Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [5]
A swastika flag flapped in the sea breeze over the Royal Hotel. Celia climbed the steps, where two guards with submachine guns always stood on duty. They recognized her, but checked her identity papers anyway before opening the doors for her. She entered the hotel lobby where a dozen local women stood around waiting for their shift to start.
There were more guards in here and uniformed German officials and secretaries were already buzzing around.
When their supervisor, a stocky German woman, arrived, they were set to work. For the first couple of hours they worked together, silently, sweeping up the restaurants, scrubbing the kitchen floor. At eleven, Celia began cleaning the rooms on the first floor. These were nearly all bedrooms being used by senior German officials and military personnel.
She opened up each of the rooms in turn, scrubbed the surfaces, beat the carpet, opened up the windows to let some fresh air in. Hard repetitive work, but it helped take her mind off things.
She knocked on another door and opened it up with her passkey. As she stepped into the room she realized that an officer was still asleep in there.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said in German, ‘I’ll come back.’
The officer stirred, quickly realizing she was no threat.
‘Come in. You can work round me, yes?’
He spoke in English though with a thick accent. Celia recognized him as Herr Wolff, but couldn’t remember his exact job. He must have been working late last night to still be in bed at this hour. He was slightly younger than her, nearer thirty than thirty-five, with cropped blond hair and blue eyes. Typical Aryan stock. He smiled as she came into the room. Thankfully he was alone — it was always a bit awkward when they weren’t.
‘May I open the window?’
‘All the better to see you with,’ he said, shifting himself upright. Celia pulled back the curtains, letting the light stream in. She turned to face Wolff who was shielding his eyes. He wore striped pyjamas but was powerfully muscled underneath. She set to work, starting at the window-sill. He kept a keen eye on her as she moved around. Instinctively, Celia put her head down.
‘I’ll leave the window shut for the moment, it’s a bit cold outside.’
She bent over the bedside cabinet, wiping it down. He looked up at her, making her feel self-conscious. At least he was keeping his hands to himself.
‘What is your name?’
‘Er ... Celia, Celia Doras.’
‘There is no need to worry, you’ve done nothing wrong.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
Celia moved over to the dressing-table, started to polish it, whistling a tune she’d picked up. She could see Wolff still watching her in the mirror.
‘Do you like watching people work?’ she asked, trying to keep her tone neutral.
He grinned. ‘That song you are whistling: “Hang Out Your Washing”? I bet a couple of years ago you’d never have guessed that the Siegfried Line would be coming to you?’
It was an old joke, but she managed a thin smile. Wolff was sitting up, his hands behind his head. Celia watched him warily in the mirror. There was a mark on his forearm, a tattoo. In the mirror it looked like ‘ZZ’.
The lighting-bolt insignia: SS. Only members of the Waffen-SS, the most feared soldiers in the whole of the Reich, would have that tattoo. This man was an SS officer.
Celia felt sick, she didn’t want to stay in this room any longer.
If he was SS, then he had killed civilians, he had tortured people.
She tried to sound relaxed. ‘I’m finished. Be seeing you.’
Celia glanced back as she closed the door, and saw Wolff pulling himself out of bed. She moved on to the next room. And the next. She finished her round about ten minutes early, at ten to twelve, and went down to the canteen for lunch. She was handed a dollop of potato and a small cube of meat. Food was getting scarce now, unless you knew a farmer who’d managed to stash something away. She sat next to a woman about her age, Marie Simmonds, who lived a couple