No Human Enemy (Suzie Mountford Mysteries) (12 page)

As if to supplement his grotesque features the colonel carried a swagger cane made of treated bone – some, naturally, claimed it to be human bone – one end of which was carved in the representation of a skull. This memento mori was in fact the haft of a thin, tempered steel blade, around eight inches long, that nestled within its bone sheath. Voltsenvogel’s reputation was such that people assumed the blade had been used in murderous diversions.

He came unannounced to Peenemünde bringing with him a technical sergeant and a corporal called Schmidt who doubled as his personal servant. They were not out of place, for SS uniforms abounded on the island: the SS had long since hijacked the
Vergeltungswaffe
programmes. In particular they were in control of the A-4 weapon. In the tangled web of the Third Reich it was always as well to be implicated in any project with special significance for the Führer. From the beginning, Hitler had been totally involved with both of the so-called vengeance weapons, seeing each of them almost as sacraments of war that would unlock the gates of victory no matter how the world was marshalled against him.

Voltsenvogel wondered how the local officers would take to his arrival in their mess. After all, his special relationship with the Führer was well known, and the events of 20
th
July were not ten days old. An officer from the Führer’s inner circle arriving so soon after the assassination attempt was bound to cause at least a small twitch of concern. So when he walked into the mess that evening he could not fail to notice how people gave him shifty, anxious glances, and be aware of the undoubted lull in conversation: a general
froideur
descended among those gathered in the ante-room.

The attempt on the Führer’s life had taken place at the melodramatically named
Wolfsschanze
(Wolf’s Lair) near Rastenburg, in the mosquito-laden forests of East Prussia.

Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg had flown down for a strategic meeting with senior officers, and the Führer. He entered the conference room with three pounds of explosive in his briefcase wired to a percussion cap and a simple timing device. The officers were ranged around a large wooden table covered with maps and papers, so von Stauffenberg armed the bomb, placed the briefcase on the floor under the table, sliding it towards the Führer with his foot. He then made an excuse to leave the room, waiting outside until the device exploded with a mighty roar, leaving a dark pall of smoke hanging over the wooden building.

Surely the Führer could not have survived such destruction, he reasoned.

The dead and wounded were carried out and von Stauffenberg stayed until a body was removed covered by Hitler’s cloak. At that point he could be forgiven for thinking his part in the plot had succeeded.

So he left, returning to his aircraft and flying back to Berlin.

By a miracle, it seemed, the Führer survived; another officer had kicked the loaded briefcase away from Hitler’s end of the table, so when it exploded many were injured and four died. But Hitler lived. Von Stauffenberg flew back to Berlin and prepared to take part in the second phase of the plot: the takeover of the military and the nullification of the National Socialist Party in order to bring the war to a quick conclusion.

It was not to be. By the following afternoon von Stauffenberg was court-martialled and summarily shot, in the courtyard of the War Ministry. More suspects were being rounded up, already there had been many arrests, some, it appeared, at random. It was said that if you looked at somebody in an inappropriate manner you could be accused. It was all reminiscent of the days of finding witches by seeing who sank and who floated.

Hence the circumspect manner in which Voltsenvogel was greeted.

‘How nice to see you, Gruppenführer,’ lied the adjutant of the A-4 Programme, SS-Obersturmbannführer Erich Lottle. ‘We had no notification of your impending arrival. Is there anything I can do…?’ Lottle had a good line in frozen smiles.

‘Just a short visit. An overnight stay.’ Voltsenvogel smiled his foxy smile, lifted his chin and looked Erich Lottle in the eyes. ‘The Führer is anxious to find out how the
Vergeltungswaffe Zwei
is progressing: he simply asked me to come down and get the information myself. I am a direct conduit to the Führer.’ Adolf Hitler had asked no such thing, though naturally he would be pleased to hear, for the Allied armies were fighting hard to push themselves away from the vicinity of the Normandy beaches around Caen and the Cotentin peninsula. ‘If the Americans and British continue to move south we’re going to need the A-4. We can’t leave it all to the Fiesler 103.’

The A-4 was the great 8,800 pound long-range rocket, 46 feet high, powered by a propulsion engine burning a mixture of alcohol, liquid oxygen, T-Stoff (hydrogen peroxide) and Z-Stoff (sodium permanganate) carrying a warhead of around one ton of high-explosive, and guided by a sophisticated gyroscopic system.

Erich Lottle told him the A-4 programme had made great strides. ‘Who would you like to speak with to get the details? General Dornberger? Von Braun?’ Dornberger, a founding father of the rocket project, held the rank of Lieutenant General while Werhner von Braun held only a courtesy SS rank.

Voltsenvogel gave him the foxy smile again, perhaps a shade broader this time. ‘I think I should go to the top. To Hans Kammler.’

‘But, Gruppenführer…?’

‘I think I should speak with General Kammler.’ Voltsenvogel left no doubt that he meant exactly what he said, but of course he knew what nobody else knew that Kammler would be promoted in a few weeks, elevated to Major-General, vaulting in one bound over Walter Dornberger who had spent years clawing his way to the top of the A-4 programme.

By this time Max Voltsenvogel was seated and had ordered a large schnapps, totally at ease among the engineers and fellow SS officers. Lottle signified that he would like permission to sit next to the colonel, and Voltsenvogel inclined his head, answering in the most cavalier fashion.

‘I fear you will have to wait a few days to speak with General Kammler.’ SS-Obersturmbannführer Erich Lottle lowered his head so that his lips were only a few inches from the colonel’s ear before he spoke. ‘At the moment the general is at the far end of the island conducting a test launch of one of the testbed A-4s. There have been problems.’

‘Then
you
tell me about them. I’ve yet to meet an adjutant who doesn’t know the ins and outs of his command. Some, I find, know a great deal more than their commanding officers.’

Lottle, a tall man, thin, a beanpole with a face tarnished by worry, long sagging cheeks, dull, pouched eyes and a mouth turned irrevocably down at each corner gave a huge shrug as though accepting the colonel’s judgement with some misgivings. Then he explained the rocket programme was still irretrievably running behind schedule – nobody’s particular fault, simply an unfortunate fact of military life. ‘There have been problems, Colonel,’ ticking them off on his fingers. ‘They have only just solved the difficulties regarding mobile launching sites.’

Voltsenvogel nodded.

‘Then there were the fuelling difficulties allied to the launching. We also have the unfortunate problems with the turbo steam pumps.’

Voltsenvogel raised a hand as if accepting fate.

‘And latterly there has been a more serious malfunction.’ Lottle squared his shoulders as though preparing to give Voltsenvogel the worst possible news. ‘The rocket is breaking up from its warhead above its impact point.’

Voltsenvogel listened almost as gloomily as the adjutant. Finally he asked how long it was estimated before they expected to have dealt with the faults. ‘My dear Lottle, we need to get the A-4 into action. The Führer depends on it now the Allies have arrived.’

‘Four, five, six weeks,’ Lottle told him as though this was some minor hiccough in the works. Also as if they had eternity to get the A-4 into operation. ‘Everything has been overcome except for the new, breakup disasters. The warhead is detaching itself from the main rocket as it reaches its apogee and starts the downward journey. These are naturally stabilisation difficulties. They are working on modifications of the tail fins.’

‘And your four, five, six weeks is realistic?’

‘I would say no later than September.’

It had better be early September, Voltsenvogel thought to himself. The rocket was essential now they were under such pressure along the northern coast of Fortress Europe. The Fi-103s had proved to be a huge success. The Allies back in England were stumbling and petrified by the new danger, for they had written off any further assault from the skies now that the Luftwaffe had been defeated. He had heard the Führer say they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off. ‘Tell Himmler that,’ and he had laughed. Himmler, of course, had once been a chicken farmer.

Voltsenvogel remained sanguine regarding the future. The Allies may well have their foot inside Fortress Europe but he was convinced they would never defeat Germany. It was unthinkable and he played his own part in the great struggle. Even now he was involved in an operation that remained uniquely his and profoundly secret: a plan that would rock the Allies back on their heels and make them slacken their tenuous grip on Normandy. The A-4 rocket would play its part in what would be the greatest psychological defeat of the war.

The key components for the operation were already in place in England. All but the launching of the V-2 rockets were in position for Operation
Löwenzahn.
Operation Lion’s Teeth.

Tomorrow, Voltsenvogel would return to his headquarters in Holland and continue the battle from there.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Laura Cotter stooged up Bluefields Road feeling less than happy with her lot. The air was suffused with filthy, sooty factory smoke: the red brick of the semi-detached houses grimed almost black by the pollution. In these days you didn’t produce the country’s steel without making smoke and dirt.

Tommy Livermore said he wanted Emma Penticost and Ron Worrall with him in the interview room. Laura was to do what the initial investigating officers had omitted – go back into the victim’s life, and sort out the small print of her existence.

The Sheffield CID had only scraped the surface of Doris Butler’s twenty-six years. They had dug out the basic information: the wedding in 1936 against her parents’ wishes – they had finally relented and given their reluctant blessing (‘So as not to spoil Doris’s day.’). Before that there were the jobs she had done: the Pitman’s shorthand/typing course, then the work, first in the council offices, one of two secretaries to the town clerk, later for a solicitor, Mr Fullalove. Friends said it was a good name for Doris to be associated with, Fullalove. Lastly, almost as an afterthought, in a footnote to the original murder reports, was the information that Doris had worked four days a week as a civilian clerk to the RTO at Sheffield’s Victoria Railway Station, through which the main London North Eastern Railway ran the most important of its trains. The RTO was a military appointment, usually Army – the officer who was law to all military persons travelling on the railways.

Eventually Sheffield CID woke up to the fact that they couldn’t interview the parents because Mr and Mrs Haynes – Doris had been a Haynes up to the wedding – had died together in the same air raid that destroyed the Marples Hotel in the city centre: December 1940.

Tommy saw Laura’s face when he gave her the instructions. ‘Just get on with it,’ he said. ‘Follow up. Do it,’ in that hurtful way he sometimes turned on when things went awry. ‘You know how to sort out the details of a victim. Go backwards and forwards; up and down; you never know what you’ll turn up.’

She pulled herself together and said, ‘Yes, Chief,’ even managing a limpid smile.

‘Fine-tooth comb time, Laura,’ he nodded, giving her his terrible smile.

She even heard him say, ‘Keep her out of trouble,’ as she was leaving, closing the door.

He didn’t even let her use a car, or take someone with her. It was all bus and Shanks’s pony – as her mum used to say when she had to walk anywhere.

There was some kind of flap on about the case; you didn’t have to get even a pass or credit in instinct to know that; also to be aware that it was something internal, in the Sheffield nick. Tommy had said he wanted Emma and Ron with him in case he lost his temper. Never a pretty sight, he said with an awful rasp. Laura thought she was best out of it. So she plodded on, her mind brimming with Detective Sergeant Dennis Free of the Reserve Squad who was off working with DI Mountford in Gloucestershire, far away. Smiling as she trudged, thinking of Dennis and his lovely, open smile, his nice, strong arms, hard body and the unruly hair that would fall in front of his eyes – ‘Lau, I’m blinded by my hair,’ he’d say in a strangulated voice. ‘I can’t see. Help me, Lau, help.’ And she’d help him and that would be nice. Crumbs how she loved Sergeant Free. Laugh through the tears, Woman Detective Constable Cotter.

Now she was doing her job, schlepping around witnesses, digging the dirt, sorting wheat from chaff, doing a recce in depth. First off was Mrs Carter – Phyllis – neighbour of the late Mrs Butler, the one whose husband, Martin, was Fleet Air Arm: a Wopag. Wireless Operator Air Gunner.

‘Get in close and then work outwards,’ Tommy always counselled. ‘Talk to them. Waffle with confidence.’ Which meant pretend you know more than you do. ‘Needle them. Get under their skin, up their fundaments, wiggle about a bit.’

Phyllis Carter’s house was, to use Laura’s mum’s favourite expression, ‘prick neat’, which she presumed had something to do with ‘clean as a new pin’, though she’d never heard anyone else use the term, ‘prick neat’. Her dad always said, ‘neat as a bee’s foot’, but he’d had Irish connections so anything he said could probably be traced to the banks of the Liffey. Anyway, Mrs Carter’s little semi looked as though she ran the Ewbank cleaner over the carpet every hour and polished the stair rods after that, then spent the afternoon with a duster stuck to her hand.

In the front room there was a big print of cows drinking from a mountain valley stream right over the fireplace, hanging from a cord reaching up to a moveable hook over the picture rail. There was red tissue among the coal in the fireplace, and a picture of roses in a glass bowl on the wall directly opposite the Highland cattle guzzling in the foothills. The three-piece suite was obviously kept for special occasions: it had matching cushions rarely dinted and beige antimacassars over the back of the chairs, two for the settee, and a large pouffe covered in matching floral material – cabbage roses and greenery – pushed into a corner near the French windows. There was a set of nesting tables but no sign of a cup of tea with a Nice biscuit to beat back the pangs until lunchtime.