Non-Suspicious

by Ed Church

  Jonboy caught the overworked barman’s eye and ordered a bottle of Corona, watching in dismay as it was poured into a cheap plastic cup due to match day regulations. He looked at his watch. Thirty minutes to go until the 8pm kick-off. Still no sign of the Tourist.

  The Elbow Room was barely recognisable from their recce the previous day. Right now it was packed to the gunwales with loud, thirsty Spurs fans, confident their team could brush aside West Brom and still pip Leicester to the title. Not that yesterday’s recce had been without its merits – establishing the layout, the lines of sight, and the fact that the rear smoking area was being renovated, forcing smokers to stand at the front. They had also gained a degree of familiarity with the bar staff.

  All while Brook filled Jonboy in on everything.

  Now, just over 24 hours later, the Welshman eased his way out of the crush at the bar and took his beer to a spot in the corner. He scanned the place once again, then looked out of the front windows to where Brook was standing with the smokers.

  The loose plan had been working pretty well – Brook and Jonboy swapping their inside and outside positions every fifteen minutes or so. It increased the area under observation while also allowing for a second set of eyes if the Tourist somehow made it past the outer watchman or, indeed, had been managing to lie low inside the whole time. The possibility he might have changed his appearance meant nothing could be ruled out.

  Although neither officer was a smoker, both had found they could play the part for surveillance purposes during their careers. Far harder was drinking their beers at super-slow speed (two new faces sticking to lemonade gave way too much of a ‘plain clothes police’ vibe). Conversation with the regulars had been just about often and light-hearted enough to earn the right to be ignored, while the Sky Sports pre-match waffle provided something in which to feign interest.

  …Just twenty minutes to kick-off now. The crowd in The Elbow Room was already past its peak as more people made their way to the stadium. Brook finished his cigarette and headed wearily back inside, tripping slightly on the threshold. He looked like he could fall asleep at any moment.

  ‘Not coming, is he?’ said Jonboy as they crossed.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it.’

  The wait to be served was shorter now. Watches were being checked, hands shaken, drinks downed. Brook got himself another – only his third in nearly two hours. But it was true what they said about tiredness multiplying the effects of alcohol. And Brook hadn’t slept much last night. Not for a long time, in fact. He continued to survey the scene in front of him. Jonboy was right. After deliberately revealing exactly where he would be, it now looked as if the Tourist had been playing with them.

  …Fifteen minutes to kick-off now. For the first time Brook could see everyone in the pub. About thirty people left. None of them the Tourist. He tapped a quick text to Jonboy (‘Stay where you are. I’ll join you for last few mins. Then we’ll call it a day’)… Bar staff were starting to visibly relax, looking forward to a couple of quieter hours before the post-match rush. A sense of de-escalation was in the air.

  Brook made his way outside and scanned the street again. No Tourist. Then he looked at the remaining smokers clustered in front of the pub’s windows. No Jonboy. He glanced at the text he had just sent him… ‘Unread’.

  ‘Fucking hell, Jonboy,’ he muttered, checking a couple of nearby fast food vans. He peered back into the pub in case he had somehow missed him. Nope. His phone was still in his hand as it started to vibrate… ‘Jonboy’… Brook swiped the screen.

  ‘So was it a burger or a hot dog?’ he asked.

  For several seconds there was only silence. Then, finally, a response.

  ‘Hello, DC Deelman.’

  Many moments in the past few days had caused Brook’s pulse to rise. Surprisingly, this wasn’t one of them. The Tourist’s voice restored the prospect of bringing this situation to a conclusion, and that sense of finality brought with it only a Zen-like calm in Brook. No more pre-match anxiety. The game was afoot. And, on the rugby field, he had always loved that first whistle.

  The detective moved one building down from the pub and backed up against a closed retail premises… still scanning the street… still trying to pick out anyone on a mobile…

  ‘Where’s the owner of this phone?’ he asked.

  ‘You mean Jon? Or is it Jonboy?’

  Brook said nothing.

  ‘Don’t be surprised. It’s quite easy to find someone’s name once you have their phone.’

  Brook still didn’t reply. Let the other guy speak. Besides, he could sense the Tourist’s confidence edging towards arrogance and that was fine by him.

  ‘Actually, I’m not sure where he is,’ the Tourist continued. ‘I last saw him chasing the kid he thought stole this phone. Amazing how fifty pounds can buy you the perfect decoy runner around here.’

  ‘Clever,’ said Brook, feeding the Tourist’s pride.

  ‘Not really. The clever bit was getting close enough to see your friend’s passcode before picking his pocket.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you talented? I would give you a medal but I’ve a feeling you picked one up just a few days ago.’

  ‘Ah. A comedian too?’

  Brook stayed silent. He could hear a police siren approaching from the south of Tottenham High Road. The response vehicle sped past him and a few seconds later he heard it down the phone. The Tourist was a couple of hundred yards to the north. He stepped out for a better view. Still no sign.

  ‘You don’t say much do you, DC Deelman?’

  ‘I tend to loosen up after a few beers. Why don’t you come join me in The Elbow Room like you said?’

  ‘I changed my mind. We’re not all functioning alcoholics.’

  ‘That’s okay. I can check if they’ve got your favourite non-alcoholic bottles.’

  The Tourist took a shade too long to reply. Brook felt he had scored a minor point.

  ‘I think I’d prefer a café. How about Big Dave’s where you and Jon had coffee yesterday?’

  Point regained.

  ‘I’m on my way,’ said Brook. ‘Don’t run away this time.’

  The line went dead.

  Brook made one final visual sweep of the area for Jonboy, then began walking. The strange calm that had come over him remained in place. Senses heightened. Pulse normal.

  Chapter 46

  Wednesday, 25th April 1945

  The Ackerman Farm, near Mühlberg, Germany

  Victor wasn’t sure exactly how long had passed. A few days was his best, vague guess; largely spent drifting in and out of consciousness. He was aware that his head wound had been cleaned, dressed and re-dressed (the excruciating pain of each process meant there was no way of sleeping through that), but he still hadn’t seen the damage in a mirror. Only – through half-closed eyes – the facial expressions of those looking at it. It was enough to know it wasn’t pretty.

  At some point he had woken to find himself in a pair of pyjamas; any embarrassment at how this had been achieved soon eclipsed by the feel of the soft material. He tried to focus on it to distract from the pain of his head and a broken left leg. He had no idea if its rudimentary splint had been attached with any medical know-how.

  The farmhouse had three occupants. A heavily bearded man and his silver-haired wife – both quiet, stoic, around sixty – and their daughter… ‘the Angel’. A relatively late arrival by the looks of things. She couldn’t have been more than twenty. Sometimes Victor woke to find her sitting beside the bed, forcing him to relive the blurry question of whether she was a vision. As if to add to the effect, she seemed to have a whole wardrobe of white and cream dresses, not to mention an effortlessly pretty face with a hint of freckles, framed by loose blonde curls. There was a sense of tranquility about her.

  If his new carers said little during the rituals of changing bandages and providing porridge or soup, then Victor said even less. In fact, he was yet to utter a single word. And with good reason. The first thing h
e had heard in the house was an argument about him (it was then he learned the Angel’s name was Gerti). From what he could gather, there were three points of view – all stemming from the impossible task of identifying the nationality of an unconscious man in his underwear.

  The father (or ‘Vati’, as his daughter called him) said the stranger could only stay if he was German – anything else would expose them to too much risk if the local SS came knocking. The mother (or ‘Mutti’) said anything but a Russian soldier was fine by her – she had heard stories of gruesome reprisals as they approached from the East and wanted nothing to do with them. Gerti seemed happy at the thought that Victor was British or American.

  ‘Ich glaube daß er ‘Help me’ gesagt hat. Das ist englisch, oder?’… ‘I think he said ‘Help me’. That’s English, isn’t it?’

  Then she backtracked upon seeing her father’s expression.

  ‘Aber ich bin mir nicht sicher’… ‘But I can’t be sure.’

  Since there was no way of knowing which argument would hold sway, Victor had chosen the tactical option of playing dumb, beyond the occasional thumbs up when an empty food bowl was taken away. For a while he wondered why they didn’t ask him more direct questions. Then it dawned on him. By not knowing the truth themselves, they were avoiding the need to lie to whichever nation’s forces came knocking first. Doing a kind deed for an unknown soldier saved them from more complex political realities.

  The room containing Victor’s makeshift bed was on the ground floor, off the kitchen. When doors were ajar, he could see through to the main room where a creaking wooden staircase led to the floor above. His own room may even have been some kind of pantry in times of plenty – hooks, shelves and dusty ceramic pots. But these were definitely not times of plenty.

  Whatever the farm’s land had once supplied was now reduced to a vegetable garden and a few chickens. Essential equipment had been broken up for parts by local army units, farmhands conscripted to the frontline, market places deserted or destroyed… All that remained here was Mutti, Vati and Gerti scraping a hand-to-mouth existence. And, now, handing a little bit of that existence to an extra mouth.

  Despite the hardships, it was enough to give Victor his first ever glimpse of family life. The smells and sounds of the kitchen drifted into his room, while the chickens created a comforting background chatter – their coop just beneath his small window. As well as heavier topics, he heard conversations about day-to-day trivia, fond reminiscences and moments of laughter. The strict routines of the Foundling Hospital and the Army had kept this world of families a secret from him.

  Since arriving, he had left the bed just a couple of times – to awkwardly drag himself to the water closet using a chair as an improvised crutch. Both times he had slept for hours after making it back, only adding to his confusion over how long had passed. Whenever he woke, he went back to listening to family life; sometimes wishing he could speak freely to Gerti, sometimes dreading how he must look thanks to that Walther P38 bullet.

  Victor told himself that if he could somehow avoid an infection in the wound, he may be able to get some kind of skin graft to repair his scalp. He had learned the term from a poor RAF chap. Mostly, however, he was just glad to be alive. He felt… lucky.

  It was on the fourth day that the Russians came.

  The chickens outside Victor’s window sounded the alarm first. The people in the house noticed something was wrong too – everyone falling quiet as the hens grew louder. Raising himself on his elbows, Victor saw the father get up from his chair, going out to check on the commotion. As his palm settled on the front door handle, the entire structure burst inwards, sending him flying. The Russian soldier on the other side still had his boot raised at the point of impact. He looked nothing like the poor wretches Victor had seen in camp. Six-foot-six of Red Army muscle. The elaborate epaulettes on his trench coat suggested his rank was every bit as high as he was.

  Gerti and her mother screamed and ran over to where Vati was trying to gather his senses. Then they turned on their heels, screaming again as three of the Commander’s underlings came pouring in past his giant frame. These three were smaller, fast and feral in green uniforms.

  As mother and daughter ran up the creaking staircase, only one of the underlings pursued. Maybe they had drawn straws. The other two began slamming their way through every cupboard in the house, turning over furniture, ripping open storage boxes, looking for whatever resources this place had to offer. They were already swinging dead chickens in their hands. No wonder there had been a commotion in the yard. The massive Commander watched over everything with a seen-it-all-before indifference.

  Gerti’s father nearly managed to regain his feet (before being encouraged to stay down by a Russian Army boot) as Victor cursed his injuries and looked around the small room for a weapon. No-one had checked back here yet. From upstairs, he could hear shouting, screaming and laughing. He didn’t have long.

  While the two foraging soldiers filled a sack with anything useful they could find, the yells from upstairs suddenly grew closer. Victor picked up the rapid creak of the old staircase again. People charging back down.

  Craning his neck for a better view, he saw Gerti’s white dress flash across his field of vision followed by a furious Russian, bleeding from his forehead. Both were pursued by Gerti’s screaming mother as the injured man’s friends laughed hysterically at his predicament. The whole thing was a scene of total chaos. Yet still the mountain range of a Commander watched impassively from the shattered front door.

  Gerti’s bloodied pursuer turned briefly to send the mother tumbling into her floored husband with a backhanded smash across the face. Then Gerti was on her own, backing into the kitchen, tripping over cupboard contents strewn over the floor. Victor’s room was the only place left for her to run, but still she didn’t enter – determined not to give away the location of the badly injured stranger she knew nothing about. Nothing beyond a feeling.

  With both parents in a concussed heap, the frantic laughing, screaming and shouting gradually subsided, replaced by the simpler sounds of heavy breathing. All three of the lower rank soldiers had their attentions on Gerti now. One of them swung his dead chicken casually by the neck as he looked her up and down… Then the bird’s head came off in his hand, sending the detached body skidding across the kitchen floor and into the shadows of Victor’s room.

  The accidental chicken decapitator made some Oops-like utterance and held up the severed head as all three men had a chuckle about it before turning back to the cornered Gerti. Victor could no longer see her, but he could hear she was crying.

  ‘Bitte,’ she said… ‘Please.’

  The soldier with the bleeding forehead took a step towards her. A crooked smile was spreading across his scrawny face, defined by a deep scar running from mouth to ear. He pointed to the fresh injury on his forehead and began wagging a finger at Gerti, making a tutting sound…

  Then a headless chicken hit him between the eyes.

  He flapped at it in shock for a moment, assuming it was alive rather than a lifeless, feathered missile. His friends saw exactly where it had come from. They pointed at Victor’s door and shouted in Russian as Gerti grabbed a frying pan and ran into the small room first, turning to face them as she reached Victor’s bed.

  The three soldiers rushed in after her, then stopped in their tracks at the unexpected sight. The adrenalin rush had caused Victor’s scalp to start bleeding again, the bandages sodden as he tried to lever his splinted leg out of the bed. In front of him, a tear-stained Gerti wielded the frying pan like a lethal tennis racket, shouting out the threat of yet more decapitations to go with the headless chicken.

  ‘Wer wird der erste? Komm schon! WER WIRD DER ERSTE?’

  ‘Who’s first? Come on! WHO’S FIRST?’

  The same soldier as before stepped forward. The one Gerti had whacked in the forehead upstairs. The one who had got a chicken in the face. The one with a growing score to settle. He drew back his fis
t at the same time as his two colleagues drew their pistols on Gerti and Victor. Gerti drew back her frying pan.

  As everyone’s time perception entered slow motion, Victor and his broken leg finally managed to get upright at the side of the bed. He thrust a raised palm into the space between the warring parties and roared his first word in four days – the only Russian he had learned in camp.

  ‘NJET!’… ‘NO!’

  The single word froze everyone in position. Even Gerti recognised it as Russian. All in the room were now staring at Victor. All asking themselves the exact same question: Who the hell was this guy? For the first time, the hulking Commander pushed himself off his shattered door frame and walked slowly towards them with echoing footsteps, stepping over Gerti’s dazed parents. He had to duck to enter the room.

  The two underlings on either side moved out of the way and lowered their weapons. The third kept his fist pulled back, poised to punch Gerti in the face. Victor stepped in front of her, momentarily – and excruciatingly – putting weight on his broken leg. Gerti was between him and the bed now. He reached both hands back, grabbing the thin mattress and forming a protective triangle around her. The Angel pointed a finger over Victor’s shoulder at her tormentor-in-chief, while raising the frying pan a little higher.

  ‘Der erste…’ she said, nodding at the scar-faced soldier and breathing hard… ‘The first…’

  Christ, she’s got some spirit, thought Victor. Taking on the Red Army with pots and pans. He raised his gaze to the Commander. Then he raised it some more. Finally, he was looking him in the eye. His left leg strained against the splint, wanting to return to the random angles at which it had broken. He couldn’t tell if it was sweat or blood stinging his eyes.

  ‘You speak English?’ he asked the huge Russian, refusing to let his voice quiver.

  ‘A little,’ replied the Commander, heavily accented. He raised a hand to the poised fist of the angry underling and lowered it without resistance. He could have killed everyone in the room in a heartbeat. The swell of Gerti’s chest seemed to press into Victor’s back a little more at the sound of him speaking English. He took a deep breath and urged his creaking leg to keep him upright as he held the giant’s gaze.