The sergeant stared into the middle distance, a look of defeat and confusion on his face. Eventually he said, ‘I’m sorry, Hanratty. I’m afraid you are to forget the whole thing.’
Hanratty stared back at him. Had he gone completely off his rocker?
‘Apparently the situation is being handled at a much higher level.’
‘Come on, Sarge. We can’t let Coltenham take this one away from us. Those bastards pulled me off that bloody prisoner when he first came in. Don’t let them get the praise for bringing a collaborator to justice too.’
‘Higher than Coltenham – much higher.’
‘How much higher?’
‘The War Office.’
Hanratty sank down in the chair, his face bright with glee. ‘Christ. So they really are going to hang her.’
‘Hang her? Certainly not.’ The sergeant took another deep breath and shook his head. ‘She’s got some sort of immunity. The gun will be collected later on today. We are to destroy any reference to it, delete it from the log and talk to no one. You must also destroy any handwritten notes. Coltenham have been given the same instructions.’
‘Why?’
‘I have no idea. Something to do with national security. Did you tell any of them this morning when they came in?’
‘No.’
‘Good. That’s how it stays.’
‘She gets off scot-free?’
‘That’s no longer our concern. We must leave that line of enquiry well alone.’
‘So she has got away with it.’
‘Constable,’ the sergeant said, ‘I’m as frustrated as you but it could be argued that your evidence is still circumstantial. It’s perfectly plausible that this German hid out somewhere on that farm, but as far as I know, there is absolutely no evidence that she helped him apart from your “hunch”.’
‘I can find the evidence.’
‘That’s precisely the point. You can’t and you must not. This investigation may continue but it is out of our hands.’
Hanratty walked out of the police station feeling utterly wretched. He’d just about had a bellyful of defeat; he’d been part of the most miserable military blunder of the war and here he was again, staring into the black gulf of failure and he couldn’t bear it. He wouldn’t bear it.
Chapter Sixty One
As the summer passed, the isolation of Lukas’s imprisonment lessened. Sergeant Thalhaüser seemed to take pity on his solitary confinement. He suggested Lukas might like to eat in the Sergeants’ Mess after the others had finished and Lukas was glad of the change.
The dining room looked out across the lawns, which dipped away from the house, hiding the barbed wire that surrounded the grounds. Some evenings the sergeant was still there, reading quietly in one of the comfortable sofas drawn up around the fireplace. Before long he began to chat as Lukas ate.
At first Lukas wondered if this was another technique to get more information out of him but he dismissed the idea – surely the British knew everything there was to know about him. He suspected Joseph Thalhaüser simply enjoyed his company and, as for Lukas, he liked listening to the sergeant’s stories about life in Berlin during the twenties where he’d worked as an actor before the war. It wasn’t long before they were on first name terms.
This particular evening, the dining room was empty when Lukas came down for his supper and he felt a wave of regret. He’d begun to look forward to his evening chats. It had been a day of heavy showers but the weather had turned fine in the last hour, the dust motes glittering in the shafts of sunlight coming in low through the windows.
Lukas wondered what Millie’s farm was like in the summer, tried to imagine those vast snowfields that he struggled through, carpeted with grass and flowers. He remembered the band of tinted skin at the back of her neck. It’ll be brown now, he thought. He longed to see her in the summer, knew her green eyes would burn more brightly when the sun darkened her skin, wondered if she got freckles across the bridge of her nose as he did when his face tanned.
He looked out of the window, the tops of the trees backlit bright green against the departing storm clouds and it was so beautiful, he felt a painful nostalgia for peace, a feeling so strong, he wondered how he’d ever managed to fight. But he longed to fly again and imagined taking off on an evening such as this, flying west towards the setting sun, towards Millie.
He heard a noise outside the door, someone in conversation with the guards and Joseph Thalhaüser came in.
‘I’m not disturbing you, am I?’
‘Not at all,’ Lukas said, rising to his feet, ready to go back to his room but Joseph beckoned for him to sit down.
‘It is very quiet here this evening. I thought we could talk a while. Would you care for a glass of whiskey? I’ve developed quite a taste for it.’
‘I’d like that very much.’
Joseph poured a couple of measures and carried them over to the dining room table where he sat down in a carver chair next to Lukas and crossed his legs, ankle to knee.
‘I have a question to ask you,’ he said.
‘Are you interrogating me?’
‘I suppose I am in a way, but this room isn’t wired, I can assure you.’ Joseph took a thoughtful sip of whiskey and, holding Lukas’s gaze, said, ‘No, I want to know: am I the one?’
Lukas stared back into Joseph’s dark eyes, saw a playful humour flickering across his face and felt a grip of anxiety that he’d misread the sergeant’s friendship. An actor before the war, of course, why hadn’t he realised? But then Joseph started to laugh at him.
‘I should have put that more clearly,’ he said, ‘but I couldn’t quite resist teasing you. Don’t look so worried; I was referring to my Jewishness. Isn’t it true that every German knows at least one decent Jew?’
Lukas laughed now, from a sense of relief as much as anything. He’d grown to like Joseph very much. He wouldn’t want to rebuff him.
‘Yes, I’ve heard people say that but no, you’re not the one.’ Joseph made a face of mock disappointment. Lukas went on, ‘I grew up in a house of liberals. I realise now, looking back, that we had many Jewish friends, intellectual friends. I never even thought about it. Before I joined the Jugend, I would not have been able to look at one man and say, he’s a Jew, or at another and say, he’s a German.’
‘We’re both German.’
Lukas nodded.
‘So why did you join Hitler’s Wehrmacht?’
‘To fly. I wanted to fly. I still want to fly.’
‘And this evening, if you could fly anywhere in the world, where would it be?’
No, Lukas thought, I can’t share that dream, it’s too precious. He shook his head and took a sip of his whiskey. It was smooth and smoky, nothing like that lethal schnapps he drank at Millie’s, but it had a similar effect. It swirled in his brain and warmed down into his chest.
‘Before I read your file,’ Joseph said. ‘I imagined you must have done a terrible thing to find yourself in solitary confinement for the duration of the war. I asked myself, did this man escape many times? Did he incite a prison riot? Then your file arrived and I saw that your crime was not so great.’
‘I think it was.’
Joseph shrugged. ‘We cannot choose whom we fall in love with.’
Lukas laughed softly. ‘I’m certain you didn’t find that word in my file.’
‘No, I didn’t. But you chose to co-operate. You see, Lukas, I spend my days organising prisoners, reading transcripts, listening to their stories and they sadden me, often they sicken me but every now and then I come across a glimmer of hope, a flash of human decency and I wonder if our salvation lies not in politics, or treaties, but in individual acts of kindness, which are as inexplicable as the violence our country has unleashed upon the world.’
‘I think we’re past that now.’
Joseph looked downcast and stared into his glass, rotating it slowly so that the liquid rose up against the sides.
‘Don’t you ask yourself: why
did she help me?’
‘Often.’
‘And if she knew what had happened to you, wouldn’t she ask: why did he not betray me?’
‘Never.’
Chapter Sixty Two
At unexpected times during the day, Millie’s fear would rise in her chest like nausea, sour and unstoppable. She would imagine her arrest, her humiliation, the horror of waking on the final day and being hurried through to her death. She was haunted by the thought of the hood over her face, the rope around her neck, the fear that the fall may not snap her neck and she would choke slowly, fighting to live when all hope was gone, as Jack must have struggled in the last few moments, despite his wish to die.
There was some advantage to this state of chronic anxiety; Morney Beswick from the War Ag Committee was coming over for an inspection and she wasn’t worried about his conclusions in the least. Jack had loathed Mr Beswick; told him in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t prepared to dig up good pasture his father had nurtured for decades to plant sugar beet but Millie wasn’t from a farming background and she found the advice invaluable. She had a high opinion of Mr Beswick. After all, he owned the best farm for miles around.
‘If you carry on making improvements at this rate,’ Mr Beswick said at the end of their tour of the farm, ‘you won’t have much trouble exceeding eighty per cent production this time next year. Enington’s almost A Grade now.’
They were standing in the yard by Mr Beswick’s car, the evening sun throwing long shadows across fields still sweltering after the heat of the day. Millie felt such a surge of pride and pleasure that her eyes pricked but a moment later she saw a figure on a bicycle coming down the track towards the farm.
She recognised the helmet slung on the handlebars, the open jacket flapping in the breeze and her mind began to detach from the compliments Mr Beswick was paying her, spinning into a familiar vortex of panic. The thought of exposure in front of a man she so much admired added to her writhing sense of shame and horror.
The mudguards of the bike rattled as Constable Hanratty hit a particularly bruising pothole at the entrance to the yard and the noise made Mr Beswick turn. He narrowed his pale blue eyes. His weather-beaten face, which normally had an expression of polite concern, watched the constable dismount with a cautious anger.
Constable Hanratty limped towards them tentatively, glancing from one face to the other. Mr Beswick raised his chin at the constable.
‘Can we help you?’ he said.
‘I’m here to ask Mrs Sanger a few more questions,’ Hanratty said.
Not in front of Mr Beswick, Millie prayed – but she couldn’t think of any way to avoid it.
‘Where are you from?’ Mr Beswick said.
‘Shawstoke nick. If that’s any of your business.’
Millie expected Mr Beswick would reprimand the constable for his insolence but to her surprise, he turned to her and said, ‘I’d better be off. Very well done, Mrs Sanger. I look forward to seeing you again at harvest time.’ He stepped into his car and drove away at speed.
The constable watched the car until it disappeared over the ridge and out of sight. When he turned, she noticed that he was beaded with sweat and there was an unpleasant eagerness in his eyes. He drew his notebook from his pocket and flicked through the pages.
‘Now,’ he said without looking up, ‘How did you know that the gun was German?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘Really? Are you sure about that?’
‘Completely. I wouldn’t know a German gun from an English one, Constable. The boy identified it. He apparently takes an interest in these things. If you’d like to speak with him, he’s inside.’
A sly look came into the man’s eyes. He pushed his notebook back into his pocket, tucked the pencil behind his ear and took a step forward.
‘And what do you take an interest in, Mrs Sanger?’
‘I’m sorry? I don’t understand the question.’
‘I think you do. The first time we had a little chat, you told me things about that Nazi I didn’t know myself,’ Millie tried in vain to calm her breathing but she could feel her chest rising and falling rapidly. She stared back at him as levelly as she could.
‘You told me he was injured and you told me he crashed at night.’
An unpleasant smile spread his lips, revealing a row of small teeth, yellowed and damaged beyond his years.
‘You may have forgotten, but he was brought to my nick. I saw the man. Good looking fellow, for a Hun,’ – he lunged and grabbed her roughly by the wrist – ‘You had him here, didn’t you?’
She twisted her arm up, trying to get free but he pulled her towards him with a bruising force.
‘You’re nothing but a filthy collaborator and I’m going to break you, easy as snapping a cigarette…’
Millie heard the door of the farmhouse bang open and a voice yell, ‘What the bleeding’ ’ell’s goin’ on here?’
Ruby pounded across the yard towards them with such velocity that Hanratty released Millie and turned towards Ruby, his face still working with angry animation.
‘Get back into the house, madam. I’m in the process of questioning a suspect.’
‘You’re in the process of bullying a defenceless woman. I saw you from the window. I know what’s goin’ on. Pushing girls around like that – what sort of a man are you?’ She turned and said, ‘You all right, Mills?’
‘I’m fine. The constable seems to have got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘He’ll get the wrong end of my stick in a minute,’ Ruby said, shoving Hanratty hard on the shoulder, sending the pencil behind his ear spinning to the ground.
‘Oi!’ he said but he backed off all the same.
‘Now, clear off,’ Ruby said, ‘Or I’ll be down to your nick myself to make a complaint.’
Hanratty stared back at them, his lower lip pushed forward, his nostrils flared. He swooped his hand towards the ground for the pencil and with a resentful look over his shoulder, limped his way back to his bicycle. Just before he mounted he called back, ‘This isn’t the end, Mrs Sanger. You’ll pay for what you’ve done.’ As Ruby rushed towards him, gravel and dust kicking up from her feet, he leapt into the saddle and cycled off as fast as he could.
‘Christ almighty, Mills,’ Ruby said, walking back towards her a little out of breath, ‘ain’t he the worse little shit you’ve ever come across?’ She linked her arm through Millie’s and walked back towards the house.
‘You saw him off,’ Millie said, finally allowing herself a smile at the vision of Ruby charging him like a bull but the smile soon fell away.
‘That certainly spiced up the evening,’ Ruby said when they got to the kitchen. ‘Fancy a beer?’
As Millie cooked the evening meal she felt the fear as sharply as ever and wondered how long she could go on fooling herself that she would be here at the end of the war for Lukas to come and find.
She could hear June moving around in the room above. June had been different since Danny’s accident, quiet and even less willing to help on the farm. Sometimes she stayed in bed all day, letting Danny run wild. Other times she seemed so fearful she wouldn’t let him leave the house.
When supper was ready, Ruby bellowed for them to come down. Danny flung himself into a chair, his plaster cast, already dirty grey and covered in graffiti, clattering against the table. He slid his body low and pushed out his bottom lip. It looked as if he’d been crying.
‘What’s the matter?’ Millie said.
His dark eyes stared at her blankly, he drew his lip between his teeth and turned his whole body away, slumping even lower in his seat. June slipped into the room, her expression watchful, her arms folded low across her waist as if she was protecting herself.
‘We’re going back to London,’ she said, her voice flat and dispassionate.
Ruby, who’d just taken a huge scoop of mashed potato, paused with the spoon mid-air.
‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘What you want to do that for?’
‘We want to, that’s all.’
‘I don’t,’ Danny said, his voice muffled.
Millie felt guilt stealing over her. She wasn’t even worthy enough to offer this girl protection. She pulled a chair out from the table next to her and said, ‘Please sit down, June. What this all about?’
‘It’s not safe here for Danny.’
Millie stared at the table. She didn’t know what to say but Ruby did.
‘Come on, June. Accidents happen. Bet it was the most exciting day of your life when you found that gun, eh Danny?’
He nodded mutely.
‘There you go, girl,’ Ruby said to June. ‘Get a bit of grub inside you and you’ll feel right as ninepence.’
June stared back at her, her lips a thin line across her reddening face. She seemed to be trembling with anger. She threw her arms up and shouted, ‘Why do that, Ruby? Why make it worse by getting Danny on your side? I know he don’t want to go but that’s just too bad because I’m his mum and it’s not up to you, it’s up to me and we’re going and that’s that.’
And she turned round and flounced out of the room. They heard her feet thunder up the stairs and a door slam, followed by the sound of muffled sobbing.
‘Blimey Bill,’ Ruby said, ‘if she’s in that much of a pickle about things, she ruddy well ought to get back to London.’
Danny jumped up and ran out of the room.
‘Oh, for pity’s sake,’ Millie said. ‘Whatever’s the matter with everyone tonight?’
‘All the more for me,’ Ruby said, grabbing hold of Danny’s plate and scraping the stew onto her own.
After a couple of minutes, Millie said, ‘It’s not safe for June to go back to London, is it?’
‘It’s been ever so quiet since May,’ Ruby said between mouthfuls, ‘hardly any bombing at all. Maybe she would be better off with her own kind.’
Millie sighed heavily and thought – first Brigsie, now June and Danny. Soon I’ll be all on my own again. She’d got rather used to company.
A Dangerous Act of Kindness Page 28