David Gibbins - The Mask of Troy

‘The drawing was taken from her by an SAS patrol who were in here yesterday,’ Mayne said. ‘Their officer took it to VIII Corps HQ.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I gave it to him. A Captain Frazer, Hugh Frazer. They’d shot some of the guards, and a German officer who fired at them. Captain Frazer stayed with me for a while afterwards, and tried to help with the children. He was pretty frayed. Spent a long time here, on the edge of this bed, just sitting and looking at the girl with the harp. It was strange. It was almost as if… as if he’d found peace, just sitting here, looking at her. Funny how it takes men like that, killers one moment, and then just sitting there, broken by it all. I only wish you chaps could cry a bit more easily. God knows, I’m close to it myself after having been here for twenty-four hours.’

Mayne swallowed hard. Hugh. ‘Frazer’s a friend of mine, actually. Saw him back at HQ. Thought he needed a rest.’

She nodded. ‘I thought it was malaria. I was in India before this. So many of them coming out of Burma had it. You get pretty good at spotting the signs.’

‘We both picked it up in Egypt. Long time ago now.’

‘What’s she doing now, sitting out there all alone?’ Stein asked.

‘The others said that before she was used as a prostitute, she survived selection at Auschwitz because her parents told the SS she could play the harp. Her parents were taken away to be gassed. The Nazis ran a camp orchestra, the Lagerkapelle. Many of the Jews were accomplished musicians, and the Nazis had them play the music the Jews had loved, the classics, folk songs, especially modern jazz, songs like “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love”, you know? Used to be one of my favourites too. It was meant to calm the arrivals during selection. Some of the people here hum snatches of it, or words from the Shabbat, in Yiddish. But so much of what they sing is anguished, despairing. I wish there was music here. There aren’t even any birds any more, with those awful fires we lit to get rid of the clothes. It’s all death, like the entrance to hell.’ She paused, swallowing hard, then nodded towards the girl. ‘You saw the local German people the soldiers brought in to see all this? I asked if anyone had a harp, and a schoolteacher brought one, a child’s harp. She’s sitting in front of it now.’

Mayne stared again at the girl, and saw the harp. He felt dizzy and swayed slightly, the ringing he had heard since Cassino going from one side of his head to the other. Lewes came silently up. ‘Sir,’ he said quietly, holding his arm. Mayne shut his eyes, opened them again, then nodded. ‘I’m all right, Jock,’ he said quietly, squeezing Lewes’ arm. ‘Good man.’ Lewes moved back, still watching. Mayne tried to focus on the girl, as if he were at sea and she was a fixed point on the horizon. He blinked hard, then remembered what he had done at the death pit. He made himself think as a painter again, framing the scene, trying to imagine how he would distil it. There was no need. Absolute realism. Girl with a harp.

Stein stepped forward. ‘We need to question her.’

‘Not if she won’t talk,’ Mayne said.

‘What is it you want from her?’ the nurse asked.

Mayne pointed at the drawing. ‘That object: the reverse swastika.’

‘I tried talking to her about her drawings. There are sometimes other objects in that place, flowers. She kept pointing at the forest. I think it could be something she saw there, where she was taken. Or maybe it’s something she imagined, while she was in the hands of those SS monsters. I don’t know.’

‘She won’t talk?’ Mayne said.

‘Not a word. None of them have heard her speak, even at Auschwitz. She probably has no family left in the world, nobody who knew her before. We don’t even know her name.’

‘All right.’ Mayne looked at Stein. ‘We leave her alone.’

Stein nodded. ‘Time for a little recce in those woods.’

Mayne turned to Lewes, who had lit up and was smoking a few feet behind them. He folded up the drawing and handed it to the corporal. ‘Take this back to VIII Corps HQ. Tell Colonel Woolley in Intelligence that I want the back-up team here as soon as possible. We want a tracker dog, Sergeant Parker and his demolition chaps for blowing open doors, the usual. And some MPs.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘See you back at that first sentry post outside the barracks in, say, four hours, at seventeen thirty. Got that?’

‘Sir.’ Lewes dropped his cigarette butt, ground it into the earth, took the drawing and buttoned it into his tunic breast pocket. Then he stood to attention and saluted. Mayne returned the salute, but Lewes remained in place, ramrod straight. Mayne gave him a tired smile, and put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be all right, Jock. No need to worry. I’ve got Stein here to look after me. You get on, and look after yourself, all right? Dismissed.’

‘Sir.’ Lewes swivelled round and walked swiftly off in the direction they had come. Mayne nodded to the nurse. ‘Thanks, Helen. And… thanks for letting Hugh, Captain Frazer… help you.’ He was suddenly at a loss for words. She gave him a tired smile. ‘I know,’ she said quietly, touching his arm. ‘I know how you chaps who’ve been through so much look out for each other.’ She turned back to the stretchers.

Mayne looked at Cameron. ‘We’d better let you get on too.’

‘I’ll show you the track into the forest.’ Cameron led them towards the treeline, and stopped on a dirt road that led to a cut in the trees, evidently an old bridleway. They could see the barbed-wire compound fence, with an open gate. ‘Anyone who’s going to try to leave the camp will have done so already. We leave that gate open to let in the former inmates who want to return, who’ve got exhausted and realize the SS really have gone.’ Cameron shook his head. ‘But it’s a wild place. SS still out there, I’m sure. Rather you than me.’

Mayne knelt down. The track was well-trodden, but there were no wheel ruts. ‘If there’s some sort of installation out there, this can’t have been the main route in.’

‘They wouldn’t have put the main route through the camp,’ Stein said. ‘There’ll be another way in, probably on the other side of the forest, for trucking in building materials and whatever they might have been storing there. The aerial photographs don’t show anything clearly, but tracks in forests are easy to conceal. It’s all consistent with something top secret.’

Cameron turned to them. ‘Good luck. I won’t shake hands.’ He checked his watch. ‘I may not see you again. I’m sure you know that the plan is to bomb the forest, to deny it to the Germans as a defensive position once the ceasefire is over. That’s what I was talking about to those officers outside on the roadblock when I met you.’

Mayne nodded. ‘Thirty-six hours, a little less.’

‘It shouldn’t affect your activities, but what you don’t know is that we may be moving the camp after all. The CO of the AA unit has been into Bremen and seen what a night raid by a thousand Lancaster bombers does. Obliterates everything, not necessarily very high-precision. The weather report’s changed too, could be nasty for a few days, so the bomber pathfinders will have their job cut out to pinpoint the western edge of the forest. It’s just too risky for us to stay here. In a way it’s a relief. The sooner this place is blotted out, the better. By tomorrow, typhus will have killed half the inmates still alive here now anyway. It seems callous, but we’re waiting before moving them, until those who are going to die do so, to free up the transport for those with some hope. They’ll be trucked to the field hospital being built at Belsen. The bodies left here will all be buried and the trench bulldozed by this evening, then we’ll torch the buildings. After that, the RAF can rain a thousand bombs on the place for my money. It’d be as if this place never existed.’