The City of Shadows (39 page)

‘Not the flunky, you gobshite! The monsignor.'

The words meant nothing to Hannah. Stefan understood though.

‘What monsignor?' said Hannah.

Hugo Keller seemed to be staring straight ahead, straight into her eyes, but he didn't see her.

‘Who are you talking about?' Hannah was almost shouting.

‘He's dead, Hannah,' said Stefan, taking her arm.

She moved back a little, still gazing down at Hugo Keller.

‘What did he mean, Stefan?'

‘We need to go.' He pulled her up.

‘I don't understand who was he talking about.'

‘It can wait. I'll explain. We're not safe here.'

As they turned round, two men were standing in the doorway, watching them. The first was Kriminaloberassistent Klaus Rothe. The other was the bearded man who had come to feed the dogs at the hunting lodge above Oliva. Rothe was surprised, but not so surprised that the long barrel of a Mauser machine pistol wasn't already pointing at Stefan and Hannah.

‘We came to clear up one pile of shit and now we've got three.' He walked forward. ‘That's your Jewess then. You're right, she's worth a fuck. If I had more time I might try her out first. But we've got an election to win.'

‘She's the one from the lodge,' said the man they knew as Karl.

‘Now you know why Jews have big noses. They stick them in where they're not wanted. But then Jews aren't wanted anywhere, are they?'

Stefan stood very still. There weren't many options he could see.

‘We've got no idea what went on here. We don't care. This is about something that happened in Ireland, that's all. We were too late anyway. He was already dead.'

‘It looks to me like you killed him, Herr Gillespie.'

The Gestapo man was pleased. It made the mess easier to clean up. He had Hugo Keller's murderers in front of him. He only had to shoot them and the job was done. Stefan didn't have to fill in the gaps to be able to read that thought. Talking wasn't going to get them out of this, but talking could buy them seconds.

‘All we want to do is leave Danzig.'

‘I'm sure. Unfortunately, you'll be shot while resisting arrest.'

Stefan glanced at Hannah. Her face was almost expressionless, but the tension in her body was enough to tell him that she wouldn't stand there and be shot. They didn't have much of a chance, but Hannah was ready to move. He nodded, hoping it was a signal she would understand. He was ready too.

‘You don't need to do this, Kriminaloberassistent,' he pleaded.

‘No, but it suits me to do it. And apart from anything else, you pissed me off, Irishman, in Weidengasse, in the mortuary.' He stepped closer.

The big pine table that stood in the middle of the kitchen was between Stefan and Rothe. Stefan put his hands on the end of the table, leaning down and shaking his head, with an expression that made him seem utterly defeated.

‘I'm sorry, Hannah.' He looked up. ‘There's nothing we can do. Nuair a bhrúim an tábla, ionsaigh an ceann eile.' He spoke to her in Irish.

She smiled sadly and shrugged. ‘Tá mé réidh.'

‘Words of fond farewell, that's nice,' said Rothe, smiling.

All at once Stefan pushed the table forward, with every bit of force he could find, driving it across the floor into the Gestapo man's legs. It was a heavy table and it hit Klaus Rothe hard. It was still moving as he fell under it. At the same moment Hannah rushed forward and flung herself on top of Karl, knocking him to the ground. Rothe rolled out from under the table and leapt to his feet very fast. He was still holding the Mauser and he was grinning. It was a good try. He didn't expect the pistol in Stefan's hand, Hannah's PKK. His surprise didn't last any longer than it took Stefan to fire.

The Kriminaloberassistent was dead. In the doorway Hannah and Karl were still struggling. The bearded man lashed out and pushed her away. He scrambled to his feet and ran. Stefan hadn't moved. He still had the PKK pointed at Rothe. Hannah got up and stepped over the body. ‘He's dead. The other one isn't!' Stefan didn't understand for a moment. It didn't seem to matter. They were alive. She grabbed the pistol and raced to the door. ‘What are you doing?' He ran after her into the hall. There was the sound of a car.

As Hannah reached the steps the black Mercedes was already heading down the drive, picking up speed. Stefan was there beside her now. ‘You won't stop him.' She stood quite still, holding the PKK in both her hands. The car was at the gate when she fired a single shot. The Mercedes carried on, straight on, out into the middle of Eschenweg, not turning to the right or the left. Then it halted; the man slumped over the wheel was dead too.

Stefan stared at Hannah. It was a shot he could never have made.

‘You've done that before.'

‘It was never a human being, just a target.' She was still staring at the car. Then she turned, handing the PKK back to him, as if she didn't want to touch it now.

‘What do we do, Stefan?'

‘We find anything that moves that's leaving Danzig. If we needed to get out before, I'd say we've more than overstayed our welcome now.'

‘And Bishop O'Rourke?'

‘There is that,' he smiled wryly. They were in this now, whether they wanted to be or not. They couldn't just walk away with what they knew.

‘We can't let it happen, can we?'

He shook his head. ‘No, we can't. Keller's got a phone.'

‘The phones aren't safe, Stefan, none of them are.'

They needed to act. Stefan's mind was racing.

‘Seán Lester's the only one who can stop this.'

Hannah took his hand, pulling him down the steps.

‘I'll go to the cathedral. You go to the High Commission.'

They ran down the steps and back out into Eschenweg, past the Mercedes in the middle of the road and the dead man slumped over the wheel, past the houses with red roofs and tidy gardens, past the apartment blocks where the swastikas hung from the windows, into Adolf-Hitler-Strasse. Hannah went one way and took the tram to Oliva; Stefan took the tram the other way, back into the city. There wasn't really any choice.

*

At the mouth of the Tote Weichsel, where the river dissolved into the Baltic, there was a narrow spit of sand that became thinner and thinner until it disappeared into the sea itself. This was the Westerplatte. In high summer the beaches here were far less crowded than Zoppot's. Here, scattered among the trees, were the concrete bunkers that represented Poland's only military presence in Danzig. A hundred soldiers sat there for no very good reason, except that they could. When the League of Nations established the Free City it was a tiny concession to mollify Polish anger that the city they still claimed as part of Poland wasn't Polish. The League saw the Polish flag flying over this windswept spit of sand as a gesture so modest as to be unimportant. The Poles saw the flag over the Westerplatte as proof that one day the city they called Gdan´sk would be Polish, whatever language was spoken in its streets. For the Germans of Danzig it had been an irrelevance to some and an irritation to others; an itch rather than a sore. But as the years went on and Hitler's voice grew shriller in the city, the Polish fort and the Polish flag that flew over the Westerplatte had become an insult. It was a sore now. And if it could sometimes be ignored it could never be forgotten.

Stefan Gillespie sat in Seán Lester's car, looking out at the Baltic. Behind them, among the trees, was the red and white Polish flag. On a day like this the Westerplatte was a wild place. The beaches were empty and there was only the low hum of the wind off the sea. They were a long way from the streets swathed in swastikas and the trucks of stormtroopers cheering for a democratic end to democracy. The High Commissioner had driven the car himself. He had no reason to believe his chauffeur was a spy but trust wasn't something that could be taken for granted in the Free City any more. And here, today at least, there would be nobody to see them.

They had been silent for a while now. Lester was trying to make sense of what Stefan had told him. Some of it made no sense at all, but then he had only fragments of information. Where it did make sense it frightened him.

Another car drove towards them. The High Commissioner watched it approaching, still thoughtful. He got out of his own car and Stefan followed. The constant hum of the wind was louder. As the second car pulled up Stefan could see that the driver wore the uniform of the Schutzpolizei.

‘Oberleutnant Lange is the nearest thing to a policeman I can trust.'

‘You don't sound very sure,' said Stefan.

‘Trust can be bought and sold like everything else. Diplomacy isn't really geared up for this. I remember some advice given to me by a British diplomat before I left Geneva: When deciding what to wear in the morning, bear in mind the day may bring unforeseen demands. Women should always keep a hat and gloves in the office for emergencies and men should keep a black tie in the desk for unexpected mourning. I don't keep one in mine. Reinhold Lange is my best chance of not having to go home to get one.'

Oberleutnant Lange got out of his car and walked towards Stefan and the High Commissioner. Seán Lester shook the policeman's hand warmly.

‘This is Herr Gillespie. I spoke to you about him before.'

‘You're the detective sergeant?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘And you're here on some kind of holiday?'

‘Not exactly a holiday.'

‘I can see Irish understatement puts even English understatement into the shade,' said Lange. He looked at Lester. ‘Do you know if the bishop is all right?'

‘He's been told anyway. Fräulein Rosen went straight to the cathedral. And I have spoken to him now as well. The question is, who's going to protect him?'

‘The Langfuhr police have picked up the car and the dead driver. Not easy to miss really. The car was in the middle of the road. They also found the two men inside the house, Kriminaloberassistent Rothe and Herr Keller. But the investigation has been officially handed over to the Gestapo now. So there is a solid wall up around it, which tells its own story of course. I can't get any more information.'

‘Are they looking for Herr Gillespie and Fräulein Rosen?'

‘I don't know that either. But I'd say probably not. They don't know who else was at Keller's house. There may be some descriptions, but that's going to take time. I think we can work on the assumption that it just looks like a Gestapo operation that went wrong. What is clear is that this man Keller was working for the Gestapo and the SS. That's all I have. I think you know that already, Herr Gillespie?' Stefan nodded. Lange continued. ‘That's why they've shut it down as far as the Schutzpolizei are concerned. It's political. But nothing seems to be happening, which is odd when there's a dead Gestapo man. However, maybe not so odd if there's something more important to cover up. I do take this threat against the bishop seriously.'

‘You do know something then?' asked Lester.

‘Last night there were some SA men up in the forests above Oliva.'

Stefan and Lester exchanged glances. It wasn't news to them.

‘Yes, I think you know something about that too, Sergeant. This is just rumour as far as I'm concerned. It's the kind of information I'm not allowed to do anything with these days. It's political,' he smiled. ‘No crime has been reported and no bodies have been found, but I think two men were killed. What's going around is that they were killed for a reason. I mean other than the usual reason, that the Nazis didn't much like their opinions.'

‘And there's a connection to Bishop O'Rourke?' said Lester.

‘Scapegoats,' replied the policeman. ‘It's a well-established Nazi trick in Germany. You shoot someone you don't like, say a businessman who doesn't want to pay his dues to the Party, then you dump the body of someone else you don't like at the scene of the crime, say a communist or a socialist, and announce he was the killer, shot while trying to escape. You've not only got your murderer, you can arrest all his friends as well. Anyway the rumour is that the two men who were shot in the forest are going to reappear and assassinate someone. The rumour doesn't say who's going to be killed but it seems to tie in with what Keller told you, Herr Gillespie. I don't suppose it's a coincidence that a priest who apparently committed suicide yesterday was one of Herr Keller's informants. Is that correct?'

‘It's not correct that he committed suicide,' answered Stefan.

‘I use the term loosely. We get a lot of suicide in Danzig these days.'

Seán Lester was frowning. The gaps were filling in.

‘Why now? The elections are almost over. If Edward O'Rourke –'

‘You've been here too long, High Commissioner. You're starting to believe what the Nazis tell you. They're not so sure they're going to win this election. Oh, they'll keep their majority and we'll still have that arsehole Greiser as our president, but they may not get the numbers to change the constitution and kick the League of Nations out. And if that happens, whatever Greiser and Gauleiter Forster and the rest of them say, they're going to lose a lot of face. They've promised Hitler a Danzig without you, without opposition parties, without elections, and with the Jews stripped of everything they own, including any rights they've got left under the constitution. If they can't deliver all that, a dead bishop might solve the problem for them.'

‘The only people who could want Edward O'Rourke dead are the Nazis.'

‘I don't know who exactly the scapegoats are,' continued Lange, ‘socialists, communists, Zionists. It doesn't much matter as long as they're Jewish. Who cares if the last person in Danzig they'd want to see dead is Bishop O'Rourke? They'll be guilty. And the Nazis will be right. They'll have a Communist-Jewish conspiracy. So when they turn on the Jews, and whatever's left of the opposition, they'll be doing it to protect not just German Danzig but Catholic Danzig too. There'll be blood on the streets and the police, God help us, will lead the charge. The only option left to you and the League would be to bring in Polish troops to restore order. But Hitler won't accept that, so he'll have to take over Danzig. The Poles will either put up with it or face a war with Germany in which they are the aggressors.'