A Dangerous Act of Kindness

by A Dangerous Act of Kindness (retail) (epub)

  Chapter Sixty Five

  The early promise of the day gave way to a blustery afternoon of showers. By evening, a steady rain fell, darkening the countryside long before the sun set. Lukas sat on the edge of one of the beds, watching the water stream down the outside of the dormitory window.

  They’d found him a Luftwaffe uniform and he wore it with the jacket undone as if he too had returned from interrogation but his mouth was dry, his palms wet. He was washed alternately with waves of anxiety and boredom, yawn after eye-watering yawn overwhelming him. He wished this interview would begin so that he could get back to his familiar routine.

  He glanced up when Otto Hepner entered then looked back down at his hands. He would have preferred to cover his awkwardness by reading a book or a newspaper but prisoners were given nothing to read, nothing to entertain them. The listeners wanted them to talk.

  The boy was barely twenty but he had the build of a man. He was solid, shorter than Lukas and his hair was sufficiently dark to produce a shadow along his top lip. His pale eyes looked out from underneath heavy brows but his face already bore lines around the mouth which would deepen as he aged.

  A strange smell entered the room with him, perhaps it still clung to his clothes from the fumigation, but underneath the chemicals Lukas caught the tang of fear. This boy’s strutting was a sham.

  The guards were still in the room, clattering away with the blackout shutters. Hepner paced around, picked up a water glass and studied the base, put it back. Once the guards left, Lukas became acutely aware that they were being monitored, imagined Joseph sitting in a room in the basement, headphones on, waiting. He found it impossible to ask a single question.

  Once Hepner stopped pacing, peeled off his great coat, flung himself full length on his bunk and began to talk about nothing in particular, Lukas relaxed. The boy rattled out a list of complaints and grumbles, disgust at his treatment, fury at his capture.

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Hepner said.

  ‘They moved me round a lot.’

  ‘Did they take you to that place in London?’

  ‘Yes, I was there. A long time ago now. I’ve been up in the north since then.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Were you with other prisoners?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How come you were captured?’

  ‘I was shot down.’

  ‘In France?’

  ‘No. I was on the way back from a bombing raid on London end of last year’

  Lukas knew he should be leading the conversation. He wished he had Joseph’s talent for acting. It was impossible to imagine what he’d talk about if he’d been fighting where this soldier had been.

  ‘Tell me about the war over there,’ Lukas said.

  Hepner looked around the room, sat up and said, ‘Aren’t you worried they listen? We were told they listened.’

  Lukas shrugged. ‘Just be careful you don’t say anything secret,’ he said. ‘We can talk about the war, surely? I’ve been out of the fighting for too long and the British, they want us to think the war in the east will finish the Führer.’

  ‘Finish him? Never. We’ve thundered across their country.’

  ‘Ha! That’s good to hear.’

  ‘We’re as strong as ever.’ Hepner drew his knees up, wrapping his arms around his legs and pulling them into his chest with a shiver of satisfaction. ‘I tell you, the feeling of being part of that power set loose on such a despicable enemy. It’s incredible.’

  ‘We’re hunters,’ Lukas said, feeling a creep of embarrassment that his crass interjections would expose him.

  ‘We’re like beasts of prey,’ Hepner said. ‘That’s what the Führer trained us to be.’

  Hepner kept looking at the door, the window; even the light above their heads.

  ‘Do you think they’re listening?’ he asked again.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Lukas said.

  Hepner began to ask about escape, he longed to be back at the front. He’d heard all about von Werra’s escape, his triumphant return to Germany and wanted to know if Lukas had met him.

  After several hours, Lukas felt his concentration slipping. He found it more difficult to think of questions to ask Hepner. The boy tended to repeat himself and Lukas found his eyes getting heavy. He didn’t need to have an interest in anything this young man said but he did have to stay awake. Even the talkative Otto Hepner may not want to keep chatting if his audience was asleep.

  Lukas got to his feet, walked around the room a bit. He wondered how long he was going to be left in here. Their dinner arrived – a mug of milk, soup and a hunk of bread. Hepner sniffed the soup, pulled a faintly approving face then gobbled it up, his mouth near the bowl. Clearly soldiers in the east were not eating well.

  Lukas wondered if Hepner had said anything useful yet, if this ordeal of boredom was nearing an end but when the trays were collected, the guards told them they would be escorted to the washrooms individually before the lights went out.

  Lukas’s heart fell. They were leaving him in the dormitory for the night. How he longed for an evening of interesting conversation with Joseph, a glass of whiskey maybe, and the solitary comfort of his tiny room up in the eaves.

  Hepner returned, his face pink from washing, his hair combed damply back from his forehead, revealing a rash of acne. The guards indicated it was Lukas’s turn to follow them.

  As he walked down the corridor behind the guards, Joseph Thalhaüser stepped out of a door.

  ‘In,’ he said in an angry whisper. When the door closed, he said, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  ‘Waiting for him to talk.’

  ‘He’s not going to talk unless he trusts you.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t he trust me?’

  Joseph made a wide-eyed face of exasperation and said, ‘How the hell is he going to believe you’re the blackest Nazi in the prison if you spend all evening making small talk? You’ve got to give him something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘For the love of God, Lukas, haven’t you heard enough soldiers bragging about the horrors of war to make something up?’

  ‘He’s already worked out I was shot down during Unternehmen Adlerangriff. I can’t pretend I’ve been bayonetting people in France for the past year.’

  Joseph rolled his eyes before folding his arms and staring down at the ground, deep in thought. Then his eyes widened and he looked up. ‘Accuse him of being a stool pigeon.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get nasty and mock him; bait him. Turn the tables on him. You haven’t got to win his trust – he must win yours. Make him prove his loyalty to the Führer as if his life depends on it.’

  ‘How on earth do I do that?’

  ‘Remember Sturmbannführer Fleischmann?’

  ‘How do you know about him?’

  ‘For the love of God, Lukas. I have your file. I know everything about you. Become Sturmbannführer Fleischmann if you have to but scare the living daylights out of that boy.’

  Chapter Sixty Six

  The lights were extinguished. Hepner complained it was far too early, he’d never sleep. It was too dark with the blackout shutters in place.

  ‘Take them down then,’ Lukas said, hardening his tone.

  There was a creak of springs as Hepner sat down on the bed opposite. An owl scree-iched out in the woods. Lukas spotted the glint of Hepner’s eyes as he stared into the darkness.

  ‘What’s stopping you?’ Lukas said, trying to sound irritated.

  ‘They’ll hear.’

  ‘You know that, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  Lukas took off his jacket and climbed under the blankets in his clothes. He lay on his back, his hands folded behind his head.

  He was at a loss to follow Thalhaüser’s orders. He tried thinking about Fleischmann, his arrogance and self-assurance; his air of suppressed violence. He could only ape that if he was given an opening but his change of
manner towards Hepner had sunk the younger man into silence. As the hours passed, Lukas felt his eyes getting heavy, his thoughts fragmenting.

  He woke abruptly to the sound of someone battling with the catches of the shutters. There was a crash as the shutter fell to floor and he leapt off the bed.

  Hepner was silhouetted against the deep indigo sky. A sliver of moon had risen, thin as a nail paring, oozing a pale light in through the window. Lukas wondered if the listeners were still awake and a solution to his inertia sprang into his head.

  He paced over to the door and pressed his ear to it, then he marched back towards Hepner.

  ‘Why do that now?’ he hissed.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  Lukas took a step closer and said, ‘It’s almost as if you knew they were no longer listening.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You knew the guards wouldn’t come back to put them up again because you knew no one was listening.’

  ‘I didn’t. I just couldn’t sleep.’

  Lukas shot out his hand, pushing Hepner by the throat, pinning him up against the window. Hepner snatched at Lukas’s wrist as he increased the pressure on his throat.

  ‘You’re a stool pigeon,’ Lukas hissed into his ear. ‘You’ve been put in here to make me talk. Questions, questions, questions – all the time. Where have I been? Where was I shot down? Do I know von Werra? How many prisoners have I been with?’

  ‘No,’ the boy rasped, twisting desperately to escape his grip. Lukas loosened his fingers ever so slightly and Hepner pulled free, darting backwards and protecting his throat with his hand.

  ‘You’re mad,’ he said.

  ‘You’re a traitor,’ Lukas spat back lunging at him again.

  They scuffled. Hepner landed a couple of blows on Lukas’s side; Lukas cuffed him across the face. He wondered if the guards would come and break up the fight or if Thalhaüser would guess what he was doing. He wrestled Hepner to the ground, clamping one arm down with his leg and pinning the other to the floor, straight out, ready to snap.

  Hepner tried to struggle, but the pressure on his arm was too much and he stopped.

  ‘Let me up,’ he whispered.

  ‘You haven’t even seen action,’ Lukas growled in his ear. ‘You fight like a girl.’

  ‘Let me up.’

  Lukas flung him aside and pushed back, coming to rest against the bed. Hepner sat up too and massaged his shoulder, his head hanging. When he looked up, his eyes were the only shining things on a shape of matt black.

  ‘I was in Kiev,’ he said.

  ‘So you say.’

  ‘I was. I swear to you. It was a savage battle but we bombarded those stinking Russians.’

  Lukas sighed heavily.

  ‘You’ll have to do better than that.’

  ‘All right. Listen. I’m telling you. The Bolsheviks planted bombs in all the main buildings and we had no idea. After their miserable defeat they waited for us to take charge of the city and then they detonated the bombs, flattened the buildings. They killed hundreds of German soldiers and officers. The city burned for days. We fought the fires. We were trying to save their city but other bombs went off, killing more Germans.’

  Lukas leant forward to show the boy had got his attention.

  ‘Is that right? It’s a cowardly type of warfare.’

  ‘They’re all Bolsheviks. They don’t behave the same as us. But we made them suffer.’ Lukas saw the eyes flash around the room. He shuffled forward until he reached Lukas. ‘We killed every Jew in that fucking city.’

  An electric shock went through Lukas. The boy was going to unburden; he was sure of it. There was an energy thrumming around the figure in the dark, a brutal excitement.

  What time was it? He had no idea. He looked round. The moon was no longer visible through the window. Were they still listening? If he was going to be Hepner’s confessor, he didn’t want to be the only person to hear.

  ‘Jews?’ Lukas said, trying to sound eager and excited. ‘I thought you said the Russians bombed you.’

  ‘Who cares? When we were in Poland, for every shot fired, we shot a man – not a soldier, an ordinary villager. We rounded them up, kept them together. Hear a shot? Shoot one of them.’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘It wasn’t enough, not in Kiev. It wouldn’t have stopped them. We caught Jews cutting the water hoses that we were using to fight the fires. It was the Jews behind the killings.’

  ‘The bastards,’ Lukas said.

  ‘We put notices up all over the city. On Monday every Jew was told to come to the cemetery at seven in the morning and bring warm clothes, papers, money, valuables. It was really clever, you see, because it was near the goods station and they thought we were relocating them.’ The boy moved closer. ‘Tens of thousands of them turned up. All the ones who hadn’t fled.’

  ‘What do you mean, the ones who hadn’t fled?’

  ‘Thousands of Jews left the city before we arrived. You know what they’re like. They scuttled off like vermin. Most of the ones left were too old or sick, apart from the women and children.’

  ‘And these were the saboteurs?’

  ‘No. You don’t understand. It was the city we were punishing. Kiev had to pay. But listen… you’re not listening.’

  More to the point, Lukas thought, are you listening, Joseph?

  ‘It was an incredible operation and I was part of it,’ Hepner said. ‘It’s the thing we’re good at. “Put your suitcases there.” And they did. We moved them further on. “Take your coats off and leave them there.” And they did. “Put your valuables there.” And they did. They were just like animals, obedient, ignorant animals, heading to the abattoir but, of course, they didn’t know that then. It was such a huge crowd. They took off their shoes, they took off their clothes.’

  ‘They took off their clothes?’ Lukas repeated, unable to imagine the horror of walking to your death, peeled and raw. ‘Why did they do that?’

  In the darkness he saw Hepner’s shoulder rise in a shrug.

  ‘Maybe they thought we’d fumigate them. I don’t know. I took off my clothes when I arrived in England,’ – Hepner started to laugh – ‘I expect you had to as well.’

  What a joke!

  ‘Some of them heard the shooting but it was too late. Some tried to run. We smashed them with the butts of our guns. We herded them, d’you hear me? Herded them and they started baying and yelling but we kept them moving. There was a ravine ahead – I wasn’t down there. I heard about it. A dozen at a time, shot at the edge of the ravine so they’d fall in. Later they made them lie down on the corpses then they shot them. Layer upon layer. They shot people morning and night. Apparently they started putting them head to head, one bullet for two people. It was hard for the soldiers getting the work finished. The children were the worst.’

  Was it time for Lukas to say something now, to remark on Hepner’s glimmer of humanity? He stayed stubbornly silent.

  ‘The children don’t do as they’re told, you see,’ Hepner said. ‘They won’t keep still.’

  Chapter Sixty Seven

  June and Danny had gone back to London months ago but still, when Millie was in the pantry, seeing what she could rustle up for supper, she caught herself thinking, what can I do for pudding? before remembering she didn’t have a little boy to please any more. She and Ruby rubbed along fine but she missed them. June had promised to write and let her know how they were getting on but she never did.

  ‘Eggs for supper again,’ she said to Gyp, picking up a basket and going out to the coops. Gyp trotted down to the entrance of the yard. Millie finished collecting the eggs and called him but he stayed where he was, staring up the track, his head tipped, listening.

  Millie put her basket down on the ground and walked towards him. The sun had already dropped behind the plateau, sucking the colour back into the fields, turning the landscape into a tapestry of grey and black, the chalk track a cold white in front of her. Gyp gave a long, low
growl and Millie peered into the gloom, expecting to see Ruby coming round the shoulder of the hill but there was no one. As she turned away, Gyp barked. She’d heard it too, the click of a stone turning underneath a foot.

  ‘Hello,’ she called. ‘Who’s there?’

  Gyp whined, circled around her a few times and she felt a chill run through her.

  ‘Come on, old chap,’ she said, grasping him by the collar. ‘Ruby’ll be home soon.’ She’d almost reached the door when Gyp sashayed away from her and cantered back through the yard towards the silhouetted figure striding towards them.

  ‘Yoohoo!’ Ruby shouted, waving.

  ‘Ruby,’ Millie called back, ‘Am I glad to see you.’

  Ruby reached her and peered into her face, screwing up her nose.

  ‘Blimey,’ she said. ‘Whatever’s the matter with you?’

  ‘It’s getting dark early now. I got a bit spooked, that’s all.’

  Inside the kitchen, Ruby said, ‘Let’s get some light in here, then.’ She started clattering with the globe of the Tilly lamp. ‘Not like you to get all aeriated about the dark. That’s my job.’ The amber flame bloomed across the walls. Ruby pulled a crushed packet of cigarettes out from the pocket of her housecoat and lit up.

  ‘What’s for supper, then?’ she said, ‘I’m famished.’

  ‘Eggs.’ As she said it, she remembered she’d left the basket sitting in the yard. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said, ‘I’ve left the eggs outside.’ Gyp was restless, alert. He was making her jumpy. ‘Come with me, Ruby. We need to shut the hens away for the night.’

  Ruby frowned and looked across at the window, black now that the lamp was lit.

  ‘I don’t like the dark. You know I don’t like the dark.’

  ‘Please,’ Millie said.

  Ruby sighed dramatically, hauling herself to her feet, pinching the end out of her cigarette and blowing down the stub before balancing it on the edge of the table.