He turned to look at her again and was astonished to see she was crying. The tears simply slid half way down her cheeks and fell on to the cot.
‘Lilo.’
‘I’m sorry. Forgive me.’
‘I shouldn’t have talked like that.’
‘It reminded me of someone else.’
‘Look, I’ll leave you. I’ll go into the sitting-room.’
‘No. Keep me company.’
He felt drawn to her then for the first time on a basis which was not sexual.
She gathered up the debris and removed it to the bathroom. The baby lay on his back, clean and gurgling. Spencer picked him up and carried him to the window. Peter pointed.
‘What’s that?’ Spencer said. ‘A tree? Yes, that’s what it is, a tree.’
Lilo came back. ‘This is the time his father used to like him. When he was clean and smelling nice.’ She held out her arms, took him back and tucked him in his cot.
‘I’m going to make some coffee,’ she said, closing the door behind them.
He followed her into the small modern kitchen. ‘Does his father ever see him or is it a total break?’
She turned away to. fill the kettle. ‘Total.’
‘Perhaps that’s best.’
They took their coffee into the sitting-room. It was a pleasant, unassuming room. A lot of the furniture was cheap veneer but there was an angle sofa in oatmeal tweed on a deep brown carpet that gave it a focus. She turned and kissed him on the lips and put her free hand up in a gesture that he now thought characteristic, and touched his face. ‘Sit over there.’
‘What have you been doing?* he said.
She sipped at the smoky surface of the coffee and then said, ‘Finding out more about your friend Bruno.’
‘Oh?’
‘I have a good contact in the police.’
Again he wondered if she was lying. And then he thought: ‘I don’t care. For just these few moments, I don’t care.’
‘What did you find out?’ he said.
The telephone rang. It was on a table in the corner of the room. ‘Excuse me, please,’ she said. She stood with her back to him, cupping the receiver in her hand so that he would not hear. In any case, the German was too rapid for him to follow. At first she seemed to be listening and then she spoke swiftly and jerkily, as though arguing. Once or twice she turned to look at him and then quickly turned back again. When she put down the receiver she looked agitated. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I must ask you to leave now.’
‘I hoped...’
‘There is someone coming.’
‘I see.’
‘It is important for me.’
‘Is it about Gutmann?’
‘No, it is another matter.’
‘Your husband?’
‘No.’
He rose. ‘When will I see you?’
‘I will telephone to you.’
It was the same phrase she had used several times before. He went out into the misty morning. In the street he hesitated and looked towards her apartment. He could just see her shape in the window looking down at him. He raised his hand to wave but she did not acknowledge it. He hadn’t walked more than a hundred metres before he picked up a taxi. As it turned into Bis-marck-strasse a blue Volkswagen left its parking place and turned after it, but he did not notice it.
At the hotel he went to the telephonist in her small cubby hole near the cloakroom.
‘I’d like you to find out a telephone number for me. A Frau Lilo Essenbach. The address is in Charlottenburg.’
The telephonist looked in the directory, then shook her head. ‘Could you try Inquiries?’
She dialled, talked for a moment, then said, ‘They do not have a Frau Lilo Essenbach.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘They are sure.’
‘Tell them it may be a new number or even ex-directory.’ She spoke again. ‘No one by that name.’
‘Thank you.’
The room was a cage and he prowled around it like an animal, his mind a jumble of conflicting thoughts: where the hell did she fit in? There was only one way to find out. He asked for the number that Lange had given him. This time there was the click of a receiver being lifted.
‘Hello?’ he said. ‘Hello?’
There was silence at the other end.
‘Hello!’ There was another click as the receiver was replaced. He sat on the edge of the bed, his skin crawling. He got through again but the telephone rang and rang until he finally put it down. He was half way through the door when the phone rang. He spun round and looked at it, hypnotized. Then he went back and picked it up.
It was Willi and he sounded frightened. ‘I have some information,’ he said.
‘What sort of information?’
‘You wish to find Bruno, not so?’
‘You know that.’
‘It is about this matter.’
Spencer felt his heart begin to race. Where are you?’
‘At the house.’
‘I’ll come there.’
‘No.’
‘All right, you come here.’
‘That is not possible.’
‘All right, where then?’
‘Somewhere open. The Zoo.’
‘In this weather? We’d freeze.’
‘You choose, please.’
There was only one ‘open’ place that he knew. ‘What about the Europa Centre? By the ice-rink?’
There was a pause. ‘Yes, all right. In two hours. Bring some marks. A lot of marks.’ The phone went dead.
Spencer replaced the receiver and turned. Lilo was standing in the open doorway of the room.
He thought she looked lovelier than he had ever seen her: the black bar of her fringe cutting across and framing the olive skin of her face, the head itself framed by the high collar of her blue suede coat. Yet there was an uneasiness that had not existed before.
‘Have you any of that whisky left?’ she said lightly.
‘About half a bottle.’ It was a little early in the day for whisky, he thought.
She took off her coat and her shoes and sat against the head-board of the bed, her long legs curled up underneath her, as she had before. It seemed impossible that she would lie to him, and yet she had, he wondered how many times, perhaps everything was a lie.
‘I was going to telephone to apologize,’ she said.
‘What for?’
‘For today at the apartment, and then I thought it would be nicer to see you.’
There was silence for a few moments and he said, ‘How’s Peter?’
Her eyes slid away from him as though it was a subject she did not want to discuss and she said, ‘He is with my mother.’
They talked desultorily for a few minutes, then the conversation languished. He gave her another whisky. Suddenly she said, ‘John, who were you speaking to?’
‘When.’
‘Now, when I came.’
‘Just the desk.’
She did not comment for a moment and then she said, ‘I am afraid for you.’
‘You needn’t be.’
‘This is a very complex situation.’ He heard echoes of Hoest’s voice in London. ‘If you know anything...’
‘For Christ’s sake, I’ve told you!’ He was angry with her now; angry with her for lying, but basically angry with her for not being the person he wanted her to be. ‘What makes you think I’ve got anything to hide?’
She laughed without humour. ‘I will tell you. I think you found out something from Herr Lange; something that you have not wished to tell me; an address, perhaps, or a telephone number. I come to see you and find you are telephoning. But you know no one in Berlin to telephone. I do not think you have been very fair with me.’
‘Jesus! Fair with you... you — ’ And then he stopped. He had been about to tell her his own suspicions: of her pretence at journalism; of her lying. But he was cautious now. After a while she left and he did not try to stop her.
*
The Europa Centre, where Spencer had had coffee the first morning, is a huge complex of offices, shops and a hotel at the apex of a triangle formed by Budapesterstrasse, Tauentzien-strasse and the Breitscheidplatz, and only about seven minutes’ walk from the hotel. The single tower of the hotel rises from the complex, as a factory chimney rises from its buildings. The shopping plaza is on several floors, a place of dark, reflective surfaces, potted trees, courts, escalators, benches and winding glass alleys. At its centre is a square ice-rink. There are shops on each floor, boutiques, men’s shops, photographic, stereo, print, jeans, a joke shop, others selling porcelain, books, leatherware and handbags, pastries, gifts; there are restaurants and coffee shops, bars and a bank. There are also half a dozen entrances and exits.
Spencer left the bitterly cold and misty air of Tauentzien-strasse and entered the Centre’s warm, dim world. To his right, behind glass windows and doors, was the ice-rink, but he was early, and like some subconsciously wary animal he went up on the escalator to a viewing gallery from where he could look down on the skaters. He studied the wide corridor surrounding the rink but there were few spectators and he could not recognize anyone resembling Willi. He spent ten minutes moving round the upstairs balcony slowly enough to give himself a good view of everyone below.
He inspected the skaters. They consisted of two elderly couples, skating carefully to a Viennese waltz. The women, old as they were, wore leotards over their thick and varicosed legs; the men, plus-fours and loden jackets. At first they seemed to him farcical as they slid around the ice with their stiff, cautious movements. But they were unaware that some of the spectators were watching them with amusement, instead they gripped each other like young lovers, and waltzed in an enclosed dreamworld, oblivious of anyone. They looked like the couples who had been there on his previous visit and he wondered if they came every day.
He wandered through the plaza, stopping every now and then, going into shops, using the abundant plate glass as a mirror. He came down to the ground floor and was looking into the window of a glass shop when he saw something shadowy behind him. He moved to get a better view and had the briefest glimpse of a portly man in a coat with a turned-up collar carrying a square white patisserie box. He turned but the figure had vanished. He went along the glass-sided alley and saw the man rising to the first floor on the escalator. His image-filled mind registered the figure with a feeling of shock. There was something about him... Was he Bruno?
He crossed to the escalator and followed. But as he rose he glanced at the down escalator. The man was sinking to the ground floor. Spencer could not see his face.
He paused on the first floor trying to decide what to do. Then he followed the man on down the escalator.
On the ground floor again he looked through the glass windows on to the ice-rink, but the man was not there, nor was he anywhere in sight. There was another escalator to the basement and Spencer stepped on to this. He searched through the shops, but there was no sign of the man. He moved to a shop with a rack of prints outside it and pretended to study them while watching the escalator. A print caught his eye. In the few seconds he looked away the man carrying the patisserie box had stepped on to the escalator and, when he turned back, was already half way up to the ground floor.
Spencer hurried after him. He watched the figure cross the court with the potted shrubs and go into another shopping alley.
He was about to follow when he saw a flash of blue. He glanced to his right just as a blue suede coat disappeared round a corner on the far side of the plaza. He was about to see if it belonged to Lilo when he brought himself up short. It was ridiculous. He would be seeing Campbell next. He looked at his watch and went through the doors to the ice-rink. The doors opened on to a wide corridor running around the four sides, separated from the ice by a wall low enough to lean on. Pillars every few metres supported the gallery above.
He walked around the ice-rink looking for Willi. He was nowhere to be seen. He stopped by a pillar to wait. There was something not quite right about the atmosphere. Every nerve in Spencer’s body was telling him to leave. He decided to wait only five minutes.
‘Hello, Johnnie,’ a voice said at his elbow. Spencer whipped round. He was looking at a portly man with a fleshy, pink face that shone with good living. It was Bruno. He had gone bald except for a tonsure of light gingerish hair, and there were freckles on his scalp. He was wearing a black leather coat with a fur collar and holding a pair of light yellow pigskin gloves in one hand. In the other he carried a patisserie box. He was the man Spencer had seen on the escalator. Altogether he looked sleek, well-fed and prosperous. In his eyes was that same calculating look that Spencer remembered. The last time he had seen it was in the cellar after the bombing.
Bruno put down the box on the wall next to the pillar and held out his hand. Spencer found himself gripping it before he could react. ‘It’s nice to see you again,’ Bruno said. ‘Is this your first visit to Berlin since the war?’
It was said blandly as though the only thing between them was a slight acquaintanceship.
‘Yes,’ he said, trying to get a grip on himself.
‘It’s changed, no? I mean, we did not have all this in those days.’ He waved a large well-manicured hand around him. ‘Then this was just rubble. Do you remember we used to walk past it sometimes on our way home from a meeting?’
‘How did you know I was here?’ Spencer said, but Bruno ignored the question.
‘I often think of those days. I wouldn’t like to go back to them, but they weren’t so bad in some ways. There was a comradeship among Berliners that no longer exists. I mean, you remember that, don’t you, Johnnie? You’d do anything for a friend then, no thought of rewards.’ He looked at his watch and then at the two elderly couples moving round the rink to the taped music.
‘They say war brings out the best in people. Don’t you agree, Johnnie? It was a struggle, but it was a struggle for everyone. Just because you had money you couldn’t buy yourself a safe place. I think it wasn’t such a materialistic society, if you know what I mean. It was share and share alike. If one person had a bottle of schnapps he shared it with his friends, he didn’t try to hide it.’ Spencer thought of the shoe-boxes filled with loot under the wardrobe. ‘Now everyone drives in his own Mercedes and all he wants is a better hi-fi set or a more expensive camera.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘No, in some ways the old days were better.’
Spencer was only half listening to this fulsome nonsense, the other part of his mind was considering his own position. How did Bruno know he’d be here? What did he want? Where had he come from? It was Willi of course. Willi had wanted to play his own game; the archetypal middle man. Clearly he had laid this whole thing on but if he’d known where Bruno was in the beginning why hadn’t he sold the information to Spencer?
‘You remember the house in Graf Speestrasse,’ Bruno was saying. ‘You remember how friendly we were there. How my mother used to work miracles with the food ration. Remember Herr Lange? He married my mother you know. They were a great comfort to each other, especially in her last days. Yes... we lived for each other then... but now!’
Listening to him Spencer felt he was beginning to lose his grip on reality and he decided to play Bruno’s game; at least for the moment; pretending there was nothing in the background at all except anodyne memories; churning out platitudes; little pleasantries. ‘You’ve done well,’ he said, businessman talking to businessman.
‘So, so. There were opportunities after the war, Johnnie. I mean, for people with a little brain.’
‘And a little money.’
‘Of course. I wish you had stayed. We’d have done well, you and I. Comrades in war and peace.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘You know when I went to school there was a stained glass window showing a dying soldier from the First War — ’
‘Yes, you told me about the window.’
‘Well, that’s what I mean. We could have done great things. I looked for you. Searched all over
town but you were nowhere to be found.’ Spencer knew then that Bruno had gone back to the cellar to make sure. What would have happened if he’d found him there? A lump of concrete on the head? ‘And you Johnnie. You’ve done well too. I sometimes saw your picture in the financial papers. The John Spencer Group of Companies. Very fine.’ He paused, looked at his watch again and said, ‘Are you here on business?’ It was a loaded, calculated question.
‘You know why I’m here,’ Spencer said.
‘Expansion?’
‘You say you read the papers.’
‘Of course. I like to keep abreast of things.’
‘Then you read of the shooting in London in which my wife was killed.’
‘That’s so, Johnnie, but I didn’t like to bring it up.’
‘Naturally.’
‘Tragic. So young too.’
‘Yes. Young and beautiful and pregnant.’
‘It’s really dreadful what happens these days. That’s what I was saying, Johnnie. The war was better. More comradeship. One knew the reason for things then. One was fighting for one’s life.’ He glanced at his watch again and Spencer felt the anger rising inside him. He fought against it. He knew the only way to conduct the present discussion was to follow Bruno’s lead. To keep it cool; always cool.
‘I’ve been telephoning you for two days,’ Spencer said.
‘I’ve been away.’
‘On business?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is your business, Bruno?’
‘A little of this, a little of that. Import. Export. You know how it is.’ He looked at his watch again.
‘Are you in a hurry?’
‘I have another appointment. Please tell me what you wish.’
‘You must have some idea.’
‘Why should I? You are being very mysterious, Johnnie. I thought it was two old friends meeting after a long time.’ Spencer was suddenly angry. ‘Don’t talk balls. You know as well as I do what I want.’
‘Perhaps it is something you cannot have.’
‘Listen to me, Bruno, the police know about you.’
Bruno shrugged. ‘What can they know?’
‘They have a photograph.’
Berlin Blind Page 18