Joe nodded. I did. The cook was hand in glove with the SS. They’d kill him, retribution. A life for a life. Joe was ready. It was right. He hoped they’d shoot him. Now. They’d crucified a Russian not that long ago, and that was just for stealing a loaf. Joe’d stolen a life, and a Kapo’s at that.

The guard turned to Joe. ‘Take it out.’ He pointed to the body. ‘Schnell.’

Joe took the cook by his ankles, dragged him across the floor. Four or five guards had entered the kitchen. The cook was heavy and Joe stumbled as he stepped backwards. Kept his balance. Pulled him over the doorstep. The cook wore a leather jacket, lined with sheep’s wool, that one of the guards must have given him. Joe took it off, wrapped it round himself. It was far too big but, by God, it was warm. Shoes, too. What use were these to the dead?

Joe waited but no one came for him in the night, nor at the morning Appell.

Eins. Drei. Vier. Sieben.

‘Ja wohl.’

He knew what duty he’d be assigned.

He started with the corpse of the cook, picked up the others along the way. He knew the routine by now. Grab the ankles, over the shoulder, toss them in the back of the truck like carcases in his father’s slaughterhouse. Sometimes they buried the dead from the camp on the heath, if there weren’t too many, one coffin, over and over again. You never knew.

The truck moved, jerked along the stony road, down to the beach. Joe had a shovel. He’d have to dig the grave in the sand this time, wait for the tide to wash the bodies out to the ocean. Two guards watched him, would shoot if he wandered into the sea or lay down in the shallow trench with the shifting sands and his murdered corpse. Take me too. Would that be so bad?

The waves broke along the shore, rollers from the North Sea. A bitter wind blasted from the Arctic. Joe was glad for the cook’s jacket. He could stuff it with cement sacks. Never be cold again. He didn’t hear the Kommandant coming, padding like a camel over the sand. Saw only the shiny black boots.

Chapter Thirteen: Dora

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

DORA

London: June 1985

‘Since Mohammed won’t go to the mountain.’ Charles was at the other end of the telephone, his voice catching with humour. ‘The mountain must come to Mohammed.’