SS-GB (12 page)

The schoolteachers crowded into the lorries were more solemn now. Some were trying to see if friends or relatives were anywhere in sight but the soldiers were dealing roughly with any sightseers. One of the older children, in the nearest lorry, had tears in his eyes. A teacher was talking to him trying to comfort him. A grey-haired man with bent spectacles smiled at the boy and in a thin piping voice began to sing:

‘If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.’

He clapped his hands. The wavering tuneless voice could be heard in the parade-ground silence of the school yard. So could the lonely sound of the man’s hands clapping. A second voice joined in the old Boy Scout song,

‘If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands,’

and there was the sound of a dozen or more handclaps, and now the child joined in, still crying. The Germans looked round for orders to stop the singing but when no such order came, did nothing.

‘If you’re happy and you know it, then here’s the way to show it.

If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands.’

And now all the prisoners clapped their hands.

‘Move out!’ yelled Huth. The lorries started their engines, and the first one began to move forward. By now the whole convoy of prisoners was singing. Theirs were not hearty voices, it was the unmusical chorus
of frightened men, but there was no mistaking the note of defiance in these discordant voices, and it gave heart to every Englishman who heard them.

‘If you’re happy and you know it, stamp your feet.

If you’re happy and you know it, stamp your feet.

If you’re happy and you know it, then here’s the way to show it.

If you’re happy and you know it, stamp your feet.’

Douglas could still hear the men’s feet hammering on the floorboards of the lorries, as the convoy roared off towards Edgware Road. Douglas took his son’s hand, and held it as if it was the only thing in the world he had. Until now he’d found it possible to work with the Germans. After all, he’d been hunting murderers and he’d not had to search his conscience about that. But increasingly he found himself being drawn down into a deep, dark vortex, moving at a snail’s pace, as things always happen in a nightmare. And yet he saw no way of escape. Under the new regulations policemen were not permitted to resign from the Force, and men who tried to do so found themselves devoid of ration books and work cards and became little better than beggars. Douglas gripped Douggie’s hand tight. ‘That hurts,’ said the little boy.

‘Sorry,’ said his father. He wondered if his son was judging him with that merciless impartiality to which all men subject their father.

In Marylebone they passed a man selling fried turnip pieces. Young Douggie went to the stall to look at the fryer and his father followed him. The crisply fried vegetable chunks were filling, warming and un-rationed, and cost only two pence for a small bagful. The old man selling them put in an extra piece for Douggie.

‘Say thank you, Douggie,’ said Douglas automatically.

‘That’s all right, Mr Archer. It’s good to see the boy looking so well.’

Douglas looked puzzled. ‘It’s Mr Samuels, Dad,’ said the child. ‘You remember.’

Douglas was shocked to realize that this was the proprietor of Samuels’ Restaurant and Tea Rooms, a well known West-End meeting-place, famous for its fine bread and cream cakes before the war. Douglas had noticed that the restaurant had lately been converted into a Soldatenheim, a recreation centre for the German soldiers. Now he saw that the dispossessed Samuels had become an old man, his skin leathery and his eyes sunk deep into their sockets.

‘I’m getting so absent-minded,’ said Douglas in an attempt to explain why he’d not recognized Samuels. Before the war, he’d regularly taken his wife and young Douggie there to eat cream cakes. ‘Can I have a packet too? They look delicious.’

Mr Samuels shovelled the warm pieces of vegetable into newspaper and screwed the top closed. Douglas gave him a pound note. ‘I’ve no change of that, Mr Archer. I’m sorry.’

‘Give me the change next time I see you.’

‘No,’ said Samuels but he changed his mind and put the note into his pocket gratefully. As Samuels rummaged through the old sweaters that he wore under his overcoat, Douglas noticed the star of yellow cloth that he wore.

‘Your boy always says hello,’ said Samuels, as if not many others did.

‘It will all work out, Mr Samuels,’ said Douglas. ‘I promise you it will.’

Mr Samuels smiled but did not answer.

Douglas hurried on to catch up with his son, who had his nose pressed against the window of Benson
the tailor. The cost of cloth had driven many tailors out of business but Benson – with a daughter who spoke a little German – was thriving, his window filled with German uniforms, buttons and badges. Young Douggie took his father’s hand and they continued together along the High Street. ‘Do you work for the Gestapo, Dad?’ said his son without any preamble.

‘No. I work at Scotland Yard. I’m a detective with the Metropolitan Police, just as I’ve always been – you know that, Douggie.’

‘The Gestapo are at Scotland Yard,’ said Douggie.

‘They are in the next-door building – Norman Shaw North – and they are nearly all Germans.’

‘But you work
with
the Gestapo…’ his son coaxed him.

‘Well, I…’

‘Sometimes you do, don’t you?’

‘Is that what you’ve heard?’

‘The boys at school said so.’ He tugged at his father’s hand. ‘Dad, me and some of the boys were wondering…’

The boy’s voice trailed away.

‘Well, come on, Douggie, out with it. We’re friends aren’t we?’

‘Could you get a Gestapo badge?’

‘The Gestapo don’t have badges; they have only special identity tags.’

‘Well, could you get one of those SS armbands…or one of the silver-wire SD badges?’

‘I don’t think so, Douggie.’

‘Oh, Dad,’ the child was desolated. ‘I bet you could, Dad. I bet if you asked some of the people at Scotland Yard, someone would give you one.’

‘What for, Douggie?’ said Douglas. ‘What would you do with it?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said the child. ‘All the boys collect them but no one’s got any SS badges yet. They asked me to ask you.’

By the time they got back to Mrs Sheenan’s home, the sky had darkened and the first few drops of rain had fallen. Douglas sneezed. He feared he was getting influenza. He sat near to the fire, now burning very low, hunched into his overcoat, with his hands in his pockets. Douggie sat at the kitchen table doing his homework. Occasionally he asked Douglas for help. But eventually the child heard the sound of deep breathing and knew that his father had gone to sleep in his chair. He didn’t disturb him. They had a small piece of boiled fish for the evening meal and after putting young Douggie to bed, Douglas turned in himself. He’d been guarding a tiny portion of Scotch whisky and now he poured a measure for Mrs Sheenan and took his glass to bed with an Agatha Christie book. But before he’d read more than four pages the detective was sound asleep.

Douglas Archer started early next morning and worked hard. He tried most of his best informants but it soon became clear to him that his usual underworld grapevine could tell him nothing that would help his murder investigation. He realized too that there was an intensive drive for information, and some of the better-known informants had been taken into custody. By the end of the morning Douglas knew that the people involved in this murder case had kept themselves away from London’s vast army of informants.

That afternoon, Douglas Archer was one of the few British nationals present at Caxton Hall. A senior official of the Reichsleitung der NSDAP – the Nazi Party Supreme Directorate – was in London on the usual spree of shopping, eating, drinking and sightseeing. He paid for his supper with a three-hour speech to the senior officers of the London police and SS headquarters.

Even the wily Huth found no way of avoiding it, and Douglas watched him yawning and nodding and providing perfunctory applause with his gloved hands. It was interesting to compare this with Kellerman who was also on the platform. He was an old hand at such occasions, leaning forward and nodding at each oversimplification and half-truth, and uttering loud cries of excited enlightenment as all the old slogans were trotted out. And Kellerman was able to convert his yawns into smiles, and, by pinching the bridge of his nose while bowing his head, he could make his dozing look like
the deep concentrated thought that requires closed eyes. And, at the end of the Party official’s long speech, while Huth was groping under his chair for his cap and stick and looking to see which was the nearest exit, Kellerman was at the podium, clapping his hands energetically and smiling at the guest. And it was Kellerman who, disregarding the programme, stepped up to the microphone and improvised a brief word of thanks ‘for a speech permeated with true National Socialist feeling and clarity of thought and purpose which admits no compromise’ – a verdict he’d pronounced upon dozens of equally dreary interruptions to the working day.

And as the assembly began to disperse it was Kellerman who, while still smiling at everyone in the room, muttered to Douglas, ‘Now perhaps you’ll know better than to put your name down as a speaker of the German language, Superintendent, eh?’

By the time Douglas got back to Scotland Yard, Harry Woods was eating tea and toast. ‘Detective Constable Dunn phoned,’ said Harry with unusual formality. He was irritated that there was a third officer working on the investigation.

‘That’s good.’

‘The picture agency says someone wrote to them for a copy of that photo. But that’s all they know about it. Paid for by postal order. No way to trace identity.’

‘Too bad,’ said Douglas.

‘You shouldn’t go to these Nazi speeches if it puts you in a bad mood,’ said Harry. ‘Dunn wants to check up on all the people in the photo – just as a long shot.’

‘Is there any tea about?’

‘I didn’t know about that photo you found at the schoolteacher’s place.’

‘Well, you know now.’

‘I told Dunn to let me have it tomorrow. I’ll see what I can do. No, there’s no tea left. It was horrible anyway.’

‘Then you can untell him. If he phones back, you tell him to carry on with the jobs I gave him.’

‘Dunn’s only a kid. This could be dangerous, you know that. And I’m not sure that Dunn has the experience to handle a complicated case like this one.’

Douglas walked over to a table in the corner. Here were the results of what must have been unimaginably long hours of painstaking work. The ashes of the papers burned in the grate, at the Shepherd Market flat, had been separated flake by flake, pieced together and sandwiched between sheets of glass.

‘Just do as I tell you, Harry. Right?’ Douglas looked closely at one of the black jigsaws of burned paper. He could see nothing there.

‘Yes, sir!’ said Harry with a mocking subservience.

‘I’m packing up for today. Where’s Huth?’

‘Talking to some SD people from Norway. Something about a heavy water plant. Does that sound right to you?’

Douglas grunted an affirmative.

Harry Woods said, ‘And what do I say if he wants to know where you are?’

‘Say you don’t know,’ suggested Douglas with a blank smile, and left.

Bertha’s was a private drinking club in Old Compton Street, Soho. It was no more than a cramped little bar on the second floor, between film-cutting rooms and old Charlie Rossi’s tailor’s shop. Daylight was eclipsed by a jungle of potted plants that seemed to thrive on squashed cigarette ends, and alcohol poured on their roots by wary girls and resolute policemen.

Bertha presided over barman and clients from her stool behind the ornate cash register. Her sharp tongue and coarse vocabulary earned deference from even the roughest villains. The Germans used it as a listening post and often there was some polite young tourist sitting in the corner behind the piano, saying very little and hearing everything.

There were half-a-dozen regulars there when Douglas arrived. All of them had been at the race meeting at Epsom, one of the few racecourses in southern England to survive the fighting. Now they were explaining their losses and arguing about their winnings. On the bar there was a bottle of French champagne, another was in the ice bucket in the sink. The men greeted Superintendent Archer warmly, although he’d put two of them away for three-year sentences, and brought trouble to the other four. ‘Straight’ Roger was there, melancholy looking, an Australian gambler who made a steady income from dice games, in spite of always using honest dice. ‘Straight’ Roger’s wins were due to the dice used by the mug; they were loaded to roll low scores.

‘Awful’ Jimmy Secker’s gambling was even more
honest. Usually Jimmy and his cronies lost heavily to the mugs. Unfortunately, Jimmy’s illegal games were always raided by the police who confiscated all the cards, dice and money as evidence. His victims were usually relieved to hear no more about it.

‘Bertha, a glass for my old pal, Superintendent Archer of the Yard.’

The words were spoken by a man who was clearly the leader of the group. He was smartly dressed in a suit of expensive Donegal tweed, flecked with brown and black twists of yarn. In his top pocket, arranged too obviously, there was a silk handkerchief of dark gold colour. Only his face jarred with this carefully chosen outfit; his complexion was yellow and waxy, his eyes small and furtive. Neither did his moustache fit with his country gentleman’s wardrobe; it was thin and carefully trimmed, the sort of thing an actor might have chosen when playing the role of a gigolo.

‘Cut it out, Arthur,’ said Douglas. He was about to say how much he detested being called Archer of the Yard but decided not to reveal this fact.

‘No offence, old cock,’ said Arthur, grabbing the champagne from the barman and adding another measure to the amount already there. ‘Pour that over your tonsils, Superintendent, it’s the real thing.’ He twisted the dripping wet bottle, to show Douglas the label.

‘I believe you, Arthur,’ said Douglas. Arthur – the snout-king – traded in stolen wine and cigarettes and these were good times for such men.