The Secret of Spandau by Peter Lovesey Read Free Book Online

Red. ‘Sorry, Cedric, but someone thought of it already.’
    Cedric’s way of dealing with Red was to ignore him. He switched to the video channel, slid a cassette into the recorder and touched a button on the remote control.
    The BBC clock appeared on the screen. A voice-over announced the Nine O’Clock News with Sue Lawley. The opening sequence gave way to a long shot of two men emerging from a building carrying a sack. ‘The end of the siege in sight,’ said the newsreader. ‘Libyan diplomatic bags on their way out.’
    â€˜The Libyan Embassy siege?’ said Dick.
    â€˜This was months back,’ said Red.
    â€˜Hold on,’ said Cedric. The headline clips were replacing each other fast on the screen. Libyan families at Heathrow, moving out of Britain. A demonstration against the Ayatollah. President Reagan in Peking.
    Then a monochrome still of a strange, staring face, filling the screen. ‘A birthday in Berlin,’ said the newsreader. ‘Rudolf Hess, ninety today and still in prison.’
    â€˜Poor devil,’ said Dick.
    â€˜Why do they always use that picture?’ asked Jane.
    â€˜It’s a great shot,’ said Red. ‘Once you see it, you never forget it.’
    Jane conceded that he was right. The look from that dark, hollow-cheeked face pictured in the dock at Nuremberg nearly forty years ago still had the power to disturb. Defiant and fanatical, the eyes expected no mercy.
    Cedric said, ‘I’ll move the tape on.’ He pressed the search button and the images speeded up. ‘Just look at the pictures a moment. I’ll cut the sound.’
    â€˜Hess is our assignment?’ asked Dick. ‘What’s new on Hess?’
    Cedric didn’t answer. He set the tape to normal speed as the picture of Hess came up again, projected behind the newsreader. Then the screen was filled with a rooftop view of Berlin, dominated by the TV tower in the East.
    â€˜This is Wilhelmstrasse,’ Red informed them, ‘approaching Spandau Jail. You could get lucky and see me in a moment. I was there for the birthday.’
    â€˜Gate-crashing?’ suggested Jane, as the blue front doors of the prison appeared, followed by close-ups of guards with dogs and a warning sign.
    â€˜I was interviewing his son, wasn’t I?’ said Red. ‘That’s him, going in to see the old man.’
    â€˜You mean him?’ asked Dick, as a talking head appeared in shot.
    â€˜No, he’s a former commandant.’
    With nice timing, a caption confirmed Red’s information.
    A map of Europe came up, showing the flight path Hess had taken in 1941, followed by black and white footage of his wrecked plane and then a sequence at a Nazi rally. Some grainy film, obviously sneaked from a high vantage-point with a telephoto lens, came next: the solitary figure of Hess at exercise in the prison garden, wearing a grey, pillbox-type hat and a dark overcoat with the collar turned up, hands behind his back, moving at a measured pace until he found some small obstruction in his path and moved it with his foot. He had receding hair, but his face looked better-nourished than it had in the Nuremberg picture.
    Cedric turned up the sound… .
developed an interest in space travel, but he stayed where he was. And his son blames the Western powers for that as much as anyone else.
    Wolf Rüdiger Hess, a man in his forties, was shown being interviewed outside the prison gates:
The Western powers are responsible because you can see American guards guarding my father today or during April, and British guards guarding him during May and French guards in June. So I think it’s not true that the Russians are the only ones who get the blame
.
    â€˜A swipe at the Allies,’ said Dick. ‘Not like the Beeb to …’ He gave way to the voice coming from the TV.
    The British say that accusation is nonsense. They and the other Western powers have