The Interrogator

by Andrew Williams

  The men were gathering on the broad terrace at the back of Stapley Hall, chatting, yawning, lighting the first cigarette of the day, some in civvies, some in air-force or navy blue, most in a mixture of the two. It was cool in the shade of the house, even on a bright August morning, with a hint of vapour when they spoke. The prisoners were falling through habit into ragged lines, watched by the sentries at the wire and in the towers at the corners of the terrace.

  ‘There seem to be more guards than usual, Herr Kap’tän.’

  A tousled-looking Fischer was standing on the steps behind him.

  ‘Perhaps the camp commander is going to pay us a visit.’

  There were forty soldiers at least, twice the regular complement, and a good number of unfamiliar faces.

  As they watched, a party of ten men under the command of Sergeant Harrison began marching along the wire to the gate. It opened and Harrison gave a sharp blast on his whistle, the signal for the parade to come to order. Mohr dropped his cigarette and walked round the prisoners – their lines orderly now – to stand at their head, Brand, the Luftwaffe major, to his right and Fischer to his left. The guards took up positions in front of him, bayonets fixed, backs to the wire, then on a command from Harrison the headcount began, a corporal and two men walking through the lines. Mohr glanced at his watch. It would be over in five minutes; everyone would be present and correct enough for the British and then he would breakfast in his room.

  But Sergeant Harrison did not blow his whistle or bellow a shrill parade-ground ‘Dismissed’. He put the piece of paper he had used to tot up the prisoners in his pocket and marched back to the gate. There was a rumble of surprise in the ranks and a Luftwaffe clown shouted something about breakfast that Mohr did not catch. He reached into his jacket for his cigarettes, to find there were only two left; he would buy more from the NAAFI at lunch-time. He took one and stroked it; half the cigarette, then he would dismiss the men himself. But as Fischer bent to light it for him, he saw out of the corner of his eye some British officers approaching the gate at the east end of the terrace.

  ‘Thank you, Fischer.’

  Four officers in khaki led by Benson with his – what was it they called it in the movies? – his ‘posse’ of guards. They took up positions at the gate, rifles at the ready. Benson and the other officers marched on towards him.

  ‘Good morning, Captain.’ There was a chilliness in the Major’s voice Mohr had not heard before. ‘This is Lieutenant Cox from the Military Police. He will be leading your escort. You and a number of your men are being taken to another camp.’

  No, Benson could not say where, there were no further details and there would be no time to pack.

  ‘I have the list here. Read it out, Harrison, would you.’

  The sergeant took out his notepad, cleared his throat nervously, then began to read the names.

  ‘May I?’ Mohr asked with a dry smile and he took the pad. His name was at the top of the list, then Fischer, the officers of the 112 and the 500 and of course the propaganda reporter, Lange. No, they were not going to let it go.

  ‘I’m sure it will only be a temporary arrangement,’ said Benson uncomfortably.

  Fischer read out the ten names to the parade. There was a murmur of concern as they stepped forward to be escorted to the gate.

  ‘Dismissed.’

  The other men stood at the wire to watch as their officers were led under close escort round the east wing and under the great monkey puzzle tree to the carriageway. A green military bus was waiting in front of the Hall, its engine grumbling, the windows painted black. As they approached the bus door, Mohr caught a glimpse of navy-blue uniform through the windscreen and his pulse beat faster.

  ‘Wait here.’ Cox left them there and crunched round the front of the bus but he was back a minute later with Lindsay at his side. They were together only a moment but there was something in his movements, in his face, his smile, that Mohr had not seen before, a stillness, a quiet assurance, and it was unnerving: ‘You’ve come to escort us.’

  Lindsay looked at him curiously for a few seconds and Mohr wondered if the composure in his voice had sounded a little studied.

  ‘Where are we going?’ he asked in German this time.

  Still no reply. Then a guard prodded him sharply in the back with his rifle, forcing him to stumble on to the steps of the bus.

  Mohr was woken by the cursing of the driver as the old military bus kangarooed to a halt. He yawned and glanced at his watch – they had been travelling for at least eight hours, with one brief stop for the lavatory and no food and now it was late evening. The military policeman opposite was sleeping, his rifle resting carelessly against the seat in front. Beyond the security partition he could hear someone climbing the steps and issuing orders to the driver. Fischer was snoring heartily across the aisle. Then the engine roared again and the bus began to roll forwards. He pressed his eye to a crack in the blackout paint on the window and hazy summer green seemed to flash by in the fading light, as if they were in a wood or a park. After a few minutes they began to slow down and then to crawl and there were more muffled orders before the driver lifted the heavy clutch and the bus shot forward, to stop seconds later. This time the engine coughed and died. The military policeman jerked upright and his gun clattered to the floor.

  ‘I won’t tell,’ and Mohr gave him his sweetest smile.

  The soldier blushed the colour of his cap badge and got stiffly to his feet. Boots clattered on the bus steps and the screen door slid back with a screech.

  ‘All right, at the double.’

  Another British sergeant stood squarely in the frame. The bus was close to the wire and it was a few seconds before Mohr realised with a start that it was parked in front of another great house, a finer house, its old bricks warm pink in the evening sunshine. It was elegant, handsome in an understated way, familiar – but it gave him no pleasure.

  44

  I

  t was the same second-floor room at Trent Park he had shared with Heine three months before. That was deliberate, of course, and crude, but strangely affecting. And Helmut Lange had taken the same bed, the one on the right-hand side as you looked from door to barred window. There was a neat pile of brown blankets at the bottom of the other bed and the bucket with the broken handle they had been obliged to share. On the dirty white wall beyond it the tangled shadow of the cedar, just as he remembered it, twisting and turning interminably in even a light breeze. And his thoughts drifted with it to home, as they had before, but opaque, brittle memories and when he closed his eyes it was the kitchen at the camp that swam into focus and the swollen face of the little engineer. More than once he had tried to say his prayers but he could not shape the words, the old words of home, ‘forgiveness’, ‘hope’, ‘salvation’, empty and hollow in this place. And in the silent early hours he tried to bury the thought, no, the feeling, that they would never have meaning, never, unless he found the courage to do what he knew in the fibre of his being to be right.

  They left him alone on the first day and he tried to prepare. He had lost control last time. This time he would say he had seen nothing, he knew nothing, he could say nothing more, nothing. Fischer had been sent to talk to him again at Stapley, a gentle reminder to keep his mouth shut. Bruns and Schmidt had visited too: no blows, only the thinly veiled threat of their broad shoulders and rolled-up sleeves. But he had known the matter would not rest. Lieutenant Lindsay was not going to let it rest.

  It was after breakfast on the second day at the Park and he was taking a piss in the bucket. Footsteps in the corridor and he knew at once it was Lindsay.

  ‘Helmut. How are you?’

  The door closed on the guards and he pulled the chair from the table and sat down: ‘You know why you’re here, of course.’

  Lange nodded.

  ‘But I haven’t come to talk to you about Heine, I’ve come as a friend,’ and he reached into his jacket and drew out a small light blue envelope. Lange could see that i
t was from Germany, stamped by the Red Cross and the Military censor, the flap neatly cut.

  ‘I’m afraid it’s bad news, Helmut. Your mother . . . ’And he leant forward to offer him the letter.

  Lange watched it trembling slightly in Lindsay’s fingers and he wondered if he could refuse to accept it and the pain of what must be written inside. But it was insistent. He took it at last and drew out the thin pieces of paper covered in his father’s neat hand:

  . . . your mother is dead . . . an air raid . . . she was rushing for the shelter when she was hit by a car . . . she loved you so much . . . pray for her . . .

  An accident, God, a stupid, stupid traffic accident of the sort you thought would never happen in a war and she was dead. He would never see her again, never be loved, never be scolded by her. And his father was alone after thirty years. He sat there, breathless, as if an iron band was being slowly tightened about his chest. One of the sheets of paper slipped from his hand and floated to the floor beneath Lindsay’s chair. He bent to pick it up and, rising, placed it carefully on the bed. Then he reached across to Lange and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze: ‘Would you like to see a priest?’

  He tried to say ‘No’ but could only manage to shape the word and shake his head a little.

  ‘All right. I’ll leave you now.’

  Funeral steps across the floor and the door closed with a quiet click.

  . . . your mother is dead . . . pray for her . . .

  His father’s words were softening, floating, drifting as his tears spattered on to the page, faster and faster. And when at last they stopped, the letter was impossible to read.

  Lindsay was with the second officer of the 112 when a guard slipped the note on to the table. It was almost six o’clock in the evening and he had spent two fruitless hours with the silent, charmless Koch, persisting beyond reason with his questions. Koch was older than the rest, thirty-five, coarse in speech and looks, large calloused hands, small brown eyes that could narrow to a point. And always vigilant. Torture would break him, it broke everyone in the end, and there was something in Lindsay that almost wanted to try. He picked up the note and opened it carefully. It was from one of the other interrogators, Dick Graham, he needed to speak with him at once. Lindsay got to his feet and tidied his papers into a file.

  ‘Is it over?’

  Lindsay glanced at the prisoner, then turned to the door and walked out. He would instruct the guards to leave Koch at the table for another hour.

  Lieutenant Graham was waiting at the end of the corridor. He looked impatiently at him over his pince-nez: ‘It said “Urgent”.’

  ‘Well, is it?’

  ‘The propaganda reporter wants to talk to you. Thought you ought to know.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Graham followed him through the door on to the broad landing of the main stair: ‘We were surprised to see you again, Lindsay, after that business with Checkland.’

  ‘It was the Director’s decision.’

  ‘Oh. And the prisoners? Why are they with us again?’ Graham noticed his frown and held up his hands at once in surrender: ‘Sorry, just conversation.’

  ‘Well, thank you for letting me know,’ and he turned towards to the stairs.

  ‘You can’t imagine how much we’ve missed you, Lindsay,’ Graham shouted after him.

  Lange was sitting at the edge of his bed much as Lindsay had left him that morning. His eyes were puffy and bloodshot and it was obvious to anyone that he had been crying, but he did not seem to care. He looked calm, if a little tired, his hands resting quietly in his lap. He did not get up when Lindsay came into the room but followed him with his eyes as he reached for the chair and sat down. And it was Lindsay who broke the silence in German:

  ‘Are you all right? I’m very sorry.’

  They were only an arm’s length apart, Lange leaning forward on his elbows: ‘I want to tell you about Heine.’

  He was searching Lindsay’s face, demanding eye contact: ‘All I know at least. Can we walk, as we used to?’

  Small groups of the park’s staff in blue and khaki were chatting and walking on the terrace and the hard yellow August lawns, soaking in the evening sunshine, and it was not until they reached the trees at the edge of the lake that Lange felt free to speak.

  ‘You see, they thought I was an informer and that I was working for you.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘He. Kapitän Mohr. He asked me lots of questions – he interrogated me. The British, you could learn from him.’

  They stopped beneath a large willow tree on the north side of the lake and Lange reached up to draw a branch through his fist.

  ‘What did he want to know?’

  ‘He wanted to know about my visits to Dönitz and if I had visited the Naval Staff on the Tirpitzufer in Berlin, that sort of thing . . . and he wanted to know about you.’

  Lindsay caught his eye and smiled.

  ‘He wanted to know who told the British he’d served on the Staff at U-boat Headquarters and what else they, you, knew. He’s trying to protect something and . . .’

  Lange took a restless step away, head bent, his right hand pulling at the willow wand, stripping its narrow leaves.

  ‘You see, he was convinced it was me. Sure it was me and I was afraid. Very afraid. And God forgive me, I told him.’

  Lindsay could not see his face but he could hear his breath short and shaking with emotion and for such a broad man he had made himself very small. They stood together in silence beneath the veil of willow, an intense silence broken only by the distant splash of wild fowl on the lake and, from the lawn, a woman’s voice calling to her friends. It was Lange who broke it at last. He dropped the branch, his hand trailing at his side, his fingers plucking at the seam of his trousers. And his shoulders rose slowly as he took a deep breath and turned to look at Lindsay: ‘But you’ve guessed.’

  His face was white but strangely still: ‘You know, don’t you? I told Mohr. I told him that it was Heine who spoke of it. I betrayed him . . .’ His voice was no more than a breathless whisper.

  ‘And when Mohr questioned Heine he broke down?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lange reached up again to the willow and tore at another branch: ‘God forgive me because I know I’ll never forgive myself.’ He wiped his eyes quickly with the back of his hand: ‘Enough tears.’

  Lindsay looked down at his shoes which were dusted with a fine layer of light brown mud. Poor Lange.

  ‘You know they tortured him, made him sign a confession. I was there. What was he guilty of? A hidden microphone, a British interrogator – it could have happened to any of us. And it was a warning to all of us. He was only nineteen. And you know, he looked at me and he knew it was me, I’m sure he knew.’

  ‘Was Mohr there?’ Lindsay asked quietly.

  Lange gasped and then laughed harshly: ‘Which of you is worse?’ And he pulled the willow branch with such force that it came whipping away from the tree.

  ‘You want to know it all? All the sordid details?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if I end up hanging from a pipe too?’

  ‘You won’t. We’ll . . . I’ll protect you.’

  Lange sighed and turned his head up to the arching canopy, golden shafts of light dancing through the branches. After a few seconds he closed his eyes and took another deep breath: ‘Yes. I’ll tell you, tell you all I know.’

  Lindsay smiled quietly to himself as he reached into his jacket for his cigarettes: ‘Here, take one, Helmut.’

  It was dusk when they made their way back across the deserted lawn and the shutters were already closed in the house. The first bats were flitting in and out of the trees, caught black against the deep blue twilight. They walked in silence side by side. What more was there to say? Lange had spoken of that night in the kitchen at the camp, every small detail, the blood on the engineer’s nightshirt, the dirt beneath his fingernails, the scuffing of boots on the kitchen flags and the twisting, biting rope red raw about his nec
k. He had moved restlessly beneath the willow, tearing at its branches, the pain and disgust and remorse written in his face. The effort had left him drained but, it seemed to Lindsay, perhaps a little more at peace with himself.

  At the bottom of the terrace steps, he stopped and turned his back on the house to gaze across the lawn to the lake and the hillside beyond, a crown of beech at its crest.

  ‘And you will protect me?’

  ‘I said so.’

  Lange did not answer for a moment but kept his eyes fixed on the decaying sky, Venus bright yellow in the west. Then very quietly: ‘I am glad I told you.’

  ‘Why did you want to? Was it your mother?’

  ‘If I told you, you would laugh. Your girlfriend, she would understand.’

  ‘Try. Please.’

  The expression on Lange’s face was lost in the gloom but there was a moist light in his eyes.

  ‘My mother. I couldn’t pray for her.’

  45

  A

  night of cold thoughts and dreams, of Heine with his tormentors, of Mohr and the ship – always the ship – and at first light Lindsay left his camp bed to find some peace alone in the park. Walking quickly, almost running, the freedom of movement, the sun already warm on his face and a low mist rising from the dew-covered grass. A soft summer haze – it was going to be a fine day – on into the beechwood, fast short rasping breaths. At the top of the hill he sat on a log to smoke a cigarette and watch the guard changing at the wire below. Was it murder? Heine may have been driven to commit suicide. Did it matter? No. He died because he had helped Lindsay loosen the first threads. All that mattered to Naval Intelligence, to him, was the unravelling of the rest, those secrets locked so securely in Mohr’s head. There was a way – it had begun to take shape in his mind beneath the willow tree as Lange was telling his story – a desperate way. It was with him through the night, although he tried to bury it, and it was hovering in the back of his mind there above the park. And as it pushed itself forward he got to his feet again and, grinding his cigarette butt into the grass, he began running, running as quickly as he could down the hill to the house.