Tamar (37 page)

When Erich had finished, Redler said, “Stay here,” and walked off. He was gone for five minutes, and Erich spent the time thinking about how much he was going to miss the nimble widow. When the lieutenant returned, he led Erich into the tent behind the kitchen, put a small leather case down on the trestle table, and took out a sheaf of maps. He selected one, opened it out, and said, “Show me.”

While Redler and Grabowski were map-reading in the field kitchen, Dart was standing in the asylum garden watching the rooks. There had now been three consecutive days of dry sunny weather, and it occurred to him that it might soon be spring. The elms were still bare, but the rookery built among their branches was busier and more argumentative than he remembered. Were the rooks breeding? Dart was perfectly ignorant of bird behaviour, but as he watched he saw that several of the ragged black shapes returning to the trees carried twigs in their beaks. They were refurbishing last season’s nests and furiously scolding neighbours who were doing exactly the same thing. Or were they still arguing over who was going to mate with whom?

He heard someone call “Ernst!” and it took him a couple of seconds to remember that it was his name. He turned and saw Trixie Greydanus approaching.

When she was beside him she said, “Awful creatures, aren’t they?”

“Are they?”

“I think so. Sinister. You always see them pecking at dead things on the road. And I hate the noise they make.”

“I rather like it,” Dart said. “They sound almost human sometimes.”

“I think you’ve been keeping company with the wrong kind of humans, in that case,” Trixie said. “Let me see your face.”

He turned to her. The swelling over the cheekbone had gone down a little; now there was a dark indigo stain, yellow at the edges, that had spread under his eye. The right side of his top lip was still split and swollen, giving him a lopsided, sarcastic expression.

She grimaced, and then stood on her toes and kissed him on the good side of his mouth. He was so surprised that he looked at her properly for the first time in weeks. He saw that the freckles had faded and the flesh was tighter over her jawbone. The face was narrower. The soft crescents below her eyes were now webbed with tiny creases, like the skin on cream. She looked like the older and more serious sister of the summery girl he had met all those months ago. He thought that if he were to take hold of her shoulders he would feel bone beneath the thin raincoat, that she would be easy to break.

“What was that for?”

“To kiss it better, of course. And because I think it’s probably a long time since anyone kissed you.”

He thought, Don’t you dare feel sorry for me, damn you. But he put a smile on his face and said, “Oh, you’re quite wrong there. I kiss a different nun every night.”

She grinned and became younger again. “Lord, how I would love to believe you,” she said. “Come on, let’s walk round the garden. These birds are getting on my nerves.”

She wanted to put her arm through his. Not just for his sake, although she’d never seen anyone more needy. But his hands were jammed into his coat pockets and his arms were tight against himself.

When they’d reached the first turn in the path she said, “I’ve just come from the farm.”

“Ah,” he said.

“Christiaan has a message for you.”

“Yes?”

“He was very shocked by what happened at the Marionette House on Sunday. He’s glad you’re safe. He said you did very well.”

Dart stopped walking and faced her. “Is that the message?”

Trixie was taken aback by the chill in his voice. Her smile failed her. “No, no. He says that because of what happened he is cancelling his last order to you, and that if you want to, you may return to the normal schedule in seven days’ time, the twentieth. Does that make sense to you?”

“Yes.” He kept his face expressionless.

“He also said that you might want to think about what happened on Sunday in a positive way. That maybe now the SS have raided Pieter and Bibi’s and found nothing, it’ll be safer to work from there. What do you think?”

Dart touched his wounded lip while he considered the question. “Christiaan’s probably right. But I also think he hasn’t thought about Pieter and Bibi. About how they must be feeling right now. And I don’t think that’s . . . fair.”

Trixie said, uncertainly, “Is that what you want me to tell him? That you don’t think it’s fair?”

“Yes,” Dart said. “Tell him that.”

Willy Vekemans awoke not long after dawn, as he always did. There must be some sort of clock in his body, he supposed, because very little light had found its way into the boarded-up bedroom. Or maybe it was the birdsong, which was lovely and complicated here in the woods. Or maybe it was his bowels, which were terrible because of all the tinned meat they’d been living on for . . . how long? A week? Today was what, Thursday? No, Wednesday. He was losing track.

Aaah, there it went again, the spasm twisting through his gut, somehow bringing with it the memory of the dead bodies lined up beside the road. Please God, no, don’t let me think about that. He swung his legs off the bare mattress and felt around on the floor for his boots, then went out into the hall. In the living room two slants of light fell across Eddy Dekker, who stirred slightly on the sofa, then lay still again. From the other bedroom came the irregular sound of Wim’s snoring, like a summer fly bumbling against a windowpane. This worried Willy for a moment, because he thought that Wim was supposed to be on watch. Or was it Koop? Yes, maybe it was Koop.

Willy unbolted the back door and opened it. The bent grass, once a lawn, was pearled with dew. Something, a fox perhaps, had left a trail through it. He carefully peeled a strip of damp wallpaper from the wall beside the door to use in the toilet and stepped out into the day. He got halfway to the little wooden privy under the trees and then stopped, spellbound. From somewhere close by a blackbird unfurled its song and spread it, like golden handwriting, on the chill morning air. It was so bright, so pure, that Willy imagined he might be able to see it if he could find the place in the sky where it was written. He lifted his face to the light and was killed by a quick burst of machine-gun fire that hit him square in the chest.

It was Koop’s unbreakable rule that all five members of the group never slept in the same bungalow. He and Oskar had spent the night in the third bungalow from the track. At first they were not sure that what had shocked them awake and brought them scrambling into the hall was in fact gunfire, simply because it had stopped almost as soon as it had begun. They squatted either side of the front door, listening to a dense silence. After a very long few seconds they heard the unmistakable sound of a Sten gun firing a long burst, and then an amazing amount of answering fire from off to their left. They stole to the window of the living room and peered through a slit in the boards. They saw four SS troopers in camouflage smocks run, stooped, through the pines and bracken. The third man was lugging a Spandau machine gun. They disappeared beyond the last bungalow, off to the right. At the same time there was another outbreak of firing from the direction of the track.

Koop said, “They’re going to work their way round to the back of the end bungalow. I don’t think they know we’re in here.” His face was banded black and white by the narrow beams of light through the boards.

Oskar’s breathing was shallow and rapid. His mouth was so dry that he could only say, “Right.”

Koop said, “We’ll go out the back door. Then run like shit down that hedge. Get into the trees.”

“Jesus, Koop.”

Koop took hold of the front of Oskar’s sweater and pulled him into the hall. When they got to the door, Koop eased back the bolts. Both men cocked their guns and leaned their backs against the wall. Oskar made the sign of the cross over his heart. Koop looked at him and said, “Okay?” When Oskar nodded, Koop opened the door and they stepped out into the light.

The pit had been scooped out long ago by men quarrying sand and gravel. Now it was so disguised by gorse and bracken that Koop didn’t see it until he was falling into it.

The pain from the wound in his back was so intense that when he rolled to a stop he had to fight to stay conscious. The trees surrounding him revolved one way and then the other. When he’d managed to make them stay still, he realized he was lying exposed in a patch of sunlight. He dragged himself into shadow. His left leg was very difficult to move now. When he’d got himself into a sitting position with his good shoulder against a tree, he forced himself to think. He also tried to stop shaking, but couldn’t.

He’d lost the bloody Sten, and he was in no condition to go looking for it. He’d never be able to climb back up that slope. Did he still have the Luger? Yes, he could feel the weight of it in his coat pocket. But so what? If it came to a shoot-out with the Germans, he’d have no chance. He was still shocked by how many of them there’d been. Oskar’d never had a hope, the poor damn idiot. He’d run down the wrong side of the hedge. God! They couldn’t have missed him. His scream had come through the bushes at the same instant as the bullets. And as for Eddy and Wim and Willy . . . Koop had heard the flat boom of hand grenades. The SS had blown holes in the walls, for sure. Then just poured the machine-gun fire in. Dear God. He was alone now. For a terrible moment he was stricken with self-pity and on the verge of tears. It was another stab of pain in his back that brought him out of it.

What he had to think about, the really important thing, was, had he been seen? Had he made it to the hedge before the Germans came round the corner of the house? Maybe, just maybe. The bullets that had hit him were meant for Oskar, definitely, and he didn’t think he’d been shot at after he’d reached the trees. And it was quiet now. Did he dare hope? It was so tempting to . . . No, stupid, stupid! The Germans would work out pretty damn quick that there had been five of them there, and that they were a body short. They’d look for him, all right. Shit, shit! He had to move.

He couldn’t tell how far he’d come, how long he’d been dragging himself through the woods. He’d got slower, he knew that; the leg had got heavier and heavier. It was weird that it didn’t hurt very much. Look at the sodding blood, though! His left trouser leg was soaked with it, and when he moved his toes he could feel the thick stickiness inside his boot. He unbuttoned his trousers. Clenching his teeth, he slid his right hand down his thigh, easing the claggy cloth away from the skin. The hole was about halfway between his knee and his hip, on the left side. It was big enough, he reckoned, for him to get his little finger into. He felt round to the inside of the thigh. No exit wound. The damn bullet was still in there. When he pulled his hand out, it was gloved in blood. He yanked his coat belt free of the loops, and with great difficulty tightened it around the top of his leg.

Standing up was murder. When he was steady, he tried to feel the wound in his back but couldn’t reach it. He was unsure whether the wetness under his shirt was blood or sweat.

He now tried to get his bearings, but the lie of the land was baffling. The ground seemed to rise and fall in no particular pattern. The sun was on his left, so he was facing south. South was, he figured, the only direction he could take safely. Okay. He’d head that way and hope there’d be some easy way out of this blasted pit. Sooner or later, he’d come to somewhere he’d recognize. And then, if he could stay alive long enough, he’d find his way to the men who had betrayed him and kill them both.

The sun was setting behind a rippled bank of cloud when Tamar left the radio room, and he stood watching it for a while. In the farmhouse kitchen he sat in the old armchair, and Marijke curled onto his lap, her head on his shoulder and her legs over the arm of the chair. It was the touch of his unshaven jaw against her forehead that reminded her that this was how she used to sit with her grandfather when she was a child. She remembered his smell. Cattle, woodsmoke, soap: those predictable, safe aromas. How he would pretend to groan under her weight. She felt Tamar’s fingers caress the back of her head.

“Should I light the lamp?” she asked.

“Later,” he said. “Don’t move yet.”

Dart was woken by the tapping on his bedroom door. His first act was to brush the spiders from his face, even though, as usual, there weren’t any. When he managed to get the door open, Sister Hendrika was standing in the passage, cupping a little stub of candle in her hands. The flame was reflected in both lenses of her glasses so that she seemed to have eyes of fire. She took a step backwards when she saw him.

“Dr. Veening would like you to come down to the kitchen,” she said. “He said to ask you to bring your bag.”

It took Dart several seconds to understand her words. “What time is it?”

“A little after five o’clock, Dr. Lubbers.”

He’d been in bed for two hours. He had no memory of falling asleep. A piece of time had simply vanished.

“What’s going on, Sister?”

“I don’t know. A man . . . Shall I wait for you?”

“No, I . . . I’ll be down in a minute.”

There was no one in the kitchen when he got there, but the stove had been lit, somehow, and a kettle and a saucepan of water were heating. Light and low voices came from the scullery, and when Dart pushed the door open, he saw the body of a man lying on its side on the steel-topped table. Horribly, it looked as though Albert Veening was peeling the skin from one of its legs. Sister Agatha was bent over the man, but she looked up when she heard the door creak. Dart now saw that Albert was using kitchen scissors to cut away the man’s blood-soaked trousers. He looked at the dirty colourless face pressed against the tabletop. The eyes were closed and the mouth was open and lopsided.

Albert glanced up. “You’ll know this man.”

Dart could not speak, because he seemed to have walked into one of his own Benzedrine nightmares.

“Koop de Vries,” Albert said. “He has at least two bullet wounds. One in the leg, but I can’t see how bad it is until we clean him up a bit. He’s also been hit in the back, high up, left shoulder. I’ll cut the coat open in a second, and we’ll have a look.”