by Len Deighton
‘Kennedy; Fiona’s lover.’
‘Kennedy, yes. And then you pushed Fiona into the van and drove away and escaped. But no one, not even you, comes out of a shooting completely unscathed. When you arrived in the West you were in a state of shock. You told me that.’
‘There was a lot of blood. Fiona was covered in blood. Having Fiona there was what made it terrible for me. You are right, I wasn’t prepared for it.’
‘The British army doctor sedated you?’
‘I was hyped up. He said I needed some magic pills if I was to fly across the Atlantic.’
‘So you remember the pills?’
‘Of course I do. Didn’t I tell you about them? How would you know else?’
‘Where’s the gun you used?’
‘It was my dad’s Webley Mark VI.’
‘Yes, where is it?’
‘I don’t know. I’d never used one of those old wartime guns before. The rounds come out in slow motion, and tip on impact. They land like an artillery shell and tear a big hole in a man, Werner. It worked okay, but it was pretty damned grim to watch.’
‘How many rounds did you fire?’
‘I can’t be sure.’
‘One? Two? Three? Four?’
‘I said I don’t know!’
‘Don’t get excited, Bernard.’
‘I know what you’re thinking.’
‘What am I thinking?’
‘You’re going to pretend I shot Tessa.’
‘Well, isn’t it possible? It was dark: just the headlights of the cars. And then someone shot the headlight out. Dark and muddy. People running. Confusion … Try and remember.’
‘You weren’t there, Werner. Thurkettle shot Tessa. I saw him.’
‘Slow down, Bernard. Play let’s suppose. Many shots were fired that night, but we don’t know who fired which. You fired, Thurkettle fired, and maybe the others fired too. You depart in the van with Fiona. Thurkettle leaves on his motorbike, and goes to London and tells them what he saw. How will his account fit to yours?’
‘Is Thurkettle in London?’
‘He might well be. I’m playing let’s suppose.’
‘Jesus Christ, Werner! I don’t care what Thurkettle is telling them in London. No one is going to railroad me into confessing that I killed Tessa. I loved Tessa. She was always wonderful, supportive and full of life. When Fiona went, Tessa helped me with the children. I wouldn’t think of killing her.’
‘You wouldn’t think of it? Couldn’t think of it? Never? Not even if she died as the result of a perfectly understandable accident? We are talking about an accident, Bernard.’
‘Is this what Thurkettle said?’
‘Tessa was stoned … drugged to the eyebrows that night. She was dancing through the mud, twirling around in her silk dress and singing. These are your words, Bernard.’
‘I’m not sure …’ I said.
‘You took Tessa there in that van,’ said Werner. ‘But for that, she wouldn’t have been there for anyone to kill.’
I jerked as if I had taken a slap in the face. It was true. Tessa had climbed into the van I was using that night. I had driven her to the shooting and thus to her death. It was the guilt that came from that fact that gave me no rest. She had come to Berlin with Dicky, and shared his bedroom at the hotel. But I could not free myself from the feeling that her death was my responsibility.
‘Bernard. If you killed Tessa, you must come to terms with it. No one is going to charge you with anything. London would give a big sigh of relief. Everyone knows it wouldn’t have been done intentionally.’
‘Who’s got my Webley?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But someone has? It was my father’s gun. Have the DDR been playing games with phoney ballistics?’
‘I heard that Thurkettle brought your Dad’s Webley back with him,’ said Werner.
‘Why the hell would he do that?’
‘You used it to kill Russians. It was a British Army pistol with marks leading straight back to your father. Leaving it at the scene of the shooting would have been madness.’
‘Is this what the Department think happened? That I killed them all?’ I looked at Werner; he often got to know what people were saying long before I did.
‘I don’t know what they think,’ said Werner. ‘Probably they are as puzzled as I am: they don’t know what to think.’
‘Where is Thurkettle now?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘The Department is going after him. They want to bring him face to face with me.’
‘Bernard. If Thurkettle is in hiding it’s because he’s frightened.’
‘Frightened of me, you mean?’
‘Of course. See it from his point of view.’
‘That I killed Tessa?’
‘And he is the only witness. Yes. What chance would he stand, with you challenging him in a Departmental inquiry? That’s how he will see it.’
I sat back and rubbed my hands together. My palms were sweaty and I could feel that my face was flushed and burning. I must have looked as guilty as hell. ‘It’s bullshit, Werner. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but it’s all bullshit. In any kind of inquiry I can clear up all the details. I remember everything as clearly as if it happened yesterday. Everything important anyway. When they bring Thurkettle in I’ll tackle him. I’ll show you what is really what.’
‘I wouldn’t count on finding Thurkettle,’ said Werner. ‘When a man like that wants to disappear, there is no finding him again.’
I sat there for a long time.
‘I was going to run away,’ I said finally. Werner nodded. ‘I was going to grab the kids and Gloria too. I had planned everything. The Irish Republic and the Aeroflot connection: Shannon to Cuba. From Havana a ship to … I’m not sure where.’
Werner stared at me. ‘Have you gone mad, Bernie?’
‘It would have worked,’ I protested.
‘Did you ask the children?’ He didn’t wait for a reply; he knew I hadn’t taken them into my confidence. ‘It would have been a fiasco,’ he said softly.
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘And what about Gloria? Did you talk it over with her?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘That’s all over, Bernard. I saw Gloria in London. She’s happy. No men in her life. Sometimes she has dinner with Bret; I suppose they both get a bit lonely sometimes. But I could tell she’s content living her own life on her own. She brought you into the conversation. She said how pleased she was that you were working in Berlin. She said you were brilliant and that she hoped you would make a big splash. She meant it. There was no bitterness, no ill-feeling in her, Bernie. But you are not a part of her life any more. And not a part of her future. You’d better face up to it.’
Werner’s words drained the life from me. I felt sick. ‘You don’t know her, Werner,’ I said desperately. ‘And anyway …’ I sipped at my drink and recovered my composure. ‘Gloria and me; yes, that’s all over. Very much all over. Now tell me something I don’t know.’
‘So what is it all about, Bernie? This madness of yours. Is it some deep-down resentment and envy of Fiona’s success?’
‘Envy? Really, Werner.’
‘Or hatred? Do you hate Fiona? Perhaps without even really understanding that you do. She loves you very much. She’s like me, she’s not good at saying things, but she loves you, I know.’
Werner’s calm voice and considerate tone made me cautious. This was Werner the world-famous children’s psychologist. I answered him in the same calm manner: ‘I don’t think she does,’ I said. ‘Fiona is in love with her work. She would be happy to see me run away with Gloria and the children too. It would give her more time for meetings and writing reports.’
‘Frank guessed you were going to run,’ said Werner.
‘Frank did? How do you know he guessed?’
‘He sent for me. And you know what a surprise that must have been. Frank and I have never got along.
Frank said he’d be wanting me to go over to London and talk to you. He didn’t say what about. Then, when he heard from Bret that you’d been meeting with the Swede, Frank told me to be in Leuschner’s Cafe next morning. I got there early and Frank was waiting for me. I don’t know how long he’d been waiting, he had already downed a couple of coffees and bread rolls and stuff. He was very agitated: filled his pipe with tobacco and put it away without smoking it. You know what he’s like when he’s jumpy. He said the Swede was dead, and that there was no need to talk to you after all. He said you’d be okay.’
‘Frank’s known me a long time.’
‘That’s the trouble,’ said Werner. ‘We all know each other too well.’
‘I’m not going to sit still for this one, Werner,’ I said. ‘I didn’t shoot Tessa. And you can go back and tell anyone who asks you about it.’
Werner stood up, huge and threatening. I’d never seen him like this before. He didn’t raise his voice above a whisper, but for the first time in my life I found him intimidating. ‘Very well,’ said Werner. He made it sound like the final curtain to a Chekhov play.
I didn’t move. Werner walked across the room to a photograph of Richthofen standing amid a group of scruffy pilots in front of an Albatros biplane. Werner took his time studying the picture, as if trying to recognize which one was Goring. Werner was walking with a limp. Long ago he had his leg broken by some thugs from the other side of the Wall. The leg bothered him sometimes: in cold weather like this, or when he was emotionally unsettled. I said nothing. Werner stood with his back to me, looking at the photo and bending his leg slightly, as I’d seen him do when it pained him. It was better to let him calm down.
Eventually Werner turned to look at me. Perhaps he’d been counting to ten. He said: ‘You spoke with Silas Gaunt?’ He spoke in a casual voice, but could not conceal his interest in the meeting. ‘Did he add anything?’
‘Yes, he added to my confusion,’ I said.
Werner continued quietly: ‘Well, perhaps it hasn’t occurred to you, Bernie, that if the Department was desperate to cover up the judicial slaughter of that poor woman – bringing along a highly paid hit man who came in, did his job, and disappeared – they wouldn’t be forging documents, wriggling and lying, and going to all the other absurd lengths that you ascribe to them. Now would they?’
‘Maybe,’ I said.
‘No … They would simply kill you. If that’s the way they did things, they’d do it to you. That way they’d get it over with neatly and quickly. And relatively cheaply.’
I still didn’t move. He looked at me for what seemed like a long time. I stared back at him and finally he stalked out, his terrible anger seemingly unabated. His long black overcoat, and his infirmity, added an extra and sinister aspect to his somewhat theatrical exit.
Soon after Werner had departed, a man named Joschi, I never knew his family name, suddenly appeared behind the bar. He was a small melancholy individual who had lost both parents in the war. He spent his childhood in a Silesian orphanage. In the final weeks of the war, Joschi, with the other inmates, trekked westward with the Red Army close behind. He had worked in a communist-run chinaware factory in Dresden until he escaped from the DDR two years ago. Now he insisted upon thanking me for his job working for Rudi in the Horrido. In fact I’d done no more than mention his name at a time when Rudi was looking for an honest and uncomplaining slave who would work the clock around for starvation wages.
‘Schnapps, Herr Samson?’ He was standing holding a glass and a bottle ready to pour.
‘No thanks, Joschi. I’ve had enough.’
‘Scotch? Cognac: seven years old?’
‘Thanks, but I mustn’t.’
‘You are looking well, Herr Samson.’
‘You too, Joschi.’ I appreciated his encouraging remark, as from what I had heard from several outspoken friends I was looking decidedly timeworn.
‘Can they make a hand-gun from plastic, Herr Samson?’ I hesitated and looked at him. ‘The customers were arguing about it around the bar, the night before last. One of the airport cops – the noisy argumentative young fellow with the trimmed beard. The one who shows everyone his paper targets from the pistol range. I think you may know him. He bet fifty marks that it was possible to make a plastic gun. They couldn’t agree. I said I knew someone who knew about these things.’
‘How did it start?’ I asked.
‘A package came for Mr Volkmann … long time ago … A courier-service delivery. It was a plastic gun. I said it was a toy.’
‘Sounds like a toy to me,’ I said. ‘Maybe I will have that schnapps.’
He poured my drink and I sipped it. He held up his glass in a toast of good health. I could see that I was being told something important. This was Joschi repaying something of the debt he thought he owed me. But I wasn’t quite sure how far I was permitted to go in asking questions. I said: ‘A long time ago?’
‘That time when there was all the fuss, and you went off somewhere to recuperate.’
‘This cop who thinks they make plastic guns: what does he say?’
‘He says he’s seen them. American plastic pistols, with triangular plastic bullets that fit tightly into the breech. They are made to get through the airport security machines.’
‘What would Werner want with it?’ Werner had no special interest or need for a hand-gun, let alone a special-purpose one. I worried lest he was involved in something that would get him into trouble. There was a secretive side of his nature; I’d known that since we were kids together. But I felt sure that there was nothing he would not confide to me, just as I had no secrets from him.
‘We get a lot of funny packages behind the bar here, Herr Samson. The boss looks inside sometimes; he likes to make sure it’s not drugs. Of course Herr Volkmann’s name was never spoken.’
I nodded. Any of the arriving airline crew members could walk across the airfield, and come through the same broken wire fence that all the on-duty engineers and office staff used when they dropped in for a furtive drink. In a way I had played into Joschi’s hands. He now knew that the gun had not been handed on to me, or gone to Werner with my knowledge or blessing.
‘Don’t mention it to anyone, Joschi,’ I said. ‘It’s a toy I’m sure. Talk about it and you might spoil a nice surprise for someone.’
‘I’ll say it’s impossible then?’
‘Yes, you can take my word for it. The poor fellow has lost his money.’
9
Colnbrook, England
It was a strange place to find the grievously sick Jim Prettyman. Jim was rich. He was an unnamed ‘exceptional business and financial adviser’ according to an article about one of his clients that had appeared in the Wall Street Journal. Jim liked numbers, and his mathematical talent enabled him to adjust effortlessly to computerized management. He was a sought-after man nowadays, a consultant to half a dozen international companies, as well as condescending to occasional jobs for the Department. I would have expected to find a sick Jim Prettyman hidden behind diagnosticians, pretty nurses and grim-faced specialists in white coats. I would have looked for him in a big private suite of the Mayo Clinic, the top floor of a Harley Street infirmary with three-star cuisine, or one of those fancy hospitals in Switzerland where the best rooms have a view of the Alps.
As it was, he had chosen a suburban house in Colnbrook, not far from Heathrow, London’s major airport. Heathrow’s claim to be the world’s most active airport was disputed, but surely its role as the largest must be uncontested. Aircraft hangars and repair sheds, service areas, high-security car parks, transport depots and freight warehouses, and offices for the legions who flew the word-processors, sprawled for miles in every direction.
Not so long ago, the airport’s vociferous neighbours were continually staging demonstrations protesting about the noise and inconvenience they suffered. But eventually they discovered that their houses had become very desirable as accommodation for well-paid airline employees. Soon special
ist rental agents took interest in this area, conveniently close to central London, where houses could be made available on short leaseholds for wealthy foreigners. Now Jim Prettyman – born a Londoner – found himself in this wealthy foreigner category: a weary wealthy visitor looking for a place to rest his head.
His rented house was typical of those built in southern England between the wars, but it had been furnished and equipped to meet the more stringent requirements of foreigners. The house was served by a heating system that dispensed warmth. The furnace could be heard somewhere in the cellar, roaring like an antique jet engine and shaking the whole house. The other facilities included two German dish-washers, a gleaming chest freezer and a two-door refrigerator with ice-water dispenser. The kitchen was like the flight deck of a spaceship, with an array of whippers, mixers and blenders, a coffee-maker that dispensed steam for frothy milk, and a complex of ovens that would microwave, turbofan or radiant-heat your dinner at the touch of a button.
‘I’m so glad you came, Mr Samson. Jay needs cheering up.’ From some unseen speaker system there came a soft but spirited performance of The Merry Widow.
I had seen photos of Mrs Prettyman. I remembered how ‘Jay’ had large coloured portraits of her in expensive frames around his Washington DC office. The photos had always shown her smartly dressed in simple shirt-style dresses that were right for Washington’s hot summers. In the pictures she had a wide film-star smile, and athletic pose. Her wealthy family, and her father who was something important in the State Department, had taken Jim to their heart and helped his career. No wonder that in the photos Jim was always smiling too.
As she took my coat and hat she said: ‘Of course he’s doped up. I have coffee brewed; will you take some?’
‘Is he? Coffee? Yes, please.’
‘He has to be on medication. I have a nurse come in three times a day. She’s a lovely person: Australian. The clinic wouldn’t discharge him to my care except on condition a real good qualified nurse attended him.’
‘But he’s on the mend?’