‘Naw, but there’s a box outside.’
Just behind Duncan I saw Joshua’s face peering round the corner, worried to bits but desperate to know what was going on.
I shouted at him, ‘Joshua, away and find that phone box. Call for an ambulance and a police car. Tell them Inspector Todd wants help urgently. OK, Duncan?’
‘Sure. Do what you like. It’s clearly martial law aroon here.’
‘Don’t go in the huff. While we’re here, might as well turn the place over, eh?’
We got some lights on and inspected the woman. Duncan had propped her up, sitting with her back against the wall, still clutching her shoulder. She was a thickset creature, late forties, and now drenched with blood. Even a .38 slug from an Enfield through a wood door will do that to a body. If I’d brought Sam’s father’s .45 we’d have had a corpse on our hands. Which would have been a pity. We needed answers.
As it was, my bullet couldn’t have hit anything vital or she wouldn’t have had the strength to swear at me. Her steady stream of curses rang out into the lobby, interspersed with spit aimed at me. Bathsheba said something to her and it started the woman off again. Bathsheba took one step closer, grabbed her by her blouse and slapped her across her face. There was a brief wrestling match until Danny pulled her back.
‘She called me a Jewish whore.’
‘Hit her again if you like,’ I offered.
‘Behave yourself, Brodie,’ said Duncan.
‘I will if she will.’ I knelt in front of the woman and said in slow English, ‘If you spit on me I will put another bullet through you. This time your head. Are we clear?’
Her raging eyes stilled. I held her gaze. She nodded.
‘Which do you speak better, English or German?’
She shrugged and spat out, ‘Deutsch.’
I switched to German. ‘What is your name?’
‘Kebel.’
‘Your real name. The name you used in the camp.’
Her eyes widened. Her head shook. ‘Kebel.’
‘Let’s try some others.’ I reached in my jacket inside pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. It had the list of fourteen Cuxhaven names on it. Eight above and six below. We didn’t have names for the two mystery women. I gave the list to Bathsheba. ‘There are three Aufseherinnen in the first list and one in the second. You see? Read them out to her. Slowly.’
As Bathsheba settled to her task I pulled out my folded sheet containing shorthand descriptions of each of the names. Two in the first list were blue-eyed blondes. Even with a perfect dark-hair job, this woman couldn’t mask her brown eyes.
Bathsheba read them out one by one while I watched the woman’s face. So did Duncan. Danny had wandered off into the other rooms. I heard drawers banging.
‘Handloser? . . . Zimmer? . . . Rheinhardt? . . . Mandel?’
There! A flicker, a wince crossed her pale face as though she’d been slapped again.
‘You got her, Brodie,’ said Duncan.
I read the description. Hildegard Mandel. Brown hair and eyes. Height 5’ 3” – hard to tell lying down, but not tall. Heavy build. From Polish Upper Silesia but of German ancestry. Good enough. I stood up.
‘Well, Aufseherin Mandel, it seems your past has caught up with you.’
I’d got her all right. Her face showed fear for the first time. She sneered something at me in Polish.
‘She said – go away – rudely,’ said Bathsheba.
‘Did she now.’ I stuck to German. ‘Well, here’s the deal, Mandel. My name is Brodie. Lieutenant Colonel Brodie. I’m just back from Hamburg where I was a witness in the trial of some of your fellow workers from Ravensbrück. Last year I performed a similar service at the Belsen trial. I have the power to arrange for you to be sent to Hamburg on the next plane to join Irma Grese in the afterlife.’
Her face lost its sneer and became wary. Doubt clouded her eyes. I continued.
‘You probably heard that the lovely Irma was found guilty at the Belsen trials. We hanged her just before Christmas in 1945. Now we’re working through the Ravensbrück guards. You will be sent to Hamburg for trial. At the end of it, I expect you to swing alongside your foul pals.’
‘Go to hell!’ she managed, breaking into German.
‘Not me, Hilde. That’s your destination. Unless . . .?’
She couldn’t help herself. ‘Unless what?’
‘Unless we keep you here. In Scotland. Tried you here. And put you in jail.’
She wrestled with the choice. ‘Why? Why would you?’
‘For information, of course.’
I thought she was going to spit at me again and I stood back. Just then Danny came back into the hall. He was holding something.
‘Maybe she could start by telling us where she got these?’
Danny held out both hands. The gold glittered in the hall light. Small carved slabs of dull beauty.
Bathsheba reached out and stroked one. Mandel’s face slumped as though the air had been released from it. She looked up at Danny and then me.
‘What do you want?’
We asked some questions but it was like pulling teeth. Then she said, ‘I am feeling faint.’ She let her head slump. Faint or feint? I let it go. We’d achieved enough for one morning.
FORTY-FOUR
Danny, Bathsheba, Joshua and I stepped out into the cold light of morning. It was bitter but refreshing. An ambulance was already drawn up and two men were unloading a stretcher to pick up Mandel. Two armed constables had passed us in the entry ready to escort their wounded prisoner to a secure room at the infirmary. A crowd of nosy Glaswegians was already gathering.
Danny and I lit up.
‘One down, Brodie.’
‘But hardly a big fish. We’ll talk to her again when she’s patched up. We’ll show her photos. See how she reacts.’ I looked at Bathsheba. ‘Are you cold? You did well.’ She was shaking.
‘Freezing. But it was meeting her. I never thought . . . I never . . .’ And suddenly the tears were coursing down her face. ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry . . .’
Danny beat me to it. He put his arm round her and held her. ‘You did brilliant, so you did. You’re a brave girl, so you are.’
Eventually she pushed him away and Danny handed her a hankie. ‘What’s next, Brodie?’
‘Mandel said we’d never find the others. So she confirmed there are others. She also said they knew we were after them. It’s why she fired through the door. She had a row with a man. No description but he sounded “posh” according to the old neighbour. Is that right, Joshua?’
‘That’s what he said, sir.’
‘One of the officers then. Maybe Suhren himself. Is it worth talking to the old man again?’
‘I just did. While you were with her. He doesn’t know anything else. Said he’s glad we caught the bitch.’ His young face coloured.
‘So are we, Joshua. You’ve done well here. Really well. Look, Danny, you get Bathsheba off to hospital. Get the wood splinters out and a tetanus jab. Then let’s compare notes this evening with the others. I’m not expecting to see you, Bathsheba. Take it easy, OK?’
They nodded and Danny walked off with her, a consoling arm round her shoulder. The man was incorrigible. And – truth to tell – I wished it were me.
I walked on down through the cold streets to the Gazette. I hadn’t been able to face the newsroom for days, ever since I’d been helped from my desk by Danny and Duncan. It hadn’t snowed for a day or two and the mounds by the side of the pavements were turning into filthy ramparts. I dropped into a café for a mug of tea and a fried-egg sandwich. I’d learned the lesson about feeding my demons to keep them quiet.
I walked through the doors into the newsroom and saw Eddie jump to his feet in his smoky office. Eyes turned as I walked across the lino to my desk. A few good mornings tinged with a query. I was barely at my desk before Eddie was at my side.
‘Are you sure this is wise, Brodie? Could you no’ just take a wee while longer off? The state o
f you the other day . . .’
‘I’m fine, Eddie.’ And the truth, as I inspected myself, was that I felt better than in weeks. Still an emptiness, despite the egg bap, but the black dog had slunk off to its kennel. I could hear its low growl, but I had a collar and chain on it. For the moment. ‘What have you got for me?’
He peered up at me searching for faulty wiring. ‘Weeeell, if you’re sure, Brodie? OK, there’s a story coming in about someone stealing coal.’
‘Coal? That’s hardly news.’
‘This was a trainload, Brodie. Coming in from Cumnock for Dixon’s Blazes. It’s getting like the Wild West oot there. The driver saw sleepers on the line. When he got oot to see what was going on, they jumped him from behind a snow pile. Left him lying there and stole the train. Got as far as Mauchline and unloaded half the wagons on to lorries.’
‘It’ll have been sold already.’
‘Nae doot.’
‘How’s the driver?’
‘At the Royal. Stitches and frostbite.’
‘I’m on my way.’
I got the story from the driver but had been just beaten to it by the Record man. I filed it anyway, together with a picture of the abandoned train that our staff photographer had taken from the embankment. I left the office in time for the meeting at Garnethill. When I got there I found a clutch of men already waiting. They were talking excitedly together in a huddle of chairs. Joshua was at their centre, his young face flushed. Danny was on the periphery sucking in the flowing conservation. I walked over.
‘Telling them about this morning, Joshua?’
He shot to his feet. ‘Yes, sir. But there’s something else. Sammy here.’
A tiny man with glasses and flat cap smiled from a mouthful of brown and broken teeth. I knew it wasn’t bad dental care. Sammy had been given a good pasting by a bunch of my fellow countrymen wearing orange sashes. They’d decided if you weren’t Protestant you might as well be some sort of Catholic. His original name was Schmuel Finkelstein. Now it was Sammy Fowler. Like many Jews he’d changed his name to blend in when he arrived in ’38 from Vienna. He’d also picked up English with the broadest Glasgow accent possible. But camouflage hadn’t helped him against the Bingo Boys.
Sammy seemed embarrassed. ‘It wis like this, sir. Ah wis jist takin’ a wee donner when Ah saw Joshua here.’
‘Why were you there, Sammy?’
‘Ah wis jist curious, sir. After whit you said last night. Ah’m sorry. Ah wanted a wee keek.’
‘Joshua, what were you still doing there?’
‘I was hanging about, sir. To see what the polis were doing after you left.’
‘Fine, Joshua. Carry on, Sammy.’
‘Well, a fair crowd had gathered thegither. This was the back o’ nine this morning. And as Ah said, Ah saw Joshua here, so Ah asked him whit wis going on. He telt me you’d been on the raid, so ye hud. And that a woman had been shot. And she’d later died.’
‘Died? Mandel is dead?’ I asked. ‘She was barely wounded.’
Danny piped up. ‘I spoke to Duncan this afternoon, Brodie. She died on the way to the hospital. She seems to have taken something. Duncan thinks a cyanide capsule. She was in convulsions in the ambulance.’
‘Sammy, did you see something? Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘Ah wis standing there blethering away wi’ Joshua and suddenly Ah saw a fella in the crowd. It wis a man Ah’d seen ower in Hope Street. That’s ma patch, as you well know. The barber there had pointed him oot tae me. He said the fella had started coming in the shop aboot six months ago. He wis now as regular as clockwork, getting a shave every week and a haircut and dye job every fortnight.’
‘A dye job, Sammy!’
‘Aye. Seems he wis always flush wi’ cash. A roll o’ it. Always smoking best fags. Black Russians, apparently. And here’s the thing: he telt the barber he was Swiss. Ah mean, Swiss, here in Glesga. C’mon. Anyways. It wis him. This fella in the crowd. He pushed his way tae the front, looking . . . no’ curious or onythin’ like the rest o’ us, mair anxious, like. He wis asking questions aboot what had happened. Sounded awfie posh.’
‘Or Swiss.’ I turned to Joshua. His eyes were gleaming and he nodded. ‘Did he look like any of the photos we have? Was it Suhren?’
His face screwed up. ‘I couldnae really say. It’s hard wi’ dyed hair and that.’
‘Don’t worry, Sammy. Go on.’
‘Then when they brought the woman oot on the stretcher there wis a bit of a commotion. The crowd a’ trying tae get closer and see what wis happening. You know what crowds are like.’
‘What happened?’
‘We couldnae see much for a’ the shoving and pushing. The polis pushed everybody back and they got the woman into the ambulance and away they went.’
‘This man. Did you see him get close to the woman on the stretcher?’
‘Ah couldnae right say, sir. It’s possible.’
‘What did you do then?’
Joshua cut in. ‘We followed him, sir. Me and Sammy. Down to the river and across the suspension bridge to Carlton Place. We know his house now. We saw him go in the entry,’ he said with triumph.
‘That smart terrace by the river?’ I asked.
Sammy responded. ‘Aye. Best street in Laurieston, just by the suspension brig. The South Portland Street brig.’
‘When does he get his next dye job?’
Sammy’s face broke into a gap-toothed grin. ‘The morn.’
By now the hall had filled and we were surrounded by the full complement of twitching ears plus Shimon and Isaac. There was only one missing.
‘How’s Bathsheba, Danny?’
‘Fine. Patched up and off home. I told her on pain of not being allowed back to our soirées to stay home and rest tonight.’
I called them to order and recounted the events of the day, including getting wee Sammy to tell us about his tracking exploits. It didn’t take long for Malachi to get to his feet.
‘Colonel, sir. I mean Brodie. Ah thought you said no guns?’
‘I had one for self-defence, Mal. I’m trained to use it. We don’t have licence to arm the lot of you and let you loose. As it is, my police pal is less than happy about even me using a gun.’
‘Are we going to ambush this guy tomorrow? Give him a real close shave, eh?’
‘You are going to continue with your search, Mal. This one has to be taken alive. McRae and I will meet him and invite him to have a chat with us. He could be the opening we need. A real breakthrough.’
We broke up and Danny and I headed back to Sam’s. We agreed on our tactics for the morning and then turned to the issues that seemed to nag at us both.
‘You seem a wee bit better, Brodie. More like you.’
‘Despite being knackered? It’s been a long day.’
‘A good day.’
‘Aye, it has. What you said last night. About the panics I’ve been getting. It feels a bit easier.’
‘Don’t you get too bouncy. It takes a while. One forward two back. But maybe it’s a start. I was told it’s about knowing why you panic. Once you understand, you’re less feart.’
‘It’s no surprise I get bad dreams. The stuff I saw. But what have I to panic about?’
‘You tell me. But take this morning; you can panic like that any time as far as I’m concerned.’
‘That wasn’t panic. It was fast reaction.’
‘Fast shooting. By the way, I’ll need a gun.’
‘No you won’t.’
‘If that woman had a weapon, sure enough so will this bloke we’re after. I need a gun.’
‘I only have my service revolver.’
‘There’s a locked case in my bedroom.’
‘There are a couple of guns that belonged to Sam’s father.’
He said nothing.
‘Danny? Todd would have a heart attack. And when he recovered he’d lock us both up.’
‘I’d rather end up in the clink than dead, if it’s all the s
ame to you.’
I glanced at him, seeing again in the soft glow of the lamps the sharp cheeks and focused stare of the young man I’d collided with in Tobago Street nick more than a decade ago. I knew that look. There was no argument I could make, that anyone could make, that would have diverted him.
FORTY-FIVE
I fought myself awake until I’d broken clear of the clutches of my night-time furies. I lay gasping for air in a shivering dawn. As Danny said, sometimes it was one forward two back. Maybe I could cut it to one back.
The window was opaque with sworls of frost, like a giant thumbprint on the glass. I gathered the quilt round my shoulders like a shawl and padded across the carpet to perch on tiptoe on the cold linoleum. I formed an eye hole with my hot breath and peeked out. Huge soft feathers were tumbling and wheeling and settling. The road was obliterated, the world deadened.
The whole house was a mausoleum. We were trying to save coal. Already rationed, the deliveries weren’t getting much beyond the mine-head. Large chunks of Scotland had become impassable, and people were freezing to death. No wonder they were hijacking coal trains.
I checked the time. Seven thirty. I got dressed and went downstairs. Danny’s hat and coat had already disappeared. He’d gone on ahead. Probably stopping at Bathsheba’s to see how she was.
Sam joined me for the first cup of tea.
‘What are you up to, the pair of you?’ Sam asked.
‘We’re meeting a man by the river.’
She eyed me speculatively. ‘I heard about the shooting yesterday. Is this linked?’
I nodded.
‘Just make sure you only hit the baddies.’
‘I’m hoping I won’t have to fire.’
‘Me too. What about Danny? Is he armed to the teeth?’
I sighed. ‘I gave him my gun. My army gun. I’ll use the Webley.’
‘God, I wish you hadn’t told me.’
‘In truth, I could do with someone at my back.’
‘I know, I know. Look, I’m glad he came up. But he worries me. I get the impression he’s even less biddable than you. And that’s saying something.’
‘He was a bit wild before. And I think that knock on the head lifted another layer of restraint.’
Douglas Brodie 03 - Pilgrim Soul Page 23