Ned thought he would show up on Monday, but he did not. Tommy was sent back to patrol outside the house. Ned waited in his office. A light rain settled. Halfway through the morning Ned put on his waterproof and walked over to the construction yard. He could see where the foreigns had broken in on Friday night. The fence had been kicked in not a hundred yards from a harbour checkpoint. Ned stepped in through the little door set in the high double gates. In the middle of the yard stood a small hut raised a few feet off the ground, lengths of raw wood arranged by size to one side, bundies of iron rods on the other. On the ground around a strewn, slippery chaos; boxes with their sides smashed in, machinery parts in junked heaps, a dented wheelbarrow jammed with half-opened packets of nails. George Poidevin stood on an untidy stack of wooden crates, levering open their lids with a length of flattened piping. Eleven thirty in the morning and he was making hard work of it. Ned picked his way over.
“I need to see your boss,” Ned called out. “You seen him about?”
George wedged the pipe in the crack and clambered down.
“Terrible business, Mr Luscombe,” he pleaded. “Terrible business. My missus is terrible cut up.”
Ned stirred a discarded coupling with his foot and looked about him.
“This the break-in I’ve heard so much about?” George nodded. “Made a bit of a mess, didn’t they?”
“Blooming nuisance, those foreigns. Should be kept under lock and key, not allowed to come and go as they please.” He pointed in the direction of the shed. The door hung off its hinges. “When they broke in all the paperwork was blown to buggery. No idea what’s where any more. This week of all weeks. I’m having the devil’s own job.”
“So Mr van Dielen hasn’t been here today?”
“Not today. Saw him yesterday though, and Saturday.”
“Miss van Dielen was here Saturday, is that right?”
George nodded. “They came round to the house first. Elspeth told him where I was and that.”
“He wanted to see about the break-in.”
“No, he wasn’t worried about that.”
“Oh?”
George drew a deep breath.
“We get instructions every Friday, see, what we’re doing the next week. What deliveries to make, what materials need to go where. It’s my job to sort it all out.” He waved his hand over the mess. “I usually do it on the Saturday morning. Get a bit of overtime that way. Well, last Friday he gives out the instructions as per usual. Number One lorry on metal rod run up over to Fort Hommet. Number Two up over to St Peter Port to piek up the colours for some extra tunnel work.”
“I don’t understand. The colours?”
“Each construction firm has been given a different colour. Ours is red. Every container that comes in from the mainland has the firm’s colour stamped on a little square on the side. Like that one there. That way there’s no mix-up at the harbour. It’s all done through the Organisation Todt. They specify the materials, the time of arrival, where they have to be delivered, what job it’s for. Mr van Dielen sorts it out with Major Ernst every Friday morning, and by the time we knock off, he’s worked out the schedules for the next week. But that night the foreigns broke in, so instead of doing what I normally do on the Saturday I spent all morning trying to clear up the mess. Saturday afternoon I’m back at the yard writing up the roster, when in he barges, dancing up and down like he’s got a banger up his arse. Forget the old running order, he says, everything’s changed. It’s all hands to the tunnels at La Vassalerie and the gun emplacements over L’Ancresse Bay. Everything else has to stop. And if Major Ernst changes his mind and wants us to do something else, we’re not to hang about waiting for confirmation, we do it, no questions asked. Well, that’s irregular for a start. We’re not supposed to take orders direct from the Germans. It’s against the rules. I looks at him and he claps me on the back, all friendly like, first time I’ve ever known him do that, and tells me to sort it out as best I can. Said he’d come round Sunday and help me out.”
“And Isobel was here with him that Saturday?”
“She were waiting by the gates when we come out. But I knew she was there earlier ‘cause I heard them coming across the road. Hammer and tongs, they were.” He paused. “Found up by the cliff, they say; horribly mutilated, that’s the word. Breasts sliced off, things in her private parts,” he said hopefully.