We made it through the valley in a oner this time. At a Y junction at the end of our valley there was no village smithy under the spreading chestnut tree. It was spreading its new green mantle over an ageing AEC Matador lorry instead – the four-wheeled type, with the soft back. The lorry had that unmistakable sulky look that machinery adopts when it breaks down. The driver, old RASC like Les, was standing beside his cab looking perplexed. He had a fag behind his ear. I waved to him. He nodded back. In the ditch about thirty yards away – up the road we weren’t meant to take – one of those little Jerry jeeps was on its side. It looked otherwise unharmed. The driver caught my glance, nodded towards the wreck, and said, ‘Don’t. It’s wired.’
I never argue with Yorkshiremen: they get too much pleasure from usually being right. I said, ‘Thanks,’ as Les and I walked over to him.
James stayed put in Kate. Les must have felt secure: he left his Sten on Kate’s driving seat. It was National Nodding Day because he nodded too: up at the lorry. It had the name Obadiah lettered neatly in Gothic on a plate above the wind-screen. Les asked, ‘What’s up?’
‘Iffy diffy. That’s the third I’ve run this war. I dunno what he does wi’ ’em.’
‘Why don’t you get rid of it? There’s some good new Bedfords coming in.’
‘Naw. Obi’s taken me up over Italy. Might as well finish it with him.’
Our own esteemed driver poked one of his big pink fingers into the soft canvas canopy covering the lorry’s load.
‘What you got?’
‘Socks. Winter woollen socks, and coffee, tea and some boxes of medicines.’
‘Bremen?’
‘Yeah. You?’
‘Yeah.’
Les pulled at his lower lip. Then he asked, ‘When did you get your orders?’
‘Yesterday. I understand that there’s a foreign gentleman riding up at the front end, with one of the armoured divisions. Fielden, our gaffer, says he’s an RAF pilot who was shot down and evading. Somehow he established contact with the QM’s base area, and is calling forward the needful. He coulda gone ’ome before now, but he’s riding the back of a tank all the way to Berlin.’
Les grunted. Then he said, ‘Some fellah.’ The way he said it made you glance quickly at him.
‘Good job he took it on.’ That was the driver again. ‘There’s supposed to be an intelligence officer up here somewhere, but it looks as if he got lost.’
‘Did he now?’ Then Les asked, ‘You OK?’
‘Yeah. We were in a convoy of six. The Master called through for us from his jeep. Recovery’s on the way.’
A mile or so further on we pulled over, and chinned it all out to the Major. He said, ‘Your bloody Pole, I suppose, Charlie?’
‘We don’t know that, but if it is, it looks like he’s got your job, sir. I wonder why they think you’re lost? I know that your signals are getting out. Do you want me to check the suitcase again?’
‘No. I’m getting acknowledgements and sign-offs back.’
Les mumbled something. I didn’t catch it. James explained, ‘If some bent bastard has paid off the soldier receiving my call-over not to pass it on to anyone else, then I am lost, aren’t I? Who else knows where I am?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep calling him my Pole.’
‘Then bloody do something about him. Get him off our backs. It’s more than my job he’s stealing. Look at the bloody silly load that wagon was carrying. Why had it got socks and beverages, when today’s urgent need is probably flour, potatoes, powdered milk and blankets?’
‘I don’t know, James, but I suspect you’re going to tell me.’
‘Because they all command best prices on the black market today, you silly little man. It’s just like the stock market: different products command different premiums in different places at different times. The laws of supply and demand.’ He thought that Pete was substituting his own stores requests for ours, and then hijacking them. After that he went into a sulk, and wouldn’t say any more until we had put another ten miles on the clock.
We stopped for a brew. Les said, ‘Major,’ with deliberate gravity. ‘Do you think we should go back for him? He won’t have an effing chance if the wolves fall on him.’
‘Too late, I suspect. Not our business anyway. Police stuff.’
‘Pete wouldn’t do this,’ I offered. ‘It’s too sloppy. He wouldn’t do anything he’d get caught for.’
‘That’s all right then. No point in going back and getting into trouble, is there?’ Then Les said to me, ‘Five bob. Five bob says that he nicks the lorry, and kills the Tyke.’
We shook on it. We were bloody well going to retrace our tracks again, weren’t we? Conscience is like being attached to life by a bit of elastic: it always pulls you back to somewhere you’d rather not be.
Back at the Matador we found Pete, of course, but with a couple of blokes and a great Thornicroft tank-recovery vehicle. That’s a six-wheeled crane with all-wheel drive, big enough to lift and tow a tank. In the Army’s world, big is big.
Les said, ‘I wonder if I keep Kate long enough if she’ll grow into one of them?’
I said, ‘There’s Pete.’
‘Glad you’re awake, Charlie.’ That was James again. He sounded bitter. ‘Are you going to get him to go home and leave us in peace, or shall I simply shoot him?’
I said, ‘Hi, Pete. Fancy meeting you again. I thought you were away with Tommo, printing money.’
‘Tommo’s met another Mädchen. One with legs as long as the Suez Canal, and tits like pyramids. I can’t get him out of bed.’
‘What are you doing then? The Major thinks you’re back in the black market, and stealing his stores.’
‘I told you I’d be OK: they’ve joined me up in the police to keep me out of trouble until the war in Europe is over: can’t be long now.’
‘You gotta be joking.’
But he wasn’t. He pulled out one of those little cards with the red stripes on it to prove it. James butted in, ‘I was going to arrest you, but changed my mind when I remembered that your partner might still come up with a nice little German property investment for me.’ He nodded at Pete’s pass, and asked, ‘That thing genuine?’
‘Yes, Major, it is.’
‘Explain. Make me believe you.’
Pete shrugged. He said, ‘OK.’ It sounded like ho-kay. ‘I try. Poles in exile congregate with other Poles in exile, so for several years I associate freely with my country’s political representatives in Britain. That also involved me with your black market, because most of them were up to our necks in it. You say it like that?’
‘You could definitely say it like that, Pete,’ I told him.
He continued, ‘It was a hobby. Now I’m supposed to go home, but your police have a big black market blowing up over here. Also they want to keep an eye on me because I am a Pole with interesting political connections. They solve both problems by signing up one to solve the other. That was a very English solution: I think that your Mr Clifford may have put in a word for me. I am not stealing your stores, I am finding out who is. I am a military policeman, Polish Division.’
I said, ‘We call that a poacher turned gamekeeper.’
‘I like that phrase, Charlie. I will try to remember it.’
‘Get the Guv’nor to write it down for you,’ from Les. ‘He’s good at that.’
‘When it’s all over I will return to Poland and join the Resistance. Maybe I told you that already.’
Les said, ‘Ain’t it a bit late for that?’
‘Resistance against the Russians, friend: the Germans have already run away.’
Les looked perplexed, ‘That don’t make sense. Didn’t we go to war to free Poland in the first place? The Russians may have got there before we did, but you can’t believe we’ll let them keep it?’
Pete did what he always did if he was being asked to reveal his serious side: he took the piss.
‘If Poland is returned to the Poles,’ he told Les, ‘I will personally see that you get a medal from my country after the war.’
One of us had to bring the conversation back. Me.
‘We thought that broken-down lorry had been set up to be hijacked by you and Tommo, and sold into the black market.’
‘And you left him? That was kind. You used to be braver than that when I flew with you.’
He always knew how to put his finger on the button.
James admitted, not too gracefully, ‘You’re right, of course. That’s why we came back.’
‘I know. The British always do the right thing in the end,’ Pete told us.
He had a tall Redcap sergeant, and a nifty jeep with side screens and all of the gear. This man strolled over banging his stick against his knee. Why do they all do that? He saluted very smartly, which embarrassed us all over again, and asked James, ‘Excuse me, sir. You would be Major England, sir?’ James smiled, and slouched something like a salute back. The MP continued, ‘There are some folk a bit worried about you, sir. No one’s reported your signals for several days, and anyway you’re supposed to be about two days north of here . . .’
Les’s face flushed suddenly. You never knew in advance what was going to trigger his anger. I held my hand up to James, hoping he would just keep the guy going, and dragged Pete into the lee of the Thornicroft.
‘What’s happening to the Major’s signal traffic? He’s radioed it in, getting an acknowledgement, and then bugger-all happens. This is the second time we’ve been told he’s off contact.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Some bent bastard is cutting him out.’
‘You want me to fix it?’
‘Just like that?’
‘Just li’ that.’ Both of his hands were held at waist height, and extended parallel to the ground. It was that comedian’s catchphrase again. We’d used it on the squadron. It made us both laugh.
I said, ‘Thanks, Pete.’
‘It’s not a problem.’ Then he paused, and gave me the look. He said, ‘Why don’t you and your people toddle off now, and leave me with my problem.’
‘What’s that?’
‘You guessed wrong about this lorry being abandoned to the black marketeers. It’s the rest of this focking convoy we’ve lost. Five lorries, a jeep and twelve men, including a Lieutenant Fielden who won an Olympic silver for running something before the war. Everybody’s panicking except Pete. Situation normal.’
‘Who’s stealing the stores?’
‘Some bad Czech with an unpronounceable name. Pete will fix it.’ I suddenly remembered his characteristic way of speaking of himself in the third person.
‘You want us to fuck off, and leave you to get on with it then?’
‘It would be best, Charlie. I fix the Major’s radio traffic, OK? See you in Berlin, OK?’
‘. . . and now you’re really a policeman?’
‘Yes, but only for a little while.’
Ah hell. Bugger him. I tried to tell James and Les. Les sniffed. James said, ‘I know. We heard you – I’ve a phone call to make, I think.’ James wandered off to Pete’s jeep.
‘Where the hell does he think he’s going to find a working telephone in this part of Germany?’ I wondered.
‘You found one a few days ago. I guess he’s guessed that the Redcap has a field telephone rigged in his posh jeep. Wanna fag?’
*
‘You believe the coppers, old man?’ James asked when he drifted back.
‘Every time I do,’ I said, ‘they lock me up in prison, or handcuff me to a bed. It’s not very encouraging.’
‘What your Polish johnny says is more or less right. Seems there’s some Czech airman ripping the arse out of the black market by getting his supplies sent up by the Army for free, and I got caught in the middle of it. He’s upsetting all the proper racketeers, so Charlie’s Pole has been recruited to sort him out. Apparently this guy doesn’t need to steal our stores; we deliver them to him. You ever heard the like? He calls small convoys forward, pretending to be folk like us, and has the stores out of them.’
‘I think it’s confusing. I don’t know who’s on our side any more.’
Les told me, ‘No one is, Charlie.’ He waited a full thirty seconds before he spoke again. ‘No one ever was. Are we going to bleedin’ Bremen, or what, sir?’ he asked me. ‘It seems to me to be getting further away from us every day.’