Sam rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, good. That puts my mind at rest.’
I couldn’t don enough clothes to keep out the chill. Wrapped like a mummy I ventured out. I took giant steps like Wenceslas but there was no one to fill my tracks. I had to be at the rendezvous point by eleven o’clock. I was early.
From my vantage point at the railway station entrance I could see across to the barber’s. Despite walking up and down and slapping my hands together I could feel the cold creeping up my limbs in slow paralysis. On the other corner, in a shop doorway, looking equally frozen, was wee Sammy. His face was buried in a huge scarf and his body looked twice its normal width. A fag hung from his mouth and sent small puffs of grey into the air, as though Sammy ran on steam.
We watched customers come and go with fresh-shaven faces and short back and sides bared to the freezing air. But no sign of our man. Finally, fifteen minutes later than his supposed normal time, he emerged. I saw Sammy stiffen and fling away his fag. The man turned his head one way and then the other before heading south down Hope Street towards the Clyde. Sammy nodded my way and fell in behind the man, but some fifty steps behind. I set out after them on the other side of the road.
We came to the Broomielaw. Ahead, blocking the view of the river, were the lines of goods sheds. The man turned left and under the railway bridge, then on into Clyde Street. He hesitated for a moment and I thought he might go via Glasgow Bridge to Carlton Place, but he kept going, presumably preferring the scenic route. Sure enough, he crossed the street between the goods sheds, aiming for the suspension bridge. At this point Sammy just kept walking along Clyde Street while I hurried to close the gap on the man. The pavements were piled high with snow and the paths were a good foot deep in packed snow and ice. My feet slithered as I darted over the road. Timing was everything.
I got on to the footbridge with the man about twenty yards ahead of me. Even the slim walkway between the great sway of supporting cables was thick with snow. I peered past the man. Barely visible on the far side a figure had just started walking towards us. With luck and timing we would intersect with the target about halfway over. I quickened my step and felt inside my coat for the big revolver. Its weight and feel gave me confidence. For a moment the target turned round but I kept walking. He didn’t speed up. Didn’t run. But we were closing on each other.
Now I could see the face of the man walking towards us. Danny was trying to look nonchalant but instead looked like a man trying to look nonchalant. I hoped it didn’t matter. I’d also hoped no one else would be on this frozen walkway into the Gorbals. But just then another two men started towards us from behind Danny. Under their snow-covered hats and scarves they were laughing and talking. I caught a glint of specs on one of them.
I looked behind me. Nobody. I left my glove in my coat pocket, reached inside my coat and pulled out the Webley. I was within ten feet of the man. Now I could see how tall he was. My height, and at least as big. Suhren’s height. He was slowing. He was slowing because Danny had drawn his gun and was walking smartly towards him with it held out straight in both hands, pointing directly at the man’s body. I moved a little to the right so that if Danny’s finger twitched I wouldn’t take a stray bullet.
I called out in German, ‘Stop!’ and closed the gap to within three feet. ‘Stop! Hands up!’
Danny was nearly in his face now and I saw the man’s shoulders slump.
I called out, ‘Keep the gun on him. I’ll frisk him.’ I pocketed mine and used both hands to run over the man’s clothes from top to bottom. I swung him round to pat down his front. Disappointment washed through me. Not Suhren. His face was contorted with rage.
‘Who are you? I will call the police.’
I replied in German. ‘We are the police. Sort of.’
Then relief kicked in. Not Suhren but one of the other officers. I had his photo. He was smiling in it, pleased with himself. His SS officer’s cap perched at a rakish angle, Iron Cross dangling round his throat, set off by the SS flash on one collar and the three pips over two bars on the other.
‘Danny, let me introduce you to Hauptsturmführer Klaus Langefeld, Senior Adjutant, Auschwitz concentration camp.’
‘Are you sure, Brodie?’ asked Danny.
‘As sure as we’re standing here.’
I saw the man’s face sag, knowing the game was up.
‘Stand in to the side, Langefeld. Let these men pass. Then we’ll be on our way.’
I glanced up. The two men coming towards us had stopped laughing. Had stopped walking. They now stood either side of Danny. Christ. Langefeld had an escort! Idiot, Brodie! Why hadn’t I foreseen that?
The one with specs had a gun pressed against Danny’s head. The other opened up his coat and raised a Tommy gun. He swung it at me. It didn’t have to be precisely targeted. At this range it would hit everything in a tenfoot swathe. I braced myself. There was no time to dive off the bridge. Could I get to him after the bullets ripped into me? Stay alive long enough to break his neck?
Tommy gun tipped his hat back. I’d seen those eyes, that dark skin, among the platoon staring out at me last night. The two men Malachi had brought along. What the hell was going on?
Behind me, I heard running steps and another three men came panting up to stand behind me. Not my rescue party. They all carried pistols. All wore scarves high on their faces. One of them had an eye patch.
‘Mal! You bloody idiot! Put that away! We’ve got this under control.’
‘Sorry, Brodie. He’s ours. Take their guns!’ Malachi called.
The one holding the pistol to Danny’s head reached out and took Danny’s gun – my gun – from his outstretched hands. Rough hands grabbed my arms and pulled the Webley from my pocket. Mal took both pistols and quickly and efficiently emptied the shells from each and pocketed the cartridges. He tossed the guns on to the snow.
‘Get him out of here.’
Mal’s two sidekicks put their guns away, moved forward and grabbed the prisoner. For a moment my eyes met Langefeld’s and I saw fear had replaced the anger. For the first time he spoke in German to me.
‘What’s happening? Who are these men? Are they yours?’
‘They’re Jews, Hauptsturmführer Langefeld. Angry Jews. I advise you to cooperate.’
Then he was bundled away back towards the city, so that only Malachi was left, pointing his gun at Danny and me. Slowly he lowered it.
‘I’m sorry, Brodie.’
‘I doubt that. But you will be. What are you going to do with him?’
‘Get him to talk. Get him to tell us where the others are.’
‘And if he doesn’t?’
He shrugged. ‘He will.’
‘We’ll come after you, Malachi.’
‘I don’t care, Brodie. I really don’t care.’
He turned and walked away from us, sure that we’d do nothing to stop him. Danny and I picked up our useless guns and brushed the snow off them.
‘Bugger,’ said Danny softly. ‘Will you call Todd or me?’
‘I’ll call him. We might be able to salvage something out of this mess. Let’s go find this man’s house. We’ll tell Todd to meet us there.’
FORTY-SIX
As we walked over the bridge we saw Sammy scampering along the path to intersect with us. He must have belted along Clyde Street over Victoria Bridge and back to Carlton Place. He was red-faced and bouncing up and down when we met him.
‘Did you get him? Whaur is he?’
‘Malachi and some of his pals took him.’
‘Whit?’
‘Don’t ask. Come on. Show me his entry.’
Danny and I had talked about ambushing him at his house, but decided we’d be better off sandwiching him on the bridge. It was the right call but the wrong result. The ambushers ambushed.
‘Ower there. That’s his entry. But I don’t know the nummer of his flat.’ Sammy pointed at a smart black door in the long sandstone façade of townhouses facing the river. There would be four, pos
sibly six in the entry.
‘Sammy, can you go and phone the police? Ask for Inspector Duncan Todd. Tell him Brodie would like him to join him as soon as he can. Give him this address.’ I pointed at the black door. Sammy leaped into action, heading for the police box at the end of the bridge.
Danny and I crossed the road, walked up to the black door, opened it and stepped into a well-kept, stone-flagged corridor. Two doors faced each other on the ground floor and presumably there were two on the next. There were knockers in the centre of each door and name plates beneath. We knocked on McKinley, then Cousins. Nothing from the first, then footsteps from Cousins’s door. We listened as chains rattled and locks clunked.
‘Yes?’ said a querulous wee man rubbing at a thin, nicotined moustache.
‘Sorry to bother you – Mr Cousins? We’re looking for a foreign gentlemen living in the building.’
‘Well, there’s an Englishman up the stairs, heh, heh, heh,’ he kechled away at his own wit.
‘Anyone else?’
‘You’ll be talking about yon Mr Schwarz. Swiss, so he is. He lives up the stair. Number four. But he’s no’ in. I heard him go oot. He goes for his haircut on a Thursday. This is Thursday, isn’t it?’
We were already on the stairs.
‘Aye, him and his wife are baith oot . . .’
We stopped and slowly walked back down.
‘His wife?’ asked Danny.
‘Aye. A nice wummin. She goes out to work in the morning. She’ll be back later, nae doot. Though I thought I heard somebody come and go earlier. Look, who are you fellas anyway? Are you the polis?’
‘The police are on their way. Aren’t they, Sammy?’ I called out to the head that had just poked round the front door.
‘Jist coming, they said. And they also said, tell Brodie to do nothing till Inspector Todd gets there. Absolutely bloody nothing. Those were the exact words I was to say.’
Danny and I climbed the stairs and sat down on the top one, side by side.
‘Could we have the wrong man? I mean – a wife?’ asked Danny.
‘It’s possible. But it’s also possible that he’s hooked up with one of the others. A good alibi.’
‘Or maybe just sex.’
‘There’s always that.’
We smoked in silence until we heard the clanging bell, then doors slamming, then a small army invading the entry. Duncan Todd rounded the corner of the stairwell, panting for breath. He stopped and held us with his stare.
‘Will you look at the pair o’ ye. Ah hope you’ve touched nothing!’
‘As if, Duncan. As if,’ I said.
He climbed past us. ‘Which door?’
‘I’d suggest the one with the foreign name. Schwarz.’
‘Have you chapped?’
‘We were told to do nothing. We did nothing.’
Todd gave us a look. Then he hammered on both doors. Nothing from either.
‘Do you have a warrant?’ asked Danny.
‘Aye, so stand back. I’m going in.’ He walked back a couple of paces on the landing, ready to charge down the door. Danny spoke up.
‘Duncan? If you’ll give me a couple of seconds, I can save you dislocating your shoulder.’
Danny stepped forward and pulled out a small bundle from inside his coat. He unwrapped it and chose a sharpened screwdriver and bent nail. I’d forgotten his SOE training. So had Duncan. He stood shaking his head as Danny fumbled at the double lock. It was less than a minute before the door swung open. Danny stood aside and made a mock bow for Todd to enter first. I followed him into a spacious hallway and on into an even more spacious sitting room with views out on to the river. A shelf of books spoke of a pleasant lifestyle, one I could envy.
‘Very nice,’ said Danny, stroking the back of a good soft couch. ‘The Third Reich must have a good pension scheme.’
‘A golden one,’ I said.
The three of us, quietly and methodically, took the flat apart. It was quickly clear that a couple lived here. We found women’s clothes – smart and cared-for – hanging in a wardrobe. Women’s toiletries crowded the bathroom. A woman’s scent tantalised our nostrils. But it was the paperwork that should offer the cornucopia. If there was any.
We found nothing. Tucked away in the bottom drawer of the sideboard in the bedroom, under a pile of women’s silken underwear, were two cardboard files. Both were empty.
‘Brodie?’ Danny called out from the sitting room. He was kneeling by the fireplace, poking at a small mound of fragments. ‘He’s burnt them,’ he said superfluously. ‘He saw the Mandel woman get picked up.’
‘He must have kept something. Some sort of ID. Ration book. That sort of thing,’ I suggested.
‘Probably had them on him.’
I gazed round the room. ‘Try the books and down the back of the chairs.’
Danny started on the furniture, plunging his hands down the sides and back, then tipping them up and examining the underneath. I began rifling the books. Nothing.
‘But you’re sure it was this SS guy, Langefeld, Brodie?’ asked Duncan.
‘Positive.’
‘Any ideas then about the woman?’
‘Hard to say. Mandel is accounted for, leaving three possible women’s names from the first list. But I still think the first dozen have left these shores. In which case we might just have found one of the unnamed women from the second list. What did you find at Mandel’s house, Duncan?’
He shrugged. ‘Nothin’ much. Her passport. A few bits and pieces of supporting documents.’
‘What sort? Anything to point us at a local connection?’
‘Naw. Just the same sort of bumf you got from Dragan.’
I glanced at Danny. Todd was holding out on us, maybe still upset at our cavalier approach. We hadn’t told him about this ambush. Why should he tell us what he’d found? We were given no time to probe him.
‘Now, the pair of you, what happened on the brig? How did you cock things up so much? Do you know who took this guy Langefeld? Sit down and talk to me.’
We sat, and while Todd’s uniformed men did a last search of the flat, Danny and I told him how we’d been outmanoeuvred.
‘What do you think Malachi is going to do to the Kraut?’
‘Make him say where the other rats are hiding.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then they’ll go after them.’
‘Shit.’
‘Shit indeed, Duncan.’
‘Do you have any idea where Malachi will be?’
We shook our heads.
He stood up. ‘Right, we’d better get going.’
‘What about this woman?’
‘Ah was planning to leave a couple of men here.’
‘We’ll stay,’ I offered. Danny stared at me; then he nodded. Duncan looked at the two of us.
‘That’ll save me two officers. Any chance you can take her alive, boys? Or is that asking too much?’
FORTY-SEVEN
He left Danny and me sitting there. Soon, unprompted, we each picked up a book and began reading. It had been a while since I’d read People of the Mist. It still gripped the boy in me. We read as the daylight faded and the gas lamps were lit outside.
‘Do we close the curtains and put on a light?’ asked Danny.
‘What would she expect? Let’s assume she doesn’t know her boyfriend’s been lifted.’
‘She’d come home to a cosy house with a fire and lights on.’
‘Sure that’s not just to make you comfortable?’
We grinned at each other and set to. We drew the curtains and built and lit a fire. We lit the gas wall lights and trimmed the flames to give us a nice glow to read by.
‘Find any booze?’ I asked.
‘Brandy? There’s a bottle in the cupboard.’
‘I think we’re allowed a medicinal drink on duty,’ I said as I splashed some of the dark, heady liquid into two tumblers. We sniffed and tasted appreciatively.
‘They were gie good t
o themselves,’ said Danny.
‘Maybe it helped them sleep.’
‘I don’t think they had problems sleeping. Not like you, Brodie.’
‘I’m a sensitive soul.’
‘You’ve talked about interrogating these sods afterwards. Did you go to a camp?’
‘All the interrogations were in tents at the British lines.’
‘So you didn’t actually visit a camp?’
‘I suppose I took a look.’
‘Did you go inside?’
‘I must have. Yes.’ Why was he pushing this?
‘Which camp?’
‘Well, Belsen was the nearest.’
‘Christ, Douglas, did you go inside Belsen or not?’
‘I don’t recall much. It was a crazy time.’
‘Douglas, it’s not something you forget. It’s not something you’re unsure of. Think back. Did you go inside a camp?’
‘For God’s sake, what does it matter?’ I took a big pull at my glass.
He spoke quietly and slowly. ‘Take your mind back. You were detached from your brigade. Who did you report to? Where? Don’t speak. Just think about it.’
He watched me, saw me remembering.
‘Now, which camp did you visit?’
‘Belsen. It was Belsen. All right? Now, are you satisfied?’ Why was I so angry with him?
‘There was barbed wire. And big gates. They all had them. Do you remember walking in through the gates? What was it like?’
‘You know what it was like, Danny.’
‘I had time to get used to it – if you like. Who did you see first? Who was the first person you met? What was he like? What was she like?’
Why did this matter? Yet it seemed to. To Danny and to me. But I had no clear memory of it. What was the last thing I could recall? The jeep. I remembered bumping along in the jeep. I had a driver. It was an open jeep; we were passing long lines of tall wire. I could see huts behind the wire. Smoke was drifting across our path. So was a smell. I put my hand up to my nose.
We came to a gap. The huge wooden gates were wide open. Inside, stick people sprawled or stumbled about among the fit young soldiers. The stick people moved like dying spiders. Some of them wore striped pyjamas. Some appeared to be naked. The driver stopped just inside the gates. I got out. The smell was very bad now. Filth and sweat mixed with carbolic soap and antiseptic. The reek of fires drifted across. It stung the nostrils. I took out a hankie and held it to my face and was ashamed of my weakness. No one else was so prissy.
Douglas Brodie 03 - Pilgrim Soul Page 24