Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

‘And if you don’t get some sort of confirmation from Mohr that they’re reading our signals?’

Lindsay pulled a face. They were lying side by side now and Mary was gazing at him intently, suddenly wakeful and serious. After a long silence she pushed herself up and the sheet slipped from her. He reached up to touch her breast: ‘You’re so very beautiful.’

‘Douglas, you must leave this alone. You’re going to get into terrible trouble.’

‘You sound like your brother,’ he said shortly.

‘Perhaps he’s right about this,’ she said crossly.

Lindsay rolled away from her: ‘He’s an idiot.’

‘He’s my brother.’

‘That is his only redeeming feature.’

‘And is Rodger Winn an idiot too?’

Lindsay sighed loudly.

‘He wanted you to interrogate Mohr, didn’t he,’ she said. ‘But not codes, he doesn’t want you to question him about our codes.’

Lindsay turned his head sharply to look at Mary: ‘Did he tell you that?’

‘Not in so many words, I just know and so do you. It’s out of bounds. Leave it, Douglas. Promise me you will.’

‘Of course I won’t. I really can’t understand this. Why is it so impossible?’ he asked. ‘My God. Doesn’t anyone trust Section 11 or is it just me?’

Mary shook her head and said quietly. ‘Please, please just leave it.’

Lindsay looked at her, slender and pretty, her dark hair unruly about her face, and he wanted to feel her close again. Reaching up, he pulled her down so that her head was resting on his chest and they lay there for a while without speaking. It was Mary who broke the silence:

‘We should go away together.’

‘Paris?’

‘Very funny. Oxfordshire.’

‘Ah. When the war’s over I’ll take you to Berlin.’

‘If they win, someone might beat you to it.’

Lindsay laughed and reached beneath the sheet to gently caress her behind.

‘Do you think Germans would be interested in this?’

‘You are,’ she said.

Mary slept there on his chest, a short restless sleep, until at a little before six, he slipped away. He stepped into Lord North Street with her sweet scent on his skin, her words troubling his thoughts.

None of the other interrogators were in the Trent Park office but the section’s Wrens were busy at their typewriters under their diligent, vigilant chief. Lindsay’s desk was beneath a window on the far side of the room so it was easy for Annie Sherlock to intercept him:

‘A busy night, sir, working late?’

It was clear from her tone that she suspected him of something sinful. Sometimes Lindsay quite liked Annie. She was a formidable figure, a muscular five foot nine with calves shaped on the tennis court — her uniform always looked a size too small for her — dark hair and eyes, strong brown features. She could be funny, flirtatious, although Lindsay found her display a little intimidating, and she cared not a fig for rank.

‘You were in great demand this morning, sir, everyone was asking for you.’

‘Oh?’

‘Commander Henderson seemed to have some idea where you might be;’ this with a knowing smile.

‘Did he?’

‘He was anxious to talk to you. He said, “Ask Lieutenant Lindsay to find me before he does anything else”.’

There was something in Chief Wren Sherlock’s imperious manner that suggested Lindsay was in some sort of trouble.

‘And Lieutenant Samuels wanted you too. He’s left a note on your desk.’

‘Thank you, Annie. Anything else?’

‘Oh just more business. The survivors from the Bismarck are expected in the next couple of days.’

‘Ah. Good,’ he said distractedly. His mind was swirling with unpleasant thoughts. Checkland wanted to speak to him about Mohr, he was sure of it. Had Samuels said something? A note in Samuels’ big round hand was propped on his typewriter, marked rather too conspicuously, URGENT. Lindsay stood and read it by the window:

Checkland on warpath. Collared me and asked for reports on the wireless operators. Asked about you. Advise softly, softly with Mohr.

Mohr was lying on his camp bed staring at the low white ceiling when Lindsay stepped into the room. He made no effort to get up. Bright sunshine was pouring through the barred window, casting a long prison shadow on the bare floorboards. Some clothes and a couple of army blankets were neatly folded on a table, Mohr’s boots were beneath it and there was a chair and a toilet bucket.

‘Good morning, Kapitän Mohr,’ Lindsay said briskly in German as if urging him to rise.

‘What do you want, Lieutenant?’

‘I would like to take you for a walk.’

‘A walk?’ Mohr raised himself on to an elbow and glanced at the window. ‘I would tell you almost anything for the privilege,’ he said and he looked as if he meant it.

Lindsay looked down pointedly at his boots. ‘Well, let’s go.’

He led Mohr past the guardroom and down the back stairs, pausing at the bottom to consider a discreet route. The hall was always busy and the security desk kept a register of the prisoners taken from the house.

‘Are you lost? The entrance is this way.’

Lindsay turned to look at Mohr. He was pointing towards the long gallery, a dry smile on his face.

‘No, there’s another way out.’

The servants’ corridor was to the right of the old dining room and at the end of it a door opened on to a covered walk that led round the west wing of the house.

Beyond the orangery and the icehouse, into the whispering beech-wood, and Lindsay began to breathe a little easier. Mohr caught up with him and the two men walked side by side along a rutted track — still thick with decaying autumn leaves — that climbed gently from the house. Mohr gazed up at the flickering canopy, smiling with pleasure. Broken shafts of sunlight danced across his face, forcing him to close his eyes.

‘Did you enjoy your job?’ Lindsay asked him in German.

‘Enjoy?’

‘Submarine commander.’

‘At first.’

‘What did you enjoy?’

‘The chase. Danger. Success.’

‘And by the end?’

‘It was my duty.’

They walked a little further in silence, then Lindsay said:

‘You attacked a convoy last September, the fifteenth and sixteenth, do you remember?’

‘I sank two ships on the first night — a small freighter and a tanker.’

‘The tanker was the Bordeaux . Only a dozen men were rescued and most of them were badly burned.’

Mohr walked on in silence. There was nothing in his face to suggest that he felt any concern or remorse.

‘I was with the convoy, one of the escorts,’ said Lindsay with a nonchalance he did not feel.

Mohr glanced across and gave him a wan smile.

‘Did you celebrate?’ Lindsay asked.

‘Perhaps, in a small way, I don’t remember.’

The hill was a little steeper, the wood thinner. They were almost at the top when with a small cry of excitement Mohr stepped away from the path.

‘These are good.’

He bent down beside the rotting, splintered stump of a tree and began to pull with both hands at the brown flat fungi clinging to its bark.

‘What do you call this in English?’

‘I haven’t a clue. Don’t poison yourself.’

‘You have some more questions for me then?’ Mohr half turned to look at Lindsay, his hands full of the fungi: ‘You’re wasting your time.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that.’

Mohr shrugged and turned back to the tree stump. ‘Do you have a bag?’ he asked.

‘Why did you go back to sea, Herr Kapitän? You’d done enough. It wasn’t a challenge any more, you were on the Staff, in a position of trust, responsibility. Safe…’