The Prisoner Read online

  ‘You’ll kill him,’ Richard shouted, earning himself a slap and a firm warning to butt out.

  Marc lay in a shaking ball when the kicking stopped, but it wasn’t over. Alain knelt across Marc’s chest with a home-made knuckleduster wrapped around his fist. Marc felt sure he’d die as a powerful blow smashed into his mouth.

  Savage cheers and whoops came from the lads around Marc as Alain pulled back for another shot.

  ‘Finish the little queer off,’ someone shouted, as Marc gagged on his own blood.

  Alain struck Marc over the right eye, exactly where Fischer’s rifle had opened him up two nights earlier. Blood spurted as Marc’s head snapped to the right. He tried yelling, but the pain froze his whole body.

  Then everything went black.

  Note

  4 Heinrich Himmler – German Interior Minister, head of the SS, Gestapo, Reich Labour Administration and many other departments. Himmler was regarded as the second most powerful Nazi after Hitler.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Time passed in a blur as Marc drifted in and out of consciousness

  He felt Osterhagen’s fingers down his throat as he lay flat out on the wharf, choking on blood. Then he was on a prisoner ward, with mattresses on the floor and an insect tickling his wrist. Patients coughed and spewed in buckets.

  Marc ached all over and passed out from the pain if he tried to move. His ribs were strapped. He could only see out of one eye and when he touched the blind side he felt a tennis ball where his eyelid should have been.

  One time – it seemed like morning – a nurse told Marc that Commandant Vogel had been to visit while he was unconscious. Then Marc came round in paradise. A clean, light ward, and real beds with German children in them. A nurse spoon-fed him stewed apple, but the lump over his eye was even bigger.

  Marc was only vaguely aware of an argument, a sense that he’d been sent somewhere he shouldn’t. All his dreams seemed to be nightmares of burning, drowning, being bombed or being kicked.

  The next time he regained consciousness he’d gone from paradise to a straw mat in a filthy ward, full of cigarette smoke and men speaking Russian. A nurse swore when he wet the mattress and she left him laying in warm piss that gradually soaked through his hospital gown up to the back of his neck.

  Stoypa, a Russian lad, started helping him sit up to use a bed pan. They spoke different languages, and Marc thought Stoypa was a nurse until he sat by himself and saw his helper squatting on the corner of the next mattress, hacking up snot.

  Stoypa disappeared before Marc had a chance to thank him. He began hobbling around, and got his sense of time back: knowing when it was day or night, or when the food was due. Hungry men heal slowly, so the Germans gave hospitalised prisoners better rations than they got in the camps. After another week, Marc could breathe OK and most bruises had almost gone.

  Marc had been deloused and all his body hair shaved to get rid of the bugs while he was unconscious, but instead of being itch free he’d picked up a rash from lying in his own urine. But the real problem remained the stubborn swelling covering his right eye. It distorted his face so that one side of his mouth twisted into a crooked sneer.

  Each morning a nurse stabbed the swelling with a needle and drew out pus. But that only relieved the pressure under badly stretched skin. Finally, there was a showdown between a Polish doctor, who said the swelling above Marc’s eye needed time to heal, and a German hospital administrator with a strict quota for getting her patients back to work.

  The German won the argument and Marc was sent for surgery. He’d imagined pain relief, bright lights and clean walls, but anaesthetic barely existed for non-Germans. Marc got told to sit on a chair in a gloomy basement room and tilt his head back.

  With leather straps around hands and ankles, and two bear-like Russian prisoners holding him down, Marc watched a scalpel and screamed as the blade cut deep and twisted inside the swelling. Marc thought he’d pass out from the pain, but briefly got vision from both eyes.

  It was a relief knowing that he wasn’t blind beneath the swelling, but soon both eyes were filled with blood as the surgeon cut away strips of skin, then used a sterilised tea-spoon to scoop out rancid-smelling pus and clotted blood.

  When the straps were off, Marc sobbed with pain as the Russians lifted him into the world’s oldest wheelchair and took him back to his floor mat. The Polish doctor pushed a nurse aside and dressed the wound himself.

  ‘It’s not always a bad thing to open a wound up,’ the Pole explained, in immaculate French. ‘It can speed the healing process. But in a less than pristine environment, there’s great risk of secondary infection. So keep dry until a good scab forms, and however much it itches, don’t poke about under the dressing with your grubby fingers.’

  *

  Three days later, Marc was sent packing with a jar of antiseptic ointment and a roll of used but allegedly sterile bandage. He spent five hours in a hallway waiting for a transport official. The wound over his eye was still sore, but he had good vision in both eyes and his brain was back in order.

  From a date on a newspaper in the waiting area, Marc worked out that it was thirty-five days since Alain had punched him out. He was scared of going back to the Oper, so it was a relief when the driver said they were taking him to Großmarkthalle first.

  Marc hadn’t forgotten the whole Germanisation thing, and although he was disappointed that Commandant Vogel hadn’t been back for a second visit, he hoped the offer remained open, and that Vogel could protect him from Alain and his gang.

  It might seem insane for a prisoner to spend a month in hospital only to be sent back where he’d almost been killed in the first place, but Marc knew he was nothing more than a card in a file cabinet to the Reich Labour Administration. He’d seen enough prisoner death reports to know that stuff like that happened all the time.

  It was a warm day and Marc almost felt euphoric on the back of the cart, breathing outdoor air, seeing women in food queues and kids with black soles dangling fishing lines off the side of a bridge.

  Marc realised that a month in bed had weakened his legs as he climbed the ten flights up to the RLA’s fifth-floor office. The transport official left him in the doorway, and the first person he saw was Ursula, the secretary.

  ‘You look different with your head shaved,’ she said, giving Marc a wary smile before tugging him into an alcove hidden by a wooden coat stand.

  ‘This cut’s all the rage at the hospital,’ Marc said.

  But Ursula was anxious. ‘The new commandant went round asking questions about you,’ she began.

  Marc felt like he’d been punched. ‘New commandant?’

  ‘It’s been Commandant Eiffel for two weeks now. You didn’t know?’

  ‘How would I know?’ Marc asked. ‘Although I did wonder, because I thought Vogel might visit me again.’

  ‘Herr Vogel put his neck on the line to get you a bed in the children’s hospital,’ Ursula said.

  Marc’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Was that why he got the boot?’

  Ursula shook her head. ‘He’d made enemies with the Gestapo. Complained to Berlin about moving out those skilled Jews. They’ve transferred him to take charge of a labour district in Poland. A promotion, allegedly, but he’s Frankfurt born and bred, so he wasn’t keen to leave.’

  ‘Hortefeux,’ a woman barked. It was one of the two battleaxe sisters who ran the office. An imperious stab of her pointing finger sent Ursula meekly back to her typewriter.

  ‘I hope it works out,’ Ursula whispered.

  Marc waited for ages outside the commandant’s office. He’d developed a theory: the longer someone makes you wait, the more of a dick they are.

  Vogel’s name on the door had been scratched off the frosted glass, but Eiffel’s had yet to replace it. Marc was surprised by the slim female figure moving about inside.

  ‘Hortefeux,’ she said, when she eventually asked Marc in.

  Eiffel was stern, catlike and chain-smoked through a l
ong ivory cigarette holder. She wore sombre civilian clothing, but with a swastika armband. A framed photo of Hitler had replaced the Mayor of Frankfurt on the wall behind the desk.

  ‘Sit,’ she said, before switching to decent French. ‘My predecessor spoke highly of you. Commandant Vogel even left me a letter, recommending that I keep you on.’

  Marc nodded eagerly. ‘I’m sure I’d be useful, madam.’

  ‘Was Herr Vogel’s trust in you well placed?’ Eiffel asked, raising one eyebrow as she flicked her cigarette end, clumsily missing an ashtray.

  Marc tried to hide his discomfort. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All departments send prisoner transfer logs to Reich Labour Headquarters in Berlin,’ Eiffel explained. ‘Every movement is logged and our system is robust. It’s rare that the numbers don’t tally.

  ‘But shortly after I began here, I received a letter asking me to investigate an anomaly with three prisoners. They were transferred to Cologne, but never arrived.’

  Marc gulped, Eiffel smiled. She liked making him squirm.

  ‘I couldn’t get any information on the prisoners, because their records had vanished from the card index – to which you had frequent and easy access. However, a transport official remembered a slightly unusual transfer request, and Osterhagen recalled that you tried to leave with three prisoners bound for Cologne. Apparently you were stopped at the gate, but your three friends vanished into thin air.’

  Marc thought about lying, but Eiffel had clearly investigated thoroughly. He was worried not just for himself, but because he could potentially be tortured into revealing the new identities and locations of his three friends.

  ‘I miss my family,’ Marc said meekly, hoping Eiffel would take pity. ‘I just wanted to go home.’

  Eiffel shrugged disinterestedly. ‘I’m sure the Gestapo Security Office would be intrigued by all these details. Fortunately for you, I have no desire for a large-scale Gestapo investigation of my department. I’ve reconciled the prisoner numbers with Berlin. The matter is closed and you’ll be assigned to a new job where you’ll have no access to prisoner records.’

  Marc didn’t want to seem cocky, but couldn’t completely disguise a relieved smile. ‘Thank you, madam. Has my new work assignment been selected?’

  ‘A senior guard mentioned that he has communication difficulties and could use someone like you who speaks French and German.’

  Marc’s heart plunged. ‘Which guard?’ he asked, though he was sure he knew already.

  ‘Herr Fischer will be here to deal with you shortly,’ Eiffel said.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Marc got a strong-armed shove, making him stumble back towards a chair in Fischer’s office.

  ‘Sit,’ Fischer barked.

  Calling it an office was a stretch: the wooden hut had a hammock strung across, an old door laid on trestles for a desk, empty cans and beer bottles stacked to the ceiling and a smell like wet dog.

  As the thuggish former dock labourer reached up to screw an electric cooking ring into the light socket, Marc noticed a photo of his new tormentor in his prime: bare chested, muscular tattooed arms leaning cockily on the ropes of a wrestling ring.

  ‘Ma said I was sick in the head ’cos Old Fischer used to mess with cats,’ Fischer said, as he ran water into a saucepan, using a standpipe poking through the hut’s wooden floor. ‘I’d throw knives at ’em. Or grabbed the little bastards and slit their guts open.’

  As Fischer chuckled to himself, Marc didn’t know where to look or what to say. He felt uncomfortable, not just because he’d been released into the custody of a nutter, but because the hospital had badly shrunk his brown suit when they’d boil-washed it to kill off all the bugs.

  ‘You French kept Old Fischer prisoner for two years in the last war. You think it’s bad here? You should have seen how you treated us.’

  Fischer worked around a tin of tomatoes with a can opener and began tipping them down his throat.

  ‘Vogel sent Alain off to punishment camp,’ Fischer said, as he held the can out towards Marc. ‘Tom toms?’

  No prisoner ever turned down food, but as Marc reached for the can, Fischer snatched it, then gobbed a big mouthful of chewed-up tomato into Marc’s face.

  ‘I hold my grudges,’ Fischer said, grunting with laughter. ‘Alain may be gone, but there’s still plenty of his mates on the Oper. I’ll put you in with ’em if you muck me about. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Marc said, as he wiped tomato juice and spit on to his sleeve.

  ‘Old Fischer’s in charge of the Oper, the main prison barrack behind Großmarkthalle and three other prison boats. Now wherever you go, there’s always prisoners with a racket. Prisoner knows how to get extra food. Prisoner with gold hidden in his mattress. Your job is to find ’em and come tell me all about it.’

  Marc looked stunned.

  ‘I thought you liked flapping your trap, snitching to your boss?’ Fischer teased. ‘You snitched me to Vogel well enough, didn’t you? Earned me and the other guards a right bollocking.’

  ‘Prisoners who snitch get their throats cut,’ Marc said weakly.

  ‘Best be careful then,’ Fischer said, with a laugh. ‘But keep information coming my way, ’cos if you’re no use to Old Fischer …’

  The guard finished his sentence by swiping his finger across Marc’s throat. As Marc sat there trying to think up a plan, Fischer opened another tin of tomatoes. This time he let Marc dip his fingers in and take a couple.

  Marc scoffed the bitter tomatoes so fast that juice ran over his wrist into the cuff of his shirt. Then Fischer yanked his arm and sadistically bent back his fingers.

  ‘You’ll do what I say, when I say it.’

  As Marc writhed off his chair and hit the floor, a small glass jar rolled out from the inside pocket of his suit. Fischer snapped it up and roared.

  ‘Yoghurt!’ he shouted. ‘Haven’t seen that since before the war. Did you steal it from the hospital?’

  Marc flinched, expecting a boot in the gut, but Fischer unscrewed the cap, dipped in two fingers and sucked the creamy liquid off his fingertips.

  The reaction was explosive as the foul-tasting substance burned Fischer’s throat and tongue.

  ‘Christ,’ Fischer roared, banging his fist on the desktop, then swirling juice from the tomato tin around his mouth to clear the taste. ‘What kind of filth is that?’

  Marc would have laughed, but Fischer didn’t need much provocation to smash your brains out.

  ‘It’s the ointment they gave me for my eye,’ Marc said, trying to keep his voice neutral as Fischer scraped his tongue on a tobacco-stained handkerchief.

  ‘Why didn’t you say before I licked it?’ Fischer asked. ‘Think you’re funny, do you?’

  Marc hoped the question was rhetorical and didn’t answer.

  ‘I’ll get one of my men to find you a bed aboard the Adler,’ Fischer shouted. ‘Report back here at eight tomorrow. Make sure you’ve got something I’ll want to hear.’

  *

  Adler was the largest of the prison boats moored in Frankfurt’s East Docks. She had three levels above the hull and four below, and while Oper was usually bedded in mud, Adler was moored on the riverbank and floated free.

  The ship’s gentle swaying made Marc queasy as he lay on the second bunk in a stack of five, two decks beneath the nearest fresh air. There was no ventilation and the build up of cigarette smoke and stench of toilet buckets made it feel like breathing soup.

  Marc’s mood was black. He’d gone from top to bottom. From friend of the commandant with a cushy job, to number one enemy of a sadistic and unstable guard. From having good mates and an escape plan, to being alone and as far from getting home as he’d ever been.

  Adler’s prisoners were older than the crowd on the Oper. Dutch, Poles and Slavs all mixed together. If any of the fifty bodies packed in Marc’s cabin spoke French, he didn’t hear them.

  The evening meal arrived in a big drum, with black loaves floating
in the soup and every man fighting for his share. Marc had left his mug, spoon and mess tin back on the Oper, so all he could do once he’d pushed through a greedy mob was grab a chunk of bread and dunk it.

  He was no weakling, but had reason to be scared as a new arrival in a cabin full of grown men. Nobody bothered him though, partly because he’d emerged from hospital with nothing worth stealing, but mainly because poor food and heavy work meant the men climbed on bunks and fell asleep, most fully dressed in stinking clothes and boots.

  These prisoners were like the living dead: worked to exhaustion, given just enough food to stay alive. Their joyless existence had more in common with that of the cattle Marc looked after before the war than with normal human life.

  As Marc lay awake, dripping with sweat and with the fleas in his mattress eating him alive, he realised the prospect of keeping his head down and ending up like his new cabin mates was more dreadful than any threat made by a thug like Fischer.

  Escaping now would be almost impossible, but Marc’s brain kept cycling back to the same questions: What would Commander Henderson do? How would he get out of this?

  *

  The guards decided it was a good day for a roll call, so at four thirty the next morning five hundred and fifty men who bunked aboard Adler were dragged out of bed to the sound of ringing hand bells, before lining up in rows on the dockside.

  The count required every inmate to recite their prisoner number in turn and took forty minutes. When that was done the men were left standing to attention while a small team of guards worked their way through seven prison decks, supposedly searching for contraband, but mainly just throwing mattresses around and occasionally finding something worth stealing.

  The guards on the Adler were significantly nastier than those on the Oper, even when their boss Fischer was nowhere to be seen. As time passed, anyone who scratched, stretched, slouched or moved got slapped with a leather glove if they were lucky, or a rifle butt slammed in the guts if they weren’t.

  After two and a half hours at attention, the prisoners were sent off to their work details without breakfast. With no work assignment, Marc found a balding guard screaming in his face, calling him a lazy turd.