Dancing with Artie (Thaddeus Hunloke Book 1)

by Pete Heathmoor

  “Five and twenty to six,” replied Poppy. He could make out her shadowy outline; she was lying on her back looking up towards the high ceiling, her fine blond hair wafting about her face with each breath she took.

  “How long have you been awake?” he asked.

  “A fair while...,” she replied dreamily.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “Not much.”

  “You look good on it.”

  “Do you think I’m pretty?” she asked reflectively.

  “Of course you are. Am I?”

  “No, you’ve got sticky out ears and you’re ripped to shreds. I wouldn’t say you were pretty. I know you think Carey is much prettier than I am. Why is that?”

  “Jesus, woman, It’s too early for bloody fool questions! You might have forgotten but you’re just some nineteen-year-old kid married to the landed gentry.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “If I hadn’t lost my scruples then I’d think it bad...”

  “You have scruples; you’re tormented by a guilty conscience.”

  “Not where you’re concerned...” Hunloke pulled the overhead light cord, flooding the room with a disturbing light.

  “You know, I am actually a Lady,” she confessed.

  “Glad to hear it, though you weren’t last night...”

  Her laugh was throaty, unlike the familiar coy giggle. “No, I really am. Lady Violet Eason.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Lady Violet...” Hunloke pushed himself upright and reached for his spare packet of cigarettes on the bedside cabinet.

  The reliable but seldom seen Trotter had lit the fire in the refectory. Unusually, Hunloke was the last to arrive for breakfast. He glanced around the room and assumed Carey was helping the Trotters in the kitchen.

  “What’s that smell?” asked Hunloke.

  “Kedgeree,” replied Poppy. He nodded and sat at the head of the table opposite her. Brian and Christine were already tucking into the curried egg and fish dish, both clearly having recovered their appetites.

  “Morning, sir,” said Conway brightly, too cheerily for Hunloke’s tastes. It smacked of guilt-free, smug satisfaction and Hunloke might well have guessed the reason why.

  “Morning, both. You look like you both slept well...,” declared Hunloke. Christine blushed, which was all Hunloke needed to confirm his suspicions.

  “Sir, Christine and I were going through a few things last night,” said Conway.

  “I bet you were...” Hunloke’s reply was delivered in a deadpan manner. Conway missed the barbed comment but the holder of the military cross for gallantry noticed Poppy’s discreet grin.

  “I came across some post delivered from the camp yesterday,” continued Conway. “One of the envelopes contained the medical examiner’s report on the dead German named Bonhof. It was rather perfunctory, as you can imagine. But it did say that the man named Bonhof had a large scar on his stomach, possibly a bayonet wound.”

  “Interesting, Brian... Pardon me for saying, but so what? Lots of soldiers have war wounds, goes with the territory. Do you want to see mine?”

  “Well, sir, Chrissie and I were talking last night in... Chrissie and I were talking and it occurred to us, well, to Chrissie actually, well, we wondered why Etherington and Bonhof both had their faces smashed in? Is that a common thing in warfare?”

  Hunloke was about to reply dismissively by course of habit when he checked himself. He flushed and angrily thumped the table with his fist, making everyone jump, including Carey, who was carrying two plates of kedgeree for herself and the captain.

  “Scheiss!” he ejaculated, borrowing one of his late wife’s favourite expletives. “I’ve been such a bloody fool! Putting on this damn uniform robbed me of any ounce of common sense! In answer to your question, no, it’s not very common in war, it’s a time consuming way to kill someone. However, it happens a lot with gangland crime where someone wants to obscure the identity of a victim, or at least make identification difficult. Brian, I love you!”

  “Thank you, sir, but it was Chrissie who asked the question.”

  “And I love her too! Enjoy your weekend; don’t forget to do what we said last night...” Hunloke jumped up excitedly from the table.

  “Where are you going, Thaddeus, you haven’t touched your breakfast,” asked an apprehensive Carey.

  “I’m off to the camp. Got some catching up to do... The paperwork for your trip is in the library, Brian.” With those final words, Hunloke was off in pursuit of his motorcycle gear.

  The fog had lifted. It seemed a temporary anomaly; the air remained infused with a hazy mist that threatened to descend at a moment’s notice. A watery sunlight filtered down from the sky casting vacuous shadows upon the Flash Estate. The engine of the Norton single cylinder sounded harsh and bitter in the rarefied atmosphere atop the escarpment.

  Hunloke was a man on a mission. Preparations for morning roll call were in full swing when he bustled into the guardroom before eight o’clock.

  “Morning, sergeant!” shouted Hunloke excitedly, swaying under the weight of the waterproof jacket, heading towards Major Beevor’s office. Under his arm, he carried a brown paper package.

  “Morning, sir.” There was a questioning air to the dour sergeant’s greeting, prompted by the early hour of the captain’s appearance.

  “Get me Grass as soon as roll call is over, if you’d be so good, sergeant. Oh, and grab me the personnel files of the five escapees. No sign of the missing two I take it?”

  “No, sir. No news overnight. I’ll bring the files at once.”

  Hunloke waited agitatedly in Beevor’s office. The files were swiftly delivered and he laid out the five documents on the desk in front of him so that the names were clearly displayed. The two files he was particularly interested in were those of Hans-Georg Bonhof and Christophe Kassel. He placed the two folders one above the other and opened each to the front page displaying their descriptions along with a photograph.

  The men in the pictures were by no means identical. Both had what was classified as dark blonde hair, which Hunloke interpreted as light brown. Bonhof was recorded as being an inch taller than Kassel. He placed a thumb over the faces of the men. Superficially, there appeared to be little difference between the masked faces.

  Would it be possible for Bonhof to pass Kassel off as himself? Perhaps had a formal identification been made then more as likely not. However, no formal identification had been called for.

  It was a well-known trait of the typical German soldier not to wear his dog-tags. The identification discs were actually of little use in revealing a soldiers name. The aluminium or zinc oval necklaces showed only unit numerals and the soldier’s ID number. Without cross-referencing the numbers to a list of names, the data was next to useless. A soldier’s Soldbuch, the equivalent of a British serviceman’s pay book, was a much surer source of identification. Clearly, the latter had satisfied the authorities as to the identity of the dead man.

  Hunloke was loath to look any further. He had the bit between his teeth and felt a sense of excitement coursing through his body for the first time since he had been in Derbyshire. He knew he would feel devastatingly deflated if any additional research implied Kassel wasn’t in fact the dead man.

  He was absorbed to the point of obsession, speculating why Bonhof would wish to assume the identity of another, especially as he had possibly already been given a convincing legend.

  Thaddeus Hunloke sat contemplatively for a good while before finally committing himself to checking the POW records for bayonet wounds. A casual observer would have found it impossible to establish the outcome of Hunloke’s search by his body language alone. Anyone who knew Hunloke would have read a good deal by his calm and composed manner whilst waiting for the completion of the morning roll call and the arrival of Günter Grass.

  The knock on the door had been anticipated by Hunloke. He was already on his feet. “Come!” he shouted impatiently.

  Günter Grass slid i
nto the office. The men exchanged salutes before taking their respective seats and removing their headgear. The usual proffering of cigarettes took place before Hunloke launched eagerly into conversation.

  “Did you ever see Hans-Georg Bonhof naked?” The question was deliberately posed by Hunloke with mischievous intent.

  “No, we did not share the same ablution block, not at the same time anyway.” The German saw no impropriety in the question.

  “According to our reports, Bonhof did not have a gut wound of any type. I’d like you to confirm it.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, now...”

  “How?”

  “Ask someone in the camp who did shower with him.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, Feldwebel, now if you’d be so kind...” Grass showed little emotional response to the request. He pinched the burning end out of the cigarette. “Sergeant Donovan!” shouted Hunloke. After a moment’s pause, an anonymous private appeared at the door. “Ah, Private...?”

  “Mathews, sir,” answered the acne-ridden soldier.

  “Private Mathews, where is Sergeant Donovan?” asked Hunloke.

  “With the corporal talking to the MO, sir.”

  “Private Mathews, have someone escort the Feldwebel back to the compound. They are to remain with him and then escort him back when he’s ready. Clear?”

  “Yessir.” Mathews remained standing vacantly in the doorway

  “Very well, Mathews, spit-spot!” ordered Hunloke.

  Twenty or so minutes elapsed before Grass returned. There was no salute, he flopped into the chair and retrieved his half-smoked cigarette from his tunic pocket.

  “Nah, Günter?” asked Hunloke in his pigeon German. Grass smiled appreciatively.

  “Grenadier Bonhof had no chest or abdomen wounds,” confirmed Grass.

  Hunloke unleashed the full broadside of his asymmetric smile, eliciting a puzzled frown from Grass. “Then would it surprise you to know that the dead Bonhof did?”

  “Not really, Herr Hauptmann. Nothing about Bonhof surprises me. I take it you are telling me you believe him to be alive?”

  Hunloke nodded.

  “So who is the dead man?” asked Grass.

  “Kassel.”

  Grass slowly nodded. “So the two men on the run are Bonhof and Flohe. That makes sense. The two of them were always inseparable.”

  “And you suspect both to be Waffen-SS. Which prompts the question, what are they up to?”

  Grass shrugged. “I would tell you if I knew, Hauptmann.”

  “Thank you, Günter. I believe you would. I’d like you to make enquiries around the camp. Here, I’ve something for you...” Hunloke reached beneath the desk and produced a brown paper package, which he handed over to the Lagerführer. “Don’t open it now,” suggested Hunloke. “It’s a couple of the things you requested. I’d appreciate it if you looked after them; I only borrowed ‘em.”

  “Thank you, Hauptmann.” Grass considered his thanks should have been issued with a little more enthusiasm but reckoned the English captain would not have expected it of him. Hunloke, for his part, hoped Grass would look after the books on ornithology and wildlife he had borrowed from the library at Flash; he had after all taken them without permission.

  With Grass returned to the prison compound, Hunloke waited for and went through some mandatory paperwork with the returned Sergeant Donovan. It appeared to Hunloke’s quizzical eye that the prisoners had not been receiving their full allowance of heating materials or food rations. It was one of the many defects in the running of the camp that Hunloke rectified with the support of the sergeant. He suspiciously speculated whether Beevor had been selling off food on the black market.

  It was late morning by the time he was free to embark upon his next line of enquiry. He wanted to search the property of Charles Beevor. Only then was he prepared to allow the possessions of the late major to be cleared from Honeysuckle Cottage.

  The cottage stood forlornly abandoned in its quaint garden in a state of mourning for Major Beevor. The dwelling felt cold but the air effervesced with latent expectation, the atmosphere within the house was reminiscent of many of the crime scenes he had visited. He may have been an atheist but he was prudent enough to acknowledge that properties were like mirrors, reflecting, and in part absorbing, the emotional energy spent within its walls.

  He worked methodically from the bottom up, sifting through the contents. Beevor exhibited the traits of many career soldiers, for he clearly preferred to travel light. Frequent moving from billet to billet, even in peacetime, engendered a sense of savage discipline whereby all but the most essential and sentimental possessions were portaged.

  The downstairs revealed little of Charles Beevor. It was only when he reached the master bedroom that he found tangible evidence of Beevor’s life. Looking under the bed, he discovered a battered trunk. The two securing straps were unfastened and he used them to tug the case out onto the open floor. The trunk was not heavy but even so, he grimaced when he hauled it onto the bed. Sitting beside the chest, he freed the spring-loaded latches and raised the lid.

  The case contained the archived personal artefacts of Major Beevor. His clothes and washing kit had been neatly stowed in drawers and in the wardrobe. All that remained were the memorabilia that Beevor insisted on keeping close at hand throughout his wanderings.

  He flicked quickly through a photograph album that pictorially presented a précis of Beevor’s army career. The picture of elephants indicated Beevor’s posting to India. Hunloke shivered, he once possessed a very similar photograph recording his time in the subcontinent. It was as though someone had looted the rubble and wreckage of his London home and found his very own personal album.

  A row of service medals lay in the bottom of the trunk on top of a bound leather book. He fanned the well-thumbed pages of what was clearly a journal. The hand remained consistent, immaculately penned. Only the shade of ink varied as the dates rolled by. The time frame of the diary appeared to cover the years of the Great War. That in itself was not unique; many men had recorded their experiences of that conflict.

  What was impressive about the journal was the quality of the written words. The flowing text never appeared to show any sign of agitation or stress. He had seen diaries where the writing was almost illegible, where the writer hurried to frantically record his thoughts in a lull between combat or during an artillery barrage. Beevor’s writing looked as if it had been written on a writing slope in his study on a timeless summer’s afternoon. Unconsciously, he found himself reading the opening passages. The memoires were meticulously scribed by a man with a flair for prose. Before realising it, he had read for over an hour concerning the build up and preparations for the great Somme Offensive of July 1916.

  He suddenly realised his left leg was aching. He was no great reader but had been enraptured by the compelling words. It was an account written by a soldier and so appreciated by a man of like-minded experiences.

  A voice hailed from below.

  “Hullo? Anyone there...?” He immediately recognised the polished voice of Poppy Gray.

  “Up here!” he shouted, irked at being disturbed. Poppy’s sense of timing was as immaculate as ever. He listened to the clunking of her sturdy shoes on the bare wooden staircase and watched her enter the room. She wore the same tweed jacket she had worn when he first met her. A plain headscarf knotted below her chin offered some protection against the chill of the day.

  “What’s up, Poppy?” he asked gruffly.

  “Where there’s gratitude for you! I cycled here specifically to deliver a message and that’s all the thanks I get! I tried to reach you at the camp but they told me you were here.”

  “What’s the message?” He maintained a sour edge to his voice to disguise the pleasure gleaned from her unexpected appearance.

  “A Major Spills wants to talk to you, Artie. He rang the house and gave me a number where you can reach him.”

  “It’s Mills not Spil
ls... Is that all he said?”

  “Well, he was hardly going to tell me what he wanted, was he? What are you reading?”

  “A journal belonging to Major Beevor. It’s good stuff.”

  He followed Poppy down the stairs, clutching the journal. He would go through the remainder of Beevor’s artefacts later. Mills took priority. Hunloke wondered where the major had been for the past few days and momentarily took fright at the thought that Mills had discovered Brian Conway was looking into his background. His concern lessened when he rationalised that Brian and Christine had not been in London long enough to start making enquiries, if indeed they had yet arrived at all. He found the notion of his initial alarm significant in an imperceptible way.

  The Norton ferried Hunloke to Flash House far more quickly that Poppy’s pushbike. The number provided by Poppy was a Liverpool number. The operator connected him but he heard only a ring tone with no one at the other end of the line. Whatever Mills had wanted, it didn’t appear worthy of him hanging around to take the return call.

  Chapter 21 - The Portrait.

  Friday, 1st December 1944.

  After failing to speak with Major Henry Mills, Hunloke experienced a familiar sense of deflation. It was a feeling he had endured many times during criminal investigations. He was definitely not a methodical researcher of documents like Brian Conway. He was a thinker and a man of action, a man who mused upon a given topic, be it a police investigation or a military operation. Inactivity was an abomination to Hunloke when he was on a mission.

  He had become excited by the revelation that Bonhof was still alive and had been swept away that morning by a heady euphoria that the discovery was a pivotal moment. Now, at the desk in the library in the alcove beneath the large Gothic arched window, he became aware that discovering Bonhof was alive was hardly a breakthrough at all. His watch told him it was only two o’clock in the afternoon and the chimes from the longcase clock in the hall aurally confirmed his observation.