Nightfall Berlin

by Jack Grimwood

  It was on the third day that he returned to the hotel, ordered himself coffee and claimed a copy of R. K. Narayan’s Under the Banyan Tree that a woman discarded as he approached the tables.

  ‘If you’ve finished with that?’

  He looked up to see the same little man.

  ‘Certainly,’ Sir Cecil said. ‘The last story’s particularly interesting. About a village storyteller who takes a life-long vow of silence.’

  A few minutes later, the little man slipped a note into his pocket. Later still, he encrypted it, wrote it out on rice paper and secreted it in his Omega, which had been fitted with a thinner movement to allow for this. It wasn’t until that afternoon that things began to go wrong for him.

  Having passed through Checkpoint Charlie, the little man retrieved his hire car from where he’d parked it and headed for Tempelhof to catch his flight for London. At first he thought the lorry that drew alongside on the Bundesstrasse 96 simply wanted to overtake. When it stayed alongside, he speeded up.

  This was a mistake.

  The lorry swung hard over and ran the Englishman off the road. It was another day before a detective with the West Berlin police paused to wonder why a dead commercial traveller with a plane to catch hadn’t been wearing a watch.

  9

  ‘Bloody, bloody man …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re apologizing for,’ Caro said. ‘He’s my father. What did he tell you to tell me?’ She smiled, and Tom smiled back; although there was enough flint in Caro’s gaze to let him know she expected an answer.

  ‘That he was sorry.’

  ‘What else?’ Caro asked. ‘In order.’

  ‘That just because I have to fly out tomorrow doesn’t mean you can’t stay. If you insist on cutting the holiday short, however, you should fly first class. Charlie would like that and your father will pick up the tab.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  Taking a deep breath, Tom blew it out.

  ‘I’m to tell you your father wouldn’t take no for an answer. That Sir Cecil asked for me by name. The PM approves. If all else fails, I’m to say it’s my duty. You’re his daughter. You won’t argue with that.’

  ‘Fucker –’

  ‘Caro!’

  ‘It’s your duty …’ She wrapped her arms round his neck, seeking comfort rather than anything else. ‘Don’t tell Charlie until tomorrow, okay? Let him have the rest of the day.’

  ‘You think he’s going to be upset?’

  ‘He’ll be devastated,’ Caro said. ‘We’re meant to be here for another week. It’s the first holiday we’ve had together since …’

  She didn’t need to say it.

  Becca died.

  Caro sat in the shade of palm trees on a recliner, eyes hidden by huge dark glasses and the brim of her straw hat pulled low. A new novel lay unopened beside her.

  ‘Book no good?’

  ‘My head hurts,’ Caro said. ‘I think it’s the light.’

  ‘Want me to pull your chair further into the shade?’

  She stood up dutifully and Tom moved it half a dozen paces, glancing up to check that he hadn’t positioned her directly under a coconut palm. ‘Go inside if it gets worse,’ he said. ‘I can field Charlie.’

  ‘I want to stay.’

  ‘Caro …’

  ‘You’re going tomorrow,’ she said miserably. ‘That makes this our last afternoon. I want Charlie to remember it being good. I want to be here.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said.

  ‘For what?’

  He crouched beside her. ‘Everything.’

  She reached for his hand and gripped it tight as they both watched Charlie jump the wake, hurtle out to one side and happily kick off a ski, remaining upright as he cut back across the waves and headed for the other side.

  ‘Is that the first time he’s done that?’ Caro asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said Tom.

  ‘He’s good.’

  ‘It’s all mathematics, apparently.’

  ‘I’ll tell him at breakfast. I’m going to take Daddy up on his offer, you know. We’ll be flying first, and if Charlie wants some overpriced gizmo in duty-free he can pay for that too. Bloody man.’ She sat back and reached for her Coke. ‘Do you think he was telling the truth about Sir Cecil asking for you by name?’

  ‘That’s the bit that makes no sense.’

  ‘You’ve never met him?’

  ‘Not that I can remember.’

  ‘And your orders are to bring him back?’

  ‘Could be worse,’ Tom said, watching his son send a fan of spray into the air as he reached the end of his rope and turned in again. ‘They could be to kill him. Except, I imagine, even we draw the line at trying to kill one of our own under the noses of the East Germans.’

  ‘Tom …’

  ‘That was a joke.’

  ‘Was it?’ Caro asked.

  10

  Above Tom’s head bats flittered like bits of torn sky, while around him palm leaves whispered dry secrets as he crossed the hotel courtyard. The night was hot, despite being the wrong side of midnight, and Tom had needed air and not wanted to wake Charlie by using the balcony.

  A fountain in the middle splashed softly enough not to upset goldfish circling a huge bowl below. Sitting on its edge for a second, Tom dipped his fingers into the water and flicked them dry. He was saying goodbye to a place to which he’d probably never return. The thought saddened him.

  Having found the right set of stairs up to his room, he expected to find the lights out and Caro asleep. Her bed was empty and the bathroom door ajar. He was just beginning to worry when he realized the balcony door was not quite shut.

  She sat in a rattan chair, her knees up and arms hugging her legs. She appeared to have been watching Charlie sleep. When he crouched in front of her, he realized she was crying. ‘You’re back,’ she said.

  ‘Sorry I was gone so long.’

  She took his hands and looked at them in the glow of an uplight in the garden below. She turned them over, examining the shadows that fell across them and finally gave them back, releasing his fingers.

  ‘You killed someone,’ she said.

  ‘Caro …’

  ‘I saw it in a dream.’ She hugged herself. ‘You were standing there with a gun …’ Her face looked haunted when she raised her eyes to fix her gaze on him. ‘That’s what you do, isn’t it? Kill?’

  Kneeling, Tom took her hands and found them frozen. How could her fingers be cold on a night this hot? He put his fingers to her forehead and realized her skin was slick with sweat.

  ‘Will you be all right to fly home?’

  ‘What choice do I have? I told Charlie, you know.’ She glanced towards the sleeping child. ‘He woke and wanted to know where you’d gone. So I said you must have gone for a walk by yourself. And then he asked me why you’d want a walk and somehow I ended up telling him about tomorrow.’

  ‘How did he take it?’

  ‘He hates you. He hates me. He hates school. He knew it wasn’t going to be a proper holiday. Not really. The only person who ever loved him was Becca, and she’s dead …’ Caro sounded lost. ‘How can anyone be that unhappy at eight? I don’t want him to be unhappy. Becca was bad enough.’

  He held her tight and felt the heat from her body.

  Reaching for her hand, he helped her from the chair. He put his hands under her arms, feeling them clamp down when she staggered slightly.

  ‘I’m not drunk,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t think you were.’ The hotel had a doctor and Tom wondered if Caro would forgive him for calling him. Probably not, knowing her.

  ‘I’m scared,’ she said later.

  They were in bed and Tom half asleep. He pulled himself back from the comfort of darkness. ‘Scared of what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Her voice sounded like that of a child.

  Tom wanted slammed doors and shouting. He wanted thrown toys, tip
ped-over orange juice and broken plates. He wanted the things Becca didn’t do. He wanted signs that were impossible to miss.

  Listen to what they’re not saying.

  That was what a friend of Caro’s said after Becca was gone; when it was too late to do any good and close to cruelty even to be talking that way … When they’re slamming doors, bursting into tears, shouting at you, listen to what they’re not saying. The worst of it was that Charlie decided to be brave.

  Tom blamed himself. He’d taken the boy out along the beach in the early hours, leaving Caro to sleep fitfully. They’d walked to the little shrine and stopped to look at the bird skull. ‘I can’t take it home,’ Charlie said. ‘Can I?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘Afraid not.’

  ‘It might be bad luck?’

  Tom remembered the flicker of heat when he first touched the skull, the slight taste of electricity and darkness. ‘This is where it belongs,’ he said. ‘I think this is where it wants to stay.’

  Charlie nodded to say that made sense.

  ‘Mummy said. About you having to go to Germany. She said … Grandpa asked you?’ There was enough doubt in Charlie’s voice for Tom to smile. ‘She said it was important,’ Charlie added. ‘That it had to be you.’

  ‘That’s what Grandpa told me.’

  ‘I wish he hadn’t.’

  ‘I wish he hadn’t too.’ Tom turned to look at the sea and noticed that the tide was out and a rock shelf exposed. A post he hadn’t seen before peeked from the water. ‘You want to walk out?’

  ‘We’ll get wet.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter.’

  When they got back to the suite, Caro was awake and stuffing dirty laundry into a suitcase. ‘You’re wet,’ she said.

  ‘My idea,’ said Tom.

  ‘Of course it was. There’s toast,’ she said. ‘And buns.’

  Buns in Caro-speak translated as anything resembling cake.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ Tom asked her.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  He’d have said something but for Charlie being there.

  ‘I’ll eat on the plane,’ Caro promised. ‘You go ahead.’

  Charlie packed his own things into a small blue rucksack and went to get his flannel and toothbrush from the bathroom.

  ‘It might be best if we said our goodbyes here,’ she said.

  ‘I was going to see you off and wait for my plane.’

  ‘Please don’t.’ Caro shook her head.

  ‘Are you going to be all right?’

  ‘I’ll have to be.’ She shrugged. ‘There are days I hate my father. You’re okay. You’re allowed to hate yours. As mine will tell you, he’s only ever wanted the best for me. Doesn’t mean there aren’t days I’d slaughter him.’

  ‘Today being one?’

  She smiled past Tom at Charlie, who’d fetched his things as instructed, and also taken one of the hotel towels with a gold crown in the corner.

  Tom said, ‘I’ll tell them we’ve taken it at check-out.’

  They said their goodbyes on the steps of the hotel and Tom kissed Caro on the cheek and then hugged her, gripped Charlie’s shoulder and then hugged him too. The little boy made it to the car before crying.

  11

  The Pan Am stewardess smiled sympathetically at the latecomer in the lightweight suit, noticed his Omega, because she’d been trained to notice such things, and showed him where to stow his briefcase.

  His seat was the best on the plane. In the first row, to the left of the aisle, and in splendid isolation, having no other seat beside it.

  The door at the front finally closed, the steps were wheeled back, and the plane began to taxi. A moment later the pilot came on the intercom to say they’d be making an immediate takeoff, and not to worry about the delay because backwinds meant they’d make up time. Five minutes after that, the Bahamas were a patchwork of browns and greens set in a spread of impossible blue.

  Before the seat belt sign was even off, the stewardess had abandoned her post to crouch beside Tom. ‘I was asked to give you this, sir.’

  It was an HMSO envelope, with one of those double tags that were wound with string. Someone had decided string was not enough and had dripped sealing wax over the top, stamping the lion and unicorn into it.

  There was a file inside, inside which was a second envelope. Tom supposed he should be grateful this wasn’t sealed with wax as well. Taking it out, he stopped at the sight of his father-in-law’s writing on the front.

  A single word.

  Patroclus.

  ‘Sir.’ The stewardess was back. ‘Can I get you …?’

  ‘I’ll eat later.’

  Lady Macbeth could no more wash Duncan’s murder from her fingers, or Patroclus deny Hector’s death … Caro had thought Sir Cecil’s muddling of Patroclus for Achilles in his letter to The Times was ignorance. But it wasn’t, Tom was almost certain. It was intentional.

  A code of some sort, perhaps a challenge.

  Slitting the envelope, Tom extracted three reports typed on official flimsy. The earliest report was dated 1966, the next 1979, the last the previous year. A list of committee members was given for each.

  Eight people on the first, twelve on the second, fifteen on the third.

  Tom was reminded of a CIA memo issued to assets inside inconvenient committees. Refer all matters to the full committee … Attempt to make these as large as possible, never less than five people. Bring up irrelevant information as frequently as possible. Haggle over precise wordings of communications, minutes, conclusions, and resolutions …

  Caro’s father was the only common point in the three lists. He’d been the assistant on the first, a member of the committee on the second and had chaired the third. You have until you land to read these. They’ll be collected in Frankfurt, at customs. Read the reports first, look at the photograph later …

  What photograph? Tom wondered.

  Each of the files followed the same format.

  A statement that the committee had been asked by the PM to look into rumours that sexual corruption existed within the British establishment, bound by the code of omertà and drawn from members of the Church, the Universities, the Commons, the Lords and Intelligence … In the first report they were referred to as pederasts, in the second perverts, in the third paedophiles.

  The reports spoke of men interviewed – discreetly, quietly – in their clubs, in the corner of the members’ bar in the Commons, in Patisserie Valerie, Maison Bertaux, the Colony Club, and Bar Italia in Soho, in their flats at Dolphin Square … The enquiries revealed what was expected. Those interviewed had led blameless and reputable (or disreputable, but still blameless) lives.

  On instinct, he flicked to the end of the first report.

  Many of the supposed victims were already known to the police, in some cases to the police and Intelligence. As were the half a dozen of those interviewed under caution. Despite the frequency of the rumours, and the unsavoury way of life of a few of those interviewed, there was no evidence children were involved.

  The second report was almost identical. It spoke – at least the bits drawn from Met reports – of perverts and queers. And though it acknowledged the existence of nonces, and admitted that every station knew of one, it stressed that these were outsiders, loners, freaks. There was no suggestion they held positions of power in Parliament, Intelligence, the military or the BBC.

  The conclusion to the 1979 report noted that the Home Office had recommended lowering the age of homosexual consent from twenty-one to eighteen. It reminded those reading that most of what qualified as criminality in the report would no longer qualify if that change was ever made.

  The third and final report was fatter.

  One paragraph, spliced between two others on children’s homes in Northern Ireland, was redacted, black ink blocking the entire paragraph. Tom knew the first home mentioned as a place of ferocious cruelty. He wondered if the report was redacted before Eddington got it or if Caro’s father had ordered
it done. Either way, it made him suspicious.

  This time, there were names he recognized. Sir Henry Petty, the actor, had been questioned under caution. The officer interviewing had dismissed the enquiry as ridiculous. That was the opinion of Sir Henry too.

  The report’s conclusion was firm.

  Individual incidents were not evidence of conspiracy.

  This time round, a note reminded those reviewing the file that homosexuality and paedophilia were not to be regarded as interchangeable. They were not. Most of the cases mentioned, while morally questionable, would not count as criminal if the heterosexual age of consent were applied.

  Having cracked and signalled that he’d like a glass of Chablis, Tom sat and thought about the report’s conclusion for a while. He decided that it was a very measured, very fair and very civilized answer to another question entirely.

  Then he took the hand-addressed envelope Caro’s father had told him to open last and shook out a single photograph.

  It landed face up.

  A naked boy not much older than Charlie glared at him.

  He was crouched in a corner, his fingers hooked into claws and his teeth bared. It hadn’t done much good. And he’d learnt soon enough there were some things you couldn’t fight. Not if you wanted to stay alive.

  Tom was looking at himself.

  12

  On his way through Frankfurt airport Tom vomited memories into a bin and made it as far as the men’s lavatory before vomiting again, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand and swilling water round his mouth before spitting the last of it down a sink. His skin in the mirror had a poisonous sheen.

  Charlie’s voice was in his head. The lyrics they’d heard sung to the steel drums outside a shack on the beach in the Bahamas.

  Let me go home, I want to go home,

  I feel so break-up, I want to go home.

  It wasn’t simply that Tom was the wrong man for the job. He couldn’t do this. Not now. Eddington had to understand that. Tom would find a telephone the moment he got through customs to tell Caro’s father so.

  ‘I thought you’d be first off …’

  ‘I was,’ Tom said.