Douglas Brodie 03 - Pilgrim Soul

by Ferris, Gordon

  I trudged through the snow and the slush with a sense of quiet desperation. I felt, yet again, driven down a path I didn’t want to take. I hated self-pity but here I was wallowing in it. Why me? Percy Sillitoe’s words rang hollow: That’s what you’re good at. Maybe once. It didn’t seem like it now. Not feeling like this. They needed a brave man with a cool head. Not a wreck with a mind full of terrors.

  I splashed down Turnbull Street, kicked my soaking shoes against the steps of Central Division and went in. It still smelt the same: old polish, old sweat and now damp, the floors wet and slippery from the carried-in snow. Ahead was the big oak counter straddling the entrance hall. But before I got there I was intercepted.

  ‘Well, the wanderer’s returned.’

  ‘Hello, Duncan. Watch your footing out there.’

  ‘It’s in here Ah worry about. You here to see me?’

  ‘No. Summoned by your boss.’

  ‘Sangster?’

  ‘The big boss.’

  ‘You’re flying high. Is this all about your wee trip to Germany?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By the looks of you, it wisnae much of a holiday. You look wabbit.’

  I pulled him over to the side. We stood close. ‘Look, Duncan, I can’t talk just now. Can we meet later? Buy you a pint?’

  ‘The Jewish thing?’ He tapped the folder under my arm.

  I nodded. ‘McCall’s, six o’clock?’

  We parted and I walked over to the desk sergeant.

  ‘I’m here to see the Chief Constable.’

  ‘You would be Mr Brodie, sir? We’re expecting you. The constable here will take you up.

  We went into the building and took the wing of the senior officers. The Chief Constable’s secretary was already on her feet. She went to the door behind her, stuck her head in and then ushered me through.

  ‘Come in, Brodie.’ McCulloch came to me and shook my hand. ‘Let’s sit over here.’ He indicated a good fire with two high-backed chairs parked either side. He called to his secretary: ‘Bring in the sandwiches, please. Then no interruptions, Miss MacDonald. And I mean none.’ He took my elbow and steered me towards the fire. Did I look as though I needed a hand? Between him and Duncan, it seemed like it.

  ‘It’s bitter out there. And you look like you need a wee half.’

  I sank into a chair. Sandwiches were brought and put by my hand. McCulloch himself set a honey-filled cut-glass decanter and two glasses on the table between the chairs. I waited for my whisky as if waiting for breath.

  He let me talk with just the occasional sharp question thrown in to show he was listening. He wanted to hear how I’d narrowed down the field and how we’d raided Cuxhaven. He couldn’t get enough of the shoot-out. I couldn’t talk about it without drowning in guilt.

  ‘Sorry about your man, Brodie. He was a brave customer.’

  ‘A soldier, Malcolm. A soldier.’

  We talked about the rat line and discussed how easily a fishing boat could drop a man off along the shoreline of the Forth. And how simple it would be to lose yourself in the crowd and hubbub of the Gorbals. There was no obvious way of tracking down the Leith contact, though McCulloch had asked his opposite number in Edinburgh to see if anyone had spotted a German fishing boat in the firth.

  Then we got on to the meat. I passed him the two lists of names and the batch of supporting details together with a rare photograph or two. I explained about the disruption that had stalled the conveyor belt last year. He agreed it was likely we’d lost the first twelve escapees but that we still harboured at least seven, excluding the dead Dragan.

  Sturmbannführer Fritz Suhren, Commandant, Ravensbrück

  Hauptsturmführer Klaus Langefeld, Senior Adjutant, Auschwitz

  Obersturmführer Rudolf Gebhardt, Doctor, Buchenwald

  Hauptsturmführer Siegfried Fischer, Doctor, Treblinka

  Aufseherin Hildegard Mandel, Ravensbrück

  Woman A

  Woman B

  Rapportführer Walter Draganski, Ravensbrück [deceased]

  It was early afternoon by the time we ground to a halt. The sandwiches had gone and the decanter had taken a hammering.

  ‘Well then, Brodie. It’s quite a story.’

  I nodded. I was light-headed with the whisky and the outpouring of scenes and emotions.

  ‘What worries me, Malcolm, is the rat line starting up again. The Cuxhaven link got away and we don’t have a lead on the Scottish operator. I don’t know what the blockage is between here and South America but we need to move fast or we’ll lose the seven that are stuck here.’

  ‘It’s my worry too. That and their propensity for murder if anyone gets in their way.’

  ‘Cornered rats.’

  ‘Exactly. Probably protecting their king rat, Suhren. It’s like having unexploded bombs walking about. Four deaths already. I want no more. But Sir Percy’s right. We need to keep this between ourselves. Can you cope with that, Brodie, as you press on?’

  ‘As I press on? Malcolm, to be honest, this has . . .’

  ‘Buggered you? I can see it, man. Give yourself a couple of days. You’re exhausted.’

  ‘What are your plans now, Malcolm?’

  ‘I’d like to flood the streets. Do house to house. As many men as I can spare. Hell, bring in the army.’

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘But can you imagine the panic? Nazis loose in Glasgow.’

  ‘I haven’t told anyone at the Gazette. I’ve drafted some general stuff about the trials but nothing about our local problems.’

  ‘Keep it that way, please. We’ll do this quietly and methodically. Our priority is your second list, while keeping an eye out for anyone that fits the first batch of twelve – just in case any of them decided they preferred Glasgow to Rio. I’ll circulate names and descriptions to my senior officers. The detectives can talk to their snitches. The murders of Craven, McGill and poor Miss Jacobs must have stirred things up a bit.’

  ‘What about the Jewish community? I promised to get back to their leaders. They opened all this up. I owe them some of the facts. They might even be able to help.’

  He was quiet for moment; then he nodded. ‘Keep it minimal. There’s no point lying to them or avoiding the matter. But let’s not have a repeat of the vigilantes of last year. The Jewish Marshals, for pity’s sake.’

  THIRTY-SIX

  It was just after two o’clock. I called Isaac’s shop before I left Central Division to say I was on my way. He said he had a new supply of real coffee beans. He’d let Shimon know I was available. I crossed Gorbals Bridge breathing in the chilled air to clear my head and sober up. The snow was starting up again, blowing horizontally down the Clyde. As I walked, I tried to work out what to tell these men, and what not to.

  Isaac greeted me with a cup of his welcoming coffee. I took it into his sanctuary, warming my hands while we waited for the others.

  ‘You look ill, Douglas. Thin. My Hannah would be feeding you chicken soup.’

  ‘I know she would, Isaac. It’s what I need. That and her smile.’

  We both looked away from each other’s gaze.

  ‘Tell me, Douglas, did it make any more sense? When you saw them again?’

  ‘You mean do I understand why they did it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’d hoped you’d tell me. Why do they hate you, Isaac? Not just the Nazis. Everybody. Everywhere you go.’

  He examined his cup for a long time. ‘I see it like this. Some people can only define themselves by their enemies. They need someone to blame when life goes wrong. They won’t accept personal responsibility. The Jews are handy. We are easily identifiable. We are a tribe that the Christian tribe can accuse.’

  ‘But we share the same start point. Christ was a Jew.’

  ‘Hush, Douglas. It is our greatest crime, they tell us. And it is cause enough to destroy us.’

  ‘For two millennia?’

  ‘For long before that. The Persians, Egyptians, S
yrians, Mongolians – they all tried to annihilate us. Simply for exissting. It is the way of nations to stamp out all other identities.’

  ‘That makes sense if the nations share a border and one wants the other’s land or wealth. Jews don’t have a state.’

  ‘Ours is a state without borders. We are a tribe within other tribes, across other tribes.’

  ‘You could say the same about Christianity.’

  ‘But you won, Douglas. You won. Then you took away our lands. You took away our rights and pushed us into work that you didn’t want to do. Like lending money. Or into brain work that you couldn’t exclude us from.’

  I understood the full vicious circle Isaac was drawing. We forced the Jews to become teachers and doctors and thinkers. We forced them to become rich. And then we envied them. We hated them.

  ‘You must think the world is very unfair.’

  He smiled. ‘It’s why we’re still waiting for the Messiah. It’s why we conclude the Passover Seder with the words l’shanah haba’ah birushalayim – next year in Jerusalem.’

  ‘So you can hardly blame Amos for wanting to go.’

  He batted his hand at me. ‘Ach, I know it. If only he’d wait until things had settled. Until the United Nations gives its blessing to Israel.’

  ‘That’s an old story, Isaac. A nation state surrounded by its enemies. History repeating itself?’

  ‘Maybe this time, eh?’

  The shop doorbell jangled. Isaac went out and came back with two men, shaking the heavy white clumps from their coats and hats. I rose.

  ‘Shalom, Shimon, Rabbi.’

  ‘Shalom, Brodie,’ they said in unison.

  We gathered round Isaac’s fire in the back room. It was snug among the bales of cloth. I gave them the main bits of news and that I’d come back with names and descriptions of possible Nazis among us. It excited them. Thrilled them.

  I tried to skip all the wretched details of the Hamburg prisoners and their dirty deeds. But it wasn’t enough for these men. They wanted pen portraits of the monsters now under sentence of death. They’d seen the court sentences in the paper and knew all the names. They wanted to know what they were like so that they could spot others like them. Take action against them before another mass slaughter.

  I told them what I could but not what they wanted to hear. The camp guards were outwardly no different to anyone else. No horns. No slavering fangs. No mark of the beast.

  Maurice Silver leaned into me. ‘Tell me, Brodie, these women, did they show any remorse? They have had time to think about it.’

  ‘Only the remorse of someone caught doing something wrong and knowing that they will have to pay for it. More self-pity really.’

  ‘No penitence?’

  ‘Rabbi, they are missing the faculty that provokes remorse. By their amoral code, they did nothing wrong.’

  ‘I cannot believe that.’

  ‘You must. I wish it weren’t true. But I met them. I talked to them. The women were the worst.’ As I spoke I had the image of Dorothea Binz in mind. Her cunning cornflower eyes and her vicious tongue. ‘Think of a succubus. Think of Lilith.’

  The rabbi sat back, clearly stunned at the notion of a female demon springing live from the pages of the Talmud. The three men glanced at each other.

  Shimon asked, ‘Brodie, we have been talking about just such an outcome as you have described. That you would come back with proof of this wickedness among us. You have the names, descriptions – including the boss of Ravensbrück, for pity’s sake. We want you to – there is no other word for it – protect us. Of course we will pay you.’

  ‘Shimon, I won’t take your money. It would be dishonest. I am one man. There are seven of these creatures at large. How can one man protect you?’

  He was nodding. ‘We have some men. Around twenty. They will work for you. You will direct them.’

  ‘Do they include Malachi?’

  ‘Yes. He is one of them. Is that a problem?’

  ‘He’s a Marxist.’

  Shimon shrugged. ‘Many Jews are.’

  ‘I fear his ideology makes him a little too enthusiastic. Kill first and ask questions after is his style.’

  ‘He needs a leader. You are a leader.’

  I was sagging under the weight of these fulsome plaudits. Too much expected of me from too many folk. If I was supposed to be helping Sillitoe, I needed to rope in some assistance. Maybe I could organise them? Set up patrols of the main Jewish enclaves? But I truly doubted if Malachi was controllable.

  ‘Look, I’ll help. But on my own terms. These men: do they have any training?’

  Shimon smiled. ‘Training, you ask? Some of them are trained to survive in the sewers of Warsaw. Some learned to fight in the forests of Latvia and Lithuania. Others learned how to endure in Auschwitz.’

  ‘I get the picture. Can you arrange for me to meet them?’

  ‘When, Brodie? They could gather tomorrow.’

  ‘Fine. Let’s meet tomorrow evening. Seven o’clock. Do you have a place to hold – twenty, did you say?’

  Shimon said, ‘The hall of the Garnethill Synagogue.’

  ‘Tell them not to come as a gang. Come singly or in twos. As if they were coming to evening prayers. One last thing: no weapons.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  I glanced at my watch. It was five thirty. All I wanted to do was go home and fall into bed. But I’d promised to meet Duncan at McCall’s at six. I was parched from the whisky and the coffee. Maybe a pint or two would help. I could get a pie there too. Sam was still over in Edinburgh and staying the night. The house would be empty and echoing, as it had been through all of December. I didn’t want to be there by myself with my thoughts.

  I set off back over the suspension bridge and then straight up Hope Street. The hill seemed harder. Maybe it was the snow beating against my face. Maybe I was out of sorts having missed my daily swims for weeks. I got to McCall’s as they were opening and sank into a chair near the fire, barely able to muster the energy to sup my pint. I must have dozed off. I was being shaken awake.

  ‘Wakey, wakey, Brodie. Ye’re like an auld alkie slumped there.’

  I rubbed my face. ‘Your boss is to blame. Kept pouring his best Scotch down my neck.’

  ‘You’re honoured. I might tell Sangster, just to see his face turn green. What’ll you have?’

  Somehow I never found the time for that pie. I gave Duncan as full a version of events as I’d given McCulloch, as though I’d become a gramophone record. But it was different unburdening to a pal. And later we shifted topics to rugby and politics, football and sectarianism, and then we switched from beer to whisky and Duncan was pouring me into a taxi . . .

  I fumbled into the great dark hall, shucked off my coat and scarf and hat and found myself on hands and knees climbing the stairs to my bed. I knew Sam was in Edinburgh but I called her name anyway, and even sang to her as I swayed in front of her bedroom door. I crashed into my own room and dropped like a felled tree on to my bed.

  I woke in the dark feeling sick. I checked my watch. Five o’clock. I was still in my shirt and trousers, now hopelessly wrinkled.

  I sat on the edge of the bed holding my head. My neck hurt. My eyes hurt. My stomach growled. I just wanted to run away. I could pack now, walk out of the door and catch the morning train to London. I could go back to where I was a year ago. Find a wee flat, slide into anonymity, and start my life again. I didn’t need all this chaos and bleakness. No more uncertainty about Sam and me; will she won’t she. No more Scottish winters: sunless, aching cold, and scoured by blizzards. I felt the panic grow in my chest, as if I’d stirred up a colony of butterflies. The room seemed stifling.

  I got up and threw the window open and dragged in the gelid air. I dropped to the floor and tried doing press-ups. I managed ten before the nausea rose again and my arms became lead. I slumped to the carpet and rolled on my back until my heart slowed and the room stilled. I crept downstairs. There was no need to be quiet but I didn’t
want to disturb the great silence of the house. I made a mug of tea. I poked aside the ashes in the grate, rolled up some old newspaper and kindling and put a match to it. When it caught, I added a few coals and sat staring at it, mug in hand, sipping the sweet hotness until the panic eased. I could get through another day. One day at a time.

  I took off into the dark morning. I walked down the middle of empty streets glazed china-white by moonlight on snow. It was too early for trams or carts and my feet made first tracks. I reached the sanctuary of the Western and found the doors locked. A notice told of the baths’ closure until further notice owing to lack of coal for the furnace.

  Barred from my refuge I found myself drifting along, squinting at the orange glow of the street lamps, as though I was still drunk. I diverted into Central Station and forced down some tea and fried eggs and bacon. I was at my desk by eight o’clock, bolstered by more tea and the first dizzying cigarette.

  I found four neatly typed articles: my original stream of conscious outpourings now knocked into shape and substance by the pencil work of Sandy Logan and Eddie. I took my hat off to these wordsmiths who’d made silk purses from my pig’s ear. I did a last pass or two myself aiming to get the facts as accurate as possible.

  By noon it was done. I picked up some blank paper and a pencil and got down to planning in preparation for the night’s meeting. I had one of the girls type up twenty copies of the SS names and descriptions. I got hold of the biggest street map I could find and started making some calculations and dispositions. I typed up a pile of short instructions. I was finished by six and bundled all my materials together in a newsroom briefcase and set off. Despite some of the tramlines being out because of frozen points and downed cables I arrived in good time at the Garnethill synagogue.