Non-Suspicious

by Ed Church

  ‘I heard about your recent… I mean, I’m sorry about… At the surgery… They told me your wife recently−’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Victor.

  Both men became aware of a very different engine sound coming down the coast road – the restrained thunder of a Harley Davidson. The rider was wearing a brown leather jacket and no helmet. As he got closer, they could see he had dark hair, cut short and sensible, and a wide, muscular neck. He pulled over beside the 50cc scooter, instantly making it look like a child’s toy.

  ‘A friend?’ asked Dr Taylor.

  ‘An acquaintance,’ said Victor.

  He had never seen the man before, but he had a fair idea who he was. He had received the message. It was done. The young doctor saw it as a good cue to take his leave (while he thought about just what Mr Ackerman’s generation had been through). He exchanged greetings with the Harley rider as they passed. It was turning into a busy day for the little cottage.

  ‘I think I know who you are,’ said Victor.

  ‘I definitely know who you are,’ said the Tourist.

  ‘You had better come in.’

  Victor led the way through his home to a kitchen at the rear. He walked with a limp but otherwise moved well for a man his age (the time of year had moved beyond the annual indecision over his exact date of birth – allowing him to know for sure he was ninety-three years old). The kitchen had an oak table with a view out to sea. Victor pulled out a chair for the Tourist then went to the fridge, cracking open two bottles of the local Emerson’s Pilsner and setting them down.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the Tourist, taking a sip. When not working he allowed himself alcohol. In strict moderation, of course. Victor sat down opposite and took a sip of his own beer. From across the table, the Tourist had a good view of the injury that had so fascinated Dr Taylor…

  A primitive skin graft ran the length of Victor’s scalp from front to back, an inch wide and an inch or two off-centre. No hair grew on it. The graft couldn’t quite hide a groove that followed the same path. The whole thing had a melted plastic quality to it – enough to distract the observer from the missing top third of the left ear. For a moment, at least.

  ‘I’ve got something for you,’ said the Tourist, reaching a hand inside his leather jacket. He took out the precious cargo that had accompanied him from London and placed the item in front of his host.

  Victor looked at the old medal and read its simple inscription for the first time in over seventy years… ‘Ad Victoriam’… It was home. The only tiny link to a blood relative he had ever had. The only connection to the unseen eons of ancestors that had resulted in his existence.

  He had last seen the medal on the day he was shot by von Eberstein. The day he learned of Harry’s betrayal. The day he met his wife… the Angel. He left it where it was on the table and walked to the back door, stepping out into the small garden. The Tourist watched through the window as the old man stared out to sea. Then the telltale rise and fall of the shoulders.

  After a while, the shoulder movements slowed, then stopped. He saw Victor raise both hands and rub his face. Then he fed the chickens, using the practical task to compose himself before coming back inside. He sat down and slid the medal into a drawer at the side of the table.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Victor, taking a long sip and raising his beer in acknowledgement.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said the Tourist, raising his in return. He looked around. ‘So, this is where you came after the war?’

  ‘Not this very place. But the area, yes. A farm on the other side of the peninsula. I don’t know how much you know about my past.’

  ‘A bit. I’m allowed to ask questions. When I’m doing this type of job.’

  Victor noted that his guest did different ‘types’ of jobs and carried on.

  ‘Well, it took the best part of a year to patch me up. The leg was never quite the same. And the head… well… you can see the head. The Ackermans had a cousin who knew a surgeon in Leipzig. He did his best.’

  ‘I never even noticed,’ said the Tourist, raising a smile from Victor.

  ‘Of course, the long recovery worked in my favour in the end. Gave me time to get to know Gerti. She never seemed bothered by the injuries. As I got better, I started to help around the farm. Did whatever I could.’

  ‘Surely you wondered what was going on with Harry and von Eberstein? Whether they had actually pulled it off?’

  ‘I thought about it. A great deal for a while. But other things were happening. Gerti seemed to be showing interest, even though I kept telling myself not to get my hopes up. Every day, my new life seemed better than the one they’d stolen. In the end, she actually proposed to me. Can you believe that? How many women did that in 1946? Best day of my life.’

  The Tourist saw a film of moisture return to Victor’s eyes. For a moment, it looked as if the chickens might be about to get another feed.

  ‘Anyway… We got married out there. Paperwork had to be fudged a bit due to my lack of documents. But it wasn’t all a bed of roses. The farm was struggling to make any money and then there was the… politics… of a German girl marrying a mystery Englishman. Let’s just say it didn’t meet with universal approval from the locals.’

  ‘And the parents?’

  Victor sipped his beer then shook his head.

  ‘The parents couldn’t have been happier. I suppose the thing with the Russians had put me in their good books.’

  The Tourist raised an enquiring eyebrow.

  ‘It’s another story,’ said Victor. ‘In any case, in the end they sold some family jewellery. Heirlooms, I suppose you might say. They didn’t really like to discuss it. But they scraped together enough for us to move out here. A new start away from everything. A Kiwi soldier had told me about this area, though he didn’t live to see it again, poor fellow. We had just enough to buy the worst bit of land on the whole peninsula. Leakiest farmhouse…’

  A smile began to spread as the flickering home movie of Victor’s mind spooled through the happy footage.

  ‘Gerti turned it around. She knew her stuff when it came to farming. Arable. Like the farm in Germany. Not so common out here in sheep country. She got a tune out of that land for over half a century before we rented it all out and moved down to this cottage.’

  The Tourist leaned in a little.

  ‘But you could never quite let it go, could you?’ he said. ‘Harry and von Eberstein, I mean.’

  Victor’s brow furrowed in thought for a moment.

  ‘You mean the cards?’

  ‘Let’s just say they came as a bit of a surprise when I found out.’

  Victor sensed an element of restraint in the comment.

  ‘Well, you’re right, of course. It was always going to be hard to totally forget. I had a permanent reminder after all.’ He gestured to his head. ‘The idea that it might all have gone swimmingly for those chaps didn’t sit comfortably with me. Call it pride if you like, I don’t mind.’

  ‘I would just call it being human.’

  ‘I knew I couldn’t risk what we had here. Couldn’t stick my head above the parapet and start shouting about the truth. The bastards had already killed me once. I would have spent my whole life looking over my shoulder. Plus, I had something to lose now.’

  He looked out of the window, as if the permanence of the sea might provide a link to the old memories he was trying to access.

  ‘It came to me when we started talking about visiting Australia for the first time. Fifty-four, was it? Fifty-five? We were doing a bit better by then. I managed to find a private investigator in England – he had a small ad in one of the London papers that made it over here. I told him all I could about who I was looking for and he eventually wrote back with two addresses, just before we left for Australia.’

  ‘So you decided to let them know you were still alive.’

  Victor drank some of his beer before continuing. He hadn’t talked this much in a while, but it was hard to deny there was a
certain therapy to it.

  ‘As they always say, there’s more than one type of prison. The physical and the mental. I realised I could build a mental one for them. A mental Stalag. I could make sure they were the ones who spent a lifetime looking over their shoulder. For a man they’d seen shot dead. For a ghost.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know how much it worked. Sometimes we went years without a holiday. And I always felt it was too risky to send a card from round here, even if I had the camouflage of a different surname. But I like to think that the next one always arrived just as they were beginning to forget the last.’

  ‘What did your wife think of it?’

  ‘Gerti? Ha! She loathed them more than me. She was the only other person who knew the whole story from top to bottom. Would have killed them herself given half the chance. With a frying pan probably.’

  He tried to focus on a point on the horizon.

  ‘We knew Christmas would be our last trip. Gerti was… Anyway… She still insisted that we went. I got news of Harry’s move into that home just in time to send the last cards.’

  Victor’s mind drifted to that final holiday with Gerti. Then he brought himself back.

  ‘So they kept the cards, did they? Good. I’m glad it was playing on their minds. How did you come across them?’

  ‘I didn’t. Some detective was poking around. He found them.’

  The Tourist took a swig, using the bottle to disguise any hint of mixed emotions in his face.

  ‘There were problems?’ asked Victor.

  ‘Nothing that couldn’t be handled.’

  ‘I take it no-one got hurt. No-one else, I mean.’

  ‘The detective will be okay.’

  Victor frowned. Unintended consequences. The Tourist moved on quickly.

  ‘So you were still keeping tabs on their addresses after all these years. Not the same private investigator, surely?’

  ‘Not quite. His son. And not private. Police. He took over the little checks from his father when he retired. Unusual for police to do private work on the side, of course, but this chap was a bit different.’

  ‘I’m intrigued.’

  Victor took his beer and stood up.

  ‘Join me in the garden. The sun’s trying to come out.’

  The chickens greeted them as they came through the back door. Half a dozen were roaming free while a couple more were keeping warm in the hen house. It was just beneath the bedroom window. The Tourist tilted his head at the strutting birds.

  ‘Good layers these,’ said Victor.

  ‘Doesn’t the noise drive you mad?’

  ‘I find it comforting.’

  The yard was surrounded by a white picket fence with a gate to a path leading down to the sand. The Tourist sipped his beer and gripped the fence as he looked out over the beach. It was sturdy. Victor had built it well.

  ‘You’re breaking all the movie rules here, Victor. Everyone knows that soldiers who dream of white picket fences never make it to the end credits.’

  ‘I like to be different.’

  ‘You’re succeeding.’

  Victor walked over to him. He loved this view.

  ‘You were going to tell me about the PI and his son in the police,’ reminded the Tourist.

  ‘Ah. That’s right. Memory isn’t quite what it was.’ He took a moment to organise his thoughts. ‘Well… this private investigator who first helped me with the addresses. We became good friends over the years. Nice chap. Another ex-soldier as it happened, though Korea was his big one. Lost an eye out there. I suppose there was some sort of natural kinship between us.’

  ‘Another unbreakable type.’

  ‘Or another lucky one. In any case, he had a son. Early sixties he must have been born. He went on to join the police and be a real high-flyer. Top of his class. Climbing the ranks. His father couldn’t have been prouder.’

  The Tourist began to suspect where this was going.

  ‘They fell out in the end. It was strange. No amount of justice ever seemed to be enough for the son. He had this obsession with it. Or at least, his version of it. Trying to right every wrong. His justice. His punishment. They like the word vigilante these days, don’t they?’

  A nearby flock of gulls that had been pecking around the beach went squawking into the air. Victor waited for their cries to die down.

  ‘He was good at it, mind. His father used to call him a crafty operator. He was the perfect officer when he needed to be. Played by the rules. Got the promotions. But all the time, out of sight, he was circumventing the whole game. Righting the wrongs in his own way. With a bit of help from men like you, of course… Sudden heart attacks, random accidents, unexpected suicides… Whatever it took to make bad men disappear. His father blamed himself – thought he’d told him too many of his war stories when he was young. Too many tales of injustice. Who knows? Anyway, the father died last year… His name was Alfie… Alfie Barnes.’

  The Tourist showed no surprise. He had seen it coming. But he had still found himself enthralled. Victor had a gentle and engaging way about him.

  ‘So you decided to point Barnes junior in the direction of Harry and von Eberstein? After your wife died?’

  ‘Funny thing is, I don’t even remember it being a decision. It seemed as natural as finally calling in pest control. The idea of a world where those two were still breathing after Gerti was gone…’

  Victor gave a little laugh at the absurdity of the idea.

  ‘…No. No way. I’m sure plenty would preach to me about forgiveness. Well, I allowed those bastards a life, didn’t I? Even after everything they’d done… betraying those fifteen escapers, executing them, Harry selling my life and von Eberstein damn near taking it. They lived a lifetime. How’s that for forgiveness? And then I called time on it. For every one of those poor sods who never got the chance.’

  He raised his eyes to the overcast sky where shafts of sunlight were now poking through and dancing on the waves.

  ‘You see that? If all of that is nothing more than science, then I was right to do what I did… If no higher power was waiting to deal with them.’

  ‘And if there’s something more than science?’

  The old soldier’s back straightened and his lungs sucked in the sea air.

  ‘I’m happy with my choices,’ he said.

  For the first time, the Tourist saw the hint of steel in Victor’s eyes. The steel that had got him through his youth as a Foundling, through the battlefields of North Africa and Italy, through Stalag IV-B and the pain of all his injuries. He had been so lulled by the old man’s gentle manner he had almost forgotten he was standing next to one of the toughest men he was ever going to meet. As quickly as the edge appeared it was gone, replaced by something altogether softer.

  ‘And what’s your story?’ asked Victor.

  Even with such a simple question, the Tourist chose his words carefully.

  ‘Well… Let’s just say there are some people who leave the military and soon find they are surrounded by medals and commendations… but flat broke. And maybe some of those people take the skills they have acquired and put them to use in the shadier parts of the private sector – building that ‘money’ column up to the max, while the ‘honour’ column slips down to zero. Then, at some point, they may realise they need to seek… a balance. So they can live with themselves.’

  Victor got the gist of it. Even if his visitor understandably preferred to talk about his activities in vague terms. He tried not to think about what the Tourist must have done. About the murky world he was rubbing shoulders with.

  ‘I imagine finding a balance isn’t easy. For those people, I mean,’ he said.

  The Tourist realised his avoidance of first person pronouns was starting to sound a little silly.

  ‘I knew the person who did this role for Barnes before me. Pest control, as you say. When he stopped doing it, I thought it might help me. To balance out the other things.’

  ‘And is it
working?’

  The Tourist puffed out his cheeks and thought of his fight in a London café.

  ‘Not really. Somehow real life always tends towards being a fucking mess. Anyway, that was my last job with Barnes. I mean, it would have been even if he wasn’t retiring. It could have gone better.’

  Victor didn’t press him any further. Along with the earlier oblique comment about an injured detective, it was beginning to sound as if – end result apart – things hadn’t exactly gone to plan. He limited himself to one more question as he finished his beer.

  ‘So where are you actually from?’

  The Tourist finished his bottle at the same time and went to speak, before hesitating. He liked Victor. But not that much.

  ‘Around,’ he said.

  Both men left it at that as they watched the sea in silence for a couple of minutes. The shafts of light appeared, faded and re-appeared elsewhere as the clouds shifted.

  ‘Do you ever swim in that?’

  ‘Every day.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. Good for the leg.’

  They headed back into the cottage, leaving the empty bottles on the oak table as they passed through the kitchen and into the living room. Framed photos of Gerti and Victor were everywhere – backdrops of coasts, mountains and cities. The couple grew steadily older as the technical quality of the photos improved, from black-and-white, to faded colour, to perfect high definition. They were smiling in all of them. Big, genuine smiles. Gerti was stunning, maintaining an air of glamour all the way into old age. In two of the more recent ones, she was wearing a pink bandana. Still smiling.

  Victor let the Tourist look around.

  ‘Any children?’ his visitor asked.

  ‘Never quite happened for us,’ said Victor. ‘How can I complain? Seventy years of happy marriage after being shot at point-blank range while in my pants. I’ll take that.’

  The Tourist nodded, his eyes moving over to a television in the corner of the room. It was showing a BBC World News report, the pause symbol suggesting Victor had been watching it before the knock at the door. It wasn’t the first time he had watched it…

  The scene was a London street, lined on either side by a large crowd, three or four deep. Some old soldiers with polished medals were in the front rows, while a hearse carriage drawn by two black horses was frozen in motion. The Tourist read the strapline: