It struck Grace as peculiar that Sergeant Baines was sending her out to interview a man who was likely to later in the day visit the place where she was staying. Why not let her talk to him then? It was odder still he had assigned her to speak with Hans at all, a man she knew, however slightly. Shouldn’t the job have gone to Constable Wallace?
Most likely it meant Sergeant Baines did not take Hans seriously as a suspect. He had made it clear he did not take Grace seriously as a member of the police force. The task was a good way to keep her busy and out from underfoot.
Which did not answer the main question preoccupying her as she bicycled toward the refugee shelter where Hans worked. How did you officially interview a man whose kiss you remembered so vividly?
It was a problem she did not have to deal with. Hans had not arrived that morning, she was informed. It had never happened before. Maybe he was ill. He wasn’t in trouble with the police, was he?
Grace said no, he was a witness, to put his supervisor’s mind to rest. She was a well fed woman with a clipped accent Grace didn’t recognize, dressed far too well for the dingy offices where she worked.
“He seems such a nice man, and we do screen these people, but.”
A visit from the police had instantly convinced the woman that the nice man was, in fact, a nefarious spy or saboteur, and nothing Grace said shook her conviction.
Was Hans going to have trouble at work now? That concern was overridden by a more pressing worry. Why wasn’t Hans at the shelter? Had his encounter with Ronny upset him enough to make him miss work? Another possibility refused to be shoved aside. Had Ronny gone out looking for Hans? And had the predator found the prey?
Grace coasted down the steep hill toward the Tyne, squeezing the brakes all the way. Lost in foggy conjectures, she found herself too suddenly at the T-junction at the bottom of the hill. She clamped on the brakes as hard as she could and the bicycle slewed sideways and came to a halt at the edge of Scotswood Road as a huge lorry rumbled past.
She wasn’t surprised to find Hans’ lodgings located on a run-down street near the river, not far from the Dying Swan pub she’d visited during her futile search for Ronny Arkwright. What she didn’t expect was the dance hall occupying the ground floor of the corner building. The Palais de Paree looked the sort of establishment that had never seen better days.
Music escaped into the chilly air to mix with the muffled roar of machinery from the works across the road. Who would want to dance at this time of day? There was a door beside the dance hall entrance. Beyond a steep stairway led to the second floor flat Hans had listed as his residence. The narrow window in the stairwell was partially obscured by a crude wooden cut-out of the Eiffel Tower.
Grace stood in front of Hans’ door, feeling uncomfortable. The sound of music from below reminded her of the dance at the church. She knocked.
Her summons was greeted by a series of heavy thumps inside the flat. The door opened. The man who spoke to her in what she recognized as a Dutch accent was not Hans. He was short and powerfully built with a crutch under one arm, the other arm in a sling. He answered her questions in a gruff voice. He shared the flat with Hans and his name was Joop Pieck.
Joop was shorter and stockier than Hans, his dark hair cropped to little more than a shadow. He thumped across the room with his crutch, sat at the table, and invited Grace to take the other chair. Fish boiled in a pot on a cooker in the corner.
“Hans is in trouble?” Joop echoed the supervisor at the refugee center.
“No. I just need to speak with him. Do you know where he is?”
“Nee. Nee. He did not come back last night.”
Grace felt a pang of alarm. “Is that unusual?”
“Ja. Not like Hans. He is a clock. Hans is in trouble,” Joop frowned. “You are police. He is in trouble.”
“No,” she said, but her heart, beating too fast, was saying yes, yes, yes. “Do you have any reason to suspect he might be in trouble?” she forced herself to ask.
Joop shrugged. “We are foreigners. We are in trouble here always.”
“Does Hans ever drink? Is there a pub he likes?”
“Nee. He spends time with a lady friend, that is all. Friend he says. Only a friend.”
“And he always returns in the evening?”
“Ja.”
To her chagrin, Grace realized she was relieved knowing Hans wasn’t in the habit of spending nights with Mavis or anywhere except his own flat. But it made his disappearance—already she was thinking in terms of a disappearance—all the more alarming.
She stared across the table at Joop, trying to read his features. His face resembled weathered wood. His tone of voice revealed nothing beyond the struggle to put his thoughts into English.
“I worry about Hans,” Joop said. “I am afraid he makes trouble for himself.”
“How?”
Joop frowned. He appeared to be trying to find suitable words and failed. He tapped his head. “Wrong, here. Since we sank. He is angry sometimes. Other times scared. He wakes at night, shouting. He sees things in his sleep. Bad things. What could he do when he is bad in the head?”
“Is that why he is not working for the merchant navy?”
“Ja. He is afraid of boats now. Afraid of the water.” Joop sounded as if he couldn’t believe such a thing was possible.
Grace asked him to describe what had happened. It had nothing to do with the investigation but she couldn’t help herself. She wanted to know. Joop appeared almost eager to tell his story as best he could. He confirmed they had fled the Netherlands, seeking refuge in England. As they approached the coast a Luftwaffe patrol spotted them.
“The planes came at us with a bad noise. Bad. Screaming. Then bombs. All around. Hitting the water. At first they miss us. We are all on deck, cursing the mof. We are only fishermen. Save your bombs. Damn mof.”
Joop’s lips tightened and his features clenched in anger as he spat out the Dutch term for the hated Hun. Was it at the memory or his inability to communicate it adequately? “More planes. More bombs. Closer this time. Water falling over us.”
His hands made swooping motions over the table. “Then boom! We are hit! And again! Suddenly I am lying on the deck. Fire and smoke is everywhere. I get up and look for Hans. My foot hits something. An arm. No body. Only an arm.
“Through the smoke I see water. The ship tips sideways. The water is almost to the deck. Black water. And there is Hans, sitting down. His eyes. Such eyes. Bad. Dead.
“Hans, he is not a good swimmer.
“Planes come back. I cannot see through the smoke. I hear them screaming down. They shoot at us. Why?
“‘Hans,’ I say, ‘you cannot stay here.’ He will not go into the water.
“‘Hans, another boat will save us,’ I say. He does not say yes. He does not say no. He does not move or look at me. He is looking at the black water with his dead eyes.
“I take his arm and pull.” Joop made an appropriate motion with his good arm, hitting the crutch leaning against the table. It crashed to the floor, startling both him and Grace. He was silent for a moment. The boiling fish filled the air with a strong miasma. Below, Glenn Miller was playing.
“Then we are in the cold water,” he resumed. “The planes scream. Bullets hit the water around us. How long? Forever? They go away. I help Hans swim. I think we will drown. We keep going. It is getting dark. Suddenly a shout. A boat has appeared.
“When we get to land, Hans can speak again. The dead look is not in his eyes. Not gone. Now it is in his head.”
***
“Didn’t I answer enough questions this morning?” Mavis let Wallace into the maisonette and showed him into the kitchen.
Wallace took off his helmet and set it on the table. He unslung his gas mask, hung the box over the back of the chair, and opened his notebook. “I realize I’m inconveniencing you, Mrs. Arkwright, but in the circumstances…”
“That’s as may be, but the last I saw of Ronny was his fist in front of me face. You canna expect me to be bubbling about him now, can you?”
Brightly colored paper chains hung from the ceiling and looped up from the mantelpiece. On a side table two pine branches in a jam jar bent under the weight of tinsel and a big glass ornament apiece.
“I’m here to get information, not to tell you how you should feel.” Wallace had been called to break up fights between the Arkwrights, so he and Mavis knew each other. His official visit was an uncomfortable situation for them both. “Constable Baxter told me she observed Ronny threatening you when she arrived home last night. I gather he then left.”
“Yes. But I could have handled him if she had not been here.”
“But you hadn’t before Constable Baxter arrived?”
Wallace doubted any little brunette could have handled Ronny on her own. Mavis certainly hadn’t succeeded very well in the past.
“What did you do after Constable Baxter left?”
“I sat down and had a good cry.”
“And after you sat and cried what did you do?”
She gave him a grim smile. “Why I got up, went to bed, had a few more tears. Then I went to sleep.”
“You didn’t leave the house after Ronny left?”
Mavis shook her head.
Wallace persevered. “You like going out? You like the dances?”
Mavis looked surprised.”What does that have to do with anything?”
“The neighbors wouldn’t think it odd if you left the house at night.”
“Oh, they notice everything. Tongues wag, all right.” The kettle whistled. Mavis had been preparing tea. She brought cups to the table and sat down across from Wallace.
“I meant they might not notice on any particular night, it being a common occurrence.”
“Been listening to gossip, have you? If you’re suggesting I followed Ronny—”
“So you didn’t go out after he left?”
“Actually, I did, to use the netty. Is that against the law now?”
Wallace ignored the remark. “And Mr. van der Berg, the Dutchman…” He paused and sipped his tea. It was part of the ritual when a constable came calling. “The neighbours, as you say, talk and since they see this man who visits often and then your husband turns up dead the very night he arrives on leave, well, certain questions must be asked and—”
“Hans wouldn’t hurt anyone!” Mavis interrupted angrily “Hans and I aren’t having an affair, if that’s what you are thinking. Grace can tell you that.”
Wallace made another note and pondered a moment, tapping his teeth with his pencil.
Mavis struggled to control her temper. “I think I’ll have a tab,” she said and offered one to Wallace before lighting her own.
He refused.
Mavis took a long drag and tapped the ashes into her saucer.
Wallace asked her what Hans did and she described his work with refugees.
“Why isn’t he with the merchant navy? I understand he was a fisherman?”
“He’s never told me why he does that particular work and, though we are friends, it never occurred to me to ask. Mind, living in a strange country as he does, it must be nice for him to hear his native language.”
“Did he bring you those oranges as a friend?” He indicated the fruit in a bowl beside the makeshift Christmas tree. “Haven’t seen oranges in the shops myself. Nice Christmas present, oranges.”
“He’s not involved in the black market, if that’s what you’re hinting at.”
“No? That would put him in a minority. It isn’t polite to ask where a gift came from, is it? Still, a foreigner…”
Mavis had looked Wallace straight in the eye the whole time he’d been questioning her. She is a tough little thing, he thought. But then she’d have to be to have survived marriage to Ronny. He persisted. “Ronny didn’t let you know he was coming home on leave?”
“No.”
“According to the report of an investigating constable, a witness claims to have seen Ronny in the city a few days ago.”
“Oh? Last night was the first I knew he was back.”
“Any idea where he might have been before coming home?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care.” She abruptly stubbed out her cigarette, almost knocking over her empty cup.
Wallace could see her cheeks reddening. “We both know Ronny was a swine, Mrs. Arkwright,” he said gently. “But even swine are entitled to justice.”