Tim Binding - Island Madness

Ned couldn’t smile.

“It’s not as easy as that, Major. It’s been a busy night all round. You’d better come into the kitchen.”

Lentsch followed him into the kitchen. Veronica was sitting at the table now, holding the boy’s hand. He started out of his chair when he saw the Major’s uniform, but Veronica quietened him back down. Ned crossed over to the back door and lifted a jacket up from the one hook. He held it up to the light.

“Recognize this?” he said.

“I’ve been through it a dozen times with him,” Ned said. “I still can’t make sense of it all.”

“He saw the man who killed her?”

“That’s what he told V. That’s right, isn’t it, Peter?” He held up the coat again and waved it in front of the boy’s face. “Coat? Girl?”

The boy nodded.

“Here we go again. Watch this, Major. Worse than a bloody pantomime.”

Veronica slung the jacket over her shoulders and lay on the floor. Ned picked her up and started to drag her across the room. “This is what you see. Ja? ”

The boy nodded again.

“And the jacket…”

V wriggled her shoulders. As the jacket slipped off the boy leant forward and snatched it up, clutching it to his chest.

“That’s what he saw up on the cliff that night,” Ned explained. “A man driving up in a car and dragging Isobel towards that shaft. Now. The man.” He spread his hands far apart. “Big, ja? ”

The boy nodded again and spread his fingers out.

“Big hands too, eh?” Ned pointed to his eyes and mouth. “What about the face?” The boy shook his head.

“It was too dark. Now look at this,” Ned said, pointing to his own clothes. “Like this?” He pulled at his jersey and his old trousers. The boy shook his head. Ned pointed to the Major’s buttons. “Buttons, cap.” He held himself upright, like a soldier, straightening an imaginary uniform. “Uniform, yes?” He marched up and down. The boy clapped his hands. Ned turned to the Major.

“There you are. A big man in a uniform. You know of someone like that, don’t you? Who lives opposite?”

“Ernst?” Lentsch sounded incredulous. “You think it was Ernst all along?”

“I think it was Ernst all along.”

The Major fretted. “You must take this boy to the authorities,” he insisted, “to the Captain. Ernst must not be allowed…”

“You can’t!” Veronica leapt to her feet.

Ned threw up his hands. “V, I’ve already told you. I’ve no jurisdiction over him. It’s out of my hands.”

“Out of your hands! Listen to yourselfl You know what will happen to him if you do, don’t you?”

“Veronica…”

“They’ll beat him to death, that’s what. Just because of who he is. Isn’t that right, Major?”

Lentsch shook his head, not in denial but in despair.

“And even if they don’t, he won’t be fit to work after they’re through with him. Which is the same thing in the end for him, isn’t it? Isn’t it?”

The Major looked down at the floor, ashamed.

“So what do you want me to do?” Ned asked.

“I don’t know. Hide him. Lock him up. You’re meant to be the law around here.”

Lentsch looked at them both.

“This is how it happens. The closer He approaches, the nearer His spirit draws, the greater the danger. You see how we are all being pulled into this crazy whirlpool. You still do not fully appreciate the truly corrosive quality of His name. Thank to my letter they will begin to worry that I am part of some conspiracy. They will start tracing back: me, Isobel, van Dielen. Her murder, his disappearance. There is quite enough there to unsettle them. Now there is this boy. It does not matter that none of us have anything to do with an assassination attempt. He has cast his shadow and that is enough. One of us might have been able to evade capture. But me, the boy? And what about Veronica here, who gave the Captain this information.”

Veronica bowed her head.

“They will come back for you,” the Major told her. “They will talk to you not once, but twice, three times; all day and all night. And you will falter. And that will be the end.” He stood up. “I have been wrong. If I go back, give myself up, perhaps these questions will be laid to rest. And you will have to try and find out the other matter before it is too late.”

Ned stopped him.

“There is another way, you know. To not hide but to cross the Channel. You and the boy, in the canoe. V too.”

“Tonight?” Veronica looked around, momentarily bewildered. “But I’m on stage tonight.”

Ned began to laugh. “Trust you, V.” He turned to the Major again. “The sea’s calm enough, if they don’t catch you in the first couple of miles. There’s a patrol boat out round the Casquets, isn’t there?”

“Once an hour it goes. But I am not a sailor, Ned. I would probably end up sailing straight into Cherbourg.”

“A compass would set you straight.” He didn’t tell them of the currents. They’d have to chance it.

Lentsch was thinking. “What about you? I don’t want you getting mixed up in this.”

“No one knows you’re here, if that’s what you mean.”

Veronica looked embarrassed.

“I’m afraid that’s not quite right. Zep told me once that no one had any idea where the Major went every evening. So I told him.”

Lentsch sighed. “So, Ned, now you are mixed up in this as well. They will come for you too. They will ask you what it is we talked about those nights, when I slunk away from the Villa.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“And they won’t believe you. They dare not. They could no more imagine that our evenings were innocent than they can believe that this boy has a right to life. They will see us all as threats to the fabric of his world; and in a sense they would be right. They would have to strap you to the block and squeeze it all out of you until you were broken into small pieces.” He looked around. “Now, it is all of us.”

Silence feil upon the room. Four in a canoe. They’d sink before they’d got a mile out.

A sudden hooting noise outside disturbed their troubles. Ned ran over to the front window. The Captain could be seen walking down Veronica’s front path.

Zepernick knocked on the door for the third time. He was becoming impatient. His face was unshaven and he looked dishevelled. The door swung open.

“Zep! Didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

The Captain looked her up and down. She was out of breath.

“You have been running.”

“I was in the back garden.”

He took off his hat. “I’m sorry about yesterday evening,” he said. “I have been busy. You know why.”

“Did you find him?” She tried to keep her voice as light as possible.

The Captain shook his head.

“We have been up all night looking for him. Every billet, every excavation site. Nothing.” He looked around. “He is not the only one who has vanished.”

“Oh?”

“Major Lentsch. He should have reported to the harbour, but he has not.” He pointed to Ned’s house. “That is where he goes at night?”

“Used to, yes.”

“Last night he was at the Villa. This morning…” He puffed into the air. “You have not seen him today?”

“No. I don’t think Inspector Luscombe is there either.”

The Captain nodded. “Good. Maybe the Major has done the proper thing. Perhaps in a day or two we will find him floating in the water with a bullet in his head. Still,” he looked at his watch, the smile returning to his face, “everyone is searching for him. Everyone except me. No one knows where I am.”

“Oh?”

“All this time I have been thinking about yesterday in the Eyrie. It has been difficult looking for this Zwangsarbeiter with such pictures in my mind.” He reached out and touched the front of her dress. “Some say the morning is the best time.”