‘You look exhausted, old boy.’ Lieutenant Tim Cooper was slumped in the burgundy plush of the Exchange Hotel’s bar, a plate of the chef’s own sandwiches in front of him.
‘Is this the best they can manage?’ He peeled back the top of a damp triangle and carefully examined its contents: luncheon meat.
‘I’ve had breakfast but…’ He glanced hopefully at Lindsay who waved a careless hand at the plate. There was almost nothing in his appearance to suggest that a few hours before he had been squatting in smoke and blood beside a dying man. The hotel staff had worked a small miracle on his uniform and his shoes were polished to perfection. But there was a weary frown on his face and a more observant man than Cooper might have noticed the distant look in his eyes.
‘It’s been a bad night,’ said Cooper mechanically, ‘What a pounding Liverpool’s taken.’ He glanced at his watch, it was eleven o’clock. It had taken him two hours to make the short journey from the mess at Orrell Hey. Burning streets, flooded streets, streets choked with rubble and unexploded bombs. He had seen a parachute mine lying in the front garden of a neat little semi, huge and uninvited.
‘The Central Library’s still burning, and the GPO, and there’s a steamer loaded with ammunition on fire in the Huskisson Dock. If that goes up, they’ll hear it at the Admiralty,’ he said. ‘Did you hear about the White? The buggers managed to sink her. Thompson, her captain, was at the mess last night. Very tight. He climbed up on to the roof and stood there brandishing a pipe at them. Bombs dropping everywhere and there he was shouting, “Come on you buggers”.’
Lindsay said nothing.
Transport for Mohr and the other prisoners from the 112 would be difficult to arrange but Cooper was hopeful of a train from Lime Street later in the day.
‘It was sickening,’ he said. ‘You should have seen them together.’
‘Who?’
‘Thompson and Mohr — yesterday. You would have thought Thompson was entertaining Marlene Dietrich.’
‘You don’t like Commander Thompson,’ said Lindsay drily.
‘He doesn’t like me, which is unforgivable. But he’ll like you.’ Cooper glanced down at the medal ribbon on Lindsay’s uniform. ‘But Mohr’s a clever bugger. He spent time here as a boy. Must have run rings round Thompson.’ He paused and began to examine his nails.
‘Well, what is it?’ asked Lindsay impatiently.
‘I’m afraid I’ve bad news…’
‘Bad news?’ Lindsay gave a short humourless laugh.
‘Yes. Thompson let Mohr talk to his men. He’s had three weeks to prepare them for interrogation.’
‘They didn’t keep him from the crew?’ asked Lindsay in disbelief. Lieutenant-Commander Thompson had broken the golden rule: isolate the commander.
‘Sorry. I hope someone kicks his complacent backside for you,’ said Cooper.
Lindsay lit a cigarette, and blew the yellow smoke at the bar-room ceiling. As it broke and curled, he could imagine the dancing shadows of the cedar on the walls of the interrogation room at the Park and hear the mocking whisper of its branches.
Standing on the quay above the wreck of HMS White, Kapitan Jurgen Mohr felt no satisfaction nor did he feel regret. It was one more act of war. Das ist eben Schicksal. Fate. The sinking of the White, the damage to city and port, these things happened in war. The country that inflicted the most pain and destruction would win.
‘Get that lot into some sort of line.’
Mohr’s men were shuffling out of a warehouse at the corner of the dock under the eye of a burly British sergeant.
‘Don’t any of you lot speak any English?’ he shouted at them, ‘Fall in now.’
‘Can I help you, Sergeant?’ Mohr’s English was a little precise but perfect in every other respect.
‘No you bloody can’t. Keep away.’ The sergeant pointed at two army trucks that were parked further along the quay. ‘Corporal, take this one up there.’
Mohr shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’
‘Suit yourself? Suit yourself my arse,’ said the sergeant angrily, ‘get a move on.’
Mohr picked his way through the rubble, the tangled hoses and bloody rags, the corporal stamping aggressively at his heels. They stopped beside one of the trucks and he leant against its bonnet to watch the sergeant pushing and prodding his crew into a ragged line. Smoke was still settling in a broad grey blanket over the river and its wharves. From time to time there was a deep dull rumble from the tightly ordered streets beyond the docks, where a demolition party was making the city ‘safe’.
The crew had abandoned its line and Mohr was most of the way through his fifth cigarette by the time the small party of British officers arrived on the quay. They stopped to look down in silence at the black and twisted bridge of the White, fifteen feet of blasted steel breaking the oily water. Mohr recognised her captain and the fat lieutenant he had met the day before but not their companion, a tall, fair-haired officer. He dropped his cigarette, ground it beneath his shoe, then walked slowly towards Lieutenant-Commander Thompson.
‘A cruel blow, Captain, really’, he said, with as much sincerity as he could manage.
Thompson acknowledged him with a curt nod. He looked grey and careworn, his thoughts clearly somewhere close to the bottom of the dock. They stood there in foot-shuffling silence for a moment before Thompson said, almost as an afterthought: ‘Yes, unfortunate.’ A perfect piece of English understatement — Mohr just managed to suppress a smile. He listened as Thompson explained in an empty, colourless voice that the lieutenants at his side were arranging for the crew of the 112 to be transferred to a camp.
‘I regret to say that an angry crowd has gathered at the gates of the dock. There are a lot of sailors’ families in this city, but you will be quite safe with Lieutenants Cooper and Lindsay.’
Mohr smiled at him, ‘I want to thank you again for your kindness, Captain.’
The fair-haired officer, the one Thompson had introduced as Lindsay, gave a short, humourless laugh. Thompson frowned and seemed on the point of rebuking him but changed his mind. There was something in his manner that suggested the two men had crossed swords already.
After another awkward silence Lieutenant Lindsay turned to him and said sharply in German, ‘Herr Kapitan Mohr, there are some rules.’
‘I was sure there would be,’ Mohr replied in German. Then in English he said: ‘But Commander Thompson doesn’t speak German. It would be polite to speak English, Lieutenant.’
Lieutenant Lindsay stared at him coldly and Mohr was struck by the intense blue of his eyes. Then Lindsay said in German: ‘You will be travelling to the station with your officers but your guards are under orders to prevent any talking.’ He glanced at his watch, ‘And we will be leaving in ten minutes.’
Mohr watched Lindsay and the others drift out of earshot. Something was niggling him, a faint but persistent echo. What was it? There was something about Lindsay that seemed inexplicably familiar.
After a few minutes, Thompson walked briskly away, his trophy prisoner no longer a concern. Lindsay and Cooper turned back to Mohr, deep in conversation. They had gone no more than a few steps when there was a blinding white flash. A savage growl seemed to roll up the Mersey towards them. Mohr threw himself face down on the rough cobbles. A chunk of steel plate clanged on to the quay close by and the sky was suddenly alive with the whistle and crash of shellfire.
‘The ammunition ship.’ Cooper was lying a few feet away. ‘She must have been sent to every corner of the city.’
Mohr lifted his head a little and caught Lindsay’s eye and in that instant, in the pandemonium, it came to him where he had seen the man before and he began to laugh, laugh out loud.