The Fish Kisser (16 page)

August 25th, 1940

If you are reading this our plan failed. Yesterday, the Willards, next door, were killed by a bomb. One of Churchill's. Part of his campaign of terror against his own people to incite them to fight against the International Fascist Party. We will not be defeated.

August 26th, 1940.

Started work on underground shelter today. Made trap door under stairs. Children must not tell anyone— sworn to secrecy.

August 27th, 1940.

Air raid last night. Worked all night. No problem with noise—big raid. Children helping nicely.

August 28th-September 2nd, 1940.

Too busy to write everyday. Working overtime at the office for the war effort. Then dig most of the night. Martha digs in the day as well.

She skipped forward a few entries, each much the same. Digging, digging, and more digging. On many days there were no comments at all.

September 10th, 1940.

Everybody working hard. 2 big air raids on 6th and 9th. Hid in our new shelter, felt safe. Throwing dirt onto bombsite next door. Warning of invasion given on the 7th. Operation Sea Lion is under way. Liberation is coming.

September 18th, 1940.

Digging finished. Using bricks from bombsite next door to make walls. Will take a long time. Battle of Britain officially over on 15th. Churchill lied—he didn't win. The Fuehrer is re-grouping to liberate us.

September 29th, 1940.

Walls almost done. Stones for floor very heavy. Still no word on advancing army. Air raids stopped.

October 15th, 1940.

Room finished. Door seals well. Going to Hampshire for a few days rest.

Trudy idly flicked pages but there was nothing more. Just five pages explaining why her prison had been constructed. Reading and re-reading the neatly written notes, she wondered what had happened to the family— What plan? How had it failed? Her muddled brain couldn't work it out and she was just putting the book back when something glinting in the bottom of the tin caught her attention. In the gloomy light she hadn't at first noticed the five silver swastikas encrusted with diamonds, but now she carefully examined them; turning them over in her hands, wondering at their intricate beauty. Then, worrying Roger might catch her and take them away, she shoved everything back and squirreled the tin under the bed.

“MUM, ARE YOU STILL THERE?” enquired Trudy, kidding herself that the typewritten words were somehow breaking out of the computer and surging through the Internet; inwardly knowing that without Roger's password, they could not. “I HAD TO GET MORE AIR,” she continued, almost apologetically.

“I TRIED TO GET OUT AT FIRST, I DIDNT KNOW I WAS UNDERGROUND. ROGER SAID HE WOULD LOOK AFTER ME. I SAID I WANTED TO GO HOME. HE CRIED AND SAID HE WANTED ME TO GO HOME TO. I PROMISED NOT TO SAY WHAT HAPPENED IF HE LET ME GO. HE SAID HE WOULD THINK ABOUT IT.”

She closed her eyes for a second, as if considering whether or not she should tell her mother anything else; then her sore fingers started again. “HE KEPT SAYING HE LOVED ME AND I SAID, IF YOU LOVE ME LET ME GO, BUT HE DIDNT. WHEN I SCREAMED HE PUT HORRIBLE TAPE ON MY MOUTH—AND HE TIED ME UP SOMETIMES, WHEN I KICKED.”

Suddenly finding herself short of breath she hurriedly added, “GOTTA GO,” and started another excursion to the tiny vent in the door.

“MUM, ARE YOU STILL THERE?” she continued, returning ten minutes later, her delusional mind unable or unwilling to accept that her message was going nowhere. “IVE BEEN GONE A LONG TIME COS I NEEDED MORE AIR. IVE BEEN SUCKING FOR AGES AND AGES AND I THINK I CAN STAY WITH YOU LONGER BEFORE I GET DIZZY AGAIN.”

“MUM,” she started again, pounding the keyboard fiercely, insisting her mother should listen, “WHEN I GET DIZZY ITS LIKE WHEN YOU BEND DOWN AND STAND UP TOO QUICKLY. KNOW WHAT I
MEAN?” Without awaiting a response, though none was forthcoming, she changed topics and typed. “I DONT THINK HE RAPED ME. PAULINE ADAMS WAS RAPED BY HER BOYFRIEND AND SHE SAID IT HURT BAD. I COULDNT FEEL ANYTHING WHEN I WOKE UP SO I GUESS I'M O.K. BUT IT HURT WHEN HE TIED ME TO THE BED.” She closed her eyes thinking of the time she was sure she had escaped—the second day of her captivity, when he'd caught her—then continued typing.

“He tied me up because I nearly got out. I'd hid under the bed and kept very still.”

Roger, paying his usual morning visit before catching his train to the city, had unlatched the trap door in the cupboard under the stairs, scrambled down the ladder, and slipped his key in the lock with the anticipation of a birthday-boy. But the gift box was empty.

“HE DIDN'T SEE ME UNDER THE BED,” she carried on, caught up in the excitement of her tale, “SO HE WENT BACK UPSTAIRS. I CREPT OUT AND GOT RIGHT TO THE TOP OF THE LADDER, BUT HE SAW ME. HE WAS AT THE BACK DOOR AND HE SAW ME IN THE HALLWAY. I RAN TO THE FRONT DOOR AND GOT IT OPEN, THEN HE CAUGHT ME. I KICKED AND SCREAMED AGAIN BUT HE WAS TOO STRONG. THEN HE TIED ME TO THE BED AND LEFT ME FOR AGES.”

She hesitated, her fingers hovering over the keys, deliberating whether or not she had the strength to tell her mother what else had occurred. Eventually, she made up her mind. “MUM. HE LOOKED AT ME. YOU KNOW—DOWN THERE,” she wrote finally, after erasing vagina and fanny, twice. “MY FEET WERE TIED TO THE BED AND HE PULLED MY
KNICKERS DOWN AND JUST LOOKED AND LOOKED. THEN HE SAID SORRY AND PULLED THEM BACK UP. THEN HE STARTED CRYING AND IT MADE ME CRY AS WELL.”

Trudy suddenly found herself sinking and pumped herself up with a few sharp breaths. “MUM. ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?” she typed, with a fervour that smacked of shouting. “I'LL HAVE TO GO AGAIN IN A MINUTE, BUT I WANT TO TELL YOU THAT I LOVE YOU EVER SO MUCH. I REALLY MISS YOU. PLEASE COME AND GET ME SOON. GET ME BEFORE ROGER COMES BACK. I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU.”

She stopped, and slumped gracelessly onto the hard floor, landing heavily on her left arm. The damaged and tender shoulder muscles registered no pain, the nerves too starved of oxygen to care. Totally exhausted, she momentarily slipped into unconsciousness, but, just a few seconds later, an explosive bout of coughing wrenched her from oblivion and forced her to start another journey across the room. She had woken from a dream to a nightmare.

“ITS ME AGAIN,” she wrote nearly an hour later, thinking she'd taken only a few minutes. “SORRY I TOOK SO LONG.”

Her crawl to the door had been interrupted by several bouts of torpor; when her mind had refused stubbornly to register anything other than the whooshing of useless air as she hyperventilated on a fetid atmosphere almost devoid of oxygen.

“IM GOING TO TAKE A BREAK MUM. DO YOU MIND? IM SO TIRED,” she typed

laboriously as her mind and body continued to slow, while her biological clock sped up, racing toward midnight.

A moment later she jerked back to consciousness; something important nagging her brain. “MUM— WAKE ME IF IM ASLEEP WHEN YOU GET HERE,” she typed, then movement stopped, time was suspended. No more letters jumped onto the screen for more than a minute as her fingers, drifting aimlessly above the keys, awaited further instructions. To her befuddled brain, the minute seemed less than a second before she questioned, “MUM, IF I FALL ASLEEP WILL I BE ABLE TO BREATHE?” And another momentary pause was followed by a short burst of movement as her fingers howled, “HELP ME MUM.”

“Ze captain has called a meeting in twenty minutes at the port.” Yolanda glanced at her watch. “At two-thirty.”

Detective Inspector David Bliss followed her gaze and his eyes popped: chunky gold—inlaid with rubies and diamonds. “Carder,” he mused, praying she'd not noticed his Timex.

“It's still only one-thirty in England,” he mumbled, more to himself than her, his battered old watch still behind the time. “God. No wonder I'm tired I've been up since six o'clock yesterday morning, that's …” his eyes closed in concentration, “that's more than thirty hours.”

“The ship's gone,” she said, confirming the obvious, as they drove down the narrow cobblestone street, overlooking the port, a short while later.

“Nice leather,” he muttered, sliding his hand over the BMW's white doeskin seat squab.

“A bit foggy,” she replied.

He let her misunderstanding pass with a smile and scanned seaward, looking out over the salt marsh to the wide estuary. But the SS
Rotterdam
had already dissolved into the thick moisture laden air.

The cobbled street was almost deserted, as were the three bars, which they passed just before the rail tracks. “Heineken, Carlsberg, and Royal Dutch,” proclaimed their towering signs without need of further explanation. On any normal day each bar would have been packed with its supporters. But today was abnormal. Although the hubbub of the ship's departure had died, groups of disgruntled workers were still gathered on the damp quayside awaiting further instructions. Rumours had spread from one group to the next that every truck and container off the ship would have to be unpacked and physically searched. Carefully circumnavigating deep pools from the night's storm, Yolanda parked on the edge of a large gravelled area amongst clumps of spiky sea-grass, polystyrene cups, and cola cans. Driftwood signposts, eaten by wind and wave, warned of the tide's upper reach.

“Zis is an old castle,” announced Yolanda, indicating a heavily fortified beachside bunker. “The meeting is here.”

Captain Jahnssen was waiting for them. “Detective Bliss,” he called excitedly. “We've got Motsom's car.”

“What about Motsom?”

“He can't be far away,” he replied, sheepishly dusting off his shoes with a handkerchief, knowing that one of his officers had been sitting on the information for an hour in the hope of catching Motsom single-handed. “We will soon have him caught.” added Jahnssen with more confidence. “We have detectives watching him now … This was built by the Germans in the first war,” he went on, segueing conveniently to a more comfortable
subject as his right hand swept around the concrete blockhouses.

“Impressive,” agreed Bliss, pointedly checking his watch, anxious to move on; anxious to start a proper search for LeClarc; anxious to have some answers for the dreadful Edwards on his arrival at six.

“This is the outer defences, where the guns were,” Yolanda explained as they reached the seaward side. “Look,” she instructed, pointing to horizontal slits where gun barrels had once dominated the Rhine estuary.

“The wall's three meters thick …” Captain Jahnssen started, when Bliss headed him off.

“Captain—the meeting … shouldn't we …” Then the voice of a junior officer came to his aid, calling insistently that everyone was assembled and waiting.

“Thank God,” sighed Bliss, eager to have the investigation in full swing ahead of Edwards' arrival. They were ushered into the armoury, which had been transformed into a modern conference room. A hundred or more men and women, drawn from half a dozen stations, chatted amiably, renewing old acquaintances, catching up on gossip—“You'll never guess who she's screwing now … Have you heard about…”

“Alright gentlemen,” the captain began, attempting to gain attention, but the commotion persisted until someone plunked a chair heavily on the old wooden floor and the meeting brought itself to order.

Bliss understood none of the captain's address, and was idly examining the intricately patterned brickwork of the huge vaulted ceiling when he heard his name mentioned. “Detective Bliss from Scotland Yard will speak to you now.”

Shit! he thought, caught unaware—I wasn't prepared for this. Raising himself nervously, mind churning, he furtively glanced around and was immediately
struck by the number of people crammed into the circular chamber. Yolanda had taken a front row seat directly facing him, and he sought inspiration and reassurance in her face. She smiled and gave a little nod, as if to say, “Go on.”

“You were very good,” she whispered later, as he sat down after outlining the circumstances of LeClarc's disappearance.

Very good—very good?. What does she mean? he wondered, trying to evaluate the strength of her words, worried that his address had flown over many of the officers' heads. But they'd smiled … it couldn't have been too bad.

“Mr. Bliss …”

Yolanda nudged him.

“Sorry,” he said, realizing that Captain Jahnssen wanted him again.

“I was asking … Do we have pictures of Motsom yet?”

Bliss rose. “Not yet Captain. I've asked criminal records to fax them over. But I've got some background on him.” He paused, shuffled through his papers, found what he was looking for, and gave details: “William John Motsom. forty-eight years old; a few minor convictions, not serious, but he has a bad reputation. Nothing provable, but his name has cropped up in several gangland hits.”

“I have information about his car,” continued the captain, thanking him, then speaking to the audience in Dutch for a full two minutes, leaving Bliss with the distinct impression he was telling them what bungling idiots this English detective and his colleagues had been in losing LeClarc.

As Jahnssen sat down an impatient voice barked in English, “How do you know he's been kidnapped?”

The question forced Bliss to his feet once more.

“First,” he answered, “a crewmember named …” He flicked through his notebook, desperately seeking a name, but failed to find it, so repeated, “A crewmember was on deck when King claims LeClarc fell overboard. The crewmember,” the catering assistant's name came back in a flash—“Jacobs, didn't see anyone else, only King. So we're fairly certain no one fell off the ship. King told me he didn't know Motsom, but I saw them together. And King went to Motsom's cabin after reporting LeClarc missing. Finally,” he said, his voice rising in a crescendo, “King drove LeClarc's Renault off the ship.” Feeling it was time to take some credit, he continued, “They knew their plan had gone wrong when I spoke to King. He knew I'd linked him to Motsom, so the only thing to do was to get LeClarc's car off the ship without anybody noticing. That way everyone would assume LeClarc must have arrived safely. Everybody would be happy, and no more enquiries would be made until LeClarc failed to turn up in The Hague for the conference.” He sat down triumphantly, the case for the prosecution complete.