Bernie leant over and, putting his glass under the brass tap, pushed himself another drink. Ned handed over his glass. They listened to the steady stream of beer foaming in.
“What time’s kick-off?” Bernie asked softly.
“Half twelve,” Ned replied.
“Well, drink up, then. You don’t want to be sober when you get there, do you?”
They were alone in the Britannia, and the doors were closed. They sat up at the bar, looking through the thick panes of distorted glass to the little Continental square across the road. A couple of soldiers sat on the bench built around the oak, while another tried to wash his face under the pump. It was barely past breakfast.
Bernie took a tentative sip. “Weak as water,” he pronounced, adding, almost as an afterthought, “No news, then?”
Ned sighed. There was no news.
“How can a man like that vanish into thin air?” Bernie asked, as if a hole in the ground, a chuck over the cliff top, or little bits of the man fed to one of the hungry pigs might not have been a probable end.
“Beats me,” Ned confessed. “I’ve got half the force out knocking on doors, there’s military patrols beating the restricted areas, boats on the look out for floaters. Even George Poidevin has got in on the act. Everywhere I go I see him bouncing behind the wheel of their works lorry, peering over the walls, jumping down into ditches, searching for his boss. Never thought of George as a St Bernard before, though he’s got the girth for it. Trouble is, apart from him and the Germans, no one wants to know.”
Bernie laid his drink on the dark polished wood.
“Stands to reason, seeing as he was one of them.”
“We’ve all got to live, Bernie. There’s a lot of families that would have gone to the wall by now if it wasn’t for the likes of van Dielen,” he said. “He’s just doing his job.”
Bernie spat the beer back in his glass.
“He’s doing more than that. He’s betraying his country, making money out of them fortifications.”
“And the men that drive his lorries? The electricians he employs, the plumbers? Are they all traitors too?”
Bernie was stubborn. “It’s one thing being ordered to do it. It’s another lining your pocket. We’re at war, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“That’s just it, Bernie, the rest of the world might be, but we’re not,” Ned countered. “You might get a couple of schoolboys chalking victory signs on bicycle saddles, but what can grown men do? Blow up a fuel depot? Shoot a soldier? You know what would happen if we did, and for what? The truth is we’ve all got to get by the best we can, whether we like it or not.”
Bernie looked at him carefully.
“You should take a long look at yourself. You can’t see it, but you’re getting too far in with them.”
“I’m not in with them,” Ned said sharply, knowing it to be partly true. “You seem to forget. Some of us have to work with them. We’ve got no choice.”
Bernie prodded Ned’s arm. “I know. Don’t think I don’t. Now drink up, there’s a good chap. You and me are going to get quietly sozzled.”
“But I’m Chief of Police, Bernie. I’m not allowed to get drunk.”
Bernie leant over the bar and began to pour another couple of pints.
“Not today you’re not,” he intoned. “You’re Ned Luscombe, in need of beer. Now do as I say and stop arguing.”
If van Dielen was on the run it was difficult to know how he had escaped with patrols out looking for him, posters hearing his description pinned on every parish noticeboard and the announcement proclaimed in every newspaper of the substantial reward available to whosoever delivered him up. Half the island had already claimed the prize. Letters, telephone calls, confidential whisperings in Ned’s office. Van Dielen is hiding in Mrs Merrill’s attic; he’d been seen stretching his legs up at Groper’s Farm: none of it true, but in Mrs Merrill’s attic they found a stack of carpets four foot high, looted from abandoned houses on evacuation day, and in Groper’s Farm they disturbed three fat and unregistered pigs slumbering in an underground pen. Under the guise of cooperation people were exorcizing their grudges.
Lentsch regarded these false alarms with resigned acceptance. He was not in charge, anyway. Albert had told Ned that since the night they found her the Major could hardly manage to put his boots on the right feet, let alone administer the island.
“Going down faster than a bishop’s trousers,” Albert said one evening over his third pint. “Pitiful to see a grown man acting that way. We all have our time of trouble. Any man worth his salt shifts it on his shoulder like a sack of coal and carries on as best he can. The Major’s gone weak at the knees.”
Albert had become a regular at the Britannia. It was almost like old times. It had starled that late afternoon when Ned had caught him struggling up the police stairs with a bloody tree in his hand.
“Uncle, what on earth are you doing here?”
Albert rested his burden on the banisters.
“Running errands for Mrs H. like an overgrown scout. Stage prop for the spring show, she says. Weighs a bloody ton. Half the leaves have dropped off already. You any good with a paintbrush?”
“I’ve managed to avoid the amateur dramatics this long, Uncle. I’m not for getting to be drawn in now.”
“Well, give me hand anyway, and let’s lay this bugger to rest. I’ll buy you a pint afterwards.”
“Done.”
That’s how it had starled. Ned would come in after work, around six. Albert would walk in sometime later, waving his finger at the barman. “Last refuge for a sane man,” he would announce. “It’s a madhouse up there.” Since Isobel’s death the Villa’s moorings had been cut loose. The house lay adrift in a sea of uncertainty, the captain indifferent to its plight.
“Every morning he comes down for breakfast,” Albert had complained, “cuts all over his face where he’s nicked himself shaving, buttons half undone, hair not combed proper. He sits there moving good food around his plate, like it was something the dog had sicked up, the Captain and Bohde both staring at the tablecloth, pretending not to notice.”
“At least they have some sympathy for him, even if you don’t.”
“Sympathy’s got nothing to do with it. They’re just hoping he’ll bugger off so they can help themselves to his grub. Moment he’s out of the door they’ve scraped his plate cleaner than a sergeant-major’s mess tin. Can’t wait for him to go and dread him coming back. Not that he’s any use in the Feldkommandantur by all accounts. Sits in his office all day staring out of the window, blubbing into his handkerchief. You see him much?”
“Most mornings,” Ned admitted. “Not that there’s much to report these days.”
“No sign of the Dutchman, then?”
“The Major thinks he might have thrown himself off a cliff, that he’s lying underwater somewhere along the coast with a handrul of stones in his pocket.”
Albert sniffed.
“Water would have kept him down a day or two, water would have moved him about bit, but unless he weighed himself down with an anchor he’d have popped up by now with his face half gone and his feet busting out of his boots. It’s what the Major needs, though, a good ducking. That’d bring him to his senses.”
“You’re being too hard on him,” Ned countered. “He’s had a shock.”
“He’s a soldier,” his uncle countered. “He should be able to cope with shocks. The Captain takes him aside every now and again, trying to talk some sense into him, but he won’t listen. Won’t go down to the Casino, mopes about the house playing those blessed records, wanders about the lanes late at night in his ciwies. Looking to get himself shot, if he’s not careful.”
“He won’t get shot.”
“No? The Captain’s thinks he’s playing a sort of Russian roulette, deliberately going to the restricted areas in the dark. He’s asked Wedel to follow him, but he just seems to slip out, unnoticed. God knows where he gets to.”