A Bridge of Magpies

When I'd finished she said speculatively, 'Seems I'm not the only one who's done homework. You're pretty well informed for a headman.'

'It was Possession's main event for a century. The story gets passed on from mouth to mouth.'

'I wonder.'

I kept wondering, too-about her. I decided to risk my sixtyfour dollar question.

'I'd like to go over all this material of yours about Possession.'

Her eyes disappeared into another time-track.

'It's copyright. Mine.'

'Does that mean no?'

'I said, it's mine?

'Let's get on,' I snapped.

The anger lay between us and soured the rest of the hike. Her brush-off burned me up because now I reckoned she'd turned on the charm to get her way with me about the wreck and play me for a sucker. I swore to myself that once we'd seen over the graveyard I'd have an ironclad reason out of her for being on the Sperrgebiet. Or else.

We negotiated the corner of the last dune blocking off the graveyard. I was in the lead.

I caught sight of a cluster of mounds and some derelict crosses. 1 also spotted something else.

I pulled Jutta back into the angle of the dune; then unslung my binoculars and brought the graves into sharp definition.

A man was kneeling at one of them, his hands busy in the sand.

'Was your mother's name Joyce?' I whispered.

She nodded.

'Then Kaptein Denny is either robbing her grave or caching something in it?

'Is that it?'

'The cross is pretty crude-looks like a piece of wreckage.'

I read, ' "Joyce Walsh…" Come back, you little idiot!'

She'd jumped up and sprinted towards the kneeling figure. I snicked back the rifle bolt, made sure it was loaded-and ran after her. Because of the wind, Kaptein Denny didn't hear her coming until she was very close. When he did, he threw us a startled glance, leapt up and scuffed the mound with his foot so that a scatter of things-some of them bright seashells-went flying.

I was up to him in a moment. I slipped the rifle's safety catch. He had a knife in one hand and in the other some rings and jewellery-and what appeared to be a rather timeworn passport. Jutta was confronting him as if she couldn't believe her eyes.

'You bastard!' I exclaimed. 'Fishing… balls! You bloody grave-robbing bastard!'

His face was a mask; he didn't retaliate; just came towards me holding out the battered passport. I wasn't dumb enough to fall for that one.

I kept the gun steady on him. `The knife-drop it 1 At my feet!'

He hesitated-unflappable and therefore dangerous. But he saw I'd blast him if he tried any tricks. He gave a slight shrug and threw it open.

'Now the passport!'

It joined the knife.

'Hold out your hand!'

There were a couple of rings and some trinkets in his palm.

I risked a glance at the things he'd kicked away: a tiny coloured porcelain figurine and some smashed painted shells which had been stuck together to imitate flowers.

'Now get off that grave!' I ordered. 'You're under arrest. Where'd you get that loot from?'

He indicated the mount The wind had long ago blown the shabby cross askew-by contrast, most of the other graves were unmarked-and the sand had filed away the lettering, which appeared to have been burned in with a hot iron. It read, 'Joyce Walsh. Died in childbirth, July 1943. R.I.P.'

Jutta's thoughts were a millisecond ahead of mine. She snatched up the passport, flicked it open, paged through it rapidly, concentrating on the wording and franking-stamps. Before she'd reached the last page her eagerness seemed to 66 have evaporated.

Her voice was dry and level as if she'd experienced some big let-down.

'My mother's.'

'Yes,' said Kaptein Denny. 'The rings-I took them from her fingers myself.'

'Christ, you're a cool one!' I exploded.

Jutta said in the same level-unemotional voice, 'If that's true, you didn't do it just now. That grave's not been disturbed.'

She was right. It certainly hadn't been dug up and unless the body lay six inches deep he couldn't have got at it. Kaptein Denny left me out of what he had to say next. 'I made that cross. The liner captain gave me your mother's passport so I'd get the name right. I took the jewellery. I've kept them all… it's a long time now.'

'You were there!'

'I was there. These things belong to you now, Miss Jutta.' `

Jutta! ' I echoed. 'You're mighty quick off the mark for a charter skipper.'

'I've known Miss Jutta a long time. From the moment of birth, in fact.'

'Rescuer Jutta exclaimed. 'It was you! Kaptein Denny!' He remained unruffled. 'I rescued a lot of people that night. Your mother among them. You were born in my boat.'

'Don't play the fool with me,' I snapped at him. I put up the gun but kept my foot on the knife. 'Let's have your story straight-and quick.'

'I was in the Possession channel that night U-160 sank the City of Baroda…:

'Doing what?'

'Fishing.'

It was too pat. Fishing nets a multitude of sins.

'In wartime? With enemy subs around?'

'I was fishing.'

I let it go.

'I saw the liner beached. It was a wild, stormy night. The passengers wouldn't have stood a chance in the seas that were breaking over the rocks. I took off a lot of them – including Miss Jutta's mother, as I said.'

Jutta fiddled with the rings. She was clearly lining up on his 67 side. Maybe she'd never left it. Maybe that's why both of them were ashore the same day..

`You must have known all along who I was when I came to you in Luderitz for a boat-why didn't you say?' `

The time wasn't then.'

`You vanished before the survivors from the City of Baroda could even say thank you. No one was ever able to identify their rescuer.'

'It's the way I'm made.'

I said, 'It takes a power of modesty to dodge a couple of warships out hunting a U-boat. Yet you succeeded.'

`They concentrated on the mouth of the channel near the Kreuz shoals where the oil slick was. I took my boat round the other way.'

Okay,' I said. 'You were super-modest. It's all in the past and it doesn't matter a damn to me whether you wanted modesty or a medal. What concerns me is the present..

'It's Miss Jutta's birthday,' he interrupted. 'It's also a deathday. I'm a Malay. That was a rite for her mother's spirit you interrupted.'

Jutta gathered up the figurine and the broken seashells. Fine,' I said to Denny. 'You've done your stuff, both temporally and spiritually. I couldn't care less. What I care about is that both of you are defying the law. This is Sperr- gebiet! Get going I'

'You can't – not now! Jutta was incredulous.

'Now's just the time.'

'Not when everything's going my way

`What way is that?'

She didn't answer. What had been brewing inside me, ever since our breather-stop, lashed back at me. I went on, 'You had a lot of show-me wishes. I obliged. The party's over.'

`Struan I '

There was more than disappointment and anger in that one word-it could have been hurt. I bulldozed it aside.

'This shore isn't a free-for-all. You both seem to have forgotten that. Now let's get moving to the boat? And then?' All feeling had left her voice.

`Luderitz. Kaptein Denny will take you back?

'That "will" sounds exactly like a re-tread captain's order.' '

Re-tread or not, it's an order. I'm also confiscating all 68 this stuff until I can go through it'

'I'm staying That's flat!'

'What have you got to say-Kaptein Denny?'

'I agree to return to Gaok. There's no law against a man sitting in his boat in the channel. Merely sitting.'

He was right, of course, Essentially he was saying the same thing as Jutta, but more cleverly.

I was saved by the bell from further argument I heard Koch's Land-Rover before they did, because I was expecting him. It was grinding through an outcrop barrier behind the sandhills, and trailing a long plume of dust.