Innocence To Die For

by Eidinow, John

  ‘Uncommonly straightforward and commercial.’ Tim responded to Peter’s raised eyebrows. ‘Notice depends on how much you pay; 72 hours is the minimum, not including Saturday and Sunday. I was warned that there was a lot of fraud, desperation. One must be sure not to be taken in. Birth certificates not necessary. Passports will do. It’s vital to have the marriage certificate attested with the passport details. Then I can validate it and issue the visa.’

  ‘And that will suffice for the flight and British entry?’

  ‘It suffices to say that you’ve a chronic case of lunacy and I’ve caught it from you.’ Tim touched his forehead.

  ‘Anything else? Let’s run through.’ If he’d learned nothing else from note-taking, it was that one thing was always forgotten or taken for granted, usually something crucial.

  ****

  On balance, he’d make it one operation: turn up, bring her to Berne, tell her the plan, do it, leave. Momentum was essential, he’d learned that in France. Two more visits to Neuchâtel would be one too many. If she refused? Surely she must understand that refusal was a certain death sentence, that he had worked it out, could work it all out for them.

  The next visit to the legation brought relief. He was desired to return in his own time to await his next commission, with the thanks of both governments for his excellent services in very difficult circumstances. The Swiss government had been informed, as had HM’s minister.

  ****

  He waited for a while in a café opposite the Berne central town hall. Then he crossed the road, took a narrow lane running down one side of the building, went into the cleansing department and was redirected along corridors and up backstairs to the governing mayor’s offices. Though certain – as certain as could be – of not being followed, while hanging on for the traffic lights to go from green to red, he’d still had a prickle of unease. Someone there, eyes on him? Idlers in the café?

  Finally, feeling somewhat awkward though he knew that was probably true for every young man coming there, he sat in front of the elderly clerk with a wing collar and sandy nicotine-stained walrus moustache who, writing with a steel nib in a vast, leather-bound ruled ledger, would take the notice of intention to marry, issue the licence, fix the date, and accept the payment.

  Yes, it was perfectly in order for the prospective husband to give notice in her absence on behalf of the prospective wife. It was much less common – though certainly not unknown – the other way round. Sometimes the young lady’s father did it for both parties. As a matter of urgency. Herr Schlup smiled broadly, showing nicotine-stained teeth against which he tapped the steel nib. Witnesses need not be a problem, he offered. In the bar round the corner, witnesses were always available: the price of a drink the usual reward. He should remember to say in which language he was being married.

  He took on a serious mien. In the current unhappy circumstances, the Association of Cantonal and Municipal Authorities had agreed that in all marriages involving ladies who were in Switzerland with foreign papers the prospective husband should formally have his attention drawn to the number of unfortunate cases where the lady’s singular purpose in pursuing the marriage had proved to be acquisition of an alternative, safer nationality. Equally when the sock was in the other shoe. The canton of Berne did not want to see its marriage laws used for what was in effect fraud but, on the other hand, nor did it wish to limit the freedom to marry conferred by those laws on the basis of individual choice. Thus in the particular case of a short-notice marriage involving a lady with foreign papers, the registration clerk was enjoined to invite the prospective bridegroom to consider his decision before it became irrevocable. He raised his sparse, sandy eyebrows at Peter. The steel nib was poised. The ticking of the ebony and brass clock on his mantelshelf seemed louder.

  ‘I am grateful to the canton of Berne for its care. Please be reassured that I have known this lady well for over a year. Our acquaintance began before either of us came to Switzerland.’

  ‘I am very happy for you.’ The steel nib scratched some initials at the base of a document, which was then passed to Peter to scratch his initials by the statement that he had heard and understood the above declaration on foreign national marriages in the name of the canton of Berne.

  Done. Their names would appear in notices displayed at this town hall and two others in the canton. But the print was very small and the names were many – no reason why anyone should notice.

  He found his way out through the licensing department, surprised to find his heart beating faster. A drink, yes, then shut away these feelings. Getting her on the plane was what counted. In a world of duplicity, the marriage would be real enough. Wouldn’t that deal with her doubts?

  He glanced at his watch. He’d missed the General Post Office, where he’d ring Dinah and arrange to see her again, in fact to collect her. He strolled over to the terrace where he’d sat with Ed and Miss Frail. “Adventurous in the sack”, she’d said. Over a glass of wine, he found himself wondering whether, if she – and Ed – had stayed longer …

  Chapter Twelve

  He was about to ring off when the phone was at last picked up and a woman speaking French with a strong Swiss-German accent gave the owner’s name. Madame and the young lady were not at home. He should try tomorrow afternoon. Or perhaps better the next day as they might return from Geneva late. Madame had gone to give assistance to refugees, in memory of her late husband. She believed that even now there were a few newly arrived. He should call again if he pleased. Better the day after tomorrow, in the morning, after 9.30. If he pleased.

  The morning was bright, promising a hot day, the mountain peaks sharp against the dense blue sky. He went back to the pension for breakfast and took his coffee to a seat under a tree in the garden. The sprinkles of sunshine edging between the leaves had the feel of high summer; the dulled green of the foliage hinted at the nearness of autumn:

  Les sanglots longs

  Des violons de l’automne

  Blessent mon cœur

  D’une langueur monotone …

  “The long lamentations of autumn’s violins wound my heart with a monotonous languor.”

  A full year since he’d seen housewives weeping on the street over the Polish invasion. Almost a year of being at war, of brilliant German victories and Britain’s scrambling to organise for defence. People joked about the French collapse. “The French population had taken to the roads but they couldn’t catch the French Army.” “Deserters would be shot – if the French army could round up enough men for a firing squad.” Now those formidable German forces were poised on the channel to invade. Would he be taking Dinah back to “Sea Lion”? How did the Verlaine end?

  Et je m’en vais

  Au vent mauvais

  Qui m’emporte

  Deçà, delà

  Pareil à la

  Feuille morte …

  “Blown by an ill wind hither and thither like a dead leaf.”

  He shivered and wished he hadn’t thought of it.

  Dealing with the Vichy’s self-glorifications and rats-nest politics, shielded as a Canadian from its vicious Anglophobia, he’d more or less forgotten the wider war. Now he was involved in his own hidden battle with the Oprichnina – a conflict with no possible armistice. Oprichnina. Rozalia. His sorceress. She was taking his head in her hands and pressing their foreheads together. The sense of deep calm came at once, but for only a moment. He heard her voice: “When they seem most reasonable, they are deceiving you.”

  The bookseller had been so easy. Another two or three weeks. A warning bell should have rung. It was ringing now.

  ****

  He parked his rented car a little beyond her block and kept watch in the mirror. Drenched in late afternoon sunshine, the street was languorously quiet, the blankness of the stone facades, shuttered against the heat, magnifying the silence.

  Gradually a pool of shade covered his parking place. Gradually, cars and people increasingly demanded his attention as workers bega
n to make their way home. His heart thumped. A taxi had entered the street. It came down towards him and stopped outside her entrance.

  He watched as Dinah, in a white blouse and long dark skirt, her hair massed on her shoulders, got out and went to the driver’s window holding a purse. Then she opened the door on the pavement side and reached into the taxi for two walking sticks before helping out a small figure, stiff, in a long white coat of satin and a wide-brimmed black hat wreathed in chiffon. Putting the sticks in the lady’s hands, she went with her up the steps and inside the main door. The taxi driver took two valises out of the boot and carried them into the building.

  Peter waited until the taxi had driven away. Then he went to the back of his car, opening and closing the boot, checking to make sure it was properly secured. Satisfied, he drove to the Hôtel des Alpes & Terminus by the station, paying on arrival for his room.

  ****

  He awoke to a louring grey sky and a fine damp on the windowpanes. As he breakfasted, the mist crept further down the mountains; from the terrace, the Alps were hidden. The drive back would not be pleasant, but he would at least have Dinah beside him. At least? At last.

  Just after 9.30, he rang from the station. Why did he have to wait? Why didn’t she pick up the phone?

  Well away from the receiver, the Swiss-German voice gave the owner’s name. No, Mademoiselle could not come to the telephone. She sounded surprised. The Mademoiselle had just gone out. To meet him at the Crêt du Plan, naturally. To Peter’s sharp query, she protested, sounding upset, that she herself had only just passed on his message. That is, had the man not said he was speaking on his very behalf, that is on the part of Mademoiselle’s Canadian friend Peter? About meeting him on the Crêt du Plan, without fail. Without fail, he’d repeated it. Well, urgent it must be to go up to the Crêt on such a morning, though the Fraulein looked happy enough when she left, a few moments ago … but she was talking into a dead phone.

  ****

  He was the only passenger. After the lift jerked into life, he had no sense of motion or place. The mist was making it impossible to tell. Was that Lily of the Valley he could smell? Dabbed on to meet him? When the door suddenly opened, he could only just discern the outline of the Bel-air terrace across the grass.

  Using the terrace as a marker, he found the track that led through the woods to the Chaumont. In the blank whiteness, his experience of the blackout and night marching helped. But while the dark was permeated with light, the mist wiped out everything – no blocks, no masses, no shades of blackness. Blankness.

  He limited his stride to short sharp steps. If he was slowed, they were probably more so, the two of them together. Keeping his eyes down on the path’s left-hand ridge, away from the edge of the hill, he pressed forward. The mist should dull the sound of his footsteps. If he were her assassin, he would take her to the viewpoint where the elderly walkers had greeted them, where the hillside fell sharply away. Just before the viewpoint, the path widened. As it was doing.

  Out of the mist the thin sound of a voice, of voices, of conversation – and his quickening momentum brought him into the viewpoint. At first blurred in the mist, a woman with her heels almost on the edge of the cliff, rigid. Facing her, a man of middling height, slight in build. The crown of his head was bald; he had wire-framed spectacles. In spite of the mist he was in shirtsleeves, and he was lifting a silenced gun, to point at Dinah.

  He made as if to turn, but too late. Peter was snapping his right hand on the gun, forcing it down, and smashing his left fist into the gunman’s kidneys. With an anguished groan, the gunman doubled up and let the gun drop. Peter was pulling him round. With his side of his left hand, fingers out, tensed, he chopped down on the man’s neck. The man fell, crumpled.

  Dinah was frozen in place on the cliff edge. Peter took her hand and led her to the bench where the gunman’s coat lay, neatly folded.

  ‘You have killed him?’ Her words came out in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘I hope so.’ Or kill he would. He went over to make sure. The lessons of the East End gym had worked.

  ‘You killed him.’

  ‘He was going to shoot you,’

  ‘What shall I do?’ She was shivering. ‘What shall I do?’

  He took off his jacket and put it round her. She clutched it with shaking hands. The mist had become thicker, swirling round them, isolating them. ‘We,’ he said. ‘We. I will tell you what we are going to do.’

  The dead man was wearing a dark blue suit with a white shirt, a discreet red and blue tie and black leather shoes. Perfect for an urban assassin. He couldn’t have expected to go walking. The jacket, so neatly folded. He must have feared blood splashing it. Who was he? Spectacle case, Zürich hotel bill in the name of Petrov, house keys, wallet. A Swiss press card for Oleg Semeonovich Petrov, correspondent for Moskovskii Kommersant. A decent sum in notes. A Soviet passport with German and Swiss entry visas. An international driving licence. No car keys. A return train ticket to Zürich.

  The pistol lay where Oleg had dropped it. A German Luger with a short fat silencer screwed into the barrel. Peter picked it up with his handkerchief and pushed it into the dead man’s waistband.

  ‘I need your help.’ He took her hand and pulled her up. ‘We can’t leave him lying here.’ He walked over to the body. ‘We’re going to throw him over. What he had planned for you.’ She shook her head at the thought. He bent and lifted the body into a sitting position. ‘Get his jacket and help me dress him.’

  Pulling on one sleeve was not too difficult; the other was frustratingly awkward. Presumably undertakers had tricks of the trade. Jacket finally on, he jerked the man to his feet. ‘Thank goodness they didn’t send a fat killer.’ Slight as the Russian had been, the deadweight was surprising.

  ‘I can’t touch him again.’

  ‘You must.’ Braced, he stood with the body, grasping it by the collar and trousers. He was beginning to sweat in the chill air. The head lolled to one side. ‘I want you to steady him, keep him upright. Now.’ He had never ordered her to do anything. ‘Now. Take his arm and hold it.’ He barked at her as if she were the section. ‘I said now.’

  Averting her face, she took the arm. Peter bent, put his shoulder to the dead man’s legs and clutched them. The trousers stank of urine. ‘Let go.’ In one movement he came up with the body, throwing it up and over, diving forward into the void. Checking himself just before he too lunged outwards, he sank on to the edge, exhausted by the effort. They could hear the body bumping and scraping down the slope, then silence.

  She was still standing, looking into the whiteness, listening. Once more he took her hand. ‘Time to go. Did you have a handbag?’

  ‘Where? Where shall we go?’

  ‘To London. Did you have a bag?’

  ‘He put it behind the bench.’

  There was a slight stirring in the trees, the leaves picking up the merest breath of a breeze.

  ‘We must get down before the mist lifts. Follow me.’

  On balance, it was best to go down the way they had come up. In the mist, two figures returning, one female, one male. If someone was waiting for Oleg, most likely it would be at the Chaumont, with trains to Zürich directly below.

  ‘Stay close to me.’ He led the way into the whiteness, the hidden leaves shivering slightly as the mist rolled and swirled.

  The outline of the hotel terrace was clearer as they emerged from the woods, and its lights were dimly visible. To anyone looking out as they made for the lift, they could still be no more than two vague outlines.

  ****

  In the city, the mist was almost a fine drizzle. Over croissants, coffee and a thimbleful of marc each, he gave instructions. They would drive to the apartment. She would tell the old lady that she had to go away but would soon be back. Helping a pregnant friend, perhaps. She would pack only enough for two or three days, a weekend. ‘Bring your passport and any other papers, anything that might identify you. You will not return.’ He would wait for her
in the street. ‘It should be safe enough. His friends must assume he’s done the job.’ That assumption was on their side. “In every setback an opportunity”. Ponsonby’s rule could be right.

  Her hands were shaking as she lifted her cup to her bloodless lips.

  ‘If there’s any sign of trouble, one short hoot, one long. Stay in the apartment until you hear two short. Otherwise, don’t linger. Walk past me and turn right, then stop. I’ll come and pick you up.’

  ****

  He drove down her street once, then came round again and parked just up from her doorway. They waited for ten minutes, then he sent her into the apartment.

  A quarter of an hour passed. An elderly woman came out on to the stairs and looked up and down the street. She wore a long white apron over a rusty black dress, her iron-grey hair coiled in plaits over her ears. He shrank down in his seat. Muttering something to herself she went back in. Half an hour. Three-quarters. Dinah was at the top of the steps with a suitcase, looking back and waving. She was finally walking up and past him.

  He hadn’t noticed how the mist had returned. At the edge of the town, the police turned them back: the mist was too thick, the road closed by several accidents, two mortal. Tomorrow all would be clear.

  He decided on his lakeside hotel. It could be a blessing in disguise: she seemed exhausted. Suitably rewarded, the porter would smile his gold-toothed smile.

  The route to the lake suggested by the police took them past the tram station. Just leaving it were the two elderly hikers who had greeted them with smiles at the viewpoint on their first visit. They were walking briskly towards the railway station. Their backs were to the car, but he pushed Dinah down, just in case.