The British Lion

by Tony Schumacher

  “I have no duty to you,” said Harris, the smile gone.

  Anja looked at the boy, then back at the mechanic.

  “I want to go home.” Her voice sounded weaker than she had expected, and she folded her hands in her lap and lowered her eyes.

  The mechanic sighed deeply and ran the rag around the back of his neck before stuffing it into his pocket and looking at Harris.

  “What time you off duty?”

  “Eight. I’ve been on nights.”

  The mechanic looked at the clock on the wall; it was twenty to eight.

  “You’d better go, come back later. I’ll have to have a think about what we should do.”

  “It’s obvious, isn’t it?”

  “She’s only a child.”

  “Yeah, but”—­Harris lifted a finger and almost pointed at Anja before dropping it again—­“she’s a German.”

  “I’ll have to have a think.”

  “If the boss finds out we had her and we didn’t let him know—­”

  “Harris, go away and then come back, like I told you.”

  “I’m only saying.”

  “Go.”

  Harris swigged back his tea and picked up his helmet from beside the heater. He stepped past Anja and opened the door, pushing the boy into the gap between it and the wall as he did so. He turned back to the mechanic before leaving.

  “Don’t do anything without me, all right?”

  “Give me her identity papers.”

  Harris frowned, then took out the papers and handed them across to the mechanic, who tossed them onto the desk.

  “I mean it—­wait for me, yeah?” Harris tried again.

  The mechanic nodded and Harris looked at Anja, and then closed the door behind him. Anja watched him through the window as he went, putting on his helmet and exiting the garage.

  “Go lock the door,” the mechanic said to Jack.

  “Mr. Adams is coming for the Alvis at eight. We’ve been working on it all night. What was the point of that now? He’ll think we’ve gone home.”

  “Go lock the door,” the mechanic replied.

  Jack sulked out of the office, giving Anja the same look through the window as she gave him.

  The mechanic closed the door, then pulled a small wooden milking stool out from under the desk. He sat and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. He stared at Anja and then took out the rag again, holding it in both hands, as if waging a tiny tug of war between them.

  “You are in a lot of trouble, girl; I’ll be honest with you. You are in a lot of trouble. Do you understand?”

  Anja nodded.

  “I’m under a lot of pressure here. You’ve put me in a dangerous place. I need you to be honest with me, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Harris told me you were in a house with a machine gun, is that right?”

  Anja nodded.

  “How did you get there?”

  Anja didn’t reply. She looked down at the floor and then back at the mechanic.

  “What is your name?” she asked him.

  “I don’t matter to you. You’ve got bigger problems than me to worry about if you don’t answer me. Unless you are quick and honest, you’ll not be staying here for long, you’ll be moving on somewhere you don’t want to go. So, how did you get there?”

  Anja looked at the floor again.

  “Listen to me, child. I don’t wage war on kids. I don’t want to hurt you, but you need to speak to me so I can decide what to do.”

  Anja looked up at the mechanic; she watched the rag turn again in his hands and felt a wave building inside, pressure forming so hard her forehead suddenly seemed tight.

  “They killed my mother,” she whispered.

  “Who?”

  “The men who took us, they killed her and then shoved her in the boot of the car.” A tear leaked from her left eye and ran down her cheek; she let it fall, not feeling it through her pain.

  “Who were they?”

  “Americans.”

  “How do you know they were Americans?” The mechanic sat back.

  “I used to watch films, with my nanny, back in Berlin, American films.” There was another tear.

  “Why did they . . . why did they do what they did?”

  “They want my daddy; they were using me, using us, to make him—­”

  “Make him?”

  “Do something important.”

  The mechanic stared at her. A second or two passed between them and Anja sniffed, then wiped her cheek.

  “Who is your father?”

  “He is a major in the SS. His name is Ernst.”

  “Koehler?” The mechanic looked at her papers and then back at her.

  Anja nodded and another tear trickled free, then fell to the floor silently.

  “What did they want him to do?”

  “He was fetching someone important, I don’t know who, from Cambridge. I heard them talking but that is all they said.”

  “Where are the Americans who took you?”

  “I don’t know. I snatched a gun and they ran away.”

  “From you?”

  Anja shrugged.

  “I had a gun, although—­”

  “Although?”

  “There was shooting before, outside. That’s why they left the gun.”

  “Harris told me there was a dead man outside the flat. Was that one of them?”

  “No, sir. I don’t know who that was.”

  The mechanic looked at the floor and rubbed the back of his neck again, this time with his bare hand. Anja watched him and wondered if he ever managed to get all the oil off his skin or if it was there all the time, like a scar.

  He looked at her again.

  “You don’t know who your dad is getting or why the Americans want them?”

  “No.”

  The heater popped in the corner.

  “My father will reward you,” she tried again, but the mechanic just sighed by way of reply.

  “The front gate is locked,” Jack said as the office door clicked shut behind him.

  The mechanic nodded slowly, barely lifting his head. He finally stood up, then picked up a battered blue hardback notebook off the desk.

  He opened the cover and flipped through a few pages before lifting the heavy receiver of the phone that was sitting on a shelf next to the window, all the while looking at Anja. He dialed a number out of the book.

  He stopped dialing and went back to looking at Anja, who, in turn, stared blankly back.

  “What you doing?” Jack asked.

  The mechanic ignored him.

  Anja heard the click and the voice at the other end of the line, faint and female.

  “Hello?”

  “It’s the garage. I need to speak to Sir James, about the ser­vice for the car.”

  “Hold on, please.”

  The mechanic looked at Anja. She thought he was sad, but it was hard to tell.

  Anja heard a male voice from the phone, louder but still a long way away. “Hello?”

  “Hello, sir, I need to discuss your car, that ser­vice we do for you, the special one, it is very important.”

  “How important?”

  “Very, very important, sir. Something has come up that you really need to know about.”

  There was a pause, then the voice on the phone again.

  “Can you call me back on the other number?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Five minutes, exactly.”

  “Five minutes, sir.” The mechanic put the phone down and Anja looked at him.

  “Who was that?”

  “The man who will know what to do.” The mechanic searched in his pocket for loose change and pulled out a few coins. He looked at Jack. “I
’m going to ring him from across the road. You watch her. Don’t let her out of this office, do you hear me?”

  Jack nodded and the mechanic took a heavy coat from a hook on the far wall. He nodded at Anja and then opened the door as Jack moved out of the way.

  “Is he going to take her?” Jack asked quietly.

  “That’s not your problem.”

  Jack lowered his head and the mechanic stared at him a moment before nodding to Anja and leaving the office.

  Anja waited until the mechanic had walked past the window before finally speaking to Jack.

  “Who is ‘he’?”

  Jack raised his head.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  THE SUN WAS well hidden behind clouds when the mechanic exited the building onto the street outside. The garage was half buried under railway arches just off a main road, so he had to walk for two minutes until he made it to the public telephone box on the corner of Chris­tian Street.

  In another call box, five miles away, there was barely half a ring before the receiver was picked up.

  “Hello?”

  Pips sounded, then the mechanic pressed the connect button.

  “Hello?”

  “Chestnut,” said the voice on the other end, and waited for the correct response.

  “Crimson,” the mechanic replied, slightly embarrassed to be using code words and playing spies.

  “What do you want?”

  “H, from Whitechapel, do you know who I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “He brought a girl to my place this morning.”

  “Lucky him.”

  “She is a German girl. Just a kid, SS officer’s daughter. I think you need to speak to her, sir.”

  “Name?”

  “Is it all right to say on the phone?”

  “What is her name, man?”

  “Koehler, Anja Koehler.”

  “Is it, by God?”

  “She has a very interesting story. She says two Americans kidnapped her and her mother to blackmail her father.”

  “Americans?”

  “That’s what she says.”

  “Any names?”

  “Not yet.”

  “We need a proper interrogation.”

  “She’s a child, sir.”

  “I’ll send a car; keep her warm for me.”

  “She’s only a child, sir. Will you—­”

  The phone in his hand went dead and the mechanic lowered the receiver slowly onto its cradle. He paused, looking out of the window at the passing scene; he felt insulated in the phone box and allowed himself a moment before exiting.

  Back into the real world.

  CHAPTER 19

  THE INTERVIEW ROOM was cold. They’d taken Koehler’s coat, his suit jacket, his tie, his shoes, his watch, and his belt. He was sitting on a wooden chair that was slightly too small for him, at a table in the center of the bare white room, deep in the darkest bowels of Scotland Yard.

  He stared at the empty seat opposite, rocking forward an inch or two as he considered swapping it for the one he was sitting on. He knew they would put him, as the suspect, in a smaller chair; it was a clumsy old trick he’d used himself a million times. They’d want to dominate the suspect, crowd him, make him feel small as they battered him with questions and God knows what else.

  He looked at the white walls. It didn’t look like fresh paint, which was a good sign. It meant that no blood had been splashed around recently.

  He wondered when being beaten up in a cell had become a concern for him.

  Koehler stood up, walked to the door, and reached for the handle; he was surprised at his embarrassment as he turned it slowly. It was locked. He frowned and paced back to the table, taking the interrogator’s seat.

  Fuck them.

  It was another ten minutes before he heard the door unlocking behind him. He turned, looking over his shoulder to see who was coming in. A young British policeman looked into the room, holding a bunch of keys on a chain; he stared at Koehler, who stared back.

  A second passed, and the bobby stepped back and nodded his head to someone just out of sight. Koehler turned back, sick of the games.

  He heard footsteps, then a slim folder of papers dropped onto the table in front of him.

  Koehler looked up.

  “You’re in my seat,” said Neumann.

  “It didn’t have your name on it.”

  “Could you move, please?”

  “There is a seat there in front of you.” Koehler gestured with his head.

  “Could you move?”

  Koehler pursed his lips and looked at the seat opposite, studying it, then looked back up at Neumann.

  “No.”

  Neumann frowned, sighed, then shuffled around the table and sat down. He reached across, dragged the paper folder over, and opened it. As he scanned the first page, he absentmindedly reached up to the back of his head with his left hand and gingerly touched it.

  “How’s the head?” Koehler asked.

  “What?”

  “How’s the head? You took a nasty knock earlier at my apartment. How is it?”

  Neumann stared at Koehler flatly before finally speaking.

  “Two stitches.”

  Koehler whistled through his teeth.

  “Could have been worse.”

  Neumann leaned back in his chair, studying Koehler, and then shut the folder in front of him, leaving his left hand on the tabletop, the other on his thigh.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Neumann asked.

  “You tell me,” Koehler replied.

  “I don’t think you’re the sort who would kill your wife and child.”

  “I’m not.”

  “But they vanished off the face of the earth.” Neumann looked at his watch. “Nearly twenty-­four hours ago.”

  “It’s a mystery.”

  “Last year, it was a mystery when your secretary disappeared as well.”

  “That’s women for you.”

  “And then there is the robbery where we found your wife’s identity card.”

  “You think she did it?”

  “I’ll not dignify that with an answer.”

  “Your job to do the questions.”

  Neumann drummed the fingers of his left hand on the desk and tacked in the wind, trying again to make some headway.

  “Then there is your friend the policeman.”

  “I thought you were the policeman?”

  “The policeman who hit me over the head.”

  “I’d never seen him before.”

  “Rossett.”

  “It wasn’t Rossett.”

  “Don’t strain my patience, Major Koehler.”

  “Why not? You’re straining mine.”

  “You’re in a lot of trouble.”

  “I’ve been in worse.”

  “But this time Lotte and Anja are involved.”

  They stared at each other; Koehler made to speak and changed his mind. Neumann stroked his mustache with his right hand, then rested his hand back on his leg before continuing, his tone softer this time.

  “Major, I don’t know what the hell is happening here. Honestly, I am at a loss. One thing I do know”—­he tapped his hand on the folder—­“is that this will not stay my problem for long unless you help me. It is still early. In an hour or two ­people will be arriving at offices—­bosses, our bosses, yours and mine. They will hear that I had to issue an order for your arrest, they will want to know why, and they won’t want this problem to remain . . . unresolved. You understand that?”

  “I do.”

  “Then you will also understand that these things can have a habit of spiraling out of control, like forest fires that start from just a tiny spark. Issues like t
his can sweep all before them.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “Then why won’t you speak to me? Maybe we can put out this fire before it burns all of us too badly.”

  Koehler didn’t reply.

  Neumann breathed out loudly and then shuffled his chair closer. He linked his hands on the tabletop and lowered his head for a moment. Koehler saw the stitches through his thinning hair.

  Neumann looked up and Koehler smiled.

  “I’m a policeman—­” said Neumann.

  “I was aware,” Koehler interrupted.

  “Let me continue.”

  “Of course. Forgive me.”

  “I’m a policeman.” He waited a second for Koehler to interrupt again, then continued. “I’ve been in London for a year now. They brought me over from Berlin to deal with what my superiors call ‘domestic matters.’ By that they mean issues they want kept in the family—­our family, the German family. Do you understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. When something happens involving our family, the Met Police ring me, and I drag March along and we see if we can sweep things up. I’m a problem solver. I make problems go away. Normally this takes a ­couple of hours. I’ll be honest with you: it isn’t very stimulating work. I normally deal with drunken soldiers and civil servants, and the occasional visiting businessman who has slapped around a whore. Sometimes I pass the matter back to the British, sometimes the army, the navy, or even, on occasion, the air force. Sometimes I deal with the matter myself. I have the tacit approval to hold ­people for a few days in the cells here, as a punishment.” Neumann pointed at the floor, indicating where the cells were beneath them.

  “Judge and jury.”

  “Indeed, it’s a little unorthodox, but I’ve never had anyone complain. You see, they prefer me dealing with matters because I’m a little less . . . direct than others. But you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”

  “Would I?”

  “I’d assume so; you do work closely with the Gestapo, don’t you?”

  Koehler didn’t reply.

  “What I am trying to say, Major, is that there is a window here, and it’s closing very quickly. You might think you are sitting opposite a dumb flatfoot from Berlin, and”—­Neumann shrugged—­“you might be right. But I’m the best chance you have to resolve this issue and come out of it in one piece.”