Tim Binding - Island Madness

Ned ran his fingers over his face. He could imagine what had happened. Caught by a group of drunken soldiers no doubt, raped and beaten to death. He thought again of that fierce little man and the peculiar personal tragedies that this island had visited upon him.

“Has her father been told?” he asked.

Lentsch nodded. For a moment Ned was nonplussed.

“Then what do you want me to do? Make a formal identification?”

“Come and see for yourself,” he demanded, picking up his own.

The Captain led the way, ducking his head as he stepped through the squat entrance. Above the desk by the door ran an inscription. Ned raised his eyes to it. Kom in unsere Kassematte, da. Kriegst Du Keine vor die Platte it read.

“You read German?” Lentsch asked.

Ned shook his head. “Some of the phrases in the Star , that’s all. Not that they’re all that use full.”

Lentsch nodded. “It means ‘Come into our casement and you won’t get hit’.”

Ned followed him in. Facing him was a straight corridor some thirty foot in length and nine foot high. The walls were lined with cream-painted lockers, on which were perched numbered helmets. Further down he could see the tall outline of a rifle rack. Hushed voices could be heard coming from a darkened room at the end, low and nervous. Boots rang out on metal, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the bright light, something set in the middle of the far floor seemed to swing round. A young man swam into view, leaning back on a slatted metal seat, his legs stretched out in front like a child’s on a playground roundabout, his arm resting on the huge apparatus of a gunsight. Ned was looking directly into the gun room. The soldier looked up and saw Ned looking back at him. They were the same age, Ned guessed. The gunner spoke to an invisible companion. The door swung to, but did not close. Captain Zepernick beckoned him through.

“This way.”

Ned followed him into a chamber running off to the left.

“This is where the gun crew abide when on duty,” the Captain explained. “It is where she was found.”

Ned looked round. To his immediate right running along the wall were nine bunks in tiers of three. Two more, with a field telephone at the foot of the lower one, were on the wall to his left. Facing him stood a thin cupboard; then, along the back wall, a table and stove. On the adjoining wall another steel door and next to it a fierce black contraption with concertina piping that snaked along the ceiling and out through a hatch above his head. He stared at it wondering what it could be. Lentsch caught his eye again.

“Air pump,” he said, “for gas attack.”

The Captain coughed deliberately, as if to remind Lentsch of the company he was keeping. Ned continued with the questions.

“How tnany men work here?” he asked.

“Usually four, three men and an officer,” Lentsch answered quickly.

“And last night?”

“Three. Is that not correct, Captain.”

Zepernick nodded.

“The Lieutenant left last night at the start of his leave. But he is due to report in at ten o’clock this morning to arrange a passage to the mainland.”

Although military in materials and colour, the men had clearly tried to make the place as comfortable as possible. A home-made chess set with crude square-cut figures stood on a little table, while pictures of families and girlfriends were propped on a lintel above, over which loomed an elaborate cuckoo clock wreathed in heavy wooden leaves. On the inside door of the wardrobe, which was full of uniforms and boots, were pasted a collection of mildly obscene outdoor photographs, girls in suspenders, girls playing leapfrog, girls squinting in the sun with their hands coyly protecting their private parts. None of them were exactly pin-up material; they were all too thin or too short or too old. They all had that same, faraway look in their eyes, as if, despite the smiles and the poses, they were only half there. From the torn scraps sticking out from a number of drawing pins, some, probably of a more explicit nature, had been hastily removed. For his or their superiors’ benefit? Whichever, by now they’d be nothing more than ashes in the stove. In the centre of this gallery was pinned a cartoon of a trouserless Winston Churchill. Winston was kneeling on all fours, the famous V of his fingers drawing into his mouth a Jew’s circumcised and syphilitic penis, while, at the other end, a laughing Uncle Sam decked out in a top hat spiked with dollars sodomized him with mirth. The Jew and the American’s hands met in gleeful celebration over his gross, compliant form.

The Major closed the clipboard door. He was embarrassed. Captain Zepernick crossed over to the stove. At the other side of it, at waist height, a hatch had been built into the wall. lts thick metal door hung open.

“This is the shaft where she was found,” Zepernick said, “For escaping.” He seemed ashamed to admit that they might need such a device. Ned bent down and looked in. There was a sizeable tunnel running back, about eight feet long and three feet high, with a rung-laddered shaft at the far end. Zepernick joined him, pointing in.

“There should be two steel…” he searched for the word… “planks?”

“Girders,” Ned suggested.

Zepernick nodded. “Two steel girders and a brick wall in there, all of which can be removed quickly.”

“So that people can’t get in?”

Zepernick shook his head. “Blast protection.” He lifted his hand and made a dropping motion. “From the grenades.”

“So why aren’t they there now?”

Captain Zepernick snorted, a mixture of laughter and impatience.

“Soldiers! They love to break the rules. In an emergency they want to get out as quickly as possible.”

“So it’s kept empty?”

“No. They keep wood for the stove. Enough for every night. Then they don’t have to go so much to the storeroom. Yesterday, however, they had cleaned it out. They knew there was to be an inspection. It was quite empty.”

Ned put head in and looked around. Though the walls were of concrete, the flooring was metal. He banged it with his hand. It reverberated like an echo chamber. Re-emerging he said, “Surely they would have heard something?”

Zepernick shook his head. “Yesterday evening they had a long practice. Setting targets with the new range-finding tower. Loading and firing drills. For night attack. Perhaps you heard? Until eleven o’clock. And afterwards the cleaning.”

“And this lieutenant, he wasn’t here for this practice?”

“He stayed until the last. A few tninutes before nine, I understand.”

“And none of them came into this room?”

“Only to make coffee, and cook.”

“And the lieutenant?”

“Schade? I do not know? You will have to ask him.”

“Schade?”

“Yes. You know of him?”

“No, no. Just want to make sure I get the name right. So when did they find her?”

“At half-past one. She was dead already.”

“And when did they last look into the hatch?”

“At eight approximately.”

Ned stood up and dusted his knees.

“And when did you arrive?”

“Soon after.” He took out his notebook again and made a great show of turning the pages. “I arrived at ten minutes past two o’clock exactly. After taking Miss Vaudin to her home.”

Ned looked at him. It couldn’t have taken him longer than five minutes to get here from Veronica’s. He had been with her a good thirty minutes. Ned ignored his smug triumphalism.

“Before we came in, Major, you said, “They have killed Isobel.” What did you mean? The gunners here?”

The Major dismissed the suggestion with a wave of his hand.

“I should have thought that was obvious,” he said. “One of you, one of the islanders must have killed her. For her…”