound reasons, and still did since she had given him more and more of them.
Burghardt returned to his papers. When he came to the signal he wanted, he found he couldn’t suppress an impatient frown. ‘Your husband seems to have eluded us, Frau Ashby. Might I suggest you find Herr Beck and have him return to this office.’
Ash had done it again, thought Christina, but arched, ‘You can reach Werner yourself.’
‘More quickly?’ Burghardt shook his head. ‘The time necessary will give you both the opportunity to think more clearly. Please see that you do.’
At half past nine that Monday, as light fled out into the night from the Dogs of War, Ashby stood next to the old stone wall that was across the road and not far from the bridge and Wetherby Cottage where those two must have waited for him. Sounds from the pub were mingled with those of the sea and the stream. There were a few cars parked nearby, and some bicycles, for here the A39, coming from Nether Stowey past the signpost to the Old Coach Road and then that of the school and on to Holford, turned west past the short road to the village of Kilve and skirted the northern fringe of the Quantocks a mile or so from the coast. Beyond the village, a lane led to Daisy’s farmhouse, which abutted the ruins of the chantry, and beyond it, Kilve Pill, the stream, soon emptied into the Bristol Channel.
His mind made up, he walked down to the pub to search among the cars, but there wasn’t a sign of that Bentley. Just a dusty brown, two-door Rover of rather institutional looks that puzzled. Daisy would be hustling the pints, but it wasn’t like her to have come to the school. Had those two been in to question her?
Seen through the tobacco smoke, the chatter and the inevitable custom, the man with the Rover was in hunting tweeds and an open mack, having a pint of bitter and feeding late on steak-and-kidney pie with hash browns. He was over against the far wall with not a flicker of interest from him, just a hasty wiping of a ginger moustache. A big man, in his mid-fifties, from London no doubt, but not on holiday, not that one. An estate agent, then? wondered Ashby, though that didn’t fit either, but tough, and definitely he had been in the war. It wasn’t just the bearing or the way he gripped his knife and fork or seized the glass. It was in the way he ate with the stolidly mechanical indifference of the trenches, as though to get it all over with before the shells started coming in again.
As the sounds of those round the stranger ebbed and flowed, the man readily accepted his isolation. A couple was playing darts, the girl with flashing eyes and a ready laugh, but he had no time even for her.
Shouldering through to the bar, Ashby gave nods to several, quiet hellos to the parson and the squire. Puzzled, he looked about for Daisy.
‘Gone to see her sister in Bristol,’ said Martin Dolby, the landlord. ‘Said she would be away three days, but it’ll be a plain bloody fortnight before she comes back, you mark my words. What’ll it be, the usual?’ He gave the bar a wipe. ‘I’m half run off my feet, what with the wife over in Bridgwater seeing to her mother.’
Still receiving no answer, Dolby drew a pint of half-and-half and set it before the schoolmaster.
‘Have you tried to telephone her?’ asked Ashby.
‘Me? No, come to think on it, I haven’t.’
Digging into a trouser pocket, the schoolmaster paid up rather than put the drink on the chit, Dolby giving him a shrewd but questioning look.
‘Would you mind if I used your telephone?’ asked Ashby.
Right worried he was, thought Dolby, and even sliding far too much across the bar. ‘Just tell her to come back,’ said Dolby, returning the shilling. ‘Sort of warms the old place up, she does. You know what I mean. Tease her.’
Shoulders intruded, the smell of wet tweed as well, Dolby saying rather harshly, ‘Well, what’ll it be now, sir? Another pint?’
‘That and another of your steak-and-kidney pies, Landlord,’ said the visitor.
‘Arnold!’ called out Dolby, ‘another of them up front! With the hash browns, sir?’
A regimental nod was given.
‘The potatoes, Arnold. It’s coming up closing, sir.’
Ginger moustache couldn’t have cared less, but said, ‘And a dollop or two of tomato sauce. That bottle on the table seems to have run dry. You wouldn’t have such a thing as a napkin, would you, and a side order of coleslaw?’
His lot had always demanded the world, thought Dolby, the man taking a sip from his pint before collaring the pie and making his way back to that table.
Ashby wasn’t long, but the call had apparently unsettled him, though he said not a word of it, simply borrowed a torch and left.
Beyond the village and the church at Kilve, an overgrown path led to an old brick building where oil shales had once been tested. The farmhouse Daisy rented was not that far, but it was in total darkness, and Ashby wondered where she was, as he had ever since her sister had anxiously said, ‘But she’s not here, Mr. Ashby. She did say she was coming yesterday, that she had to get away for a bit, but I thought she must have put it off until next week.’
Telling her not to worry, he had promised to call her back the moment he heard anything.
Daisy was thirty-six, had been married at the age of seventeen to a man with little money and twice her years. The thick red hair and sea-green eyes of the girl she’d once been were still there, but the husband had driven her to despair with his screams and tears in the night, and ever since she had been chary of military men, yet his own understanding of such had helped, and the two of them had gradually come to know each other.
They had never discussed getting married—the thought had never occurred to either. Daisy wanted her independence, and so did he, but every once in a while they would walk down this lane after c
losing to pause by the garden gate, those errant hens of hers rebelliously clucking from atop that old stone wall.
Naked, she was beautiful, pleasingly plump, eager yet content, knowing what she wanted, yet not demanding, just letting instinct guide them. The spare key was where it should have been. Letting himself into the house, he shone the light round. In the kitchen, extra food had been left out for the cat, but this hadn’t been touched. Upstairs, her bed had been made, but when he pulled the plain brown leather suitcase from the closet, it was packed for that visit.
Her walking shoes weren’t in the mudroom. She wasn’t in the loft of the barn. She was in the ruined, ivy-covered walls of the chantry, whose remaining monastical buildings had been destroyed by fire in 1848, and when the torchlight found her, he hesitated, for she had been beaten and stripped of her clothing, which lay scattered about, was kneeling with her back towards him, her hands bound behind her with baling wire, the ankles as well, the knees spread widely.
Sickened by what had happened, Ashby was at a loss. Granted he had seen death far too many times. One could never have become accustomed to it even then, or else one would have soon lost one’s mind, but this … He knew her throat must have been cut, for the knife had slashed both buttocks, and certainly she had been questioned, for the gag her killers had used, being untied at the last, was clinging to her left shoulder, a dirty bit of rope. Hemp, he thought, as the sound of the waves finally broke through to him, he switching off the light to let the darkened silhouette of those crumbling walls close about him, he blurting, ‘Daisy, why? Why you, for God’s sake? This went too far and makes no sense.’
‘We’ll just leave this, if you please,’ said a voice from out of the darkness. ‘There’s no good getting your bowels in a knot, Captain Ashby. Let the figs of retribution take their course. It’ll all come out in the end.’
‘Who the hell are you?’
And still sickened by what he’d come upon. ‘Hacker, Captain. Colonel Hacker.’
The Sleeper Page 3