Island Madness (40 page)

The boy nodded again.

“And the jacket…”

V wriggled her shoulders. As the jacket slipped off the boy leant forward and snatched it up, clutching it to his chest.

“That’s what he saw up on the cliff that night,” Ned explained. “A man driving up in a car and dragging Isobel towards that shaft. Now. The man.” He spread his hands far apart. “Big,
ja?
”

The boy nodded again and spread his fingers out.

“Big hands too, eh?” Ned pointed to his eyes and mouth. “What about the face?” The boy shook his head.

“It was too dark. Now look at this,” Ned said, pointing to his own clothes. “Like this?” He pulled at his jersey and his old trousers. The boy shook his head. Ned pointed to the Major’s buttons. “Buttons, cap.” He held himself upright, like a soldier, straightening an imaginary uniform. “Uniform, yes?” He marched up and down. The boy clapped his hands. Ned turned to the Major.

“There you are. A big man in a uniform. You know of someone like that, don’t you? Who lives opposite?”

“Ernst?” Lentsch sounded incredulous. “You think it was Ernst all along?”

“I think it was Ernst all along.”

The Major fretted. “You must take this boy to the authorities,” he insisted, “to the Captain. Ernst must not be allowed…”

“You can’t!” Veronica leapt to her feet.

Ned threw up his hands. “V, I’ve already told you. I’ve no jurisdiction over him. It’s out of my hands.”

“Out of your hands! Listen to yourselfl You know what will happen to him if you do, don’t you?”

“Veronica…”

“They’ll beat him to death, that’s what. Just because of who he is. Isn’t that right, Major?”

Lentsch shook his head, not in denial but in despair.

“And even if they don’t, he won’t be fit to work after they’re through with him. Which is the same thing in the end for him, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

The Major looked down at the floor, ashamed.

“So what do you want me to do?” Ned asked.

“I don’t know. Hide him. Lock him up. You’re meant to be the law around here.”

Lentsch looked at them both.

“This is how it happens. The closer He approaches, the nearer His spirit draws, the greater the danger. You see how we are all being pulled into this crazy whirlpool. You still do not fully appreciate the truly corrosive quality of His name. Thank to my letter they will begin to worry that I am part of some conspiracy. They will start tracing back: me, Isobel, van Dielen. Her murder, his disappearance. There is quite enough there to unsettle them. Now there is this boy. It does not matter that none of us have anything to do with an assassination attempt. He has cast his shadow and that is enough. One of us might have been able to evade capture. But me, the boy? And what about Veronica here, who gave the Captain this information.”

Veronica bowed her head.

“They will come back for you,” the Major told her. “They will talk to you not once, but twice, three times; all day and all night. And you will falter. And that will be the end.” He stood up. “I have been wrong. If I go back, give myself up, perhaps these questions will be laid to rest. And you will have to try and find out the other matter before it is too late.”

Ned stopped him.

“There is another way, you know. To not hide but to cross the Channel. You and the boy, in the canoe. V too.”

“Tonight?” Veronica looked around, momentarily bewildered. “But I’m on stage tonight.”

Ned began to laugh. “Trust you, V.” He turned to the Major again. “The sea’s calm enough, if they don’t catch you in the first couple of miles. There’s a patrol boat out round the Casquets, isn’t there?”

“Once an hour it goes. But I am not a sailor, Ned. I would probably end up sailing straight into Cherbourg.”

“A compass would set you straight.” He didn’t tell them of the currents. They’d have to chance it.

Lentsch was thinking. “What about you? I don’t want you getting mixed up in this.”

“No one knows you’re here, if that’s what you mean.”

Veronica looked embarrassed.

“I’m afraid that’s not quite right. Zep told me once that no one had any idea where the Major went every evening. So I told him.”

Lentsch sighed. “So, Ned, now you are mixed up in this as well. They will come for you too. They will ask you what it is we talked about those nights, when I slunk away from the Villa.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“And they won’t believe you. They dare not. They could no more imagine that our evenings were innocent than they can believe that this boy has a right to life. They will see us all as threats to the fabric of his world; and in a sense they would be right. They would have to strap you to the block and squeeze it all out of you until you were broken into small pieces.” He looked around. “Now, it is all of us.”

Silence feil upon the room. Four in a canoe. They’d sink before they’d got a mile out.

A sudden hooting noise outside disturbed their troubles. Ned ran over to the front window. The Captain could be seen walking down Veronica’s front path.

Zepernick knocked on the door for the third time. He was becoming impatient. His face was unshaven and he looked dishev-elled. The door swung open.

“Zep! Didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

The Captain looked her up and down. She was out of breath.

“You have been running.”

“I was in the back garden.”

He took off his hat. “I’m sorry about yesterday evening,” he said. “I have been busy. You know why.”

“Did you find him?” She tried to keep her voice as light as possible.

The Captain shook his head.

“We have been up all night looking for him. Every billet, every excavation site. Nothing.” He looked around. “He is not the only one who has vanished.”

“Oh?”

“Major Lentsch. He should have reported to the harbour, but he has not.” He pointed to Ned’s house. “That is where he goes at night?”

“Used to, yes.”

“Last night he was at the Villa. This morning…” He puffed into the air. “You have not seen him today?”

“No. I don’t think Inspector Luscombe is there either.”

The Captain nodded. “Good. Maybe the Major has done the proper thing. Perhaps in a day or two we will find him floating in the water with a bullet in his head. Still,” he looked at his watch, the smile returning to his face, “everyone is searching for him. Everyone except me. No one knows where I am.”

“Oh?”

“All this time I have been thinking about yesterday in the Eyrie. It has been difficult looking for this
Zwangsarbeiter
with such pictures in my mind.” He reached out and touched the front of her dress. “Some say the morning is the best time.”

“Zep! It’s nearly lunchtime!” She pushed him back. “Anyway, I can’t,” she whispered. “Mum’s upstairs.”

“No matter. I know where.” He pulled her outside.

“Please, Zep. Not now.”

Grabbing her wrist he hauled her down the garden path. The shed door hung open, the set of garden tools, the workbench, the ornament dangling from the roof, all in place.

“This time I will not make the same mistake,” he said. Taking the wooden shoe from its hook, he placed it on top of one the boxes piled up at the side before lifting her up onto the bench. He pushed her dress back up to her hips.

“Zep,” she said, turning her head away, pushing his hands away. “I don’t think we should.”

“Don’t think we should?” He was at her buttons now. “Don’t think we should? What are you talking about?” He yanked the dress open.

“No, I…” She tried to talk but his hands were under her, pulling at her worn elastic, sending her sprawling back against the wall. “Please, Zep. Not here. Not now.”

He pulled her up and hit her once, not hard, on the side of her head. She began to cry. He pulled off her underwear, slowly, methodically, looking her squarely in the eye. His fingers reached underneath.

“Now tell me again of this boy of yours.”

“What?”

“This boy of yours. Where did you say you saw him?”

Veronica kissed him quickly.

“We don’t want to talk about that now, do we?”

“This is a new kind of interrogation, Veronica. Very good for me and very good for you.” He examined her with dispassionate interest. “Where did you see him again?”

“I told you. Out of my surgery window. Climbing into one of those lorries.”

He unbuckled his belt and let his trousers fall.

“I don’t believe so. I have found out all about this boy. His name is Peter. He is from a village in the Ukraine. He is fifteen years old. His father was shot for partisan activities. He is the wearer of Isobel van Dielen’s jacket and has been wearing it since the time of her death. He is billeted in Saumarez Park and every day he marches to work from there to the tunnel. You did not see him climb into lorries and you did not see him from your surgery window. But you have seen him, that is true. Teil me where.”

She hesitated.

“If you do not I shall have your father shot.”

“What!”

“He has been trying to sabotage the airport runway. Mowing the grass too short. It is a very serious matter.”

“Oh, God!”

“I can prevent this, if you tell me all I want to know.”

“Oh, God!”

“You must tell me everything, Veronica, and then it will be all right. But before you talk, we do this…”

He took himself in his hand and looking down, slowly pushed himself in. She stared past him. There was a shadow in the doorway. She began to tremble.

“Oh, God, no.”

The Captain grinned.

“That’s better. Just like old times, eh, Veronica?” He quickened his pace.

“No,” she said, struggling as the shadow moved quickly forward. “No, keep away,” but the Captain pushed her back and held her fast, savouring the spectacle of her writhing hips and half-hidden sex, as the pleading cries which only made him more determined drowned the sound of the bare feet and the swing of the are and it was only when he felt the breath of disturbed air and saw the look on Veronica’s face as she tried to break free that he turned and saw the outline of the boy standing on tiptoe behind him with the dark shadow of the wooden foot coming out above his head. The boy swung with all the weight of all the pickaxes he had ever held, swinging the wooden foot by its short chain, true and sure, so that the heel landed in the centre of the Captain’s head, cracking it open like a walnut, so hard that Veronica felt the blow jolt up through her womb as the Captain jerked first in then out of her, and dropped to the ground his knees on the floor, his hands trailing down over her twisting body, his broken head resting between her legs, blood seeping out of his mouth and his nose. She lay there, rigid, panting, unable to move. The boy stood before her, the foot and chain swinging back and forth. There was a sound of water running onto the floor and she could smell the sour scent of urine rising. She tried to move. The Captain’s head bumped down onto the workbench, his hands on either side of her knees. The boy moved forward.

“
Kaput
,” he said, and pushed him over with his foot.

Ned and the Major carried the body through the back garden and out into the field, then pushed the car through the opened farm gate. They sat him in the front. Ned closed the gate and walked up the road. Lentsch looked down at the body of his friend. There was blood seeping out of his ears and down his nose. He leant in and wiped his face clean.

“You could have been a good man,” he said. “Whatever you did, I am sorry for you.”

Ned returned. “It can’t be seen from the road,” he said. “As long as no one finds it in the next six or so hours we should be all right.”

Together they tore branches from the hedge and laid them over the roof and against the boot. Lentsch stood back, and surveyed their work.

“We cannot leave it for long. When we go we must take the car down to the bay with us. That way when they find him, they will not connect his death with anyone here. It will be quicker for us too.”

“Won’t they miss him?”

Lentsch looked at his watch. “Everyone knows how the Captain likes to spend his afternoons. By nightfall, though, they will be worried. More so as I have disappeared too.”

“We’ll be gone by then,” Ned promised. “We’ll row out to the Casquets, tuck up in one of the little inlets while the patrol boats pass, then head straight out. We’ll be low in the water, so slow and steady, that’s the trick. Slow and steady. You can do that, can’t you, Major?”

Back at the house Veronica was shaking in spasms. Ned’s mother was sitting with her, holding her hand.

“I’d have done the same myself if I’d thought it would save them.”

Veronica lifted her head. “Where’s the boy?” Her concern was dragging the fear out of her.

“Cleaning up. You picked a good one there.”

“Well, I was good at choosing, first time round, any road.”

Ned knelt down beside them. He’d never thought he’d see the day nis mum and Veronica were holding hands.

“You know we’ve got to go, Mum.”

“It’s where you would have been all along if Dad hadn’t gone at such an awkward time.” She turned to Veronica. “His father always was a difficult so-and-so.”

The Major returned with Peter following in his wake. Another unlikely couple, Ned thought.

“The outhouse is quite clean,” the Major said. “We scrubbed the floor together.”

Veronica sat up and patted the arm of her chair. The boy sat down, shy at first. Through the open back door the first chili of the evening fluttered through.

“It’s going to be cold out there,” Ned said. “We should all be wearing waterproofs. I don’t know if we’ve got enough spares.”

“Lard, that’s what you need,” Veronica prompted. “Before you set off, you should strip, the lot of you, and cover yourselves with it, head to toe.” She ruffled the boy’s hair. “And to think I’ve just given you your first wash in months. Couldn’t have chosen a worse time if I’d tried.” She stood up to go next door. “You’d best rub it on each other. That way you’ll get a good covering all over.”

“I’ll do yours, then, shall I?” Ned offered. His mother laughed.

Veronica cuffed him quickly. “I’m not going,” she said.

“What?”