‘Told you, sir.’ That was Les to James.
‘What?’
‘Bad job, that house; jerry-built.’
He didn’t even laugh at his own joke. Neither did we.
As we drove away I asked them, ‘Two things. Was Kilduff going to kill me, and if so, why?’
England said, ‘Yes and no and money.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Yes he was going to kill you, but not necessarily alone – he was prepared to bury the three of us if he had to – that’s what really teed me off.’
‘. . . and the money?’
‘He expected to pick up three thousand dollars for it. Someone really wants you off the job, old socks.’
‘Who?’
‘Do you care?’
The bastard was right. He usually was.
Eighteen
We crossed the Rhine near a place called Emmerich. Don’t even ask me what bloody day it was. What I disliked was the number of knocked-up Sherman tanks standing forlornly in the fields. I wondered if any of them was Albie’s, and what chance he had had of even making it that far. The bridge was prefabricated of metal, and swayed with the water streaming beneath it. The water looked an ugly brown, and moved fast: we seemed to be too close to it. Kate’s wheels fitted into parallel tracks, like tram rails that dragged us into Germany. A sign on the far bank read Welcome to the 1000 year Reich, and you didn’t even get your feet wet! Courtesy of the HD. The D was formed on the last upright stroke of the H . . . the letters ran into each other.
I asked Les, ‘Who’s that?’
‘Bloody Highway Decorators. Highland Division. The HD. Pushy Jocks who can’t resist leaving their mark on every place they get to first, just to tell you.’
‘Like cats or foxes pissing on trees, I expect,’ James told us, and that was that. I thought that they were being a bit hard on them. The cats, I mean.
The Rhine had loomed large in my imagination. Now it was just brown and brutish, had the consistency of an open sewer, and was behind us. The next town we got to was like many I saw in Germany: houses reduced to their component parts. The number of straight roads away from the ruined towns was unnerving: it was as if the road-builders couldn’t think in curved lines. The up side was that Les could work up to a fair old gallop, provided we stuck to roads that showed signs of having recently been visited by the Army, and pretended that no one had invented the landmine yet. The down side was that if a fighter or a Jabo caught us in the open, and decided to invite us to tea, there was nowhere to hide.
I saw a couple of American Thunderbolts in shiny unpainted livery and invasion stripes – we weren’t even bothering to paint the damn things any more, there was so little opposition. They were low to the ground and looked pregnant, with a bomb apiece, drop tanks and wing-mounted rockets. When they saw us they canted over in a flat circle that brought them behind us again, and about two hundred yards over to the left. Then they flew alongside for a few seconds. I could feel the hairs on my neck lifting, but the nearest pilot gave me a dazzling grin full of teeth, and a wave. Then they streaked off into Germany.
Les said, ‘Those things do almost four hundred miles an hour.’
I said, ‘I think that one of McKechnie’s brothers just waved to us.’
‘Black boy, was he?’ That was the Boss. ‘I’ve heard that they have some of those. Good job, really: much steadier under fire.’
Les asked, ‘Why’s that, Boss?’
‘Fuck knows. Maybe they got a bigger dollop of raw courage than the rest of us when God was handing round the sweeties.’
‘You believe that?’
‘No. They’re the same as the rest of us, only maybe they’ve been so badly done to they have something to prove. Turn left at the next major crossroads.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Bremen’s north of us. At the moment you’re pointed towards Berlin. The Reds would be awfully peeved if you reached it first. Not to mention the fact that we must be catching up the front echelons pretty quickly: another few miles and we’ll be somewhere where the Jerry will want to have a pop at us.’
I turned back to look at him as I spoke. ‘We are in their country after all, Major. Maybe they feel they have cause.’
‘I expect you’re right. I expect that that’s what that policeman thinks.’
Les was already slowing up as I turned back, still asking, ‘What policeman?’
‘That one there,’ Les said. ‘I think he wants us to stop.’
There was a man standing in the centre of the arrow-straight road with his left hand extended palm forward to us. He wore a dark blue uniform with silver buttons, and white gloves. Apart from the silly hat he could have been a London copper. His hat looked a bit like an infantryman’s helmet from the Napoleonic Wars: it was tall and black and shiny, with a gleaming silver badge on the front. It had a narrow black shiny peak, but
