by Bill Jones
Together, Goltz and Zuhlsdorff had run the rope over and round the pipe. With the loose end wrapped around his wrists, the enormous figure of Mertens was now struggling to haul Rosterg up off the floor.
‘Fat bastard. I need someone to hold him up.’ His body had become stuck in the sitting position. His eyes were closed and his head was lolling on his left shoulder. The noose had been pulled so tight round his neck, the rope had almost disappeared. Taking one arm each, Zuhlsdorff and Bruling shouldered the man’s weight while Mertens reeled in the slack.
Above them, the pipe was sagging and flakes of ancient black paint floated down on Rosterg’s face.
For the last time, he was upright again.
‘That’s it. That’s it. Now tie this off.’
The face of Mertens was scarlet with effort. Koenig reached forward for the end of the rope, passing it back to Goltz who knotted it tight around a tap. And then let go.
There were six inches between Rosterg’s feet and the ground.
Although he was still moving, it was nothing more than the gentle sway of a pendulum finding its own centre.
The only sound was the angry chirrup of the rope rubbing down through the old paint until the metal hidden beneath it was shining again.
43
The prisoners were eating breakfast when the siren went off.
From the canteen windows, they could see the camp suddenly erupt with men and dogs. One frowning guard and two British medics were jogging purposefully alongside a solitary civilian policeman in a helmet.
Fifteen minutes later they were back, walking slowly towards the gatehouse with Rosterg’s body laid out between them on a stretcher hidden by a grey blanket. When the compound was locked behind them, almost every Polish guard was still on the inside.
Throughout the rest of that morning, they ripped the place apart. Every building was cleared and searched. Mattresses and bedding were hauled out under the sun; chairs and clothing and the men’s feeble ragbags of personal belongings were tossed on piles in the snow.
For the first time in weeks, the air temperature had pulled itself above freezing, and as the men stood to attention outside their huts the snow softened and slid from the roofs in shapeless clumps.
Without Rosterg to translate, the Poles got on with their work in silence. By the middle of the morning, the bloody poker had been taken away from Hut 4 along with the charred remains of Rosterg’s army tunic, pulled from the innards of a stove. By lunchtime, the last of the soldiers had backed out of the compound, carrying with him a bloodied length of rope.
Hartmann had kept himself out of sight. Between the huts and the perimeter fence – looking out across the fields to the town’s church spire – there were places where he could lean back and enjoy the rare warmth on his face, trying fruitlessly to erase the night’s memories. When the siren finally stopped, he made his way to the latrine block and entered the narrow door through which Rosterg’s body had been dragged just a few hours before.
Inside, the place was still freezing. Bare metal was showing where the noose had worn through the paint on the pipe, but the pools of blood had been hosed away, leaving only the nose-curling tang of bleach.
‘He had to die, Max. All the rotten apples are gone now.’
He hadn’t heard Bruling come in. He’d felt certain everyone would be eating.
‘You didn’t know him the way I did.’
They were standing side by side, looking down on the same blotted patch of concrete.
‘You don’t think he was a traitor?’
‘He was cleverer than that.’
‘Well, as I say, he’s gone now anyway.’
‘And that’s it? We all get on with the war?’
Bruling turned, pulling a grimy cap down tight over his forehead. ‘I’m hungry. We should go before it’s all gone.’
‘You can have mine. I’ll give it a miss.’
‘You should have a little faith.’
‘You should enjoy your lunch. You’ve earned it.’ He doubted whether Bruling would have noticed the sarcasm.
In the afternoon, the search parties came back: a show of strength, a provocation. Everyone knew there was nothing to find – no one had been hauled in for questioning – and by sunset the prisoners’ ebullience had revived.
One murdered German; one thousand possible suspects; almost all of them bearded, blue-eyed and blond. Even if the guards cared – which they didn’t – no one was ever going to find out what had happened.
Whatever passed for normality in Camp 21 had returned, and as the floodlights flicked back on sporadic shouts of abuse from one side were again met by random spurts of gunfire from the other. Inside every hut there was a hum of hopeful, boyish chatter, as if Rosterg’s death had made them strong once more, and victory was – yet again – just a breath or two away.
From his bunk, Hartmann listened, and felt the empty space beneath him like a terrible secret.
Rosterg had vanished – written out of the men’s conversations, and his bed occupied by a new arrival. Like Bultmann, no one had really known him. That was how you got through the war. Minimise friendships; friends were always a complication. Without ceremony, his body would be buried nearby. Very soon, it would be as though he’d never lived. For the first time, the camp seemed to float on a wave of optimism. By day, a light wind blew in over the southern hills, bringing warmer air under bubbling blue skies. After nightfall, the Northern Lights danced and the glassy traces of the men’s footprints froze hard on the footpaths.
With the kinder weather came fresh supplies. Trucks were moving again on the road up from the town. Dusty coal bunkers were refilled, and the kitchens creaked under the weight of new rations. For a handful, there were even letters – old news posted months ago by people who might no longer be alive. Only seven prisoners inside Hut 4 received one. The rest feigned indifference, as if contact with home – like Christmas – was a weakness.
There had been nothing for Hartmann. He wasn’t surprised.
Despite themselves, however, the men briefly succumbed to the season. There were no presents or decorations, but on Christmas Eve there was singing and a double supply of coal. For Christmas Day lunch, there was cold sausage, mince pies and extra mutton in the stew, along with five cigarettes for every prisoner. Within an hour most of them had been smoked, and the men – heads spinning with tobacco – tumbled out of their canteens to chase a limp football around in the slush.
Even Hartmann had surrendered, enjoying the mindless exuberance and the alien burn in his lungs. Just for a few happy minutes, they could have been kids in a school playground. Mertens had stationed himself in goal, and no one could get the ball past him. When Hartmann had been about to take a shot, Bruling tripped him from behind, and the two had rolled away, half laughing, through the snow.
Since the murder, he had spoken to scarcely anyone.
Koenig turned away whenever he saw him. And for two days, Goltz had done nothing but fester on his bunk. No one was fooled by a kickabout in the snow. Beneath the surface nothing had really changed, and as the daylight drained out of Christmas Day, so did the camp’s high spirits. Irrational elation surrendered to private despair.
Alone in his sleeping bag – listening to the snow melting through the cracks in the roof – even the hardest captive knew the drill.
No one was marching to free them. This was as good as it would get.
On Boxing Day, the wind swung back round, bringing blizzards down from the mountains.
Two days later, in the neighbouring compound, a nineteen-yearold prisoner visiting the toilets after curfew was shot through the neck. Abandoned overnight, he’d bled out and died and fury stirred again through the huts.
Hartmann knew what would follow. In the loneliness which had engulfed him after Rosterg’s murder, everything had become clearer. Men like Goltz alchemised outrage into power, and the humiliation felt by his defeated comrades could only be assuaged by violence.
Everywh
ere he went now, Hartmann could sense the sideward glances. When the time was right – when another scapegoat was required – it would be his head in the noose. Koenig’s cold shoulder wasn’t shame or discomfort; it was a kind of warning.
In the bitter days which followed Christmas, Hartmann’s certainty grew. All over the site, tension was rising, inflamed by the shooting of the teenager. With no let-up in the weather, the prisoners hunkered inside. Once again, fuel supplies were dwindling. By the morning of New Year’s Eve, in Hut 4, they’d scarcely enough to keep one stove going all day and boredom twisted in the damp air like spindrift.
Whenever he could, Hartmann took himself outside. For almost five days, no one had spoken to him, and he’d grown to love the company of the distant pines. Just as he had in Devizes, he’d plotted and mapped every single feature he could see. He’d looked on as a hooded crow pecked the eyes from a dead sheep. He’d watched as a fox crept under the wire, rooting out the peelings from the dustbins. When the clouds split, it felt like the whole world had been washed and hung out to dry. Wherever he turned, you could see for ever.
Every colour and every shape was rendered perfectly, like the two black cars moving quickly towards the camp, turning right against the entrance where the white swing gate lifted and the sentry studied their documentation.
As Hartmann watched, he heard the engines die, a shudder of pistons and then silence.
Two people were slowly getting out from the back of each vehicle.
Three were wearing long black coats and identical city hats.
Hartmann shuffled closer, shivering as the powder filled his boots.
The fourth was wearing brown and standing slightly apart from the others.
A door was opening in a low concrete admin block, and a British officer was beckoning the four strangers towards it. Oddly, the headlights on both cars were still shining.
The figure turned, carefully taking in the camp and the men in the towers.
It was her. He was absolutely certain of it.
The interrogations started shortly afterwards.
Hartmann had returned to his hut. Breakfast was over, and a silent group had gathered around the stove. Zuhlsdorff was jabbing at the coals with a charred stick, probing for life. Damp blankets had once again been draped hopefully over the pipes and apart from three men playing cards, the prisoners had reoccupied their beds. No one heard the detachment of six Polish armed guards walking briskly behind their own shadows.
When the hut door cracked open, Zuhlsdorff spun from the stove to face them holding his makeshift poker. As he stood, his chair fell backwards, and a soldier stepped forward to swipe the stick from his hand.
A ribbon of sunlight had rolled out between the two rows of bunks, into which the prisoners now stepped, shading their eyes to see what was happening.
‘Bruling, Mertens and Dahl, please. Here. Now. With me.’
There was a moment’s confusion. The guard’s German had been under-rehearsed. Goltz had rolled off his bunk, and was looking round for the three named men.
‘Bruling, Mertens, Dahl. Now, please.’
The guards were fanning out in a half-circle with their rifles aimed into the belly of the hut. Bruling was the first to step forward.
‘It’s all right. It’s fine. We’re coming. Anything to liven up the day.’
An hour later, they were back. As three more prisoners were led away, Goltz pounced on Bruling. ‘What the fuck’s happening? Tell me.’
‘Three prisoners at a time. Three separate rooms. One in each. They’re asking about Rosterg.’
‘He killed himself. That’s what we say.’
‘Yes. We do.’ Bruling looked down at his feet. ‘However, I think it’s pretty obvious they know that didn’t happen.’
‘Who’s they? What the fuck did you tell them?’
‘They’re from London. I only recognised one of them. I told them nothing.’
Up on his bunk, Hartmann was listening. Eighty people in the hut, minus Rosterg. It could take all day, and Goltz had sounded rattled.
It was the middle of the afternoon before his name was called.
‘Goltz, Zuhlsdorff, Hartmann. With us, please.’
Together. He hadn’t expected that. There was no turning back now. He’d been on this course for too long.
In single file, the three men were marched from the hut. Hartmann was in the middle.
‘I know what you are, Max. I always have.’
Hartmann turned into the snarling face of Zuhlsdorff. ‘Two words.’
‘What?’
‘Blood transfusion.’
Ahead of them, on the other side of the main fence, he could see the cluster of barracks and buildings reserved for their keepers. Inside, the electric lights were already on – dusk was fading quickly – and as the gates swung open they were guided in through a black-painted metal door. Goltz’s skin was paler than he’d ever seen it.
‘You’ll tell them nothing.’
It was someone else’s turn to be terrified. Hartmann met his eyes. ‘Trust me. Don’t worry. I’ll be absolutely fine.’
There were three interview rooms off a damp corridor. At the edge of the middle door, he felt certain he could smell perfume, and headed for that one.
This would be for Rosterg and Wirz.
When they were marched back an hour later, the sky was stretched across the mountains like a bruise. Goltz seemed pleased.
‘Piss easy. Thick as pigshit. They know absolutely nothing.’
Hartmann clambered up on to his bunk. He knew what was coming. He didn’t need to see it. Behind them, their escort had lined up, three on either side of the entrance.
There were no more names being called, and the door had been left open. Out in the gloom, four figures were moving towards it.
There was a healthy crackle in the wood-burner and Goltz had pulled up a chair to rub his hands in its glow.
‘Piss easy,’ he repeated for anyone who was listening. ‘We’re all safe.’
The four figures entered the hut. Three men in black and the woman in brown.
It was Helen who spoke. Hartmann was glad about that.
‘Joachim Goltz. Kurt Zuhlsdorff. Erich Koenig. Josef Mertens. Heinz Bruling. Please make yourselves known.’ She looked up into the silence. Everyone in the hut was gaping back. ‘We are arresting you for the murder of Wolfgang Rosterg.’
She had more to say, but it was lost in the thunderclap of protest, in the melee of guards pushing past and penning prisoners back on their bunks. Goltz and Bruling were being dragged away and strong arms had locked tight around Mertens. Only Zuhlsdorff had mustered any resistance, lashing out with his boots before collapsing under a barrage of fists.
As the four men were removed, the uproar died instantly.
Four men. Just four.
In the doorway, Hartmann could see the party from London anxiously surveying the hut. He was thinking the same thing.
Koenig. Where the hell was Koenig?
44
It wasn’t easy to find in the dark.
Patchy cloud had pushed in, concealing the moon, and the coal bunker was hidden from the camp’s ring of artificial light. Back in his hut, the pieces would be falling into place. Even without Goltz to prompt them, the prisoners would quickly work things out.
As soon as the official search for Koenig had spread out over the entire camp, Hartmann had slipped away, and his absence was all the proof they’d need.
Zuhlsdorff had been right, they’d say. But Zuhlsdorff was gone.
Whatever happened now, Hartmann could never go back.
He studied the bunker, feeling the shape of it with his hands. Down at ground level, the snow had been scraped away around a square hatch. He knelt down and reached his arms inside. There was no coal in it. There’d been no coal in it for weeks. A cold draught was blowing from the opening, and as his fingers inched forward he felt the edge first, and then the nothingness of the hole. As if bitten, he pulled his
arms back sharply.
Koenig had come this way. He knew it.
For a second, he squatted, trying to make out the trees along the edge of the river. Somewhere near the water, that’s where he’d said it emerged. As he hesitated, the light from a watchtower spun out across the field, catching the gorse-choked dip where the bank fell away into the brook. Above the ground, it looked a long way to the exit. Below ground, it didn’t bear too much lengthy contemplation.
I don’t have to do this, he thought. Either Koenig would die out there, or they’d catch him. In the end, it would come to the same thing. No point thinking otherwise.
From a long time before, he recalled a cognac-fuelled drive through the French night in an open-topped staff car. There’d been a stupefied boar watching at a crossroads as they sped past, and when they’d parted at dawn, he’d told Koenig about Alize and the child. Maybe that was when he’d started falling. No. Koenig had always been falling.
He crawled forward and disappeared into the bunker. They were all probably doomed, but Koenig had no one else. It had to be Hartmann.
Within a few heartbeats, he was in absolute darkness.
There was a square opening in the ground. Leaning into it, he could feel the four sides of a vertical timber-lined shaft. A rich, black smell filled his nostrils, and the wood felt rotten with damp. He reached deeper, stretching down with his arms until he could touch the bottom, before sliding his body down over the edge into the cavity below. Loose grains of dirt came slithering down the shaft alongside him, but there was room to turn round, and he could soon feel the way forward in the ghastly nothingness where his flapping hands met no resistance.
Under his knees, the ground felt sticky with mud. Everything else appeared comfortingly solid. The walls and ceiling had been panelled and the flow of good air was unexpectedly reassuring. Ahead of him, he imagined a straight crawl towards the riverbank. No junctions or choices. To the touch, although he could see nothing of it, the tunnel seemed well constructed.