Frankie's Letter Read Free

Lehmann’s room. Lehmann was elderly and deaf. It wouldn’t take them long to work out he had nothing to hide. This was his only chance.
    â€˜You haven’t seen me. Remember you haven’t seen me and no harm will come to you or Lottie. I wasn’t in my room.’ She nodded, her eyes fixed on his face. ‘Give me a few minutes, then scream as loudly as you can. They won’t harm you if you haven’t seen me.’
    She swallowed. ‘But . . .’
    â€˜For Lottie’s sake you mustn’t come to harm. You haven’t seen me.’
    Leaving Frau Kappelhoff in his room, Anthony slipped out into the corridor and along to the attic. Of all the ways he’d worked out to escape from the house – and that was one of the first things he’d done – this was far and away his least favourite, but it couldn’t be helped. He made the safety of the attic staircase and closed the door behind him as the noise of the soldiers’ voices increased. They’d finished with Herr Lehmann.
    Up the attic stairs, avoiding the creaking boards in the middle, over the dusty floorboards to the window, fumble with the catch . . .
    An ear-splitting scream rang out. Frau Kappelhoff had found Cavanaugh’s body. There wasn’t any suggestion she was acting. A tirade of sobs followed the scream. No, he thought, the poor woman certainly wasn’t putting that on.
    He took off his socks and shoes, stuffed his socks into his pocket and, hanging the shoes round his neck by their laces, scrambled through the tiny window onto the tiles. He could hear Frau Kappelhoff’s sobs and the men’s exclamations as they discovered Cavanaugh. He was past all harm, poor devil and, with luck, they should be occupied for the next few minutes.
    The rain smacked down in a dreary drizzle. Putting his fears under stiff, if brittle, control, Anthony held onto the window frame, closed the window behind him, and set out to climb the roof.
    The window stuck out onto the roof in the shape of a little house. He edged himself round by holding onto the gutter, his bare feet finding a tenuous grip on the wet tiles.
    Frau Kappelhoff’s house was the last in a row of terraces. The roofs faced the street in a line of inverted V’s, like a series of miniature forty-five degree hills. He needed to get over the crest of Frau Kappelhoff’s roof to the other side. He sat astride the top of the window, judging the distance. It wasn’t very far, but the street yawned below and Anthony hated heights.
    At that moment it would have been as easy for him to go back as it was to climb that roof. Easiest of all was to stay put, but that wasn’t an option.
    He wiped his clammy palms on his trousers, stood up and started to walk. He’d seen builders walk up roofs, shouting to their mates, stopping to light a cigarette, laughing. Laughing, for God’s sake! If they could do it, so could he. But the roof was wet and a tile moved under his foot. In near panic he slipped, regained his balance, and flung himself up the last couple of feet to the ridge pole. Weathered by years of sun and rain, the cement crumbled under his hand. In sheer desperation he shifted his grip and lunged over the apex of the roof, facing the man-made. red-tiled valley of the roof of the house next door.
    His breath came in huge, unsteady gulps. Beneath him lay, like the promised land, the slope downwards to the flat parapet which joined Frau Kappelhoff’s to the Kolhmeyers next door. He half-climbed, half-slid down and sat on the parapet, shifting only to make sure he was out of sight of the Kolhmeyers’ attic window.
    The rain drifted down, he was filthy from the climb and his fingers were numbing with cold, but as he lit a cigarette and relaxed, leaning against the slope of the roof, sheer relief made him as happy as he’d ever been in his life.
    The April evening in that northern latitude was long and cold. Anthony put on