Yesterday's Sins

by James Green

  ‘While you’re with us they’ll be on the staff here. Eat all your meals here, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Drink here when you feel like it. Everything is paid for. When you drink, do you get drunk?’

  He asked like he was asking, do you prefer tea or coffee? ‘No, I drink but I don’t get drunk, not often.’

  ‘Good, drunks get stupid. Get drunk if you need to, but do it here and someone will see that you get back to the apartment OK. That’s your table.’

  He nodded to an empty table which was out of a direct line of sight from either the big front windows or the door.

  ‘Nobody else will be using it and nobody will try to join you.’

  ‘Are your blokes on all day?’

  ‘No, two shifts, but don’t use the bar after ten. The other pair go off at ten. We all need a life, Jimmy. It can’t be all work can it?’ And he laughed. ‘So. Girls?’

  ‘Girls?’

  ‘Will you want a girl? If you do, tell them in the office below your apartment. They’ll see to it.’

  ‘No, thanks anyway, no girls.’

  Otto sounded doubtful but he still asked. ‘Boys?’

  ‘Good God. Nobody. No girls, no boys, no anybody.’ Otto laughed again.

  ‘I thought not but I had to ask, you understand? We need you settled, not going looking for anything.’

  ‘I won’t go looking, I promise.’

  ‘Good. Everything will go well. I also promise.’

  Jimmy liked Otto but he didn’t trust him. He had known men like him in London, big blokes who laughed a lot. Nat had been like that. And Nat had wanted a hundred grand off him or he would send him out of London in five directions at once. But nobody had given Nat any warning so the bomb in his car had turned the laughter off, prematurely and permanently. Laughter didn’t mean anything, laughter could go with violence just as easily as anything else. But he still liked Otto and believed he would keep to his side of the deal. Unless someone offered him more to hand Jimmy over or turn him into a permanent resident in one of their cemeteries. Otto was in business to make money, not to do favours for his big brother or make new friends.

  ‘What about a church?’

  ‘A church?’

  ‘Yes, a Catholic church.’

  ‘What would you want a church for?’

  ‘Mass. I go to Mass when I can.’

  ‘Maybe. I’ll think about it. But not confession, I can’t have a man in the confessional like I do here at the bar.’

  Jimmy knew it was a joke so he smiled. ‘Mass will do, Otto.’

  Otto sat thinking for a moment.

  ‘No, sorry, Jimmy, settle for being a sinner among sinners for a while. Let Udo do the praying for you. I can cover you here but not if you go wandering off into a church. I couldn’t cover you in a church.’

  ‘OK.’

  They lunched together in the bar and drank beer. Then Otto left. Jimmy went back to the apartment and slept some more. He had time to kill so he killed it. He’d done it often enough before.

  The next day Jimmy was on his own. He left the apartment and looked through the door of the ground floor office. Two girls and a middle-aged woman were doing something at desks with papers. They took no notice of him. Whatever it was, it didn’t look like any whorehouse he’d ever seen. He went out and looked around the streets again. Everything was the same except the derelict had gone, but his empty bottle still stood by the wooden pillar.

  Jimmy had his meals in the bar like Otto had told him and had a few beers, more than a few, to help the day pass. He found he was tired, tired of running, tired of looking over his shoulder, tired of trying to be the kind of man Bernie would think of as a good man. He had never been a good man. He had tried to change, he had tried hard. First in London, then in Rome, but he had failed both times, just as he had been failing in Denmark and was now failing in Lübeck. His were small talents: a talent for causing pain and a talent for working things out. Small things but they were all he had. He had no talent for big things: for goodness, for sacrifice. Maybe you had to be born with those. He was what he was, and he always would be.

  George had been right when they had met at the Liffey Lad last time he was in London, about a hundred years ago. George had told him, ‘If people change, Jimmy, it’s just their underwear they change. You’re the same.’ And George was right. It was right then and it was right now. He hadn’t changed and if, from some Heaven, Bernie was watching him, he would be causing her the same pain now as he had in their life together. Except there wasn’t supposed to be any pain or sadness in Heaven, so either she was dead and gone and Heaven was just a fairy story or she didn’t watch him or think about him. Either way he was alone, and would be for ever and ever. Amen.

  Jimmy sat at his table. The day was over, it was just after ten and he was having a final beer before going back to the apartment. Otto came in and sat down. The waiter on the afternoon shift with the same bulge under his apron came over and stood by Otto.

  ‘Beer.’

  The waiter nodded and left.

  ‘Come to say goodnight, Otto?’

  ‘Come to ask you a question, Jimmy.’

  ‘Ask away.’

  ‘How long?’

  It was a question Jimmy had been asking himself on and off all day. How long would he stay and where would he go next?

  The waiter came and put the beer on the table and Otto took a drink.

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe it all depends on Bronski. You still not worried about Bronski?’

  Otto shook his head.

  ‘If I worry, I worry about you. Sitting around with nothing to do but wait and think isn’t good for you. It isn’t good for anyone. You can’t stay here indefinitely. You should make plans.’

  ‘What? Escape plans? Dig a tunnel maybe?’ Otto didn’t laugh this time.

  ‘Seriously, you should decide what needs to be done. Udo said you wanted to disappear. I should look after you until it could be arranged. Do you want papers, a passport, a new identity? If you can pay you can have them, good ones, almost the real thing. Just say the word and you’ll have them in a couple of days. Then you can get on your way, a new man, a man no one will be looking for.’

  As Jimmy listened, he could feel his anger rising. Why? Why get angry? Otto was making sense. What had he bloody well come for if not to get away and start a new life with a new identity?

  ‘And go where?’

  ‘Anywhere. Forget Bronski. Just slip away, he’ll never find you.’

  The anger kept coming. Jimmy couldn’t stop it.

  ‘I’ve had enough of running. I’ve been running one way or another for too many years and I’m fucking tired of it. I’m tired of trying, I’m tired of people, I’m tired of pretending to be something I’m not. You know what I’d really like to do, what would really cheer me up right now?’

  Otto slowly shook his head. He could see that Jimmy was getting angry. But who was he getting angry with? If he was getting angry at himself it might mean trouble.

  ‘What would cheer you up, Jimmy?’

  ‘What I’d really like to do is beat the living shit out of somebody, preferably Charlie fucking Bronski, but at the moment it could be anybody, anybody who comes to hand.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘If that’s an offer? Because if it is, don’t be sure I won’t take you up on it even with Godzilla and Billy the Kid to look after you.’

  Otto reached out and put a hand on Jimmy’s arm. Jimmy looked down at it and noticed his own hands on the table. His fists were clenched and his knuckles were white.

  Then he relaxed. The anger was suddenly gone. Otto saw it, took away his hand and sat back. Jimmy sat in silence for a moment. Otto was right, he couldn’t sit about doing nothing waiting for something to happen, so he made a decision.

  ‘OK, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Find out where Bronski is and I’ll kill him. I don’t need you to do it. I want to do it. I want to see his eyes when he closes them for the last time. I want him to see it was
me putting the bullet into the bastard.’

  ‘Are you sure? Is that what you really want?’

  Jimmy nodded.

  ‘OK. We know where Bronski is.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘In a hotel. I can take you there.’

  ‘Right, get that gun, tell me which hotel he’s in and then stand back and let me finish this my way.’

  ‘Sure. I’m glad you’ve come to a decision. Just one thing, I said half up front and half when you leave. I’ll want the second half tomorrow. I’m glad you made a decision but I don’t want to bet what you owe us on the outcome of your hotel visit. Not if you insist on going on your own.’

  ‘I’ll have your money for you by lunchtime tomorrow. Just see you have the gun.’ He tried to get laughter into his voice. ‘A German gun, no foreign rubbish.’

  Otto smiled, but it was a sad sort of smile.

  ‘No rubbish, good ex-Stasi issue. Soft-nosed bullets?’

  ‘Just as they come, Otto, just as they come.’

  Otto called the waiter over and ordered two more beers. They would sit for a while like two old friends, a drink and a talk at the end of another day. And tomorrow Jimmy would kill Charlie Bronski.

  TWENTY-ONE

  She had come to Bronski’s hotel room from the station. It was late, but she seemed to want to talk and she was in charge.

  ‘Why Lübeck?’

  Bronski couldn’t see that it mattered.

  ‘Why anywhere? Running has to stop sometime. In his case, it stopped here. I thought East Germany was good for you. From Lübeck you could spit into the old GDR. Why are you complaining?’

  ‘I’m not complaining, Yuri, just asking the question. If you stop running you have to have a reason. One reason is you’ve given up, another is you’ve run out of breath, the best reason is because you think you’re safe. Does he think he’s safe here?’

  Charlie shrugged. He didn’t care. The target was static and that made him vulnerable. Was this how the British did things? Sit, wait, endlessly talk about it but do nothing. No wonder the country was a basket case.

  ‘Maybe he does, how should I know? He’s here, we’re here. Why not get on with it?’

  ‘Does he know you followed him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure. If he thought he was being followed he’d have shown it. He’d still be running or he’d be looking and he isn’t doing either. He’s being looked after by a local called Long Otto. He just sticks close to home and uses one bar where he’s looked after by two of Otto’s boys. We don’t have a problem unless Otto gets wind of us and even if he knew we were here he wouldn’t be too much of a problem. He’s just local muscle, a real provincial.’ No, that was going too far, don’t overdo it. ‘But it’s his town, so while it’s just you and me he could be a problem.’

  He waited but she just sat there. Was she thinking or waiting for divine inspiration? Why wouldn’t she give the go-ahead? And why was it just the two of them?

  ‘Why is it just you and me? Is it a cost thing? Why are you Brits always so strapped for cash?’

  ‘Because we’re not flashy or stupid,’ was what she said. What she wanted to say was, ‘Because we’re too mean to pay for what we want or what we need. Because our political masters don’t get votes from things nobody is allowed to talk about. Because these days we’re a chicken-shit outpost for our American cousins.’

  But nobody ever said those things, at least not out loud.

  Her mobile rang. She took it out, listened for a moment then put it away.

  ‘We go tomorrow. It’s arranged.’

  ‘Arranged? Arranged how? Who with?’

  ‘With me. It’s arranged and all you need to know is we go tomorrow. The place is to the north of the city, Herrenwyk; there’s an old industrial site there, derelict, waiting for redevelopment. Come on, we’ll need to give it a look-over so we can get the thing worked out.’

  They went downstairs to the hotel car park where her rented Audi was parked.

  Damn, thought Bronski. Now she decides to be dynamic, at this time of night.

  About half an hour later a pretty young woman knocked at Bronski’s hotel room door but there was no answer. After a couple more tries she gave up. Why wasn’t he there? He had seemed to enjoy himself the previous night and seemed keen for a re-run. Oh, well. Tricks. Who could figure how their minds worked? At least she would get a good night’s sleep. She certainly wouldn’t miss him, he was a grunter with about as much finesse as a claw-hammer. She walked away down the corridor swinging her handbag, happy to have an unexpected night off.

  The Audi was travelling fast, headed along the dual carriageway. Bronski had a road map open but wasn’t looking at it. On leaving the city they had followed the signs for the Herren Tunnel and this motorway led them straight to it. They arrived at the tunnel, paid the toll, moved on and finally emerged on the far side of the river. As soon as they had left the bright artificial lights Bronski indicated a right turn. Clarke-Phillips moved the car over onto the slip road and followed it round until they were heading back towards the river. They came to a T-junction.

  ‘Left here.’

  The Audi turned onto a road that ran parallel with the river on their right. This was a world away from the old-world charm of central Lübeck. They drove past floodlit lorry parks, industrial buildings with the names of the company lit up and fenced yards piled high with building materials. Bronski studied the road map by the light of a torch and gave instructions.

  After a while the lights gave way to darkness and, from what they could see in their headlights and the occasional street lamps, the places looked older, less prosperous, then run-down and finally broken-down and boarded-up.

  ‘It should be here on your right somewhere.’

  They pulled off the road and slowly drove through a wide area of missing mesh fencing onto an old concrete car park with tufts of weeds growing strongly from the cracks and pot-holes. The headlights showed them a squat, one-storey building, one of several that had once been some sort of industrial complex. From what Charlie had managed to see of the last part of their journey, they were in a really scummy area, dirty and with anything that hadn’t already been knocked down slowly crumbling away. He would say one thing for it, though – it wouldn’t be a busy part of town.

  Clarke-Phillips switched off the engine and held her hand out for the torch. Charlie gave it to her and threw the road map over onto the back seat. They got out and she led the way to a pair of wide, rusty steel doors. Inset into one of them was a smaller door, which was slightly ajar. She pulled it open and they went in. She shone her torch around so they could both get a look at the place.

  It was perfect. An empty, concrete box with small windows and steel doors at each end. There was rubbish scattered all over. Broken boxes, paper, cardboard, worn tyres. It was just one big space and, apart from the square pillars which held up the ceiling, there was nowhere to run to and nowhere to hide. Once Costello was inside, it was all over. Bronski was impressed.

  ‘How did you find it?’

  ‘I found it, never mind how. It’ll do the job. Just be sure and bring Costello here.’

  ‘And how do I do that? Either he’s in his apartment, near the apartment or in that bar. How do I pick him up? And if I pick him up, how do I persuade him to come here so you can put a bullet in him?’

  ‘How about asking nicely?’

  ‘And how about you come up with an idea? I told you we needed more people on this. I can’t strong-arm him into the car off the street, cover him with a gun – if I had a gun – and drive him here in a car.’

  ‘No, I can see how that might be a trifle difficult.’

  ‘So how do we get Costello here?’

  ‘We send a car for him and like I said, you ask him nicely.’ And when she had explained he understood. The way she explained it, asking him nicely would work. It would work fine. He should have had more faith. Maybe these Brits
weren’t all idiots after all.

  He wondered what the time was. Maybe if they hurried back he could still arrange things with his call girl.

  ‘OK, back to your hotel and we can sort out our exits and tie everything up.’

  ‘What’s to sort out? We do what we have to, we leave.’

  ‘We do what we have to and we leave the way I say we leave. I want us both clean away and no slip-ups.’

  Damn, thought Charlie, there goes my sex.

  They went back to the car and retraced their journey back to the Herren Tunnel then headed towards the city, making good time on the big, straight road. Neither spoke during the journey, both were thinking. Both thought things had gone very well, better than expected. And both were right and both were wrong.

  In his apartment Jimmy slept soundly. He had made his decision and tomorrow it would all be over, one way or another.

  TWENTY-TWO

  It was barely one when Otto arrived and sat down at the table. Jimmy was having a couple of sandwiches and a beer.

  ‘Hello, Otto. Been busy?’

  ‘The usual, this and that.’

  ‘You’re early, I’ve only had one sandwich.’

  ‘Last night you seemed ready to go so I didn’t want to keep you hanging about.’

  ‘You’ve got it?’

  ‘Not on me, Jimmy, not even in here can I pull out a gun and hand it over. It’s in the glove compartment of the car. When you’ve finished your beer, we’ll go and get it.’

  ‘Ammunition?’

  ‘Just what’s in the clip. You said one shot, remember, no second. But I made them soft-nosed. Hit him and you’ll blow some of him off wherever the bullet goes. That should hold him long enough for you get another shot, even if you only get him in the arm.’ Jimmy finished his coffee. ‘And you? You have something for me?’

  Jimmy put his hand into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out an unsealed envelope. He handed it over to Otto who took it and put it into his inside pocket.