Shoes for Anthony (27 page)

‘Plan,' we all replied, and down all our fists went, bumping in agreement.

Someone had been there. Of that there was no doubt. The den had a ransacked feel to it, as if a dog had gone on the rampage. Boxes were overturned, the bench was pushed onto its side, and our precious mountain treasure was scattered across the floor. ‘Maps are gone,' I said, after a quick cursory check. ‘Not our atlas, though. Just the maps we took out the plane.'

‘That's curious,' said Bozo, kneeling down to pick up a plank of wood. ‘The radio's back. Look.'

He heaved it onto an upside-down box and as he opened it, we gathered round. ‘Looks like someone's had a right old hack at it,' he said, fingering some deep grooves in its side.

‘Does it still work?' asked Ade. ‘Give it a go.'

‘You turn it on there,' I said, pointing towards a switch on the bottom right of the unit. ‘Piotr showed me.'

‘Stick it on, then,' said Ade, holding on to his knees with his hands. ‘Eh, what if it's tuned in to the last person he was talking to? We might turn it on and hear Hitler!'

‘Come on, Ant,' said Fez, nudging me. ‘He's right. Might give us a clue, like.'

I picked up the headphones and slipped them over my head. ‘Turn that,' I said, nodding towards a dial on the bottom left of the panel.

Bozo twisted it and a sudden crackle made me jump. ‘Down a bit,' I said. ‘It's too loud.'

Bozo turned the dial and the crackle evened out into a low hum. It was like finding yourself standing in a large, empty barn. There was no noticeable sound, but the silence had its own music.

‘Can you hear anyone?' said Ade, leaning in.

‘Nah.'

‘Have you tried tapping that?' said Fez, gesturing towards a small metal armature. ‘P'raps you need to tell 'em you're here, like.'

I let my finger rest on the small round button that sat at the end of the arm. I tapped it down. A sound. I tapped it again. Another one.

‘I can hear something,' I said. ‘But I think it's me tapping.'

‘Of course it's you tapping, you idiot,' said Fez. ‘That's for Morse code, innit? Tap it again.'

I made a few more random taps and waited. Still nothing. I shook my head. ‘Nope,' I said. ‘There's no one there … Wait … Hang on … there's something.'

Sudden, organised, shape-shifting beeps came through: long, short, swift, slow, breaks, then again. Someone was trying to communicate with me.

‘Can you hear that?' I said, my mouth agape.

Ade ripped the headphones from my ears and listened. ‘Christ, man,' he said, his voice thrilling with excitement. ‘You're talking to Hitler. To actual bloody Hitler.'

He dropped the headphone to his mouth and shouted into it. ‘Up yours, Hitler! Up yours!'

‘Don't be daft, man,' said Fez, taking the headphones to listen. ‘He can't hear you. Tap back again, Ant.'

I tapped three times on the armature. Another series of beeps returned. Then nothing.

We all looked at each other, pondering our next move. And then they came again, a steady stream of dots and dashes, but as they continued, it was like an infection seeping, or standing too close to a fire. The noise felt dangerous, toxic.

‘Turn it off,' I said, reaching for the switch. ‘We don't know what we're doing. We might be giving them clues. I don't like it.'

I turned the radio off and sat back on my haunches, gripping my knees. The others looked at me. Ade was frowning. ‘Let's not tell anyone about this,' he said, eyeing each of us in turn. ‘If he's brought this back here, it's for a reason. Look at the place. He's coming here. He's looking for something. What stuff from the plane have we got stashed at home? P'raps we've got something he needs? And if we play clever, like, we can catch this fella in the act. We'll be heroes.'

‘We can't not tell, man,' said Fez. ‘This might be dead important, like. A radio that Germans speak through!'

‘We can tell 'em after we've caught him. This is bloodsies, Fez. Proper bloodsies.' He reached into his pocket and pulled out his small penknife. ‘Hands out,' he said, flicking the blade open.

We all held out one hand. Bloodsies was a promise that could never be broken. A do-or-die pledge. If you broke bloodsies, you were the very worst sort, a traitor, someone who would never be trusted again. It was death itself.

Ade quickly scratched each of our thumbs and, as the blood came, we placed our hands together, clasped tight so the blood came fast. I watched the thick velvet stream running down towards my wrist. ‘Never tell,' said Ade.

‘Never tell,' we replied.

Arthur Pryce was at sixes and sevens. In his ten years as the police officer in charge of Treherbert, he had never been this busy or confused. His pocket book, which I think I'd previously seen him remove only once, was now full, and the problem was, he didn't have another one.

‘They come from Cardiff, see,' he said, as he tried to find a page he hadn't had to write on. ‘So I'm waiting on a delivery.'

‘Do you think you can remember what I say without writing it down?' asked Piotr, eyebrows raised in an attempt to be helpful.

A strange, baffled look wafted over Arthur Pryce's face. ‘No,' he said, as if the very thought was utterly incomprehensible.

Arthur Pryce wasn't married. He didn't want to be, neither. Instead, he lived at home with his mother, Mrs Pryce, who, in the absence of a long-dead husband and a daughter who'd run off with a man in murky circumstances, was only too happy to devote her every waking hour to her son in uniform. ‘A policeman,' she would say, ‘commands respect. He's a figure of authority.' And then she would wipe something off Arthur's face with a wet hanky, because, after all, he was still her son.

‘You haven't got anything I could use for official purposes, have you?' said Arthur, casting a hopeful glance at my mother. ‘I have to write it down, see. To be proper.'

My mother gave a small, irritated sigh and stared off towards the kitchen. ‘Well, you can't have Davey's Basildon Bond. That's for emergencies.'

‘But it is an emergency,' complained Arthur. ‘I've got no notebook.'

‘It's Basildon Bond, Arthur,' said my mother, forcibly. ‘That's for special emergencies. This isn't a special emergency. It's an unfortunate oversight. The two are very different. I've got an old envelope somewhere. You'll have to make do with that.'

Arthur went to protest but there was little point. Men of Treherbert knew better than to ever pick a fight with a mam, so instead he sat, fingering the end of his pencil, looking forlorn and beaten.

‘There you go,' said Mam, coming back from the kitchen and handing him a used envelope. ‘You can write on the back of that.'

‘Not very big, is it?' said Arthur, giving it a cursory examination.

‘Then write in small letters,' said Mam, folding her arms.

‘Any chance of a cuppa?' said Arthur. ‘I haven't stopped all morning.'

‘No,' said Mam, unrelenting. ‘There isn't. Now hurry up and get this writing done, then I can be off to Pontypridd. Some of us have sick husbands to be visiting.'

Arthur blinked. Of all the men I knew in Treherbert, he was probably the least qualified to become a policeman, but Father often said Arthur's weakness was his greatest strength: everyone felt so sorry for him, nobody ever wanted to break the law.

‘Right, then,' said Arthur, taking his pencil and licking the end of it. He had flattened out the crumpled envelope as best he could and rested it on the top of his thigh. ‘Can you, Captain Skarbowitz, describe what the escaped German looks like?'

‘I'm going to have to guess,' said Piotr, clearing his throat. ‘Because I'm not quite sure which one it was. Ant tells me two of Germans he saw dead had severe burns to faces, so I don't think seeing bodies would help me much. Actually' – he stopped and cast a look in my direction – ‘can you remember ranks of dead Germans?'

I was sitting by the wireless, staring up at the dresser. I'd been thinking about the cup of bullets and how I might take one, maybe two. Problem was, there was no way I could do that without getting a clouting from Emrys. It was too risky.

I crunched my face into a look of concentration. I'd only looked at the bodies fleetingly, but images flashed back to me: fallen photos, a hand raised in fear, blood congealed around nostrils. I clamped my eyes tight shut and tried to rewind my memories. Standing there, staring down, what did I see? The boots, the grey trousers, moving up, the tunic, half-open. Look to the sleeves, Ant. What was there?

‘Stripes, I think. Three on one. Two on the other.'

Piotr nodded. ‘Did you see flight jacket? Heavier thing. Made of leather?'

I shook my head.

‘Then it may be navigator who escaped. He was wearing one. The others joked about it. Told him he always felt cold. They weren't intending to fly us far, you see. They didn't need full flight gear. And they weren't expecting to be flying into enemy territory.'

‘Navigator?' repeated Arthur, trying to write that down. ‘He'll know his way round maps, then. Which makes him dangerous.'

I opened my mouth to tell them about the maps that had gone missing from our den, but a sharp sting from the cut on my thumb held me back. I looked down. The wound had opened, a small trickle of blood weeping towards my knuckle. I lifted my thumb to my mouth and licked it. Never tell.

‘He was average height, little on thin side,' said Piotr, brushing some lint from the knee of his trousers. ‘Had hungry look about him. I think his nose may have been broken. It had a bend in it, here.' He tapped the bridge of his nose with a forefinger. ‘Dark hair. Brown rather than black. Starting to thin. He had it greased down with something I remember being quite fragrant. It's funny how pleasant smells stand out when you're used to nothing but dirt.'

I remembered the sweet, deep smell of the cap I had found. How peculiar, I thought, to have the hat of a man we were hunting. If we had a bloodhound, I would press his snout into it. But we didn't have a bloodhound. We just had Arthur Pryce.

‘Small, tight eyes, squinted as if he needed glasses. Drawn tight. Slightly hooded, haunted look about them. And I remember colour. They were black, lifeless. The sort of eyes you would never want to stare into to find love.'

He stopped and glanced towards Arthur.

‘You probably don't need to write that bit down. I'm worried you're going to run out of envelope.'

‘Yes,' said Arthur, stopping mid-sentence. ‘I think I'll just write “small black eyes” and leave it at that.'

Piotr nodded. ‘He had an unremarkable mouth, lower lip fuller than the upper. And he was clean-shaven. Having said that, few weeks up mountain may mean he's grown a beard. Actually, something I remember quite clearly now. He had a finger missing. On his right hand. The middle finger ended at first joint.'

Arthur looked up, his face brightening. ‘That's an excellent detail,' he said, beaming. ‘I'll definitely write that down.'

‘I don't know if he had any other distinguishing features. To be honest, he was quite ordinary looking. A normal fellow. If it wasn't for the finger, I might not recognise him if I passed him in street.'

Arthur gave a solemn nod, sat back in his chair and sucked the end of his pencil. ‘We'll recognise him if he's still in his uniform, mind. Although I expect he'll be quick to get out of that.'

‘If I was him,' Piotr said, ‘I'd lay low during daylight then go down into town at night. He'll need clothes and food. Whether he stays round here will depend on what he intends. If I wanted to get home, I'd surrender. His war is over. If he's here to gather intelligence, then he needs to stick to shadows.'

‘He'll be killed before he can surrender,' I said, running my hand down into my wellington to deal with an itch. ‘At least he will if Emrys and the lads get to him first.'

‘Yes,' said Piotr, his voice falling. ‘I expect he will.'

Mam reappeared in the doorway with her hair tied up tight and her coat on. She reached for her handbag and hooked it into the crook of her elbow. ‘There's some cawl in the pot for your lunch, Anthony,' she said. ‘Piotr too. But don't have all of it. The lads will want some when they're down from the mountain. I'm going to catch the bus to Pontypridd and see Father. I don't want you up that mountain, Ant, do you hear? I've told Bopa to keep an eye on you. Until that German's found, you're to stay in Scott Street. Promise me, Ant?'

I didn't say anything. I knew full well it was a promise I couldn't keep.

Ade had gathered us in the dark corner of a culvert beyond the baker's. The smell of bread baking – crisp, yeasty, warm, familiar – played the backdrop to something dangerous and unknown. Each of us had brought our own personal booty from the plane crash.

‘It can't be the cap,' said Fez, nudging his head towards it, ‘there's nothing important about a cap. If you were a spy, why would you care about a cap? You wouldn't. What else you got, Ant?'

‘Couple of photos. Postcard. Magazine. This,' I said, holding out a thin tubular piece of metal. It had a tiny hook at the end of it.

‘What is it?' said Ade, taking it from me to have a better look.

‘Dunno,' I said. ‘P'raps it's like a screwdriver, or something? Mechanical?'

‘Let's have a look,' said Bozo, crowding closer. Ade handed the silver tube to him and he held it up towards the sun. ‘Why's it got a hook?' he mumbled. ‘What do you need hooks for?'

‘Catching fish?' said Fez, staring upwards. ‘Picking things up? Attaching something?'

‘Try hooking it on something,' said Ade, looking around the culvert. ‘There. Hook it on that line.'

Behind us there was a length of thin rope the baker used for hanging up muslin to dry. Fez reached up and gently placed the tip of the hook behind it. He let go and stepped back and we all stood staring at the small metal object gently swaying in front of us. Ade shrugged. ‘Well,' he said, none the wiser, ‘it hangs down. Why would you want a bit of metal that hangs down?'