Renaday held up his hand, demonstrating.
"And then there's the little matter of Vic's nearly severed finger and cut marks on the hands…"
"As if he was fighting back against someone with a knife."
"Right-o, Tommy. Defensive wounds."
Tommy nodded.
"A crime scene that isn't a crime scene. A Kraut who seems to be helping the wrong side. I'd say we have a few questions."
"True enough, Tommy. Questions are good. Answers are bloody well better. You saw MacNamara and Clark. Do you think it will be sufficient merely to throw doubts all over their case?"
"No."
"Neither do I." Hugh lit another cigarette, staring at the smoke that curled from his lips, and then looking at the glowing tip.
"Before we got shot down, Phillip liked to say that these things will kill us, sooner or later. Maybe so. But it seems to me that they're about fifth or sixth on the current list of deadly threats. Far behind the Germans, or maybe getting deathly sick. Or I don't know what else.
And right now, I'm wondering if maybe there aren't a few other items we could add to the list of deadly possibilities. Like ourselves."
Tommy nodded, as he reached into his own pocket and pulled out a package of smokes.
"Tell Phillip everything," he said.
"Don't leave out a detail."
Hugh smiled.
"He'd line me up at dawn and shoot me himself if I did. Poor old sod's probably pacing back and forth in the bunk room now, behaving for all the world like some overeager child on Christmas eve." He finished his cigarette and flicked it out onto the ground.
"Well, I'd better get going before he swoons from unchecked anticipation and curiosity.
Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow you meet Lieutenant Scott. Bring that famous policeman's eye to bear, will you?"
"Of course. Although it might be a damn sight easier for me if he was a lumberjack. And a drunken one, at that."
When he walked into the bunk room where Trader Vic had lived. Tommy was greeted with a dank silence and glares. The six remaining kriegies were packing their meager possessions together, readying themselves to move. Blankets; thin, scratchy German-issue sheets; whatever extra clothing the men had acquired; cooking utensils; and Red Cross foodstuffs were being gathered in piles on the floor. Men were also taking the hay-stuffed pallets off the bunks and folding them over for transport.
Tommy walked over to Lincoln Scott's space. He saw the Bible and Gibbons’ Fall on a makeshift wooden table constructed from a trio of parcel boxes. Inside the top box was Scott's stash of foodstuffs all the tinned meats and vegetables, condensed milk, coffee, sugar, and cigarettes that the black flier had accumulated. He also had a small metal church key for opening the tins, and he'd fashioned himself a metal frying pan, using the steel lid from a German waste barrel, attaching a flattened handle that was also steel to the lid by jamming the handle into a small slice on the lid surface.
Scott had wrapped an old, tattered cloth around the handle to serve as a grip. Tommy admired the construction of the frying pan. In it, Lincoln Scott displayed typical kriegie ingenuity.
The energy to make something out of nothing was the one thing all the prisoners held in common.
For a moment, Tommy stood by the bunk, staring at the meager collection of possessions. He was struck in that second by the limits to what all the kriegies had. The clothes on their backs, some food, some tattered books. They were all poor.
Then he turned away from Scott's items. Across the room two men were sorting through a wooden chest. The chest itself was an unusual sight.
It had clearly been constructed by a carpenter who'd spent time on making the edges fit securely, and sanding the surfaces to a polished sheen. Vincent Bedford's name, rank, and dog tag number were carved in the blond wood in an ornate script. The two men were busily separating foodstuffs from clothing. And, to Tommy's surprise, he saw one of the men remove a thirty-five-millimeter Leica camera from amid the clothing.
"Is that Vic's stuff?" he asked. A foolish question, because the answer was obvious.
There was silence for a couple of seconds, before one of the men replied: "Who else?"
Tommy approached closely. One of the men was folding a dark blue sweater. It was a thick, closely knit wool. German naval issue. Tommy thought. He had seen a sweater like that only once before, and that was on the body of a U-boat crewman that had washed ashore in North Africa not far from their base. The Arabs who had discovered the sailor's body and transported it to the Americans in hope of payment had fought hard over the sweater. It was extremely warm, and the natural oils of the wool repelled moisture. At Stalag Luft Thirteen, in the midst of the harsh Bavarian winter, the sweater would have been a valuable commodity to shivering kriegies.
Tommy continued to gaze over the assembled riches. He had to stop himself from whistling in appreciation of Trader Vic's hoard. He counted over twenty cartons of cigarettes alone. In a camp where cigarettes were often the preferred currency of trade and barter, Bedford was a millionaire many times over.
"There has to be a radio," he said after a moment.
"And probably a good one, too. Where's that?"
One of the men nodded, but made no immediate reply.
"Where's the radio?" he asked again.
"None of your fucking business. Hart," the man sorting through the items muttered.
"It's hidden."
"What's going to happen to Vic's stuff?" Tommy wondered.
"What's it to you, lieutenant?" The other man working through the collection turned abruptly.
"I mean, why is it any of your business, Hart? Ain't you got enough to do with defending that murdering nigger?"
Tommy didn't reply.
"Asshole," one of the men blurted out.
"We ought to just shoot the bastard tomorrow."
"He says he didn't do it," Tommy said. This statement was greeted with hisses and a few snorts of near-rage.
The American flier kneeling in front of the chest held up his hand, as if to quiet the other men in the barracks room.
"Sure. Of course. That's what he says. What did you expect?
The boy had no friends and Vincent was popular with everybody.
And they sure as hell didn't like each other none too much right from the first minute, and after they had that fight, the boy probably figured he'd better get Vic before Vic got him. Just like a goddamn dogfight, lieutenant. I mean, what are fighter pilots trained to do?
There's only one absolute, essential, can't be broken goddamn rule for fighter pilots: Shoot first!"
There was a murmur of assent from the other airmen in the room.
The flier looked over at Tommy. He continued speaking in a level, taut voice, filled with anger: "Have you ever seen a Lufberry circle,