Andrew Williams - The Interrogator

‘It’s too soon to give him a clean bill of health.’

Fleming paused: ‘Well, that’s as may be but for now we’re rather in his hands and we would appreciate some assistance — if you don’t mind.’

Mit Käse fängt Mann Mause . Lindsay left the prisoners in the sticky heat of their rooms and walked with the thought all afternoon. Bait to catch the mouse. It was the only way. He stood for a while beneath Lange’s willow tree throwing the occasional pebble into the lake, the ripples twinkling in an ever-widening circle until they were lost in the bright sunlight. Consequences, consequences. To risk one man’s life for the many. It was at the edge of what he knew to be right but the thought had chased him all night, all day. ‘Whatever you need to do.’ Surely a conscience was a luxury in the war they were fighting. It needed to be an elastic conscience at least. But he wrestled with the thought that it was for more than the greater good, more than duty, it was his demon. A conviction — confused but firm — that in vanquishing it there would be some sort of release. Once the idea had taken hold of him, it held him in a breathless embrace, squeezing him tighter, tighter. ‘Whatever you need to do’: he needed to do this.

Jürgen Mohr was sitting at the table with a copy of yesterday’s Times . Lindsay stood aside to let the guard remove the supper tray with its half-eaten meal of pork and potatoes and something that might have been gravy.

‘This is how you hope to break me,’ said Mohr in English and he pointed to the plate. The door closed behind Lindsay and he leant back against it.

‘I don’t need to break you.’

‘Oh?’

‘You and your officers are going back to the camp — for now. ‘I have your old statement,’ and he lifted the file he was holding. ‘And fresh statements from the others.’

‘May I have a cigarette?’ Mohr sounded tired. Two days spent sitting, waiting, with only old English newspapers and a battered copy of Milton’s Paradise Lost to relieve the boredom, and that special anxiety, the uncertainty of the prisoner, the frustration, the helplessness. Lindsay took out his cigarettes and tossed them on to the table.

‘There is going to be a trial. We’re preparing the papers. Two, perhaps three of your officers.’

Mohr took a cigarette and waved it at Lindsay, who stepped forward to hand him the lighter.

‘Which ones?’

‘And your part in the Council of Honour and the interrogation of Heine will be examined too.’

Mohr drew deeply on his cigarette. But for a small frown hovering at his brow, he looked calm, his chin in his hands, his elbows on the table.

‘You’re leaving tonight.’

Their eyes met for a moment, then Mohr looked away, the ghost of a smile on his face, and he picked up the Milton.

‘This is hard for me, but I understand enough to admire.’ And he opened the book at a small paper marker. ‘The hell within. The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.’

He raised his eyes slowly from the text to Lindsay’s face. And Lindsay felt tense and uncomfortable for a moment. He turned to rap on the door. Heavy boots in the corridor, the drawing back of bolts, and as it began to swing open he looked again at Mohr.

‘Keep the cigarettes.’

Rain brought the late summer smell of decay to the park on the following day, the horse chestnuts curling brown and the first fall of beechnuts and acorns. Helmut Lange was allowed to walk between showers, a guard at his heels. They walked in silence and he preferred it that way. Lindsay had sent a note with his apologies; did he want another book, what about cigarettes? Its warmth would have surprised the sergeant who delivered it if he had been able to read German. There were half a dozen prisoners with their escorts in the park and sometimes Lange was permitted to offer them a smoke. He did not see any of those who had travelled with him from Camp Number One. And it was the same the next day. No one seemed very interested in him any more and he spent hours on his camp bed day-dreaming of home, his mother never far from his thoughts. What would happen to him? He had never thought to ask. He had felt numb with exhaustion after the evening he had spoken of Heine, too full of grief to think of the future. Lindsay would come in time to tell him. There were other camps, perhaps they would send him to Canada. But in the stillness of early morning, as the rain beat against the shutters, a profound anxiety crept through him, penetrating every fibre until his nightshirt clung to him cold and wet. What, what, what was going to happen? Oh God, what was going to happen?

The breakfast tray was still on the table untouched when the guards came for him on the fifth day. Down the stairs at the double and through the fine civilised entrance hall, out to the forecourt and the old military bus, its engine idling roughly on the same note. The same, the same, everything the same. Where was Lindsay? There were other prisoners, officers, men in leather and Luftwaffe-blue chatting in hushed voices. Someone asked him a question but his mouth was sticky and dry and he could not think of an answer. Where was Lindsay? He tried to speak to the British Air Force officer in charge of the escort: ‘Please, I must talk…’

But the guards were pressing the prisoners up the steps and on to the bus. Someone held his shoulder:

‘Come on, Fritz. It’s a long way.’

And in a daze, his heart sick, he was pushed to the door, tripping on the step, past the sour-faced soldier behind the wheel, and shaking to his seat.

It was Dietrich who noticed the short muscular figure in naval uniform shrinking at the back of the line. He looked frightened at six hundred yards. He was walking slowly towards the gate at the eastern end of the terrace, almost hidden by the new Luftwaffe officers shouting their greetings to friends behind the wire. But my God, he had a nerve. Kapitän Mohr was at the blackboard with his English class when Dietrich threw open the schoolroom door:

‘He’s back, Herr Kap’tän.’

Mohr looked at Dietrich for a moment, then calmly put down the chalk and walked over to the bay window. The class followed his example. The prisoners were parting like a river washing round a rock but for a few seconds he was lost behind their shoulders. Then Mohr saw him at the end of the line, white, unshaven, unkempt, clutching his sack to his chest like a tramp with a schnapps bottle. Shabby Lange, frightened Lange, one of the guardians of the German Navy’s reputation. What would dapper Dr Goebbels have thought of his reporter? The British had held him for two additional days. Why? The camp was sure it knew; it was whispered a hundred times over lunch, on the touchline as the football pitch, and in the rooms after lights-out: ‘Lange broken’, ‘Lange an informer’, ‘Lange’, ‘Lange’, ‘Lange’. Fresh evidence, statements, a trial. And yet here he was again shuffling into Stapley camp.

The new prisoners who knew nothing of Lange were speaking, laughing, shaking hands with comrades. But the rest were silent and some were turning away, presenting their backs to Lange in disgust. He was quite close to the window now and Mohr was surprised and struck by the stillness of his face, stiff, white, yes, but he seemed to have found a new strength from somewhere, an inner calm. But it was only a glimpse; the stocky frame of the 112 ’s navigator, Bruns, had stepped in front of him, those intimidating shoulders blocking the view.

‘Shall I ask Bruns to bring him here, Herr Kap’tän?’ Dietrich was poisonous, a man who loved raw violence.

‘No. I’ll see him later,’ said Mohr coldly.