Then, at half past nine, there was a sharp knock on the office door and without waiting for permission a corporal stepped smartly inside. His face was bright with excitement: compliments of Lieutenant Green, orders are being given in the prisoners’ common room that suggest preparations are being made for the court. Lindsay was on his feet at once and without waiting for Duncan, he pushed past the corporal into the corridor, his heart pounding furiously. So, it was beginning.
Elsewhere in the house, Leutnant zur See Helmut Lange was placing one foot in front of the other very deliberately on the stairs. He felt strangely detached, as if he was floating above his body, marking everything from the escort at his back to the tiniest of stains on the rough strip of burgundy carpet. They turned right at the bottom and on through the hall, the armorial glass in the tall windows twinkling in the last of the light.
The lookout at the common-room door – a Luftwaffe officer he did not recognise – made a point of scowling at him before he stepped aside to let him pass. As Lange was reaching for the handle, it turned on the inside and the door swung open on a room full of faces. A little dazed, he stood there trying to focus on just one face until a hand pressed him firmly in the middle of the back and through the door. There were at least forty men, silent, watchful, hostile, leaning against the dark oak-panelled walls or draped over the common room’s battered armchairs. It was gloomy, some bulbs had been removed from the chandelier and the corners were lost in shadow. On the side of the room opposite the door, two lookouts were standing at the bay window with an eye to chinks in the heavy blackout drapes.
The Council of Honour was sitting in front of the inglenook fireplace at a low trestle table, a yellow file and papers scattered across its green baize cover. Major Brand of the Ältestenrat was in the chair; to his right was Mohr, bent over pencil and paper; the third member was a fresh-faced captain of the Luftwaffe.
‘Here, Herr Leutnant,’ said Brand, pointing to a small wooden chair a short distance from the table. ‘Sit down.’
Lange’s right knee was trembling like a leaf in a gale and it was a comfort of sorts to sit down, to put the eyes of all but a few in the room behind him.
‘This is Hauptmann Peters,’ Brand turned his head a little to the Luftwaffe captain. ‘He will be taking the place of your former commander on this council. Kapitänleutnant Fischer is indisposed.’
That was for the benefit of the room. It sounded like an excuse. Perhaps his old commander was refusing to play any part in the proceedings. And just the thought was enough for Lange to feel a surge of gratitude and warmth for Fischer, bawdy, drunken, decent Fischer. Try, try, try, he must try to draw strength from the thought.
‘You know why you’re here before this council?’
Lange nodded quietly. His left knee was beginning to tremble too. Why was his body letting him down? It was frustrating. Yet he felt an inner stillness he did not expect or understand. Brand began to read from a badly written charge sheet: . . . that you gave aid to the enemy by providing him with intelligence on the disciplinary proceedings of a Court of Honour . . .’
His voice was theatrically severe, almost comic, but there was also a note of pride, even of relish, that was entirely the man.
‘. . . that you have acted as informer on this and other matters of first importance to the Reich, endangering the security of fellow officers . . .’
It was the same charge written a dozen different ways. Mohr was fidgeting impatiently with his pencil and Lange could hear coughs and the shuffling of feet behind him. At last Brand reached the end and, placing the sheet down, he leant across the table to glare at Lange: ‘Can you answer these charges?’
‘I would like to say . . .’ He could hear himself as if at the end of a long tunnel. Was that his voice? It was a guilty voice. No. No. ‘I would like to answer, yes. There was a crime, a terrible crime, a man murdered for a moment of weakness. Heine murdered. And my fault . . .’
‘That’s enough,’ snapped Brand. ‘You’re here to answer for yourself and . . .’
‘I am at fault yes, yes. At fault for letting it happen and yes, perhaps helping it to happen.’
There was a rumble of surprise at the quiet but naked defiance, the steel in Lange’s voice. No one expected it from the PK man.
‘And to my eternal shame . . .’
‘That’s enough,’ Brand shouted and he began rising from his chair, his face and neck an indignant pink. But a firm hand and a look from Mohr held him hovering over the table like a petulant schoolboy. And it was Mohr who now spoke to Lange:
‘You’ve made your view known. But there is only one question we are here to answer: did you give intelligence to the British about the proceedings of this council and the disciplining of Leutnant Heine?’
There was an insistent cold purpose in his question. The room was still. Lange could hear his own short breaths and feel the eyes of many boring into the back of his head. He had resolved to say what was right, to condemn what had passed without fear but now, in that silence, Mohr’s steady gaze upon him, he was afraid again, very, very afraid.
‘I believe, I . . .’ What could he say? What? ‘It was a crime and . . .’
‘The British are preparing a case. Did you provide them with intelligence? Did you speak of your comrades? Yes or no?’
Yes or no. Yes or no. It crackled distantly down the wire and through the small Bakelite headphones. Lindsay’s stomach was churning with anxiety as he leant towards the volume control on the receiver. It was almost time, almost time. Silence, then something that sounded a little like a choking cough and then uproar. Shouting, the screech of chairs, hissing, and noises it was impossible to place.
And then the calm voice of Mohr cut through all: ‘So to these charges against you, you plead guilty?’
Lange must have nodded because there were more hisses, shouts, an angry chorus of hate. And then silence. A complete empty silence. And a few seconds later a light buzzing. The line was dead. Lindsay spun round in his chair to look at Duncan: ‘For God’s sake. Can we get it back?’
‘Well?’ Duncan looked sharply at the young sergeant from Signals sitting at the receiver beside them.
‘It may come back, sir,’ he said weakly.
‘Two minutes. Two minutes. We can’t risk any more.’ Lindsay got to his feet to stand shuffling anxiously behind the Signalman as he tinkered with the set.
‘Let’s go now,’ said Duncan. ‘Now.’
‘No. We must see if . . .’
‘It’s back, sir.’
Lindsay snatched up his headphones and sat back at the table. Yes, yes. He could hear Brand, that pompous fool. Brand droning on about secrecy, the war being fought in the camp, the lives of their comrades, and the enemy’s spies: but Lange, what of Lange? He glanced across at Duncan who was bent over the sergeant’s shoulder, his hands pressing his headphones to his ears, a puzzled expression on his face. Why was Brand babbling on unchecked? He was addressing the room, not Lange. What was Mohr doing? The camp’s intelligence officer caught his eye at last and scrunched up his face in concern. And he was right, yes. Lindsay could sense there was something very wrong. Was Lange even in the room?
‘All right. That’s enough.’
Duncan ripped off his headphones: ‘Thank God yes. Let’s go.’
A shrill blast on a whistle, then a distant heavy thumping like native drums, wood on wood, something atavistic. Lange heard it as they half marched, half dragged him along the corridor, dark, stumbling, like a primitive sacrifice. Every grunt, every movement, every colour and shape, a rough flashing pattern, familiar but opaque with a fear he could taste, sweet in his mouth. Twenty metres, prisoners’ office on the right and the schoolroom, small pantry on the left, and at the end the heavy mahogany door to the servants’ quarters. Closer, closer, every step closer and he could hear the short anxious breaths of the men about him, hands tight on his arms and the collar of his jacket, and Bruns’s square head bobbing in front. And still the distant dr
umming, boom, boom, boom.
Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with Thee . . .
Bruns was at the door and for a moment the hands loosened their grip as he was propelled through it into the servants’ passage.
. . . pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
And passed the kitchen and on, on to the washroom, a man in the shadows, blue on black. More banging, closer now, just a few metres down the passage. The door to the yard. The British. Lindsay. And why were they hammering on it?
Oh Mary be my strength.
Wet floor. White porcelain. A slash of violet light in the mirrors. A tap running. And more shadows, more men. Frightened faces but angry. They will stop now, they must. Arms tugged roughly back. The rope cutting into his wrists.
‘No, stop, stop.’
‘Fuck off, traitor.’ Dietrich’s saliva on his cheek. ‘Quick. Quick.’
A chair. Another rope. Someone with large practised hands knotting the rope. Koch.
Shouting in the passage. English. German. ‘Stop. Stop.’ And he knew he should struggle. Time. He needed time. And the things he could have done. Words he should have spoken. To lose hope. Life. Love. And the greatest of these is love. Hail Mary full of grace . . .
The noose in Dietrich’s hand too small and too stiff.
‘Fuck. Koch, do something about this.’
Shaking hands on the rope. Faces lost in shadow then close and very white. And the banging. Banging at the washroom door now.
‘There isn’t time. We can’t do it.’ Dietrich frantically pushing at someone and screaming: ‘Do it. That’s a fucking order.’
The rope fraying at the knot. The noose in front of his face. Pulling his hair. Pulling his head back. And the rope rough on his neck. Burning his neck.
‘The chair?’
‘No. No. No. Pull him up.’
The knot hard. Our Father, our Father . . . The knot nudging the back of his head. Tight. Tight. Tighter. Tighter.
. . . and at the hour of our death.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, what a shambles. Banging on the bloody washroom door like buggers at a rowdy rugby club while a man’s life was in the balance.
‘For God’s sake, hurry up,’ Lindsay shouted.
The Military Police sergeant swung the sledgehammer again. Boom against the lock, bouncing up and down the dark passage, a dull hollow echo that resonated like the torpedo that sank the Culloden. Duncan was standing beside him touching an angry cut in his lip. They had fought their way to the washroom, trading punches with some of the prisoners. Yes, a shambles, close to a riot. Doors barred. Soldiers armed with rifles in corridors and crowded rooms. No one with authority. He had left the arrangements to the Military Police. A shambles.
‘Get that fuckin’ door open now, you lazy lummox,’ Duncan bellowed, bank manager no longer but shipyard keelie. ‘And put your back into it. Oh God, give it here,’ and he snatched the sledgehammer from the soldier. Swinging his broad shoulders, he brought it down with such force that the lock burst, oak splintering, the hammer bouncing from his hands. It was as if a great cathedral bell had sounded only feet away. Only Duncan had enough presence to act, throwing his shoulder against the door: ‘You after an invitation?’
It gave way and he stumbled headfirst into the washroom. Lindsay followed, the soldiers at his back.
‘Stop it or we’ll shoot.’
He could see Lange’s twisted face and the rope in the light from a high washroom window. His body was shaking, his mouth open, gasping, gasping for air. But he was heavy and they were trying to lift his legs to tighten the rope. There were five, perhaps six men. Was that Dietrich?
‘Stop it now or I’ll shoot. Now.’
Dietrich turned to shout something to the others and they stepped back, their hands in the air. And now Lange was swinging, the rope creaking, taut, twisting, swinging free, a strange gurgling noise in his throat and his chest heaving for air. And Lindsay grabbed him and held his knees: ‘For God’s sake help me.’
Then a sharp crack above his head and a drenching spout of water and Lange’s body slipped from the broken pipe. Hands helped to ease it to the wet stone floor. Strings of hair across his forehead, eyes half closed, and the water drumming against Lindsay’s back as he bent to shelter him from its force.
‘Please God . . . a doctor, a doctor now.’
The cold was seeping through his jacket and through his shirt and creeping through his body. What had he done? Lange was dead.
SEPTEMBER 1941
A single bad deed by one individual can jeopardise the achievements of many others. The favourable reputation of an entire fighter group can be wiped out by some foolish or unnecessary act of violence by only one of its members. This lapse of common sense actually gives aid to the enemy, who will exploit the misdeed . . . the guilty conscience alone will perform most of the work advantageous to the inquisitor.
Hanns Joachim Scharff, Interrogator, Luftwaffe Interrogation Centre, Oberursel, Germany, 1943–45
Raymond F. Tolliver, The Interrogator:
The Story of Hanns Joachim Scharff,
Master Interrogator of the Luftwaffe
47
18:30
13 September
Brixton Prison
London
T
he police van was careering through the streets at dusk like something from a Hollywood gangster picture. A railway arch, the broken front of a chemist’s, sooty houses and the shell of a large department store, south London flashing by the small square grille in the rear door like images in a Rotoscope. And Mohr sliding about the seat handcuffed to a policeman who was clutching a helmet to his lap. It might have been comic but it was just demeaning. A large but simple church with fluted columns, more houses, then a sharp turn right to the gates and white stone towers of what could only be a prison.
‘Where is this?’
The policeman glanced at him, then down at his helmet. The gates swung open on to yellow-black walls, a curious octagonal building flanked on either side by the four-storey wings of the prison. And it was here, in front of Prisoner Reception, that the van came to a halt.
‘Strip.’
How had it come to this? To be treated like a criminal. He had fallen into a dark place.
‘I am a naval officer.’
‘Scales.’
Something was eating at his core, the loss of the boat, captivity, it was impossible to be quite sure, but he felt emptier and more uncertain. He had made mistakes.
‘Uniform.’
Someone thrust a rough khaki shirt and trousers into his arms. There was a dark stain on the front of the shirt and the trousers were too large at the waist. One of the warders was turning Mohr’s white cap over in his hands, then with a sly smile he placed it on the table and began prising the badge from the band.
‘F’ Wing at Brixton clattered like an empty dustbin. British fascists and Irish nationalists, spies and murderers, their shouts and groans in the night, their boots on the stairs and the landings, the rattle of keys in security gates and the heavy slamming of doors. A Victorian hell of steel and bare brick and chipped and dirty whitewash. His cell was four metres by two, a barred window high in the wall, a bucket and a bed. That night as he lay on his thin damp mattress, the cold echo of the prison shackling his mind, Mohr knew he was a prisoner in a way he had not been before.
At slopping-out the next morning he saw Dietrich and Schmidt further down the landing in the same prison browns, heads bent over their shit. And he felt a contempt for their stupidity that was matched only by the contempt he felt for himself. Then at eleven o’clock there were footsteps and voices outside his cell and someone pressed an eye to the slot in the door. A moment later it opened and Lindsay stood there, a prison warder at his back.
‘I’ve brought you a newspaper,’ he said in English and tossed the Daily Mail on to the bed. ‘Now you’re a celebrity here too.’
Mohr looked at it for a moment, then picked it up and o
pened it on his knee. His own picture was at the bottom of the front page beneath the latest news of the war in the Soviet Union. It must have been taken in Liverpool when the crew was escorted off the ship. And the bold headline beneath it:
U-boat Commander to be Charged with Murder
He flinched and closed his eyes for a moment as if someone had caught him hard in the stomach. It was public knowledge, perhaps in Germany too. Humiliating. The copy beneath the picture said that a man had been ‘brutally’ murdered at a camp for enemy officers in the north of England. A number of German prisoners were being held, including a ‘senior Nazi U-boat Commander’ and it mentioned him by name. And he was also to be ‘charged’ with conducting an ‘illegal court-martial hearing’.
Mohr looked sideways at Lindsay: ‘Have you read this?’
‘Of course.’
‘. . . this ruthless Nazi officer is responsible for the deaths of many British seamen and now with equal ruthlessness he has turned against one of his own . . .’ Who is this person?’
‘You, Mohr, you,’ said Lindsay contemptuously. ‘You will be brought before a court in the next few days. You and your lynch mob: Dietrich and Bruns and Schmidt and Koch and the others too. You will be found guilty and hanged.’
‘You are the one who should be in court.’ Mohr’s voice shook with repressed fury.
Why had Lindsay done this to him? He was going to dress it up as a dirty little crime, Mohr the murderer, the mindless Nazi thug. It was more than just an intelligence trick, it felt personal in some way, an assault on his integrity, his reputation. But he was caught, a fly in a web.
He tried to collect himself: ‘No one has taken a statement from me.’
‘You look worried. We don’t need a statement. We have witnesses. I heard you myself.’
‘I want to give a statement.’
Lindsay shook his head, then; half turning to the prison warder behind him, said: ‘Look after him. I don’t want to give him the opportunity to make a complaint about his treatment to the court.’
The Interrogator Page 30