The Man Who Never Was Read online

  “Sometimes you amaze me, Inspector. Carry on with the good work, I have to make a call, please excuse me.”

  *

  Moss was thinking through exactly what Marion Wentworth expected to achieve by shadowing Milan Hajek. He decided to look at it in a different way. A personal friend in the Inland Revenue was contacted.

  “Julian, it’s Oswald Moss, I know it’s been a long time. How is everyone?”

  “Well, well, old Oz. We’re all fine, including two grandchildren. Marjorie, and our daughter Alice are actually up in the northeast with them at the moment. Her mum is over ninety now, you know, and unfortunately she’s in care. Marge wanted a photo of all four generations. Her mother is actually doing ok, but she wanted to see the kids while she still has all of her faculties, and she is a bit too frail to travel. Anyway, is this purely social? I feel bad about letting the contact slide.”

  “Now you’ve made me squirm. It’s a favour I’m after. How far back can you trace tax records of individuals?”

  “Depends on a few factors, but there has been a kind of cut-off point for, shall I say, ‘normal’ people, if the revenue fails to collect tax. There are obviously exceptions if we’re dealing with suspected tax evasion or avoidance. What is it you are after?”

  “It’s probably nothing but I was interested in a foreign national who may or may not have been registered for tax in this country.”

  “What period are we talking about?”

  “I don’t really know, that’s the problem. It could have been any time from the end of the war until now, if he is still here, and alive.”

  “I don’t think there’s much chance of running him to ground. Was there anything special about him?”

  “He was German and may have had connections with the spooks. He was probably here under one or more aliases. Ok, just forget it, Julian. It was a long shot.”

  “It’s not the kind of enquiry which would go unmissed, Oz, it’s quite risky. I can do some background checking and that’s about all, no specifics. What’s the name?”

  “Max Vogt, V-O-G-T. Now please don’t do anything stupid, Julian, this is just a hunch I’m working on, it isn’t crucial.”

  “Understood, I’ll get back to you one way or the other.”

  Chapter 17

  High Spen 1945

  Chopwell Woods

  Michael was frantically trying to explain the change in the situation to his friend.

  “Karl, it has happened already, the Luftwaffe boys have gone home.” He made flying gestures by spreading his arms and simulating aircraft noise. “Yesterday, they go to Deutschland.”

  Karl’s English vocabulary had expanded enormously, and grammar wasn’t an issue. After all, the two of them had nothing else to do, other than eat and keep warm.

  “You say my friends are at home now?”

  “Not just your friends, all Luftwaffe boys. It was on the radio.” Michael drew a stick picture in the dirt, with arrows from all over England, converging on Germany.

  “This is good, no?”

  “Yes, it is for them, but I heard from the village that they are going to send more people to find you. Police will come here from the city.”

  “For me? I don’t want going back to Deutschland.”

  “Maybe it’s not to go home. I don’t like the sound of it. I think you have to stay here longer. If you run they will catch you.”

  “But now I can go at the police, and tell I like to stay in England.”

  “No, the radio said that all German men who have escaped from camps will be kept here for questions, and then sent to Germany later. They won’t let you stay.”

  “Something must change, Michael. I only want staying here for many days, not all my life.”

  Michael was crestfallen, and in this very moment it fully dawned on him that Karl was never going to be happy if there was no prospect of getting back to mainstream German society, and with his family. He’d hoped he might adapt and enjoy the wild. It wasn’t to be.

  “You have to be very careful, but I’ll help you. The problem is your English, it’ll give you away.”

  “In this city, Newcastle, there will be some people sleeping in the streets, yes?”

  “Lots of people Karl, but not Germans. They would tell the police about you if they could get money for it.”

  “But Newcastle has ships, and I can get work. I will go to Germany if I can do it with a trade ship. I still have my family there, and they will keep me safe. It is only the German officers I must not meet. Yes, this is a good idea, can you help me?”

  “I’ll try to find someone who knows about merchant ships, but Karl, the war has just finished, so there might not be many going to Germany just yet. And I think the police will be checking them.”

  “Yes, you are right in this point. I will have to be – what is it? Some cargo? I will hide in the bottom of a ship. We must find one which goes to the north of Germany, Hamburg is good. I know people there. Thank you, my friend, I would like to stay in England with you, to find a ship, but not living in the woods.”

  *

  High Spen

  The news of the repatriation had spread quickly throughout the region and it suddenly occurred to Jack, that this continuing hunt for Karl would ultimately impact his own son. He asked Harry if he wanted to join the volunteers to find his friend.

  “If they find him, he’ll have to go back to his family in Germany. He might have a little boy like you. If we help the police to look for him, you can say a proper goodbye to him. Would you like that? We can help at the weekends.”

  “Yes, and when he goes home can I go to see his little boy?”

  “I don’t really know if he has a son, I’m just trying to explain why he’ll want to see his family, just like I did when I was so far away from all of you.”

  “Ok, can we give him a present to take home?”

  “Why not? I’ll try to think of something for this weekend.”

  That night Jack went to the Field Club after his evening meal, tired from a hard day’s work at the building site. The bar was crowded and the decibel output was verging on splitting ears, mostly because of arguments regarding the outcome of the forthcoming grudge football match between Spen Black &White, and Chopwell.

  In the smoke-filled bar, Jack was telling one of his pals about taking Harry on the search for Karl. The smell of sweat from dozens of working men was extremely pervasive, and yet totally ignored. Unaware that a bystander from a different group was eavesdropping, Jack mentioned that he had promised to take a present, in the event that they did find the German.

  The noise level faded as the eavesdropper, a man not resident in the village, but temporarily employed there, began to bait Jack.

  “We’ve only just got rid of these bastards from the village and you’re talking about handing out gifts to the one who got away. Fucking Nazi convert.”

  Jack’s friend, Tommy Hume, tried to restrain him from responding.

  “Leave it, Jack, this nutter is always looking for trouble.”

  Jack turned to the man and quietly asked if he had fought in the campaign. This caused the background noise to escalate again. There were obviously many who sided with this stranger.

  “No I didn’t, like many of us I worked the mines, to keep the bloody country’s energy supply going. Now I have a trade to my name. What’s it to you?”

  “Then you made your contribution. But you haven’t got any experience of what it’s really like being told to kill people. These German soldiers were told the same, and it wasn’t so difficult to realise your own survival had to come first. It became more of a problem when we were told to clean out foxholes with grenades, even though we knew the people inside wanted to surrender. If you’ve never looked a man in the eye before you killed him, then you should reserve judgement on his character.”

  The man spat on the floor and moved closer. Jack prepared himself as he spoke once more to the aggressor.

  “Unlike this countr
y, where there’s been debate about conscientious objectors, the Reich made sure there was no such thing in Germany. Yes, I’ve spoken to young men we captured, and many of them didn’t want to go to war at all. It’s the politicians who wage war, not these kids. Now, what experiences are your comments based on?”

  There was a short hiatus in the dialogue, during which the noise was completely doused. The big stranger produced a knife.

  “On the fact that my brother was killed by these filthy swine.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. My own brother was also shot by Germans in 1918, just a few days before the fighting stopped. I know exactly how you feel. It doesn’t change what I just said.”

  This actually enraged the man, and he lunged forward. Jack was nimble enough, and well-practised in avoiding bayonets. A group of the man’s friends gripped him and relieved him of the knife, one of them saying, “Ralph, if you want to fight one of our soldiers, it has to be a fair fight, he’s unarmed.”

  Confident in his size and strength, the stranger nodded. A ring of spectators was formed, while the barman despatched one of the customers for the constable.

  Jack had earned a reputation for this kind of combat, and it had been accompanied by an appropriate nickname. ‘Biff’ was derived from the technique itself, and conferred to him by soldiers in his regiment who’d suffered at his execution of it. Most fist fights, like wars were won before they were fought. Saturday night bar brawls were not much different, and Ralph depended on assets which would never come into play.

  Jack waited, coiled and watching his adversary’s transfer of weight from one foot to the other. It came from Ralph and signalled a right hand punch. The auto-response was B (body) I (incapacitate) F (face) F (flatten). The natural tendency of wanting to immediately smash the opponent in the face drove Ralph to nullify his own weight advantage. Jack feinted one way, side-stepped the other, not only avoiding the blow, but unbalancing Ralph, causing him to run on to a sapping right hand to the solar plexus. The momentum from both men was then additive, and effectively cut off the big man’s ability to breathe. His massive arms fell by his side and Jack delivered a crushing left hook to the jaw. His foe’s legs buckled and he was in a heap on the floor. His friends carried him out before the police arrived, and Jack resumed his chat with Tommy Hume.

  It had done his reputation no harm. Word got back to his employer, Thomas Armstrong & Son. He was being depicted as fair-minded, modest, able to deal with trouble, and not least of all, a man who’d fought for his country. He didn’t have long to wait for a transfer from labouring work to a trainee bricklayer.

  *

  Two days later Harry and his dad joined the search. The present Jack had mentioned to his son turned out to be a pair of fur-lined leather army gloves, as a barrier against the cold. Jack had an inkling that if Karl was caught, he’d be confined somewhere without heating. Nothing came of their efforts, and Harry was tired by the time the daylight began to fade. As they relished the supper Bella had made, she told them that another group searching for Karl had found a man hanged beside a bend in the river running through Chopwell Woods. Harry didn’t immediately connect this to his German friend, but Jack said, “Was it Karl?”

  “No, it was that tramp who hangs about the village from time to time. But they reckon he did have some stuff on him which could belong to the airman. There’s a watch for instance. Quite an expensive one they say, and it’s a German make. Maybe he stole it from the airman and Karl killed him.”

  “I don’t think so, Bella. Soldiers wouldn’t hang someone for a theft, more likely they’d strangle them, hit them over the head with a rock, or even stab them – not take time out to find a rope and hang them.”

  “Yes, I suppose so. Anyway, they’re now looking at all of Chopwell Woods, they think he’s in there somewhere.”

  Nobody was to know that Michael had walked with Karl through the night to Newcastle docks, and they had bid each other a tearful farewell. Karl’s watch was a gift to his ‘landlord’, who had lived for so long before finding his first true friend. Michael had wept almost incessantly all the way back to the woods, and without any further deliberation, he entered the cavern, took the rope and chose the spot where he first set eyes on Karl. He couldn’t rationalise why he was unable to go back to his lone existence after all these years. By taking his own life in this way, he’d unintentionally put the police on to the wrong scent. He had reasoned that Karl would never know of his suicide if he managed to get aboard a ship.

  Because Michael’s death was being investigated as a murder, there was little information released, and no funeral would take place for the time being, with no next of kin to object. His passing changed nothing in the village, but indirectly improved the chances of Karl escaping the country. Then there was the matter of the watch. With nobody to claim it, the case file became its home for many years.

  Chapter 18

  Newcastle C.I.D.

  Moss had engineered an olive branch to present to Marion Wentworth, without discussing it with anyone on the case. He’d roped in some of the uniformed staff to collect innumerable old files from a store room, and temporarily pile them in a holding cell which needed a facelift. By re-jigging the decorators’ schedule, they spruced up the store room first. It was a pleasantly warm room, unlike the attic, and had a window on to a courtyard. The lawn had a central patio, and there were several architectural antiques scattered around the perimeter. The decorators were then despatched to the holding cell, as the old files were to be shifted up to the attic.

  “May I ask what is going on?” said Marion.

  “Come with me, Marion, while we finalise the transfer. I felt a bit guilty about you sitting up here all on your own.”

  She was very happy to see her new office but asked how she was expected to pay for it.

  “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, I’m told.”

  “Just accept my apologies for you having to sit and freeze up there. It only took a bit of lateral thinking to sort it out. I’ll still be asking the same awkward questions, that’s not going to change. Since you’ve brought it up, you mentioned a report you had from an officer of the crown about events in 1945. Why can’t I know his or her name?”

  “If I believed I could tell you that, I would have already done so. Things may change.”

  “Ok, just checking. I’ve convinced myself that it must have been a report about something in this region if it pertains to this case. I’ll do a bit of digging. Don’t give me that look, I will keep you informed.”

  *

  The Northumberland Countryside

  Sophie Redwood had taken the flight from Heathrow to Newcastle. Black was nervous about being seen and whisked her away to a remote pub in rural Northumberland. He wasn’t going to impress her with the reception area of this venue; it was in need of a lot of work, but the place enjoyed a good reputation as a restaurant.

  She looked around the dingy, time-worn lounge and began to wonder what she was doing here. Black informed the barman that they would go straight to the table. It was a different world they entered – bright, clean and effusing a seductive aroma. After the waiter took their drinks order, he explained.

  “My boss doesn’t know I’m meeting you. That’s why I chose this place, it’s a busy day here when they have six tables occupied.”

  “It’s all a little melodramatic, Inspector, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t your boss know?”

  “He’s a bit too cosy with the vulture from the Capital, as you refer to these people. The other one has gone back to London, but Superintendent Moss is being run by the woman who stayed. Let’s order the starters before we talk any more shop.”

  They both perused the highly unusual selection available from the menu, and Sophie was impressed, so much so that she found it difficult to choose. Black watched her every expression, thought that her appearance certainly complemented her sexy voice. He had to force his thoughts back to the case. Once they were free of attention from the wai
ter Black decided not to mess about.

  “I know you aren’t going to reveal your source, but can you tell me if any of our people are involved in leaking information to you? If the answer is yes, it might make our conversation today a little less productive, or even redundant.”

  “I’d figured that out anyway, and I wouldn’t have needed to agree to this meeting if I felt able to get what I want by conventional contact with the Newcastle police force.”

  “You haven’t ruled out other forces, or the Met in particular?”

  “None of my information came from provincial police forces, but nobody can ever rule out the Met, even though that isn’t my source either. Look, if we are going to make progress it requires a certain amount of trust. I don’t think I can get the whole story into print on my own, and I know you are being led to an ‘acceptable’ conclusion. Working together carries more risk for you than it does for me, that’s true. But maybe I can provide you with just enough hints to feed to your boss to periodically swat the Foreign Office off his back.

  “My article is a prime example. It isn’t just you it has embarrassed, there are others who have made complaints to my boss. It’s a fine line Inspector, and it could get very nasty. Could you top up my wine glass please?”

  “I get the feeling that you didn’t actually dig this information out, did someone come to you?”

  “That’s a strange question.”

  “Well, it’s more of a statement really. The investigation hadn’t even been of sufficient interest to the local rags, but you picked it up, and your information was disturbingly accurate. You know more don’t you?”

  “Yes, however, it requires proof, or should I say corroboration. Someone could have told me that a British citizen was a Russian spy, but I’d need hard evidence to be taken seriously.”

  “And why has your source volunteered this information about a Mickey-Mouse case in Newcastle?”

  “Here’s where some trust is required. It wasn’t voluntary information. You don’t need me to tell you that newspapers employ some pretty grubby methods of getting to the truth. I had some fairly reliable stuff fed to me by a regular source which would have embarrassed a well-respected person. My boss wanted to go ahead with that story, but when I gave this individual the chance to deny the claim, information on this case was dangled in front of me. So it was a question of trading rather than voluntary disclosure. You have to remember that it’s not quite the same as a court of law.