Radio Moscow, and Other Stories


David Malcolm





for Jennifer

with love and thanks





Most of these stories were written in Sopot in Poland between 2009 and 2016. The exception is “Radio Moscow.” I wrote this story a very long time ago in Gdańsk. It has existed in various versions in the intervening years. This version is very close to the original one written, as it is set, in a pre-1989 world.

Most of these stories were first published in a collection by Blackwitch Press in 2015.





Radio Moscow, and Other Stories





Avtor/Author: David Malcolm

Založba/Publisher: Artizan, d.o.o., Slovenska Bistrica

Na voljo na/Available through: http://www.amazon.com





Copyright © 2016, David Malcolm





CIP - Kataložni zapis o publikaciji

Univerzitetna knjižnica Maribor

654.19(0.034.2)

MALCOLM, David

Radio Moscow and other stories [Elektronski vir] / avtor David Malcolm. - El. knjiga. - Slovenska Bistrica : Artizan, 2016

ISBN 978-961-94000-2-9 (pdf)

COBISS.SI-ID 88404481





Radio Moscow



Hamburg



In America



Says no



Fur

About the author





Radio Moscow





Far from Boston, I walk along a street in this strange city. It seems like winter already although it’s really only autumn. The air is cold and wet, and the sky is a sheet of gray cloud. All the leaves must have fallen from the trees before we came. There are a few berries left, black, caught on the twigs of the bare bushes in front of our block of apartments.

I’ve decided to go to the stores, not the small one behind us, but to the group of stores perhaps half a mile away. I hunch into my thick winter coat and pull up my scarf toward my chin. I’ll have to wear my new fur hat soon. My high-heeled boots scrape on the pavement. Already they seem a little dressy for the stores. I’ll have to buy some new ones.

Our apartment block is one of seventeen (I looked at the numbers on the sides, black and three feet tall) on a hill, on the outskirts of the city. To one side there is a little valley and beyond that another hill and more blocks. In the valley, there are bare trees, some small wooden houses, and rough grass. There’s also a school, half-built, bare blocks of concrete looking raw. I walk along the edge of the valley past blocks of apartments just like ours, past the places where we leave our garbage, past some small private houses with little bare gardens, to the stores.

Inside the general store the floor is hard, cold concrete. Two long counters run the length of the shop, and behind them is a wall with shelves of boxes and cans. Two of the other walls are tall glass windows. (Central European sub-Bauhaus, Philip calls it.) Beneath the windows runs a bench, but no one sits on it.

They only serve from one counter, so you have to stand in line for ages, long, dark lines of men and women in thick coats and heavy boots. Most of the shops are the same. Near the cash register is a glass case with butter and cheeses, yeast (sandy, crumbling little blocks), margarine, cream. Then they give you milk from huge crates behind the counter. I watch the women dragging them in two or three at a time, their thighs stretching and heaving. It’s always women who work in these shops, thick-set, strong; shiny, transparent white coats stretched over their breasts and buttocks. You can see the floral pattern of their blouses through the material of their coats.

The labels on the cans, the jars, the packets seem so dull, the walls so bare. The walls are painted a pale pastel sandy wash, and there are notices (some printed, some handwritten) on them which I can’t understand at all yet. There is a smell of sweat in the line and the people seem to press against each other. There is a slight sweet smell of dirt and vegetables and stale milk too.

I stumble through my requests. Some pasta, some butter, a can of peas, some tea. I ask for flour. Something is wrong. The woman’s face closes up behind the register. No, she says. I look confused. She speaks at me. The woman in the line next to me reaches into her purse and shows me her little pale yellow ration card. Of course, we haven’t got ours yet. We’ll get them later, maybe. I smile at the saleslady. She has a shiny, well-cared-for face with a large brown mole on one cheek and blond dyed hair. She purses her lips and looks along the line. In defiance almost, I’d say. She puts a bag of flour on the counter and pushes it toward me. I look at the coarse gray paper with its strange blue writing, and blush as if I’d done something forbidden. I pack everything quickly in the plastic bag I’ve brought with me and walk quickly out of the store.

The smells seem so strange. The smell of the food store – sweat and milk and earth. The sharp chemical smells of the store where you buy paint or car oil or washing powder. The vegetable store with its line of white cabbages like skulls, more earth, a slight smell of rot.

I walk home – everywhere gray and dirty. The grass between the blocks is worn and thin. Dirty puddles lie on the pavements. The blocks are gray and rough, slabs of concrete bolted together. The front door of our block has had its glass windows broken and is now covered in sheets of metal, scarred with graffiti. The walls of the stairs too are covered with scratched messages. Children’s games, punk groups, maybe some that are political. I don’t know. Each apartment door, as you climb the stairs, is closed and painted gray and has a little peephole, a tiny, beady glass eye, unmoving, watching.

At home I take off my heavy coat and boots and stand in the kitchen, looking out of the window over the cold, wet parking lot to the blocks of apartments on the other side of the valley.

I drift off and stand for minutes at a time. Out of time almost.





So that’s what American women look like. I’ve never had a job watching one before.

I sit in my car where I can see her come and go from the flat. Now she’s walking to the shops up the street. Smart dresser. You can spot foreign clothes – a little difference in style, the material a bit heavier or a bit lighter. Now, these clothes I have on, no one could mistake – especially the boots, good heavy ones with thick soles. They used to creak when I walked in them, but now they’re soft, worn-in, part of me. Warm. Policeman’s boots.

She walks along the edge of the valley by the bare trees and the garbage skips. She stops, looks down into the valley, then up at the flats again. I wonder what she sees. I’ve lived here all my life. My sister lives in one of the apartment blocks over the other side of the valley.

I wonder if she sees it differently.

She moves nicely. Foreign. Our women move real nice too. Loose, warm. But she moves OK too. Maybe a bit stiff – a bit skinny – but only if you know she’s foreign.

I wonder what she’s thinking. Does she like it here? But they never do, foreigners. Take one look and run back to their embassies or foreigners’ clubs. Or sod off altogether. Can’t effin’ take it, can they?

I lean back and light a cigarette. Albanian stuff, good and strong. Though it stinks up the car something awful. Piotrek always complains when he relieves me. And Hania always says my clothes smell. She’d rather I smoked those fancy American ones they sell in our shops now. Women’s stuff.

I stroke my mustache and then scratch my thigh. I can see everything from here.





Everywhere landscapes drained of color – wet gray houses, wet earth, fading dying leaves, gray forests (I pass them on the bus, peer through the filthy window) smoking with mist, pale frosted vegetables and flowers. Buildings – gray, pock-marked plaster falling off in scabs, crumbling brown brick.

A large black bird, sitting in a tree, black above the last red leaves, hanging, dangling down. Birds in the trees at night like strange black fruit.

A man digging in his garden in the dark. Behind him, the moon. He cuts into the pale earth and darkens it.

I go to the stores a lot – sometimes here, sometimes in the city. An unpronounceable district of stores. But I prefer it here. I’ve grown to like the lines of apartments, the bare little gardens, the newspaper kiosk that is always closed. The crowds of dark, heavy people, the gray buildings, the traffic, the street car lines scare me in the city. They know me now in the local stores, but they never smile.

Maybe my boots are all right. Some of the women are very well dressed, even here, even to go shopping. Some wear nice tight skirts and very nice fur jackets. The young girls are very fashionable. Sometimes they wear huge, colored ribbons in their hair. It should look childish, but it doesn’t. It’s like a challenge to the greyness.

Always the white car, square and heavy. And inside a man, dark, almost too big for the car. It’s always waiting at the corner beside the children’s playground. It could watch the whole road from there.





I unwrap the sandwiches Hania has made for me. Little, fresh, crisp rolls; cheese and egg, slices of sausage. I pour some of the hot sweet tea from the flask into its top and sip it. The trick is not to fill it so high that you burn your fingers when you hold it round the rim. It tastes good. Hania’s uncle – the one who was abroad in the war – he says foreigners can’t drink tea like ours, dark and sweet. I wonder what she drinks at home. Coffee probably.

Though we have plenty of coffee at home. Hania never has any problems there. Maybe she’d rather I did something else. But then – no money, no flat. Maybe she’d just rather I was someone else – not so big, so heavy, so much of a peasant. Well, my grandad was, wasn’t he? Little farm (though that’s a fancy word for it) down in the south. Of course, it was another country then. Hania’s a city girl herself. Her dad ran the restaurant by the old post office before he died. Actors, politicians, factory directors – they all used to come to his place. They were always used to money, that family. Then the old man died. And after that … ? Well, there was me.

But the American … I suppose she’d wonder why I’m a cop. Well, we’re not exactly liked, are we? The eldest kid doesn’t brag about it at school. Not nowadays, anyway.

Maybe it’s because of that old bastard of a school teacher we had when I was fifteen. Old, bald, wizened geezer. Fancy, stuck-up voice. Pre-war intelligentsia fallen on hard times. Had nothing to lose, I suppose – the Germans killed his wife – so he used to take the mickey out of me because I was bit slower than the others. Didn’t speak right. Held my pen funny. I don’t even remember. My dad didn’t give a tinker’s for education, wanted me to be out working as soon as I could. So why should I care? Fucking school director was a mate of this teacher. Protected him. God knows how he got through the fifties though. But they got him in ’68, when they fixed the Jews.

And then the kids that used to come to the cottages by the lakes. Doctors’ sons, school teachers’ sons. Big city kids. They used to nick our girls, call us yokels. It’s nice to kick the shit out of people like that nowadays. Of course, it’s not like the fifties. You’ve got to be more careful these days. But you do get an odd chance. Soft little bastards they usually are too.

But I like home. I like the kitchen (Hania just got it all repannelled – cost an arm and a leg too). I like the kitchen all crowded and steamy, with Ma and Hania cooking and shouting at each other. And a couple of the kids. Or maybe Hania’s sister and her little ones. (As long as she leaves that husband of hers behind, little wanker. Always bleating about the priest.) Not that they can all get in at once, mind you. And maybe some poppy-seed cake, or a sponge. Or some herrings and cream (Hania does them real well). The windows all steamed over and the air heavy almost. I love it.

I wonder when she’ll notice I’m here.

She’s a good looker though. A bit skinny, I reckon, under that coat. Thin, narrow face, turned up nose, black straight hair. Tall. Five ten probably. Can’t see her eyes from here.

Nice German coat. What? A hundred and fifty dollars. Nice boots. Can’t get those here. Not even for dollars. She’ll mess them up if she wears them all the time. She should get a pair here. I could tell her about this little man in the capital. Out in the suburbs. A Jew, I bet. But a good shoemaker.

I wonder if she’s Jewish.





I don’t see much of Philip since we got here. He’s out most of the day at work. And then there are his trips. He has to travel all over the country – seeing people, fixing things up. He seems tired, full of stress. This is the first time they’ve had someone up here, although the office in the capital has been there for years. It’s been a really good thing for him to get this job. He says he has to make a success of it.

It bores me out of my gourd.

We have people over a lot. Most of them speak good English, and with dollars you can get most of the food you need, so it’s not too much trouble.

I read. Not very much. It’s difficult to get English books here, and we didn’t bring many with us. For some reason we’ve an old Bantam edition of Wuthering Heights, very worn and cracked. Neither of us remembers buying it. But I read it again and again. Especially certain bits. The dream at the beginning. I can really see it. The little girl’s cold hand and her voice crying to be let in. And I like the way Cathy and Heathcliff do everything but screw. I mean, it gets pretty explicit at times. Like just before she dies.

But I suppose I’m alone a lot. Though sometimes it’s like it used to be. We lie in bed. I read and he smokes. It helps him relax. I don’t mind the smoke. In fact, I rather like it. It’s like an old French movie – as if he was my lover. He keeps a packet of cigarettes in the drawer by the bed specially.

Sometimes I put my head on his chest and watch the smoke make patterns in the air. I imagine we’re in a little attic in Paris or maybe London.

I worry though. He’s pale and says his stomach hurts him. But he says he has to work.

I’m alone in the apartment a lot, especially because it’s winter just now. But I don’t feel like going out too much. I like it in our apartment.

We have three rooms, which is a lot for here. Philip uses one as a kind of office. Then there’s a big front room and our bedroom. They didn’t give us much furniture, so it looks a bit bare, but I have a few books and a couple of pictures from home. It doesn’t look bad.

The weather is gray all the time. It gets dark at three-thirty.

I like to lie in bed in the apartment and listen to the noises in our block – water running down the pipes, the groan of a cistern, a closet door closing, the creak of a bed, a baby crying. Outside I can hear car engines start, or children playing. Dogs bark. Every afternoon the black birds fly over the house. Huge flocks of them, hundreds, going seawards, crying. If I lie a certain way in bed, I can see them against the gray sky, hundreds of them, skimming past, riding the wind.

The first snow fell the other day, a thin coating, soon brown and wet.

I went for a walk yesterday along a street I hadn’t walked on before. Not far from ours, just off the main road. Large factory buildings, one only half-finished, but with no sign of any more work being done; one with a wall of bare, badly fitting concrete blocks – both new buildings. An electricity generating station. A torn wire fence. A half-finished road, ending in muddy puddles. On the low hills beyond the factories’ empty frames, an orchard (black trees curling on the still white snow), and terraced allotments. Grey sky and brown, black snow.

I wandered over a piece of empty ground underneath the hill our apartments are on. Bare. flat. Mud. On the ground, a single car door, red, battered. Children playing soccer on a muddy field without enthusiasm. Two men walking slowly by the field. Some of the black birds that are everywhere these days moving idly, purposelessly on the slope. Grey sky and cold open space. It felt very friendly.

Do I miss home? Why am I here?

A horse and cart move around our neighborhood – a red brown horse with matted hair, a heavy wooden cart with rubber wheels. There are potatoes in huge, dark sacks in the back. The man standing in the cart holds the reins and rings a handbell. He calls out as they move slowly between the buildings in the rain. As it grows darker …

I feel very lonely here sometimes.





I’ve spent years watching. An expert. Patiently. Slowly. Waiting for someone else. And I like it. You get off in a world of your own. Make your mind a blank. Just watch and wait. The car’s your shell, part of you. Warm and comfortable. You have your tea, your sandwiches. And you watch. Somebody. Something. It’s cushy.

Pictures from watching. Ones that keep coming back. Winter trees against the sky. Thin, black branches. Telephone wires. Lighted windows. People moving behind thin curtains. A fat old lady in a doorway calling in her dog. The front of an old apartment block, paint peeling in a dozen places in the lamp light. Women moving in the evening light between shops and their houses, drifting like leaves through the dark.

Back at the office, they laugh at me when I report in. “How’s the American?” they ask. “Piotrek says she’s a smasher, eh?” I just shrug.

But she is, and I’ve started to wait for when she goes out. And I watch her.





In winter the Old Town is like a dark Gothic maze. Something Walt Disney might have thought of, but darker, much darker. Thin, high-gabled houses, narrow, closed-in streets. Arched gateways to the streets, covered with snow. A statue in a fountain – a figure of time, a peasant, stiff and erect, a square hat on his head and snow on his shoulders, a huge scythe in his hand. A character from a Hardy novel. Snow piled high against the sides of the buildings.

I walk quickly through the streets. Sometimes I stop and look in the windows of the little basement shops. They are bright and warm, full of silver jewelry.

I know he’s following me, and I like it. I walk quickly, the cold air catching the back of my throat. It’s mid-afternoon, but the air is already hazy, darkening, and the lights are on in the jewelry stores and tourist shops, and the upper windows of the tall, thin houses. I enjoy leading him here and there, by the huge, wet, dark walls of the church, round by the old, crumbling market the Germans built, threading the narrow streets, down to the frozen river. Across on the other side are some bombed-out warehouses, overgrown with pale, wintry grass. Further downstream, a chimney pours out thick, amber smoke into the gray sky.

He is big and heavy. I can see that. He wears a heavy, black coat that looks shiny from a distance. He has a flat cap pulled down over his forehead, but I can see the black hair and the heavy mustache. His breath is in clouds too. He is always there watching, here on the street, or in his car.

This is my routine now. In the morning I go to the stores and buy food for the day. Fresh rolls, milk, some vegetables. The same gray sky, the same blocks. the same gray grass.





The diner is quiet at this time of day. The air is warm and wet, and the windows are all steamed up so that people outside are just dark shapes. I spoon up the dumplings in milk sauce and chew them. Off duty for today. Piotrek or Marek can take over for a bit. She never goes out at this time of day anyway.

She smiled at me that first time and I didn’t know what to do. She must have looked for ages. And then she smiled. Christ, I thought, what do I do?

She walked past the car, close to it. I watched her in the wing mirror as she passed me. Or rather I watched her bum, nice buttocks, in tight jeans. A nice shape to run your hand over. Then she stopped and stared out over the valley for a bit. And then … the look, the smile.

I suppose I should have reported it. Told them back at the office. But I didn’t. I was afraid they’d take me off her.

Today she did it again. Walked to the shops and then back towards the car. And then the long look at me and a smile.

I guessed she could see my face in the mirror. If you watch someone, I suppose they can always watch you too.

I smiled back.





I know his face better now. His hair is black and straight. It looks greasy and falls over the right side of his forehead. Brown eyes with dark lashes. His skin is cheesy, pale, covered in small dark pores. The mustache covers his lips. I wonder what it would be like to kiss a man with a mustache. And his hands – huge, heavy – they lie on the steering wheel.

I like his smile. Shy, cautious somehow, not confident. Though he’s older, maybe ten years older than me. Late thirties, I’d say. I bet his teeth are bad. They all have bad teeth here.

Philip’s away a lot again – sometimes for ten days now. I live in the apartment alone. I cook, I read, I listen to the Russian radio in English. I stand at the kitchen window and look out over the bare trees along the edge of the valley.

The Russian radio seems so strange to me, heavy, fake, like people trying to be jolly who aren’t really. I thought of a kind of story, not really a proper story, but one after all, I suppose. I took bits from the radio – copied them down (I had a pencil and paper ready for the best ones sitting in the kitchen by the window) – and joined them to the parts I wrote myself. It seems pretty weird, but I like it. I call it “Radio Moscow.”

“Radio Moscow”

After the Kremlin chimes, we invite you to stay tuned for the news and other features … Seventeen hours UTC in the thirty-four and forty-three meter wave band …

I pull on bra and panties, lacy whispers that hold my breasts and bum. Then a little slip top, cool and slithery. My stockings are laid out on the bed. I sit down and draw them on over long stretched legs.

John Woodford attended news conferences where captured bandits spoke … A British instructor taught him to blow up bridges and houses, and in West Germany he was taught to use remote control devices …

A tight black skirt, cinched in a the waist. Its hem brushes my knees.

… swept by mass actions of protest against the pro-American dictatorship … in support of the struggle waged by peace-loving forces … participants in the colloquium at Jena were scientific workers and military specialists …

A soft silk blouse, bright sky blue. Blue is for winners. I button it slowly and brush up the collar. I tuck it in the waist band of my skirt. I feel my belly flat and hard.

They stressed the need for pulling these countries’ efforts together on a peaceful and democratic basis … expanding their interaction on the international scene … the rights of the nations to self-determination and non-interference in the affairs of other countries … this can hardly be achieved in so far as relations of distrust exist between nations … we must practice a policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of others …

I look in the mirror, practicing. I hold my head up high, making my neck long. I stare and smile.

… Olga Szubachova begins with “You Know It Won’t Happen Yet” …

My eye shadow. Light blue. I touch the corners of my eyes. The smell enchants me. I smooth a little rouge on my cheeks. I feel my lipstick caress my lips and make them full and sticky.

… at the Russian school of animal training … the world’s only animal theater … from faraway continents … elephants from Africa have come to love our sauerkraut and pickles … a nanny goat would look ravishing with a ruffle at her neck … how would you dress an elephant, I wondered … she’s grown out of her togs … grading animals’ costumes is very difficult … some animals love their costumes so much that they eat them … we don’t mind if this happens after the show … the world’s only animal theater …

A bright scarf round my neck. Crimson. It falls over my collar bone.

He got convinced that main Soviet agricultural facilities are not inferior to American farms …

I toss my head. My hair touches my shirt collar.

The largest Soviet record company, Melodyia, has issued a disc of Byelorussian folk songs … When we asked her colleagues about her, they mentioned sincerity, sympathy, readiness to give aid …

I slide my leg into one boot and zip it up. Then the other. Ready?

… the world has moved into a period of crucial decisions, yes, crucial decisions … we see a race which can inevitably lead to destruction …

Coat over my shoulders. It will be chill till I reach the car.

After the Kremlin chimes …

He clicked down the shabby stairs of the apartment block. Dead Kennedys scratched on the brown oil paint. Ready to start all over again.





I spoke to her. Jesus. I spoke to her.

She stops by the car window and smiles. I hear her through the glass. Clearly. “Hello,” she nods her head. I smile back and say hello.





Today.

Today I walk to the car and stand at the window. “Wind it down,” I say to myself. “Go on. Wind it down.” He does and looks up at me. We smile our secret smile.

“Tea,” I say in his language. “Come now. Tea.”

I don’t wait for an answer. I turn away and walk toward our block of apartments.

Five seconds. Ten maybe. That’s all.





Me? I follow.

Get out. Lock the car. A quick look up the street. No one important. The old ladies at the window don’t matter.

I follow.





Up the stairs to the door. My heart is racing (the cliché sounds right here), and I feel all hollow under my stomach. My breath comes hard.

He is behind me on the stairs. I can hear him. At the door, I turn and smile. I unlock it and we go inside. He waits for me to go first and closes the door behind me.

I stand in our living room. I notice it’s a bright day today, and the sun splashes across the floor. He stands in the hall in shadow, large and dark.

I turn and I seem to leap over the space to him.

And he catches me.

And I am kissing a man with a mustache.

My skirt seems up round my thighs, and I’m crushed against the bulk of his coat.

And I don’t care. I don’t care about anything.





My first thought is there’s nothing to her. I can hold her like a little doll. Her tongue’s everywhere, and I run my hand up inside her skirt.

All I know is I want to screw her.

I know the place well by now so I back up, still holding her (Christ, she practically jumped to me) and kick open the bedroom door.





I am an adulteress now. That’s all I can think, here on the bed, as we make love. I am doing this here, now. Me.

It’s amazing how different bodies are. You get used to one shape, one arrangement of bones and flesh, one hair line, one set of genitals, one skin. And then suddenly you’re embracing, fondling, stroking another, and it’s grinding and heaving on top of you, pressing in new, strange places.

I dig my nails into his buttocks. Philip loves this. But he grunts and reaches behind to knock my hand away. “No,” he says in his language, and holds my arms out on either side of me. He looks at me for a moment, his weight pressing down on me, dark brown, expressionless eyes. “American whore,” he’s thinking. “American whore.”

I watch myself as in a movie. I am moving beneath him. My hands are running over his back. My legs, my mouth, my voice. I am here, doing this, and enjoying it. Oh yes, enjoying it.

The taste of the stale tobacco from his breath is in my mouth.

He rolls off me and he’s on his back staring at the ceiling. We lie side by side. I look out the windows at the passing clouds in the blue sky. I can’t believe in winter.

Sex like this is out of time.

I am an adulteress and alive.

Like in the movies, I turn to him and say (in his language): “Give me a cigarette.”

He lies a moment, turns and smiles, and then …

And then reaches into the drawer by the bed and pulls out a packet of Philip’s cigarettes.

“American. Good. Huh?”

Are they his first words?

He lights two and gives me one. We lie back and smoke.





I know the room pretty well now. We turned the apartment over three, four times when they first came. Didn’t expect to find anything. Just to be sure. Just so as we knew.

I can see her classy cosmetics at the foot of the bed. And then the box full of her underwear. We liked sifting through that.

Lots of books too. All in English. Intellectuals, eh?

What about her husband? Poor guy. Can’t get it up, I suppose. Or just not there. They can have more money than us, but no bloody use in bed, these foreigners.

I’m sleepy.

She’s a smasher though. All skin and bones, mind you. But real lively too. There on the bed, thin bones, marks of an old sun tan. Her hair splashed out behind her.

I touch her smooth, straight side with my hand. She sits up, looks at me and then steps over my legs. I feel the door open and she’s out of the room.

I feel sleepy, so I stub the cigarette out in an empty glass by the bed, and I let myself drift.





I don’t like this story any more. When writers write, I bet they do it for reasons we’d never guess. Just to create one or two moments, to recreate an atmosphere. And we might never know what it really was that made them write. Something they once saw or felt. The rest is just an excuse.

Why didn’t I notice the smell before? Like cabbage boiling in a kitchen on a cold washing day. And the clothes. The heavy, shiny jacket and trousers, the shirt with the worn cuffs. The pale blue underwear that doesn’t fit.

The smell of him. The brutality of our coupling. The weight of him on me.

I wrap the robe around me and go to the kitchen. My feet are bare over the cold floor. The long kitchen knife in my hand is like a jagged piece of metal, torn off in a car crash. I go back to the bedroom. He is on the bed asleep, completely unprotected, a white, flabby, hairy body. He looks dead already.

His throat is bent back. His hands are heavy and inert on the bed. Giant, swollen fingers, like huge fat worms.

I loved him. He was my lover.

So I stab and I stab through bone and flesh. So much blood, splashing everywhere.

I wash in the bathroom. Back in the bedroom, I collect my clothes quietly without looking at the bed. I pick my coat up from the floor of the hall, brushing it down gently. I take my bag and open the door. I don’t lock it behind me.





I woke in the late afternoon. The clouds had moved, the light was different. I sat up, suddenly afraid. Christ, two o’clock already. I started to pull my clothes on.

Where was she? The place was empty. No one. Only things.

I was in a hurry. I pocketed one of the bags of coffee on the kitchen table and let myself out the door.

I could have just left the door ajar. See how she’d like that – foreign bitch – but I didn’t. I pushed it gently to.

I got to the car five minutes before Piotrek.

“Well, where is she?” He grinned as he squeezed himself into the passenger seat.

“Fell asleep, didn’t I? She’s probably gone out.”

He laughed. “Don’t worry. It’s not important. She’ll come back. Who cares anyway? She’s nobody special.”





I walk along the gray street in a strange city. It’s early spring and the sky is blue. It’s cold, but maybe there’ll be buds on the trees soon. God, let there be buds soon.

I pass the white car. Always there, always watching. I know the man inside is smiling at me. I ignore him and walk back to the empty apartment





She never smiles now. Just stares through me. Maybe I should ask them to take me off her. But I don’t. I’ll wait some more. Maybe she’ll smile again.

Just watching.

A flight of pigeons over the valley, like a handful of black and white confetti, thrown up into the cold blue sky.

Be Easter soon.





Hamburg





Mid-November. 1949. London.

When he got off the boat train from Paris, and had walked stiffly through the early morning cold, he saw his friend waiting beyond the ticket gate. His coat collar was up, but his head was bare.

“Jim,” he said.

“Gavin.”

“You have come to meet me, haven’t you?”

“Don’t be daft. Of course not. I was waiting for three exotic dancers from Le Crazy Horse.”

They smiled at each other.

“But in their absence …??”

“You’ll do just fine.”

“Buy me a coffee?”

“Carry your bag a bit?”

He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. He was much taller.

“I’ll manage, old son.”





They went to a small French café in Soho, one they knew from the War.

“That place on the Rue Monge is still there,” the smaller one said.

“I didn’t have time. Ran from Austerlitz to Gare du Nord. I was late getting into Toulouse. Spanish trains. Their own pace.”

“Tired?”

The big man shrugged.

“Got a place to stay tonight?”

“I can always stay with my aunt. There are a couple of girls I could ’phone.”

They both smiled mischievously.

“Liz and I can put you up. We can get there after the reading. It’s only Kentish Town.”

“You’re sure?”

“Sure. I asked her last night. I think she’d even like to meet you.”

“I’m sorry I missed the wedding.”

“We didn’t expect you to come. It was, well, as they say, a quiet affair. Just a registry do. We couldn’t get away to get up north.”

“Did the families come down?”

“My mother and father did. Liz’s parents were both killed in the bombing on Clydebank.”

“Well, you found yourself a Scottish lassie.”

“She’ll be pleased to meet you, Gavin. She’s heard a bit.”

“You’ll come to the reading?”

“I always come. When I can.”

“Aye. These are some of the wartime poems. The ones from Italy. You’ve seen a couple.”

“I thought so. From the notice. Faber, eh? Nae bad, son. Did you meet Eliot?”

“No, but I’m going to this evening, amn’t I?”

“Better not say ‘amn’t I’ in front of him.”

“Am I not? I’m an aristo. I can say any goddam thing I please. He’s from St Louis, remember. Anyway, it’s good Scots.”

“I will observe with great interest. What role is it this evening? Wild man of the North? Old-young soldier been through hell? Mediterranean spiritus mundi? Rough trade with an interest in the wilder reaches of Baroque mysticism?”

“No, that’s Campbell, not me. Tell me, Jimmy, my lad. Why did you meet me off the train? Apart from just wanting to see me?”

“Well, the glamour of your company is something these days. I have a very literary assistant. She was rather impressed by the invitation to Queen Square.”

The smaller man paused. “But yes, I do have something on my mind. Any pressing engagements after, let’s say, Thursday? Care to go to Germany with me? Another coffee? Bun?”





They caught a bus back from the reading. The big man was tired. His friend could see it and spoke little. But when they got off the bus beyond Camden Town, they saw a late night café open. The big man gestured towards it. They went in, ordered milky teas, and sat down. The windows ran with steam.

“It was OK?”

“Gavin Douglas is a good poet, always has been. Even when he wasn’t a big man like he is now. And you can read your poems well, which is more than you can say of most. Faber and Faber were pleased. Eliot looked like one of his cats with a dish of thick milk. There were some serious men there, I think. That was MacNeice you were talking to. He looked happy too.”

“Yes. Indeed.” He rubbed his eyes. “Now, let’s get this straight. You want me to go with you to Germany on Friday. All costs covered by His Majesty George VI, King-Emperor of India, fides defensor. We will fly to Hamburg on a British military plane. We will then somehow get to a god-forsaken British Army base somewhere uncomfortably towards the zone of Soviet occupation, now, the infant German Democratic Republic (god bless her and keep her). We are travelling to the German lands moreover when there is, to say the least, still a bit of a flap on because the evil Russkies blockaded the fair city of Berlin, erstwhile capital of the Reich etc., for nigh on a twelvemonth this past year. Our allies the Yanks having none of it, and they and we building a jolly old Luftbrücke to aforementioned fair city, formerly seat of the viprous fascisti. Thus the Red fiends were seen off. There, in those aforesaid German lands, using our inimitable language skills – not to be sneezed at, I am aware; we both have firsts, though I’ve always considered yours weaker than mine, based on no evidence whatsoever – so employing our actually existing language skills (though what good fluent and accurate German is going to do us in our dealings with the British Army of Occupation, I do not know) – as I say, using those skills and our innate powers of detection (which I’m not sure we have), we are to investigate and solve the mystery surrounding the unexpected and doubtless untimely demise of a British senior military officer who met his death almost a year past, when the winds off the Lüneburger Heide were certainly distinctly chilly, as they are, indeed, now. This is full-blown November. In North Germany. These are the badlands.”

“Well, yes, that’s about it. Is there a problem you can see?”

“Apart from why you want me. Apart from why you have to go. Not really.”

“Im traurigen Monat November war’s, die Tage wurden trüber. Der Wind riß von den Bäumen das Laub. Da reist’ ich nach Deutschland hinüber.”

“Hmmn. Wie schaurig ist’s übers Moor zu gehen.”

“We can see if the new currency works.”

“Jim, knowing those bastards … it will. It will.”





As they walked down the empty street, Douglas asked again, “Why me, Jim?”

“Because I know that you report to the British Embassy in Madrid. So we’re in the same sort of business, as it were. Also because I like your company. And, further, because I finished the war as an acting captain. You were a real captain. You are also DSO and bar. A certified bloody hero. When I have to deal with those bastards in the brass, I want you at my side. I'm James Christie, the man from the ministry, the little man, with a funny Scottish accent. A war record that is solid, but not better than any other, in fact, not worth a damn. You're Gavin Douglas, a bloody aristo. They don't care if you’re a poet too. They don’t care that you’re a bloody Scottish poet. In fact, they may not know that you’re either. You outrank – morally speaking, in the bravery stakes – every single one of those bastards. Believe me. I know what I’m doing.”





Liz bustled around, poured them some wine, took a glass herself. There was a copy of his last volume of poems on a table in the corner. It looked read. She smiled at them both. The fire lit the side of her face.

“Welcome, Gavin. You are surely welcome.”

Gavin thought her very pretty and cracked a huge grin back.

As he unpacked in the tiny cold room at the back of the house, James knocked. He came in and laid a ministry envelope on the bed.

“Read that tomorrow morning. Get some sleep now.”





Douglas read through the ministry file as he sat in the Christies’ kitchen. Both had gone to work early in the dark morning. He looked out at the pleasantly wild garden, the lavender bushes tall and tossing in the wind, the bare branches of a cherry tree scratching the gray sky, rain tossing down through the gusts. Why did he always forget how cold England could be? He spread James’s mother’s raspberry jam thickly on a piece of toast.

Sir Nicholas Fairbairn. Brigadier. Found dead – shot, straight to the heart, Douglas noted (how Victorian) – in an Army car, off the road, ten miles from the Kaltenbrünnen camp, in a stand of birch trees. Dead for several hours when found by a local forestry worker. Gun held close to the dead man’s chest. Gun left in car. Suicide? A clever murder? No note had been found. Fairbairn. Good Scottish name. No such antecedents however. Long and distinguished career. Subaltern in the first show. Lieutenant at the end of it. Stayed in the peacetime regular army. Although in his case “peacetime” is a bad joke. Service in Ireland, Iraq, India, Burma, Palestine. Burma? My God, Burma. Active service, to put it mildly, throughout the Hitler war. BEF. Dunkirk. Crete. Western Desert. Italy. Northern France. Tobruk. El Alamein. Anzio. Monte Cassino. Caen. The Ardennes. (My God, Douglas thought, a hard war. Either a good man to be beside, or a dreadful one. Did others get out along with him?) Palestine. (Bloody hell.) Always refused staff appointments. A combat officer. Thus, only Brigadier after thirty-three years. (He must have been good at killing people though.)

So who killed him? Perm any one of these. A German revanchist national. The Jews. The Irish. The Arabs. Did he have any black marks from some dusty maidan in north India? Over-zealous interrogation of suspects in a Lucknow lock-up? A lone Indian nationalist gunman, left over from the INA, making his solitary way from the ruins of Berlin?

Personal? Whatever that means nowadays. Who knows? For us to find out?

Am I doing anything for the next few weeks? Poems to write? Novels to work on? Nothing that pressing. Jimmy asked very nicely.

Today is Tuesday. We leave on Friday. Two days to do a little digging.

Douglas went into the hall, picked up the telephone and dialled.





They left for Guildford the next morning. Douglas drove. It was his aunt’s car.

“And the last time you drove a Hillman was?” Christie asked.

“You’d be surprised. A fine vehicle. A fine marque. I prefer something a bit racier myself. But a year in the Generalissimo’s Spain has taught me humility when it comes to transport. One takes what one can get.”

“Remind me how your aunt knows Fairbairn’s wife?”

“My aunt knows everyone. But I don’t think she exactly knows Frau Brigadier. More knows those who know her. I’m sure Aunty Meg thinks Guildford is desperately suburban. As we do. Do we not? But we should talk to the wife, do you not think?”

“The inconsolable widow?”

“Well, let’s see. My aunt had some words to say on that score.”





They parked on the street. The house was tall and set back from the road. Dull grass and a pebble drive way. They got out of the car. Douglas looked at his watch. Christie smiled at him.

“A Special Branch acquaintance of mine said always get there early. It throws the interviewee.”





But it didn’t. Christie watched Douglas charm the widow. She spoke with him alone. She sat on a chintzy floral couch against the bay window. She crossed her legs. Silky swishes. Black dress, but elegantly cut, nice material. Liz would die for it. Younger than he’d expected. Dark hair, fashionably cut. Perfume, something classy. Liz would know. Forty, no more. Shaken still, he’d guess. Genuinely shaky. But being the officer’s wife. Eyes uneasy. She smoked elegantly but a lot. In the ashtray a crowd of half-smoked cigarettes, the ends touched with red. No want of money, anyway. The house was pleasantly warm, well-furnished. He felt, as ever, clumsy in his thick shoes on the thick blue rug. He wanted to take them off, but knew socks were not quite appropriate here. That constant sense of never being salonfähig. He listened. She had been in England when it happened. No, she didn’t go with Sir Nicholas on his postings. Never. It was their arrangement. It was sometimes lonely without him, of course, but she had become used to it in wartime. He preferred her out of harm’s way. Most of the postings had, in any case, been in very hostile places. She had stayed with him in India, of course, in ’34 to ’36. Well, that was different, of course. But since the War, no. This was the first posting for years in, she supposed, a peaceful place. Well, after all, it seemed it wasn’t, was it? Enemies? Well, a man in his position, in his line of work … he hadn’t made friends in thirty years of soldiering. No, no idea who, in particular. Had he seemed upset before his death? No, just as usual when he came over to see her a few weeks before it happened. Stiff-upper-lip. Never complained, ever. Stiff necked even. Men like him don’t, do they? She looked over her shoulder, out the bay window, to the lawn and shrubs and thick wet sky. “I miss him so, gentlemen. Forgive my emotion. You’ll understand. Even though I saw him only when he had leave, or could make sudden trips back. He was … a fine man. A soldier. A gentleman. He loved me deeply.” No, no children. He felt it was not a world for children. “He had a dark side, you know. He had seen so much. So much darkness. I think we asked too much of men like Nicholas. In the end, I see him alone on that cold plain in north Germany, after all those years of, well, fighting. In the winter’s dark. Oh, I don’t know. I feel so sad for him. And I wasn’t there to help him in whatever the situation there was. And now he’s gone. Oh, he left me well cared for. Look around you, gentlemen. But he, he is not here.”





In the car they waited as if by arrangement. Ten minutes. Fifteen. A car drove, rather fast, out of the Fairbairns’ drive. A green Humber. London licence plates. A man driving. Tall behind the wheel, forty, forty-five, black hair cut short, military moustache. They looked at each other. Something? Nothing? Everything?

“We’ll remember that face, shall we?”

“And the licence plate.”

They drove back to London silently. When they returned, Christie went to his office to settle the paperwork before their trip. Douglas brought the car back to his aunt’s and haunted happily the bookshops along the Charing Cross Road.





Douglas felt too big for the little back room with its view onto the narrow garden. When he’d got back to the Christies’, Jim, in shirt sleeves, had been drying dishes while Liz, in a pinafore, washed. He had heard the slow murmur of their voices and the brisk clink of dishes as he let himself in. He brought a bottle of wine, but they drank only a glass each, before Liz suggested they get some sleep before tomorrow. Douglas lay on the narrow, but not uncomfortable, bed and stared at the ceiling. He thought of the little town on the coast not far from Granada – the sun, the white walls, the barren hills rising behind, the heat, the blinking brightness of the Mediterranean. “The dancing / Fusillade of sunlight on the water,” MacNeice had written. That was good. And what now? He’d been inveigled into a trip into the German darkness. He wasn’t sure he wanted to go back. Army of Occupation. Hunger winter. 1946. 1947. De-mob couldn’t come fast enough. Black light. Cold. Ruins. Pale faces eaten by defeat.

And that was just us, he muttered to himself.





Ruins, and lots of them, as the military plane banked over Hamburg, and the dark waters of the Elbe estuary. Christie glanced at his friend. He and Douglas, he supposed, would have looked more if they had not been so used to ruins. But Operation Gomorrah and all its later godchildren had been … what was the word? … blunt, thorough, to the point. Palisades of walls covered in snow. House shells. Chimney stacks still standing. Lights in the cellars. Wooden lean-tos. Smoke curling into the grey afternoon air.





Kaltenbrünnen Barracks. Reichswehr, then Wehrmacht, now British and Commonwealth Forces. 14th Hampshire Regiment. Distinguished service in every British war since the Peninsula. Colonel Belfer, former ADC to Brigadier Fairbairn, now temporary OC, face like that of a Spanish saint. Outside, the snow, caught in the lamp light, whipped and whirled and danced over the cobbled square. Tea sat hot and heavy in thick mugs on the desk. The lamp caught the side of the Colonel’s thin face and sculpted it.

“I was with him in Crete, you know,” the Colonel sighed. “On that bloody retreat to the sea. Other places too. Nicholas was one of the bravest men I’ve ever met. Let me give you an example. There were plenty of them, God knows. Crete. We were being thrashed. Held up by a German machine-gun nest. Our man crawled on his belly three hundred yards, bullets bouncing off the ground and the rocks, and he lobbed a handful of grenades into it. Fixed the blighters. We were held up by another machine-gun post in a small house. Did the same. Crawled on himself, just with his Sergeant Vickery, and they chucked the grenades in the door. Messy. But it put a stop to them. He took a piece of mortar in the shoulder and a bullet in the foot. He kept on with his arm in a sling, hobbling along, sometimes on Vickery’s shoulder, trying to get the German gun positions marked. Shot at the Germans with his rifle propped on a tree fork one time. Poor bloody Kraut got so close once, he fell over the barrel. We were all a mess on that retreat. That retreat. Yes, there were others in those days. We got used to them. Nicholas had been at Dunkirk. But you know that. Skin and bones and rags, most of us, on that one. Dysentery. Dehydration. Sunburn. He was no better. Worse with his wounds. Somehow he pulled himself up the side of one of those steep ravines they have there, he and Vickery, with the bren gun. Took out a German patrol. Hurt them badly. He didn’t seem to care what they threw at him. But careful with his own men’s lives. You know, you chaps. You know. You went through it all too. I’ve heard of you, Captain Douglas. And you, too, Mr Christie. Good records, both of you. I asked around before you came out, I must confess. Strange to come back to this after all this time. Anyway, Nicholas took risks himself, but he didn’t send you to do stupid things. And never just for glory. Whatever that is. Always to hurt the bloody Germans. To hurt them, and hurt them again and again. And yet, when they surrendered, he was quite correct. Correct, yes. A good soldier, gentlemen. I don’t know if we’d have won without men like him. And where would we be?” The Major looked out at the dark barracks yard. “The SS hanged little kids, deserters they called them, from those lamps. They were still there when we arrived. Dangling there. Back in ’45. And then Buchenwald. Just down the road. Well. Where were you chaps then?”

“Resting up outside Trieste. Scared we were going to be shipped out to Japan,” Douglas said softly. “Any ideas about his death, sir?”

“No, since you ask me. I can’t conceive why or how he died. Suicide? I think not. He had had, shall we say, dozens of opportunities to finish it all. In the desert. In the bocage. On the Rhine. God in Heaven, they even sent him to Palestine in ’46. Very easy for a chap to get his head blown off there. So someone did him in? Maybe. But the Brigadier was very tough. Very aware. Very on guard. No one’s fool. Not an easy man to kill, I’d say. I wouldn’t like to try anyway, even if I had a reason. It’s beyond me.” The Colonel gripped the bridge of his nose. “Beyond me, gentlemen. I wish you luck. Though what you’ll find now that the trail’s gone so cold, that I do not know.”





Cold. It’s so bloody cold, thought Douglas, as he tried to keep some heat under the thin blanket. Why are we here? Some whim of the War Office? So they put this across Jimmy’s desk? Police work isn’t really my line. Or his. They know that. Some secret they want dug up? Something they want stopped? Pre-empt another investigation? Save an English hero? Pull one down? Stop looking for conspiracies. It’s just happened. It’s cold. We ask questions. We listen. Maybe soon we can go home. That courtyard, the snow, the old soldier’s stories – ideas for a poem or two there?





“Liz, ask about Brigadier Fairbairn. Please. Your friend at the FO. Anywhere else, anyone else you think you can without calling any much attention to it. Quiet words. I should have thought of this right away. Silly, amn’t I? Me a policeman. Gavin. Why are we here? Why are we here? The man’s a certified hero, that’s all we know. Why dig around now? Sorry. I was too excited to be going to Germany to think of this. Yes, Liz, too vain. Please. Find something for me. What? Oh yes, Gavin’s fine. Aren’t you, Gavin? Just fine.”





They set up office in one of the cold whitewashed rooms on the ground floor. Under the window the metal ribs of the radiator were burning hot. It was still dark at eight o’clock. The darkness came again around four. They interviewed Fairbairn’s fellow officers. Nothing of substance, thought Christie. Mostly temporary gentlemen, war-time intake, they barely knew him, this aloof, hard man, from another time. But they had respect. “Scrupulously fair,” one captain said. “Hard, but fair,” said the second lieutenant, sincerity all over his pimply face.

“Well, now for the sergeant,” said Douglas, his hands behind his head, stretching before the window.

Regimental Sergeant-Major Thomas Vickery. Hair cropped brutally short, held in place by glistening cream. Thin moustache over his closed lips. Every button shining. Uniform a crisp carapace. His voice was strangely soft, the south-east proletarian accent like an undercurrent. Christie and Douglas – who knew of these things – felt he could have ditched it completely, or worked it up, at will, and that he probably did. He took a cigarette from Douglas. They smoked. Christie watched the smoke curl in the lamp light.

These were the men that had terrified him when he was a second lieutenant in 1941, thought Christie. The men, he’d worked out, who really ran the British Army. Once he established that he was supposed to do what his sergeant told him, and was prepared to do it, he was all right. You just had to seem to give the right orders as if they were yours. In the end, you knew what those orders should be, and the sergeant didn’t have to take you aside to explain. And go into the building or over the hill first. That was hard too, he remembered.

“I was with the Brigadier in Flanders. His first company. We both made it through to the end. More than you could say for most of us. Came out in mid-’17. I stayed with him after ’18. He took me with him. Everywhere. He trusted me, I suppose.”

‘You must have seen some dangerous times together.”

The glance of the old soldier.

“Well, yes, sir. Iraq was no picnic. Nor Palestine either. And I didn’t think we’d make it off that bloody pier in Dunkirk until we were on the boat.”

“Ireland?”

“We were regular Army, sir. Not irregulars. Not Tans. The Brigadier didn’t hold with them much. He’d no time for indiscipline. And the Tans were not half out of control. He didn’t think that war was there to be won anyway. He never cared for guerrilla stuff. Knew about it, thought about it, didn’t he just, but he didn’t like it. Cork. Rangoon. Haifa. Nor do I, I must confess. Too many civilians. It gets very messy. Thank the Lord, the Krauts rolled over in ’45.”

“India?”

“India was a dream, sir. The only years, it seems, we weren’t getting shot at. Well, not a lot. Some police work. Facing down crowds – a few times. No, we were happy there. He liked the food, the heat. He took up bird watching. Can you believe it? Not that there weren’t some amazing birds to see there. Colours. Calls. No. No bad memories. He liked the traditions. The barracks going back a hundred years. Stories of the Afghan campaigns. It’s not the Indians came after him, if that’s what you think. Nor the Micks either, begging your pardon. Not like Sir Henry Wilson back in ’22. I remember that. The shock of it. No, sir. Picking off a British Staff Officer in London. The Brigadier was too young to have made real enemies in Ireland. We did some bitter things there. It was a civil war. Or became one. A real one once we left anyway. But nothing that would stick to him, if you know what I mean. Me neither.”

“So you don’t think he killed himself?”

“Sir. No. I knew Sir Nicholas. As well as anyone. No. He wouldn’t have. Never. No. Someone did for him.”

“Why?”

“I cannot tell, sir. Germans maybe. These werewolves we’ve heard about. Though I’ve not seen any in all my time here. Nor seen any Germans with the stomach for more fighting. When you’re beat, you’re beat.”

“We were beat at Dunkirk, but kept on.”

“Yes, sir. And at Narvik. And in Singapore. And in the desert it was a close thing, wasn’t it? For you were there, I think, sir, weren’t you? We all breathed a sigh or two of relief after Alamein. I know I did.”

“What did he think of the Germans?”

“Well, what would he think, sir? What do you think of them? Two bloody wars. And then when we get here, we see what they’d got up to in those camps. That one just a few miles from here. I don’t think he cared for the bastards too much. But correct, you know. Always correct. Tried to be fair. That’s how I see it anyway.”

“Did he have enemies?”

The Sergeant shrugged. “Half the world, I suppose. We soldiered over enough of it. I can’t really say though. It’s all a mystery to me. If you mean personal enemies, I wouldn’t have said so. His life was all soldiering. No time for friends. Or enemies.”

“Except you.”

“Except. . . ? I don’t quite follow.”

“Do you miss him?”

The look of the old soldier again. What can they know? Bloody Johnnies-come-lately? They think they know because they did a bit soldiering in the forties. What do they know of bloody Baghdad? Of the retreat in Crete? Of Dun-bloody-kirk? But a polite reply.

“There’s not a day passes but I think of him, more than once too, and what we went through together. Not a day – and mark this, sirs – not a day I don’t thank the Lord that I could be with him for all those years. Whoever killed him – and I know someone did – may he rot in hell. If I knew who it was, I’d pull the blessed trigger myself.”





“Protest too much?” asked Christie.

“What do you think?”

“No. No. He loved the man. See his eyes when he spoke. He climbed up the side of the ravine in Crete with Fairbairn.”

“Maybe that’s the point.”

“He got the medals, and Vickery didn’t? But he did. He got a DCM after Crete. He’s a bloody Regimental Sergeant Major. And not daft enough to want to be an officer. No need. Not a man others mess about with. I’d say he’d done well for the illegitimate son of a shop girl. Or a clerk’s kid from Bedford. Or whatever.”

“Yes. I take your point. Fairbairn watched over him. From the officers’ mess, of course.”

“Oh, Gavin. Give over. Do you think a man like Vickery has ever wanted to be in the bloody officers’ mess? With that shower of pansies? I’m not sure we did. No one gave us any choice, as I recall. No, it’s not there we’ll have to look.”

“Where then?”

“I think the German police. Tomorrow. Bright and early.”

“Bright?”

“Early then.”





They were driven to Hamburg in the morning dark. More ruins. A Flakturm, massive, indestructible, obscene. Snow. Black skies. Cold. A tall brick building with shrapnel scars and bullet holes. A young policeman met them at the door. People milling by the entry way. Long echoing corridors, painted green halfway up the walls. Arched ceilings. Ninth floor. Wide stairs. Polizeikommissar Meier. In his early thirties. Their age. Nondescript suit, dark hair, neutral eyes. Watching them.

They spoke German. Meier gave no evidence that he could or wanted to speak English. No murky, ill-pronounced little English phrases slipped into the bright stream of his German. He’d had them checked out, clearly. The office looked out over the still dark and ruined city. Christie did the talking mostly.

“The suicide argument is nonsense,” Meier said with surprising abruptness. “I don’t believe it, nor did your people. In any case, you do not shoot yourself in the heart. It is inefficient. We all know how it’s done. Someone killed your Brigadier.”

“He was a trained soldier, Herr Kommissar. Someone got very close to him. Someone used his own revolver.”

“Yes.” He spread his hands. “You can draw your own conclusions.”

“How was the Brigadier seen by the local population?”

“By the Germans? You think a German killed him?”

“We don’t know. We’re only asking.”

“You are not policemen, meine Herren. Is that correct? Your military police have already talked to me about this.”

“No, we’ve been sent by London.” Christie cleared his throat. He doesn’t ever want to say who we are, thought Douglas. Whoever we are. “We’re interested in re-examining the case. We are interested in your opinion of the matter.”

“Really interested? A German policeman’s opinion.”

“Really interested, Herr Kommissar.”

“I can see why. It is suspended. A mystery. Well … would it be convenient if a German were responsible? Rather not, I think. I think you would like a domestic solution. Une femme perhaps. But no. The Brigadier had no liaisons. He was a man wedded to duty. A model officer. You see, I carried out my own investigations. For the case intrigued me. There was a man who had been fighting since 1917, was it? And here after more than thirty years someone does what no Pommeranian sniper, no I.R.A. gunman, no Iraqi hill tribesman, no Indian nationalist fanatic … and so on and so on … and no Afrikakorps Feldwebel … had been able to do. He even came back from Palestine unscathed. It is very odd.”

“How do you think he was perceived by the locals?”

“I thought of that too. After all. Maybe. Well, very well. He was seen as fair. Predictable. Which is much to be valued in an occupied country. You value predictability. He was respected. Again, I thought … strange. A man who fought the Germans not just once, but twice. A man badly wounded, I believe, more than once. To treat us with courtesy. Consideration even. Remarkable.”

“You know this?”

“I have talked with his translators. Young civilians he used – to talk with the authorities, with professional groups, with … anyone. Farmers. Policemen. Quite different from some officers … and men … of the occupation forces, I may say. The translators spoke highly of him. He tried to make his thoughts clear. To explain himself. Courteous, they said. Correct. All of them.”

“But you have no insight into the case. Beyond what you have told us.”

Meier opened his broad hands.

“I would say this. He was off his guard. He had arranged to meet his killer.”

“Or it was someone he knew.”

“Maybe. But out there on the heath? He went there to meet someone. The someone he was to meet got in the car. That person took the Brigadier’s own revolver. And shot him. There in the car as they sat side by side.”

“You know that?”

“Policeman’s imagination, meine Herren.”





Then as they walked back to the car, suddenly he was with them again, stepping out of the darkness, from a side entrance.

“You left this notebook in my office, Herr Christie. I am returning it.”

They stared at him. He was empty handed. He spoke in English.

“A courtesy to our visitors. I thought I would return it myself. Quickly. Please listen to me. I neither love nor hate the British. I am not from Hamburg, but from much further east. This is my home now, but my people did not suffer in the bombing. I fought you in Italy and in France. I am your reflection. I have become a policeman. Once I had other plans. You do police work now. Maybe you had other plans too. We are all living and sometimes tidying up the loose ends of war. And there are many. Briefly, if you ask me is there anything odd that somehow, somehow might be connected with the Brigadier’s death, it is this. About the time the Brigadier was shot, sometime that evening, there was a fight, a very serious fight between a German national and two British soldiers. In a bar in Kaltenbrünnen. The British soldiers picked a fight with the German and attempted to kill him. That is what the barman told me. He said they meant to kill. He knew. He is not a man inclined to call a thrown punch a grievous assault. He ran a bar there when the Wehrmacht was stationed in the barracks. Men who had been on the Russian Front. They were not kind or happy. He said the British soldiers – two corporals – sought the man out, picked a fight, and had every intention of finishing the man off. Very big men. Thugs, according to the barman. Born killers. They were disturbed by your MPs. A chance visit. The near victim ran out the back of the bar. The barman said he was nondescript, medium height etc. But he was not from here. He had an accent from Saxony. The barman knows accents. It was a game with the soldiers from the barracks to spot regional accents. This may mean everything or nothing.”

“The British soldiers?”

“For you to find. Not for me. But this has not been in any report of the case that has passed my desk. Of course, it may be quite unconnected. But you might want to …”

“Look into it?”

“Yes. I would say so.”

“Why are you telling us this here, and not in your office?”

“It’s better. When I am told to stop thinking about something, I think that that is maybe something important. I don’t like the old men who sent us to war. I don’t like it when they tell me again what to do. I think you understand me. Well, gentlemen. It has been a pleasure. If I can be of any service again, please let me know.”

“The name of the bar, Herr Kommissar?”

“Of course. Lottchens Schenke. Eckkneipe. Marbachstraße. The proprietor’s name is Klaus Hertel. Mention my name.”





The drove back through the grey midday.

“He was helpful.”

“Interesting, yes.”

“You’re uneasy?”

Douglas thought for a moment. “I object to being told by ex-Wehrmacht that we are somehow … any how … his mirror images. We didn’t start the fucking war, did we? And maybe we have a few things on our conscience,” he pointed out the window to a blackened moonscape between empty buildings, “but they’re hands are dripping.”

He paused again. Christie watched him.

“They almost put me off Heine. The bastards.”

He cleared his throat.

“Eckkneipe tonight?”

“I think so.”





You have to go to the crime scene, Christie thought to himself as they drove along the bumpy sandy track. But why? Some primitive magic? The sky had cleared a little and the rain had stopped. Douglas sat in the front seat with the Corporal who was driving. Belfer sat with Christie behind. The Colonel leaned forward. He talked to Douglas.

“It must have been about here. Yes. Just up ahead. By that clump of firs. Stop the car now, Forbes.”

They got out. The soldiers in the jeep that had followed them stayed sitting in it. There was a wind and the air was cold. The wind pulled at their coats. The clump of firs was at the bend of the road. You could see who was coming in both directions. There was a clear view over the moor to the left. The soil was sandy. Christie dug the toe of one shoe in it. Low furze and bushes, small trees, twisted by the wind. Shades of grey and browns. Only the dark green of the fir trees gave any colour.

“The car was here, if I remember, gentlemen. Facing out that way. That’s right, isn’t it, Forbes? East, basically. The German police and our MPs told us he was killed sometime just past midnight. The car stood there for seven hours or so, until this bicyclist from the village over yonder came by. He saw the Brigadier was lying all to one side. He went past first of all. None of his business, I suppose. But then something made him turn back. Maybe the English officer needed help. A worthy chap, clearly. Well, he saw what we know, so he cycled like billy-o back to the village to ’phone the police.”

They stood and stared at the trees and the sand, the bushes and the sky. Douglas felt a wave of futility coming over him. He yawned. He dug the toe of his shoe in the sand too.

Belfer talked to Christie.

“So sad, really. All those wars, all those years. Then you get killed on the corner of a scrappy little road, nowhere really, and in peacetime.”

“It is a little ironic, certainly. How did he feel about all those years, all those wars? As you say.”

Belfer looked at him quickly.

“He was a soldier. He didn’t talk about it much. Always the practical. How to achieve what was needed. Though he’d listen when others grumbled. Not long, but long enough. And only if he thought the chap deserved a listening to. But himself? No, not really.”

“Never? You were with him for several years, ever since Crete.”

“Never. You know … Except once. VE night. It was odd. We were all a bit odd that night. Looked like we’d done it. If you thought about it, you realized how lucky we were, but we’d done it. A lot of drinking, a lot of wildness that night. We were just over the Dutch border, some funny little town. I met the Brigadier late at night in the inn we’d requisitioned. Sitting by himself in the front parlour, in the dark, not even a glass of whisky. ‘Come in, Andrew,’ he says. ‘The men behaving themselves?’ Something like that. Well, we did have things pretty much under control. I had the MPs out in force, and had checked them myself. I must have said something. Don’t recall what. He waved me to sit down. It was, well, a bit bizarre, sitting there in some old lady’s parlour, antimacassars on the chairs, doilies on the dresser. I wonder where the owner had moved the photos of some young lad in Wehrmacht uniform. He was looking out the window, through a lace curtain. You could see the street outside, and hear the men’s voices from time to time, quite far of, singing you could call it. ‘Well, we got through it Andrew,’ he said. ‘There were times … but we did it in the end.’ ‘Did you ever doubt it?’ I asked him. ‘You?’ It was pitch black in the room, just a little light from outside falling on the floor. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Oh, yes.’ And then he paused and it was as though he was talking to himself. ‘When was your moment? Norway? Dunkirk? The balls-ups in the desert? When they told us Singapore had fallen?’ I told him I thought it was when I was in London and saw the smoking, blackened buildings in the City. ‘We can’t recover from that, I thought … But I was wrong.’ ‘Yes, we were wrong, weren’t we? When we doubted,’ he said. ‘Spain for me,’ he muttered suddenly. ‘Thank God.’ ‘Spain?’ I said to him. But he didn’t answer. Just stood up and walked to the window. He moved the lace curtain to one side. The road ran past outside. I remember it was completely empty. Nothing going in either direction. We never went back to that conversation, if you could call it that. He never said anything about that again.”

“I wonder what he meant. Spain?”

“Yes, I wonder too.”





Later in the car as they drove back to the barracks, Belfer asked about the meeting with the German police.

“Really a courtesy call, I suppose,” Christie said. “And checking to see if they had any helpful ideas.”

“And did they?”

“Not really. The inspector there, Meier, he plumps for murder, and by someone the Brigadier knew.”

“I envy you chaps, you know,” Belfer said. “With the language. Never had the time myself. Or the aptitude. Or maybe the need either. No real need. Always find some chappie who knows some English. Sir Nicholas, too. No German at all. I think he spoke a little French – from before the war. Well, everyone did then. Or so it seems. By the way, there’s box of his things. Not much. A couple of books. Stuff from the drawers by the bed in his room. Mrs Fairbairn said she didn’t want them. Not really surprised actually. Care to have a look at them when we get back? Can’t think who else would be at all interested.”





Belfer had the box sent up to his office.

“Leave you chaps with it for a bit. Take your time. Tell my sergeant when you’re done. Just pop out now. Inspect the NAAFI kitchens. Some complaints about the food. Can’t say I blame them. But, I suppose, at least there is some.”

A brown cardboard box. Fifteen by fifteen. About the same deep. An alarm clock. A pale grey woollen scarf. Shaving kit. Bottle of ink. Two pencil stubs.

A volume of Heine’s poems. Black letter. Leipzig 1920. Inside the fly-leaf: An meinen lieben Marcus. Deine Trudl. Freiburg, Sommer 1922.

“To my dear Marcus. Your Trudl. Summer 1922,” Douglas whispered softly.

“Read, would you say?”

“I would say so. Pages well thumbed. By his bed, presumably.”

“Twenty-five years later.”

“Probably an old lady he helped across the road.”

“In a sense, it doesn’t matter if it’s Eva Braun or Lili Marlene. Not at this point. It matters it’s in German.”

“Yes. Well. The man who always used a translator – and never spoke German with anyone as far as we know – came home at night to browse through Heine and remember walks with the lovely Trudl in the Schwarzwald.”

“You ever been there?”

“Summer 1938. That’s why my German was always better than yours. Lovely place. Pretty girls. Nice wine. The Sudentenland was on people’s minds a bit though.”

“Remember the sergeant in 33rd squadron? Ferguson? The one who’d been a policeman in Glasgow before the War. He said to me once that he reckoned if someone lies once then there are a pile more lies just waiting there to be found.”

“Said that about Chamberlin, did he?”

“Churchill, I think. He remembered the tanks in Sauchiehall Street in 1920. He said everyone lied anyway. So his bon mot was bound to be true.”

“Sergeant Vickery?”

“Well, he didn’t say anything about Sir Nicholas’s German, did he? I mean he can’t not have known. Or did it escape his notice over thirty years?”

“Later, James. Later.”





Corporal Forbes stopped the car just before the junction between Marbachstraße and Kolbergstraße. The Eckkneipe was on a corner as it should be. The door was arched with red bricks and the sign was painted in Gothic letters. There had been no bombing here. The trees were all gone, burnt for wood the previous winters; the buildings were shabby, the plaster scuffed, scored, dirty, but intact.

Inside it was dark. An oil lamp burnt on the bar, and two on tables in the room. At one of them two men sat hunched over small glasses of beer, dark shapes, only part of their features lit. Behind the bar a thin man with sunken eyes was watching them.

I feel like a character in an American gangster movie, Douglas said to himself.

James spoke to the barman in German.

“Herr Hertel?”

The man nodded sourly.

“We are with the British military police,” James said quietly. “Could we speak with you about the night of 15th November. Last year, you remember. There was a quarrel, a fight. British soldiers. A German. Kommissar Meier said you’d remember.”

“I remember,” Hertel said slowly.

“Two small beers, please,” said Douglas smiling.

The man slowly took two bottles from the shelves behind the bar and poured the beers out.

“Thank you,” said Douglas smiling. James paid.

“Yes, I remember,” said the owner. “Big men. Two British corporals. Very angry. They were looking for trouble.”

“The man they attacked. The German. You didn’t know him. But the Hamburg police say he had a Saxon accent.”

“Yes, from east of here.”

“The Russsian zone?”

“Maybe. The War, you know. People move around a lot.”

“Listen,” said Douglas. “We’re not here to cause you any trouble. We’re not here to pin anything on the Germans. Any Germans. We just need to have an idea of what happened.”

Hertel looked at him.

“Right. A little guy with a Saxon accent. Your age. Nothing to notice about him. Thin black hair. Pale face. Your height.” He pointed at James. “Muddy boots, but it was winter. Smoked his cigarettes like each one was his last. Nervous. Not from here obviously. Said he’d been picked up in near Allenstein in East Prussia by the Russians. Let to go home because he had a dodgy lung. Was here trying to find an uncle who could get him a job. Maybe it was true.”

“Why not.”

“Don’t know. His hands. Too well cared for. Desk man. Like you. Hadn’t been living rough. And I don’t think you’d come out of a Russian camp with hands like that. Just guessing. I told the others the same.”

“What others?”

“Two guys like you with Kripo badges from Hamburg. Not the Kommissar. Asking the same questions. Where’d you learn your German?”

“I was smart at school. He copied from me.”

The barman thought about it a moment and gave a snort. It might have been laughter.

“Anything more?” asked Christie.

Hertel paused again.

“Well he wasn’t actually a German. You know that?”

“I’m sorry. What was that?”

“I mean I told the Kripo guys. No, his German was good. Like yours. Better, in fact. I’m sorry, but it’s true. But he was no German. I’d say he was an Engländer. Like you.”

“But you didn’t say that to Kommissar Meier.”

“No. I didn’t want the trouble. But when the other cops turned up, I reckoned I should come clean.”

“Okay. What else? Anything else?”

“As if that’s not e-bloody-nough,” whispered Douglas.

“Those British corporals were bad. They were out to harm him. Very seriously. He wasn’t going to walk out of this bar ever.”

“So what happened?”

The barman shrugged. “The little guy was lucky. He ducked the first punch, got over the bar, ran out the back.”

“And you?”

“We used to have Wehrmacht stationed here on their way east. I’ve dealt with big angry soldiers before. I waved that at them.” He pointed to a baseball bat in the corner behind the bar. “Screamed a lot. It usually puts them off. They ran out to try to get to the courtyard behind. Didn’t manage to. Maybe one of the lads stuck out a leg as they were running by. One fell down anyway, hard, there by the door. Difficult to say. I called the MPs. They came fast, I will say that, but the corporals were long gone.”

“Hey, Klaus.” The voice was rasping. “What do these fucking Tommies want?”

“Hey,” Hertel spread his hands. “Nothing. Leave it be. There’s no trouble.”

The two men had got up and were walking towards them. They were big men. One was much bigger than the other. Neither Christie nor Douglas felt they meant them any good.

“Bastard English coming in here. Asking questions. Fuck off to your NAAFI. Victory House. Go bomb more civilians, you bastards.”

“Hey, Jochen, no,” said the barman. “Cops.”

“Don’t give a fuck,” said the one who did all the talking. The other one, Douglas noticed, was moving to their right and behind, to cut them off from the door.

Douglas put his hands up in front of him. “Back off, friend.” Slow. Don’t mess with me. Chucking out time at the Prince of Wales, Correction Wynd, Aberdeen. Easy.

“You fucking bastards. You bombed us to shit in ’43, and you come in here with your fancy-arse German. Sticking your nose in. What you looking for? We did our bit in the war. Sorry we didn’t get more of you cunts.”

Douglas was getting ready for what he knew would be a very nasty fight. He could take the big guy first and then he and James could get the other. He clenched his fists and was ready to rush the big German, when he heard James say very slowly and deliberately, “If any one of you bastards moves near my friend, I will blow his goddamn head off with this. Which I am entitled by the Statutes of Occupation to do.”

James was standing at the far end of the bar against the wall, gunman’s corner. In his hand was a Browning ’38. He held it very steadily, Douglas noticed with some surprise.





“We should have just said we were Scottish,” Christie said calmly as they walked back to the car.

“Yes,” said Douglas. “That would have fixed it right away.”

Then by the car. “I should thank you,” Douglas said.

“Not really. We have a running account.”

“I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why you’re toting a ’38.”

“Later, Gavin. Later.”





Liz smoothed her skirt and crossed her legs. Whitlow sat opposite her. Outside the London traffic kept a steady rushing sound. Rain pattered against the tall windows. Bare trees. Grey sky, solid cloud.

It was warm in the room. Whitlow smiled and leaned back in the low chair. The air seemed musty, but it was at least warm. He twitched his nose fastidiously. His bad right leg was stretched out stiff in front of him.

“Tell me, Mark,” Liz said leaning forward to take up her cup of tea. “Tell me what you know about Fairbairn.”

“Well, my dearest Lizzie. I did as ever as you commanded me. I asked my friend at the War Office. He asked – discreetly, don’t worry. Fairbairn. Well, good war. Or wars, I should say. I’m sure you realized. Every damn conflict since Flanders fields. Poppy, his middle name. Sorry. That was catty. Learned – or practised? – his trade in dusty deserts mostly. Or shabby little towns in dusty deserts. Some quite aggressive actions in Palestine in ’37. Did not earn him the love of the local Arabs. The Jews rather liked him, but I suppose that’s no surprise. He gave a paper at Staff College in ’38 on future colonial conflicts. Spoke to the French too about it. Containment. Policing. Aggressive pursuit. Proactive stuff. I think that’s the word. Didn’t think you’d necessarily win, but you’d make it bloody unpleasant for the other side. Maybe they’d give up and go away. So, most of that you know.

“About Spain? Well, after Dunkirk, it was all a bit of a mess, wasn’t it? Had to sell the whole thing as a victory, when we know … well, we know what it was. And it wasn’t the fault of the French. Or not just. Well, your Fairbairn was roundly vexed by the débâcle, and was prepared to say so. Not some walrus-moustachioed blimp, but lean, mean, very smart, and very brave. And, in his way, successful. So they sent him to Madrid for a while to shut him up, get him out of the way. Military attaché. We thought if he told Franco that we’d knock hell out of Spain every damn way we could if they let the Wehrmacht anywhere near Gibraltar, well, then he and his generals would believe him. And, as far as we know, that’s what he did … blamelessly. He wasn’t there long. He was in Crete. Got off wounded. Got a DMC for that. Then the desert war got going in ’41, and he was sent to help see off the Italians, and then get knocked about by the Afrikakorps. He helped to hold the line. Always. A very good officer. He won a lot more than he lost. More than you can say of most. I knew a chap like him at Dieppe. Canadian. Damned good. If it hadn’t been for him, I wouldn’t have got off. Didn’t make it himself though. Waste.”

“So, Madrid from. . . ?”

“Well, it’s not entirely clear at our end, which is strange. Autumn 1940. Three-four months only. They needed him again. So he was brought back. Crete was summer 1941.”

“And in Madrid?”

“As I say, as far as I was told, he was there to scare the Spaniards. He did a good job, apparently.”

Liz looked up from her notebook. She straightened her glasses “And why is that all not quite public record? Or not at all?”

Whitlow brushed his right trouser leg. “Well, my dear. Those were odd times. I’d say we were a couple of days away from talking seriously, very seriously, mind you, to the Germans. They wanted to get him away. Both sides of the equation. Because he could cause a stink about the balls-up in France. Because he could make people angry about the Germans. Spoil the chance of a peace deal. Or … maybe, maybe, and no one will sign his name on this idea – maybe Fairbairn was told to do a bit more than just frighten the Spaniards?”

“What for example?”

“Well, Madrid was crawling with spies then. Maybe – and my friend was speculating wildly – maybe he was there to feel out some of Franco’s officers about cutting the Caudillo’s wings. I mean there were Anglophiles aplenty in the falange and the Spanish Army. However it was, they brought him back quickly.”

“So quickly it was as if …”

“Yes. Never happened. You said he never talked about it.”

“I don’t think so. At least that’s what I’m told.”

“And who’d be telling you? James? Is he fishing in those waters? Not much to be got there now, I’d have thought. A very cold trail.”

“Hmnn. Still. The other matter?”

“Oh yes, very interesting.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, my dear. British national, working for the Soviets or the East Germans. Oh yes. And from the description, well, we wondered if it might be someone we knew.”

“Someone you knew?”

“Well, my dear, there were a couple of candidates. But we really like the idea of one of them. A chap called Spicer, Jack Spicer. Rolled up by the Germans in 1940 somewhere in Northern France, stuck in a prison camp. Probably recruited by them in late ’40. Later – briefly – Legion of St George.”

“Recruited?”

“Well, the Germans did keep at it. Trying to get POWs to join them in the war against the people who’d got them into that mess. Or the Bolsheviks. Or the bosses. Or the English imperialists. Never very much success. Our chaps held firm. The NCOs watched the men, and with the officers ésprit de corps or pig-headed bloody stupidity did the rest. But a few turned. Mostly pathetic little men, kids sometimes. Caught on merchant ships in 1940 and interned. Ex-Mosley lovers in British Army uniform. Chaps utterly out of their depth. Lost souls. Spicer was a bit different though. An officer, a captain in the Warwicks. Not a stupid man. He seems to have signed up … well, out of disgust. ‘I’ve seen through the whole tawdry show,’ he told one fellow POW. Bright chap. Studied chemistry in Birmingham before the War. Did the wrong thing. I don’t know I entirely blame him.”

“You think the person I described might be this Spicer?”

“Well, possibly. The description fits. We know his German was very good by 1944, when we heard of him in Berlin. They got him out of the Legion of St George very quickly. Bunch of wastrel no-hopers, drunk most of the time. No use at all. But a fellow like Spicer would have been of use. Intelligent. Embittered. Language skills. Too good to waste on Deutschlandfunk, like Joyce and those other pathetic little men. He seems to have worked for the Abwehr. Oh, we’re interested in him. We’d really like to chat to him.”

“Even after all this time?”

“Nations keep lists, my dear. When the Germans marched into Bromberg – or Bydgoszcz, if you’re a Pole, but who can pronounce that properly? – they had lists of people they wanted to settle scores with. The same with the Russians in Eastern Poland in ’39. Memories of the Polish-Bolshevik War. All terribly nasty. We’re not perhaps as thorough, but we do have our lists. And this war is only four years over. Treason has no statute of limitations. Or, if it does, it shouldn’t. Anyway there’s something else about Spicer.”

“What? What else could he have done?”

“Quite a lot actually. In the spring of 1945, when it was clear to any right-thinking person that the German Reich’s days were numbered, a number of bright boys and girls decided they had to choose another side, and that smartish. There were quite a few bright boys and girls in the Abwehr, despite their abysmal record in destroying England. One part managed to get to the Americans and sell all its files and people to them. The less lucky, stranded too far east, were forced to make a deal with the Soviets in 1945, a deal which we believe the Soviets to have honoured. We have had reports of someone we believe to be Spicer in Leipzig working for the Eastern Zone’s authorities.”

“You think he’s a Soviet agent?”

“Soviet. East German. Communist. Some such. And as such, oh we’d like to get our hands on him. My friends in M.I.6 got quite, well, shall we say?, enthused when I talked to them. Quite sad when I said I didn’t think we’d be bringing him in. They’d love to debrief him and then hang him.”

“And Spicer was turned, as you call it?”

“By all accounts, right after Dunkirk. In the autumn of 1940.”

“About the time. . . ?”

“Yes, about the time Fairbairn was in Madrid. But don’t run ahead of yourself. As far as we know, he was stuck in a prison camp outside Frankfurt then. That’s where he was last seen in a British Army uniform. Early autumn 1940 – before you ask.”

Liz sat back in her chair.

“Well, Liz, have I been a good boy?”

“The best of boys, Mark.”

“And …?”

“Well, yes,” she smiled. She put down her notebook on the low table between them. She took off her glasses and carefully put them in her case. Then she stood up, stretched, and began to unbutton her blouse.

“And what exactly would you like to do with your little Scottish slut today?”





They bought steaming cups of milky tea at the NAAFI canteen in the airport building at Fuhlsbüttel. The BEA plane sat on the new runway beyond the wet grass. The sky was darkening toward an early night. They had avoided each other all day. Douglas had read in his room and worked on a poem in his notebook. Christie had worked on papers from London. At noon he had taken a phone call from London. Then he had talked to Belfer and his adjutant. Douglas and Christie had driven to the airport in silence, each, it seemed to the other, slumped in sombre thoughts.

“So what do we know now, so far?” Christie began.

“Well,” Douglas answered, slowly looking up from his thick cup. “Well … I’m glad you ask me that. The key things, I suppose, are Sir Nicholas could speak German (and rather well, I wager – I mean Heine), but kept that secret. Trudl. The summer of ’22. Freiburg. The only book he kept. As far as we know. Odd, to say the least. The German cops have been told to lay off the case. And – what’s his name? – Meier doesn’t like that. But still two Kripo – or two men pretending to be Kripo – bother to go to the Eckkneipe. Where two British corporals tried to kill a foreigner with an eastern accent. The night Sir Nicholas was done in. And Spain. Spain is important somehow, but we’re not sure how. It’s a little like Fairbairn’s German. No one really wants to talk about it. How’s that for making our bloody ignorance visible?” He smiled.

Christie was silent. He moved his cup slightly, setting the handle diagonally to the table’s corner.

“I got a phone call from Liz today. She’d done some asking around – among people we know at the FO and War Office. She talked to someone called Whitlow. FO, connected to DI. A good man, wounded at Dieppe. Sensible. He says about Fairbairn’s trip to Spain it’s all a bit hazy. What was he there for? To scare the Spaniards? Tell them to lay off Gibraltar? To talk to crazy anti-Franco colonels? To get him out of the way in mid-1940 after Dunkirk? And we wonder still why it’s all passed over. Not in the files. Not common knowledge. And then our stranger in the Eckkneipe. Well, Whitlow doesn’t know, does he? But he says it sounds a bit like it could be a fellow called Spicer, British national, serving officer, turned in 1940 in a POW camp near Frankfurt. He worked for the Abwehr, and now he seems to be working for the East Germans and/or the Soviets. It’s all speculation, but it starts to make a kind of story.”

“So Spicer was here to see Fairbairn.?”

“Maybe.”

“And then … who? someone? tried to have him, Spicer, done in. It didn’t work. Did Spicer go on then to get to Fairbairn? Did he kill him?”

“Don’t know, do we?”

“We don’t know a damned lot. What about the thuggish corporals that scared even the barman in the Kneipe.”

“I talked to Belfer and his ADC today about that. Transfers out since the Brigadier’s death. A lot. You can imagine. Immediately afterwards? We have four or five likely candidates. I can get Special Branch to look them up when I get back to London.”

“Special Branch, Jim? You can get Special Branch to look them up?”

His friend sighed.

“Yes, Gavin. I can.”

“Just like you can tote a Browning in your briefcase. Got it with you now? I need to feel safe.”

“No, I don’t. I don’t think I need it here. I think it’s all a bit melodramatic anyway. Most of the time.”

“But you still …”

“Look, Gavin. I’m allowed. And I’ll explain it all later. Not now. It would take too long.”

Douglas would have argued, but didn’t. He didn’t want to know, he thought. He wiped the air with his left hand.

“I owe you enough, Jim. I won’t insist.” He smiled. “So Spain then?”

“Please if you could. Go to these people.” He handed his friend a half sheet of paper. “They know what you need. They’ll arrange tickets and currency allowance and so on. They’ll contact the Embassy in Madrid. But you know those people anyway, don’t you?”

They looked at each other. Then Christie spoke again.

“I’ll chase up what I can about the demobbed corporals at this end. I’ll try to pick at Belfer’s memories a little more. I’ll get the plane back in two days.”

“And in Madrid I’ll try to find what I can about Sir Nicholas’s mysterious months in Spain in 1940. Exciting.”

“And in London talk to your aunt about the Fairbairns. See what she knows.”

“Trudl. 1922. Yes, indeed.”





Meier waved down Christie’s car about ten kilometers outside Kaltenbrünnen. A new German police car, a driver, Meier and a uniformed sergeant.

“I called the barracks,” said Meier in German. “I thought you’d come back from the airport about now.”





The body lay on the grass, pulled from the ditch. Both Meier and Christie thought of the hundreds of dead they had seen. One more. Black waterlogged suit. Collarless shirt. Some weed round the greying pale skin. Head at an odd angle.

“Murdered,” said Meier slowly. “We will get a full report from our medical people tomorrow. But I’d say about twenty-four hours ago. Neck broken. Nothing in his pockets. Clothes look like they could be from anywhere.”

“You think this could be the man from the Eckkneipe the night Fairbairn was murdered. Why?”

“He fits the barman’s description. He’s not from here. One of my officers talked to the people in the village just over there beyond the trees. They say a stranger walked through the day before yesterday. Bought some bread in the bakery. Sounds like him. The stranger had an accent from over there.” Meier gestured eastwards. “The lady in the bakery said he looked scared. Tired, hungry, and scared.”

“That’s not unusual these days.”

“No. But maybe … We’ll get the barman to look at him.”

“Tomorrow?” Meier nodded.

“You can take a photograph back to London,” Meier said softly. When Christie tried to look him in the eyes, he seemed absorbed in the dead man’s features.





Christie pulled his overcoat about him as he walked over the courtyard. It was freezing cold despite the cloud cover. He looked up at the sky, the surface grey-marbled from the barrack lights. The buildings themselves were all in darkness, except Vickery’s office, where a single yellow light still burned. Christie made towards it.

The long corridor in the building was lit by a grey, weak light. Christie heard his footsteps scrape and echo in the emptiness. He knocked at Vickery’s door.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Sergeant Major. I’m leaving tomorrow, and I’d just like a few last words with you.”

“Last words. That sounds ominous. Please sit down. I’ll help if I can.”

Vickery sat behind a plain wooden desk. Probably Wehrmacht issue, Christie thought. The room was spare and neat, like the man himself. In the corner were some cardboard boxes. Vickery followed Christie’s eyes.

“Packing up. I’m leaving the Army. Over thirty years now. With the Brigadier dead, there’s not much in it for me anymore.”

“You’re going back to England?”

“Yes, a small house. Sir Nicholas bought it for me, oh, in 1935. In Northamptonshire. My people were from there. Farm workers mostly. I haven’t been there in years. But it wouldn’t take much to put it to rights.”

“I guess you’d be good at things like that.”

“You learn in the Army. How to make do with what you have. I’ve done plenty of that.”

Vickery took a bottle of whisky and two glasses from out behind the desk.

“Care for a drink? You being Scottish might not care for this though.”

“Sergeant Major, that is a very good idea. And you know very well that that is a very good whisky. I’m flattered. And I can’t begin to think how you found a bottle. I don’t suppose they’ve seen that at a British Embassy since ’39.”

Vickery smiled. “Well, I was fishing for compliments there, I suppose.” He poured out two measures of Glenmorangie. “And, as I said, you learn to make do in the Army. Your health. Confusion to the enemy.”

“I’ll second that … Provided we know who they are.”

“I think we do. Whatever name they go by.”

“Wise words, Sergeant Major.”

They paused to drink the whisky. Christie – who wouldn’t care, he reflected, if he ever saw another whisky again – felt the warmth run through his chest and stomach. Vickery sat back in his chair.

“You’ve been asking about corporals who were demobbed just after the Brigadier died. That was to do with that fight in the town the night he was killed. You think they’re connected?”

“We’re just looking. Trying to find something. It’s a trail gone a bit dead, isn’t it? But, yes, there is that coincidence of events. Probably nothing.”

“But the German police took you to see a body this afternoon. Oh, there’s no secrets in the Army. Your driver had to make a report. The duty sergeant told me.”

“You should be running the investigation, Sergeant Major, not us. Yes, well, maybe that’s the man the soldiers tried to beat up. Maybe not. The Kommissar from the Hamburg police we’re dealing with seemed to think so. We’ll have a photograph. We can check. But what that will have to do with Sir Nicholas’s murder …”

They were silent for a moment and drank the whisky slowly.

“Anyway, Sergeant Major. I have a few ideas for names to check up on back in Britain. But I wanted to ask you about some other things. May I?”

“Anything to help.”

“I’m trying to get a picture of Sir Nicholas’s movements before the murder. The days, the few weeks before. He hadn’t been in Kaltenbrünnen for over a week before the murder. Major Belfer has told me that he was in Frankfurt at US Army HQ. Lots of hush-hush talks, the Major said. Would you care to add anything to that?”

“Yes, Sir Nicholas was down with the Yanks.”

“The Major says that they were mulling over the Berlin blockade. Looking back over it. Taking stock. Contingency planning. That sort of thing.”

“Yes, that would be about right, sir. The Americans got on quite well with Sir Nicholas. And he with them. More than you can say – either way – about a lot of British officers. Sir Nicholas was in the States in the thirties, you know? Oh yes, they brought him over. Lady Fairbairn too. Gave a talk at West Point. Fighting insurgencies. New kinds of war in the twentieth century. How to win them. How not to lose them. Recently, as far as I know, it’s all been about facing off the bloody Russians.”

“You didn’t go with him to Frankfurt?”

“No. This is all a bit above my head. And a bit more than what they pay me to do.”

“Do you know what Sir Nicholas might have been talking to the Americans about?”

Vickery looked at Christie quizzically.

“Not really for me to say, but …”

“But?”

“Well, Sir Nicholas had about had it with the Russians and Berlin. The Russians generally. He thought, as I understand it, that we had to face them off wherever, and whenever. He talked to me sometimes about it. Greece. The Balkans. Asia, too. He said that it was all going to go ape-shit there. And soon.”

“And he didn’t like the Russians because …?”

“Oh well, Sir Nicholas wouldn’t have any truck with Communism, would he? Not given the world he comes from … came from. He commanded Polish units too in his day. Listened to them. I did too. They didn’t forget 1939, even if lots of people back home did. As I remember it took Hitler coming at them in ’41 to bring the bastard Russians into the war. And I don’t know if the Major told you … Well, there was a DP camp just east of here. Women, kids, old men, from East Prussia. I know they started the bloody war, but it doesn’t make you feel good the stories they tell about the Red Army. I heard them too. It’s a rotten bloody world, Mr Christie. And now he’s gone. Thirty years. It means something, doesn’t it? It has to.”

“It has to, Sergeant Major.”

“Another?” Vickery poured them two more measures.

“So, Sir Nicholas was friendly with the Americans.”

“Yes, indeed. I don’t know. I can take them or leave them. He thought they did well in ’44 on D-Day and after. Winter ’44 too. I think he thought they were the only ones who were serious about the Russians, too.”

“If Sir Nicholas was still alive, what do you think you’d be doing?”

“Fair question, that. And I don’t know the answer.”

“Why? Surely …”

“Surely after thirty years we’d have gone on as before. Maybe. But you see, I’m tired. Thirty years of soldiering. Sir Nicholas’s death gives me a reason, in a way. I think I’ve maybe had enough. But the boss, well, no, not he. Looking for the next war, he was. It scared me sometimes. I’m trying to tell you as much as I can, as best I can. I don’t know if it helps.”

“It helps. It helps.”

Christie put down his empty glass.

“I should go now. Thank you.” He leant forward. “But there’s one last thing. It’s been niggling me. Why did Sir Nicholas pretend he couldn’t speak German?”

Vickery looked at him carefully.

“Why do you think he could speak German?”

“Just a guess, actually. There’s a book in his effects. German poetry. Heine. With a dedication in German. From 1922. Can you help me out with this?”

“Oh yes, his German was very good. Pre-Great War. You know the way things were then. Upper middle-class kids. Walking in the Black Forest. Wagner. Beethoven. German governesses even. Sailing on the Baltic. Then he stopped in the late twenties.”

“Stopped?”

“I looked after him and his affairs for thirty years. He stopped. Stopped reading. Stopped writing. Stopped speaking. He could see the way things were going in Germany. He just felt sick about it. Wanted to separate himself from all that. And he was right in a way, wasn’t he? The thirties showed that. He was never an appeaser. Funny that. I’d see him go livid when some red nosed colonel in India started to say what a good thing Hitler was. And Mussolini, and all that shower. Kept his peace after the first explosion though. Did no good, he said. Only history would show the idiots what was what.”

“He was a wise man then?”

“Yes, I think he was. He’ll be missed.”

“By the Americans?”

Vickery made a gesture of impatience as if he were brushing away a fly on his desk. “By all of us, Mr Christie. By all of us.”





That day in London, Liz had been very busy. She felt proud of herself, bustling around, getting so much done in one day. Quite a spiffy little sleuth and fixer she. First, she met James’s policeman friend Inglis at Warren Street Station.

“This is the fellow, Mrs Christie. James asked us to check on him. Uniformed officers. We flagged down his car in Putney. Told him we’d had a report of a stolen vehicle that answered to the description of his. Very apologetic we were when we saw everything was in order. Carry on, sir. Thanks for your help. That sort of thing. Well, here he is. Thomas Nelson Page. That’s the home address. That’s his war record. Captain. York and Lancashire Regiment. Western Desert. Italy. But … you can read all that for yourself. Sorry, Mrs Christie.”

“That’s all right. So, ex-soldier. Reasonable war. And in peace, what does he do?”

“Independent means, as they say. So it seems. Lucky devil, eh? Also runs a property business in Surrey. Commercial property mostly. Does reasonably well. Lives a bit beyond that though. Golf clubs. Nice car. Comes up to town a bit. Not a spiv though. High-class.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, one of the lads said he thought he heard he’d been involved in a divorce case a few years back. Couldn’t remember the details though. You might want to check that.”

“I will, Inspector. Many thanks.” Liz smiled brightly.

“James out of town?” She nodded. “So who does he work for now? He’s not Army any more, is he?”

“I wish I knew, Inspector. I wish I knew.”





She called Alan Trevor at The Guardian. Yes, he was in town. Yes, he could see her that lunchtime. Liz smiled. It was either a quiet day in the world, or Alan still lusted hopelessly after her.

“Page. Thomas Nelson Page. Divorce case in the past two years or so. Details, please, Alan.”

“And I thought it was my charm and wit you were desirous of.”

They met in a small Italian restaurant in Bloomsbury. Chianti bottles in straw, rough plaster, and a mural of an arch and receding blue hills.

“Right,” Trevor said over the rather good ziti. “This is what I know. Oh, God, Liz. You’re taking notes. I love you.”

She kicked him under the table and stuck out her tongue.

“Beast,” he moaned. “All right. Ready now? Page. Divorce. Martin Cummings. Important civil servant attached to various splendiferous bodies associated with the war effort and winning the peace in Europe. A serious man, with a serious job, despite my mocking tone. His wife Isabel, a bit younger, but nothing too … ostentatious. He suddenly takes it into his head to divorce her. This is 1946. Spring. Now, none of this gets into court. It’s all unofficial, gossip really. But I talked to the staffer who wrote up the piece – Cummings started off claiming adultery. And with … yes, a Thomas Nelson Page, ex-Yorks and Lancs, businessman of Horesham. And then Cummings stopped that. Laid off the divorce thing, and settled for a separation. Cost him a bloody fortune too. My man didn’t know why.”

“That would be interesting, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe just a change of heart. But … anyway, I have here – and you may thank me for it after the meal, before you bustle off to do whatever it is you and your James do do – the name and address of the gumshoe who got the goods, as they say, on Page and Isabel Cummings. Soho. Not exactly your sort of place. But, Liz dear, I’m sure you’ll manage.”





T. Malleson. Investigations. Confidentiality. Assured. The card was grimy and tacked above the worn white bell button. Three floors up. Stairs worn. Walls painted a faded mustard. A smell of drains from the toilets on each half-landing.

The window behind Mr T. Malleson’s head looked out on to a blackened brick wall. The office was sparse but tidy. Worn linoleum. A large gray filing cabinet. A gas ring in a corner. A bare desk with a black notebook on it about the size of a paperback book. Mr Malleson looked as if he kept most things in his head. In his fifties. A sagging face with small bright blue eyes. A bald head with wispy tufts of hair above his ears. A dark suit, a dark blue tie, a bright white shirt. Liz glanced at his hands. They were large and clean looking. She handed him the War Office card. It always did well with men of his generation.

“Ah, the War Office, Mrs Christie,” Malleson smiled. “What can I do for the War Office?”

“Mr Malleson, I understand you conducted an investigation in … ,” she pretended to check her notebook, “. . . early 1946. An investigation for a Mr Cummings. He believed his wife was betraying him.” Liz looked up. “My question, doesn’t embarrass you, does it?”

“You haven’t asked me a question yet, Miss. I mean Mrs Christie. And no, you aren’t embarrassing me at all.”

“Quite. I’m glad. Well, this investigation. . . ?”

“Please let me make something clear from get go,” said Malleson in a slow friendly sort of way. Liz heard the West Midlands nasal sounds through the London. “Where this office is is one thing. Although I think the neighbourhood is appropriate, from a certain perspective, if you like. But I’m afraid I have to say I’m a serious investigator, and I have a policy of confidentiality vis-à-vis my clients. I can’t tell you about a confidential investigation. And all my investigations are so.”

“I thought that, Mr Malleson. So, I wonder if I can persuade you in any way to reconsider your policy for the sake of … shall we say? England’s security.”

Malleson laughed.

“When a Scot starts talking about England, I know to be very careful.”

“I did rather overplay that, didn’t I? You see, I really do need some information, and it is about national safety. I repeat my question. Could I do anything for you that would allow you to waive some of your principles in this matter?”

Malleson appeared to think for several seconds before answering.

“Mrs Christie. To be frank, I would do a lot for England. My generation generally did. I was one of the lucky ones. Well, yes, I think there is something the War Office could do for me. My son is with the British and Commonwealth Forces in Japan. Army of occupation. Mostly Americans, of course, but there are British troops too. The lad’s done his time. He was at Kohima-Imphal. The fighting through Burma. I want him home. His mother wants him home. But they say they need him. Good radio man. Did his trades cert. before he was called up. Can’t do. Get me my son home, Mrs Christie. There – a quid pro quo.”

“But Mr Malleson, I need to know some things now. I can, I am quite sure, get your son home. I can have instructions sent tomorrow. It can be done. But I need to know some things today. It seems a bit of an impasse.”

“Well, Mrs Christie … I suppose that’s so. But maybe not. The one thing you learn in this job is to trust no one. But sometimes, on a whim, you trust them. You come to me with … yes, I’d say that was a WD ID … and probably a genuine one … but I’d also say you’ve got three more different ones in that little handbag of yours. You are a Scot talking to me of England. Well. But I like you. I’ll trust you. Shall we say this? I will tell you what I know, and if you find it useful, it will be like a debt that you will be obliged to pay. Tomorrow you will set wheels in motion to bring my son – whose name, rank, number, and unit I will write down for you before you leave – to bring him home.”

Liz bowed her head. “That is a very generous and trusting offer. I accept.”

“Good.” Malleson nodded, almost as if to himself. “I am also inclined – let me say from the get go – to tell you what I know because I was annoyed and frustrated by the way things turned out in this investigation. I am a professional, and I do not like it when my skills are used and then ignored. It should make no difference to me, but in this case it does. As I recall, in February 1946, I was approached by Mr Cummings, a well-to-do and, as I discovered, well-placed civil servant to conduct an investigation into his wife’s activities. You may be surprised that someone like that gentleman would come to me. I assure you, Mrs Christie, I draw my clientele from many walks of life. The premises is, as I’ve said, one thing. What I am is another. I, of course, answered a telephone call, and spoke with him in a private room in a hotel in Mayfair. The name is not germane, I think. I instituted an investigation. Watching. Following. The usual m.o. I very rapidly ascertained that Mrs Cummings was, indeed, conducting an affair of the heart, and I think an intense one, with a gentleman, a recently demobbed officer. His name is Thomas Nelson Page. A businessman in Horesham. He appears to have had no problem being demobbed. I started to investigate this gentleman, and it is here that I found something to give me pause. For this Page was, it seemed to me, in the employ of the Soviet Union or its allies. He met frequently with a person I know to be an agent of that country.”

“Where?”

“On Hampstead Heath twice. Also in a café on Euston Road. Once.”

“You watched them for how long?”

“Approximately six weeks.”

“And you are sure that this person he met was in the employ … that is working for the Soviet authorities.”

“I am confident of that, Mrs Christie. I make it my business to know at least some of the … foreign agents working here. And some of our chaps who watch them. Some of the ladies too. Sin, politics, national interests. You would be surprised how they overlap.”

“Perhaps, Mr Malleson. How did this develop? The Cunningham affair.”

“Well, that is why I’m vexed. I laid out my evidence to Mr Cunningham. Discreetly, as I’m sure you can imagine. He left a hurt and angry man. The next day I expected he would tell me that he intended to initiate divorce proceedings and that my information would be required in court. Instead, he telephoned me to say that he would not be taking the matter any further. In addition, I was visited in the summer of 1946 by a gentleman with a card rather like yours. He urged me to … say nothing about the business.”

“And you did not like that?”

“The divorce proceedings were one thing, but I was unhappy that the gentleman in question was not pursued.”

“And you know he was not?”

“I have eyes. I have ears. He is still plying his trade. Whatever that may be.”

“Do you have any reason to connect this man Page with Sir Nicholas Fairbairn?”

“The military gentleman who died in Germany last year?”

Liz nodded. Malleson looked down to his left as if the floor held an answer to a silent question.

“Well, Mrs Christie, you are not the first to ask me such a question, so I suppose my answer is yes. In the autumn of 1948, last year it was … October … If you need a more precise date, I can give it.”

“Not at present.”

“Yes. A … gentleman visited me, as you are doing now. Sent by a mutual acquaintance in the police force. He wanted to know about Page. Then, too, I made a judgment to tell him. He came with a recommendation from someone I trust.”

“And his name?”

Malleson wrote on a small sheet of paper. He handed it to Liz.

“This is my son’s name, rank, unit. His commanding officer’s name is here. This is where I know him to be stationed. Do I have your word that you can arrange his return?”

“Mr Malleson. You have my word.”

“Then when I have a telegramme from him that he is to be released from the Army. I will impart that information. Let me see. You should be able to cable tonight. I imagine my son will know within the week.”





Gavin leant across the table to light Liz’s cigarette. Then he lit one of his own. He blew out the match. She smiled at him. He smiled back.

“The wild wastes of Germany were. . . ?”

“Wild and wasted. But we managed.”

“Now you’re going to Spain. Which will not be wild and wasted?”

“I’ve got used to it, I suppose. It’s grim sometimes. And very unhappy. Civil wars are very nasty. But it’s cheap. And they have the weather.”

“I envy you.”

“You and James could come out. I have room. Andalucia. Sunshine. Olive oil. Wine.” He smiled.

“I’d like to. When all this is done.”

“Good. Jim will be back?”

“The day after tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow you’ll see my aunt.”

“Yes. I phoned her. We arranged to meet.”

“Not in a café in Soho.”

“No, Café Royal.”

“Make sure she pays then.”

Liz laughed. Gavin decided he liked that laugh very much.





Mrs Douglas settled her fur round her shoulders. Liz admired the neat velvet collar on her suit jacket. Gavin’s aunt dressed well. Liz wondered if her dark blue button frock passed muster. Probably not. The elderly waiter fussed with the tea things. Mrs Douglas smiled at him. There was a hum of conversation around them.

“So, my dear. The formidable Mrs Christie.”

“Formidable?”

“Well, Gavin said you had brains and looks, and were rather nice in addition. That makes formidable in his book.”

“And in yours?”

“You didn’t study with James, did you?”

“No, I did modern languages, French and German, in Glasgow. We met after the war when he was seconded to the civilian administration in Germany. 1947 in Düsseldorf.”

“Not terribly romantic, I suppose.”

“But it was. The dark, the cold, the bombed buildings. It was a strange new world. And you felt guilty being happy.”

Margot Douglas laughed. She sipped her tea.

“Yes. I can see how you would have found a soul mate in James. I have always liked him ever since Gavin brought him down here before the war. And Gavin seemed much happier than I’d seen him since his parents’ separation. I suppose, I wondered about his mother’s flight to Aberdeen. I mean – to Aberdeen? Appropriately Byronic, I suppose, but still. Anyway, he has turned out a poet. And a good one. Better than Byron, perhaps.”

“Mrs Douglas.”

“Yes, my dear. I expect you want to pick my brains about the first Mrs Fairbairn. Odd, that. A young person like you. From the Ministry? And you want to talk to an old woman like me.”

“Mrs Douglas. That is rather false modesty. I would not be the first to have turned to you. I know your opinions were sought in 1938 about Spain, and earlier about the Nazis. You have been many places. You have many connections.”

“More’s the pity that no one heeded my opinions until it was too late.” Her voice had an edge to it. “ I think I saw what those gangsters in Berlin were up to. We were quite close with some people in the political centre. I always thought Erzberger and Rathenau were rather the thing. But they had to kill them, didn’t they? They didn’t listen to me here at first, and then … Not early enough, but still early. How could anyone take seriously what that crew of thugs said? Common criminals had more honour. And then Spain. Do nothing but hamper the democratically elected government – for all its faults – and then drive them into the hands of those beastly Russians. Good God, I despair sometimes.”

Mrs Douglas sighed.

“But … that was then. Now we have a fine new world. Except the shadows from the past fall over it rather, don’t they? Surprised? I expect you thought to find me an old dragon spouting invective against Mr Attlee and his crew. Perhaps, I would have wished things otherwise, but Mr Churchill did rather go too far comparing those worthy gentlemen to the Gestapo. I do not share many of the opinions of my class. Though I am of it. Perhaps it had to be thus – after those terrible thirties, don’t you think? So … Mrs Fairbairn, the first. Well, I did some investigating, a grand word – asking might be better – as Gavin requested me to. I talked to some old friends … and acquaintances. Swallowed some pride rather, but for my lovely Gavin … He does rather break hearts, doesn’t he? Oh, don’t blush. Those poetic eyes, that poetic hair. That rugged chin. That poetry. Well, this is what I’ve dug up. Valerie Fairbairn, née Pollard, county family, nice girl, estate in Dorset, both brothers killed in France. Met Fairbairn at a cousin’s wedding. The usual palaver. Married 1923. He was back from that unpleasantness in Ireland. Valerie travelled with Fairbairn sometimes. Otherwise, long periods in England. Often at her parents’, sometimes at the house in London that Fairbairn inherited. She didn’t take to hot climates, they say. And Fairbairn was rather occupied in hot lands in those years, wasn’t he? Died in a car crash in 1930, when Fairbairn was home lecturing at the Staff College. Apparently something of a beauty.”

“Any … ?”

“Any scandal? Any rumours? Any muck? I asked. Or rather listened, and remembered. Nothing really. Or almost nothing. Fairbairn had been away – Iraq, India. . . ?”

“Egypt. Late 1929.”

“Yes. Indeed. You are au fait. And had come home. I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that there were some … well, tears when he came back. She had been seen, in fact, with a rather stunning young chap, cousin of a German friend of the Fairbairns. Saudek, Erich Saudek. The Fairbairns knew them from holidays in the Black Forest in the early twenties. Gertrude Saudek was the woman’s name. She used to come to London in the twenties. Artistic interests. Very respectable though. Fortune survived the Great War … somehow. I met her and the Fairbairns, oh, in ’26, was it?”

“And you thought?”

“I thought she was very taken with Nicholas Fairbairn. And less so with Valerie. But it was all kept quite under control.”

“Do you think the first Mrs Fairbairn was having an affair with this Erich Saudek?”

“I don’t know, my dear. And at this distance we’re unlikely to find out. I simply report what I’ve been told. Her death was – shall we say? – fortuitous. But if we say that, we are speaking well beyond what the facts strictly allow.”

The two women sat back in their chairs.

“These Saudeks, do you know what became of them?”

“Both became fearful Nazis, they say. I rather lost sight of them. After 1939, one had rather a lot to think of. But he was fearfully handsome. If you like short blond hair and blue eyes, that is. Rather too … hmnn … Aryan for my taste.”

Mrs Douglas leant forward.

“Tell me about your people, Elizabeth.”

“Do people like me have people?”

“Touché. But yes, you do. As does James. As do I. And Gavin too.”

“My father was a draughtsman in a shipyard. My mother kept house. They both died in the bombing in 1941. I was at university by then. The University helped me to get through my studies. It was hard. I had little money.”

“Then you have done well. And you can do something now. It was impossible for me. I wish you well. And that lovely James of yours.”

“You are very attached to those two, aren’t you.”

“Oh, they are delightful lads. Utterly plausible. Gavin has all the obvious glamour, but James is … forgive me, my dear … but he is what I believe the Americans call cute.”

Liz smiled. “I think so too. Sometimes a little too much.”

“Well, yes. But he doesn’t quite believe it. A virtue of a Scottish upbringing.”

“You have never married Mrs Douglas?”

“And have no children? Yes, Elizabeth. Has Gavin not told you? My young man was killed in 1917 at Passchendaele. Pretty name for such a sad, terrible place, no? It never seemed right to find another.”

“I’m sorry. And forgive my forwardness in asking.”

“Oh, you Scots are so disarming! I did not take exception to the question from you. And it is thirty years ago. It is a common tale. Many tell the same. The death of your parents must have struck hard.”

“Yes. But it’s also a common tale.”

“My dear, what a terrible century it’s been. And not over yet, I think. And despite what you think, my dear, I rather like that blue dress of yours. It must turn a few heads.”





The BEA flight to Northolt had been delayed, and James did not reach Kentish Town till eleven. He sat by the fire and took the chill out of his bones. Liz sat opposite staring in the flames. He looked around at the small front room, the books, the radiogramme, the thick curtains shutting out the night. He reached out a hand to her and she held it.

“More dead bodies. You’re tired of them.”

“A little. And drinking whisky. And men in uniforms. And ruins. And children with skinny scabby knees and dirty faces.”

“And all the stories.”

“Yes, and all the stories. So much terrible unhappiness.”

“Gavin’s aunt says she doesn’t think it’s going to get better very soon.”

“What do you think?”

“No, Not really. Not soon. Will you see if you can chase up the man in that photograph? Tomorrow? And those corporals?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Come to bed, Jim. Come on. Now.”





But Christie did not chase up anything the next day. Rappaport called him into his office as soon as he got into work.

“Need you to go to Washington, Christie.”

James sighed. “Why, sir? I’ve this Hamburg thing on just now. A few loose ends still.”

Rappaport looked at him sharply through rounded glasses. “How is that coming on? Progress?”

“The business is a year old. Nobody knows anything any more. Maybe we’ll never know.”

“Hmmn. Not our priority just now. The Americans like you, Christie. You’re as clean as can be, they claim. They can’t stop thinking some of our people have been whispering things to the Soviets.”

“Have they?”

“Between you and me, damned if I know. Take that for what it’s worth. But the Americans seem very suspicious. You’re completely clean. No politics in the Army. Too young in the thirties. And they know you don’t have any time for the Russians.”

Christie liked Rappaport. He ran a fair and clean office. He knew a great deal about Orthodox icons, and had had a respectable war. Christie had met him in Austria in 1945.

“What do they want?”

“They won’t say. They want you to take part in some meetings. Officially, it’s about settling some issues about Berlin. They need a German expert from our side. I suppose it’s a compliment they asked us along. They’ve been getting damned chilly, I’m told.”

Christie knew better by now than to argue.

“And the Hamburg business?”

“Shelve it for a few weeks. As you say, the trail is cold. It will be cold in a month’s time.”

“A month?”

“Yes, Christmas in the States. Sorry, Christie. It could be Ulan-Bator. Or Chemnitz.”

“Or Klagenfurt.”

“Indeed.”





Christie did not come back to Britain for three months. He stared at the huge North Atlantic waves as the passenger liner crashed its way through them to New York. He enjoyed the sunlight of winter in Washington. He spent hours in meetings large and small. He soon discovered part of his responsibility was to sit in on interminable debriefing sessions with a Soviet defector. The Americans kept pushing at the issue of Soviet operatives in Britain. Christie could see why. All the time, however, Fairbairn never left his thoughts. He talked to a few people. He liked Americans. They seemed to like him too. Sometimes he got answers.

Douglas spent the time in Spain. He talked to people at the Embassy in Madrid. He made a car trip to the French frontier. Then he went to Granada and on to his small house in the Sierra Nevada. He wrote poetry and walked.

Liz took the names of demobbed corporals to Special Branch and charmed James’s friend into looking through them. She took the photograph of the dead man to her friend Whitlow. Over Christmas she stayed at home, read a yoga book, cautiously tried the yoghurt she bought from a small Greek shop, listened to the radio, and walked on Hampstead Heath in the rain. She visited a middle-aged German emigré she knew and had sex three times with a rather charming doctor she had met at a book launch the year before. In the new year she went back to work.





It was an early spring in London when James came back, a new decade. They all met two days later at the weekend. In the Christies’ front room they spread out their finds on the oval utility dining table.

“So … let’s take things step by step,” James began, aware he was being boring. “Liz?”

“The dead man Jim saw on his last day in Hamburg, the one Meier took him to, was, indeed, Spicer. British traitor. Abwehr agent. After 1945, working for the Soviets and the East German communists. That’s confirmed by my friend in the War Office.”

“He comes to the Kaltenbrünnen area just before Fairbairn died. Two British soldiers try to kill him,” Douglas said. “Do we have any … dare I say? … leads on those?”

“Get used to the vocabulary,” said Liz. “this seems to be what we do now. These ones seem most likely.” She pushed forward two grimy photographs of heavy-set men in British Army uniforms. “Martin Monaghan and John Ibbotson, both late of HM forces in Germany, both with a long line of convictions before – and during! – the War. A lot could get waived, it seems in 1942. Both demobbed the day after Fairbairn’s death and sent back to … dare I say? … Blighty on the London flight that afternoon. Both now serving time in Wormwood Scrubs for assault and affray. And much else. The Met seems to want to throw away the key. We need to chat to those two fellows. But there are other choices. I think we might go to see those two though. If we need to.”

“Liz, you’re getting quite … well, Army, I suppose … in your conversation,” said Douglas. Liz smiled at him.

“Ok, Gavin,” said James. “Spain? tell us about it.”

“Fairbairn was, as we know, attached to the Embassy in Madrid in late 1940. What his real job was there, we don’t know. Liz’s friend Whitlow has speculated. But he was there. I asked what he did. I have friends too. Nobody could tell me anything. Or no one wanted to. Now, let’s assume that there is some secret about this time in Spain. The fact that it never gets mentioned suggests someone, lots of people – well, more than one or two – are hiding something. What? Meetings with disaffected Spanish military? Not a very dark secret. But with the Germans? Well, that might be worth burying. Official? Unofficial? Better unofficial. Anyway, Fairbairn did take a trip up north once during his stay. He was off post for a week. The driver is long gone. Died of influenza in 1943. Or that’s what they told me. But one thing remains after everyone is dead and gone. Yes … the requisition chitty. For petrol. I saw it. Enough to get to the French border and back. Of course, maybe Fairbairn just tootled around the Costa Alegre for a week. I don’t think so. He could have gone up as far as Hendaye.”

“You’re not …” began James.

“Suggesting he was in on that famous encounter on 23rd October 1940? Not for a moment. The requisition was dated 15th November 1940. All I am saying is that the Germans were meeting people on the French border in 1940.”

“If Franco, why not a British military attaché?”





Liz made tea and brought to James and Gavin as they stood at the front downstairs window, watching the rain.

They sat at the table again.

“Saudek,” James said softly, almost musingly. “I didn’t waste the time in Washington either. Not at all, in fact. It was interesting. All of it. But not for our business either. I spoke with people in their intelligence office. They have … large plans, I may say. The chap I spoke to about Saudek stiffened a little when I mentioned his name, but he liked me, we were drinking, and I made it clear this was a … well, private thing. Funny, that. Private, he would talk. Public, he wouldn’t have, I think. Your aunt, Gavin, thought the Saudeks were Nazis. That was, it seems, true, up to a point. Or at least they put on a show. In fact, they were Comintern. Lasted out the War, feeding information back to Moscow. Didn’t pull out till the whole edifice was coming down. Now – apparently – ensconced in Moscow. Heroes of the USSR, and all that. Probably deserved. But … if the Saudeks were communists …”

“Then,” said Liz, “the Trudl in Fairbairn’s book was Gertrude Saudek, and Erich Saudek may have had an affair with Valerie Fairbairn. Both working for Moscow.”

“And if Fairbairn ever knew, then that might explain why he stopped speaking German.”

“Only linguists would think of that, Jim. But you’re right.”

“So … ,” Liz stretched out her arms. “Fairbairn may have met the Germans on the Spanish border in 1940. The Soviets made a pass at him and his missus in the 1920s. How successful we don’t know. The present Mrs Fairbairn has been associating with a man in Moscow’s pay. Someone turns up at Kaltenbrünen last winter. Maybe someone ex-Abwehr now working for East Berlin, which means Moscow ultimately. Let’s call him Spicer. Two British soldiers try to kill him off. They fail. Someone kills Fairbairn. The two soldiers from the bar are demobbed fast and disappear back to Britain.”

“And,” said Gavin, “we know someone was interested in Page and talked to your Mr Malleson back in late 1948, just before Fairbairn’s murder.”

“Liz?”

“I’ll make the phone calls now,” she said. “I’ll check the demob order has gone through for the son.”





They waited by the window and drank their tea. They could hear Liz’s muffled voice in the hallway.

“Thank you,” she said finally. “Thank you, Mr Malleson.”

She came into the living room. The men looked at her.

“Vickery,” she said. “He says it was Vickery who came to him in 1948.”





I wondered if you gentlemen would come.





He said.





I wondered when you would come.





The kitchen was painfully neat and clean. Outside the tiny window late afternoon dark settled on the grass and fruit trees. He had made tea. There was a plate of Rich Tea biscuits. They all sat at the bare table. Liz felt the weight of the browning in her handbag. How stupid, she thought. Stupid to think they would need it. He spoke and they listened.





I generally assume that things come out in the end. You think they’re buried, but they come out. I never thought I’d get away with it. Sooner or later, someone would pull it together. I had to do it though. Maybe you know why. Maybe you’ll see. But it was a year, and then you gentlemen came. But still, forgive me, I wondered if you would dig deep enough. Well, I suppose you did. And you, Miss, I suppose you did some of the leg work in London, didn’t you? They spared you the cold in Hamburg. Well, what should I say? How to tell it? Properly, that is. I was with him so long. We went through it, didn’t we? Well, what was public knowledge was only part of it. I suppose I knew where the skeletons were, all of them. I saw it in the ‘20s with those Germans, stuck-up bastards, trawling up the boss and Mrs Fairbairn. They got to them both, you know. O very charming. The guv’nor and his Trudl. Mrs Valerie and that toothy bastard Saudek. I knew they were no good, and then someone must have dropped a word in the boss’s ear, or the penny dropped at last – I like to think it was that – I mean he wasn’t a stupid man at all – and that was that. I never heard him speak German again – but just once. Otherwise, he did what he always did. Stiffened his back and jaw and carried on. Hard man. Ask the Arabs. Ask the Germans. But Mrs V. – she was never the same. Hurt. I doubt the Saudeks got anything out of either of the Fairbairns. They were class. Knew where to draw the line. I was sorry when she died in that crash. A lady. I liked her. She was good for him. Could laugh him out of his moods. Well, we did a bit of soldiering in the ’30s, did we not? Hard, nasty stuff. He was good at it. I was good at it. Playing hard bastards in Palestine. India was a dream in comparison. And then Spain. Well, first, you understand, there was that total effin’ balls-up at Dunkirk. Pardon my language, Miss. I’ve never seen the boss so livid. “Vickery, we deserved that,” he said. “We deserved that licking.” How we got so many off , so many back, I’ll never know to this day. And the boss spoke his mind back home. Which doesn’t do in brass circles, does it? So they ship him off to Spain. The main thing was to scare the shit out of the Spanish military. Go near Gibraltar and you’ll have bastards like Mad Nick Fairbairn to deal with. Just dying to make up for Dunkirk. But then in November ’40, we get in a car and when I ask where we’re going, the boss says: “Up north. Meet some people.” All clipped, stiff-like. I knew to shut up then. So we get up to the French border, a little town called Bera, just this side of the frontier. Pretty little place. I remember a river. White houses. Cobbles. Could have been anywhere in Spain really. Well, when I see the three Wehrmacht cars there, I know this is all bad. But the boss talks to them. It’s all smiles and handshakes, saluting, heel-clicking (no “Heil Hitlers” though, thank God) and they go into a house. He was talking Kraut that day, for sure. I stay with the car and look at the German soldiers looking at me. And I hated the bastards. I couldn’t see what the boss was doing talking to them, after all we’d been through since nineteen-bloody-seventeen. And I register their faces, one by one. But then the brass comes out, more smiles, handshakes, and then a photo. Well, I knew that was real bad, but the boss smiles and stands still for it. I think he didn’t fucking care about anything then. The war was lost, as far as he was concerned. But then we go back to Madrid, and he thinks some more, and then he gets called back in 1941, and we go and fight the bastards instead of making smiley-smiley with them. Which suited me just fine. And him too really. We made a good show of it, anyway. All the way through to VE Day. Almost every damned stop on the way. Retreats, advances, defeats, victories (whatever they are). And then we’re here in Hamburg, at Kaltenbrünnen. Cold spring, I think it means. Well cold it was. But we were busy, with the Yanks (who just loved Sir Nicholas since we were there in the ’30s “Hey, Nick, how ya doin’” – that kind of thing – and then they’d get down to business, I’ll give the Americans that, they get down to business), and then the bloody Russians blockading Berlin. The Yanks were happy to talk to Sir Nicholas. Like they were preparing him, grooming him for something. He was their Brit. And that cold winter, well two things happen, don’t they? Back in London, for a bit – I see that the second Mrs is being … well, a bit naughty. The boss was too goddamn busy in Whitehall to see anything. But you can’t keep things like that from the servants. It’s our job to watch. So to protect the Brigadier I go behind his back. Talk to my friend at Scotland Yard. Ex-Army from Egypt. Who sends me to this tough little bird in Soho, who tells me all I need to know about that greasy gigolo Page. So I go back to Hamburg to think a bit, but when I do, who do I clock coming to see the boss? One of them Wehrmacht guys from Bera in 1940, one that stood apart a bit from the others, and just watched. Didn’t say anything. So I knew the balloon would go up sooner or later. One thing or the other. We were there again. Even the month was the same. Bloody November. I wasn’t half sick. Can you imagine? Here we go again. Mrs F. screwing a commie agent. The krauts putting the screws on the boss. So I killed him. It seemed the best thing to do. To save him, if you like. To save something out of these past thirty years. I didn’t want him going down as a traitor, did I? I didn’t want people to laugh at us. Couldn’t let it happen. And I didn’t. Did I?





They drove back to London through the dark in silence. At the Christies’ Gavin produced a bottle of red wine from his holdall. Liz set out the glasses. Then Jim raised a toast.

“To Sergeant Vickery.”

They solemnly drank to the sergeant’s health.





They walked on the Heath the next day. It was blustery. Flashes of sun. Specks of rain. There was no one on Parliament Hill. Everybody was at work but them. They looked out over London smoke.

“So tell me, Jim. Who do you work for?”

Liz walked to a bench and sat down. She watched them, huddled into her coat. Sometimes the sun flashed off her glasses.

“I work for HMG. My department is connected with the Control Commission.”

“In a pig’s eye, James Christie. You make it sound like you deal with coal shipments. Butter rations. The weight of an administration loaf. You carry a gun, for God’s sake. They send you to Washington. And you can get people there to speak to you. But it’s more than that, isn’t it. You work for the Yanks too. And I bet Liz does as well.”

Christie looked at his friend.

“Okay, Gavin. Guilty as charged.” He shrugged. Liz watched the men without moving.

“Why, for God’s sake?”

“We thought you’d ask. Sooner or later. So I’ll tell you, Gavin. Though you know. You of all people. Beating up through Italy with you. Seeing what the partisans would do. Settling scores. I didn’t like that. Enough blood already. And the Polish guys in the unit told me what they thought of communists. I listened – like Fairbairn, like Vickery. But then … in Klagenfurt, Gavin, remember? Remember? We put women and children on trains back to Russia. We put men on trains who just had the bad luck to have to chose between a Wehrmacht uniform or starvation or a bullet in the head. And they were all, all of them, going to be shot when they got back. I didn’t like the Russians we had to deal with in Austria. I thought they were absolute bastards. Soviet Repatriation Committee. The officers strutting in their white uniforms. Remember the Nazi-Soviet Pact? I did. Quite vividly, actually. Five years before. Only ten years ago now. And suddenly those bastards were our noble allies. They only fought the Germans because the Germans were insane enough to invade. As far as I can see, the only people serious about the Russians are the Americans. We haven’t two halfpennies to rub together. A busted flush – whatever that may be. Too tired to do anything any more. We just get on with fixing the shit left over from the thirties at home. But there’s all that shit out there. Only the Americans can face off bloody Stalin. Of course, I’m working for them.”

“And they told you to check out Fairbairn’s death.”

“Yes, they needed to know how political it was. Who did it? They didn’t like the loose end. They had plans for Fairbairn. Something grand in NATO. They thought the Germans and the British had cooked something up to keep it quiet.”

“That’s a hideous mixed metaphor, Jim,” said Liz.

“See what a passion I’ve got into,” said Christie. “See, Gavin.”

“And what will you tell them? The Americans?”

“More or less the truth, actually. Fairbairn had some skeletons in the cupboard. Good it was all resolved now. He was being groomed for some big NATO job. Which he would have been very fine at. But not with his wife screwing a Moscow pretty boy, and the East Germans putting the screws on him because of some meeting in 1940. To which – understand me well – he really should not have gone, whatever he felt about Dunkirk.”

“You got lucky – seeing Page leave Mrs Fairbairn’s house,” Liz said from the bench.

“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Gavin said. Both men turned to her with toothy grins. “We are born policemen. We knew what we were doing every step of the way.”

“Boys,” Liz declared as she got up. “Take me to lunch.”





In the summer of 1950, Liz and James met Meier by the Binnenalster in Hamburg. High buildings around the lake had been rebuilt. The cafés at the far end were open. The sun shone. The Christies brought small gifts – a silk tie from Bond Street for the Kommissar, some perfume for Frau Meier, toys for the children. Meier presented the Christies with a small leather volume of Heine’s Deutschland, ein Wintermärchen, published in Hamburg in the 1860s. They sat on a bench by the bridge that divides the outer and inner lakes of Hamburg. They spoke German.

“The book is a rara avis, as I’m sure you know. It has an odd provenance. Personal, I suppose. Heine was not highly regarded or read in the Hitler time. The father of my friend Klaus had a good library and liberal principles. Klaus died at Stalingrad. I did not. I inherited his father’s library. It survived the bombing in ’43.”

“But then we cannot accept it,” said Liz. “It is part of your life.”

“And that is why I would wish you to have it, Frau Christie. It will link us.”

“You are very kind, Herr Kommissar.”

Meier cleared his throat.

“You are here to talk about the Fairbairn case, you said in your telephone call.”

“Yes,” Liz said. “James – and I – wish to ask you some questions about last winter. And perhaps to tell you something.”

“Tell us,” said James, “about Spicer.”

“Ah, yes,” said Meier. “Spicer. Of course. Gladly. When I heard of the stranger in the Eckkneipe and the attempt to murder him – for that is what it was – I naturally investigated the man. I had his description, his age. I did not then know he was not German. That was later. I did not send the two Kripo men, but I saw their report. I knew his German was excellent. I felt sure that Spicer was, indeed, the man in the Kneipe.”

“May I ask whom you asked?” Liz spoke gently.

Meier looked out over the lake.

“Alte Kameraden, Frau Christie. I’m afraid there are many. I have an unimpeachable war-record with them – for all that I was only Army. They will at least talk to me. I do not wish to be privy to their dark secrets. But sometimes they are very useful. I spoke to a man who recalled Spicer in the Abwehr in 1943. From his description, I was sure he must be the man. I also spoke to some – shall we say? – more palatable acquaintances in a new German government agency. They thought it most likely that this was Spicer and that he was now working for East Berlin.”

“Why do you think he ended up dead in a ditch outside Hamburg in 1949?” Liz asked.

“Spicer had failed. Sir Nicholas was dead. He could not be blackmailed. Spicer’s usefulness was over. He had been recognized in 1948. He would be again. Who knows the motivations of such people? He had run. He was fleeing. Perhaps he thought he could make his peace with the British. Hamburg would have been as good a place to run to as any. He had not had a good war. He did not have a good peace either. There is a confusion in the heads of such men at such times, I imagine. He was very unlucky.”

“And the NKVD killed him?”

“Most likely. An accident? On purpose? He had no more use for them. Perhaps he could have told the Allies something.”

“So,” said James at last, “when you showed me his body you knew who Spicer was.”

“More or less. A British traitor. St George’s Legion. Abwehr. Later a creature of the NKVD. Yes, that much I knew.”

“Why did you show me the body?”

“Because I had been told not to follow that line of investigation any further. Because I had been told not to cooperate with you beyond what was necessary.”

“And …”

“That vexed me, Herr Christie. I have an antipathy to being told what to do by the old men who got us into … all that. But this you know. It was important that you have a photograph to take back to Britain. And I do not like the Russians. I thought I would … co-operate.”

“Do you know why Spicer could blackmail Fairbairn?” Liz asked.

“He had been at a meeting? In Spain? The Abwehr had tried to recruit Sir Nicholas? I heard some rumour of that.”

“Why was Spicer at the meeting?”

“Ah. The Germans, you see, thought he was a gentleman. He would be able to assess Fairbairn. Speak to him – gentleman to gentleman, as it were. I suspect, from what I know of the British now, that was wrong. But there were some very naïve persons in the Abwehr then. They thought all British officers were, in fact, officers. Not ones with degrees in chemical engineering from Birmingham, I think. However, I am told that Spicer never actually spoke to Sir Nicholas. It – apparently – wasn’t necessary. So … I would like some help with what happened in winter ’48.”

James spoke. “No, Spicer never spoke to Fairbairn, and Fairbairn probably didn’t know of his existence. But his sergeant saw him. So when Spicer turned up in Kaltenbrünnen, he knew at once what it was about.”

“So who was the murderer?” Meier asked.

“Who do you think?” James couldn’t resist.

“Vickery then,” said Meier with a brief sigh. “The sergeant. Of course. To save the reputation of the officer, of the British Army, of himself. For honour. Well.”





They said their goodbyes. The afternoon sun lay on the lake. A pleasure boat puttered out from the far end.

“Both of you and your friend showed yourselves fine policemen,” said Meier.

“I’m not a policeman,” said James.

Meier laughed. “Who are you then?”

“We’d love to know,” said Liz. “Later, Herr Kommissar, later.”





Gavin Douglas wrote only one poem about all this. It is dated in his Collected Poems “Hamburg 1950” (which is, of course, misleading).

Why are we here?

Some whim of our masters?

So they put this across his desk?

The work’s not my line.

Or his. They know that.

Some secret they want dug up? Something they want stopped?

Save an English hero? Pull one down?

Stop looking for conspiracies. It’s just happened.

It’s cold. We ask questions. We listen.

Maybe soon we can go home.

The courtyard, the snow, the lamp light, the old soldier’s stories.

Of forgotten wars. Best forgotten wars.

In Deutschland. In 1950.





In America





I travelled to America for the first time, and, indeed, the only time, in the spring of 1968. I flew of course. I recalled the grand ocean liners with some nostalgia. It seemed somehow a more befitting way to go to the New World. But this was the second half of the twentieth century, and with a shrug I settled for the Air France jet liner from Orly to New York. I travel at ease nowadays. I had enough of long and unpleasant journeys when I was younger (and not so much younger). I caught the Toulouse-Paris express at Brive-la-Gaillarde. In Paris, I stayed at a small hotel I know in the 15th. It is very bourgeois, but then so am I. I dined alone that night near the Luxembourg Gardens. I think the proprietor did not remember me from when I worked in the city, but that, strangely, gave me a satisfaction. I was not known. I had been forgotten. The next day I meet Henri in a café near his building. The spring sunshine was warm. Pretty girls clicked by on high heels. We chatted of his children, of office politics, and he confirmed her present address. I had sent my deposition in some weeks earlier.

“You are going for sure?” he asked.

“I have the ticket in my pocket,” I answered.

He shrugged and made a moue.

“It has been so long,” he murmured.

“Ah, so long,” I said. “So long since North Africa, so long since Vietnam, so long since Algeria, so long since we were both younger, so long since we bathed our children and read them stories at night. So long, my friend. I am interested to see the effects of so long.”

Henri stroked his moustache. “On whom. I am interested on whom.”

Boston, they say, is the most European of the cities of the United States. I reached it after a rather tiring journey from New York. It seemed foreign enough to me. But perhaps it is no more than the language. My English is good from the time of the War, but I use it little, and here, and in New York, they spoke so fast. I am not young any longer either. The journey also had somewhat wearied me. I had, indeed, started to worry about why I was here. However, my daughter had ’phoned ahead and booked me a room in a pleasant, spacious hotel in the downtown area, a few minutes from a large public garden with fountains. I walked in the evening, in the warm spring air, and watched the crowds bustle. Lovers met. Business men and secretaries with clothes not so different from those in France were heading home. There was even a metro. I went to bed early after dining in the hotel (an American steak!). I slept the sleep of the just.

At four – as always – the dreams came. They were the usual variants. We were on a hilltop in Vietnam with shells coming in. I was making love to my dear wife and her face became all of a sudden that of an Arab girl we interrogated in Marseilles. I walked among bloated corpses in the desert beside burnt out tanks and guns. Too much twentieth century, I’m afraid. My own hands far too dirty.

I took a cab the next morning to East Boston. The streets were narrow. Wooden tenements lined both sides. They had wide front porches and stretched back – it seemed huge distances. This was a New World architecture, I thought. There were bars with Irish names and small shops with Italian flags hanging outside. Men stood on street corners and watched my yellow cab.

She opened the door a crack. I had taken off my hat and bowed slightly to the eyes in the gap between door and lintel, over which a thick chain stretched.

“Bonjour, madame.”

I think she recognized me at once. Her eyes widened slightly. She stared at me.

“Vous permettez. Vous vous souvenez de moi?”

Did a smile cross her lips, there in the space between door and frame? I hope so.

“But, Captain, of course.”

Later, sitting by the table, on shabby chairs that smelled of dust, the sunlight filtered through lace curtains, she smiled again. We spoke English. She let me understand she wished it. Her voice was as soft as it once was.

“Is it still Captain, by the way? This coffee is weak, isn’t it? It’s the best I can get. Sometimes, in a café downtown … well, but it’s expensive … though at least drinkable.”

“I became a colonel at the end. But I do not use my rank. I am private now. No, the coffee will do well. We are in America. I suppose it is un café américain.”

“Always adaptable, Captain. I admire that in you. Flexible, Viktor said. A good man, but flexible. A good man and flexible, I thought.”

“Those were odd times. He turned out to be right.”

“And you?”

“For me it turned out I was also right. Or I became so. I went to London to join the Free French. I took part in D-Day. We fought through the bocage. We reached Paris.”

“Ah, Paris,” she murmured and looked away.

“You are private now. So this is not official?”

“Madame, look at me. I am retired. A grandfather. I grow flowers in my garden in le Limousin.”

“Tell me about Paris.”

“Ah, what would you know? The lights by the Seine. The smell of fresh bread in the morning. A thousand-thousand little cafés. The deuxième – narrow streets and restaurants. The Boulevard St Michel with the pretty students and the young men so serious. St Germain-des-Prés.”

“Il n’y a plus d’ après …”

“A St Germain-des-Prés …”

“Il n’y a pas d’autre fois.”

We smiled at each other.

“But you recall it from 1940. You have not returned since then.”

“That is a statement, not a question, Captain. No, I have not.”

“I was surprised to be contacted. After so long. A friend – in the Ministry – the Americans sent a request. To account for those years. You gave my name. He called me. I was flattered you remembered. So you wish to be a citizen of the United States? Vous avez attendé longtemps.”

She rose from the couch on the other side of the table and passed toward the window to her left. She moved the lace curtain slowly to one side. The window looked onto the wooden boards of the next building. Perhaps she could see the street from where she stood.

“I never felt the need before. We always planned to go back. Someday. Soon. Later. We became resident aliens. And then later … well,” she turned to me. “Well, I held on to it somehow. Being foreign. Bernie … my second husband … but you know, I expect … Bernie was happy with it. For him I was Europe. A Jewish classicist. His parents from some horrid little shtetl on an empty plain in Russia. I would tell him stories of Paris before the War, of Prague before Munich, of … well, you see.”

“And now?”

She looked out the window again.

“Colonel. I am fifty-three years old. I am not leaving here. I am on my own now. It will be easier to be a citizen.”

“I do not think they will make trouble for you.”

“But they checked.”

“There have been some scandals. The Americans took in some very bad people after ’45. They needed to be sure.”

“And they ask a Vichy police official to give me a clean bill?”

“I was … briefly … what you say. Since then I have paid my dues, I think.”

We looked at each other. She smiled quickly.

“It is to laugh, I suppose. In ’43, we were okay. In ’48 too left-wing. In ’50 they would have sent Viktor to jail if they could. And now they want to check if I was a fascist.”

“I wrote the right things. I made sure my friends in the ministry sent it straight to the Americans. You were a hero of the resistance. You shot a German officer after all.”

She sat down on the couch again.

“Do you still smoke, Captain?”

“Madame, a little. Now, at my age, so much caution. Moderation. But, yes.”

“And a French brand?”

“With me. Of course. In Vietnam, even. I never took to the American issue.”

I opened my cigarette case. She took a Gauloise. I lit it. She sat back and drew in a long breath.

“Tell me what happened.”

“To whom?”

“Who do you think?”

“Ah. We travelled south. The British were in Cameroon. We joined the British Army.’

“No. Really?”

“No. Not really. Somehow – it was war-time – somehow you got places – somehow we got to London. I joined the Free French. Richard – this was ’42 by now – Richard … went to work for the Americans. His languages were excellent. You know that. He knew France. He had a good record. In those days, the Spanish War experience did you no harm. Later he was able to bury it. We fought the Germans. I in the desert, in the fields of France. I ended up in Vienna liaising with the Russians. Richard … well, traveled widely.”

“He cabled me once in California. He was passing through. He asked to see me.”

“And?”

“No. I couldn’t. What would have been the use?”

“He was very unhappy, I think.”

“And that is the only reason he would contact me? No, no, forgive me. That was unfair. I thought so too. But I was unhappy also. I could see no point.”

“Viktor.”

“Oh, Viktor had already gone to South America. They had made it most unpleasant for him. He was in Mexico already.”

“He died there.”

“Yes. They said … a car accident. Crossing the street. He was abstracted. He often was.”

“They said?”

“Well. … I had met Bernie already. In the defense committee. He made things safe for me. And then he came to Boston to teach. Cambridge is lovely, isn’t it? Have you been? No? Go. So many … interesting people. And if I had dark times, well, a half of the faculty had lost all their families in the War, so it wasn’t unknown. Compensations of genocide.”

She smoked for a few minutes. I remained silent. The question came at last.

“Tell me about him.”

“When did you meet that director?”

“It wasn’t the director. The writer. Usually nobodies in Hollywood. But someone has to write those words. I don’t remember what we told him. I don’t think it matters. They tell the story they want. You came out quite well.”

“Yes, I suppose. You know, no one ever worked out it was me. Not in General Staff. Not at the Ministry. Not in Intelligence. Not even the Americans. Maybe they don’t watch movies.”

“Tell me about him.”

“Richard is dead.”

“At my age … that is no surprise.”

“Why do you need to know?”

“Why are you here?”

“By 1950, when he cabled, he was drinking a lot. He was working for an organization that supported Franco and Salazar, paid people to execute Greeks who’d fought the Germans, co-operated with ex-Abwehr men, and sat back when Viktor’s Czechoslovakia was handed over to fascists again.”

“The communists.”

“You forget. Richard was in Spain. He had little time for communists.”

“And?” It was her hard Popular Front face. Viktor would have been proud.

“And. They say he was careless. Like Viktor. A stupid death. Willed. In Paris, at least. He dropped down in the street. Dead by the time they got him to hospital. His heart, they said.”

“À bientôt.”

“Merci, capitaine.”

“C’est rien.”

“All so silly, really. We fight. We suffer. We win. We lose. They make a silly film about us. We become immortal. But not us. Not our story. Not really.”

“No, Ilse. No.”

“No, Paul.”





Later as she showed me out, she said something else.

“I had a daughter, you know.”

“No, I did not.”

“Yes, born in the New World. In 1941. In June. In California.”

“And she … ?”

“She lived. I gave her up for adoption.”

“Why?”

“Oh, Viktor. The cause. Because I wanted her to be safe here.”

“Have you … ?”

“Oh, yes. Not contact. But I found out where she is. Who she is.”

“Will you tell me?”

“No. She’s safe from unhappy Europe, from all that history. She is very beautiful and very clever.”

What was there to say? I made my adieux, and picked my way carefully down the wooden stairs into the hot spring sunlight. I needed suddenly to go back to le Limousin, to my garden, to my dear wife. I needed desperately not to think, not to remember. I wanted my nightmares again, not a new one, not a new regret.





Says No





I don’t hold much with churches and all that, you know. Never since I saw my Pa dying in that room above the store. He had to sell the farm when the droughts came, back there in Oklahoma. I didn’t see any justice in any of that. I couldn’t believe anyone or anything was looking over the world, balancing right and wrong. But I remember back in ’32, when I’d been out in L.A. for a couple of years already, and I was making good money, I went to night school for a bit. You know, the usual classes, book-keeping, math, business writing, public speaking, civics. The insurance business. But there was one guy offering an English class, reading old plays. I thought why not? I had enough real credits. Well, I liked it. Some stuff was hard, you know, really old English. But the stories always held you, and they were as bloody as some of the tough-guy novels you see people reading on the streetcars and trains. I liked the old Greek ones best though. You got into a hole just because of one mistake, and once you were there, all the rest followed. You just took a wrong turning, said hello to the wrong guy – or the wrong dame – in the wrong way, and that was fate. That made a kind of sense to me. Chance and really bad luck. And, I suppose, hope for the opposite. Punishment for just being in the wrong place. Yes, that made a kind of sense. Pa would have understood it anyway.

But when she made me that proposition, when I realized why she wanted her husband to have life insurance without him knowing about it, I got out of there as fast as I could. I was scared as hell. The perfume like honeysuckle, the anklet, the legs crossed just so I couldn’t miss them, the dress that hung off her tail like the sweetest, neatest table-cloth you’ve ever seen, the whole smile that said “Bed me” – all that made me sweat and run. Especially because it was clear I was supposed to fix her husband for her, and help her get the insurance. I was gone faster than you could say “premiums” or “double indemnity.” Then she came round that evening, in the rain, in that tight white sweater and slacks under her coat, and I kissed her and fucked her. She talked some more about how her husband didn’t care for her any more. He swore at her when she bought any new clothes, didn’t take her out like he used to, was always tired at night. He just didn’t care for her now. He’d even slap her around a bit. All he cared about was his job in the oilfields and his daughter – who was going to get all his money anyway. She’d thought of doing him in a dozen times. I told her no, it was real hard to kill someone and get away with it. I told her it was real hard to have any money left after a husband dies. I’d seen so many cases myself. I told her, too, that we had a guy in our office, a tough little bastard, who just loved to get his bite into phoney claims. He’d pull her heart out in strings inside of a half hour if he had a chance.



But you know how it goes after you’ve made love. You get that kind of lazy excitement when anything seems possible, and you start talking big. I told her there were ways. I’d been in the insurance business a long time. I knew a couple of tricks might break the system. In truth, I’m not sure. There are only so many ways to kill a man, and the insurance investigation guys worked them out years ago. They have tables. They have files. They write big fancy articles, with statistical columns, for each other on poisons, gas, gun wounds, blows to the head. They know as much as the police, and they sure as hell aren’t stupid. I’d rather swim buck-naked with a bunch of hungry sharks than try to put one over on them. I was a lower life form to most of that fraternity – a cheap salesman that sold policies to dead Indians and grannies in cabins on earthquake faults, to stuntmen in Hollywood and Wall Street bankers with offices on the twenty-sixth floor. We got the company into the messes they had to get us out of. You couldn’t tell them that without the sales guys, they’d have no jobs and no pay checks.

She left in the end, after a couple more hours, mussing my sheets. I patted her on the ass and told her I was her man and that we’d talk tomorrow. I guess she had one exciting enough evening out of it, although with women you never really know, do you? The girls fake a lot. It keeps us guys happy, I guess. They have to.

I knew exactly what I was going to do next. I was getting the hot hell out of that place, at least for a while. I drove to work real early the next day, and was first in line to see the lady in Personnel. She had the hots on for me a bit, and, to be honest, I wouldn’t have said no and kicked her out of bed. Especially because I didn’t think she wanted me to help do in her old man, or her first cousin, or any other inconvenient relative. Or her cat. She peered over her nasty-bitch glasses at me, but listened to what I wanted – which was a week’s vacation, paid. It was only a fraction of what was due me, and she knew that. I didn’t take vacation time generally. I don’t see the point, and who would I go with anyway? I like to choose when in my own time and not have some clerk in Personnel tell me what days I can take time off. I just said there were a couple things I needed to do up north. She signed the papers. I smiled. She smiled. I left. I put a note on McCready’s desk, and told Charlene the secretary that I was going to be gone for a week. I got in the car. I’d packed a bag that morning, so I drove to the downtown branch of my bank and paid out a bit of what I had in the main account. Then I drove south down Highway 1. Yeah, exactly the opposite way to what I’d told Glynnis in Personnel. I don’t know. I guess I’m private that way.

Don’t you love the Pacific coast? All that space, the ocean all blue to the horizon. The waves knocking hell out of some of those rocky bays, chasing each other like crazy things in from the west. Nothing but a couple ships sailing north, maybe a rig or two. You’re high up, too. You can see forever. I stopped for lunch, ate some burgers, drank a cold beer, and looked at it some. Then I drove on.

Come evening I reached a little town called Palmyra. There was a motel on the outskirts, so I booked in. I was hungry, thirsty, and tired. The guy on the desk said Maya’s Place was good to eat in. It was downtown and looked out on the breakwater, and you could hear the waves thump. It was empty, but the food was good. There weren’t any other customers, so the waitress kept looking over in my direction. She was a pretty girl, mid-thirties, blond hair worn straight with a fringe, a nice figure under the uniform. Her cheeks had a few rough bits, like she’d had acne as a kid, but that just made her look … well, better somehow, more real. I asked her did she want a drink. She smiled and said she did.

I reckon most people, especially women, like to talk about themselves, and, honestly, why not? I like to listen to a pretty woman talk about her life, her family, the town, the movies she’s seen, boyfriends she’s ditched, the mayor’s wife and her hats. You get to know what she’d like out of life, where’s she going, what’s she missing. Peggy didn’t have a husband, but her boyfriend was some Mike who drove trucks between Palmyra and about everywhere in the state, and just now he was off on a seven-day trip up north. He sounded like an OK guy. But, you know, one thing leads to another. We were there in the restaurant and there were no other customers. It was like we were cut off from everything, in our own little pocket outside of time, with just the ocean banging outside on the beach, and the darkness. About nine the cook came out to say he was closing for the night. I offered to walk Peggy home, and ended up in her bed. She had lovely long legs, and later the moon came up and shone on them, all straight and slim and white in the dim bedroom.

So I hung about for three days. During the day, Peggy worked in a store a couple of blocks back from the beach. So I’d drive off in the morning, anywhere, just to clear my head, forget about the dame in L.A. I’d go to some small town and sit for ages in a diner. Or I’d stop by the ocean and watch it. I’d go on walks too, all along the sand, by big rocks, and I’d watch the big surf smash on them. Nights I’d get back, shower and go down to Maya’s. They were hurting, hoping to hold out until the tourists came. Often I was the only customer the whole evening. I’d chat with Peggy or the cook, who owned the joint. Then I’d set out on my own and double back to meet Peggy by the pepper trees at the street corner. Once we went to the beach and swam in the ocean, all naked, and then we made love on the sand. I clowned around on the sand, too, doing cartwheels, and I made her laugh. No one saw us. It was like we were charmed.

I crossed off the days in my head and so twenty-four hours before Mike was due back, I said to Peggy I better be getting on or back, whichever. I said it was great, but I knew she wanted to make a go of it with Mike, and so I better clear off. She made a funny kind of lop-sided smile, held my hand, and nodded. No tears. No fuss. I liked Peggy.

As soon as I got to the office that morning, I knew the game was screwed. You could feel it in the elevator operator’s look and the way the girls at the front desk just paused before giving me their fake smiles. I was used to getting real smiles from them. Bad news travels fast, or maybe they smelled it in the air. So I’m in my office for about five minutes when Myra comes by and says Mr. McFadden needs to see me now. Then I know it’s real trouble. McFadden is front office. He doesn’t interfere unless there’s a real problem. Well, all the glum, pale faces told me I was dead. All I had to do was roll over. Did I know Phyllis Dietrichson? Did I go to see her on April 24th about car insurance? Did I make improper advances toward her? Did I force myself on her? Did I lift her skirt and hump her against the fish tank? (No, they didn’t really ask me that. But they damned near did.) Did I force an improper relationship on her? (On Phyllis, Mr. McFadden? You couldn’t force that dame to give you the time of day, if she didn’t think she’d get something out of it.) The short of it was she filed a complaint. They could let it go to the police, but they’d like to settle it this way. Mrs. D. wasn’t asking for a penny (didn’t that make you suspicious, you heap of ivy-league shit?). She didn’t want her husband to know. All (all!) she wanted was for me to be fired so I couldn’t go on doing these disgusting things. I was out the door, my desk cleared, and my files handed in, in an hour. Well, goodbye Pacific All-Risks.

I went back to my apartment. There were no real memories, neither good nor bad. It had served its purpose. There was nothing I wanted to keep, except some clothes. The kitchen was clean and tidy. My mom taught me that. I repacked my bag. I sat for a few minutes just staring and not thinking much. No one would miss me if I never came back. I liked it that way.

The car was paid off, all mine. I threw my bag in the back and drove off. The colored boy that looked after the cars waved me goodbye. I waved back.

I drove south again. Always south. I wonder why? Away anyway. Away from L.A.

I’d taken plenty of dough out of my bank, and there was still a good amount in the account, so I wasn’t worried about much. A guy like me can always get work. When I came west in ’29, I didn’t have any references, no schooling, nothing but my hands and my smile, and look how I did. I wasn’t worried. I drove slowly back down the coast, like a repeat of my vacation. In the late afternoon I got to Palmyra again, and I thought why not? So I turned off the highway, and stopped outside Maya’s Place.

It was all boarded up, shutters over the windows, and a note pinned to the door. “Gone fishing,” it said. “Can’t wait till summer.” Poor dope, I thought. That’s how it goes. I crossed the street to the beach wall and looked out over the ocean. There was a swell and the sun lit the backs of the waves. I lit a cigarette. It was good to stand there. There was a breeze off the water and the beach wall was warm in the sun.

Then I hear a car draw up. I turned round. It was a big Buick with a fancy grille and white wall tires. The lady that got out was about as fancy. I saw dark hair pulled back in a tail, a high-waisted tight dark skirt, a red shirt with the collar put up, and lots of very trim leg click across to the restaurant door. She paused and turned round. She was very beautiful, honey skin and bright red lips to go with her blouse. She looked at me across the street. I smiled. She walked over to me.

“Seems I’m a day too late,” she said, and her voice was as good as her legs. Honey, candy, ice cream with maple syrup and walnuts … hell, I don’t know. “Got a cigarette?”

“Sure,” I said and handed her one and lit it. She leaned toward me and I smelled her perfume, something rich and musky, something from somewhere else.

“Do you know Mr. Kortas?”

“Ate a few times there a few weeks ago. That’s all.”

She sighed. “He owes me a bit of money. I wanted to find out when he was going to pay. I guess we’ll have to find him now. At least we have the property.”

“He can’t take that with him.”

“No.”

She was looking at me. “My name’s Helen Ramirez.”

“I’m Walter Douglas. Your name Spanish?”

“Yes. My husband’s name. One of those old California families. Been here forever. I used to be Sloane.”

“You been here forever?”

She laughed. “No. You?”

“Me neither. I came out from Oklahoma in the ‘twenties.”

“That’s like me. Wisconsin.”

“I like it here though.”

“Me too. You meet such interesting people.”

She smiled in a way that could mean everything and nothing at the same time.

She threw away her cigarette.

“Mr. Walter …”

“My first name’s Walter. Second name’s Douglas.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.” She was teasing me. “You’re one of those guys that can go either way. Henry James. Philip Dick. John Thomas.”

“Joe Louis? Yeah, something like that.”

“Walter. Can I call you Walter?”

“Sure.”

“Know much about cars?”

“A bit. I know where the shift stick is.”

“The engine keeps cutting out in mine. I don’t know what could be the problem. I thought I wasn’t going to make it.”

“That sounds like a problem for a garage.”

“I suppose so. Look, I was going to call the town garage from the restaurant. But I guess I can’t now. Could you drive me? Do you know where it is? I hate to …”

“It’s no bother, Mrs. Ramirez.”

“Helen. You can call me Helen.”

So I did. We drove to the garage near the highway. In the car she was all leg and perfume. I didn’t want the day to end. I didn’t want the next ten minutes in the car to end.

I drove her back to the Buick and the mechanic jacked it up and towed it away. He said he couldn’t look at it tonight, but he was sure he’d have it fixed for tomorrow. She pouted a bit, said she had some business down the coast, but then I said I’d take her anywhere she wanted.

One thing leads to another, as I think I’ve said before. I drove her. I waited outside of a big fancy house a few miles down the highway. She was gone a while, but came out all smiles. She patted her bag.

“They were in,” she grinned.

“You shouldn’t tell strangers that,” I said. “For all you know, I could be a thief. What’s to stop me robbing you?”

She smiled and stretched her legs. “I don’t get robbed, Walter. I don’t make mistakes about people. And even if I did, and you did, I do assure you that my husband would come after you for a very long time. Forever, in fact. But I don’t think you’re that kind of man. You like women far too much, don’t you? Walter?” Her skirt rode up above her knees just dandy.

We ended up in a motel north of Encinitas. She was good. She knew what she wanted, asked for it, and I think with me she got it. She was like one of those wild fires that hits the hills in the canyons in hot dry summers. It blazes and burns forever, so much it hurts. Everyway it hurts. But you can’t get enough.

I didn’t get enough over the next five days. In fact, I don’t think I ever got enough of Helen Ramirez.

She got her car back from Palmyra the next day. We stopped in a small town somewhere in the hills. She made some phone calls and came back all smiles. She bent toward me and mouthed in my ear, all sweet, like honey dripping from a spoon.

“Not busy for the next four days, Walter, are you?”

I laughed.

“OK,” she said, breathy, laughing too. “Ditch your car for a while. Come with me.”

We drove up into the hills. The house was a white cabin in a clearing. The trees made it private, but you could walk a ways up the hill and you’d be where there were no trees, just you and sky. You were high enough up you could catch a wink of the sunlight on the ocean. There was a small lake a mile or so down with water so clear and cold you thought you were hallucinating in it, that there was no bottom to it. I don’t remember what we ate, things she bought from a store in some tiny town at the neck of the valley. I stayed at the cabin. You could hear the birds in the morning and the whirr of the crickets most anytime. We drank big pitchers sometimes of white, sometimes of red wine. We made love a lot, and everywhere, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, against a tree outside, by the water of the lake. We were crazy, laughing. It was like something else was charging through our veins, not common old blood any more. It was like the gods had touched us somehow, and we were running on their power, their juice.

Then she drove down the valley to get some more wine and cigarettes, and she came back, and said she had to go to Mexico. I’d been waiting for that, or something like it.

But it wasn’t over. I was to pick up my car and drive down. She’d tell me where to go. I couldn’t miss it. There were people she had to speak to down there.

“What is this business you do? Really?”

She looked at me with a blank face.

“My husband has business interests. Property mostly. I deal with a lot of it. When he’s away on trips. He goes up to L.A. for weeks at a time. He has businesses in Chicago. New York too.”

That really told me a lot. But Helen was like that. I believed no one would rob her. She was just too hard for most people. I was glad she liked me.

I’d never been to Mexico before. I drove down through Tijuana, through dusty shabby streets, heading all the time for Santa Rita, the patron saint of lost causes.

I met her on a café terrace. She’d told me we’d have to be more careful here. Small town, lots of eyes. She looked wonderful in something white and light, with dark glasses and bright red lipstick, scarlet as cherry, as blood.

“Meet me later tonight, over there, where it says ‘Cantina.’ It’s not, but the sign pretends it is. It’s a good place. Someone I know owns it. It’ll be okay.”

I checked into the hotel she told me to, and at eight I was all spruced up for her. If she looked good on the terrace, she looked like a million bucks in the restaurant. Off the shoulder black dress that showed off that tiny waist and those gorgeous legs. We drank martinis and then some local drink, and then she told me she wanted me to help her kill her husband. Since she was Helen, the story wasn’t just a more subtle variant of Phyllis’s whining. This was business. She would cut me in. We would take over her husband’s businesses. I’d be the prince consort. I’d get to fuck the boss.

I listened and knew I had to run again. I was way out of my depth, way out of my league. I’m a big guy, good at business, good in bed. If there’s rough stuff, I can handle it sometimes. But my Pa taught me to mind my own business and know when I was outclassed. I gave Helen a smile, got up, and made for the door.

Except I couldn’t get there. I’d heard the noise building up behind us, and I’d seen the crowds were coming in. But I’d been listening to her so much, I hadn’t realized how crowded the joint was by now. And then as I turned to go, it was like water pushing in through the door. It started to rain, a sudden burst coming in off the ocean, a lightening flash, and people started to pack into the doorway from the street. I twisted and squeezed sideways at first. Then I got desperate and started to push. It was kind of dumb, I suppose, but I needed to get away. Then suddenly there was this big guy, Mexican looking, as big as me, standing right in front of me, with mean eyes looking as if he’d send me straight to some gringo hell. I tried to go to one side but the crowd was too much. “Let me through, Mack,” I said with a smile. But he just grinned. I tried to get past him but he just stood there. I was stuck right up close against him, like we were dancing. I could feel his breath and smell his sweet cologne. “Look, buddy,” I started, and then there was a knife in his hand. I grabbed down and held his wrist. No one could see us. Everyone was jammed close, and sweating. The music from the gramophone was blaring, something in Spanish. I thought I was going to die. The sweat was pouring off me as I held his hand jammed down against his side. And then her hand came between us and she said something in Spanish. I stared the guy in the eyes. I swear he winked. Suddenly he broke free from my hold and started to back off into the crowd that somehow let him through. I looked down and there Helen was smiling up at me, fresh as clean sand, as if she never ever thought of making the proposal she just made.

“Come back, Walter,” she said, and her voice was lovely, like the crystal water in the lake. I let myself be led back to the bar. Crowds parted for Helen too. Later she said, “I won’t do it. It was just a crazy thought. I get like that sometimes. It’s not easy doing what I do, being what I am. I get thoughts. You’re right. I could never really harm him. Let’s forget all that. Let’s drink to us. To us, together.”

The night was wild. The music got louder somehow. People’s voices went crazy. We drank. We danced real close. I wanted her so bad. The rain had stopped, so we snuck out while the place was still crowded. She threw a shawl over her head and we ran across the street to my hotel. As we made love on the bed, the storm came again. We went at it like wild animals, tearing at each other. I remember lightning and thunder, rain banging on the window, and flashes of light on her back as I fucked her from behind, my hands grasping her waist. That’s all I remember.

I guess my headache saved me. Whatever they gave me, really kicked in about three, and I woke, sweating, with all the electrics of hell inside my brain.

The room was cut by a bar of moonlight. I turned and looked out the window. The storm had passed and the sky was all torn clouds. The moon hurt my eyes. I turned them away.

The man was sitting on the chair in the corner staring at me. Or not, because in the light I could see there was a knife stuck in his chest. Right there, in the middle of a big black stain.

I got up slowly because of my head. I had to sit on the edge of the bed for a moment. It hurt so much.

He was an old guy, or maybe not so old, older than me anyways. His head was slumped on his chest. His gray hair hung down in a strand over his forehead. I stood looking at him in the moonlight.

No blood.

The chair, the floor should have been soaked in it.

They’d killed him somewhere else. Dumped him here.

I touched the body. It was cold.

Get out, Walter, I thought. Now. Think, Walter, think, I said to myself.

It’s Helen’s old man, I thought. They did him in. They’ll pin it on me. The Mexican cops will come in the morning. They’ll find him here, and me stretched out on the bed. They won’t care that there’s no blood. My prints will be on the knife. It’s the one from the guy in the bar, for sure. They’ll beat the shit out of me. I’ll confess. The US consul won’t give a damn. Helen looks great in black. The Mexican guy’ll squire her. For a bit. Until she gets tired of him.

Run, Walter, run.

No point in shifting the body. They’ll be after me whatever. Or maybe not. No name registered. Only the car can trace me. OK, head for the border. NOW. Dump the car. Sell it. Anything.

These hotels always have back stairs. I move fast and quiet. Nothing left of me in the room. Nothing they can trace anyhow. They’ll be watching the car. Slowly edge the back door open. Wait. Wait. No matter how hard it is. There under the tree a cigarette light. Walk down the stairs, toward the car, calm, real slow. He comes over. That Mexican shit. I smile. He looks confused. He comes close enough. Stupid. This I can do. I hit him very hard. He goes down. I stamp on his head. Feel something crack. My hand hurts like hell. In the car. I drive over the bastard’s body. Slowly.

Then out of the town. I make the border before daybreak. Stop to shave and wash my hand by a stream off the highway. It’s morning over the Pacific. I find a car dealer just opening at nine. “Run a bit short, buddy. Need to cash in the car. Buy something a bit cheaper.” I’ve always had good cars. The documents are in order. I can trade it in for something less fancy. Drive it round the block. Sign the papers. This is the border. They don’t ask too many questions. In an hour I was on my way.

I headed north for L.A. Where else would I go? Ohio? Back to Oklahoma? I’ve never been to Jersey. The ocean was as lovely as ever with all its promises of blue jewels.

The state cops picked me up outside of Laguna Niguel. I stopped for a coffee back aways. They sent the description and the details of the car up ahead. The captain at the station booked me for the murder of Mr. Gary Diedrichson, of Los Feliz Boulevard, Glendale, Los Angeles County.

Phyllis looked great in black too. All through the trial. No way I could account for my movements for the two weeks in question. Driven by black-burning lust and a desire for revenge, the DA said. The gun was never found. But most likely I dumped it down by Encinitas or El Cajon.

Like I dumped my life somewhere somewhen. Down the line.

Back to those plays teach made us read.

If they have it in for you … just forget it. You end poking your eyes out or in the chair.





Fur





I’m not telling this story to anyone. Not talking into a dictaphone. No confession. Just running it through my head. Pretending Dave can hear it? Maybe.

The movie got it wrong. Where to start? Dave nailed Vince in the apartment. Vince’s shot only brushed me. The fall knocked me out. I didn’t die. Other didn’ts. They didn’t give Dave his job back at Homicide. They don’t take back rogue cops. That wasn’t the end of Lagana either. You don’t stop a town boss with a scandal. He was insulated from all the guys on the take anyway. Duncan’s letter when it came out did harm, but didn’t stop him. That was the boys from New York, who were embarrassed by all this … well, embarrassment. Cruised in. Took Mike for the long walk. Wonder what happened to that fancy house and college daughter. And that gold-framed picture of his mom Dave told me about.

And my face hurt like hell. You get boiling Cona coffee thrown over one side, well that doesn’t go away fast.

One good thing – they never worked out I shot Ma Duncan, there in her furs. Dave knows. But he never tells.

So about a month after the showdown, the big men from New York talk to Dave. Nothing personal. Lagana was a loser. But it’s not good for business to have a guy like you walking around with no comeback. Don’t want to whack you. No point in annoying the cops now (even if they don’t like you much). Take your pension. Get out of town. Don’t care where. Oh, and take Stone’s little whore with her scarred face (that’s me) with you.

Now, there’s one thing Dave knows at this point. Can’t fight these sonsofbitches. He’d already picked his wife in bits out of a car. He didn’t want that for his daughter. The kid seemed OK with his sister. So they say he’s going on a long trip to look for work. He’ll write. Sounds like the ’30s, doesn’t it?

I have my fur coat, some average jewels (not exactly rhinestones, but …) Vince gave me, and not much else. Not that Vince was that bad, well, some of the time. He was OK in the sack, nothing spectacular, but I’ve been with some real bastards. And there was enough money for shopping and booze. Could’ve been worse. But the boiling coffee in the face does kinda color your view of the rat. Sorry he didn’t suffer longer.

I didn’t think Dave would take me. I mean why? I reminded him all the time of what went wrong. But Dave was always a knight. Always help a girl in a jam. Always looking for one. A sucker? I don’t know.

He bought a good second-hand Ford Crestline, a ’54 model, in powder blue. I liked that. Cream upholstery. Good for a girl. Even one with half a face. We headed west.

It took us a month to get to the coast. We drove. We stopped for a day or two in motels. I stayed in the room. Dave brought me food up. We drank a little. Not much. We never made love. Just lay side by side at night, staying warm. Staying close.

He didn’t talk much. Me neither. What was there to say?

So we made the coast. We knew Dave would have to find work. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t go out much, not with my face. No one would give me a job. I couldn’t cook. Never learned. I couldn’t even whore any more. Not that Dave would have let me.

We found a house in a section. One like all the others. Built post-war for the guys coming back from Japan and Germany. One level. Ranch lay-out. Lawn. Postage-stamp backyard. Car port. So close to the neighbors and walls so thin, there weren’t too many secrets. We could make the payments.

Dave gave out I’d had an accident back east. Had to stay indoors most of the time. He got a job at the Marin plant, building bits for new jet fighters for the next war.

It wasn’t a bad life. I listened to the radio. I read the books Dave bought me. Anything. Plato to Spillane. We ate pizza a lot. We went to the movies sometimes in the evening. In the dark no one noticed my face. I could unwind the scarf. Dave didn’t like the work, but he was a worker. He was determined. That’s what got him where he was. Just stubbornly driving ahead. Even against all the red lights.

Then it all kinda caught up with us.

Dave never went out drinking with the guys after work. But that one night he must’ve been feeling a bit loosened. He went with a couple of them to a bar in Campbell on Sarato. Only one beer and then home. Well, he sees these two guys bothering a girl at the bar. What the fuck was she doing there anyway? I say. But Dave has to step in. He gets the first guy down in a second, but he’s out of his town and has no badge to cover him here. So the other guys grab him and hold him while two others work him over. They smash his hands and beat his head so bad that he’ll never see anything again. Not straight anyway.

No eyes. No hands. No work. No money. No future. And we sure as hell don’t have a past we can use.

I get him back from the hospital. Pay the bill. Feed him tinned soup. I have to go to the supermarket. They stare at me. No dark corners in a supermarket.

Dave’s quiet. Lies in bed. Stares at the closed blinds.

What’s he thinking? Of that girl back home. Of his kid. Of how this all could have been different. If he’d just kept his head down. If … if …

The cop that visited Dave in hospital on the quiet told me who did this to him. Showed me photos. Said he was sorry. They couldn’t do anything. He’d a … Back home. Yes, I knew.

I took Dave’s gun out of the drawer by the bed. A Colt Official Police, four inch barrel. I loaded it. Made sure I knew how it worked. Heavy, but it fit in my bag.

I drove to Campbell. I waited in the alley outside the bar where they’d left their cars. The two guys came out with two girls in furs. I stepped out of the doorway. They saw my face. They saw the gun. “Run, ladies, run,” I said. “Or see how you’ll end up.”

I took their guns. I wanted them to drag out their lives like me and Dave. I shot them in the knees. I saw the bone explode and the blood. They folded, the big guys. Then I threw the raw bleach in their faces and watched them claw at their eyes. I don’t remember their screams. Funny.

You do a trick like that, you gotta leave fast. I got Dave into the car, packed a bag, took what was left of the money, and drove south, way south.

We got to the high desert. It was night. You could see the stars. I gave Dave the pills (pills we had plenty of) and laid him out all nice on a rock. There was wild flowers. White ones. You could hear a night bird in the distance. I smelled trees and wind and rocks. I took the rest of the pills and laid out beside him. I put the fur over us. I looked at the sky.

I knew animals and birds would come and we wouldn’t look pretty in a day or so. But for now we were real peaceful. Later we’d go back into the ground. Even the fur would turn into dust.

Away from people. Away from all this. Away from all that.





About the author





David Malcolm was born in Scotland. He was educated in Aberdeen, Zürich, and London. For over thirty years he has lived and worked in Japan, the USA, and Poland. He lives in Sopot, Poland. His novel The German Messenger, a spy story set during the First World War, was published by Crime Wave Press in 2016.