‘Not a promise, more a suggestion. A hint, if you like.’
‘You’re a ruthless woman at times, Samantha Campbell.’
‘
All
the time, Douglas Brodie. Your turn to get the coal in.’
Next day I phoned Shimon and Isaac and told them that I would be pursuing this case but they could save their money. My new paymaster was the Crown.
‘When will you be back, Brodie?’ asked Shimon.
‘I don’t know. February? March?’
‘Will you call me on your return? Tell us what you found? This is vital to our community.’
‘I know, Shimon. I know. I’ll be in touch.’
Isaac’s concerns were different.
‘This will be hard for you, Douglas.’
‘It’s a short stint. I know the ropes.’
‘It’s because you know the ropes that I am concerned for you. It is too much for one man. We have asked too much. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m fine, Isaac.’
‘No, you’re not. I’ve seen your eyes.’
I swallowed. Was it that obvious?
‘I’ll be with Samantha.’
‘That’s the only blessing. Take care of each other.’
‘We will. Which reminds me: how’s Amos? Is he still intent on life in a kibbutz?’
‘The arguments get worse, and go nowhere, Douglas. He is a stubborn man.’
‘He didn’t fall far from the tree, Isaac.’
‘That’s the trouble. I would do the same. Maybe I will.’
‘Don’t say that! I’d miss your coffee.’
‘I’d send you some. Go with God, Douglas.’
By way of preparing us for the north German plains, winter hit Scotland with a vengeance. It snowed for two full days across the west of the country. All the major towns and cities had power cuts, partly because of pylons downed in the blizzards, partly through government efforts to save supplies.
In sharp contrast to Manny Shinwell’s shambolic Ministry of Fuel and Power, the War Office moved with uncomfortable speed and efficiency. They’d had practice. On Saturday morning, within four days of McCulloch’s visit, I took delivery of a thick brown envelope covered in official red sealing wax, and a large parcel, similarly sealed and stamped ‘Priority. War Office’. They arrived, special delivery, at seven o’clock in the morning. I signed for them and took them in.
I emptied the envelope on the kitchen table and picked through the instructions and travel warrants; first class all the way to Hamburg. Sam had already received her identical set. No sign of return tickets for either of us, however. There was a separate envelope in good-quality white paper. I used a kitchen knife and pulled out a folded foolscap document and a second smaller envelope. The foolscap had red wax seals. It was a commission, my new commission as a lieutenant colonel in His Majesty’s armed forces.
I sat down, staring at the paper. My father hadn’t lived long enough to see my first commission as a one-pip lieutenant in his old regiment. It had been one of the proudest days of my life. This commission – unlooked-for, unwanted and unwarranted – churned up a whole ragbag of emotions from guilt to wonder to pride. My immediate thought was to phone my mother to share in this casual achievement. My next was that it would terrify her, that she would worry sick about me being back in the army. Mostly I felt this wasn’t real, in the sense that I hadn’t earned it. Would I? What was being asked of me? How much of me did I have to provide in return? But I couldn’t quite hide from myself the small thrill it gave me.
I placed the smaller envelope to one side and turned to the box. I picked it up, placed it on the table and began hacking with the bread knife at the wax and string. I tore away the brown paper and gingerly opened the cardboard box. Please don’t let it be the Black Watch. Or the Signals. Fine regiments both, but . . . The ‘friendly’ rivalry between the Black Watch and the Seaforths was now ingrained in me after too many pub fights in my NCO days. And while the Signals Corps were some of the bravest men I’d met, they carried radios. I was a rifleman.
Sam would be disappointed. I was amused and then touched. The moment I saw the black beret and its silver badge with the distinctive emblem and the words ‘Fear Naught’, I relaxed. I would be proud to wear this.
Sam came in. ‘Show me, show me.’
I stuck the beret on, pulled it to a jaunty angle and turned to her. ‘What do you think?’
She put her specs on and peered at the insignia. ‘It’s a tank.’
‘That’s a clue.’
Her face fell. ‘No kilt?’
‘Not even a Kilmarnock bunnet. Sorry.’
I turned back to the box. Under the beret was a black holster. I took out the gun. The Enfield No. 2 revolver. Empty and no sign of a box of .38s. For safety they would be sent separately, I assumed. Unless they thought I didn’t need bullets. Which would be ironic for a Royal Tank Regiment man. Also a pity; on this trip I’d feel more comfortable with something that went bang.
I hauled out the khaki jacket. I’d forgotten the weight of the heavy wool. It had the correct crown and star on each shoulder and collar insignia and buttons to match the beret.
‘Go on. Put it on,’ she said.
I hoped they’d got the size right. It would be a real test of the system. They must have checked my service record. And my swimming was keeping my weight down. More or less. It was a neat fit. Not new, but well cleaned and cared for. I did up the jacket and Sam helped me slide the black leather Sam Browne belt and cross-strap in place, looping through the holster. She stood back and inspected me as gravely as Monty himself.
‘You’ll do, laddie. You’ll do. How does it feel? Take a look.’ She pointed at the mirror upstairs in the hallway. I walked up and stood in front of it. I was startled. It wasn’t me. It was the wrong headgear and the wrong jacket. Certainly the wrong buttons and wrong rank. But, Christ, it felt right. What the hell was happening? Was I enjoying being wrapped up in the comfortable embrace of old rituals? Was I relieved at once more being told what to do rather than working it out for myself? Or did I just relish the promotion?
Sam joined me and put her left arm round me from behind.
‘It suits you. But you’re improperly dressed. No, not your troosers. You’ve no decorations.’
She fingered the gap on my chest. Then she put her right arm round and slid a strip of material in place. ‘This was in the box.’
It was a row of medal ribbons. They’d got it right. All my tours of duty. The red, white and blue of the France and Germany medal. The green, white and red symbolising Italy. And the sandy ribbon with red and blue stripes for Africa.
It also held the little strip of purple with white either side. The Military Cross, handed out to eejits and show-offs. I fingered each and triggered snapshots from every campaign. But it was like I was watching
Pathé News
; it wasn’t me in the pictures.
‘What about this letter?’ Sam handed it to me.
I sat down on the steps and opened it. It was in fine black copperplate. I looked up at her. ‘It’s from my old boss in the African campaign, Gordon MacMillan. He’s a major general now.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It says, “Dear Lieutenant Colonel Brodie – Dear Douglas! It gives me much pleasure to have you back with us, albeit under different colours . . .” It goes on for a bit . . .’
‘Tell me.’
‘If you’d stayed in, as I advised you, you would already be wearing these badges of rank and, in due course, would have made field officer rank and above. You still could.
Wear this uniform with pride. It belonged to a good man. If you perform this service on behalf of your country half as well as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Ferguson we will not be disappointed in you.
Yours sincerely,
Gordon MacMillan
Major General
Director of Weapons and Development, General Staff
War Office
London’
I paused, trying not to let my feelings overcome me. MacMillan had led from the front at Tobruk and was now safely behind a desk somewhere. I remembered him last at Bremen after Tom Rennie, the CO of the 51st, got killed. Rennie had given me my major’s crowns. I took off my beret.
‘Well then, Miss Campbell, shall we catch a train?’
We left that night on the sleeper to Euston. I slept fitfully on the bottom bunk, as ever mildly amazed at how my life could take a turn, remembering the journey I’d taken in reverse last April. Called to Glasgow from London by the lady now in the bunk above, Advocate Samantha Campbell, and asked to help prove my old pal Hugh Donovan innocent of the murder of a young boy. She’d needed all the help I could give her. The odds and the system were stacked against him and us.
The real killer was long dead now. I’d seen to that. And the corrupt policemen who’d concocted the evidence against Hugh were queuing up for gruel in Barlinnie alongside the cut-throats and thieves they’d put away over the years. I’d heard Muncie, former Superintendent Muncie, was spending much of his time either in the prison hospital or in solitary between attacks on him by his fellow inmates. It should have brought me satisfaction. Instead it just left me empty.
Now here I was, heading south again, on my way to reprise the worst period in my life. Once more to sit opposite malign intelligence and twisted reasoning. Facing such amoral certainty made me doubt my own standards. Even my sanity. Was wickedness always just below the surface in everyman? And why should it be my job to confront it? The wave of self-pity made me nauseous. I had a stupid moment of anxiety when I realised I’d left my old cap badge behind. I had a new one, hadn’t I? In its proper place.
When I had drifted off to sleep, rocked in my hurtling cradle, my dreams turned black. The old powerlessness settled over me and I woke gasping and punching the base of the bunk overhead, fearing I’d been buried alive.
‘Douglas? Are you all right?’ came the urgent whisper, then the hand from above, digging down through the cloying earth, dragging me to the light.
‘Sorry. Bad dream. I’m OK.’ I held her fingers until sleep carried me off again.
TWENTY-TWO
We rolled gently into Euston at six thirty. In the narrow confines of the compartment we sluiced our faces, bumped into each other and fought our way into day clothes. I shaved and donned my uniform and we sat on my bunk turned back into a seat – hers we had stowed away – sipping hot sweet tea until life returned to our brain cells.
We stepped out on to the platform and were saluted and whisked into a staff car driven by a young WRAF.
‘This is for you, sir.’
Shells for my service revolver. I tucked them away.
The drive to RAF Hendon took half an hour through busy London streets. Snow had come south too. Dirty grey mounds lined the pavements. I could see the changes already. This city had more life than a year ago, more double-deckers, more cars and certainly more people. Fewer in uniform.
We swung into the RAF station and instantly left the suburbs. A vista opened up: white fields surrounding a long grey strip of runway. A few planes sat round the far right of the field next to a huge hangar. We pulled up at the officers’ mess, a black and white faux Tudor building facing the airfield.
It felt natural to be sitting at the long brown tables tucking into bacon and eggs surrounded by fellow officers, albeit in RAF blue. Sam seemed completely at ease too. She’d already made this journey once and smiled at the fuss being made of her by the CO and his staff.
We took off over London and turned east. We could now see the staggering extent of the bomb damage. Great swathes of the docks and east London obliterated. It would take decades to rebuild. I dug into my bag and pulled out the cartridge box. I loaded my revolver. Sam glanced at me and then looked away with a frown.
We crossed the North Sea, taking the same route as Bomber Command just a couple of years ago. We picked up the coast of Holland, just north of my own last battlefields. Every mile from the Normandy beaches to the Rhine crossing costing us blood. By the end, the 51st had lost over 1,200 officers, killed, wounded or missing, and over 15,000 men.
We hugged the dotted line of the Dutch coast until the pilot announced we were over Germany and into British-controlled air space. Below was worse than anything we’d seen over London. Towns and cities had been steamrollered. Only the seams and slices of tarmac left a clue to former civilisation. Our plane droned on into the late morning, heading northeast up the bend of the coast.
Suddenly we were over water again, a great wide estuary: the Elbe, the gateway to Germany’s biggest port city. Now Hamburg was a great wasteland dissected by the grey wind of the river. Our plane took a northerly dip and headed towards the edges of the concrete moonscape. We landed just after noon on a patched-up airfield in the middle of acres of rubble. Sam and I were stiff and sore from sitting, and we tumbled down the steps into a snell wind blowing from the north. It was below freezing and all round the airfield were piles of cleared snow. British bombers and some aircraft with American insignia were parked haphazardly round the landing strip. The hangars and control towers were pockmarked and damaged. Bomber Harris’s boys hadn’t missed much.
Another round of saluting, another staff car, and we were driving south. The sun was already dipping into the cold sky of this short winter day. All around, tumbled buildings. Windows gaping blindly. Cratered roads punching the springs and bouncing us around in the back seat. Suddenly a road sign swam into view. I focused on it until I could make out the German script. Hamburg.
‘How far now, Sam?’
‘About five miles. A part of the city called Rotherbaum. In the centre of town, near Lake Alster.’
‘Where’s the courthouse?’
‘In a big old building aptly called the Curiohaus.’
‘Are we rooming there?
The driver cut in from the front seat.
‘You’ve got a nice gaff, sir. If I may say so. You and the lady. A hotel we’ve taken over for senior officers, sir, like your good self.’
Sam snorted. ‘A decrepit pub by a big bloody cold lake.’
It was a fair description. We were suddenly driving alongside a vast frozen plain. Mist hung across it. A faded watercolour from a palette of greys.
We drew up outside a small hotel. A sign bearing a snarling grizzly hung over the doorway. Though built of wood, the Bear had come unscathed through the firestorm of bombing that reduced much of the city to ash. Saved by the lake. Its old dark timbers made it look more like a Goering hunting lodge. I was surprised not to see a black and red flag dangling from its pole.