The wind got up from somewhere: it blew the smell of burned rubber from the lorries around us. The sky was leaden. Les was watching murdered men being exhumed without turning a hair, and James was off fretting because Pete had ignored him, Major or no Major. I said, ‘This is a stupid conversation, Pete. Go and talk to James; he’ll only take it out on me and Les if you piss him off.’
‘OK. Thanks for telling me you’d found the lorries. People don’t tell the cops nothing these days.’
‘Anything. They don’t tell the police anything . . .’
‘Nothing,’ Pete insisted. ‘They tell cops nothing . . .’
‘Nor would you,’ I told him. ‘Not when you were on the other side.’ Then reality checked in, and I added, ‘. . . only you were never really on the other side.’
Bugger him. Bugger the lot of them. I wanted to find Grace and say my piece; make sure that she was all right, and then go home. For the first time in my life, I thought, I had a decent plan. When we gathered up, and went out to Kate we had to skate close to the American plane. I think that we called the type a Cricket. The pilot grinned, and raised a hand to me as I moved past. It was Tommo. He was in a flying jacket. He looked shagged out. I thought briefly about Cliff; how come so many of these types had learned to fly? The Cutter was commandeered by the SA Major, who wanted to do a quick and dirty autopsy on the bodies. Hendriks promised him a lift into Bremen as a reward. The black man looked very unhappy as we drove away and left him.
The Cricket zoomed low over Kate an hour later. They would be in Bremen before us.
Twenty-Six
‘You forgot those two Jerries on the BMW, didn’t you?’ Kate was labouring up a long twisted hill. The Major had assured us that we would be able to see Bremen from the other side. I’d already worked out that what I had originally thought were thick cumulus storm clouds was in fact a broad column of smoke.
James asked, ‘What?’ and sniffed the air like a gun dog. He must have been dozing.
A jeep pissed past us as if Kate had been standing still. Mud splashed back from it. Les cursed, because since we’d changed Kate’s windscreen the wipers didn’t work.
Les again: ‘He was worried about not having killed enough Jerries before the great reckoning up began. He doesn’t want to face the Great Architect in the sky with all his pluses in the wrong column. He’d forgotten those bastards on the motorbike, and is still worried about the Yanks we had put down.’
James asked, ‘What Yanks? Can’t seem to remember any.’
‘Nor can I, sir.’
We ran without speaking for thirty minutes or so. Kate sounded sweet. We crested the hill, and saw the southern suburb of Bremen for the first time. It was about fifteen miles away. Les said, ‘Journey’s end, Charlie.’
A few miles on, in a small hamlet the size of Korne, we were pulled up at a roadblock manned by bored-looking squaddies. There were half a dozen vehicles parked up off the thoroughfare, waiting to be passed through. James got out for a look-see. A squaddy saluted. One other started to, and then bent over and vomited. James raised an eyebrow and waited. It was the first time I’d seen him do either. The saluter apologized.
‘Sorry, sir. He’s got some sort of stomach problem.’
‘I can smell it from here, Bombardier’ – he was good at unit flashes – ‘I’d say his stomach problem came in tall brown glass bottles labelled Wein.’
The saluter straightened. His face wore a game’s up expression.
‘Sir.’
But James ignored the vomiter.
‘So what’s the hold-up?’
‘I think that things are a bit chaotic down there, sir, so they want everyone held back until the MPs have got control again. There are three armies loose in there at the moment.’
‘Brits and Canadians, and . . .?’
‘I understand that an American tank unit got in there somehow, sir.’
‘Are there any exceptions to your instructions? We really do have pressing business . . .’
‘They left me a list, sir.’
‘Could you check it for a Major England, Mr Finnigan – my driver – and er . . . Pilot Officer Bassett? He’s my passenger.’
‘I could, sir, but . . .’
His eyes flicked sideways to his drunken companion, who was sitting on the ground by now, hunched over a .303, cradled in his lap. James leaned over and lifted the rifle away. He said, ‘We’ll hold the fort for you.’
The gunner nodded. He stepped sideways through the hole they’d knocked in a cottage wall. It was their makeshift guard house. I got out to stretch my legs. I’d already filled my pipe with sweet nutty tobacco. Now I lit it. I asked James, ‘What’s afoot, sir?’
‘I don’t think they want us to see what our brave soldiery are doing to the citizens of Bremen. Matey is off to check his list of bodies who may be passed through. I said that I’d man his post.’
‘We could just sod off.’
‘That would be unsoldierly.’
‘I think that you make those words up, sir.’
‘Sometimes. But I always write them down afterwards.’
Kate had once been identical to the staff car which drew up. Unlike Kate it still had all the right windows, was unbattered, and it had obviously had a wash that morning. Its driver, when he hopped out, was immaculate. He went to attention in front of James, who put him at ease. James appeared to be enjoying himself. The new driver must have at-eased in a particularly soggy spot. I could see that he was slowly sinking into it. The new Humber suddenly swayed as somebody heavy shifted inside. A rear passenger door opened, and a portly Colonel stepped out. He had a nicotine-stained moustache the size of a small broom.
