Pilgrim Soul by Gordon Ferris

nightmares of last year in north Germany.
    We set up camp in Bergen, a couple of miles from the concentration camp at Belsen. They brought in the Nazi prisoners in chains and under guard. Most were men. Most were senior
SS officers who’d been running the camps. A few women came through and some doctors. My job was to sift the testimonies and decide who should be sent to trial for war crimes, just fifty miles
north of Bergen, at Lüneburg.
    In the first analysis it didn’t take much interrogation. Unless they’d managed to discard their uniforms, anyone with the double lighting flash and the
Totenkopf
–
death’s head – insignia on their collars was sent for trial. Anyone who’d removed their collar tabs or sleeve markers were also assumed to be SS until they could prove otherwise.
The same went for any officer sporting one or more oak leaves. A full colonel and above was deemed to have been sufficiently steeped in the blood of innocents, one way or the other, to be culpable
of war crimes.
    This steady fashion show emphasised how much the Nazis loved their uniforms, and how they were always fussing about with it. From field grey to black, from SS rank to Wehrmacht, from
shoulder-boards to collar patches and sleeve diamonds, it suggested an army more taken with appearance than combat. Which was far from the truth. On reflection, thinking of our kilted warriors,
maybe pretty uniforms made for better soldiers?
    But my job went further than separating the sheep and goats. We wanted information. We were tracking down the top men, the ones who unleashed hell, and we were following every lead. In exchange
for useful information, we were prepared to write on their notes that they’d been cooperative. It might be enough to save them from a hanging.
    I realised the rabbi was talking to me. I broke out of my reverie. ‘I’m sorry?’
    ‘I was saying that justice has been done to this man, Mr Brodie.’
    ‘I doubt that, Rabbi. If he was anything like his pals, he got off lightly.’
    The rabbi inspected me carefully. He turned to the others. ‘I have some words to say to Mr Brodie. May I beg your indulgence?’
    The other men murmured and nodded and took their leave. The rabbi and I were left sitting together. We knew the subject matter. He began.
    ‘Ellen told me she’d talked to you, Mr Brodie.’
    ‘We let her down. She was terrified by the murder of Paddy Craven and then the pawnbroker. You know the whole story?’
    He sighed. ‘She was not a bad woman, Mr Brodie.’
    ‘Brodie will do, Rabbi. I agree with you. It’s not easy making a new life.’
    ‘Not when the old one comes back to haunt you.’ He smiled. ‘Call me Maurice.’
    I took a breath. ‘She tried to call me the night she died. Probably from the phone box they found her in.’
    He was nodding. ‘I know. She called me too.’
    ‘What!’
    ‘You know she was staying with a cousin for a while after you met her? She came back just before Hanukkah. To celebrate with her mother. She came to see me. Told me she thought she was
being followed.’
    ‘Did she know who it was?’
    He shook his head. ‘I called one of our people. I asked him to keep an eye. He did. He saw a man waiting outside Ellen’s house.’
    ‘When?’
    ‘Two days before.’
    ‘Did he know this man? Did he get a description?’
    ‘He did better. He followed him. Back to his market stall.’
    ‘Galdakis’s stall?’
    ‘It would seem so.’
    ‘Why didn’t your man act?’
    ‘Galdakis –
Draganski
– hadn’t
done
anything at that stage. My man didn’t know why he was following Ellen.’
    ‘When she phoned you. That night. What did she say? What did she want?’
    ‘She was terrified. She lived on the third floor. She’d looked out through the curtains and saw the man. He was walking up and down and looking up at the window. Ellen panicked and
left the flat. She went out the back door of the entry, through the green and round to the phone box. She said she was