''48

  There was whisky in the kitchen cabinet, but I was too dog-tired to get it.

  It was still dark when moans from over my head awoke me. I sat there and listened to Stern’s agony, feeling pity, anger and helplessness. The pity was for Stern, something I never thought I’d feel for a German; the anger was against those bastards who’d done this to him; and the helplessness was because there was nothing more Cissie and I could do.

  There were footsteps on the stairs – the whole house warned of any movement inside its walls with creaks and grumbles and even sighs – and then dread took a slow dive into the pit of my stomach when the shadowy form of Cissie appeared in the open doorway. I already knew what she was gonna ask me to do.

  ‘Hoke, he needs medication now, something to kill the pain. Antiseptic, too, and fresh dressings and bandages to keep the wound clean. He won’t last the night otherwise.’

  Oh shit, I thought. Goddamn bloody shit. I hauled myself out of the armchair.

  The enormous, Gothic-grim hospital was a mile or so away, along Whitechapel, its edifice forbiddingly bleak in the moonlight. I’d taken time only to wash away some of the blood and to pull on a grey sweatshirt, its sleeves cut away at the elbows, to protect me from the slight chill that had come with the early hours. Taking the pistol – I noted for the first time it was a Browning .22 – from the table, I tucked it back into the waistband of my pants and left the house. I ducked into the pitch-black alleyway, a hand running along the rough brick wall for guidance, and returned to the Austin open-top that had brought us here. The drive hadn’t taken long, but I stayed in the car on the ramp outside the hospital’s main entrance for a while, steeling myself to go inside. Only the thought that Wilhelm Stern had saved my life twice and the more I delayed the worse it was for him made me open the car door and mount the steps to the open entrance (those doors were open because old bones had jammed them that way).

  Holding the lantern I’d brought with me shoulder-high, I went inside.

  I still hate thinking about those wards and corridors packed with human debris, some of the corpses piled on top of each other as if their last moments had been spent struggling, fighting for attention maybe; now they were locked together in eternal strife, or at least until their bones collapsed. There were smaller forms among them, the deteriorated bodies of children, but I refused to look at their little withered faces, treading through them carefully, my eyes averted, looking directly ahead. They were everywhere, those mouldering things that were once living, breathing people, in every space, every corner, as I’d known they would be, and I shuddered each time my foot brushed against something brittle and crumbly. The sour smell was everywhere too and I clamped my hand over my mouth and nose to mask the worst of it.

  It took almost an hour to find the room I was looking for and still I hadn’t toughened myself against the carnage around me: I was scared to my boots, and nausea was only a heave away. Even as I broke into locked glass cabinets and examined vials and jars, looked through cupboards for gauze and surgical dressings, then into drawers for pills and syringes, I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see something I really didn’t want to see. I gathered up anything that might be useful, including sedatives, forcing myself to be calm, to take my time and collect essentials and maybe not-so essentials, loading scissors and safety pins, antiseptic creams and boxes of Elastoplast, anything that came to hand, into a laundry bag I’d taken from a storage closet. Only when I was sure I was done did I run from that place.

  It was growing light behind the distant rooftops as I drove along the broad Whitechapel High Street and weariness was making my eyelids heavy and my hands like lumps of lead on the steering wheel. It didn’t take long to find my way back to Old Castle Street, and I was soon hurrying through the alleyway, my legs hardly able to support me, then pushing open the door to No 26.

  Cissie was sitting on the stairs at the end of the short corridor, dawn light pressing itself through the begrimed window overhead to flush her hair and shoulders with its grey mantle. From her muffled sobs I knew I was too late. Stern was already dead.

  20

  WE LAY SIDE BY SIDE in the bedroom at the top of the house, both of us still fully clothed, Cissie watching me, one hand resting in the gap between us. I was on my back, looking out the window at the brightening sky, cigarette between my lips.

  I’d led her to this room – next door was a much smaller, single-sized bedroom – and waited for her weeping to end, aware that those tears were not just over the death of Wilhelm Stern, whose body was covered by a single clean sheet on the bed in the room below us, but also over her friend’s betrayal and everything that had followed in its aftermath: the botched attempt at blood transfusion, the slaying of poor old Albert Potter, the bombing of the Savoy, our flight downriver from the Blackshirts, leaving those other wretches, who’d been lured from their hideaways by the lights, to the mercies of a dying madman. Her bewilderment at Muriel’s treachery only increased her distress, because they’d become true friends – or so Cissie had thought – during a period of massive upheaval when the world itself had been stripped of civilized guidelines and robbed of most of its inhabitants. Despite their different social backgrounds, they had formed an alliance, each one supporting the other in moments of despair, their companionship helping them keep their sanity. Until Muriel had discovered her own kind again in the form of Sir Max Hubble.

  The guise she’d adopted in order to survive had fallen away like a cloak worn for warmth and not for taste, and that disloyalty – the choice Muriel had made – was something Cissie could not understand. The truth of it was – and I tried to make Cissie understand this – that the bitch had been loyal, but it was to her own class, to people of her own persuasion. Hell, Cissie had been there when Hubble had mentioned that Edward, England’s abdicated king, demoted to dukedom, had aligned himself with the Nazi ideologies, along with certain others of the so-called British aristocracy. Before the war their persuasions were no great secret, according to other pilots I’d spoken with, and only the formal outbreak of hostilities had hushed them. Breeding above principles, was their warped philosophy. Their own ideals were more important to them than their own countrymen. It was a decadent and self-serving system, one that flourished throughout England’s history, and something my own mother had been glad to leave behind when she made her home in America, even though she loved her birthplace, and these ‘wrong-sorts’, as she put it, were only a small minority. Muriel, I’d assured Cissie as I’d brushed her curls away from her grubby face, had only remained true to her own conditioning, and her double-cross amounted to little more than a natural alliance.

  None of it seemed to help Cissie much, but maybe some of it eventually got through, because after a while she ceased her weeping, wiped her cheeks and nose with the back of her hand and started to talk…

  ‘Wilhelm wanted you to know he was sorry.’

  There was a hollowness to her voice in this bleak room, its only furniture the bed we lay on and an armchair with wooden arms, a pile of boys’ clothing – different sizes, so I knew they’d belonged to more than one – resting on its cushioned seat I turned my head and her dirty face was not unlike a child’s itself in the pale, morning light, only shadows beneath her eyes indicating the trouble she’d been through.

  ‘He managed to talk?’

  ‘Towards the end. I think the pain lessened, but because of that he knew he was dying.’

  ‘Why sorry?’

  ‘Oh, not for what he’d done. He said he’d only been fighting for his country during the war, carrying out his duty, just like us.’

  ‘Yeah, his duty.’ I dragged on the cigarette, then took it from my lips, hanging it over the edge of the bed, smoke curling up between my fingers.

  ‘He was apologizing for Germany’s final action, not for his role as a soldier.’

  ‘He was a spy.’

  ‘Soldier, spy – it was all the same to him. But he was deeply ashamed of what Hitler did to his own
country and the rest of the world. He said Germany’s inevitable defeat should have been accepted with honour. He didn’t want you – us – to judge his race by the mad dogs who ruled them. Only the High Command had known about the rockets and what they were capable of.’

  ‘What’s it matter? Nothing can change what happened.’ My eyes closed. Yet, weary though my body was, my mind refused to shut down: it was still buzzing with everything that had happened since yesterday.

  ‘He just wanted you to know, Hoke, that was all.’

  ‘I figured him right and got him wrong. I didn’t trust him, but he saved my life.’

  ‘Wilhelm understood that. He didn’t blame you for your suspicions, Hoke.’

  ‘Did he manage to tell you what his mission was over here during the war?’

  ‘He found it difficult to speak towards the end – he was choking on his own blood. But he tried…oh, he tried so hard…’

  I thought the tears would start again as she cast her eyes downwards, but she straightened, her mouth set tight.

  ‘He wanted to set the record straight between you and him, something about honour among enemies. I think he wanted to die with your respect, Hoke, not your hatred.’

  ‘He’d already earned my respect.’ I lifted the cigarette again and held it over my lips for a moment. ‘So what was he up to?’

  ‘He told me his plane was shot down, but it wasn’t over the East Coast, it wasn’t a Heinkel, and it wasn’t in 1940. It happened one night, in ‘44, a few weeks before D-Day, and the aeroplane was a…what was it?…a Junkers. Yes, he said it was a Ju 188. It was gunned down over the Solent and the seven others on board with him were all killed. He managed to bale out before the burning plane crashed.’

  Her gaze went past me towards the window and the oncoming day was reflected in her hazel-brown eyes.

  ‘His clothes were alight when he jumped, and – absurdly, he said – he was more worried about the fire becoming a beacon in the night sky than burning to death. The rushing air put out the flames, though.’

  I thought of the scars on the German’s back and neck and wondered at his courage. To parachute into enemy territory in the middle of the night then to hide himself while search parties scoured the countryside for survivors, badly burned and alone, well, that took a rare kind of guts. Another thought occurred to me.

  ‘He told you there were seven others with him in the Junkers? That kind of bomber only carried a crew of four.’

  ‘It wasn’t a normal crew. They all had official papers on them giving them Slavic names, not German. If they got caught their cover story was to be that they were Polish and Czech freedom fighters who’d stolen the plane to escape to England so they could carry on fighting with the Allied Forces.’

  I clicked my fingers. ‘Exbury Point.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I remember hearing something about a mysterious German bomber crashing at Exbury Point, near the Beaulieu River where assault landing craft and barges were being made ready for the invasion of Europe. Rumours were that all kinds of secret activities were going on there –’

  ‘Yes, that was it. He said German Intelligence had learned that pilotless rocket aircraft were being tested along the inlet from the Solent and it was his job to discover how far ahead the British scientists were with their experiments. Only three men on the Junkers were meant to parachute into the area – the rest were crew members, but with the same kind of papers as the spies in case the worst happened.’

  ‘And it did.’ The end of the cigarette glowed brightly as I drew on it. ‘But how the hell did Stern get by after he’d jumped?’

  ‘He hid for two days, then was able to reach his contact in the New Forest when the commotion died down.’

  ‘But his burns

  ‘He was a bit special, wasn’t he?’

  And some, I thought, guilt over my treatment of this war ace nagging at me. ‘What happened to him?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, he stayed in the area feeding back information to his bosses until the invasion took place. He said it was important for you to know that he did very little harm to the Allied Forces’ efforts down there, because once the counter-invasion of Europe had started – which was very soon after he’d arrived – his intelligence reports had hardly any value. All he could do was try and survive himself.’

  I blew smoke and crushed the cigarette stub against the bare board floor, my fingers brushing against the pistol lying there. When I rolled back, Cissie was propped on one elbow, looking down at me. Her curls fell loose over her face again.

  ‘Hoke?’

  I didn’t answer, just stared back into her eyes.

  ‘We imagined they were all evil, didn’t we? The enemy, the whole German race, I mean. We thought they were all the same.’

  ‘They started the whole goddamn thing.’

  ‘Hitler started it.’

  ‘And the German people went along with him. People like Stern.’

  ‘We bombed their city first.’

  ‘Your country only retaliated for their first raid on London.’

  ‘It was a mistake. The German bomber was off course. They hadn’t meant to bomb civilians. And our own government knew that when they ordered the raid on Berlin. Hitler’s answer was the Blitz on London.’

  ‘Stern told you this?’

  ‘He was dying, he wouldn’t have lied. I never believed all the propaganda our government put out anyway, just most of it. Like everybody else, I suppose.’

  My eyelids were beginning to feel heavy once more. Cissie had a point, but I didn’t have the energy to agree or disagree. Either way would’ve meant more debate and I was just too beat for that.

  ‘Hoke?’ She thought I’d fallen asleep.

  I murmured something, or maybe I just groaned.

  ‘The last thing Wilhelm wanted you to know was that he didn’t mean any of those things he said at dinner. He was just tired of your goading, he wanted to strike back and he regretted it. He despised the Blackshirts too. He said they aligned themselves with the worst of his countrymen, the bigots, the Fascist bullyboys. That’s why he didn’t join them last night. In fact, he said if he could live he would help you in your fight against them.’

  ‘I’m not fighting the Blackshirts, Cissie. I’ve always run away from them.’

  ‘Then why d’you stay here, Hoke? Why didn’t you leave the city years ago?’

  My mind was drifting and I found it very pleasant. ‘Too much to do,’ I mumbled, giving in to the creeping lethargy. The mattress beneath us may have been musty and full of lumps, but I seemed to be sinking into an overwhelming softness. Something was shaking my shoulder and I turned away from it. The voice persisted though.

  ‘What, Hoke? Tell me what you have to do? Tell me…’

  I was gone and soon, so was the voice. Mercifully, my sleep was dreamless.

  I think it was the warmth on my face, the blaze against my eyelids, that woke me. My eyes opened and I turned away from the sun’s rays, disturbing Cissie, whose arm had been curled around my waist. Our faces close, she blinked at me for a few moments; she didn’t move away.

  Everything came at me in a rush and I was suddenly alert, leaning on one elbow to check the open bedroom door, then turning towards the dirt-smeared window, squinting my eyes against the sunlight forcing its way through.

  ‘What is it?’ My reaction had frightened her.

  I listened for a full minute before replying. ‘It’s okay. We’re safe.’ I couldn’t really be sure of that until I’d taken a look outside, back and front of the house, but I didn’t sense any danger right then and my instinct had always been reliable. I lay back on the thin pillow and realized I was aching in a hundred different places and hurting in a few more.

  There was dried blood on my arm where they’d tried to bleed me last night, and the incision still throbbed a little. My shoulder was stiff, the dressing that had covered the bullet graze now missing, and various cuts and bruises reminded me of the hell I’d been throug
h these past few days; even breathing too deeply caused a dull pain, but I could tell my ribs were only bruised, not cracked, otherwise that pain would’ve been a whole lot sharper. My ankle felt okay, although a mite sore, and I rotated it one way, then the other, just to test it it complained sure enough – a sudden twinge, was all – but there was no swelling any more, so I knew I could get around okay. Anything else – cuts, gashes, sores and contusions – didn’t matter. there was nothing to cause me serious problems.

  The back of Cissie’s hand brushed against my cheek. ‘What’s the diagnosis? You going to live, Hoke?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  Lifting my head from the pillow, I inspected the room, checking all was as I’d left it from my previous visit some months before. I hadn’t had the chance before we’d fallen asleep in the early hours, and the room had been dim anyway; now I saw it was the same as always, the kids’ clothes on the armchair, the fireplace full of cold ashes, the door to the corner cupboard that was stuffed with more clothes and only a few toys and comic-books still slightly ajar.

  ‘How’re you feeling?’ I asked when I was satisfied nothing had been disturbed.

  ‘My legs feel like they’ve run a couple of hundred miles and my arm’s still sore from the grip one of those Blackshirts had on me, but otherwise, ‘cept for some bumps and bruises, I’m fine. I think.’

  As she followed me in scanning the room I studied her profile. Her jaw was good and firm, her nose neither dainty nor dominant, kind of just right, the thin scar across its bridge white against the dirt on her face. There was dust and glass in her singed hair and the evening dress was mussed up, torn in places, but like me, she’d suffered no serious damage.

  ‘Who lived here before?’ she asked, unaware I was watching her. ‘Were there bodies…?’

  I shook my head. ‘No, the place was empty when I moved in. But my guess is that a woman lived here with three young sons.’