SS-GB (18 page)

‘Have you ever heard of an atomic bomb?’ Springer asked Douglas.

‘Before the war…there were newspaper articles but no one took them seriously.’

Springer nodded and turned away. Only by dressing up the complexities in a mumbo-jumbo of Black Magic was he able to get much of a response from the Reichsführer-SS. Even now very few people would believe his estimates of the damage an atomic explosion could cause, and even fewer could follow the reasoning that led him to that conclusion. Douglas stood back while Springer talked with Huth.

Soon it was obvious that Huth’s knowledge was no more than a hasty reading of relevant theories, skilfully applied to the fact of everyday problems. But even this was beyond the vocabulary of Douglas’s excellent and fluent German, and the ideas were beyond his grasp of science. But now he understood the way in which the two men had got the support of Himmler’s personal astrologer. With the aid of the Black Magic chart they had persuaded the Reichsführer-SS that the atomic explosion was part of a pre-ordained destiny, a means by which Himmler and his Führer would lead the German people to world conquest. But Springer and Huth had no illusions about Black Magic. They were concerned with more practical aspects of their future. ‘Do we know how far the army have got with their programme?’ Springer asked Huth.

‘The pile must have been running,’ said Huth. ‘It probably got too hot, and the reaction got out of
control. That’s the only way to explain the burns on Spode’s body.’

‘The army have kept their secrets well,’ said Springer. ‘They must have captured the British work more or less intact.’

‘I’m hoping that we’ll be able to discover whether Spode’s burns were from uranium or plutonium,’ said Huth.

‘Not plutonium,’ said Springer. ‘If they’ve got as far as that, we’ll never get control of the programme.’

‘This officer is working on the Spode murder,’ said Huth.

Springer turned to look at Douglas, as if noticing him for the first time. ‘Do you know what radioactivity is?’

‘No, sir,’ said Douglas rather than hazard a guess for this forbidding man.

‘It’s the emission of radiation from unstable atomic nuclei – alpha particles, nucleons, gamma rays, electrons and so on. For the human body it can be fatal; we call it radiation sickness,’ said Springer.

‘Would it burn the skin?’ Douglas asked. ‘Like sunburn?’

‘Yes,’ said Huth, anticipating the next question, ‘Dr Spode was dying of it.’

‘Is it infectious or contagious?’

‘No,’ said Huth.

‘We don’t know,’ said Springer, looking sternly at Huth. ‘But, if unshielded, any radioactive substance can kill an unlimited number of people.’

‘Should we search the house in Shepherd Market?’ asked Douglas anxiously.

‘We’ve done that already,’ said Huth. ‘There is nothing there. I have a special unit, with detection apparatus, on standby day and night.’

Springer nodded. ‘I must go back to the Reichsführer
now,’ he said. He rolled up the diagram. ‘I’m thankful that he has realized that this could mean the end of us all.’

Douglas wondered whether Springer was referring to the demise of the whole of mankind or only to the political career of his master and immediate circle. Springer gave a click of the heels and a jerk of the head before returning to the map room.

‘There’s a standing instruction,’ Huth told Douglas angrily. ‘All senior police officers provide a contact address, or phone number, day and night.’

‘Yes,’ said Douglas.

‘Day and night,’ said Huth again as if he was trying to provoke a quarrel. Then the anger went out of him. He slapped Douglas on the arm. ‘Let’s get out of here. I’m going to give you a lesson you’ll never forget.’ He opened the door of the coach and climbed down the steps. From somewhere on the far side of the yards a steam engine gave a grunt and a gasp, then there came a long trickle of metallic sounds, as a goods train settled its couplings and moved a few inches forward.

When they reached the motorcycle, Huth pushed the rider aside. He threw a booted leg over the saddle, and stood tall to kick the engine into life. If he was aware of the dangers to a uniformed German riding the dark streets, he gave no sign of it.

They began a hair-raising journey through the fog, as Huth craned forward over the handlebars like a witch riding a broomstick. He had pulled the silver cords of his peaked cap under his chin, and found goggles in the pocket of his leather overcoat. The dirt on his face corresponded to the shape of the goggles and his beaklike nose. He seemed oblivious of Douglas in the sidecar beside him. Within him there was an anger, a motive force that gave
him the strength to continue long after his physical power had ebbed away.

Douglas never did forget that journey at reckless speeds through the evil-smelling London fog that swayed in front of the headlight, sometimes blinding them with a wall of reflected green light, and sometimes moving aside to reveal long ghostly corridors that ended in miserable grey streets. And all the time there was the deafening roar of the engine. Exposed and unsilenced, the four cylinders bellowed and screamed at the narrow streets of south London, voicing Huth’s contempt and fury.

Douglas feared for Huth’s sanity that night. Like a man deranged, he crouched over the handlebars, looking neither to right nor left but shouting at the world: ‘I’ll show you!’

‘Just wait!’ and ‘You’ll see what your friends are like!’ Although the wind snatched away his voice and mangled it, Douglas recognized the words, for Huth repeated them time and time again in a litany of wrath.

The journey took them through the depressing urban sprawl south of the river, a wilderness silent and empty except for the tread and challenges of foot patrols. After Clapham they encountered more and more signs of battle damage unrepaired from the street fighting of the previous winter. Shell craters, and heaped rubble, were marked only by yellow tapes, soiled and drooping between roughly made stakes.

Halfway up Wimbledon High Street – at the corner that makes such a perfect spot for an ambush – there was the blackened shell of a Panzer IV, a monument to some unknown youth who – with a Worthington beer bottle, filled from the service station at the top of the hill, and a box of Swan Vesta matches – passed into legend, and into songs that were sometimes crooned softly where no German ears listened.

Wimbledon Common still bore the skull and cross-bones ‘Achtung Minen!’ signs that a company of Royal Engineers had made overnight and planted along the grassland, when, with no more than a dozen anti-tank mines remaining, they tried to prevent the spearhead of 2. Pz. Div. outflanking the defences that were being organized at the top of Putney Hill. The churned earth of the common showed how the bluff failed.

They were at Motspur Park before Douglas realized that they must be headed to Cheam Village where he had once lived so happily. It was a small place, set amid parks, golf courses, sports fields and mental homes. For most people it is remembered as nothing more than the place they turn the corner, on their way to Sutton. Such transients knew Cheam only as the ugly modern houses that followed the main road, but behind that it was a pretty little place. The street where Douglas had lived then consisted of clapboard-covered frame-cottages, built long before the fire regulations prohibited such designs. That’s why they had suffered so badly from what the official diarist of 29. Infanterie Division (mot.) recorded as only Plänkelei, or skirmishing. In Sycamore Road, skirmishing infantry used flares and smoke grenades, and the resulting fires destroyed more houses than five previous Stuka attacks.

The machine-gun mounting on the sidecar clouted Douglas on the side of the head, as Huth swung the heavy bike at full speed up on to the grass and through the remains of a neighbour’s house. Now Douglas saw it, the ruins of his home, ripped open to expose its charred interior. As he climbed out of the sidecar Douglas felt under his feet the crunch of ashes that even the months of rain had not washed away, the buried broken pieces of his life. And he smelled the unique and unmistakable odour of war; it is a curious
mixture of organic smells, carbon, ancient brick dust, sewage-impregnated soil. This persists long after the stink of putrid tissue is gone. Douglas smelled this odour now and was grateful, for it alienated this place, so that his memories of it were subdued, as is a dream in fitful sleep.

‘Is it Jill?’

Huth wiped his dirty face with the edge of his hand.

‘What?’

‘My wife. Is it something to do with my wife?’

‘No,’ said Huth. Douglas followed Huth’s gaze to where a German army lorry, an ambulance and a couple of cars were parked in what was once his neighbour’s garden. Now there was no sure way of knowing where one property ended and another began. From here, he could see the place where the next row of houses had been ploughed into the earth by counter-battery gunfire that destroyed two German 8.8cm guns. Their twisted barrels could still be seen.

Here, on the edge of Surrey, the fog had cleared but low clouds raced across the moon, so that its hazy blur changed shape constantly and sometimes disappeared to darken the whole wasted landscape.

Huth turned away to yell at a couple of engineers who were rigging an electricity cable. ‘Ladder! Give me a ladder, here! Right away!’ It was the peremptory voice of the parade-ground bully, and the SS soldiers responded to it with redoubled efforts. Two more men came running across the uneven ground, holding a reel by means of a metal spike. Behind them the cable paid out to where more men were struggling with the starting motor of a mobile generator.

‘Come with me,’ commanded Huth and without waiting for the ladder he began scrambling up the heaped rubbish. Douglas kept close behind him as they clambered over loose timbers, and scattered ash
and plaster-dust into the air. Huth coughed, and then cursed as the belt-buckle of his unbuttoned overcoat caught in a tangle of rusty wire, and tore off. Huth kicked toe-holds in the plaster and teddy-bear wallpaper of what was once the bedroom of Douglas’s son, and heaved himself up to the almost intact balustrade of the upstairs landing.

Huth was breathing heavily and made no attempt to help Douglas as he ascended behind him but he moved aside to make room on the precarious perch. As Huth put his weight against the wooden rail, Douglas heard the creak of breaking wood and grabbed Huth’s arm as a section of the flooring gave way. The two men hunched together, and heard the clatter of the broken timber falling upon the rubble below them.

If Douglas was expecting thanks for saving the Standartenführer from a broken limb, or broken skull, his expectations were in vain. All he got was one of Huth’s cold humourless smiles that lasted only as long as it took him to get out his handkerchief and sneeze into it noisily.

‘Are you all right, Standartenführer?’ came a voice from the darkness below.

‘No more than a head cold,’ Huth called in reply, and blew his nose. Below them someone laughed softly. ‘Edge along to this side,’ said Huth.

Douglas followed him as he disappeared through what had once been the upstairs linen cupboard. Its hot-water boiler, crushed almost beyond recognition, dangled into the room below. On this side of the house, the upstairs front, enough of the floor’s supporting beams survived to hold the weight of the huge brass bedstead that had been their wedding present from Jill’s parents.

‘Throw the cable!’ shouted Huth. Immediately a length of cord was tossed to him. With an easy
expertise, he looped the cord and drew a hand-lamp up to where he could use it. ‘Give me light, damn you!’ he shouted when he found that he could not switch it on.

‘Immediately, Standartenführer, immediately!’ called some anonymous voice desperately seeking the extra few moments that a placatory reply provided.

By now Douglas’s eyes had become accustomed to the shadowy remains of the bedroom. He saw the bed, its brass disfigured, the frame warped beyond repair and the springs a tangle of rusty wire. And yet, thought Douglas, some looter must have coveted it, for the great bed had been tilted on its end, and propped up where once the window of their bedroom looked out over the tiny front gardens of Sycamore Road. The fast-moving scud thinned enough to provide an extra glimmer of moonlight. And now Douglas saw something else. Someone was here with them. Uncaring of their voices the figure remained spreadeagled across the bed, in a pose that seemed to defy equilibrium.

‘Light!’ yelled Huth again. ‘Light, damn you!’ a style of order which Douglas had come to recognize. There was a brief babble of German, a couple of attempts to start the generator, and a cry and curses as it backfired.

Bewildered, Douglas moved forward a fraction. Below him he saw the flashlights of the soldiers. The frame of the house creaked, and there was enough wind to hum in the telephone wires that were draped across the charred room beams. Then, with a cough, a stutter and a roar, the generator started, but the lights did not come on; neither the one in Huth’s hand nor the floodlights the engineers had erected in the garden below.

‘Did anyone ever tell you that the Germans are an efficient race?’ Huth inquired of Douglas.

‘It’s all a question of priorities,’ said Douglas. As he said it, the arc lights spluttered into life, their beams cutting through the night like steel scalpels as they sought a meeting place. Douglas closed his eyes and turned away from the glare before he was able to focus his eyes on the bed and its occupant.

He was dressed only in tattered bloodstained underclothes, hands wired to the bed-frame, head bowed, face bloody; like a Christ, as the men who’d tortured him intended he should be.

‘Jimmy Dunn!’ said Douglas.

‘You’ve seen a dead man before, Superintendent,’ said Huth.

‘Poor Jimmy!’

‘On an errand for you?’

‘Investigating the murder,’ said Douglas.

Huth reached forward and, using a stick, he prodded at the large piece of cardboard that was wired across the dead man’s chest. ‘I was an English hunting dog, working for the German huntsmen,’ said the crudely written sign.

‘Poor little Jimmy.’ So Harry Woods had proved right. It
was
too dangerous for an inexperienced young policeman and now Douglas tormented himself with responsibility for his death.