Sam looked over at DI Andrews. "Would that be ok?"
"Fine with me," the DI replied, looking relieved. Sam wondered how their earlier interview had gone. "I'll send someone in."
A moment later, a young male nurse was in the room and Mr. McKenna was directing him to sit at the far end and not listen in. DI Andrews made a swift exit, before the nurse could insist he stayed, and as he left Sam was sure he heard Mr. McKenna muttering "Fuck the filth!" under his breath. He stifled a laugh and tried to maintain his professional composure, such as it was.
"No recordings," Mr. McKenna said, seeing Sam setting up his Dictaphone between them. "Just you write things down. And don't you put my name in your paper. I don't want any of this linked to me, right?"
"No problem," said Sam. "You'll be 'sources close to Mr. Kruger,' is that ok?"
Mr. McKenna laughed. "No one was 'close' to Kruger. Not really. But we chatted a bit. We're both fond of whisky, and you've got to talk about something when you're drinking."
"So what did you chat about?" Sam asked.
"Him being a Nazi, mostly," said Mr. McKenna. Sam spluttered on his tea. He had known that the Nazi accusation was coming, but he hadn't expected it to be so matter of fact. "It's true!" Mr. McKenna insisted. "I'm not just saying that because he was German. He told me about it. We'd both been engineers — me in the RAF, him in one of the big Nazi research centers. Peenemünde."
"Peenemünde?"
"Aye. It was a research station on an island in the Baltic, up near the Polish border. Luftwaffe base. It's where Wernher von Braun developed buzzbombs and V2 rockets. Aeroballistics. That's what Kruger worked in. I nearly got killed by a buzzbomb when I was stationed in London. We used to laugh about how he probably built it."
Sam looked at the old man with interest. It was easy to forget that the residents of the facility had once been young people with active, complicated lives. Is this what's in store for me? Sam wondered. Anonymous old age, surrounded by staff who don't know or care that I used to be a real person? I wonder what this guy's life was like before he got dumped in here. "So how does someone get from working with Wernher von Braun to a retirement home in South Queensferry?" Sam asked.
"By getting old," Mr. McKenna replied. "You go where the kids are, if you've got any."
"I thought Mr. Kruger had no family?"
"Not now," said McKenna, "but he used to have a daughter. Elisabeth, her name was. Nice lass. I remember she used to come here sometimes to see him. You'd never have guessed them for father and daughter, what with her accent. She was American. Looked and sounded like a film star. That was because they were in California, you know. Or it might have been New Mexico. After Paperclip." He saw Sam's bemused expression. "Operation Paperclip? When the Russians came and the Yanks got all the Nazi scientists out?"
Sam nodded. "Heard of it. So what happened to Elisabeth?"
"She married a Scotsman. That's why she moved here. But they died, her and her husband both. Car crash. In 2000, I think it was. Maybe 2001? No, 2000, because Mary Williams was still living in the room to the other side of mine and she died just before my 80th birthday. Anyway, after Elisabeth died, Kruger didn't have anyone else. I think that's why he left his box with me."
"His box?"
Mr. McKenna slowly leaned forward in his seat and called out to the nurse. "I need my box," he said. "There are things in it that I need to show to Sam here. I need you to go and get it for me. The wooden box. In my room."
The nurse, clearly accustomed to humoring Mr. McKenna's whims, was only gone for a moment. When he returned, he was carrying a battered wooden strongbox with a sturdy handle on the top. He set it on the table while Mr. McKenna fished out the key that hung on a string around his neck. As the nurse retreated to his chair at the other end of the room, McKenna handed the key to Sam.
"You get it, son," he said. "It's too fiddly for me these days."
Sam took the chunky brass key from him and fitted it into the lock. Despite the box's obvious age, it had been well maintained. It opened easily to reveal a neatly arranged selection of highly polished brass mechanical parts, folded papers, and a couple of small leather-bound notebooks. "Anything in particular I should be looking at?" Sam asked. "I'm not sure what most of this stuff is."
"Neither am I," said Mr. McKenna. "Most of the parts are things I don't recognize."
"He never told you what they were?"
"No. And I never asked. If he'd wanted to say, he would have." Mr. McKenna took out some papers and unfolded them. "You don't speak German, do you?"
Sam shook his head. "Not since school. If those papers aren't about how many brothers and sisters Kruger had, I won't be much use to you." He leaned forward to look at the papers. Some were neatly typed, some handwritten. He selected a notebook at random and opened it to see the same flowing script. These notes were brief, with lots of abbreviations, crossed-out sections, further notes added in the margins, hastily-scribbled equations. At the back, Sam caught a glimpse of a sketch. He smiled. Who ever thought about Nazi scientists stopping to doodle? "So why did he give you the box?"
"In case he died," Mr. McKenna said with a shrug. "They're not always that careful here when they clear out the rooms. If you don't have family to come in and do it for you. They just dump everything in a skip. They don't check for things that shouldn't be thrown away. If you've got something that's important to you, you pass it on to someone else so it won't go in the bin. I've got things from a few people. My son's got a list of the bits that he's to save when I go. Don't know what he'll do with them, mind. Probably just sell them. But at least they'll still be out there. I don't suppose I'll care, being dead."
"That's tea time, Mr. McKenna." The nurse stood up and moved toward Mr. McKenna, ready to help him back onto his feet.
"Can we have just a few minutes longer?" Sam asked.
"Sorry," said the nurse. "We serve dinner at five."
Sam bit back a sharp response. "Want me to take the box back to your room?" he asked Mr. McKenna.
"I don't want it," the old man whispered. "Can you take it?"
"Errr, sure." Sam was surprised. "Do you want me to pass it on to the police?"
Mr. McKenna scowled. "What would they do with it? They'd probably say I stole it or something. No, just you keep it. Or find someone who'd want it. I don't care. I just don't want it here."
Sam packed the papers and notebooks back into the box with great care while the nurse got Mr. McKenna to his feet, straightened his dressing gown and helped him balance. "Are you sure?" Sam called, as the nurse and Mr. McKenna made their way out of the room. "You could probably sell these. Could be worth a fair bit of money."
Slowly and painfully, Mr. McKenna took the handful of steps back toward Sam and clapped him on the shoulder. "Maybe I could," he muttered, leaning in close. "But do you think I want to end up like Kruger?"
Fair point, Sam thought. So you gave it to someone who doesn't care. Good choice. He locked the strongbox again, picked it up by the cold brass handle and made his way back to join DCI Smith in Mr. Kruger's room.
"Were you carrying that box when we got here?" Smith asked as they got back in the car.
"What, this?" Sam glanced at the box as if it had only just appeared. "Nah. The old boy I was talking to earlier, Mr. McKenna, he gave it to me. Apparently it's a super secret Nazi box and I might want to write about it or something. He wasn't taking no for an answer, so I said I'd take it. I'll keep it for a bit. He's bound to want it back eventually."
"Poor old guy." Smith shook his head. "I hope I don't end up like that."