SS-GB (32 page)

Douglas didn’t respond, but by that time he’d been able to read some of the names on the sheet that Huth was waving at him. The teleprinter message had come from the SS Hospital at Hyde Park Corner.

SPRINGER, PROF. MAX. SS-GRUPPENFüHRER. NR.
4099.
STAB RFSS. DIED OF WOUNDS
02.33.

‘Yes, they keep dying,’ said Huth.

‘And Professor Springer was killed there?’

‘We’ve lost a good friend, Superintendent.’ He reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink, adding water to it with exaggerated care, like a stage drunk.

‘Have we?’

‘He was my friend at the court of King Heinrich,’ said Huth. ‘The Reichsführer-SS had given him a free hand to find a way in which the SS could take over the nuclear experiments from the army.’ Huth’s fist clenched hard. ‘My authority came through Springer.’ Huth looked at his fist. ‘I gave him a place at the back, near the Naval Staff, but the bloody fool had
to move closer to the grave, to see better. A piece of masonry fell on him.’

‘Does it mean your investigation might be stopped?’ said Douglas. He sipped at the whisky but drank very little of it.

‘Not a chance of that, thank goodness,’ said Huth. He was still looking at himself. His trousers were muddy and one knee was torn. Douglas guessed that he’d been one of the working party who extricated Springer from under the fallen stonework.

‘You’ve known Professor Springer a long time?’

‘I could tell you stories, Archer. Things you’d never believe. I was with Springer that weekend, when we killed the brownshirt leaders. I met him at Tempelhof when he landed on the special flight bringing Karl Ernst from Bremen. Springer had arrested him in his hotel that morning. Karl Ernst was Röhm’s second in command, Reichstag Deputy and Counsellor of State, but he submitted to arrest as meek as a lamb.’ Huth sipped his whisky. He was more relaxed but frowning slightly as if making an effort to remember the weekend of the ‘putsch’.

Huth smiled. ‘They didn’t know what was happening to them, those SA men. They couldn’t imagine that the Führer might have told us to execute them. Ernst was typical. He thought it was an uprising against the Führer. Just before our firing squad let him have it, he squared his shoulders and shouted “Heil Hitler!” and they fired, and killed him.’ Huth closed his open hands over his face as Douglas had seen asthma sufferers do, and like them he breathed slowly and carefully. ‘Funny, eh?’

‘Not very funny,’ said Douglas.

‘It taught me a lesson,’ said Huth bitterly. ‘I watched that fool die and I vowed that I would never listen to any kind of political claptrap ever again.’

‘And did you?’

‘Do I look like an idealist, Archer?’

Douglas shook his head but didn’t answer lest he spoil Huth’s mood for talking. He’d known other men like this. He’d heard them confess to terrible crimes, and, like Huth, such men spoke of themselves with a strange impersonal detachment.

‘It was easy to see the Nazis would win,’ said Huth. ‘The Nazis were the only ones with the brains and determination. And the only ones with the organization. I like winners, Archer. My father liked winners too. He was a ruthless bastard, my God how I detest him still. Being at the top of the class was the only way to win my father’s affections, so I made sure I was at the top of the class. Nazis are winners, Archer, don’t be tempted into working against them.’

Douglas nodded.

‘Next week I’ll be in Berlin. I’ll talk to the Reichsführer-SS and perhaps to the Führer too. They’ll have to give me Springer’s job because there is no one with all the information,’ he tapped his head, ‘and eventually I’ll get Springer’s rank too. Cheer up! Kellerman’s days are numbered, Archer. We’ll be rid of him before next month’s out. I’ll have him upstairs, sitting in a chair, answering a lot of difficult questions about his bank account in Switzerland and the bribes he’s getting from some of the contractors building the new prisons.’

The surprise showed on Douglas’s face.

Huth said, ‘I’ve got a file this thick on Kellerman. Why do you think he’s so keen to get a chance of searching through my documentation? He’s not interested in taking over the atomic bomb programme, he’s just anxious to save his skin.’ He drank water. ‘Do you want to stay with me, Archer?’

‘On your staff?’

‘There’s not many of Springer’s personal staff that I will want to keep. If you stay with me, you can come all the way to the top. I’ll make you a German citizen and bring you into the SD immediately – no more rationing, travel restrictions or finance control.’ He looked at Douglas.

‘I thought you only liked winners,’ said Douglas.

He gave a thin smile. ‘Not as a personal assistant,’ he said.

Perhaps his offer was well meant. To what extent it was a spontaneous and clumsy Teutonic attempt at flattery, and to what extent a carefully planned proposition, Douglas could not decide.

Huth got up and went to the window. ‘You didn’t talk to Mayhew yesterday?’ he said without turning round.

‘I’ll find him,’ said Douglas.

Huth was silhouetted against the light and Douglas saw the way in which his fingers fluttered nervously at his side, as if he was trying to remove dirt, or glue or memories from the tips of them. ‘Mayhew is an educated man,’ said Huth as much to himself as to Douglas. ‘A cultured, reasonable individual.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Douglas.

‘He has no personal quarrel with me, does he? What’s he looking for? Prestige and the respect of his equals. That’s what motivates all normal men. Between us we can come to some kind of arrangement. And the result will reflect credit upon both of us, and elevate us in the way we wish. Can you tell him that from me?’

It was breathtaking cynicism, even by Huth’s standard. ‘And what guarantees do I have?’

‘You have that wonderful excuse that you only obeyed orders. Be grateful for that, my friend.’

‘I’ll be a contact,’ said Douglas, ‘but not an informant.’
Even as he said it he recognized the rationalization as something he’d heard from countless men he’d used – and despised – in the past.

There was a knock at the door. Huth bellowed ‘Come in’ and a porter entered with a bucket of coal and began to build a fire in the grate. Huth nodded Douglas’s dismissal.

Douglas got to his feet, and thanked the Providence that Huth was not one of those Germans who went through the ritual of saying ‘Heil Hitler!’ at the end of each such meeting. In front of the old porter it would have been just more than Douglas could have endured.

A mass of paperwork was piled up on Douglas’s desk and Harry Woods was late. Douglas cursed him for an inefficient fool. Today of all days he could have used his help. He looked at Harry’s desk diary and found an appointment with the Superintendent Crime at 9.30
A.M.
Douglas phoned the clerk and invented a story about Harry being ill. The clerk made a joke of it; Harry’s inability to be punctual was well known.

Douglas sent a civilian clerk to look for Harry in Joe’s Café. It was too early for the ‘dive’ of the ‘Red Lion’, or the CID’s ‘tank’ across the road. Douglas phoned the desk Sergeant at Cannon Row police station next door, to see if Harry was in there gossiping.

When all the answers were negative, Douglas phoned Kellerman’s chief clerk. He asked him for the address of the arrest team collecting point in the Islington district where Harry Woods lived. It took him fifteen minutes to get the answer: York Way Goods Depot, behind King’s Cross Station up until last night at 10.30
P.M.
After that, they began using the Caledonian Road Cattle Market as an overspill.

Douglas phoned Huth in his office. ‘Standartenführer.
I think it’s possible that Harry Woods has been picked up by one of the arrest teams.’ There was no reply. Douglas added, ‘He didn’t come in this morning, in spite of an appointment with the Superintendent Crime.’ After another long period of silence, Douglas said, ‘Are you there, sir?’

‘I can’t think how Woods stayed free so long,’ said Huth. ‘Well, you’ll have to get yourself another Detective Sergeant. Can you find someone who speaks German?’

‘I’m going to look for Harry,’ said Douglas.

‘Suit yourself,’ said Huth. ‘But make sure there is someone behind that desk by eight o’clock tomorrow morning. This is no time to work with a depleted manpower.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Douglas and hung up the phone.

Harry Woods lived in Liverpool Road. At one time they’d had the whole house but now its upper two floors were rented to another family. Harry Woods and his wife Joan ate their meals in the basement kitchen and that’s where Douglas sat while Joan made him a cup of tea.

He guessed what had happened as soon as Mrs Woods opened the door. She was still in her dressing-gown, her hair uncombed and her eyes red with crying. She was much younger than Harry. At one time she’d been the prettiest typist in her office typing pool, where Harry Woods met her while investigating a theft at a factory. Now her blonde hair had gone colourless and her face was pinched with the cold. She smiled as she passed the weak unsweetened tea across the table, ran a hand through her dishevelled hair and self-consciously pulled the neck of her dressing-gown together.

They had arrested Harry Woods at three o’clock that morning. The German officer arrived with his team of twelve soldiers. The very young Metropolitan police Constable, from some outlying Division, had never heard of Harry Woods. ‘He’d never heard of Scotland Yard either if you ask me,’ added Joan Woods bitterly.

‘Didn’t Harry show them his warrant card, Joan?’

‘The German officer glanced at it, thanked Harry very much and put it in his pocket. He was polite enough, the officer…he regretted it, he said. But he spoke hardly any English, and you know Harry’s just
no good at all with this German, Mr Archer. If you’d been here it would have all been different. You know how to speak with them, Harry always says that.’

‘You should have phoned the Yard, Joan.’

‘The public phones had soldiers guarding them. They would only permit official calls, you see. I saw the woman next door coming home after trying it.’

‘Yes, I suppose they need the public phones in order to keep in touch with the arrest teams.’

‘I went round to the police station and waited there for hours. Finally I managed to find the station Sergeant – he’s an old friend of Harry’s and I know his wife – and he told me to go home and get some sleep. He said it was all a mistake and that Harry would probably be back here before me.’ She shrugged. ‘But he wasn’t, was he?’

‘The Germans are holding hundreds – perhaps thousands – to question them about the explosion at Highgate. It might be a couple of days before we locate Harry and then it might take another day to complete the paperwork to free him. It’s bound to be a muddle, Joan.’

‘You’ve always been good to us, Mr Archer,’ she said. In fact Douglas had always found it difficult to get along with Joan Woods. She resented Douglas’s accent and his middle-class manners and the way in which his University education had automatically provided him with Sub-Divisional Inspector’s rank, while Harry had spent all his life getting to be a Detective Sergeant.

‘We’re a team, Harry and I,’ said Douglas.

‘Harry cried when he found that you’d got his brother off that deportation order. We never realized that it was you who wangled it for us. Harry dotes on young Sid. He cried. If I never move from here alive; Harry cried.’

‘Thank the Police Surgeon too, Joan. He wrote a long letter about Sid being too ill to work properly.’ Douglas got to his feet. ‘Anyway I’ll chase Harry up now. But don’t be worried if he’s still not home tonight. It will be a long job.’

‘Harry’s a good man, Mr Archer.’

‘I
know
he is, Joan.’

Outside the basement window there were only the whitewashed stone steps up to the street level, each step with its potted plant withered by the cold. There was a scurry of wind and some litter tumbled down the steps with a sound like running water. ‘It’s damned cold,’ said Joan Woods, blowing on her hands.

Worse, thought Douglas, for all those unfortunates who were being held prisoner in the open. ‘Don’t let it get you down, Joan,’ he said.

She gave him a flicker of a smile. There was no real communication between the two of them. They had nothing in common, except Harry.

Douglas began in the Caledonian Road Market. He knew it from before the war. On Sundays the whole of London came here to buy anything from old clothes to antique silver. Often Douglas had impatiently followed his Uncle Alex as he studied heaps of radio components, broken typewriters and piles of old books.

Douglas had not expected that there would be as many prisoners as this. In places, the inner perimeter wire had been broken and trampled by sheer weight of numbers. Only the metal rails, that were the permanent part of the cattle pens, steadied the crowd to prevent a major disaster.

The endless sea of heads moved constantly, like an ocean lapping at the high outer wire fence and the deserted roadway where the soldiers patrolled. Large numerals on posts marked the various groups of ‘detainees’ at the time of their arrival but now the overcrowding had caused the groups to merge and mingle. Even while Douglas watched, a young girl tore the yellow cloth star from her coat and climbed across the low pen railing to join another group of prisoners. In Market Road there were five Midland Red buses bearing ‘Im Dienst der Deutschen Wehrmacht’ stickers. Douglas guessed that a lot of the Jewish families would never get to the interrogation centres. They would be sent directly to the notorious concentration camp at Wenlock Edge.

Douglas’s pass took him through the outer ring of guards, and into the hut near the weighbridge, now
occupied by a dozen frantic army clerks, swearing, shouting and arguing. There was no use inquiring about a man named Woods, they were arguing about a discrepancy of ninety persons in that morning’s arrivals. Douglas waved his pass and moved off into the inner compound.

Perhaps hell is like that; a discordant confusion of anxious souls. Some argued, some slept, some shouted, some wept, some wrote, some sketched and many conspired about their coming interrogation. But mostly they did no more than stare into space, eyes unfocused as they tried to see tomorrow. After nearly two hours of elbowing his way through the crowds, Douglas had become as dazed as they were. No matter how systematic his search, he knew that it would be possible to pass within arm’s length of Harry without seeing him. No matter how methodical his movements, the crowd surged round him so that he saw the same individuals again and again. More than once, footsore and hungry, Douglas was ready to abandon his task. And yet he knew that, if the positions were reversed, Harry would never give up looking for Douglas, simply because the idea would not occur to him.