I sat on the ground in the shade with my back against Fred’s front plate. Twenty feet away from me Charteris sat with James under the awning that stretched out from the Kangaroo. Between them, and slightly forward, an old drum with a blackened skin was sitting on a small stool. There was a small book resting on it. Doug told me that it was the KRs. Lammers was sitting on the ground in front of them, his arms clasped around his knees. His fingers had been cleaned and bandaged. He wore iron handcuffs. Cummings stood at ease in front of the officers, clearly giving his report. From time to time I caught Lammers looking around the field. Counting us, I thought. He still expects to get away with it. Every time someone addressed a question to him he shook his head. I still had the small suitcase under my left hand. Eventually they waved me forward. Lammers didn’t even look up at me. James asked me, ‘What was the problem, Charlie?’
‘He was. He’s not right, sir. The village is like an army of cleaners have moved through it.’
‘That’s hardly his fault.’
‘Every time I asked him a verifiable question, where he went to college, where he trained for the church, he told me – then asked, Do you know that? I think he’s trying to work out how detailed his lies need to be.’
‘Well done, Charlie. I like that.’ James was being sincere, but he sounded bloody patronizing. Charteris frowned. I told them, ‘He says he’s a Lutheran, and then says his Bishop sent him here. I’m not sure that Lutherans have bishops in their mob. I’ll have to check that, sir.’
James asked me, ‘What else?’
‘He had this in the church.’ For the first time I gave him a decent butcher’s at the small suitcase I had lifted. ‘To me, it looks the same as the one you have: and you said that you got yours from Jerry.’
The Major’s eyes gleamed.
‘Well, well, well.’ I think that he addressed that to Charteris, not me. ‘What have we here?’
Charteris had Cummings open the suitcase.
‘. . . over there somewhere, old chap: just in case.’
He waved him over to the centre of the field. Doug went with him, without being asked. That impressed me. It was locked, but responded to one of several small keys found around the Dutchman’s neck on a piece of string. We waited for the discreet explosion that never came. After a decent interval they brought the case back to us. His papers and ration book had looked OK, and the other larger cases had just contained civilian clothes: some of them for a woman – that was interesting. It was the small case that got James’s attention, of course, but he fretted over it. He asked me, ‘Come and have a shufti at this, Charlie. If it’s a radio it’s like none I’ve ever seen.’
‘Me neither,’ I said, when I got alongside him. It was electrical all right, with ammeters and a voltmeter, and a small integral glass-cased battery, but James was right – it was never a radio.
‘I wonder what that does?’ Charteris asked us, and depressed what looked a bit like a Morse key, but wasn’t.
The concussion almost knocked me over. The sky went black. The noise deafened me. The wind stripped leaves from the willows, the awning from the Kangaroo, and wrapped Kate up in her own camouflage shroud. I had instinctively crouched, and when I looked to the source of the explosion saw a massive black cloud boiling over Brond. A shower of fine rubble, dirt and dust fell on us like a summer storm. Lammers must have made his move, because he was flat on his face with Doug astride his shoulders, pinning his neck to the field with his rifle. Cummings, crouched by me, said, ‘Effing hell!’ which seemed appropriate at the time, and James, picking himself up and dusting his uniform down, said, ‘Detonator, I think. It’s a remote detonator. Very sophisticated.’
I said, ‘I forgot. When I wouldn’t let him go the bastard swore at us in English. Something north-eastern. Gateshead or Newcastle.’
Charteris didn’t say anything. He’d gone white. Then he spoke quietly to Cummings. He said, ‘Peg the bastard out, Sar’nt.’
And that’s what they did. The military often seems to have a monopoly on cruel and unusual punishment. Two squaddies spreadeagled the poor sod in the middle of the field, and secured him with tent pegs, and Charteris threatened to have a tank driven over him. I remember the tank was named Rachel’s Dream.
Charteris said, ‘Come over with me, Padre. Maybe he’ll speak to you.’
When we were at Lammers Charteris squatted down to speak to him.
‘This is the way it works, old boy. I will signal the tank forward. It will move very slowly. Its starboard track will run right up the middle of your body. The first pain you will feel will be the pressure of it on your inner thighs, then it will crush your balls. It’s all downhill from there, I’m afraid. I understand that your head will stay alive until the tank runs over it. That will take about five minutes if my driver is very careful.’
Lammers was taking fast deep breaths to pump himself up. He spat.
‘Won’t say nowt.’ He still sounded like a Northerner, but said to me, ‘Give me absolution, Father.’
I said, ‘You’re a Lutheran. You don’t need it.’
‘I’m not. I’m a Catholic, Father. Please give me absolution.’
‘No,’ I told him.
‘That’s not allowed,’ he squealed. ‘You can’t refuse.’
‘Try me,’ and we walked away.
Charteris said, ‘That was a bit hard, Padre.’
I thought that that was a bit rich, coming from someone who was getting ready to drive a tank over someone else. He waved his hand at Rachel’s Dream, its driver revved it unnecessarily, and began to inch
