Bare fingers wiped mud smears off a length of bone, and the arc-lights pierced sufficiently into the hole to show the minute working of the decoration at the head of what had been a hairpin – consigned to the fire rather than be an ornament in the tresses of a barbarian's woman. Gaunt, with all the warmth he could muster, congratulated the doctor on his significant find. They were called for tea. He levered himself out of the pit and carried his bucket to the tent where the urn was and sandwiches. He had thought, in a Wiltshire field, he would find sanctuary, but his mind was trapped by thoughts of Polly, and the man she had believed in, and the bright but deep eyes in the photograph of an enemy… and the casualties of war, then and now.
It was a supreme effort to drag himself to his feet. He was so nearly there, so close to his Grail. Oskar Netzer pulled himself up, off his stomach, off his knees and elbows, and the gate rocked on his weight and his fingers clutched at the catch holding it shut. Weakness consumed him, but the pain was long gone. When the gate swung open, a little more of his feeble strength left him and he lost his hold on the ironwork. He fell forward on to the cemetery path. He staggered over the loose gravel towards the stone and his wife's grave. He saw nothing ahead of him in the blackness but knew where he must go… and he believed he had made expiation for the wrong done by his uncle.
After a few short steps, he collapsed on to the sharp stones – but he hoped to reach her resting-place and to sleep there and be with her, to tell her of his ducks, and of the men who had intruded on his paradise, and that he had loosed the evil's hold on him… He crawled off the path and over sodden grass, reached out and found the glass jar, the stems of flowers that had been stripped by the wind.
He clasped the stone and did not know what he had achieved – did not know who would bury him – and sleep took him.
A clock chimed. A car, with lights flashing, and with an escort in front and behind, brought Timo Rahman to the prison in the north of Hamburg at Fuhlsbuttel.
He was led from it to a desk where the details of his life, and the charges he faced, would be processed.
The gaol's landings awoke. Word had passed. Spoons beat against metal mugs. Plates rattled against doors.
His name was shouted and echoed down the block's iron staircases. He was ordered to strip for medical inspection.
He was in hurtful ignorance of the reason for the collapse of his rule, and of who was responsible.
'I can't go in any further.'
'It's bloody dangerous out there, Dad.'
'Myself, I'd do it if I could,' Harry shouted at the wheel-house door, at his son. 'I can't… What I'm promising, it's never again.'
'Just get her stern on, Dad, and keep her there.'
He should have been down on the deck to help his boy but dared not leave the wheel and the diesel engine's controls to young Paul, his grandson, who had retched again and was now too frail to hold the wheel steady and did not know the working of the engine. The door slammed behind him, but he yelled and did not know if he was heard.
'Don't hang about. You get there, you ground, you pick them up if they're there, but you don't wait. Their problem if they're not in place in the water – my conscience is clear that my word was kept.'
Harry reached up, worked the lever that manoeuvred the light on the wheel-house roof and hit the switch. In the flood of the beam, he could see his son and grandson heaving the dinghy off the bucking deck and on to the gunwale, resting it on the trawler's side, then – as a spray surge swamped them – pushing it over. On a wave, the dinghy – held by a straining rope – climbed higher than the gunwale, higher than them, then fell like the trough had no bottom to it. He had given his word to Ricky Capel, and his word was all the honour left to him. His son seemed to punch the shoulder of his grandson, as if to reassure the kid, who was destroyed by sickness, then launched himself over the side. Harry lost sight of him in the next pit, then saw him lifted in the dinghy, and the kid loosed hold of the rope.
He kept the light on the dinghy. He watched its progress, pathetically slow, and smoke fumes spat from the outboard. It rose and it fell. It was hard, one-handed, to hold the light on the dinghy and to keep the steering on the Anneliese Royal steady, to control the engine and bring the forward speed down from three knots forward to two knots. To his starboard side was the roll of the buoy light, the Accumer Ee on the chart, and to port were dulled blips of colour from the island's homes.
A prayer slipped on Harry's lips.
He held the wheel-house roof light on the dinghy and saw it shaken among the whitecaps and go towards the surf… Whatever it cost him, he swore that he would never again be Ricky Capel's slave.
He heard, 'About bloody time. You ready? We go, yes?
We don't hang about, not now.'
The world of Malachy Kitchen was now a tiny, confined space. His whole world was a dune with blown grass and soft sand, a beach, riffling surf and a light that wavered on the leaping progress of a dinghy. He felt cleansed, as if old baggage were dropped, and no one here would label him a coward. He coiled his body and made ready to run.
They were gone.
They went in a sliding chase down loose banks of sand. Little yelps of elation from Ricky Capel, like a child at play and happy, nothing from the man who led him.
The light on the boat at sea, perhaps because she was hurled up, wafted away and beyond the dinghy, and then raked over the surf and came on to the beach from which the tide ran, and Malachy saw them, saw that Capel had the box that was the radio, and that the second man carried a machine pistol that trailed loose in his hand. Malachy stood, but the light's beam did not reach him. It swung low, searched for the dinghy and found the breaking waves, then its target. They were off the loose sand, on the beach, and they ran away to his left towards a point that the dinghy headed for.
He had the tags in his hand, and he lifted the strap over his head: they were his name, his service number, his religion and his blood group, and they were his history. In his fist, fiercely clenched, Malachy held them.
Because he knew when he would hit, he waited a few long seconds more. He could not see them, only the dinghy.
He thought himself his own master, and all that was his old world were the shoes on his feet and the tags in his hand. He came off the dune and the sand plunged under his feet. He fell and pushed himself back to his feet. The wind blasted against him, the rain stung at his eyes, and he ran.
Shells crunched, broke, under the tread of his shoes.
He stretched his stride.
When the boat's light came up again, off the dinghy, it caught them – Ricky Capel behind and the second man in front of him – found them near to the surf line.
Neither looked back.
He pounded the beach. He careered through a lagoon of water. It was where he wished to be, a battleground that was perfect.
They were in the water. He saw them against the white sweep of the surf, and against the thunder of the breaking waves the voices were shouting, screaming.
'We're coming… Can't you get in bloody closer?'
'You got to come to me. I'm not bloody grounding.'
'Get in nearer.'
'Won't risk tipping her. Tip her and we're all bloody gone.'
'I can't goddamn swim.'
'If the engine goes under, we're wrecked. Come on, shift it.'
They were into the surf wall, Ricky Capel trailing.
Between the cresting waves, Ricky Capel had the water at his ankles and shins, but when the waves rolled at full height the water squirmed round his waist and seemed to drive him back. Malachy heard Ricky Capel's howl that he had lost a shoe. The man ahead never turned, never reached back with a hand to steady Ricky Capel, never tried to be of help.
Malachy splashed into the surf and the drive of his legs was blocked. He was lifting his knees, stamping for height over the surf, and was closing on Ricky Capel. He did not think why he was there, what he did, how Ricky
