The Darkest Hour (16 page)

Brandt looked at Werner, who nodded silently back before staring straight ahead again.

“The boy?” Schmitt spoke to Koehler, who remained crouched, back to the wall, forearms on his knees and head leaned forward, looking exhausted, like a recovering long-distance runner.

“Yes, the boy.”

“Are you saying Rossett did this?” Schmitt looked from Koehler to Brandt.

“Yes,” Koehler replied.

“But why? I don’t understand. Surely this was the resistance?”

“The resistance didn’t know who was being held here. It was Rossett. Trust me, I’m correct,” said Koehler, lifting his head back and resting it against the cold wall of the jail. He looked up at Schmitt by turning his eyes only.

“But how did Rossett know they were here?” Schmitt looked from Koehler to Brandt, who looked like he was about to cry again, so overpowering was his confusion.

“He didn’t. Don’t you see, man? Rossett wasn’t interested in the resistance; he was after the boy. With the resistance, he just got lucky. Rossett would have released them as a diversion. Jesus Christ . . .” Koehler’s voice trailed off and he hung his head again before taking a deep breath and rising to his feet, sliding his back up the wall. “Don’t you see? He would have come here after everyone else was gone. He had a pass to get into the yard past the sentry.”

“What pass? How do you know?” Schmitt looked again at Brandt for answers, but the young officer just gulped and shook his head.

“I gave him a requisition for fuel. He must have shown it to the sentry to get into the yard, and, once inside the perimeter, he would have tried to talk his way in here. Judging from the skin and blood on the gate, I’m not so sure he managed it. I think he slammed the guard’s head into the gate and then used the keys to get in. He will have made his way around to the desk and overpowered the duty sergeant.”

“That easily?” Brandt leaned forward to inspect the gate as he spoke, noticing for the first time the blood and scraps of skin stuck to the black iron.

“Fat old men eating cake and a green soldier on a soft posting in England? How hard could it have been?”

Schmitt looked at the gate, then back at Koehler.

“You gave him the means to get in? This is your fault.”

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is. Unless we get this matter resolved quickly, we are all, each and every one of us, as the English are so fond of saying, in the shit.”

Chapter 24

R
OSSETT STOOD IN
the darkness and willed his eyes to adjust to the black that surrounded him.

They didn’t.

He breathed.

The black seemed to just get blacker. It felt like he was standing in space. He had no depth, no sliver of light to focus on, just cold, dark, inky black, and it was starting to cause him to panic.

He breathed again, quicker this time, snatched breath that didn’t quite fill his lungs.

The cold, wet wall he could feel with his hands appeared to be covered in moss, and somewhere in the darkness he could hear water dripping. He’d walked forward fifteen paces before hitting a wall, and then twenty in the other direction before he hit another. He hadn’t found the source of the drip, drip, drip of water on stone, as the sound had neither faded nor grown louder as he’d moved. It had just seemed to follow him, drip, drip, dripping its way into his imagination.

He’d been in a place like this before, as deep, as dark, as damp, and as dangerous as this place, and that place had sucked the air from his lungs as well, just as its memory was doing now.

He tilted his head back and sucked in more air.

His heart pounded and he leaned his head forward again, resting it lightly on the cold stone.

He wiped his fingertips against the wall and then sniffed them. They smelled of damp and dirt, like the moss he could feel growing from the broken brick, looking for light just like him.

Drip, drip, drip.

Rossett was starting to panic.

He turned his head, tilted it, and felt another flicker of fear, like the first few sparks catching at kindling.

He ran through what had happened since he’d left Charing Cross, then winced at the memory of being outwitted by Leigh. He should have just taken Jacob and run when he had the chance. Instead he’d thought he was releasing a few petty criminals or maybe low-level resistance, but the way Leigh carried himself, the way he’d behaved with the others and with Rossett, made him realize he’d released a nightmare onto the streets, which in turn had locked him up in the cellar of a dock in Wapping.

Rossett breathed deeply again and listened to his heart banging in time with the drip, drip, drip.

Relax, breathe, don’t panic.

He’d had better days, and he was getting the feeling that this one was only going to get worse.

He lifted his head; the cold stone had calmed him. He felt his way slowly around the wall with his hands until they were resting on timber instead of stone. Gingerly, he probed the door for weakness, but felt only solid iron hinges and timber and no handle.

He felt a chill ripple through him like a stone cast into a pond, and he pulled his coat tight by jabbing his hands in his pockets and folding them across his front. He could have murdered for a cigarette.

They’d taken everything from him except the clothes he stood in: his warrant card, his wallet, everything, including the sovereigns.

Rossett wanted to sit down but resisted the urge. It was going to be a long night, and shivering on a damp floor wouldn’t help matters. He decided to try to keep moving and stuck out one hand as he counted off some paces forward again, into the darkness.

“Try to keep still, you’re going to trip right over me.” The voice came from down below near to the floor, and Rossett froze midstep. Eyes wide in the darkness, he turned his head this way and that trying to locate the source of the voice.

“Who’s that?” Rossett replied, hoping his voice didn’t give away the shock he felt at hearing someone else in the room.

“Just one of the rats,” the voice said, chuckling, and Rossett took a step backward and held his hands up in front of himself in a futile gesture of defense.

“Who is it?” This time Rossett heard the panic, felt it tumble from his lips, and he hated himself for the weakness.

“All right, chum, calm down, ’ang on while I get this lit . . .” Rossett heard a rattle and then saw what seemed like a supernova of light five feet in front of him and near to the floor.

The match flared, then settled as it found a lantern, and a weak amber glow filled the room. An old man lay on the floor next to the light, on some wooden planks covered with dirty straw under a few empty coal sacks.

The scene, lit by the lantern, gave off a desperate air of someone locked away for a long time with just drips and rats for company.

The old man seemed to touch the match to his lips before he puffed it out with the slightest of wheezy breaths, then pushed his hand across his face, pushing dirty lank gray hair from his eyes and up back onto his head.

Rossett noted how dirty the man was. He must have been in the room for a long time. For the briefest of moments, Rossett wondered if he was going to end up looking like the specimen on the floor and he looked to the door for confirmation.

In the light of the lamp, the door looked more solid than it had seemed in the darkness, and, on looking around the rest of the room, he saw his suspicions confirmed, that there was only one way in, and getting out appeared to be a tall order.

The man on the floor hadn’t spoken while Rossett carried out his survey, and when Rossett looked back to him he merely smiled and shook his head.

“You ain’t gettin’ out, mate, not unless they let you, and I wouldn’t be buildin’ your ’opes up either. I’ve been here for a couple of weeks now, maybe longer.”

Rossett didn’t reply. He crossed the room, picked up the lantern, then walked the perimeter studying the wall. He’d guessed the size correctly; the light from the lamp barely made it from one side to the other. The old man had set up his bed about two-thirds of the way across from the far wall, Rossett guessed to get away from the damp that was leaching through the old stonework and pooling in places near the foot of the wall. He crossed to one of the pools and put his fingers in it, then tasted the cold gritty water.

“We’re in a cellar, chum, below the water, I reckon. It dries out sometimes, always bloody cold though. They bring in a stove when it gets really bad, but even that ain’t much good. There’s underground streams and rivers round ’ere ain’t been seen for centuries. We could be next to one of them. Sometimes I can just hear it rushin’, I think.” The old man seemed to realize something. He looked up at Rossett and smiled. “But that could be me mind going. You never know, do you?”

“Who are you?” Rossett finally spoke, his voice soft now, panic gone and a cool calculation restored by the lamp.

“George Chivers, and you are?” The old man stayed on the floor but proffered a hand to shake, which Rossett ignored.

“Why are you here?”

“Ah well, chum, that’s a long story.”

“Tell it quickly,” Rossett replied, cutting off the old man, who smiled and shook his head.

“In a ’urry, are you?”

“Tell it quickly.”

“It’s a misunderstandin’. Seems I’ve upset our mates upstairs and they think I’ve got something they need.”

“Is that it?”

“And I think they’re tryin’ to raise a bob or two, for the cause.”

“What cause?”

“To kick the bleedin’ Germans out of Blighty! Where’ve you been, sunshine?”

Rossett stepped back from Chivers and looked around the room again. In the corner he saw a few small upturned wooden fruit-packing boxes. He picked one up, placed it near to the door, and sat down, retaining control of the lamp by placing it at his feet.

Chivers watched for a moment and then rummaged in his pockets under the sack, bringing out a small pouch of tobacco, with which he commenced to create a damp, twig-sized cigarette. He stayed on the floor, propped on one elbow, finally looking up at Rossett as he licked the cigarette paper and rolled it between his fingers. The paper looked dirty and gray, same as the man who was holding it, but Rossett licked his lips at the thought of having a smoke. He nodded toward it and half managed a smile through his burgeoning hangover.

“Any chance I can have a drag of that?” Rossett gestured toward the cigarette. Chivers clutched it to his chest and shook his head.

“No bleedin’ way; get your own.” Chivers rolled the cigarette in between his fingers and then pulled a match out of the box that lay next to him. He lit the cigarette and savored it like fine wine, closing his eyes and holding on to the taste as long as he could. If it hadn’t been for the hacking cough that broke his concentration, Rossett doubted the old man would ever have breathed out again.

Eventually, he surfaced, and the coughing, which sounded like wet mud being churned in his chest, subsided. Chivers glanced up from the floor with blinking eyes and offered the cigarette to Rossett by nodding and holding it up in his direction.

“ ’Ere . . . ’ave it” was all he managed to say, his breath short as he tried to fight off the cough that lingered not far away.

Rossett stood and took the cigarette. Close up, he realized just how ill the man looked. The gray skin wasn’t just the result of dirt. The man had the sort of coloring an undertaker would spend a week trying to get rid of. He smelled of damp and his hand shook slightly as he passed the cigarette to Rossett, who looked at the toothpick of tobacco, then took a drag.

He offered the cigarette back to Chivers, who shook his head and slowly started to rise from his bed. Rossett returned to the orange box and watched as Chivers crossed the room to urinate into a tiny grille set into the floor in the far corner.

The man was little more than a skeleton dressed in dirty rags. Rossett wondered if the same fate awaited him. Chivers picked up a metal mug that had been lying next to his bed and held it up.

“Tea?”

Rossett shook his head.

“Can’t say I blames you.” Chivers looked down into the mug, then fished something out before taking a sip. “Been ’ere almost as long as I have.” The old man scratched himself with bony fingers. He looked at Rossett for a moment, then picked up another orange box and sat opposite him.

“Seein’ as you woke me up, maybe you can tell me ’oo you are?”

Rossett took another drag of the stale cigarette and for a moment thought about snuffing it out with his foot, then thought better and nipped off the burning end before slipping it into his pocket. He might need it later.

“Maybe you should explain what you are doing here for a start?” Rossett replied, still looking for some explanation for his current situation.

“I’m ’ere because them bastards won’t let me go!” Chivers laughed as he spoke, then started to cough again, hunching over and spilling his cold tea.

Rossett waited for the coughing to subside and sat quietly watching the old man wipe his mouth with a rag that might once have been a scarf.

“There must be a reason why they put you down here.”

Chivers smiled, showing teeth that were almost as moss covered as the walls, and slowly shook his head.

“ ’Ow do I know you ain’t one of ’em come to ask me questions?”

“Because I’m banged up here with you?”

“Bah! They’ve tried this before, stuck a young lad in with me one night tryin’ to get me to talk. I told ’im to piss off, same as I’ll tell you. Piss off.”

Chivers stood up from the crate and turned away, as if he had somewhere to go and was ending a business meeting. Rossett watched him stand and then cross the room to lean against the wall where he had urinated earlier. After a moment, the old man coughed and spat a solid chunk of phlegm into the grate with startling precision before turning to face Rossett again. His cheeks looked hollow in the shadows and his eyes like potholes to hell.

“You can piss off, all you Churchill-loving monarchists. Nobody’s going to win this war ’cept us. And I ain’t ’elping a bunch of cowards ’iding in Canada while good communists battle ’alfway across Europe to save Britain. Government in exile? Don’t make me bleedin’ larf. Government in fucking ’iding, that’s what they are . . . cowards, the lot of ’em.”

Chivers spat again.

Rossett shook his head and regretted putting out the cigarette.

“I’m glad you got that off your chest,” he said, leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees and easing the strain of sitting on the box.

“It ’ad to be said,” Chivers replied.

“I was talking about the phlegm.”

Chivers stared at him across the room for a moment before starting to laugh and crossing back to his box. He sat down before the coughing started again, milder this time, but still loud enough to startle a donkey.

Rossett looked at the broken old man and felt another shiver of his potential fate.

The two men sat for a while, with just the mysterious drip drip drip to break the silence until Rossett stood and prowled the room again. He stopped over the grid in the floor and leaned low to look into it. It was about nine inches wide and smelled foul, a makeshift toilet that wouldn’t flush. He considered lifting the cast-iron grate but decided against it; he wouldn’t fit through it, and even if he could have, he doubted that he would want to.

“They give me a bucket of water most days to wash in and then pour down it. I don’t know ’ow it’ll cope with two of us. It’ll be fair foul, I’d imagine.”

Rossett turned to look at Chivers from the grate.

“When do they bring the water?”

“How the bleedin’ ’ell should I know? They just do. Door opens, I get me tea, some grub, and the bucket. Sometimes I get some baccy and a drop of oil for the lamp, other times, like I said, when it’s very cold they put in a stove to dry meself and get some warmth in me bones.”

Rossett looked at the door, willing it to open. He decided that would be his best chance of escape. The room’s only weakness would be the humans who came in.

As if reading his mind, Chivers smiled and said, “They make me stand in the corner before that all ’appens. They bang on the door and shout for me to get there. I reckons they can see me, ’cos if I don’t move they don’t come in. They just leave me for a while, and it’s a long time made longer when you ain’t got some grub and water, so I do as I’m told. Even when they come in, they ’ave guns, so don’t you be thinkin’ ’bout jumping anyone, else you’ll get me killed.”

Rossett crossed back to his box and sat down again, glad to be away from the smell of the grid, even if it was only to experience the smell of Chivers.