Adrian Magson - No Sleep for the Dead

Unger made polite and careful introductions. Oscar Hemmricht was tall, rawboned and dressed in a check shirt and heavy work pants. He looked carefully at Palmer before nodding and shaking hands, then invited them both to sit at a heavy kitchen table, while he poured fresh coffee from a cafetière.

‘He does not speak English,’ said Unger. ‘Sorry — I should have said. Obviously, I’ll translate for you, unless…?’ Palmer shook his head. His German was passable, but not for this kind of thing. There was too much danger of missing something important, and Unger would be better able to judge how things were going if he was involved first-hand.

Unger spoke for a few minutes, during which Palmer picked up references to the Volkspolitzei — the border police — and the Ost — the East. Oscar Hemmricht listened, nodding and occasionally looking at Palmer, then cleared his throat and asked a question.

‘He wants to know if you were here before,’ said Unger. ‘He says you have the look of the military.’

‘Yes,’ replied Palmer, looking directly at the farmer. There was no benefit in avoiding the truth. ‘I was a military policeman in eighty-nine. I came out to this place with a colleague when the shooting was reported. It was the only time.’

Oscar nodded but said nothing, so Palmer decided to ask him a direct question. ‘Your father ran this farm back then, is that correct, Herr Hemmricht?’

Hemmricht spoke, Unger translating that the old man had died five years ago of pneumonia, leaving the farm to his only son. It was a good farm now, with more land and lots of opportunity, but still difficult to make it pay.

‘Were you all here on the night of the shooting?’

Hemmricht frowned and shook his head. ‘No, we were asked to leave two days before.’

‘You recall that period, then?’ Palmer felt a sense of relief. At least it wasn’t a complete non-starter. He’d been worried the man would draw a complete blank.

‘Of course. Very little happened here.’ Unger conveyed the farmer’s wry shrug. ‘I was a boy… these things were interesting. What do you want to know?’

‘Did anyone say why you had to leave?’

‘A man came. From the British. There was a military exercise coming through, and with the border being so close, there were dangers for civilians. My father was not pleased, because of the farm, but he agreed to go. They said it was the law.’

Unger looked sour at what he plainly saw as a misuse of military and local powers at the time, and explained: ‘What they meant was, they did not want to risk having to pay compensation if anyone got hurt. It was probably cheaper to pay for the family to stay in a spa thirty kilometres away until the exercise was over.’

‘Really? I’ve never heard of that happening before.’

‘Nor me,’ said Unger.

Palmer said nothing, but watched Hemmricht’s body language as Unger was translating. The man kept shooting nervous glances at him and curling his roughened hands around his coffee cup. Palmer thought he might be holding something back, but Unger appeared not to have noticed. He asked one more question to make absolutely sure.

‘Did you keep animals here back then?’

Hemmricht nodded and held up his hands, fingers spread, happy to be on safe ground once more. ‘Nine cows,’ confirmed Unger. ‘And a few chickens. They did not have much.’

Palmer smiled before saying casually, ‘And you fed them on the night of the shooting?’

Unger looked surprised, but put the statement to the farmer. Hemmricht, in turn, became guarded, and there was a heavy silence, during which Palmer kept his gaze firmly on him. Eventually the man sighed and spoke briefly and Unger translated. ‘He says he was here. How do you know this?’

‘Because his father had been here since he was a boy, am I right?’

‘Yes.’

‘And no British army exercise was going to be allowed to risk what few animals they had in the world. So the old man told his son to stay behind and lie low while the exercise passed by, and to make sure the animals were fed and watered. I’m no farmer, but it’s what I would have done.’

Unger translated, then looked at Palmer. ‘He says you are correct. His father was very insistent that the animals should not be left alone. Anyway, two cows were in calf, and the money from the calves was important to them.’ He paused, then said apologetically. ‘He says his father did not trust the soldiers.’

‘But there was no British army exercise, was there? I’m only guessing, but I think I would have known about it at the time. I was a military policeman and it would have been my job to know. There was nothing.’

Unger’s translation received no response from the farmer, save for a pulse beating in his throat.

‘What did he see?’ Palmer insisted softly. ‘Tell him there will be no recriminations. I would like to see justice done, that’s all. To put right a serious wrongdoing.’

Unger spoke again, and Hemmricht got up and refreshed their coffees, then sat down again. He avoided their eyes, but as he spoke, it was clear that the passage of time had not diminished the strength of his boyhood memories.

The farmhouse and adjacent buildings were in darkness. He had been awakened by the sound of an engine moving along the track from the road, heading towards the border area. Speaking softly to calm the animals, he had peered out through a crack in the wooden side of the barn, but all he could see was a set of headlights bouncing along in the dark. He couldn’t understand why any car would be going over there at this time of night, because it was just a track to some fields. Beyond that was the border and the open expanse of ground where only motorised and dog patrols and the truly desperate ever set foot. Not even the game birds seemed to congregate there, as if recognising the inherent dangers posed by man. He decided the vehicle must be an advance party for the military exercise they had been told about, although it was surprisingly close to the border. Even as a boy, he was aware of the tensions surrounding where they lived.

He had never seen an exercise before, although he had heard tell of the vast array of tanks and personnel and, being a boy, was curious to see the soldiers. There was a dry ditch running in a zigzag fashion from the farm over towards where the car had stopped, where he sometimes used to take his dog, rooting for rabbits and rats. Although close to the border, it was safe as long as he did not venture beyond it. He considered it now. It was easily deep enough to hide in, so he slipped from the barn and crept along it until he was as close as he dared go. Then he settled down to watch.

He waited for two hours, during which the car’s lights went out and nothing stirred. An occasional sound came from the border tower, the sharp bark from a dog or a laugh from one of the guards, but beyond that, nothing. No tanks, no armoured carriers, no trucks, no jeeps, no flares. Perhaps, he thought, they had taken a wrong turning. Not a good sign for a military exercise.

He had fallen asleep for a while, he explained, until dawn began to tinge the horizon. It was bitterly cold, but he was accustomed to it. The cows in the barn started to shuffle around, and he was on the point of going back to feed them, when he noticed movement by the vehicle. Three men, he said, got out and were looking towards the wire and the open ground. It was as if they were waiting for somebody. One of them had a long object hanging from his shoulder — a bag of some kind.

Then he spotted a flicker of movement in the one place he had not expected it, in the area his father had once called the killing ground. He nearly cried out, he admitted, because this was not good. He recalled his father impressing on him that only the truly desperate came through the wire, and their chances of survival were almost nil. He rubbed his eyes and peered through the gloom, and made out the figure of a man inching forward out of a thin scattering of brushwood, right on the border by the fence. He couldn’t see any detail, but the man must have been there for a while. It was amazing that he had not been seen or heard by the guards. He guessed the man had crossed to the halfway point just after dusk, when there was a changeover of guards and the chances of being seen were reduced by the fading light.