Death In Captivity (5 page)

‘He didn’t die all that quickly,’ said the doctor from behind him. ‘Take a look at his face.’

In life Coutoules had not been a particularly handsome little man. Now, in death, his lips were lifted from his teeth in a grimace of pain, and his brown eyes, from which the doctor had carefully wiped the sand, were open and staring.

Footsteps sounded in the passage outside and they all got to their feet as Colonel Lavery came in. In fact, Colonel Baird, being a full colonel, was the senior officer, but Colonel Lavery was, by appointment, Senior British Officer in the camp, and formalities of that sort were observed.

‘Please sit down,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘What – oh, I see. A tunnelling casualty.’

‘Yes,’ said Colonel Baird. ‘I expect that’s right. But it’s not quite as straightforward as that. Goyles, would you tell Colonel Lavery what you just told me.’

Goyles repeated his story. It took longer this time, because there were a lot of details which he had to explain to Colonel Lavery, which Colonel Baird, as head of the Escape Committee, had understood without explanation.

When he had finished, Colonel Lavery turned to the doctor.

‘Can you tell us anything now,’ he said. ‘It might help to clear things up. At the moment, I can’t see—’

‘Certainly,’ said Doctor Simmonds. He was an unexcitable Scot who had left a first-class job in Edinburgh to look after the simple ailments of a Lowland Regiment in the Western Desert. ‘This man died of asphyxiation. He’s been dead, in my opinion, rather less than twelve hours. Certainly nine or ten. I can’t be more precise.’

Everybody looked at their watches and did sums.

‘Ten o’clock now,’ said Colonel Baird. ‘That makes it that he died about eleven o’clock or midnight last night.’

‘The whole thing is impossible,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘Unless there’s been a conspiracy of silence in Hut C—’

He looked speculatively at Goyles. ‘As I understand it, it takes four men to open this trap, and four men to lower it. Will someone tell me how Coutoules got into that tunnel? I’m leaving aside altogether the question of how he got into the hut. So far as I know, at lock-up last night, he was in his own room in our Senior Officers’ hut—’

No one found anything to say.

‘I’m perfectly aware,’ went on Colonel Lavery steadily, ‘that Coutoules was not a popular character. It was, in fact, at your suggestion, Baird, that he was removed from Hut C and was segregated in a small room in our hut.’

Colonel Baird nodded.

‘If I might suggest it,’ he said bluntly, ‘we’re putting the cart before the horse. There’s no doubt
how
Coutoules died. Anyone who wasn’t used to tunnelling, blundering along in the dark – particularly not realising that the last six feet hadn’t been shored up – would be more than likely to bring the roof down on top of himself. I should say that the chances were in favour of it. How he got into the tunnel, I know no more than anyone else, but the fact is that he
did
get there –and I expect the truth about it will come to light sooner or later. It usually does. So I suggest we stop worrying about what can’t be helped and tackle the immediate problem. What are we going to do with the body?’

‘We shall have to tell the Italians,’ said Colonel Lavery sharply. ‘We can’t keep a death quiet for ever – besides, we should be putting ourselves hopelessly in the wrong.’

‘All right,’ said Colonel Baird. ‘We hand over the body, I agree. But do we have to say where we found him?’

Whilst Colonel Lavery was thinking this one out, Colonel Baird went on.

‘Because if so, I’d like to put it on record that we should be making the enemy a present of the only undiscoverable tunnel in the camp.’

‘I can quite see we don’t want to do that,’ said Colonel Layery.

‘Let me be quite frank about this,’ said Colonel Baird, ‘and strictly I ought to turn these two young men out of the room before I say this, but I expect they can be trusted to keep their mouths shut—’

The doctor grunted, and Goyles nodded.

‘I don’t really visualise this tunnel being used for an escape – not a normal escape. We all know that the British have taken Pantellaria. The Eighth Army will be in Sicily soon – and Italy after that. Suppose the Italians pack up. Have you thought yet what the Germans are going to do – about us, I mean?’

‘I’ve asked myself the question a dozen times,’ said Colonel Lavery, adding ‘I haven’t liked any of the answers either.’

‘All right,’ said Colonel Baird. ‘Let’s take the obvious answer. The Germans aren’t going to let go the sixty thousand prisoners in Italy that it cost them all that sweat and blood to take – not if they can help it. One morning we’re going to wake up and find the Wehrmacht on these walls, and a train in the station getting up steam to take us all to Krautland. Tell me how much you’d pay then to have an absolutely fool-proof tunnel waiting and ready.’

‘Yes,’ said Colonel Lavery.

‘Not just a rat-hole which a dozen men might squeeze through with luck, but a decent, wooden-lined, three-feet-by three, guaranteed back door. With proper organisation we could empty this camp in one night –
and the British lines might be at Naples by then.
’

‘Yes,’ said Colonel Lavery again. ‘You’re absolutely right. What do you suggest?’

‘I suggest,’ said Colonel Baird, ‘that we dig a hole right here and bury him. Let the Italians look for him.’

‘And what if they find him?’ said Colonel Lavery, ‘as they may very well do. Murder’s a civil offence; even in a prisoner-of-war camp. Would there be anything to show that we hadn’t suffocated him first and buried him afterwards? They know very well he was unpopular in the Camp. There have been threats. It wouldn’t be too pleasant if they started to hang someone for a murder which we knew had never been committed.’

‘It’s nasty either way,’ said Colonel Baird.

‘There’s just one thing about that,’ said the doctor. ‘If they examine the body properly they can’t maintain that he was suffocated and buried afterwards.’

‘Do you mean the sand in his nose and mouth? There’s nothing to show that wasn’t put in after death is there?’

‘Have you looked at his hands?’ said the doctor. ‘He was alive when he went under that sand all right. He’s pulled one of the nails clean off his right hand and the other three nails nearly off, trying to scratch his way out.’

There was a short silence.

‘If it comes to that,’ said Colonel Lavery, ‘I suppose we might have faked even a detail like that, but— ’

‘Could I make a suggestion, sir?’ asked Goyles.

‘Certainly.’

‘Why don’t we bury him in
another
tunnel. There’s one started in this hut. It isn’t, actually, a very good tunnel. It hasn’t gone more than about twelve feet and I think it’s been a bit lucky to survive so far—’

‘You suggest,’ said Colonel Lavery, ‘that we put him in this tunnel, pull down some of the roof on top of him and call in the Italians – pretending it’s a normal tunnelling accident?’

‘Something like that, sir.’

‘What do you say about that, Baird?’

‘I think it’s a damned good scheme,’ said Colonel Baird. ‘I don’t think this other tunnel’s got a hope in hell of getting anywhere. The Committee thought twice about letting them start even. The trap’s much too obvious for one thing. If we’ve got to throw away a tunnel, this is the one to discard.’

‘All right,’ said Colonel Lavery. ‘The less I know about it in my official capacity, the better. I’ll leave the details to you.’

The Hut A tunnel started from the bathroom.

A square of tiles had been taken up, and the tiles had been cemented on to a wooden, tray-shaped frame. The work had been done neatly enough and, in its original state, it had probably made quite a satisfactory cover. Unfortunately, it suffered from the frailty of its construction. Daily use had cracked and chipped the edges of the tiles, so that its outline was becoming distressingly apparent to the eye. Also it had developed a slight, but detectable, wobble.

From this and other reasons the tunnel had been allotted low priority by the Escape Committee; in particular very little material had been made available for shoring-up. Things had gone well enough whilst the diggers were actually under the foundations of the hut but now that they were striking out into the sand of the open compound progress was becoming increasingly difficult. That they had got as far as they had was almost entirely due to the enthusiasm of the tunnel’s proprietor and only begetter, ‘Brandy’ Duncan of the Black Watch.

There was another reason for its slow progress, and ‘Brandy’ expressed this bluntly to Goyles. ‘They’re such a hopeless crowd in this hut,’ he said. ‘No bowels.’

‘I know what you mean,’ said Goyles.

‘They spend their days sunbathing, and their evenings filling up their stamp albums and playing roulette and complaining about the food. I ought to be sick at you for collaring this tunnel, but, by God, I’m not. Book a place for me and Andy in your outfit, and you can have this tunnel and welcome.’

Goyles thanked him and reported back to Colonel Baird. He had known that
morale
in Hut A was low, but hadn’t realised how far it had slipped.

Colonel Baird wasted no time.

‘We’ll want someone to go down the tunnel and do the actual damage. I think it had better be Byfold – he’s the nippiest of you. Get him over here with his tunnelling kit. Duncan and Anderson can open the trap for us. Doctor, will you give Goyles a hand and fetch the body along?’

So, in haste and with no rites, the second interment of Coutoules took place. The watchers were alerted round Hut A. ‘Brandy’ Duncan and his friend, Lieutenant Anderson, opened the trap-door in the bathroom floor and helped Byfold down with the body. Laboriously it was handled along to the far end of the tunnel.

To Byfold’s eye the whole thing looked shockingly makeshift. To start with, the shaft went down a bare seven feet – as opposed to the twenty feet in their tunnel – so that the roof had very little clearance from the surface. So long as they were under the hut this did not matter, because the concrete foundations of the hut themselves formed a roof to the tunnel. The last six or eight feet were a different matter. It was like going along a rabbit hole.

Alone, it would have been tricky. With Coutoules in tow it looked both dangerous and impossible.

When the body was at last in a position at the end of the tunnel which resembled, as closely as possible, the position in which it had been found, Byfold crawled back to the shaft for further instructions.

He was running with sweat.

‘Now you’ll have to fake the accident,’ said Colonel Baird. ‘One thing, though, you’ll have to take care not to open a hole right up to the top. A partial fall is what we want.’

‘I don’t think that’s possible,’ said Byfold. He was irritated and exhausted and his eyes were full of sand.

‘If it can’t be done,’ said Colonel Baird patiently, ‘the scheme’s a wash-out. Think, man. If you make a hole that can be seen from the top, a sentry will spot it happening and we’ll have Benucci here in five minutes. What do you think he’s going to say when his doctors tell him that Coutoules has been dead for twelve hours?’

‘Hmm,’ said Byfold. It really hadn’t occurred to him before to wonder what the Italians would say. So long as his own tunnel was not in jeopardy he was quite happy.

‘I think,’ said Duncan diffidently, ‘that it could be managed. If you were to take one of the uprights from the shaft’ – these were about nine feet long: they had come out of the rafters of the theatre hut – ‘I think you could squat down in the safe part of the tunnel and work the end of the wood into the roof. You ought to be able to bring down a good slab that way, without too much danger—’

‘Try it that way first,’ said Baird.

The upright to which Duncan referred was one of four which ran up each corner of the entrance shaft and supported the trap. They were all embedded in the earth at the bottom and screwed into a framework at the top, on which the trap itself rested.

It took a little time to get one out, but they did so in the end, and Byfold grasped it in his hand, lance-like, and crawled once more along the tunnel until he was in sight of Coutoules’ boot heels. He hoped it was for the last time. He had not loved Coutoules in life; in death, he felt he was seeing a good deal too much of him.

He propped himself on one elbow, made sure that he was himself still under the firm foundations of the hut, and edged forward the piece of wood which he held.

The roof of the tunnel, which had looked only too ready to collapse, proved, of course, tiresomely difficult to dislodge. He thrust his wooden spear lengthways into it and wriggled it about. A thin dusting of sand fell from the roof and the wood came out and fell with a soft thud on Coutoules’ rump.

Byfold swore and began all over again. He saw that he would have to dig the roof out in a series of steps.

Jab, jab, jab.

His arm was aching, he was sweating all over, and the sand had got into his eyes again.

Why to God do we ever trouble to shore-up a tunnel, he thought, if it takes all this trouble to bring it down.

He dug the end of the wood in once more and levered downwards. There was a soft, rushing noise, quite unlike anything that had gone before and the air was full of falling sand.

When he raised his head he saw that he had done an almost perfect job. The whole of the roof at the far end of the tunnel had come down. The body was completely buried. There was no daylight showing, but judging by the depth of the fall he guessed that there was very little left between the roof of the cavity and the surface.

He crawled back to the shaft, propped the wooden upright loosely back into position, and climbed out.

Cyriakos Coutoules was reinterred.

‘I do not understand, Colonel,’ said Captain Benucci. ‘You say that this Greek died in the tunnel, but you do not know who was with him.’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t know,’ said Colonel Baird. ‘I said I wasn’t going to tell you.’