Hart's War Page 10

  “And the evidence, Major Clark?” Tommy asked.

  The major snarled, staring at Hart with distaste.

  “I will compile it and make it available to you at the earliest appropriate moment.”

  “Thank you, sir. And I have another request, as well, sir.”

  “Another request? Hart, your task here is simple. Protect the accused’s rights with honor. No more, no less.”

  “Of course, sir. But I think I need to speak with Lieutenant Scott to do that. Where is he?”

  Von Reiter continued to smile, obviously taking some pleasure in the discomfort of the American officers.

  “He has been escorted to the cooler, lieutenant. You may see him after you have inspected the crime scene.”

  “With Flying Officer Renaday, please, sir.”

  “As you requested.”

  There was a boxlike intercom on the desk in front of Von Reiter, and he reached out to it, pressing a switch. A buzzer went off in the adjoining office, a door immediately swung open, and Fritz Number One entered the room.

  “Corporal, you will accompany Lieutenant Hart to the North Compound, where the two of you will find Flying Officer Hugh Renaday. Then you will escort these two men to the Abort please, where you discovered the remains of Captain Bedford, and provide whatever assistance they might need. When they have completed their inspection of the body and the area surrounding it, please take Lieutenant Hart to see the prisoner.”

  Fritz Number One saluted sharply. “Ja wohl, Herr Oberst!” he blurted in German.

  Tommy turned toward the two American officers. But before he could say anything else, MacNamara raised his hand to his cap brim in a slow salute.

  “You are dismissed, lieutenant,” he said slowly.

  Phillip Pryce and Hugh Renaday were in their bunk room inside the British compound when Tommy Hart, accompanied by Fritz Number One, appeared at the door. Pryce was balancing in a stiff-backed, rough-hewn wooden chair, with his feet perched up on the top of the black steel potbellied stove in a corner of the bunk room. He had a stub of a pencil in one hand and a book of crossword puzzles in the other. Renaday was sitting a few feet away, a dog-eared Penguin paperback of Agatha Christie’s The ABC Murders in his hands. They both looked up when Tommy hovered in the doorway and immediately burst into smiles.

  “Thomas!” Pryce almost shouted. “Unexpected! But always welcome, even unannounced! Come in, come in! Hugh, to the cupboard quickly, let us entertain our guest with some appropriate foodstuff! Have we any chocolate left?”

  “Hello, Phillip,” Tommy said quickly. “Hugh. Actually, I’m not making a social call.”

  Pryce dropped his feet to the floor with a thud.

  “Not social? Ah, most intriguing. And by the distinctively harried look on your young face, something of significance, I’ll wager.”

  “What’s the problem, Tommy?” Hugh Renaday asked, standing. “You look like, well, you look like something’s up. Hey, Fritz! Take a couple of smokes and wait outside, how about it?”

  “I cannot leave, Mr. Renaday,” Fritz Number One said.

  Hugh Renaday stepped forward, while Phillip Pryce also stood.

  “Is there a problem at home, Tommy? With your folks or the famous Lydia that we’ve heard so much about? Surely no. . .”

  Tommy shook his head vigorously. “No, no. Not at home.”

  “Then what is the matter, lad?”

  Tommy spun about. The other occupants of the hut were out, which he thought was fortunate. He did not expect the news of the murder to be secret long, but he recognized that it might be wise to conceal it as long as possible.

  “There’s been an incident over in the American camp,” Tommy said. “I have been ordered by the SAO to help with what for lack of another word I’ll call the ‘investigation.’ ”

  “What sort of incident, Tommy?” Pryce asked.

  “A death, Phillip.”

  “Holy mother, this sounds like trouble,” Hugh Renaday burst out. “How can we help you, Tommy?”

  Tommy smiled at the hulking Canadian. “Well, actually, Hugh, they’ve authorized me to enlist you. You’re supposed to accompany me, right now. Kind of like an aide-de-camp.”

  Renaday looked surprised.

  “Why me?”

  Tommy grinned. “Because idleness is the devil’s playground, Hugh. And you’ve been far too idle for far too long.”

  Renaday snorted. “That’s cute,” he said. “But not an answer.”

  “In other words, my brusque Canadian compatriot,” Pryce interrupted briskly, “Tommy will fill you in shortly.”

  “Thank you, Phillip. Exactly.”

  “Is there something I can do in the interim?” Pryce asked. “Eager does not describe my enthusiasm.”

  Tommy smiled. “Yes. But we’ll have to talk later.”

  “Very secretive, Tommy. Hush, hush and all that. You have definitely pricked my not insubstantial curiosity. Don’t know if this old heart could actually stand to wait too long.”

  “Bear with me, Phillip. But things are just happening. I got authorization for Hugh to help. It was just a guess, but I didn’t think they would allow me anyone else. At least not officially. Especially a high-ranking British officer. And especially one who was a famous barrister before the war. But Hugh will fill you in on everything we learn, and then we can talk.”

  The older man nodded. “Rather have a direct hand in whatever it is,” he said. “But without details, I can still see your point. This death, then, I take it, has some importance? A political importance, perhaps?”

  Tommy nodded.

  Fritz Number One shuffled his feet. “Please, Lieutenant Hart. Mr. Renaday is ready. We should make our way now to the Abort.”

  Both the Canadian and the British officer looked surprised again.

  “An Abort?” Pryce asked.

  Tommy stepped into the room and reached out and grasped the older man’s hand. “Phillip,” he said quietly, “you have already been a better friend than I could have ever asked for. I will need all your expertise and all your capabilities over the next few days. But Hugh will have to provide the details. I hate to make you wait, but I can’t see any other way. At least, not yet.”

  Pryce smiled. “But, my dear boy, I understand. Military foolishness. I will wait here like the perfect soldier that I am, awaiting your pleasure. Exciting, what? Something truly different. Ah, delightful. Hugh, seize your coat and return fairly well stuffed with information. Until then, I will stay warm by the fire, allowing myself to fantasize with anticipation.”

  “Thanks, Phillip,” Tommy said.

  Then he quietly leaned forward, and whispered into Pryce’s ear the words: “Lincoln Scott, the Negro fighter pilot. And do you remember the Scottsboro boys?”

  Pryce inhaled sharply. The quick intake of wind degenerated into a hacking cough. He nodded with comprehension.

  “Damn damp weather. I recall that case. Infamous. Go swiftly,” he said.

  Renaday was swinging his thick arms into his coat. He also grabbed a pencil and a thin and precious pad of drawing paper.

  “All set, Tommy,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  The two airmen, with Fritz Number One urging them to hurry, marched toward the American compound. Tommy Hart filled in Renaday on what he’d learned in the commandant’s office, and briefed him on both the fight and the incident at the wire. Renaday listened carefully, asking an occasional question, but mostly simply absorbing the details.

  As the gate to the South Compound swung open for them, Renaday whispered: “Tommy, it’s been six years since I was at a real crime scene. And what we had for murders out in Manitoba were drunken cowboys knifing each other in bars. Usually there wasn’t much to process, because the culprit would be sitting there covered with blood, beer, and Scotch.”

  “That’s okay, Hugh,” Tommy said quietly. “I’ve never been to a crime scene.”

  The morning count had obviously been accomplished while he’d been at the com
mandant’s office. The men had been dismissed, but still dozens of kriegies milled about the assembly yard, smoking, waiting, aware that something unusual was going on. The German guards maintained their tight ring around the Abort. The kriegies watched the Germans; the Germans watched them.

  The clumps of airmen stepped aside carefully as Tommy, Hugh, and Fritz Number One approached the latrine. The guard squadron allowed them to pass. But Tommy hesitated at the door.

  “Fritz,” he asked, “you found the captain?”

  The ferret nodded. “Shortly after five this morning.”

  “And what did you do, then?”

  “I immediately ordered two Hundführers who were patrolling the perimeter of the camp to come to the Abort and make certain no one entered. Then I went to inform the commandant.”

  “How was it you found the body?”

  “I heard a noise. I was just outside Hut 103. I did not move quickly, lieutenant. I was uncertain what I’d heard.”

  “What sort of noise?”

  “A cry. Then nothing.”

  “Why did you go into the Abort?”

  “It seemed that the noise had come from there.”

  Tommy nodded. “Hugh?”

  “Did you see anyone else?” the Canadian asked.

  “No. I heard some doors closing. That is all.”

  Renaday started to ask a second question, then stopped. He thought for an instant, then demanded: “After you found the body, the Abort was left for a time. How long was it before you returned with the two Hundführers?”

  The ferret looked up into the gray sky, trying to add up the time. “A few minutes, certainly, flying officer. I did not want to blow my whistle and raise an alarm until I had informed the commandant. The men were located at the wire just outside Hut 116. A few seconds, maybe a minute to explain to them the urgency of the situation. Five minutes, perhaps. So, in total, perhaps as many as ten minutes.”

  “Are you certain that there was no one else about when you discovered the body?”

  “I did not see anyone, Mr. Renaday. After I spotted the body, and after I made certain Captain Bedford was dead, I used my torch to quickly sweep the building. But the night was still upon us, and there are many shadowy places a man could hide. So I cannot be completely certain.”

  “Thank you, Fritz. One last thing . . .”

  The ferret stepped forward.

  “I want you to go find us a camera. Thirty-five millimeter, loaded with film. With a flash attachment and at least a half-dozen flashbulbs. Right now.”

  “Impossible, flying officer! I know of no—”

  Renaday instantly stepped forward, pushing his face up toward the lanky ferret’s nose.

  “I know you know who’s got one. Now, go get it, and bring it here without letting anyone know what the hell you’re doing. Got that? Or would you prefer it if we marched over to the commandant’s office and demanded it?”

  Fritz Number One looked panicked for a moment, trapped between duty and the desire to be correct. Finally, he nodded.

  “One of the tower guards is an amateur photographer. . . .”

  “Ten minutes. We’ll be inside.”

  Fritz Number One saluted, turned on his heel, and hurried away.

  “That was smart, Hugh,” Tommy Hart said.

  “Figured we might need some pictures.” Then Hugh turned to Tommy and seized him by the arm. “But look, Tommy. What’s our job here, after all?”

  Tommy shook his head.

  “I’m not sure. All I can tell you is that Lincoln Scott is going to be accused of doing what’s inside the Abort. And the major says they’ve got all the evidence they need to convict him. I suppose we should try to help him as much as we can.”

  And with that, the two men stepped up to the door to the latrine.

  “Ready?” Tommy asked.

  “Forward the light brigade,” Hugh replied. “Theirs not to reason why . . .”

  “Theirs but to do and die,” Tommy finished the refrain. He thought this might have been a poor verse to select at that moment, but he did not say this out loud.

  The Abort was a narrow building, with a single door located at one end. The wood-plank floor of the building was raised up several feet, so that one had to walk up a short flight of rough steps to enter. This was to allow space beneath the privies for huge green metal drums that collected the waste. There were six stalls, each with a door and partitions to provide privacy. The seats were hewn from hardwood and polished to a shine by use and near-constant scrubbing. Ventilation was provided by slatted windows up just beneath the roof line. Twice each day Abort details carted off the barrels of waste to an area in a corner of the camp where it was burned. What wouldn’t burn was dumped in trenches and covered with lime. About the only thing the Germans provided the kriegies in abundance was lime.

  A stranger walking into an Abort for the first time might have been overcome by the fetid thickness of the smell, but the kriegies were used to it, and within a few days of their arrival at Stalag Luft Thirteen, the airmen learned that it was one of the few places in the camp where one could go and have a few minutes of relative solitude. What most of the men hated was the lack of toilet paper. The Germans didn’t provide any, and the Red Cross parcels were skimpy, preferring to send foodstuffs. Men used any possible scrap of paper.

  Tommy and Hugh paused in the doorway.

  The familiar stench filled their nostrils. There was no electricity in the Abort, so it was dim and dark, lit only by the gray overcast sky that filtered through the high slatted windows.

  Renaday hummed briefly, a nameless snatch of music, before stepping forward.

  “Tommy,” he said, “think for a second. It was five in the morning, right? That’s what Fritz said?”

  “Correct,” Tommy answered, keeping his voice low. “What the hell was Vic doing here? The inside toilets were still operating. The Krauts don’t shut off the plumbing until mid-morning. And this place would have been pitch black. Except for the searchlight that sweeps over it . . . what? . . . every minute, maybe ninety seconds. You wouldn’t be able to see a thing.”

  “So, you wouldn’t come out here unless you had some good reason. . . .”

  “And going to the bathroom isn’t the reason.”

  Both men nodded.

  “What’re we looking for, Hugh?”

  Hugh sighed. “Well, they teach you in cop school that the crime scene can tell you everything that happened if you look closely enough. Let’s see what we can see.”

  In unison, the two men stepped into the Abort. Tommy swung his eyes right and left, trying to absorb what had taken place, but uncertain in that second precisely what he was looking for. He moved ahead of Renaday, and pushed forward. He paused just before reaching the final stall in the row, pointing down at the floor. “Look there, Hugh,” he said quietly. “Doesn’t that look like a footprint? Or at least part of one?”

  Renaday knelt down. On the wooden floor of the latrine was the clear outline of the front of a boot heading toward the Abort stall. The Canadian touched the outline gingerly. “Blood,” he said. He looked up slowly, his eyes on the door to the last stall. “In there, I guess,” he spoke out with a small, quick inhale of breath. “Check the door first, see if there’s anything else.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like a bloody fingerprint.”

  “No. Not that I can see.”

  Hugh got out his sketch pad and pencil. He quickly started to draw the interior layout of the Abort. He also noted the shape and direction of the footprint.

  Tommy pushed the stall door open slowly, like a child peeking into his parents’ room in the morning.

  “Jesus,” he whispered sharply.

  Vincent Bedford was sitting on the privy seat, his pants pulled down to his ankles, half-naked. But his upper torso was thrust back against the wall, and his head lolled slightly to the right. His eyes were open wide in shock. His chest and shirt were coated with deep maroon streaks of blood.


  His throat had been cut. On the left side of his neck the skin was laid open in a gory flap.

  One of Trader Vic’s fingers was partially severed and hung limply at his side. There was also a slashing cut in his right cheek, and his shirt was partially ripped.

  “Poor Vic,” Tommy said quietly.

  The two airmen stared at the dead body. Both had seen a great deal of death, and seen it in horrific form, and they were not sickened by what they witnessed in the Abort. The sensation both men felt in that second was different, it was a shock of context. They had both seen men ripped asunder by bullets, explosions, and shrapnel; eviscerated, decapitated, and burned alive by the vagaries of battle. Both men had seen the viscera and other bloody remains of turret gunners actually hosed out of the Plexiglas cocoons where they’d died. But all those deaths came within the context of battle, where they both expected to see death at its most brutal. In the Abort it was different; here a man who should have been alive was dead. To die violently on the toilet was something altogether shocking and genuinely frightening.

  “Jesus is right,” Hugh said.

  Tommy noticed that the flap over the chest pocket of Bedford’s blouse was lifted at the corner. He thought that would have been where Trader Vic kept his pack of smokes. He leaned across toward the body and lightly tapped the pocket. It was empty.

  Both men continued to examine the body. Tommy kept reminding himself inwardly to measure, to assess, to read the portrait in front of him as he would the page of a textbook, carefully, critically. He reminded himself of all the criminal cases he’d read in so many casebooks, and how often a small detail resulted in the crucial observation. Guilt or innocence hanging on the tiniest of elements. The glasses that fell from Leopold’s jacket. Or was it Loeb’s? He couldn’t remember. Staring across at Vincent Bedford’s body, he felt completely inadequate. He tried to recollect his last conversation with the Mississippian, but this, too, seemed lost. He realized that the body tucked into the privy in front of him was quickly becoming the same as so many other bodies. Something simply shunted away and relegated to nightmare, joining the throngs of other dead and mutilated men inhabiting the dreams of the living. Yesterday it was Vincent Bedford, captain. Decorated bomber pilot and hotshot trader of campwide renown. Now he was dead, and no longer a part of Tommy Hart’s waking life.