Douglas Brodie 03 - Pilgrim Soul

by Ferris, Gordon

  ‘I could get over to Berlin and shake them up personally, Sam.’

  ‘It would be counter-productive. You know what wee clerks with power can be like. Iain’s already getting complaints about you.’

  So I had to sit out, going stir crazy in this cold hut by the desolate lake. The brief surge of hope and enthusiasm that had come with my birthday celebrations and the breakthrough with Hellinger had evaporated. Had died with Will Collins. I was drinking too much again, and now I had little to get up for.

  The days mirrored our moods. The sun hadn’t been seen across northern Europe for days. We heard there were tenfoot drifts throughout Scotland and England. Hamburg matched it foot for foot. We got up in the dark; it grew grey; then it went dark again. They were skating on the Alster, even building fires on it and roasting chestnuts hoarded from last autumn. But there was no indication that life and light would ever return to this blighted land.

  We were in bad shape. Or at least I was.

  ‘You can’t keep blaming yourself, Douglas.’

  ‘Who else can I blame, Sam? Will Collins didn’t have to die. I could have sent fifty men to round up Günter Hoffmann and his pals instead of just the two of us. I might even have caught the schoolmaster.’

  ‘You didn’t know who you were looking for till you got there.’

  ‘You were right, though, Sam. I was playing the hero. It was self-indulgence.’

  Sam too was changed by it, more introspective, more hidden. We’d been gone barely a month but it felt like I’d done a five-year stretch at Barlinnie. I felt engulfed by the churned-up past. I walked through each day with a pack of black dogs snapping at my heels. If I stumbled and fell, they would tear me apart. At night we kept the connecting door open between us. Sometimes we slept together, spooning in the dark. But it was simply good to know she was there, a few steps away.

  On 14 February I found a note in my diary and fired off a congratulatory telegram to a certain Police Sergeant Murdoch and his new bride Morag. Sam and I spent the rest of St Valentine’s Day holed up in our igloo while the winds howled outside and sabre-tooths fled in front of the advancing glaciers.

  At least the information was dribbling in. Across all fourteen names a pattern emerged. About a third of the names were NCOs or camp wardens, Aufseherinnen in the case of females. Possibly the guardians of the bigger rats. The rest were former SS officers or medics at Ravensbrück, its sub-camps or other camps. Together they formed a roll call of the most terrible places on earth: Auschwitz, Belsen, Treblinka and Buchenwald.

  Finally we were done. The last pack of papers came through from Berlin. I could have tried to send them by air courier but nothing was getting off the ground. As fast as they cleared the runway another blizzard took it out. Sam and I were packed ready to go by any form of transport – truck, train or plane – the moment there was a break in the weather. I’d be my own courier. But we couldn’t even leave the hotel, far less Hamburg.

  We listened to the wireless whenever we could get a signal. Through the whines and the static, we learned it was no better in Britain. Atlee had cut power to nineteen hours per day. Factories were shut and the home fires had ceased burning. It wasn’t an attractive destination but we were desperate to get there. I wanted reprisals for Collins.

  My patience snapped on the nineteenth and we made a break overland by a series of trains to the Channel. We got as far as Ostend only to find the service suspended because of pack ice off the coast. Europe was marooned. They sent icebreakers into the harbour on Friday, and on Saturday morning we caught an overcrowded ferry to England. By evening we were toasting each other in the bar of the officers’ mess at RAF Hendon.

  ‘Douglas, I don’t want to say it, but you’re not the man I set out with.’

  I looked up at the mirror behind the bar. Looking back was a scrawny old man in an ill-fitting uniform. I pointed at him.

  ‘See. You hit thirty-five and it’s downhill all the way. You’re a wee bit ethereal yourself, Samantha Campbell, if you don’t mind my saying so.’

  Her lovely face was hollowed out, her cheekbones beneath her specs emphasising her deep-set blue eyes. She’d had no weight to lose but now she was fragile, wisp-thin.

  ‘Let’s get ourselves home, laddie. A gallon or two of Isobel Dunlop’s Scotch broth will soon fill us out.’

  The RAF did us proud. They cleared the runway twice next morning so we could take off, climbing above snow clouds to blue sky and sunshine. We hoped for a slow flight just to bask in the warmth and light. But by one o’clock we were diving into the clouds again and coming into land over the ice-age landscape that used to be Ayrshire.

  Glasgow was a whiteout. The taxi from the station took three goes at the hill up to Sam’s. The house was stone cold. At least it was dust-free: Izzie had kept up the assault in our absence. As darkness fell, Sam and I pulled our chairs closer to the puny flames and nursed our whisky.

  ‘Now we’re back, Douglas . . . Look, I don’t know how to put this. One of my friends is a doctor.’

  ‘Who’d come and take me away in a straitjacket?’

  ‘Of course not. But you could get pills. Help you sleep.’

  ‘I’ve got this.’ I held up my glass.

  ‘That’s another thing.’

  ‘I’m drinking too much?’

  ‘We are.’

  ‘Look, it’ll calm down now. It’s finished. I can pass this over to the police. I’ll talk them through it, translate it. It’s all the information they need. I’ll tell Shimon and Malachi that the police or MI5 – or whoever the hell they like – will handle things from now on. Let them take it from here. And I’ll see if they’ll demob me again.’

  ‘You looked good in uniform. Shame you have to hand it back.’

  ‘There wasn’t a kilt.’

  It was no night for passion and we went to our separate rooms. I jolted awake with the unfamiliar silence. The old Bear Hotel had creaked and groaned and the wind had howled over the frozen lake. Now there was nothing. I padded to the window and scraped a hole in the ice. Outside it seemed to be daylight, though my watch disagreed. A half-moon silvered across great scoops of snow. The streets were flooded with it. As I watched, new flakes began tumbling again, and soon the moonlight was obliterated in a white storm. I stood at the window for a while, feeling like a little boy, strangely excited for morning.

  THIRTY-THREE

  A soft touch on my face startled me until she spoke.

  ‘Douglas, Douglas. I have to go out now. Are you all right to leave?’

  ‘Where . . . I mean, what time is it?’

  ‘Eight thirty. You’re fine. Take the day off. I’ll phone the Gazette and say you’ve got the flu.’

  I rolled on to my back. ‘I never get the flu.’

  ‘Stay there and sleep it off.’

  ‘Is that an invitation?’

  ‘That sounds like the old Brodie. No time, dear. I’ve got meetings over in Edinburgh. I’m staying there tonight. I need to report back and persuade them to let me stay working in Glasgow. They owe me.’

  She left me lying there and a little later I heard the front door open and close. I was drifting in and out of wakefulness now, brain buzzing and flitting. Faces kept crowding in. Laughing faces, sneering and mocking. I recognised some of them as creatures I’d interrogated, but most were unfamiliar. I kept pushing them back until I woke again shouting at them, hurling abuse at them, denying their existence. I was bathed in sweat. Maybe it was the flu.

  I forced myself upright, and sat on my bed until the room stopped swaying. This wouldn’t do. I had a job to finish. A baton to pass.

  Cocooned in gloves, hat, overcoat and scarf I plunged into ankle-deep snow and began trudging down the hill, skidding and hanging on to railings.

  Eddie must have been looking out for me. He shot out of his office.

  ‘Ah thocht you were doon with the flu, Brodie? Your landlady phoned us.’

  ‘I’m a quick healer, Eddie. What’s the news?’r />
  He followed me right through the newsroom to my desk. I sat down and Eddie loured over the filing cabinet at me.

  ‘Well, Sandy and me have just aboot managed to cobble thegither the odd crime column in your absence. Maybe without the majestic Brodie flourishes, but no’ bad a’ the same. So, where’s your scoop, Brodie?’

  ‘What scoop?’

  ‘Christ, man, you’ve just been out there in Germany at the trials of the century and you ask me what scoop? Were you no’ taking notes or anything?’

  I sprang to my feet. ‘Taking notes? We were taking notes all right! I’ve got enough filth and tragedy and evil to fill the Gazette from front to back for a decade! Is that what you want?’

  Eddie staggered back. Behind him, the room had stilled. My face was hot and I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. I gathered myself and took a deep breath.

  ‘Eddie, sorry. I’m tired. It was hard work. Look, give me a couple of hours. I’ll knock out something. A day in the life of a prosecutor. I’ll do a court scene. Something that tells the readers what it’s like. OK?’

  Eddie was still looking at me as though I was a ghoul with my head under my arm.

  ‘Aye, right. OK Brodie. You sure you’re feeling OK? Ah mean, take the afternoon off if you’re no’ feeling weel.’

  I sat down. ‘I’m fine, Eddie. I’ll get a column together for you. Two hours.’

  It took me less, and I produced enough for ten columns. It poured out of me. The packed courtroom of the Curiohaus. General Westropp chairing his military panel. The bank of accused women reduced to cyphers. Eeny, meeny, miny, mo. The public gallery packed with middle-class Germans come to gawp at the working-class thugs who’d let the side down. The defence counsel claiming their clients were innocent lambs, forced to obey orders.

  I wrote of my own role, standing in the witness box in my smart uniform, swearing the correctness of my written reports. Pointing out the defendants and confirming their identities. I wrote about the spleen and the bile and the empty eyes of the men and women I interrogated.

  But I didn’t reveal that some of their number had got away. Or that rat lines ran across the Continent, north and south, easing the passage of war criminals to safe havens. I certainly didn’t disclose that some of these escapees had been given written permits and safe travel documents by a rogue bishop. That one of the escape channels was called the Vatican Rattenlinie. That another seemed to end up here, in Glasgow.

  I didn’t give Eddie the scoop he wanted. That somewhere in our city, under the virginal snow, was a rats’ nest of sadists and evil-doers.

  I handed in my much-too-long draft to Eddie and in return was given three phone message slips. One was from McCulloch’s office. Eddie poked it.

  ‘That yin’s urgent, Brodie. You can use the conference room to ca’ him back if you like.’

  The second was from Isaac, no doubt operating as the conduit for his pals. The third was from a Whitehall area number.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Sitting in the conference room and weighing up the respective importance of the three slips, I decided to start gently. I made my first call to Isaac.

  ‘I’ve been worried, Douglas.’

  ‘That I’d forgotten you?’

  ‘That you’d be harmed by this. We asked a lot of you. Too much, my friend.’

  His tone was genuine and concerned. For a ridiculous moment my eyes stung.

  ‘It’s kind of you, Isaac. But I’m back and I’m fine. Can you call Shimon? Arrange to meet later? At your place?’ I thought of Isaac’s snug back room as a little sanctuary. It would be good to have somewhere safe to meet.

  I then called London. A woman answered; I asked for the extension provided on the slip of paper and gave my name. A second woman answered, this time with a newsreader voice.

  ‘Kindly hold on, Colonel Brodie. I’ll put you through.’

  Still Colonel? That was nice. But at the same time worrying. There was a pause, a couple of clicks and a ‘You’re through, sir’. Then a man’s voice I recognised from the parade ground of the Glasgow police college, and later, as a detective sergeant, on a private mission that nearly got me killed.

  ‘Brodie? Colonel Brodie, I should say.’ Sir Percy Sillitoe’s even tones were unchanged from a decade ago. Perhaps more BBC. London does that to a man.

  ‘Yes, sir. You want a briefing?’

  ‘If you please, Brodie.’

  ‘May I ask one thing? Am I still in the army? Am I still commissioned?’

  ‘For the moment anyway. A technicality. It just seemed easier all round. Official secrets and all that. So . . .?’

  I took a deep breath. This wasn’t the moment for an argument. I switched into my debriefing mode, learned in the police and reinforced in the army.

  ‘You got my telex?’

  ‘A breakthrough, you said. We warned the local bobbies in Leith but it’s a needle in the haystack if we don’t know what they’re looking for.’

  ‘I know. Worth a try.’

  ‘But you’ve got names, Brodie! Descriptions. That’s the stuff!’

  ‘And some photos. We found out that the northern rat line had been used by twenty escapees.’’

  ‘Christ!’

  ‘Indeed, sir. We have fourteen names, plus two mystery women. What we don’t know is how many have already passed through en route to South America.’

  ‘Any guesses?’

  ‘The rat line got stuck about a year ago. I don’t know why. I think around a dozen had passed through Scotland by then. Since then a further eight were dropped off at Leith and may still be here. We’ve accounted for Draganski. And we know three other caches of ingots were stolen by Paddy Craven before he ran into Dragan’s knife.’

  ‘So perhaps seven at large. Including the camp commandant Suhren. Highly dangerous, especially if they feel cornered. You have descriptions, you said?’

  ‘At Cuxhaven they changed hair colour, grew beards and were given top-quality passports. And presumably some gold and silver to speed them on their way. We think Fritz Suhren had hidden some loot and retrieved it when he absconded. He may have been prevailed on to leave some at Cuxhaven to help others behind him.’

  ‘The schoolmaster got away? The link man at Cuxhaven?’

  ‘It means the rat line could be reopened somewhere else.’

  ‘Do we know who’s running the line at your end? In Glasgow? Or Leith?’

  ‘No. What about your research, sir? The documentation with the Red Cross stamps, signed letters from Bishop Alois Hudal?’

  ‘It’s a delicate matter, Brodie. We don’t think the Vatican was directly involved in helping Nazis out of Europe. One rogue bishop doesn’t make a conspiracy. The last thing we want is to stir up more anti-Semitic accusations about the Vatican.’

  ‘Sir, on a different tack, I lost a good man. Lieutenant Will Collins. He was fearless. I shouldn’t have risked him. He earned a medal. A big one. It would be important for his family.’

  ‘I heard. He will be honoured. You might have earned one yourself. But don’t beat yourself up, man. No one else could have got us this far.’

  ‘No? Anyway, I’m glad it’s over. I’ll report to the Chief Constable. He’ll take it from here.’

  ‘Ah, yes. Of course, Malcolm and his boys have their part to play. But they’ll have their work cut out. I want to take up a little more of your time, Colonel Brodie.’

  I knew it. ‘I’m just a reporter, sir.’

  ‘You’re a lieutenant colonel.’

  ‘I can resign my commission.’

  ‘You could, but I’m sure you won’t. I know you, Douglas Brodie, remember? From the old days? You handled a problem for me in a way that no one else could. You’re not hidebound. I need a different take on this. Your take.’

  ‘I’m not MI5.’

  ‘Ah, didn’t I mention? I’ve agreed with the Army Department – General Gilmour personally – that you’re seconded to me for this mission.’

  I felt the cl
ouds building up again. They can’t do this to me. But of course they can. Even if they can’t make me, can’t force me, they know how to draw me in.

  ‘Does the Chief Constable know all this, sir?’

  ‘Malcolm knows. But only him, Brodie. He won’t be telling his officers. It would get . . .’

  ‘Messy?’

  That was putting it mildly. An army officer, seconded to MI5, running a parallel operation to the Glasgow police force. And there was the small matter of my erstwhile Jewish employers. I was no longer on their payroll but I’d promised they would hear from me. I knew some of them were terrified by the thought of the Nazi plague following and enveloping them. Others, like Malachi, probably relished the prospect of honing another pitchfork.

  ‘Bloody messy. You’re a fine detective, Brodie. And you take risks. That’s what you’re good at. Go and find these bastards.’

  My phone conversation with McCulloch was much shorter and to the point.

  ‘I’ve been waiting, Brodie. Can you come to my office? Soon as you can, please. Have you eaten?’

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I picked up my neat folder of information on the escapees and told Eddie where I was going. Eddie was glad to get my surly presence out of his newsroom. He and Sandy were hacking away with their blue pencils at my draft. It was now split into four columns to run on subsequent editions. I left them to it.

  The snow had stopped and teams of men were shovelling clear the main roads. Some of the trams had snowploughs fitted, and gritters were at work. The carters had covered their horses with blankets and tied sacks round their hooves to give them purchase. The drivers were hauling on their brakes with both hands to stop them becoming sledges on the hills. When the schools broke up at four, the streets and parks would be filled by roaring battalions of kids, in a thousand snowball fights.