by David Laws
She swallowed and suddenly came to life. “Get away, I want nothing to do with you.”
“Best talk to me, now it’s out in the open.”
She waved an angry arm, as if warding him off. “Go! Or I’ll call the police.”
“Oh, please do, I’m sure the police will be especially interested in all your past activities – as will your bosses at the Ministry.”
“Nonsense!” she said.
“I can show you, if you like; I have a copy of the list here…”
With a jerk, she began to march quickly towards her door. “Get away from me!”
“You’ll be forcing me to show your bosses the history of your past activities.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’ll look pretty silly when they see the evidence.”
She ran hurriedly up the steps, jangling keys.
“I’ll be back tomorrow at this time,” he called after her. She was struggling with the lock. Perhaps her hands were shaking. “When you’ve had time to see the sense of talking to me. When you’ve had second thoughts. Much better to get your side of the story out. Better than a public spectacle—”
His words were cut short by the slamming of her door.
Of course she might easily vanish. Lie low and never show herself again, but Harry thought he’d observed in her reaction a personality able to recover from a shock and who could be expected to meet a challenge. Or perhaps he had simply glimpsed hauteur. Either way, he thought she’d decide to face him out the next evening when he arrived outside her house. Then it would be make or break. Either she’d succumb, or he’d face the prepared defences: an aggressive boyfriend or a fulminating father. “How dare you accuse my daughter…?” He could anticipate the phraseology.
Harry had a plan. In one pocket were his notebook and pens. In another, his microcassette recorder. Slung loosely around his neck was a red-and-white striped football scarf inscribed with the ironic logo and yellow cannon symbol well known in these parts. He’d timed his approach precisely. The crowds were already beginning to thicken. Legions of men sporting similar scarves and red bobble hats were trudging up from the Tube station and heading out across the fields. Today was match day at the nearby Arsenal Stadium. This afternoon Harry would have the comfort of crowds for company. He could appear from out of the ranks of the football supporters at the moment of his choosing, or simply melt back into them if the meeting went badly.
At half an hour before kick-off she still hadn’t shown herself, so he slowly drifted across the road and headed along the railings towards the big black door at Number 10. He would knock her up, confront her on the doorstep.
Climbing those big stone steps gave him a slight flutter of nerves, but he was too committed to draw back. He lifted the knocker – but before he could bring it down to strike there was a click and the doorway was a sudden chasm.
A figure was framed there. Not Marianne. Not a boyfriend. Not even a pinstriped ball of fatherly fury.
Harry was staring straight into the hostile gaze of Bruno, the hardman with the strange accent he’d confronted four days before inside Erika’s cottage at Great Barton. The same man he’d struck on the head with his soil sock. The same man from whose wrath he had fled across the darkened fields of Suffolk.
Bruno didn’t speak. He was flexing his shoulders, like this was some exercise he’d just learned at the gym. There was a second, or maybe two, when nothing more happened, then Harry sensed rather than saw Bruno take a step forward to cross the threshold.
Time to go to the match!
Harry turned, vaulted down the six wide steps, landed awkwardly on the pavement but managed to keep upright and dash across the road into the crowd. They parted easily enough, and he reduced to a walking pace next to a tall figure bundled up in a massive parka and another smaller man munching a burger. They didn’t seem to notice his presence. Harry wrinkled his nose at the pungent odour of vinegary chips and ladles of tomato sauce. Fans were taking on fuel while on the move.
Suddenly he felt a hand come around his neck and jerk him to a stop. Bruno came into his line of vision, drawing back an arm ready for a massive swipe.
“Hey!” Harry squirmed and ducked, ready with a prepared reaction. “Spurs supporters! I’m being attacked. Get him off!”
“What?”
The moving phalanx came to a halt and turned to stare.
“Spurs hooligans! Madmen from Tottenham. Out to get us!”
Bruno clearly had no idea what he had stepped into. The burger, ringed by a massive curtain of tomato sauce, was jammed into his face. A kick was delivered to somewhere painful. A fist connected with soft tissue, then the scene became a close-quarter melee with an indeterminate number of bodies pushing, kicking and shoving.
Harry was moving swiftly in the direction of the stadium. Running on the fringes of the crowd, he felt mud splatter up his trouser legs, then heard shouts from the crowd behind.
“Get back to White Hart Lane!”
Panting, he saw the fence at the end of the park looming up. More shouts from way off, car doors slamming, a motor racing. He guessed Bruno had wheels, would be tracking him as soon as he made it to the roadway. Would the crowd protect him there? His best chance was to reach the dead end just over the brow of the hill and cut off any motorised pursuit.
Harry lunged across Highbury Crescent, grateful traffic was non-existent due to the presence of the crowd, plus Highbury’s strange system of dead-end streets. His pace was slowing as he veered left into Ronalds Road. The limp he had picked up from the chase at Erika’s cottage was reasserting itself. And he wasn’t built for this. He wasn’t a marathon man. He risked a glance behind. Who were Bruno’s friends? In the paranoia of the chase, he thought they could be anyone. Or everyone. He glanced at the faces of people who didn’t look as if they were going to the game. That idler with the bulldog face; that pouting hoodie; that young scruff giving him the eye. It made him even more scared, more panicky, more energetic in the pumping of his tired and painful legs.
Breathing heavily, he loped forward, past a locked and barred mansion block on his left, past parked cars and stumpy, withered trees and a stately building on his right. Despite the sweat in his eyes, he registered the word Roundhouse and a group of people standing motionless outside. Some charity activity, obviously, oblivious of the passing crowd. Downhill now, past another block with the name Crescent Rooms inscribed in sandstone above the entrance. Careful now with the uneven pavements.
He almost stopped dead. Thought he heard the click of a flick knife, but nothing – perhaps just someone with keys, or the sharp snap of a spectacle case.
Then relief. The barrier was a line of boxed bushes and black metal pillars to block off motorised traffic, through which the crowd filtered into the next street.
His sense of relief was short-lived, however. Behind him he could hear a car horn, a revving motor, shouts from the crowd, then tinny bangs on the sides of a vehicle. No one drove in Ronalds Road on match days. This was crowd territory. Bruno’s team were clearly having to edge through a hostile throng and no one was making way.
Then he heard car doors slam, shouts and running footsteps. A booming voice announced, “We’re going to get you, Harry Topp.”
He dashed forward. Renewed energy took him downhill into Arvon Road. Another line of Victorian villas on his left, deep basements, railings, dustbins and binbags on the footpath, for-sale boards sprouting like flags on a ship, a boarded wooden fence on his right. At the end of the pavement the wooden hull of a small boat loomed absurdly into view behind a wire fence. Only later, replaying the chase in his head, did he make sense of this. A kiddies’ playground.
Out then into the wide boulevard of Drayton Park. For a moment he thought of dashing into the railway station, then he remembered the narrow, restricted platforms with no place to hide. Instead h
e hurried forward, glimpsing the Highbury Library on his right. Even as he loped, coughing and retching, he recognised the cafe and the joke. The Highbury Library: synonymous with the disapproving silence of the Arsenal crowd when their team played badly.
He slowed, ready to turn left toward the stadium, past the seven man-sized block letters attached to the kerb spelling out the club name. That’s when he saw them. They’d second-guessed his destination. Bruno and two bulky figures, waiting beside a black SUV.
Paralysed, Harry stopped and clocked the raptorial smile spreading across Bruno’s face. No doubt savouring the vengeful beating to come.
What did this mean? Bruno at Marianne Corbishley’s front door? Even as he stood looking at the man’s predatory grimace, Harry wondered if she was still one of them. Perhaps the Kameraden had simply moved to protect a source – even a past source – so as to guard the reputation of their main man, Christopher Tresham. Perhaps they were making sure Marianne did not talk and give away incriminating information. He looked to the side. To continue his quest, Harry needed to stay free. Then he had an idea.
Two mounted policemen were posted like statues at the entrance to Whistler Street. He moved as quickly as his legs would allow in their direction, waved, smiled politely and wished the two officers a good evening. In return, he received a cursory nod.
“Can I stroke your horse?”
A shake of the head – clearly there was no invitation to linger, but Harry would not be put off. He could see Bruno and his nasties had backed off, uncertain what to do. He began to gabble. Not much of a chat-up line, he had to admit, but he did his best: what were the horses’ names, where were they stabled, how long would they have to stay at their post?
The cops were not conversational, but that didn’t matter. Harry began talking about the streets to the north, turning and pointing in that direction, knowing that this would seem, from a distance, like he was making a complaint about being pursued and pointing out the culprits. It was unlikely Bruno and his pals had ever before been confronted by a police horse.
“Why were you running?” one of the officers wanted to know.
“Oh, I just like to keep active,” Harry said with a smile.
The cops nodded knowingly. Just another loon! There was no end of them in this crowd.
And when Harry looked again he was able to breathe out slowly, the tension draining from his body. Bruno and friends had melted away.
Chapter 18
Sunday 10th March 2019; 19 days to go
Erika was in the shower. She was always exceptionally careful there, obedient to her water phobia. There were fears of drowning, of water creeping slowly up her body, higher and higher until it reached her face… foolish, she knew, unjustified, but she always avoided swimming pools and walks near rivers, and refused invitations to the coast.
Later, she realised she had used rather too much shampoo. The lather was thick and slippery. And quite inadvertently, the shower head slipped from her grasp, twisted like a malevolent snake at the end of its long, flexible water pipe and squirted a geyser of water straight up her nose.
Her nose. That hypersensitive body part that screamed blind panic at the first drop of moisture, the first nauseous alarm of the drowning body.
She couldn’t help herself; felt an immediate, unreasoning fear. A far-off voice at the back of her mind told her she was overreacting. It was only a few drops of shower water. With her last grip on self-control, she made it, dripping and sobbing, into the bedroom, wrapped in a huge bath towel, shaking, sweating, dabbing the material to her face, constantly clearing her nose, clutching the towel like a baby seeking the solace of a dummy. And the memories flooded back, swamping her grip on reality. She sat on the edge of the bed, but she was no longer there, no longer in that sunlit bedroom with its white counterpane and flock wallpaper. Instead she was in that other place with the four closed-in, ice-cold concrete walls.
“Three days,” the Stasi officer said, as she was pushed through a tiny door into a room that was a pool of darkness. A small shaft of light from the doorway briefly lit four concrete-slab walls. Tiny, hardly enough room to turn. No furniture, no fittings, no windows, no light. The door slammed behind her and she could hear the bolts being slid. Absolute blackness. And cold. She dared not move, afraid to fall, totally disoriented. Stay still, she told herself, get used to this place, but she could not repress a shiver. It was wet underfoot and she was naked.
And then came the water.
Slowly issuing from some unseen pipe, cold as a knife, and swilling around her toes and feet. Almost panic, then, as she thought: were they going to drown her? Would the water slowly rise until she could no longer breathe? Would she be a frozen corpse at the end of three days?
“Not so chirpy now, I see.” The mocking voice once more, the big desk and the flabby interrogator, Erika back on her stool, hands tucked below her rump.
She said nothing. Sullen, hating, shivering – but careful not to provoke.
“Learnt your lesson? Going to give me the names?”
Silence, a stare. They’d given her some clothes – an appalling jogging suit, tiny underwear and a gross pair of carpet slippers – but these did nothing to provide warmth. Still she shivered. She thought she’d always shiver for the rest of her days.
“And you see, it’s not just you that’s the issue.”
Silence was her only weapon now. Could she ever throw off that vicious, stinging cold and the deadening, demoralising wetness of the water room?
“You see, there’s your family to consider. How they must be worried about you,” the interrogator said. “How they must suffer for your crimes. Your father – he’s old, perhaps his heart will not stand up to the strain. You see how your crimes have an ever-widening impact.”
“Forget it!” Suddenly, quite involuntarily, Erika could not keep silent. “That tactic won’t work with me. The old bastard, that evil old man, he can pop off at any time for all I care.”
The interrogator did a dramatic double take. “I hope I never have a daughter like you! What a terrible person!”
Fear gripped her. She had meant to stay silent.
“And then there’s your mother. I hope you have more regard for her…”
This time, she managed it. Silence.
“Your attitude will harm every member of your family.”
More silence.
“Your brother?”
“He’s one of your lot… but of course you know that. He’s probably the one who’s put me in here.”
The silence that came then was from the other side of the desk, followed by a deep sigh. “I see that corrective treatment has not changed your attitude for the better. If water won’t work, we will have to think of another way, some more insanitary method, perhaps…”
She snorted. An inner voice screamed for her to shut up, to avoid provocation, but another, louder voice did the speaking: “Fat chance. I grew up on a farm. Made my bed in the barn. Slept with the chickens. You can’t frighten me with a pile of old shit.”
The buzzer was pressed and she closed her eyes. Had visions of a padded cell and a straitjacket, of endless solitary confinement in some tiny basement cell, of sleeping to order with her face permanently turned to the cell door, of sitting in a cell all day adopting a prescribed craven posture, of other unimaginable tortures. Perhaps they would drown her this time.
Instead of a guard, however, another man entered the room and a period of whispered conversation took place behind shielding hands on the far side of the room. She tried but could hear nothing.
That voice again. “In view of your youth, it has been decided to give you another chance to explain yourself. To purge your contempt and change your attitudes. To adopt the correct approach to your role as a citizen. Herr Fischer here…”
Erika switched her attention to the younger man: fitter, alert with an op
en expression. No obvious sign of contempt or hostility.
“Herr Fischer here has decided to take on your case.”
At this point during the nightmarish journey through her tortured past, there was that rare thing: a smile. Herr Fischer didn’t get the chance to correct her attitudes. Before he could try out his methods – whatever they might be – her cell door clanged open, along with a lot of others, and she joined a happy throng of political prisoners streaming out into the streets. The date was the autumn of 1989 and the people had rebelled, overthrowing the detested regime. The prison at Hohenschönhausen became a hated memory, forever linked in her mind with a dread of water.
Later, when she, Anneliese and Renata invaded the Stasi offices in Leipzig, Erika had tried to seek out Fischer’s personal details. For what? Retribution or curiosity? She wasn’t sure, and her search came to nothing.
However, Herr Fischer wasn’t finished with her – even after the fall of the Wall. In time, in post-Communist, post-Stasi Germany, he would find her again and transform himself from interrogator to persuader.
And in that process, he would transform her life.
Chapter 19
Monday 11th March 2019; 18 days to go
There were no smiles, only frowns, for the cameras as seven men padded separately along the paving stones of Downing Street. The public perception of how a Cabinet meeting might look, gleaned from all those photo opportunities staged by party publicists, could not have been more misleading. A moon-shaped table peopled by twenty or thirty smiling faces, their gaze turned, glinting, towards the source of light and the camera; beautifully laid-out water glasses and papers squared off like obsessive mandarins; all sweetness and light…
Jake Pinckney was one of half a dozen figures slouching back on chairs. He was flicking his fingers – a sign, some said, of seeking the forbidden release in tobacco. He gazed with disdain at a sheaf of papers scattered on the floor. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Business Minister, and Ag and Fish had ears tuned to low murmurings coming from the Home Secretary. Cliques and groups were forming up for battle.