Chapter Thirteen

GUNTHER LOOKED ROUND THE LOUNGE of the big flat in Russell Square. It was Friday evening. I might be here for weeks, he thought. The flat was in a Victorian building but the interior had been modernized, all clean lines, rectangular furniture, the lights round the walls shaped like inverted shells. In contrast the pictures were German scenes, standard diplomatic issue. His eye was caught by a seascape, a view across windswept marram grass to the Baltic, grey-blue under a wide pale sky. A lone sailing boat was visible near the horizon. It reminded Gunther of visits to the coast during his childhood.

There was a double bedroom, and a study with a large desk, where a notebook and pencil were laid neatly on the blotter. In a corner was a photograph of Reichsführer Himmler, his face in half-profile, the keen eyes behind the spectacles staring at something just off-camera. It was a reminder that Gunther’s loyalties were to the SS now, not Ambassador Rommel.

He went into the kitchen. A tall refrigerator contained rye bread, spiced sausage and cheese as well as several bottles of beer. Good, the English policeman would probably expect a drink when he came. He went into the bedroom, took off his jacket and shoes, and padded back to the lounge in his socks. A little clock on the mantelpiece showed a quarter to seven. The policeman, Syme, was not due until eight thirty. Gunther wondered what he would be like. On his walk to the flat from Senate House he had noticed how shabby and tawdry London looked; dog dirt and litter on the pavements, tired-looking people shuffling home after work, no zest or sense of purpose in their step. A newspaper hoarding spoke of more strikes in Scotland, a Special Conference of the Scottish National Party resolving to assist the authorities all they could in return for a convention to consider Home Rule as a first stage towards possible independence. Gunther’s own vision of the future, the German vision, was clear and logical and bright; a total contrast to this confused, dirty mess of a country. He switched on the television that sat in a corner. A cowboy drama was showing, cheap American nonsense, not allowed on German television. He turned off the set, lit a cigarette and sat staring at the seascape, remembering his childhood.

Gunther had been born in 1908, six years before the Great War. His father was a police sergeant in a small town not far from Königsberg in East Prussia, Imperial Germany’s easternmost province. He was ten minutes older than his twin brother Hans. They looked identical, the same square faces and light-blond hair, but their personalities were different; Hans was quicker, funnier, with a quicksilver energy Gunther lacked. Gunther was more like his father, solid and steady. He was a clumsy, untidy boy, though, always creasing his clothes, while Hans was as neat as a new pin.

Both did well at school though Gunther was a plodder while Hans was quick and imaginative, too much sometimes for the disciplinarian teachers. Gunther always felt protective of Hans, yet at the same time jealous, envying him for the qualities that made him the more popular twin among the other boys and later, with girls. It was Hans, though, who always wanted Gunther’s company, while often Gunther preferred to be alone.

Their mother was a small, tired, self-effacing woman. Their father was a big man, with a craggy face and a moustache with upturned waxed points like the Kaiser’s. In his uniform with its tall helmet he could look intimidating. He believed in order and authority above all. When the Great War came he spoke proudly of bringing German order to all Europe. But Germany lost the war. The decadence and disorder of the Weimar Republic that followed horrified the ageing policeman. Once at the dinner table, not long after the war, he told them with tears in his eyes, ‘There were students demonstrating in the town today. Anarchists or Communists. We came and stood on the side of the square, to make sure it didn’t get out of hand. And they stood there laughing at us, mocking us, calling us pigs and lickspittles. What will become of us?’ Gunther was horrified to realize then that his father, his strong father, was frightened.

At secondary school, Gunther developed an interest in English; he was good at the language and became fascinated by British history and how Britain had built a gigantic worldwide empire. Germany had overtaken Britain in industry, but had been too late to create an empire to provide the raw materials it needed. His teacher, a strong German nationalist, taught how England was in decline now, a great people gone to seed through democratic decadence despite their magnificent past. Gunther wished Germany had an empire, instead of being what the teacher called a cowed nation, provinces hacked away at Versailles, the economy ruined by reparations. Gunther would tell Hans about his thoughts of Empire and his brother, who had much more imagination, conjured up stories for him of great battles on sweltering Indian plains, settlers in Africa and Australia struggling against hostile natives. Gunther was in awe of his brother’s ability to picture another world.

The twins often went out cycling at weekends, along the straight dusty roads between the plantations of tall firs, the forest stretching away into shadowy darkness on each side. One hot summer Sunday when they were thirteen they went further than before. They passed carts lumbering by, little villages, a massive redbrick Junker country house surrounded by wide lawns. At lunchtime they stopped to eat their sandwiches by the side of the road. It was very quiet and still, insects buzzing lazily in the heat. Hans had been thoughtful all morning. He said now, ‘What shall we do when we grow up?’

Gunther nudged a stone with his foot. ‘I want to study languages.’

Hans looked disappointed. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t do that.’

‘What do you want to be?’

‘I want to be a policeman, like father.’ Hans smiled, his blue eyes alight. ‘We could both join. Catch all the bad people.’ He pointed a finger down the empty road. ‘Bang, bang.’

In 1926, when the twins were eighteen, Gunther won a place to study English at Berlin University. Hans, bored with school, had already left and taken a clerk’s job in Königsberg. He seemed to have forgotten his dream of following their father into the police. Gunther had not; he had thought about it many times but the prospect of going to university was exciting. He had never left East Prussia before and longed to see Berlin. His parents, delighted with his success, encouraged him.

The evening before Gunther left he sat with his father by the fire. The old man was nearing retirement; he was happier these days, life was easier. A degree of prosperity was returning to Germany under Stresemann after the nightmare of the Great Inflation. His father gave Gunther a beer and offered him a cigarette, smiling through the thick moustache, drooping now, that had turned from blond to white, stained yellow-brown with nicotine.

‘A son of mine, going to university. The train will take you across the Polish Corridor, the part of Germany that was stolen from us in 1918. They’ll pull the blinds down over the windows while you cross Polish territory. At least, I think they still do that. I hope so.’ His heavy face became serious. ‘You take care now, don’t get into bad company, nightclubs and places like that. A lot of bad things go on in Berlin.’

‘I’ll be careful, Father.’

‘I know you will. You’re a steady lad.’ The old man smiled again, sadly. ‘If it were Hans I would be worried. I don’t know what he gets up to in Königsberg.’ He shook his head.

Gunther said nothing. He had always known he was the one his father preferred, though he felt Hans was better than him in so many ways.

Gunther spent three happy years in Berlin. He seldom visited the flesh-pots; his friends were mostly quiet, studious people who, like him, despised the avant-garde Berlin crowd, the artists and hack writers and queers. One day during his first week, he was walking along a street far from the city centre with some fellow-students, watching the scenes around them. Looking down an alley, Gunther saw an extraordinary-looking old man staring at him. He wore a long dark coat, and his black hair, surmounted by a skullcap, curled round his cheeks in long side-locks. He stared back at Gunther with fearful, hostile eyes. Gunther said, half laughing, ‘Who the hell was that?’

One of the others said, in a voice full of contempt, ‘A Jew.’

‘They don’t look like that. What about Steiner and Rabinovich in our class, they look and dress just like us.’

His fellow-student turned on him angrily. ‘Those Jews, they pretend. That old man is what they really look like, but most of them dress and talk like us, pretend to be Germans, so we won’t recognize them as they steal from us. Don’t you understand anything?’

The encounter made Gunther feel queasy, gave him for the first time a sense of the strange, half-visible threat in their midst.

In the summer of 1929 he left for England for a year at Oxford; he felt alone and out of place the whole time there, surrounded by people who mostly seemed either to be decadent aristocrats or pretending to be. Gunther wasn’t political, but like his father he supported the conservative German Nationalists who wanted Germany to be great again, stable and ordered. He longed for East Prussia’s clean, bracing air as he endured the endless, dirty English drizzle. He had no money to socialize or travel and sometimes went for days without talking to anyone; he studied and studied, English history especially. He had letters from his parents, and less frequently, from Hans, who was bored in his clerk’s job but couldn’t think what else to do.

That autumn the American stock market collapsed. In Britain businesses closed and unemployment mushroomed. Gunther learned that things were terrible in Germany too, the brief prosperity of the late twenties gone, unemployment rising to millions, homeless workers in Berlin paying to sit on stools in draughty halls, with elbows balanced on ropes strung across the room on which they leaned to sleep. The politicians seemed helpless, running about like headless chickens. Hans wrote that he had lost his job in Königsberg and gone back to live with their parents. Nobody knew what was going to happen next.

In the summer of 1930 Gunther returned to Germany, glad to shake the grime of England from his feet. Arriving in Berlin he saw homeless beggars, women and children selling themselves on street corners. On the tram from the station to his university lodgings he passed a Communist demonstration, men in mufflers and caps marching under a red banner with the hammer and sickle, carrying placards demanding work, singing ‘The Internationale’.

The term had not yet started, so Gunther went back home, the blinds on the train lowered again as they crossed the Polish Corridor. He arrived back at the house; behind its little fence the garden his mother tended was as neat as ever but in the warm sunlight the cottage looked dowdy, in need of a coat of paint. His mother opened the door and embraced him. ‘Thank God you’re back,’ she said. His father was sitting in his usual chair by the fire, a jug of beer by his side. ‘Hello, son,’ he said. The big man looked shrunken somehow, huddled. Gunther and his mother sat down at the table. He asked, ‘How are things?’

His mother answered, ‘Not good. Your father’s pension has been cut. It’s hard to manage.’

Gunther asked, ‘Where’s Hans?’

‘He should have been back by now.’ She smiled. ‘He is so excited you’re coming.’

‘Does he have a job?’

His father made a sound like a snarl. ‘Oh, yes,’ he said bitterly. ‘Hans has a job all right.’

Gunther looked at his parents, puzzled. His mother lowered her head.

He heard the kitchen door open. Hans came into the room. He smiled at Gunther, white teeth in a tanned face. He wore a uniform that Gunther had glimpsed on the Berlin streets: brown shirt and black trousers, beautifully ironed with sharp creases, a brown cap and dark tie, solid black boots. Gunther’s first thought was how fine Hans looked, what a contrast to his own pallid rumpledness. His twin’s shirt sported a bright swastika armband.

That night Hans took Gunther to a meeting. He had joined the Nazi Party that spring and for the last two months had been working for them as a youth organizer. The Party was taking on more people with the Reichstag elections due in a few weeks.

Gunther knew little about the Nazis, just that they were a fringe party with a few seats in the Reichstag; he remembered hearing about a comic-opera putsch in Munich when he was a boy, newspaper pictures of a man with a fierce frown and a toothbrush moustache. Upstairs, in their old room, Hans now told Gunther all about the Movement, his eyes alight and happy. ‘We’re on the march now, we’re hoping for a hundred deputies in the Reichstag elections in September.’

‘A hundred?’ Gunther asked scoffingly.

‘Yes. People are joining us in hordes. The bourgeois parties have failed Germany.’

‘Bourgeois? You sound like a Communist.’

‘In Berlin we’re chasing the Communists off the streets,’ Hans said seriously. ‘We’re a German party, a racial party, we’re for Germans of all classes.’

‘Father doesn’t seem to approve. I’m not surprised if your party’s into street fighting.’

Hans shook his head vigorously. ‘Only to stop the Reds handing us over to the Russians. When we take over, we’ll bring order back. Real order. It won’t be easy, though, we know that. We’re realists. Father thinks that somehow you can wave a magic wand and go back to the Kaiser’s time but it’s not like that. And then . . .’ Hans’ eyes lit up. ‘We’ll make Germany the master of Europe.’ He laid a hand on a thick volume on his table, reverently, like a pastor touching the Bible. ‘It’s all set out here, in the Leader’s book Mein Kampf.’ The gleam in his eyes, mirrors of Gunther’s own, was frightening but compelling too. ‘Come on, Gunther,’ Hans said, spreading his arms wide. ‘You know Germany’s been done down and crushed, that this isn’t how it’s meant to be.’

‘I know, but . . .’

Hans leaned forward. He asked his brother, ‘What do you believe in?’

‘Getting away from English rain.’

‘What are you going to do now?’

Gunther shifted uneasily. This was a new Hans, jabbing these questions at him. But Hans had always thought about things more than he had. ‘I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘While I’ve been away – I’ve decided, this academic stuff isn’t for me, I thought of giving it all up, maybe even joining the police after all. Doing something real, something honest.’

‘Come with me tonight,’ Hans said quietly. ‘I’ll show you something truly real and honest.’

They cycled out to the forest, their front lamps piercing the darkness. Gunther was tired and his head was full of jumbled impressions of the last few days – leaving England, the long train ride to Berlin, the beggars and demonstrators, Hans in this uniform. Moths danced in the thin pencils of light cast by their lamps. Other cyclists in Brownshirt uniforms appeared, many of them teenagers in black shorts, and they exchanged happy shouted greetings with Hans.

They came to the entrance of a forest path that led to one of the many little East Prussian lakes. Families went walking there on Sundays. Hans and Gunther had gone with their parents as children. Tonight a group of older Brownshirts, big men, stood on the forest verge where the path began, oil lamps on the ground beside a neat stack of bicycles. Hans walked over to them, extending his arm and shouting out, ‘Heil Hitler!’ It was the first time Gunther had heard the Nazi greeting. A big Brownshirt put a hand on Gunther’s chest. ‘Who are you?’ he asked threateningly. ‘Where’s your uniform? You look like a fucking tramp.’ It hurt Gunther that the man didn’t realize they were twins.

‘He’s my brother,’ Hans said. ‘He’s just travelled back from England.’

The man shone a torch in Gunther’s face. ‘All right, Hoth. But he’s your responsibility.’

Gunther and Hans joined a trail of men and boys walking down the path, talking excitedly, lighting the way with their bicycle lamps. They came to the little lake. Tall torches in braziers had been lit on the shore, a boy watching each to make sure the flames stayed under control in the dry forest. There were about two hundred people there. Hans said, ‘I’ve got to get my lads lined up. There’s a speaker coming from Berlin. Just stand somewhere on the side and watch. Don’t sit down,’ he added. ‘That would be disrespectful.’

Gunther watched as Hans organized two dozen boys efficiently into straight lines. They stood to attention on the shore. At a command everyone fell completely silent. Gunther could hear the wood crackling in the branches. The scene was beautiful and dramatic: the torchlight, the uniformed men still in their silent lines before the calm moonlit lake, the forest behind. Gunther felt a shiver of excitement. Then four Brownshirts walked out of the trees, accompanied by a tall, slim young man in black uniform. He had light blond hair and an extraordinary, long face, ascetic with a proud beak of a nose and a wide, full mouth that somehow spoke of strength and immense firmness. He stood beside a torch, back to the forest, facing the assembly. He was introduced as National Comrade Heydrich from Berlin, recently appointed to the Leader’s personal guard.

Heydrich began speaking, in a confident, penetrating voice. He said, ‘Sixteen years ago, in 1914, in a forest not far from here, Germany fought and won a great battle. Russia had invaded us, they were set to conquer and destroy us. But at the Battle of Tannenberg we threw them back. We destroyed their army. The few Russian survivors ran away. Germany suffered 20,000 casualties; brave men many of whose bones lie in these forests, in the German soil they defended. This is what brave Germans can do! So how, comrades, have we fallen so far?’

Heydrich spoke of the surrender by Socialist German politicians at the end of the War, the destruction of the German economy by the Allies, the Depression, the dithering bourgeois parties and the growing Marxist threat. He spoke of a new Germany to be built on the ruins. He had taken a military stance, hands behind his back, his voice growing more insistent. ‘We shall prevail, because greatness is Germany’s destiny; that is the lesson of history, clear to all who read it. A legacy handed down by our ancestors who first settled these forests, the heroic Teutonic Knights.’ Gunther suddenly thought, I’ve spent years studying English history. But what about my history, Germany’s history? Have I wasted all this time?

Heydrich raised a slim hand, pointing at the ranks before him. ‘But if we are to fulfil our mission we must be alert, aware of the enemies within and outside the Reich! It will take years to beat them down but we shall do it. The French, the Socialists, the Catholics with their masters in Rome, the Communists with their masters in Russia. And the masters of them all, the controlling hand, the enemy within and without. The Jews.’

Gunther hadn’t thought about the old Jew he had seen in the alley for years but he remembered now.

Heydrich fell silent. Gunther glanced over at Hans to see him looking back at him. His twin smiled and nodded. At a signal, the Brown shirts began singing, their clear young voices echoing across the lake:


‘The flags held high! The ranks are tightly closed!

SA men march with firm courageous tread . . .’

As he listened, Gunther thought, Now I can be proud to be German again.

He woke with a grunt. Sitting there, thinking back, he had fallen asleep. He looked at the clock; the Englishman would be here in half an hour. He was hungry. He walked into the kitchen and, sitting at the little table, ate some bread and sausage. Then he went back to the bedroom and took some fresh clothes from his case. He looked at himself in the mirror, the sagging features and protruding belly. He was letting himself go, had been ever since his marriage broke up. His wife came from a police family, too, but even so she had never been able to adjust to Gunther’s irregular hours. She had loathed England during his posting there. Back in Germany she hadn’t liked his new work either, finding the remaining Jews and the networks that harboured them. ‘I know they must be resettled,’ she had said, ‘but I don’t like the idea of you hunting people out, hounding them.’

‘If you accept they should all be resettled in the East, what would you have us do?’

‘I don’t know. But I don’t want you talking about it in front of our son.’

It was then that he had realized she disapproved of him. As though she could understand the things he had to do. Even in his early days in the police, hunting down ordinary thieves and murderers, you had to be hard – especially in those last disordered days of Weimar. And it was the same with the Jews, you couldn’t eliminate the threat with softness. He had visited the ghettos in the East on training courses, seen what the Jews were like when they were forced to live together – filthy and stinking, fawning around the Germans in charge. Vermin that had to go. It was hard and unpleasant but necessary, as Hans had said.

He remembered when an informer had put him onto someone he said was Jewish. He had picked up the suspect, and later heard he had died under interrogation. Then he learned it was all a mistake, the dead man hadn’t been Jewish at all, the informer was carrying out a personal vendetta. It had saddened and angered him, but in war sometimes the innocent died too.

He didn’t miss his wife any more, but he missed his son every day. Michael was eleven now. He hadn’t seen him for a year. He turned away from the mirror. He felt, as so often, that somewhere deep inside he didn’t measure up. Least of all to his dead brother. He remembered Hans’ enthusiasm, his energy, his purity.

Syme was ten minutes late, which annoyed Gunther. When he answered the doorbell he saw a tall, thin man in his mid-thirties, wearing a heavy overcoat and a fedora. He had a lean, clever face full of cheerful, eager malice, and keen brown eyes.

‘Herr Hoth?’ The man extended a long, thin hand, with a friendly, confident smile. ‘William Syme, London Special Branch.’ Gunther shook his hand and ushered him in. He took his coat. Underneath Syme wore a sharp, expensive suit, a white shirt and a silk tie. It was secured with a gold tiepin, in the middle a black circle with a single pointed white flash, the emblem of the British Fascists. ‘I hear you flew over from Berlin today,’ Syme said, in a cheerful friendly voice.

‘Yes. Please, sit down. May I offer you tea or coffee?’

‘Not for me, thanks. I’ll have a beer if you’ve got one.’ Gunther noticed an undertone of a Cockney twang and guessed that Syme, like many ambitious Englishmen on the way up, was trying to develop a ‘received’ English accent.

Gunther brought out two beers and offered Syme a cigarette. Syme looked round the room. ‘Nice flat,’ he said appreciatively.

‘A little modernist for my taste.’

Syme smiled. He said, ‘I’ve been to Berlin a couple of times. Jollies with the Party. Great buildings there. We went to the Nuremberg rally two years ago, we were sorry the Führer couldn’t attend. I’d have liked to have seen him. I hear he’s been ill.’ Syme’s eyes flashed with curiosity.

‘The Führer has many responsibilities,’ Gunther said coolly.

Syme inclined his head. ‘Beaverbrook’s there now. Wonder what they’ve agreed?’

Gunther wondered too, remembering what Gessler had said about the English police soon having their hands full. Whatever it was, Syme didn’t know. He realized he disliked this man. Then he thought, that won’t do, we’re going to have to work closely together. He smiled disarmingly. ‘So, Mr Syme, have you been in the police long? You’re young to reach an inspector’s rank.’

‘Joined when I was eighteen. Promoted two years ago, when I went to Special Branch.’

Gunther smiled. ‘I was working in Britain when the Auxiliary Branches were formed. I remember your then commissioner’s words to the first intake – “You should not be too squeamish in departing from the niceties of established procedures which are appropriate for normal times.” I thought, a very English way of putting things.’

Syme said, ‘Yes. Nowadays our essential job’s fighting the Resistance. Any way we can.’

Gunther nodded at the tiepin. ‘I see you are a member of the Fascist party?’

Syme nodded proudly. ‘I certainly am.’

‘Good.’ Gunther waved a hand to the chair. ‘Please sit down. We are grateful to your people for assisting us in this case.’

‘We’re all good pro-Germans in my section of Special Branch.’

Gunther nodded. He said neutrally, ‘I believe there has been some unease among British Fascists about joining the coalition with the old parties, Conservative and Labour.’

Syme shrugged. ‘It’s a way in. It’s how Herr Hitler began, isn’t it? And having Mosley in charge of the police is a big step to power.’

Gunther nodded seriously. ‘Yes. You are right.’

‘Though the commissioner is a bit puzzled over why you want this loony Muncaster so badly.’ Syme’s eyes narrowed. ‘According to our records he hasn’t any political past or Resistance links.’

Gunther leaned forward. This man was cocky, but clever too. He said, ‘No police or intelligence service is infallible.’ He smiled self-deprecatingly. ‘Not even ours. But we do think this Muncaster may have political associations in Germany. Concerns have been raised. At a high level.’

‘I thought the anti-Nazis had all been dealt with.’

Gunther raised a hand. ‘Mr Syme, I may not say. It is an internal matter. I would have thought you would have been told this,’ he added.

Syme smiled. ‘You can’t blame me for trying.’

Gunther frowned. The young man was going too far. ‘The terms of reference for co-operation were, as I said, set at a very senior level.’

Syme looked discomfited. His mobile face was expressive, too expressive perhaps for a detective. He said, a slight edge in his voice, ‘Well, the commissioner says I’m at your disposal.’

‘Thank you.’

‘What is it you want done?’

Gunther drew on his cigarette. ‘We wish to find out all we can about Frank Muncaster. What his mental state is, whether he is lucid and if so, what he says. Our problem is that we, the Gestapo, cannot just go into this hospital demanding to see him.’

‘No.’ Syme frowned. ‘The British police force can do more or less what it wants these days, especially Special Branch. But lunatic asylums remain under the authority of the Health Department.’

Gunther nodded agreement. ‘Quite so. And we do not want our interest in Muncaster known.’

‘I understand. I think.’

‘Has anyone outside the hospital shown any interest in him?’

‘Who? The Resistance?’

‘We’ve no evidence they know anything about him. But we need to be careful.’

Syme pulled out a packet of cigarettes, unfiltered Woodbines, and Gunther took one, though he preferred milder brands. Syme said, ‘No-one’s shown a peep of interest in Muncaster. I’ve seen the local police reports. Frank Muncaster has no record, but in October he suddenly went potty, pushed his brother out of a first-floor window in some family quarrel then started screaming about the end of the world. He was put in the bin and that’s all we know. He’s a geologist, an academic. All these types are loopy.’

Gunther smiled again. ‘I am sorry we can’t confide in you fully. But we will work together, find out what is at the bottom of this. If there is something, we will both get considerable credit.’

That struck a chord. Syme nodded slowly. He said, ‘And if you decide you want him, would you take him back to Germany? Extradite him?’

‘Perhaps. For now, what I would like is for both of us to go up there this weekend, take a look at his flat, and interview him. If that is convenient,’ he added politely.

‘It’s already arranged. We sent a letter to the hospital saying we want to talk to Muncaster about the police case over the assault. Sunday’s their visiting day. The doctor in charge, Wilson, phoned us wanting to know what it was all about, angling to be at the interview. Protective of his charges,’ Syme added contemptuously. ‘Said Muncaster was a Doctor of Science, a man of some status was how he put it. I know what I’d do with the loonies, the same as you Germans have. I spoke to Wilson, quoting the Defence of the Realm Act. That shut him up.’

‘Good.’

‘Might have to watch him, though, his cousin’s a senior civil servant, close to the junior Minister of Health. That could give him some clout if we piss him off.’

‘Yes.’ Gunther smiled. ‘I know. Kid gloves. Now, when we talk to Dr Muncaster, please say I am your sergeant. I will say nothing. I lived in England for five years but my German accent might be picked up.’

‘Yours is hardly noticeable.’

‘Thank you. I was at university here and for a few years after the Treaty I worked as an adviser with Special Branch. I knew the present commissioner.’ He paused. ‘He approved this operation.’

Syme nodded slowly, impressed; his hands twitched slightly in his lap. He lit another cigarette.

‘What do you want me to ask him?’

‘I have a list of questions we could go over now. Can you arrange a car, by the way?’

‘We can go in mine. Afterwards we can go to where Muncaster lives. It’s a flat. His keys will be held by the hospital. The local boys will provide a locksmith, I’ve already been onto them.’

Gunther nodded appreciatively. ‘Thank you. You have been very efficient.’

‘Yeah, well, we English aren’t completely useless, you know.’

They spent the rest of the evening going over the plans, the questions Gunther wanted asked of Muncaster. He stressed several times how the Gestapo appreciated Syme’s co-operation. They finished at about ten.

‘Time I got home.’ Syme stood up and stretched his long arms.

‘You have a wife waiting?’

Syme shook his head. ‘No, I live in my parents’ old house. Inherited it when my mother died last year.’

‘Where is that?’

Syme hesitated, then said, ‘Wapping. My dad owned it himself, though,’ he added proudly.

Gunther nodded. ‘What did he do?’

Syme paused. ‘He was a docker. Got squashed flat when a crate slipped off a crane and fell on him.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘It happens in the docks. I’m well out of that.’ As he spoke, the underlying Cockney twang was gone again. He looked Gunther challengingly in the eye.

‘My father was a policeman,’ Gunther said. ‘Dead too now, sadly.’

As they moved towards the door Syme said, ‘We thought we had a lead on Churchill last week, living as a guest of some distant Marlborough relative at a big house in Yorkshire. But if he was there, he was gone by the time we arrived. He moves around all over the place.’

‘He must be nearly eighty now.’

‘Yeah, the old bastard can’t last much longer. And we caught and shot his sidekick Ernie Bevin last year.’ At the door Syme turned to Gunther and said, ‘Lot of Jews down our way. At least they’re kept in their place now. Used to be a cocky lot.’

‘Yes. They are an alien element.’

A look of ferrety curiosity appeared on Syme’s face. ‘People here often ask, what have you done with them? There were millions in parts of Europe, weren’t there, milling around like beetles? I know you say they’ve all been resettled in the East, but we hear things sometimes, in the Branch. Big gassing plants.’

Gunther smiled and shook his head. ‘So far as I know, Inspector, they are all in camps in Poland and Russia. Safely secured, taken care of, made to work hard.’

Syme smiled and winked.

When he had gone Gunther sighed deeply. He hadn’t liked Syme. But he had been very efficient, prepared everything well. He remembered what he had said about the Jews. Like everyone in his section of the Gestapo, Gunther knew exactly what had happened to those Jews deported to the East; they were all dead, gassed and cremated in the huge extermination camps of Russia and Poland. Some of the smaller camps had closed now, though others remained open for any Jews and social misfits who had not yet been swept up, and for Russian prisoners of war. Some of the senior camp personnel had come back to staff jobs at Gestapo HQ; they tended to be reliable, efficient men, though a lot were prone to drink. But what else could Germany have done, with the war in Russia raging? They couldn’t be burdened by millions of hostile, dangerous Jews in the ghettos of the East. By express order of Himmler himself, though, the subject was never mentioned outside Gestapo offices.

He thought again about his hostile reaction to Syme. He knew himself well enough to wonder whether his dislike might be linked to his unease at what Gessler had told him at the end of their interview earlier: ‘If the English policeman finds out anything about the secrets Muncaster may hold, he is to be disposed of. There and then. We will deal with the Home Office afterwards.’ What Gessler said had been in the back of Gunther’s mind all night. He had been shocked. Policemen didn’t kill their own.

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