Up and over the bulwark where they stood, regaining breath, staring around at the deserted and abandoned decks. The eyeless bridge where anxious lookouts had watched for aircraft and the tell-tale periscope. Storms and frozen nights in the Baltic, hopes, fears, all the things which every ship must know.

  Beri-Beri led the way. Down one ladder, through a watertight door, where battery-driven lamps lit the handrails and catwalks, and then down the next.

  The deeper they went the more distant and muffled the sea sounds became. It was eerie, creepy, as they groped along the shining catwalks where countless men had gone before them. On and off watch, to enter or leave harbour. As the ship had carried many wounded back from the Russian Front, it was more than likely there had been many sea-burials too.

  Beri-Beri levered open a door and flashed his huge light inside. It was one of the ship's four holds. 'See, they've made a good job of it.' The massive piles of gas shells and bombs in this hold were covered in cement. No wonder she felt so heavy in the water despite being stripped of all her fittings.

  Marriott said, 'I'm glad you've done this before. I'm bloody well lost!'

  Beri-Beri's teeth gleamed in the lights. 'I studied the plan until I knew it backwards.' He dragged up another hatch and said, 'Last bit, old son.'

  Here, at the very bottom of the hull, it felt even more oppressive. The sea was just a far-off booming sound, while the gurgling slap of trapped bilge-water seemed to be all around them.

  Beri-Beri clung to a vertical steel ladder and studied the long array of explosives. Again, more concrete so that the full blast would go straight down, blast a hole in her bottom without breaking her back to strew the deadly cargo across the sea-bed. 'Like a bloody great Bangalore torpedo!'

  Marriott stooped over the nearest pile. It had to be done this way. To scuttle the ship might take too long, so that she would drift for many miles, her final resting place unknown or wrongly marked on the charts. To blow her up by gunfire would be even more dangerous. Insanity.

  They checked their watches. Up in the damp air of his bridge, Kapitän Krieger would be doing the same. He had his orders too. Marriott thought he was not the kind of man to act without or against them.

  Beri-Beri remarked suddenly, 'We do meet in the oddest places.'

  Then he stooped over and unclocked a well-greased metal plate. 'It's very simple really. There's a line just here which is connected to a friction-type igniter set. You pull it, and the thing fires. After that–' he grinned up at him. 'You've got fifteen minutes. Piece of cake!'

  'Suppose it misfires?'

  'There's a second one next to it. But I've never known one to fizzle out.' He chuckled. 'Not yet, that is.'

  The hull rolled suddenly and Marriott heard a chorus of metallic groans and shudders. Like a protest. Like something alive.

  He said, 'Let's get it over with.'

  Beri-Beri nodded, suddenly serious. 'Let's.' He dragged at the line and there was a tiny spurt of sparks and smoke.

  He stood up and licked his lips. 'Time to go. You first.' He gripped the ladder and waited for Marriott to clamber up towards the oval hatch while he stood and watched the inert mass of concrete.

  Marriott gripped the rim of the hatch. He might get used to it. He had been in dying ships before, and in the Med had even helped to fit charges to vessels they had found working for the enemy amongst the Greek Islands. But this was different, although he could not explain why.

  There was a sharp click beneath his feet and he heard Beri-Beri exclaim, 'Hold on!' Then the lower half of the ladder veered round, swinging on a single bolt, before that too parted and Beri-Beri fell straight down on to the concrete.

  He struggled to get to his feet and fell on his side. 'Oh, shit! My bloody leg!'

  Marriott clung to the remains of the ladder and peered down at him. 'I'm coming! Don't move!''

  Beri-Beri almost screamed. 'You can't do anything! You'll never be able to lift me up there!' He was sobbing, pleading. 'For Christ's sake get out while you can! This lot'll go up–'

  Marriott hung by his fingers for a few seconds then dropped lightly to the bottom.

  He bent over his friend, felt him tense as he tried to move the leg folded under him at an unnatural angle.

  'Go! In the name of God!' He was gasping with pain and despair.

  Marriott cradled his shoulders in his arms and crouched down beside him. All at once, after the stark spasm of fear, he felt completely calm.

  'I'm not leaving you, you silly old bugger.' He pulled him closer, and tried not to listen to the lapping bilge-water, while the smell of the acrid fuse seemed to be everywhere like an invisible threat. Once he thought he heard a loud thud, the vague vibration of engines, and could picture the tug standing away. They had already overstayed their time. And why should Krieger risk his ship and his men? Just months back they had been fighting each other. Killing and dying. Krieger had no cause for regrets, even if he could do something.

  He thought suddenly of his driver, Heinz Knecht, when he had ordered him to remain at Flensburg with the car until they returned.

  He had protested. 'You might need me, Herr Leutnant! You are my officer now! It is my place also!'

  How right he had been, he thought. Something slid from a catwalk and seemed to fall for a long while before it clattered down below.

  Beri-Beri groaned, 'You've still got time ... if you jump for it, you could make it to the top –'

  'I thought you'd dropped off again.' He hugged him tightly. 'Forget it.'

  Beri-Beri seemed to relax. Then he said hoarsely, 'That girl.'

  'What girl?' He felt it probing through him, already missing what he had never shared. 'It was hopeless.'

  Beri-Beri gritted his teeth. 'How long have we got?'

  But Marriott would not remove his arm to look. It would be quick anyway. If it was enough to take out a ship's keel.. .

  He stared with disbelief at a rope bowline as it dropped down by his legs. He stared up and saw the boy's face peering at them, another shadowy figure beyond, the sound of feet on metal.

  Marriott struggled to his knees and dragged the bowline around Beri-Beri's shoulders. He did not know what he was saying to him; the words just seemed to flood out as he tried to secure the line. All he could think was that they had not left them to die. They had come back. It might be too late already but... He gasped, 'Haul away!'

  Beri-Beri cried out just once, and then mercifully fainted as they dragged him up and over the rim of the hatch. Marriott took a deep breath and then jumped for the upper part of the ladder. Hands reached down to guide him through, and then they were all lurching along those same eerie catwalks, pausing only to haul and thrust Beri-Beri's limp figure through one hatch after another until Marriott saw daylight, tasted salt spray, and felt almost sick with gratitude and disbelief.

  He saw the tug's tall funnel rising and dipping close alongside, the master peering up at the ship's bulwark, his real feelings hidden by a mask of watchfulness.

  Orders were barked, lines cast off, and then with powerful dignity the tug Herkules thrashed stern-first clear of the side.

  Marriott saw his friend being wrapped in a blanket, while someone placed a lifejacket under his head like a pillow.

  The explosion when it came was surprisingly subdued, but the tell-tale bubbles and spreading pattern of floating rust told him that the explosive charges had done their work.

  Marriott walked into the spacious chartroom and leaned over the same calculations, before marking the position and initialling the deck-log.

  He was vaguely aware that the tug had gathered way and was forging ahead once more. The master's shadow fell across the chart and for a long moment their eyes met and held.

  Marriott had faced death many times. He had persuaded himself he had been able to accept it, if not the actual dying.

  Today he had surprised himself. He had accepted both without hesitation.

  The master nodded very slowly.

  'I send radio signal, Herr Leutnant. They will have doctor waiting.' He gave a rare smile so that his weatherbeaten face seemed to be all wrinkles.

  'Now I know the war is kaputt!'

  Marriott saw the bare-footed boy staring at them through the door and replied, 'You took a great risk, Kapitän Krieger.'

  The older man shook his head. 'To go to sea is a risk, Herr Leutnant.' He held out his hand. 'I have some schnapps. It is a good moment.'

  'None better.' He saw them carrying Beri-Beri to the shelter of the bridge. Leave him to die? Not in a thousand bloody years!

  He did not see the expression on the German's craggy face, nor did he realise he had spoken so fervently, and aloud.

  Captain Eric Whitcombe of the Army's Special Investigation Branch was sipping his first mug of scalding tea of the day while he read slowly through a copy of the Daily Mail.

  He was a big man, with a sun-reddened face and a dashing ginger moustache. His battledress was neatly pressed, and he was still unused to the comfortable quarters and German servants which had been available to him since his arrival in Kiel.

  Through the door he could hear his department coming to life, somebody whistling, while out in the yard one of his MPs was unsuccessfully trying to start a motor-cycle.

  The headlines on the front page were huge. Larger, if anything, than those on VE-Day. It was all over. Officially. August 15th would henceforth be remembered – 'celebrated' hardly seemed suitable – as VJ-Day. The Japs had finally thrown in the towel. But for the bombs' horrific casualties, Whitcombe doubted if the war would have ended even next year. He straightened his back and walked to the window. He walked and stood like a policeman, which indeed he had been before joining up for the duration. His last nick had been a busy one in North London, Jews, the rag-trade, and clashes with Mosley's blackshirts every Sunday. A kind of local entertainment, and always busy for a newly made-up inspector.

  It would be strange to begin all over again, he thought. School-crossings, pickpockets, Saturday night punch-ups, drunks, and vagrants. A copper's lot. In many ways he would be sorry to go back. This was a different world which even some of the occupying forces did not know existed. The black market, troops flogging stores and petrol, officers who were not slow to make a dishonest quid when the choice offered itself. But deeper still there was depravity and squalor which made a London knocking-shop seem like a kindergarten.

  He was proud of his team. Most of them were ex-coppers, and the majority were from the Met like himself.

  The door swung open after a brief tap and Sergeant Jim Thornhill walked in and saluted.

  'Morning, Jim.'

  Thornhill slumped down in a chair and gratefully took a mug of tea.

  'Thanks, Guv.'

  To the army they were captain and sergeant. To one another they were the Guv'nor and his Skipper. It was their own defence against the rest, their world within a world.

  Thornhill was unshaven, and there was dirt on his battledress elbows and knees.

  'How'd the obbo go, Jim?'

  The sergeant suppressed a yawn. 'Caught a couple of the buggers out by the Ravensberger Wasserurm. Pair of displaced persons, Poles again. Had a load of gear on them. Ration cards and faked petrol permits.'

  'Hmm – bad business. The Poles seem to be trying to get their own back. They won't though. A couple of them are being topped today. That might help to cool them down.'

  The sergeant was looking at the newspaper's front page. 'They'll not be around to celebrate VJ-Day, that's for sure!'

  Thornhill frowned and said, 'I've been thinking about that navy bloke, Petty Officer Evans –'

  'Ah!' The captain tugged a file from his briefcase. 'I've been looking into it while you've been away on the job.'

  Thornhill raised his dark eyebrows. 'I thought we'd done with that case. Major Helmut Maybach of the SS is just a bit of dirty linen now, surely?'

  Captain Whitcombe put on his glasses, something he hated to do in company. 'I had the forensic boys go over it all again. They even exhumed the corpse, or the bits which were available.' He grinned, knowing it was pointless to try and shock his sergeant. He had been a CID officer in Bethnal Green and had seen just about everything. What he had missed there he had certainly made up for in Germany. He continued, 'Managed to get one good fingerprint. A bit messy for our lads, but they got a really clear dab.' He looked at him impassively. 'That man Evans was right. It wasn't Maybach after all. We already had his prints with his other details. The SS were very methodical, even – or should I say especially – with their own lot.'

  Thornhill put down his mug, the tea, the long nights of observation, even bed, forgotten.

  'That means he may still be here? Christ, I'd like to feel that bastard's collar!'

  Whitcombe took out another sheet of neatly typed information. 'You know about Evans's background, but you may not have seen this.' He held the paper to the light. 'Evans's father had been using his fishing-boat to pass messages to the Maquis on the French mainland – he was good at it apparently. Then one day he had to bring half-a-dozen members of the Maquis to Jersey, to hide them before using his fishing permit to smuggle them to England. Can you imagine that? In a twenty-five-foot boat? It must be all of a hundred miles, and with their patrols everywhere.' He gave a deep sigh, picturing it in his mind. 'He took them to Guernsey first. He had friends there.'

  Thornhill nodded slowly. 'But somebody shopped him?'

  'Yes. The Channel Islanders had their collaborators too. Maybach did the interrogation himself. He knew Evans's father wouldn't crack so he tortured his wife right before his eyes, didn't even stop when he spilled everything. She died under the torture, and then Maybach took his men over to Guernsey and captured the others. He did the same to them, and from their agony was able to send information to the Gestapo on the mainland, then even more members of the underground and their families were arrested. Most of them ended up in the gas chambers.'

  Thornhill asked quietly, 'And his young sister?'

  'She was just sixteen then. Maybach had her stripped and raped in front of her father before they took him out and shot him. Hung him from a tree in his garden so that everyone would know the penalty of non-co-operation. Then she was taken away to some French brothel used by German troops on leave from the front. Reports say she lost her mind there, so she followed the others to the death-camp.'

  Thornhill pictured Evans's intent features, his carefully worded questions and explanations. He must have always been preparing himself in case he was captured and his true identity revealed.

  'You think Evans knows?'

  Whitcombe removed his glasses. 'I'm bloody sure he does. Something you must have said to him triggered it off in his mind.'

  'Well, I'd better have a word with him, Guv. Together we might –'

  'No. I think I've a better idea, Jim. Pick a good man to tail him, two if you think it best. The best you've got. If we show our hand to Evans he might blow the gaff, and Maybach will go to ground. My guess is that the bastard's trying to fix a passage out of here, maybe to join some of his mates in South America. Remember, Jim, plenty of ships run from Hamburg to the South Atlantic, or they did, and they will again if Mil. Gov. is going to get things moving.'

  'I'd like to be on this detail. I'll take Taffy Hughes along with me.'