by Jon Cleary
He dropped the photos and was sick again; but this time nothing came up. He felt sweat break out on him; a sudden wind swept up from the valley, chilling him to the bone. Or perhaps it was not the wind.
He went for a walk back up the track, unconsciously waiting for someone to come down, see what he had done and call the police. Then he thought of the photos lying beside the car: he would never be able to stand anyone’s seeing those. He hurried back down the track, stumbling on the uneven ground. He gathered up the three photos, turning them over so that he did not have to look at them again, put them in a hole on the lee side of a large rock and lit them with his cigarette lighter. He watched the photos curl up, turning to brown ash. In a moment the photos were no more than a small pile of ashes. He knew that his life, too, was no more than that.
He looked back up the track once more; but no one was coming. He took out Uritzsky’s suitcases from the boot of the car and opened them; he found what he was looking for, a set of negatives different from those from which the burnt photos had been developed. He held them up to the sky: as far as he could tell it was Venetia and John Leeds in another wild embrace. He put a light to the negatives, watched them burn.
He quickly went through Uritzsky’s suitcases; there was nothing else incriminating in them. He carried them down the track to the edge of the cliff and flung them far out, one by one, watching them fall, seemingly in slow motion, down to the thick forest of gums far below. He went back to the car and opened Venetia’s briefcase again. Tucked into an inner pocket was an airline ticket in the name of Mr. A. Skelly, from Broken Hill to Perth; that was why Uritzsky had ordered him to drive west. In a second pocket there were three passports: one British, one Australian, one United States. They were all in the name of Alexander Skelly, who had been born in, respectively, Hove, UK, Melbourne, Australia and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on April 15, 1934.
There was only one thing missing from each of the passports: there was no photo. Uritzsky had not yet made up his mind how Alexander Skelly should look.
The passports were forgeries, Walter was sure of that; but they were excellent ones. Uritzsky, somehow, had taken advantage of the KGB’s expertise; he may even have forged the passports himself. Walter sat down, again half-in and half-out of the car, and looked at his life, backwards and forwards. Few of us take the time to look both ways at our lives: we have to be strung up high enough on a crisis to get the long view.
There was nothing to go back to but scandal and a murder charge. There was nothing to go forward to but the unknowable. There was really no choice. There was, of course, the child in Venetia’s womb; but how could he be sure now that it was his? The question made him sick again, but again there was nothing to come up out of the hollow pit of himself.
(“You should have come back,” said Venetia.
“I have,” said Walter, smiling; he had not told her how he had felt at seeing the photos of her and John Leeds. “Only now.”)
He took the signet ring from his finger and put it on one of Uritzsky’s fingers. He stripped the clothes from the corpse, turning his gaze away so that he did not look at the mess that had been Uritzsky’s face. He took the clothes down to the cliff and flung them out; they floated down much more slowly than the suitcases, ballooning out as the air rushed into them, so that they looked like parts of a sky-diver who had become dismembered in the sky. They drifted down to catch in the tops of the trees on the floor of the valley. No one was likely to climb down the sheer face of the cliff to check the distant scraps of cloth.
He went back to the car, took out his own briefcase and put the ten thousand pounds in his suitcase and the suitcase back in the car. He checked the five thousand pounds in Venetia’s briefcase; Uritzsky had spent none of it. He had fifteen thousand pounds, not a fortune but enough for a new start. He would have to lower his standards, but he would learn to penny-pinch.
(Alice laughed. “You wouldn’t have known what being poor was, Walter. How could you pinch a penny? You’d never seen one.”
“I was speaking figuratively,” said Walter, not annoyed at her scepticism. He’s become much more tolerant, Venetia thought. “I don’t think I saw myself living in one room in some hill village in Spain or Portugal.”)
He dragged Uritzsky’s body by the feet deeper into the scrub. He hoped it might not be discovered for a few days, preferably weeks; he hoped for time for the body to decompose, making identification difficult, if not impossible. It never occurred to him that it would be twenty-one years before Uritzsky’s skeleton would be found.
He dropped his briefcase beside the body. He picked up the Smith & Wesson and the Colt .45 and put them on the car seat. He took one last look around, walked over and ground the ashes of the photos and the negatives into the ground, then came back and got into the car. He waited a few more minutes for justice to appear at the top of the track; but justice and the world, it seemed, didn’t care. An unsuperstitious man, he uncharacteristically took it as an omen.
He started up the Ford, turned it round with some difficulty and drove it back up through the town. He passed the local police station and his foot eased on the accelerator of its own accord; but it was too late now to stop and confess. He turned on to the Great Western Highway, the route of earlier drifters looking for a new life.
He slept that night in the car on the plains just west of Cobar. It was a deliberate stop, a stab in the soul. He sat there in the car in the dark night, looking back at the distant lights of the small town, and wondered how innocent Venetia, or Mary as she then was, had been in her days and nights in the town. When he fell asleep he dreamed of her, but she was looking beyond him, with that wild manic look on her beautiful face, at someone behind him. He tried to turn his head to see who it was, but instead he just woke with a crick in his neck.
Next morning he buried the two hand-guns in the scrub. Murder was behind him, and he was not interested in self-defence. He was still half-hoping to be caught. He was suffering from the conscience of the middle-aged honest man, when conscience itself is halfway between the carelessness of youth and the cynicism of old age.
He drove on to Broken Hill, left the Ford in the small airport car-park after wiping it clean of his fingerprints. He caught an afternoon flight to Adelaide and picked up the last flight to Perth. The western capital in those days had not yet become the entrepreneurs’ circus of the later years; the travellers from Sydney and Melbourne who might have recognized Walter had not yet started their pilgrimages to the future tycoons. He was saved from recognition by East Coast snobbery towards the West.
He checked into a small hotel in the city and next morning went out and had some passport photos taken. He had shaved off his grey moustache; he looked younger, though perhaps not young enough to have been born as late as 1934. That was a risk he had to take.
He made certain purchases in a stationery store, then went back to the hotel and put one of the photos in the British passport. He had seen the ASIO experts working on forged passports; he used the right gum, the right finishing off of the photo. Then he went uptown and bought an economy air ticket to Munich via Singapore. He had travelled first class all his life, but this was the first step in the life of Alexander Skelly.
That night he walked down to the river. He ripped up his own passport and the Australian and United States passports he had taken from Uritzsky’s briefcase and threw the pieces out into the stream. Then he went back to the hotel and slept his last sleep on Australian soil. He dreamed again of Venetia, but she was still looking over his shoulder, still with that manic look of lust on her face.
Twenty-four hours after leaving Perth he landed in Munich as Alexander Skelly, British sales representative.
III
“Why did you choose to go to Germany?” said Alice.
“I couldn’t go to England, my first choice—I’d have been at home there. But I was afraid of being recognized. I thought of the United States, somewhere in New England, but I don’t think I’d have been
comfortable there—I’m not American-minded. And the Vietnam War was hotting up—I didn’t want to take sides, even in my own mind. I wanted to put all that behind me. It was Germany or France, and I chose Germany. It has a beautiful countryside and I’ve always been interested in German history and music and literature.”
“I’ve never read a German book,” said Venetia. She said it only for something to say; she had been quiet all during Walter’s story, filling in in her own mind the bits she knew he had left out about herself and John Leeds. “You’ve been there all this time?”
“Off and on.” Walter smiled to himself. “I settled in a small town in the Black Forest, but I made trips.”
“How did you live?” said Alice, practical about day-today matters. “You had that fifteen thousand pounds, but that didn’t last you all this time. Germany is expensive, isn’t it?”
“Ah, Alice, you haven’t changed. Do you still count the pennies?”
Alice nodded, smiling. She’s already accepted him back, thought Venetia. She’s asking questions, but she’s already forgiven him.
“You never lose the habit, Walter, not when you’ve had to count „em when you’re young.”
“I suppose so.” Perhaps it had something to do with their common age: he felt more comfortable with Alice than with Venetia. But then he had never been in love with Alice, never lost her to his best friend. “I invested most of the money on the Frankfurt stock exchange. It didn’t take me long to learn which were the good stocks and which were the zweifelhaft ones. I may have been a lawyer and a judge, but I came from the oldest stockbroking family in the country. The German economy was booming along then. I did all right,” he said, as matter-of-fact as Alice. Then he added, “I also got a small stipend I’d rather have forgone.”
“What was that?” said Venetia, sensing that the intervening years had not been as empty as she had thought.
Walter hesitated; but he wanted to rid himself of all his secrets. “The British, MI6, picked me up after six months. I made the mistake of going to Berlin and an old acquaintance from the SIS recognized me. He’d come out to Melbourne to advise me when I took over ASIO—he was in Berlin as their chief control. You understand what that is?”
“I’ve read spy stories,” said Alice.
“It was a chance in a million. He sat down opposite me in a pavement café on the Kurfürstendamm, that’s Berlin’s main street. He was the sort of Englishman who’s always playing a part. I remember his first words were, „Sir Walter Springfellow, I presume?’ They knew there was some mystery about my disappearance. He told me ASIO and SIS and the CIA—”
“All those initials,” said Alice. “Isn’t there some spy lot that has just a plain simple name?”
“Mossad, the Israelis. The best of them all.” He spoke with a professional’s knowledge.
“Go on,” said Venetia, not in the least interested in spy organizations, only interested in this man sitting beside her who had come so unexpectedly (and unwanted? She pushed the thought aside) back into her life. When he had been head of ASIO she had never been able to take seriously, though her intelligence told her she was wrong, that her husband was a spy. She caught a glimpse now that that was what he had become, a professional in espionage. “What did this Englishman want?”
“Further blackmail—in the nicest possible way, of course. They were looking for someone new to control their agents in the Communist bloc, someone who understood how things worked. Their man had just been exposed. He never asked me about what happened to Uritzsky—he was very gentlemanly about that—I told you, he was the sort of Englishman who was always playing a part. But I think they had guessed I’d—disposed of him somehow. I think, from remarks he dropped, they also knew about your—your affairs.”
“You mean they spied on me? The British or ASIO or whoever?” She was shocked. Alice looked ready to do battle.
“ASIO, probably. They’d have been investigating my disappearance. Anyhow, the Englishman said he would keep my secret, whatever it was, if I went to work for MI6. My true identity would be kept secret from all but the top men in the SIS. The Secret Intelligence Service,” he explained to Alice, when he saw her exasperation at more initials.
“So that’s what you’ve been doing all this time?” said Venetia. “Still spying?”
“Up till four years ago, when they allowed me to retire. They paid me a stipend—it wasn’t much, but it was enough—and expenses. I moved from the Black Forest to Gebirge, near the East German border. That was frustrating—it was so close to Bayreuth and the Wagner festival, but I could never go, for fear of being recognized by someone from Australia. I’d grown this beard by then, but I didn’t feel safe, not after I’d been recognized in Berlin. I used to go over into East Germany and Czechoslovakia and Hungary to check my agents, then go to the opera and concerts there. It is all very good, especially in East Germany,” he added, as if he thought they might think singing and music inevitably suffered because of ideology.
“Did MI6 ever say if they’d told ASIO about you?”
He shook his head. “They never told me and I never asked. I followed your career. I got the English papers regularly and they ran occasional pieces on you, especially after Mrs. Thatcher came to power—the English had never recognized women up till then, except their queens. Somehow, I felt proud of you. It made what I was doing seem mean and small.”
“Spying is mean and small,” said Alice, who had read only the sleazier spy novels.
“I didn’t think that twenty years ago,” said Walter defensively. “But mean and small, it’s necessary. The world doesn’t run according to the Ten Commandments.” He looked at Venetia. “I’m sure they don’t apply in the business world. Not from what I’ve been reading.”
He was still stiff and proper about certain things; but Venetia could not hold it against him. “When did you learn about Emma’s murder?”
“Last November, when it happened.”
“That was in the English papers?”
“I told you—they’re only interested in the sensational stuff from Australia. Sport and scandal and our stupidities. I almost came home then, but I fell ill.” He was silent a moment, covering the pause by sipping the cold tea in his cup. “I was worried about the scandal, too. Coming back from the dead, turning out to be the murderer and not the victim.”
“Aren’t you worried now?”
“Only for Justine’s sake. And yours. They can’t do much to me now. I’m dying,” he said, his voice dropping. He looked neither for pity nor for love: he knew it was too late for those. “I have terminal cancer.”
“Oh God!” Venetia suddenly broke. She came out of her chair, almost fell on her knees beside him and grabbed at his hand. “Oh, my darling!”
He kissed the top of her head. “I’m resigned to it. I didn’t mean to tell you, it slipped out. I’ve had no one to confide in for so long . . .”
“There’s nothing they can do?”
He shook his head. “I’ve been to the best specialists. I have three months at the most. I’m sorry—I honestly didn’t come home to be nursed. I came home because I wanted to see my daughter before . . .” His voice trailed off.
Venetia knew that what she felt was pity, not love; but it was an aching pity and that was a form of love. “You’ll stay here—we’ll look after you. We shan’t tell anyone you’ve come back—”
“We’ll have to tell Edwin and Ruth,” said Alice.
“Well, yes, them, of course. But no one else.”
“I have to see Justine,” said Walter, still holding Venetia’s hand. “That was the whole point of coming home. I’ll go to the court tomorrow—”
“That would be too dangerous—”
“No, I shan’t go with you. I’ll sit by myself—no one will recognize me . . . You didn’t, did you, not at first?”
“Not at first.” She pressed his hand again, still on her knees in front of him. “You’ve changed.”
“We all have, I hope,�
� he said. “But too late. Too late.”
IV
The reunion with Edwin and Ruth was emotional but restrained. Both of them were shocked to the core: the presumed dead, especially murderers, are not everyday returnees to Mosman. But he was family, and it never entered Edwin’s and Ruth’s heads that they should call the police. Especially when they learned he had come home to die.
Edwin drove him to the Darlinghurst courthouse the next morning, the second day of Justine’s trial. “I’ll drop you a block or two from Taylor Square,” said Edwin. “I shan’t come into court with you. I’m afraid, from what I read in this morning’s papers, it could turn into a circus. A Roman one.”
“They’re throwing her to the lions?”
“It looks that way. Venetia has got the best man, Joe Albemarle—you wouldn’t know him, he’s come along since you went away—but he has a tough task on his hands.”
“Who do you think killed Emma?”
“I don’t know, Walter. Someone she knew, obviously—she let the murderer in herself to her flat. She made enemies, Walter. She was always difficult, but after you left . . .” He looked sideways at his brother while they were pulled up at traffic lights. “She had an—an unhealthy regard for you, you know.”
“I know. It always worried me. Did relations between her and Venetia ever improve?”
“They got worse, if anything. And with Justine, too. That’s part of the evidence against Justine. I’m afraid you’re not going to enjoy today in court.”
Walter took his place in the queue outside Court No. 5 and managed to get a seat in the second row of the public gallery. Venetia and Alice were already in their seats, which one of the court officials had reserved for them. Walter glanced at them and they returned his look, but neither of them nodded or gave any other hint that they knew him.