The Man Who Never Was Read online

  Karl took off his identity disc and swung it from its cord. Gunther explained that this was a risk for Karl because it would be needed if they ever were to be repatriated.

  “So, Harry must be keeping this safely, and a big secret.”

  The lock-jam was brushed aside when Harry could make out strange numbers on the metal disc as it reflected the sunlight. He was more than happy to go and retrieve his ball. Bella indicated to Gunther that the hardest part of the deal was done, but she had to speak to the ‘commandant’.

  Chapter 6

  Hexham, Northumberland

  Maggie’s father and mother lived in a small, red brick, two bedroom bungalow in Hexham. Frank’s collection of wartime books, articles and souvenirs were all neatly arranged in the second bedroom. They never had guests for a sleepover, and Frank was really looking forward to retirement from his daily grind as an auto-electrician, so that he could indulge even more in his obsessive quest to pin down his father’s precise role in post-war England. However, cars were becoming ever more complicated in design and he was having difficulty in absorbing every new-fangled system. Unfortunately, he still had a few years to go.

  When Maggie introduced her father, Black noticed a distinct nervousness in Frank. He fussed about where they should sit, and didn’t seem to want his wife Ellen to be present. Maggie went into the tiny kitchen with her mother to make tea. It gave Ellen a chance to ask Maggie what the visit was all about.

  “Your dad has been on tenterhooks ever since you arranged for this policeman to come here, but he won’t tell me why. What’s it that’s got him on edge?”

  “Mum, I’m in the police force too, or had you forgotten? If there was anything to worry about I’d have told dad. It’s just a chat to see if he can point us in the right direction to find out more information about an artefact we discovered in one of our case investigations.

  “I remembered dad showing me granddad’s dog tag from the war when I was about eight, and this one is very similar. If dad can tell us anything which helps us identify the soldier whose disc it was, it will save us a hell of a lot of time. And it won’t do any harm to my chances of passing my interview exam. Just give us ten minutes and stop worrying.”

  Ellen carried the overladen tray, stacked precariously with antique china crockery and biscuits. Maggie followed her back to Frank’s ‘office’ with the teapot.

  “There now, help yourself to biscuits, these chocolate digestives are very nice. Anyway, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get on with the washing.”

  Black nodded his appreciation and turned to Frank.

  “Maggie tells me you may be able to throw some light on this disc we found. I guess she’s told you it was lying next to the bones of a body, in the old coke works at Winlaton Mill. The disc itself is badly pitted, but we do have an enhanced image from the university which helps a little in trying to decipher the symbols.”

  He laid the two items on the small table in the centre of the room. Frank ignored the image and picked up the disc. He walked to the window to shed more light on the symbols of the disc, as the cramped space was quite dark even with the electric lights on. He then turned, and began to open then close several desk drawers impatiently, whispering something under his breath.

  “Your mother moves stuff around from one place to another for no good reason, and she never tells me what she has done or why…. I’ll have to…oh, here it is.”

  He produced a magnifying lens and promptly examined the disc with it. The minutes ticked away and Black was becoming less hopeful that he’d get anything useful from Maggie’s father, when all of a sudden Frank’s face betrayed his considerable relief.

  “I was a bit apprehensive that I’d find some connection to the unit my own father served in, but that isn’t the case.”

  “Can you be more explicit, sir, I mean about the disc,” said Black, his interest reviving somewhat, “anything, all manner of knowledge could be important, no matter how insignificant it may appear to you.”

  Maggie was beginning to get restless.

  “Well, Dad, say something.”

  Frank asked the two of them to sit down again and retrieved a small box from the sideboard. Maggie knew what it was. Frank spoke, his voice trembling with emotion.

  “Inspector, this is my father’s disc, or dog tag, as this country refers to such objects. Look at them together. Yours has a zinc coating and mine is pressed from aluminium, as most of the earlier discs were during the war. My father’s was issued right at the start of hostilities, but yours wasn’t produced until the beginning of 1943. Apart from this I can tell you of another difference; yours is from a Luftwaffe training unit, whereas mine refers to a unit already in action.”

  “Fascinating,” mumbled Black, smiling at Maggie, as his excitement piqued, “and what else is there? The numbers and letters must mean something to you.”

  “They do mean something but I’m no expert. I can see from your disc and its image on the table that there could be several interpretations of the legend. First of all, the two halves of the disc have exactly the same meaning, just the bottom half is a mirror image of the top, but is upside down. This enables anyone to read the duplicated information whichever way it hangs on its cord. It would normally be hung from the single hole, and the cord passes though the two holes at the bottom to keep it flat, I suppose.”

  Black was beginning to sense a breakthrough and became more specific in his questioning of Frank.

  “Aha, and this surely means if a letter is pitted on one half we may possibly get it from the other half.”

  “Exactly,” exclaimed Frank, seeming to relax, “you can therefore work out the wording. Unless I’m mistaken, it is ‘3/FL. AUSB. REGT. 43’. This means it was issued to a man who was part of a regiment which was undergoing training at that time. Mine is totally different and has additional information, including a blood group letter.”

  “Right, great, so what else does ours tell you about the person to whom it belonged?”

  “I’m afraid that I won’t be able to tell you anything about that. There is another irregularity though. You see the number which refers to the person – it is above the serving unit description, and that is wrong. Look here again, my father’s is correct, the number is below his unit reference.”

  “Wow,” said Black, “does that mean it could be bogus?”

  “Not necessarily, you see, as the war progressed many units had the capability of pressing new discs as the need arose. There are many instances of pragmatism, the rules were bent, in this case it could be because the unit description is so long it couldn’t be placed higher up on the oval disc, and it all had to go on one line. So, they may have put the number 277 in the wrong place just for convenience.”

  A slightly disappointed Black shrugged his shoulders.

  “Oh well, that’s about it then for now. Still, it has been helpful, Mr Reichert. Thank you for your time.”

  “Wait, Inspector, that isn’t the end of the line, just my capability. As you can imagine, even after the war was over, there were many reasons for not allowing the definite identification of the individual to become public knowledge. Imagine the feelings of the parents of a dead soldier if they were contacted by someone other than the proper authority, and that’s where we should address inquiries now.

  “The Abwehr was the German Military Intelligence organisation from the 1920’s until after the war. The information still exists and the keepers of this archive will respond to an official police request, especially if it will help fill in a blank in their records. It could be of great service to any remaining relatives of this man.”

  “Ok,” said Maggie and Black in unison. Then Maggie queried one of her father’s words.

  “Dad, you said we could go to the Abwehr, did you mean we, the police?”

  “No, I meant ‘we’ including myself. I think we may get a quicker response if they know I’m half German.”

  “But what if they check back on granddad�
��s cooperation with Britain?”

  “I’ve always thought about that, Maggie, and I’ve changed my mind a thousand times on what it all meant. These days the new breed of West German citizens want to confront these issues head-on instead of burying them. Their guilt over one Austrian megalomaniac is being assuaged by more understanding of the motives of soldiers like my father. They wanted to end ethnic and social cleansing. They may have been in the minority but they were amongst the bravest. But it wasn’t healthy to mess with the Gestapo back then.”

  His hand was shaken in appreciation by Black and Maggie managed to hold back a little tear of pride. She asked D.I. Black to give her a couple of minutes with her father.

  “Dad, are you sure it’s a good idea for you to get involved with the Abwehr? It could lead to things you’d rather not know about granddad.”

  “Do you think I don’t realise that? However, it’s about time I put all this stuff behind me. It isn’t just the uninformed in Britain who still treat German people with suspicion. And, there are still those in Germany who hold preservation of the ‘Fatherland’ and Aryan bloodlines in particular, as a holy grail to be restored. They treat people like my father, but who were repatriated, as treasonous outcasts. I want to flush these bigots out into the open, and this person, whoever it is, presents an opportunity such as your grandfather never had. He seriously considered going back there, and had it not been for your grandma, and the fact that I came along, he would surely have done so. It won’t be easy but it isn’t so dangerous these days.”

  Maggie could sense Frank had experienced some kind of watershed moment and it was as if he’d offloaded a great emotional burden. They hugged and she felt him shaking, as he bade her to go.

  “I need to speak with your Mum.”

  *

  Newcastle C.I.D.

  There was a note on Black’s desk from Constance Carr which simply said, ‘Ring me’. He did so, and just as she answered he scalded his tongue with the coffee Freda had left for him. She’d warned him about it, saying the new machine was having teething problems, but as often happened his mind was elsewhere. It seemed to be a function of his photographic memory, a prioritisation of registry when there were many factors competing for attention.

  “Bloody Norah!”

  “No, it’s Constance, sorry to disappoint you.”

  Now that the glitch in the coffee machine had worked its way up the ladder of importance in the most dramatic fashion, the exact moment would be embedded into his cerebral hard disk.

  “Hello Connie, there is no Norah, you’re still the only one. Do you have something for me?”

  “Nothing of that kind I’m afraid. I have revised my initial estimates a little following the full series of tests on the bones. I believe the person was in his early twenties at most, and when I said it wasn’t a recent death I didn’t expect it to have been so long ago.”

  “You mean about 1945?”

  “Well, I can’t be that precise, but…”

  “Sorry Connie, you did tell me to back off until you’d finished your examination, so you wouldn’t have heard that the professor from the university is pretty certain that our man was buried underneath the concrete slab, which was installed in 1945. You see, if I had continued to be a pest, you’d have known this already.”

  “Mmm, well at least my findings don’t contradict your theories and circumstantial hearsay evidence. Anyway, to the facts, there is clear indication of severe trauma to the cervical vertebrae. The most obvious cause could have been the crushing weight of concrete, but on closer examination I found definite evidence of blows from some kind of sharp implement. An axe, a heavy bladed tool, something like that. There are multiple strike patterns which produced many fractures. I’d say this was a violent death.”

  “So, we’re looking at murder then. I had a feeling that this might be the case. I tried to think of why or how a corpse just happened to end up neatly tucked away under a presumed impregnable foundation slab, and I couldn’t come up with anything. I was partly drawn to this conclusion by the proximity of the barrel and hessian we found, possibly from a sack. It all added up to hiding a body in a place where it would never be found.”

  “In that case, Inspector, you’ll be interested in my report on the remnants of those very pieces of hessian and fragments from the barrel. I took the liberty of passing these to our budding forensics department and they discovered something unusual. The various parts were clumped together with compacted mud and they are still working on what the victim may have been wearing. By washing the mud away very carefully, some of the fabrics have been isolated, apparently not pure wool, but one patch fell away and yielded a gold ring. It obviously wasn’t being worn, probably tucked away in a pocket. It has an engraving – the letters M.V. are inscribed on the inside face.”

  “I owe you one, Constance Carr. I have to let Moss know that this really is a suspicious death, in my opinion a murder.”

  “Well you’re the detective, I just deal in facts and educated hypotheses, so I’ll leave the speculation in your capable hands. I’ll let you know what I consider to be appropriate if you really feel you ‘owe me one’.”

  Chapter 7

  High Spen 1945

  Even if the rest of his classmates all had mums and dads, Harry was the only one in the entire village who had a Luftwaffe dog tag.

  High Spen, at that time, was a thriving community despite having a small population, many of whom were pitmen. Amongst the facilities there were no fewer than three working men’s social clubs – the Field, the Road-End, and the Central, which was curiously known by the locals as ‘Headsy’s. The Palace cinema stood proudly in a prime location, surrounded by Suzy Best’s sweet shop and temperance bar, the Venture bus garage, and the Corner confectionary emporium.

  Scattered along this main street were many other businesses, giving the illusion of complete self-sufficiency. Two hairdressing salons, a milliners, a hardware store, two greengrocers, a butcher, a newsagent, an elegant ladies dress store, and Cumberledge’s, an immaculate example of one of the first one-stop food outlets to rival the Co-operative.

  Not content with the three clubs, there were plenty of supporters of the Miner’s Arms and the Bute Arms pubs. Three delineations of religious worship were on offer, and bestriding the whole community was indeed the Co-operative Wholesale Society. It was a classic portrait of competitiveness being spawned by complacency of an assumed monopoly.

  Despite the quarterly dividend of the Co-op offering a seductive rainy day fund, the villagers unconsciously or otherwise spent enough in the peripheral businesses to forge a parasitic or symbiotic relationship within the economic community.

  The bustling nature of High Spen thrived for decades, and it could only be brought down by the unthinkable – closure of the coal mine.

  In Harry’s little world there was also evidence of a seemingly disproportionate investment in local education. He attended the Infant and Junior Mixed School, and would have a choice at the age of eleven, depending upon his ability. He would attend either the Secondary Modern Senior or Hookergate Grammar school establishments, the latter drawing pupils from surrounding villages within a five mile radius.

  For Harry there was an abundance of school children who would eagerly divest him of the dog tag. Its currency increased by the day. Bella advised him that it had to be kept in a safe place, because it was so important to Karl, its German owner, and anyway it had to be returned at some point.

  There was no bank in the village, people were paid in cash, spent cash, and were hardly able to save, except for the Co-op dividend. They certainly couldn’t afford to borrow money at that time, even though the war was supposed to be at an end.

  Bella, for that very same reason, didn’t want to incur costs of depositing such a controversial item with a solicitor in Blaydon, the nearest small town. Harry cried when she told him they would have to give the disc back to Karl as soon as possible. It was his only grasp on street credibil
ity, even at such a young age. Boys and girls alike wanted to glimpse such a symbol of rebellion against the decree of parental authority.

  “Grandma, you said I should lend the men my ball, why are you saying I have to stop lending it now?”

  “It’s too hard to explain Harry, you’ll understand when you grow up.”

  “But that will be a long time. Why can the men not stay here instead of going away?”

  “Because they have families in Germany and anyway the tents they live in here are cold and damp, they aren’t fit to live in for a long time.”

  Harry thought about this for a while and reasoned that Germany must be even further away than Newcastle, also in his opinion, it would be quite exciting to live in a tent. In addition, the men were his friends even if they had a family.

  So why would they leave? He couldn’t go to his family, and his parents didn’t come to see him very much, whereas his friends were there every day.

  “Listen Harry, if you give the disc back to Karl, I’ll buy you a new football and some proper boots to play in, then the men will become even better friends if you let them keep the old ball. You can then expect them to give you something else as a present, something even more exciting than a silly disc.”

  The prospect of something unknown but more exciting than the dog tag worked its magic. Harry couldn’t sleep because he was imagining a new football and a mystery present. It felt like Christmas.

  Bella suddenly recalled that she had intended to talk to the ‘commandant’ about the initial swap, but she’d forgotten. Her juggling of keeping the various Co-op halls pristine, the house tidy, cooking meals, attending to her husband’s deteriorating health, including taking him to Harrogate Spa, was taking its toll. On top of this it was a challenge in its own right looking after a little boy with somewhat special needs.

  It was a sort of blessing that the commandant was merely some delegated underling from the Home Guard.

  “Mr Proudfoot, I suppose I have enough on my plate without having to get involved in red tape. My grandson accidently kicked his ball over the fence where you keep these airmen locked up. Now, I know the rules say there should be no fraternisation, but we don’t want the ball back, it won’t last much longer anyway before it bursts. I just wanted you to know they can keep it. They offered it back, but Harry is getting a new one. I sincerely hope your people won’t look on this as some kind of Quisling situation.”