We crossed the Rhine near a place called Emmerich. Don’t even ask me what bloody day it was. What I disliked was the number of knocked-up Sherman tanks standing forlornly in the fields. I wondered if any of them was Albie’s, and what chance he had had of even making it that far. The bridge was prefabricated of metal, and swayed with the water streaming beneath it. The water looked an ugly brown, and moved fast: we seemed to be too close to it. Kate’s wheels fitted into parallel tracks, like tram rails that dragged us into Germany. A sign on the far bank read Welcome to the 1000 year Reich, and you didn’t even get your feet wet! Courtesy of the HD. The D was formed on the last upright stroke of the H . . . the letters ran into each other.
I asked Les, ‘Who’s that?’
‘Bloody Highway Decorators. Highland Division. The HD. Pushy Jocks who can’t resist leaving their mark on every place they get to first, just to tell you.’
‘Like cats or foxes pissing on trees, I expect,’ James told us, and that was that. I thought that they were being a bit hard on them. The cats, I mean.
The Rhine had loomed large in my imagination. Now it was just brown and brutish, had the consistency of an open sewer, and was behind us. The next town we got to was like many I saw in Germany: houses reduced to their component parts. The number of straight roads away from the ruined towns was unnerving: it was as if the road-builders couldn’t think in curved lines. The up side was that Les could work up to a fair old gallop, provided we stuck to roads that showed signs of having recently been visited by the Army, and pretended that no one had invented the landmine yet. The down side was that if a fighter or a Jabo caught us in the open, and decided to invite us to tea, there was nowhere to hide.
I saw a couple of American Thunderbolts in shiny unpainted livery and invasion stripes – we weren’t even bothering to paint the damn things any more, there was so little opposition. They were low to the ground and looked pregnant, with a bomb apiece, drop tanks and wing-mounted rockets. When they saw us they canted over in a flat circle that brought them behind us again, and about two hundred yards over to the left. Then they flew alongside for a few seconds. I could feel the hairs on my neck lifting, but the nearest pilot gave me a dazzling grin full of teeth, and a wave. Then they streaked off into Germany.
Les said, ‘Those things do almost four hundred miles an hour.’
I said, ‘I think that one of McKechnie’s brothers just waved to us.’
‘Black boy, was he?’ That was the Boss. ‘I’ve heard that they have some of those. Good job, really: much steadier under fire.’
Les asked, ‘Why’s that, Boss?’
‘Fuck knows. Maybe they got a bigger dollop of raw courage than the rest of us when God was handing round the sweeties.’
‘You believe that?’
‘No. They’re the same as the rest of us, only maybe they’ve been so badly done to they have something to prove. Turn left at the next major crossroads.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Bremen’s north of us. At the moment you’re pointed towards Berlin. The Reds would be awfully peeved if you reached it first. Not to mention the fact that we must be catching up the front echelons pretty quickly: another few miles and we’ll be somewhere where the Jerry will want to have a pop at us.’
I turned back to look at him as I spoke. ‘We are in their country after all, Major. Maybe they feel they have cause.’
‘I expect you’re right. I expect that that’s what that policeman thinks.’
Les was already slowing up as I turned back, still asking, ‘What policeman?’
‘That one there,’ Les said. ‘I think he wants us to stop.’
There was a man standing in the centre of the arrow-straight road with his left hand extended palm forward to us. He wore a dark blue uniform with silver buttons, and white gloves. Apart from the silly hat he could have been a London copper. His hat looked a bit like an infantryman’s helmet from the Napoleonic Wars: it was tall and black and shiny, with a gleaming silver badge on the front. It had a narrow black shiny peak, but the effect was spoilt by its crown, which sloped from back to front. It made him look as if he’d stepped from the pages of Toy Town. His car didn’t help. It was one of those funny black VW things that look as if an elephant has sat on the boot and then wandered round to sit on the bonnet.
Before we stopped completely I heard the nasty little ratchet sound of the Major cocking his revolver. He asked, ‘Les. Why are you stopping?’
‘I wish I could give you a sensible reason, Major, but the truth is, out of curiosity.’
‘Fair enough. But if I have to kill the bastard, on your head be it.’
By then we had pulled up a few yards short of the man and his little car. I couldn’t see the copper’s reinforcements either; there was just this dead-straight road, the copper and his car. He walked to Les’s side of the car, taking his time. Les had to open the door in order to speak to him. His Sten must have been in plain view.
The policeman said, ‘You are English?’
Les replied, ‘Yes. Support troops. We bring food and medicines to the civilians after the Army has moved through.’
‘That does not concern me.’
Did all the bastards in Germany speak perfect English? And if so, had they done so for years, or was it a fairly recent phenomenon practised in the face of the inevitable?
‘How can we help you?’
‘By paying your fine at the next functioning police office you encounter. I will not insist on this occasion that you divert from your route to pay it in the nearest police office: you must be in a hurry – invaders usually are.’
He was a man in his late forties. His respectable moustache was laced with grey. His eyes twinkled. Either he was as scared as I was, or he found the whole thing amusing.
Les grunted, and asked, ‘What fine?’
‘For driving at over the permitted speed. You passed a large black and white circular road sign a kilometre back. What was on it?’
‘The number forty,’ I told him, leaning over Les, who gently pushed me back, ‘and a lot of bullet holes.’
‘The bullet holes do not concern me. The numbers do: they state the maximum permitted speed at which a vehicle may travel. I am glad it is still there. You were travelling much faster than that. I calculate that you were exceeding seventy kilometres an hour. I will not permit that.’
Les was one of those guys who loved arguing with coppers, no matter where, and no matter about what.
‘How do you know that?’
‘If you look behind you will see seven trees alongside the road. I have measured the distance between them. I start my stopwatch as you pass the first, and stop it as you pass the seventh. From that, and the distance covered, I calculate your speed.’
‘Have you always been a policeman?’ I asked him.
‘No. Only since the war was declared. Before that I was a teacher of mathematics.’
Les gave a deep sigh, and said to nobody in particular, ‘Fuck it. He’s jobbing me for speeding.’
‘His calculation is likely to be correct, Les,’ I told him. ‘He’s a maths teacher.’
‘Too right!’ That was the Major. ‘Guilty as bloody charged, if you want my opinion.’
The policeman’s face would crack if he ever smiled.
‘Fined many people for speeding this morning, have you?’ Les again.
‘Three vehicles . . . and one for driving on the incorrect side of the road.’
‘I suppose that you have measured the width of the road as well?’
‘Yes, I have. The road is seven metres at this point. There were also two Americans in fighter aircraft,’ the policeman said, ‘but they would not stop when I signalled them.’
‘I wonder why.’
‘Les,’ the Major said, ‘cut to the fucking chase, and ask him how much the fine is.’
Les gave him the You must be kidding me look, but before he could open his mouth the policeman told James, ‘It will not be necessary for your driver to ask me again, Herr Major. I heard you the first time, and, unlike our glorious leader, I am neither deaf nor a fucking idiot. The fine is ten DM.’
‘Right.’ That was James. ‘May we pay you instead?’
‘No; you would pay in forged notes. I am not an expert, Herr Major.’
‘What about English money?’
‘English no; Scottish, maybe. I was informed that Scottish moneys are difficult to forge.’
‘Give him a bloody dollar, anyway, Charlie. He’s earned it.’
It wasn’t quite as simple as that. We had to wait until he had walked back to his car, had written out a speeding summons for Les, and brought it back. When he reached over Les to hand it to me he gave me our first smile. Then he said to Les, ‘Please be careful, driver. Now the war here is over, there are policemen with nothing to do, and many small townships that will feed their people from the proceeds of court fines. Do not get caught again.’
Les put on the wisecrack face. He said, ‘Look, Jerry. I don’t know how to say this best; but in case you didn’t notice, you’ve just been invaded. There won’t be any courts, except Allied ones, and they’ll be fully tied up trying Jerries like you for crimes against people an’ dumb animals.’
Our Jerry wiped his smile off, and went dead serious on us.
‘You are very wrong, Private. No matter what is lost in Germany, we will not lose our courts of justice. The spirit of Germany lives in its courts, and we Germans are the most litigious race in the world.’
‘You haven’t met the Americans yet,’ James told him.
‘I’m sure that we will get along well with the Americans.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ James said.
Nobody seemed to know how to finish the encounter. Les did it. He’d kept Kate ticking over. Now he did it: bang neutral, bang first gear, and let her roll. The policeman stepped back and saluted.
‘That man had balls,’ James told us.
‘Yeah, but they were between his ears.’ That was Les. ‘He won’t last the week.’
*
‘Charlie, I’m not going to stop for another of those bastards. Lean out the window an’ wave your gun at him, and don’t drop it. Maybe he’ll get out of the way.’
Another day, another dollar, isn’t that what the Yanks say? In our case it was the same bleeding day, and likely to cost us another bleeding dollar. There was another vehicle parked on the roadside, and I could see someone in the road trying to wave us down. I couldn’t make out if they were civvy or military. When I could see I told him, ‘No. We know this guy. It’s Tommo, remember? He sold you that house in Stuttgart.’
Les gave me a warning look as we slowed, but it was too late. James had already picked it up.
‘What’s that, Les? Are you buying a bit of old Germany? Fallen in love with the place so quickly that you’re already planning to move in as soon as the shooting stops?’
It was the only time I saw Les properly embarrassed.
‘Just a little free enterprise, Major. Someone like me doesn’t get that many chances.’
‘No offence meant.’
‘None taken, sir.’
But you didn’t have to be a mind-reader to work out that some moral judging had gone on there, and Les hadn’t come out of it as clean as he’d like.
‘My cousin used to have a place in Stuttgart before the war, but he was bombed out of it. Perhaps you’d rent yours out to him afterwards, if he wanted to come back.’
‘I’ll think about it, sir,’ Les told him. It was a way of saying No ruddy fear, without face being lost all round.
‘Thank you, Raffles.’
Tommo strolled over. He looked far from comfortable himself. I expect it was something about being out in the daylight. What made it worse was that Pete lounged nonchalantly in the front passenger seat of their jeep, and that Alice’s Restaurant was on the back seat. We drew up alongside them. I opened the door. Pete grinned wickedly at me. Alice’s head was buried in her coils; I don’t know whether she was looking at me and grinning, or no. The Major stuck his head between ours. That made it a five-way conversation, which didn’t always make complete sense.
I asked Pete, ‘Why have you got the snake with you?’
‘Someone knocked the case over at Blijenhoek. She escaped and bit the pianist halfway through “Moonlight in Vermont”. Everyone was very pissed off.’
‘Pianist pissed off?’
‘I expect so. Dead, also. This snake doesn’t goddam miss. Should have been a goddam sniper. Either snake goes, or snake dies. Tommo made some promise to some dead Major in England that he looks out for the snake. We’re looking for what’s left of a zoo. They got them in Bremen, Hamburg and Berlin.’
‘No zoo in Berlin,’ I told him. ‘We bombed the fuck out of it.’
‘That’s good. They got Russians in Berlin soon. I don’t want to be around no Russians; they won’t like fellows like me.’
The Major asked, ‘Tell me about Les’s house: this buying and selling lark. Anything in it for me? Some bijou gingerbread house on the edge of a Bavarian forest would do; somewhere to take the girlfriend for a dirty weekend.’
‘I expect that I could fix you up, sir, given a few days. Furnished or unfurnished?’
‘The former, I expect. Is this quite legal?’
‘Why does everyone ask me that?’ Tommo bleated.
‘Your reputation precedeth you, I expect,’ I told him. ‘Why did you stop us?’
‘To bring you the news, courtesy of the new Polish American Forces radio network.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Me and Pete. The real estate business is too easy: too tame. We’re going to start a commercial radio station.’
‘I’m interested in business,’ the Major told them. ‘But what does commercial mean in that context?’
‘It’s financed from its own income.’
‘And that is?’
‘Small-ads – like the front page of the London Times: that and the accumulating values of its registered assets.’
‘It has a lot of those, does it?’ From Les.
‘Mainly properties in Germany and England. It’s all tied up. I’m not as well off as people imagine. Not like Pete here.’
The Major asked Tommo, ‘How much would it cost for me to catch up with the rest of you?’
‘Five hundred quid.’
‘Is that what you charged Private Raffles here?’
‘And Charlie,’ said Les. ‘He’s bought a small estate near Frankfurt.’
James didn’t say anything to me, just gave me a big reproachful look. All wet eyes and turned-down mug. It didn’t move me, but I told him, ‘Didn’t think you’d be interested, sir.’
Tommo told him, ‘Les paid a lot less, and Charlie a lot more. Charlie bought a lot more. He’s got an estate as big as your Hampstead Heath. But to answer your question properly: no, they didn’t pay the same pro-rata I’m offering you; they paid less. There’s different rates for officers: higher rates.’
‘Charlie’s an officer.’
‘Wasn’t when I met him; an’ he don’t look like one now. Looks like some sort o’ gypsy.’
‘Thanks, Tommo.’
‘Don’t mensh. I don’t suppose you want a snake?’
‘Thank you, but no. Why did you flag us down?’
And: ‘How did you know we were on this road?’ That was Les.
‘A clever friend with friends, who owed me. They triangulated on your last broadcast, and we worked it out from there. We been waiting here a couple of hours. I fill my pants every time I hear a plane go over. I was never meant to be this close to a real war . . . and I told you, we flagged you down to give you the news.’
‘What news?’
‘That you’re hot. Someone in the dirty circle has put the word round. There’s a price on you. Three grand no questions to the man who brings home your head. All the seriously bad guys are talking about it. A year ago I would have thought about it myself.’
‘Thanks again, Tommo.’
‘You know some scruffy Lieutenant called David Clifford? A bit of an older guy?’ Pete asked me.
‘Yes.’
‘Good guy or bad guy?’
I had to think about it. Les answered, ‘Good guy, we think. It’s difficult to be sure. Why?’
‘Arrived at the ’Hoek a few hours after you left. He was asking. I think he’s good: he’ll catch up with you eventually if he wants to.’
‘What was he saying?’
‘He asked me to tell you he had arranged a plane to get you out. All he needed was for you to tell him where from. He said to forget everything else; it’s time to go home and save your skin. I think I believed him. Maybe.’
‘What did you say?’
‘That I never heard of you. But that I would be sure to pass the message on if I ever met you. Then he starts buying drinks for the black fellow they call the Cutter. I think that they also call him Keck, which is something like his name.’
‘What did he say?’
‘They got drunk together, and Keck offered to circumcise your Lieutenant for free. I heard that bit. I missed what Clifford said back to him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he was running too fast. He knocked down Alice’s Restaurant, the snake bit the pianist, an’ you know the rest.’
Les asked, ‘Where did she bite the pianist?’
Tommo replied for himself this time, ‘Behind the piano, where he was hiding.’
‘No; I mean, where on his body?’
‘Oh Christ; on his bum. You know that snake’s got a thing about arses?’
‘Sounds like some fellows I went to school with,’ James told us. It seemed to kill that line of conversation, if you’ll forgive the pun, and anyway he’d made that joke before.
Tommo pushed a couple of old oiled-cloth envelopes at me. He said, ‘These are the deeds to your place, an’ Les’s too. Don’t lose them.’
Les asked, ‘These are legal?’ again.
‘They are deeds of sale and possession, made out by the best surviving Jerry lawyer in Frankfurt. Transfer entries in your names have been made in the property and land registers. Now: do I have to say it again, or would you like it set to music? You’re landowners now. Legally. God loves you after all.’
‘God, and Tommo Thomsett. Thank you,’ I told him, and asked, ‘Where’s Grace?’
‘Up beyond Löningen somewhere, I heard. They were slowed down because of a fight over the other bird they got with them. One of the Eyetie medics ended up in hospital . . . and then we shanghaied him to work on the wounded. Apparently he says he’s only going to sew Krauts back together again, so they beat him up a bit and slung him in the can. Lucky he wasn’t whacked. Some politician had to intervene to get him out again . . . you believe that?’
‘Why not? Anything else I should know?’
‘Lee Miller’s up here somewhere. She took pictures of one of those concentration camps, and the Army’s trying to get them back off her to prevent them being published.’
‘Why?’
‘You seen one of those camps?’
‘No. Why?’
‘You will, an’ then you’ll know why. I ain’t being coy; it’s jest best you see for yourself.’
‘What’s Lee doing about it?’
‘She’s on the run; heading for Munich – the Army ain’t got a chance.’
‘What else?’
‘Cliff’s in zone, an’ worried about you.’
‘I know: Pete just told me.’
‘He’s using the call sign Ratking, an’ listening in to the Major’s daily callover. He won’t butt in until you call him to get you out. If I had to trust him on a scale one to ten, I’d rate him at six or seven, I think.’
‘Pete didn’t tell me all that. Thanks. Who put a price on my head?’
‘Us Yanks,’ Tommo told me. ‘ ’s funny: I always thought you was on our side, Charlie.’
‘So did I.’
‘So someone must have told us to do it.’
‘We figured that out for ourselves. Who?’
‘Someone who don’t want you finding Grace, nor her kid maybe.’
There it was at last. I had needed someone to say it out loud before I could believe it myself.
‘It would have to be someone close,’ I told him.
‘So why don’t you give up and go home?’
‘I have another appointment to keep in Bremen now; and Grace is the excuse I need to keep going.’
‘I could arrange an escort for you. People I trust, with a lot of firepower.’
The Major butted in. They call his sort of butting in an interjection.
‘Very kind, but no. Anyway, I ask myself, why should you help our Charlie here? In my country we use this proverb about not trusting Greeks bearing gifts.’
‘Point taken, Major. I don’t like Greeks either. I like the Eyeties though: good sound criminal stock. I look after Charlie because he’s part a my family. Like the other guys I mentioned. He does me favours, an’ I do him favours. Favour for favour.’
‘And they’re all strictly legal.’
‘Naturally. So is this where I have to start to get humpy, and ask you what the fuck your problem is . . . sir?’
‘I don’t have one, Master Sergeant. Take no offence.’
‘And you still want a cottage in . . . Bavaria, you said?’ He pronounced it Barr varr ey . . . ah. It sounded very exotic.
‘If that’s not too much trouble, old boy.’
‘Nothing’s ever too much trouble for me to do; for people in my family, that is . . .’ At least he spelled it out clearer to James than ever he’d bother to do for me.
Les asked Tommo and Pete, ‘Is there anything else we need to know before we push on?’
‘I heard that every Snowdrop who had contact with Charlie in Paris has done a runner: AWOL. Probably an exaggeration. I think that that is making us Allies a bit unhappy about you.’ When I didn’t respond he added, ‘That’s a black Sergeant you call the Cutter, a PFC named Bassett – the same as Charlie – and some Lieutenant. I think his name was Kilduff, or something like that. I know all about the Cutter, of course – in fact I rather like the guy – but I don’t suppose you know anything about the other two, do you? They were supposed to be on your trail. That Snowdrop Oliver at the ’Hoek is all fired up about them. First they come into his patch without a say-so. Then they start missing their radio schedule. You have a bad effect on policemen, Charlie.’
Les said, ‘If we come across them alive we’ll let you know.’
Pete always thought the worst of me. He smiled across a tiger smile that meant, I don’t believe a word that any one of you has said so far, and said out loud, ‘Your pal Albie Grayling: the tank commander. He’s up in Löningen now, and laid up for a couple of days. He’d like you to look him up when you get there.’
‘How’d he get there already? How’d he get past us?’
‘He didn’t stop to hobnob with the enemy at Goch, like you did.’
See what I mean?
Ten minutes later James asked Les to stop the car.
‘Get in the back with Charlie. I need to think. So I’ll drive.’
Les tucked himself into a corner, and closed his eyes. He asked me, ‘We all just joined the Mafia, didn’t we?’ but it wasn’t a question.