Elke edged the freshly washed and polished Volkswagen out on to Adenauerallee, that highway she seemed to know so well, shrugging the thought away. She didn’t want a reason for the adjustment between herself and Ida. It had happened. That was enough. The reason wasn’t important: wasn’t necessary to isolate. What about other factors? She began to ignore what came to mind but finally refused herself. Why not consider it? She was looking forward to the concert, with Günther. As he said he was looking forward to escorting her, when she’d accepted. Soon – within days – they would have to make arrangements. Would they meet at the concert hall? Or would he collect her? Better to meet at the hall. Less complicated. Less … just better. What if he offered to pick her up? It would be rude to refuse. If he did she would have to invite him in, either before or after: further rudeness, if she didn’t. Most definitely before, if he insisted on coming to Kaufmannstrasse. She would have to get something in to drink, to avoid being as unworldly as she had been with Ida. Basic courtesy to do so. What? She didn’t know. What had Dietlef drunk, when they’d been together? Beer, she remembered: beer was all that students and postgraduates ever drank. Günther Werle didn’t seem the sort of man to drink beer. Wine, perhaps. It might be wise to get in some whisky or schnapps, as well. Near the centre of the city, Elke smiled abruptly: it was not a problem. She could ask Ida, at lunch. Ida would know. The reliance was still two-way.
The car-parks were full, but today that did not cause Elke the irritation it might have done. She made a protective tour around familiar streets and succeeded with a meter on Engeltalstrasse. Before lifting Poppi from the vehicle she ensured it was parked evenly between the lines of the designated space, paid and then returned for the dog.
It was getting hotter, warming up but not yet boiling like the ‘Bonn kettle’. The sun felt comfortable upon her face: she hoped Ursula would feel like walking in the grounds tomorrow. Ursula had not resisted at all on the last few Sundays. It had to be something to do with the newly-prescribed tranquillizers.
The produce market was not crowded and although she did not intend to buy anything Elke lingered among the stalls, smiling at traders shouting their wares, shaking her head to those who picked her out openly to offer samples. She hesitated, too, at the flower stalls further on. If Günther came into the flat it would be nice, proper, to have fresh flowers. But they wouldn’t be fresh by then, would they? Better to wait, nearer the day: nearer the day they would have decided anyway if they were going separately or together.
Clara, the waitress Elke never called by name, was waiting to greet her by the accustomed table inside the Bonner Café. Elke accepted the coffee and consulted the menu before choosing the apple cake they both knew she would order.
‘Cream?’ the girl suggested, as she always did.
‘No thank you,’ Elke refused, as she always did.
And outside but unseen, concealed by the jewellery shop window, Otto Reimann smiled, already convinced that everything was going to work as smoothly as he’d planned it should.
Reimann considered the most difficult part – the part he could do nothing to anticipate – was already resolved exactly as he wanted it to be because there had not been a restricting car-park vacancy when Elke reached the centre.
The expert observation, a lot of which he had confirmed for himself, had given Reimann precisely the time of Elke’s regular Saturday morning departure from Kaufmannstrasse. But Reimann had still been waiting early, to allow for any deviation from normal. Which there hadn’t been. The short drive into the city had been just as uneventful, so it had only been about the parking that Reimann had known any concern. Engeltalstrasse could not have been better. Knowing Elke’s destination Reimann had not needed to maintain any further pursuit. Instead he’d found his own parking place on Spessartstrasse and still been early for his rendezvous with Jutta, to identify both parking positions, aware more than at any time since this new operation had begun how completely their positions were switched.
‘So far it’s going all right.’ A begrudging concession.
‘It can only fail if you and the others make mistakes now.’ He hadn’t quite intended it to sound like a threat.
‘I don’t make mistakes,’ she’d come back at him, defiantly.
‘Let’s hope there isn’t a first time. And that the others aren’t careless,’ had been his retort, just as forceful.
Elke left the Bonner Café at ten thirty, the recorded time in the observation files. And as the files predicted, she turned left towards the bookshop and the cathedral. Reimann went in the opposite direction, back through the produce market. The already identified telephone was conveniently near the corner of Spessart. He hurried his approach, to create the breathlessness of a supposedly anguished man, and babbled the beginning of his emergency call so that the receiver had to interrupt to make him repeat the report of his car’s theft. He did, with an account of actually seeing the crime being committed, too far away to intervene but able to give the direction in which the car had been driven away. He added the location from which he was speaking and promised to wait until the police arrived.
It was very prompt, quicker than Reimann had guessed it might be. He repeated all the details to the two traffic policemen and was sitting in the rear of the car when the first report came over their radio.
‘Just a few streets away,’ the observer reported. ‘You’ve been lucky.’
‘I don’t agree,’ Reimann said sourly and for the police benefit when they reached Engeltalstrasse.
The KGB active service unit drafted in to Bonn at Reimann’s request had staged the crash brilliantly, causing exactly the sort and type of damage he wanted. The nearside wing of Reimann’s Mercedes was crumpled and the bumper was buckled into the wheel. But by far the worst damage was to Elke’s Volkswagen. The wing furthest from the pavement was crushed along its entire length from the glancing way the two cars had been brought together. The force of the impact had driven it tightly against the tyre, which was punctured. Additionally the wheel had been shattered away from the front axle and lay skewed, making the car lopsided.
Reimann went through the head-shaking pretence of examining the damage and gazing inside the vehicle – carefully obeying the police injunction to touch nothing – while one officer sought evidence and descriptions from witnesses and his colleague directed single line traffic around the interlocked cars. The sort of uninvolved people who always stop to stare at traffic accidents stopped to stare, forming a crowd through which it was difficult for Reimann to detect Elke Meyer’s arrival. According to his detailed information it could only be minutes.
It was actually three.
Always someone to fear the worst, Elke had the initial twinge of concern as she came up behind the crowd at the entrance to the street where she was parked. At first the crowd blocked her view. She tried, ineffectually, to make her way through, hearing ‘crash’ and ‘runaway’ from unseen people and feeling the concern harden into positive worry.
When Elke saw fully, the worry settled into shocked, irrational panic. There was only one thought: my car, my car, my beautiful car. Then she said it, aloud, but it didn’t come out as words, more a helpless whimpering noise.
‘My car!’ she said again, disbelievingly. ‘That’s my car!’
The people closest to her moved away, like sympathetic mourners. Someone shouted helpfully to the police: ‘Here’s the owner,’ which was Reimann’s warning. He looked up from the crumpled vehicles but didn’t move towards her.
Elke was never to have any recollection of purposely getting to the accident. In the panic that held her, she was only conscious of the broken wheel, the punctured tyre and the scarred and twisted metal of the obsessively cherished vehicle.
‘Fräulein Meyer?’ said one of the policemen. He had already obtained the owner’s identity from the registration details through the police car computer. ‘Fräulein Elke Meyer?’
Elke blinked at the man, not completely hearing the question. ‘M
y car!’ she said. ‘Someone’s crashed into my car. Damaged it. Look how it’s damaged … broken…!’
Reimann judged it the moment to become involved. Despite knowing the care she took of the vehicle, her distress was far greater than he had expected. He was pleased.
‘My car, too,’ said Reimann. ‘The other car is mine.’
Elke’s despair, her inability to get control of herself, started visibly to shake through her. ‘You did it! You crashed into me!’
‘No,’ interceded the policeman. ‘Herr Reimann’s car was stolen. The thieves crashed into you: three men, according to witnesses. They escaped in a Porsche. We’ve already circulated a description.’
Reimann wondered where the Porsche would be found; by now the Soviet unit would have switched to prearranged and waiting cars at least twice.
‘But what’s going to happen? … my car…?’ Elke straggled to a halt, chest so tight she couldn’t breathe, made faint by the recognition when she focused at last upon the other car’s owner. It couldn’t be! No, of course it couldn’t! It wasn’t. But so similar! Elke was numbed, momentarily close to fainting.
‘There are breakdown trucks already coming to get them off the street,’ the policeman continued.
None of the carefully prepared files had cautioned him that the stupid woman was given to hysteria, thought Reimann. The stunted animal named Poppi was twisting round their feet, frightened by the crowds and the obvious excitement. And yapping, just as Reimann had guessed it would yap. Quietly, the sympathy sounding quite sincere, he said: ‘I’m sorry about your car. It doesn’t matter so much about mine: it’s owned by my firm.’
Elke made a supreme effort for control, fully aware at last of the number of people all around and that she was their focal point. To Reimann she said: ‘Forgive me. It was a shock … I didn’t expect … forgive me.’ So similar, she thought again: practically a double.
‘It’s naturally a shock,’ he said, soothingly. More than you know, he added, mentally: there are many more to come, dear Elke.
At that moment the towing trucks arrived and the policemen closed the street completely while they manoeuvred into position. Men in greasy overalls got from both cabs, nodded with the disinterest of experts to both Reimann and Elke, and started at once to fumble between the Volkswagen and the Mercedes. One shouted for a chained hook attached to a crane to be lowered beneath the front bumper of the Mercedes, yelled again and stood back as one car was lifted free of the other with a screech of tearing metal. Reimann saw Elke wince, as if it were a human sound.
‘How will everything be paid for?’ asked Elke, dazedly.
As I intend it to be, thought Reimann. Instead of replying he turned to the policeman, who represented officialdom and from whom Elke would accept statements without question. The policeman said: ‘By insurers. In the circumstances I imagine it will be a complicated situation. It wasn’t Herr Reimann’s fault.’
Elke isolated the name for the first time. His voice was different, much lower, than Dietlef Becker’s had been. The likeness was still uncanny. Unsettling. She still felt weak.
‘I’ll find out where the cars are being taken,’ Reimann offered. From the fixed way she was staring at him he believed she had made the connection. He got two business cards from the breakdown men and returned his in exchange. He said he would come later that day to the garage, accepting in advance of their protests that it was unreasonable to expect a damage estimate so soon.
‘What about her?’ said one of the mechanics, nodding towards Elke.
‘Contact me at that number and address if there’s anything to discuss,’ said Reimann. He had to try everything now.
With the evidence of the accident disappearing down the road the crowd began to break up. The policeman in charge shepherded Elke and Reimann on to the pavement and said: ‘There is some information I want.’ He needed only details of their driving licences and insurance, with the addition of a short official statement from Reimann of personally having seen his own car stolen. Reimann insisted that everything had occurred too fast for him to provide any useful description of the men involved.
‘The witnesses to the crash here say there was one comparatively tall man: the other two medium height. All casually dressed?’
Reimann shook his head. ‘I really didn’t see,’ he apologized. By now the unit would be very differently dressed.
‘We’ll contact you, as soon as we hear anything,’ the policeman promised. ‘I’m hopeful.’
You shouldn’t be, thought Reimann. He said: ‘You’ve been extremely helpful.’
‘Yes, thank you.’ Elke spoke quickly, anxious not to appear ungrateful. She felt none of the earlier, welcomed calm but neither was there panic now. She still wished her thoughts would come in the proper order, so she would know what to do. She felt she was recovering from the other shock, the positive resemblance this man had to someone else whom she still didn’t believe she truly hated, as Ida expected her to hate.
‘There are a few things we’ve got to talk about.’
Elke turned to Reimann. He had a considerate, open face and was smiling at her kindly.
‘Would you like to sit down? Take a coffee or something?’ The damned dog was sniffing around his legs, curiously. Reimann wanted to edge it away with his foot. He didn’t.
Elke realized she would like to sit down: she felt drained, physically aching. She nodded and said: ‘I think I would.’
The café was crowded and noisy, not at all like the Bonner, but he managed to get a table on a slightly raised balcony away from the main hubbub.
‘Coffee? Or something stronger?’
‘Coffee, please.’ He had a way of looking straight at his companion but strangely Elke was not disconcerted: she had the impression he was concentrating entirely upon her. He had brown eyes. Dietlef had had brown eyes. Dietlef hadn’t gazed so directly, though.
Reimann gave the order and said, businesslike: ‘Now! Is there anyone we have to contact? Husband? Boyfriend? Anyone?’
‘No, I …’ started Elke, habitually in retreat. Lunch! She was late, practically an hour! And she was never late: they’d be worried, not knowing! Mustn’t panic any more; mustn’t babble. Think! She said: ‘I was going to my sister. They’ll be concerned.’ She started around towards the door, half rising before realizing how silly she must look.
‘We’ll phone,’ said Reimann, with further calmness. ‘I’ll do it for you, if you’d like.’
Of course! Telephone: easy! Elke said: ‘I’ll do it. But thank you.’
Reimann located the telephone and sat watching her hurry towards it: in her anxiety, she didn’t walk head lowered, as she usually did. She had quite a tight ass. He considered adding a brandy for himself when the coffee arrived but quickly decided against it: her immediate impression – and every impression after that – was important. Would be important, for quite a while to come. Urged by the reflection, aware that she was looking back from the telephone position, Reimann leaned to pat the dog, which she had left tethered by its lead to the table leg. Poppi backed away, with a nervous snarl. Reimann withdrew: fucking animal, he thought.
Ida’s alarm was immediate. Elke cut across her sister’s gabbled questions, insisting she was unhurt – that she hadn’t even been involved – and that she would get to Bad Godesberg as soon as possible: she just had a few things to discuss with the other car owner. He seemed extremely considerate, and there was an amazing coincidence, she would tell Ida later. Talking to her sister about the accident – and being distanced from the man – allowed Elke outwardly to compose herself. No more spluttering confusion, she resolved, as she walked back to the table. She was conscious of his studying her, smiling, as she approached. When she reached the table he stood, politely, for her to sit.
‘I wasn’t making a lot of sense out there, was I?’ It was the right thing to do, to offer an explanation for her panic.
‘Anyone would have been upset,’ said Reimann. She’d made a reasonable rec
overy, he conceded. Just.
‘You’ve been very understanding.’ She didn’t feel at all ill-at-ease. He was a comfortable person to be with.
More understanding than you’ll ever know, mused Reimann. He said: ‘I think we should meet properly, don’t you?’ He reached across that table in greeting and said: ‘Otto Reimann. Hello.’
She hesitated, then took the offered hand. ‘Elke Meyer,’ she said. He wasn’t being flirtatious or anything stupid or discomfiting like that: he was trying to relax her. Even more considerate.
‘Things you have to know,’ announced Reimann, formally. ‘Here is my card, with my phone number and address …’ He scribbled quickly on the reverse side. ‘… And my insurers. Here’s the name of the garage where the cars have been taken: I’ve said I’ll make contact this afternoon, to see if they’ve any estimate of the cost of the damage. They probably won’t have, but there’s no harm in asking.’
‘What do you need from me?’ asked Elke.
Reimann positively hesitated, at the irony of the question. ‘Your address, certainly. Insurers, too.’
Elke began groping through her handbag. She got as far as: ‘I don’t seem …’ before Reimann offered her a small notepad and his own pen. Elke wrote down the Kaufmannstrasse address he already knew and said: ‘I suppose I’d better get in touch with my insurance company, to tell them what’s happened.’
‘Don’t hurry about that,’ advised Reimann. ‘They’ll need an estimate for the damage repairs, anyway …’ He gestured to his business card, which lay between them and upon which the titles of the Australian magazines were listed. ‘… My car is covered by the company insurance. It could be they’ll accept responsibility for your car as well as mine. There’d be no purpose in your unnecessarily incurring penalties or losing bonuses if they will, would there?’
Little Grey Mice Page 13