Nightfall Berlin

by Jack Grimwood

  ‘Why’s she staring at us?’

  Tom glanced over and the old woman smirked.

  Amelia saw her nod to Tom and jerk her head towards the rear door.

  ‘She’s found me a camp bed that looks as if it hasn’t been used in thirty years. She’s waiting to see how long it takes me to get you there. We could always go down? It would be safer for talking.’

  ‘In a moment,’ Amelia said.

  ‘You said you were here at the GDR’s invitation?’

  ‘A gesture of friendship. They paid for my flight and hotel …’

  ‘And they seemed happy enough for your father to leave?’

  She sipped at her beer. ‘Yes,’ she said finally. ‘They seemed entirely relaxed at the prospect of him going. Almost keen …’

  Almost keen?

  Across the bar, the mechanics were jeering a commentary they could barely hear and gesticulating at footballers they could hardly see. Groans from the flats behind the bar said whatever had happened on the pitch was bad. Seconds later, cheers indicated that balance had been restored.

  ‘In what sense keen?’ Tom asked.

  Amelia seemed distracted by the match. ‘I don’t know, Major Fox,’ she said. ‘It was just a feeling. I’m only here because my mother practically ordered it.’

  Reaching for her glass, she took a heavy swallow. She stared at the road and Tom wondered what she was looking for. When one of the mechanics scraped back his chair, she flinched. The whistle went, the mechanics stopped watching their flickering screen, and Tom realized that Amelia was looking at police officers and so were they. Three figures had appeared under the arches, their advance suddenly blocked by a rumbling tram.

  Major Fox. She’d called him Major Fox.

  When had he told her his name?

  As one of the mechanics shifted, reaching inside his jacket, Amelia pushed back her chair, obviously trying to move out of the way.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ Tom told her.

  He called for another two beers, despite Amelia’s being almost untouched, and headed for the loos, apparently changing his mind at the last minute to return to the counter. ‘Tell them I said I was KGB,’ he told the old woman. ‘Say I spoke only Russian and showed you a KGB card. It looked real to you.’

  The old woman opened her mouth and shut it again.

  He could feel her gaze as he made for the door, walked straight past the steps down to the gents beyond and let himself out into the yard, then into the alley beyond, locking the gate behind him.

  He was fifty paces away and walking fast when the shouting started.

  As someone began kicking the yard door, Tom lifted his head, took his hands out of his pockets and sprinted for the end of the alley, almost running head first into a group of crop-haired football fans. At least half of them wore leather jackets. More than half were drunk. Sliding his way into the group, Tom grinned at one and clapped another on the back.

  ‘Dynamo?’ the man asked.

  ‘Dynamo,’ Tom agreed enthusiastically.

  The man passed him a half-empty bottle of brandy and Tom took a noisy gulp. ‘We won,’ shouted a fat man dressed in the maroon and gold of Berliner FC Dynamo. The others took up the chant and the crowd moved off to find a bar to celebrate their victory, gathering other fans on the way.

  Tom went with them, head down and screened by jubilant East Berliners who drowned out the other shouting and swept him away, on a wave of excitement, from the sirens beginning to wail.

  35

  The crack of a pistol shot in a backstreet … The scream of a seagull … Another of a fox rutting that sounded like … Tom’s dreams went, promiscuous and skittering, to a married woman in Belfast who bit his hand when he tried to muffle cries as she bucked beneath him. Remembering her summoned a smoke-wreathed Provo pub. From there, to burning leaves in those early years of taking Charlie down to Caro’s parents. And, before that, a trash fire behind the block where Tom’s dad ran the stores. The clash of army boots on sticky tarmac, the smell of road and parade ground one and the same. He’d been born dead, in a hospital on the edge of a British base in Cyprus. A midwife resuscitated him.

  More than once, his dad regretted that.

  Tom was his memories. Sometimes they were all he was. It was unfashionable to believe in evil: more than that, it was actively frowned on. The problem was Tom had seen evil, tasted it and could identify its stench in the air and its stink on human skin. He knew, at least in his dreams he did, that each time he touched evil it left him tarnished. Rolling over, he scratched a fleabite in his sleep.

  ‘Here,’ said a fat man, holding out a blue and yellow box.

  The boy didn’t want to take it but a sudden tightness in the fat man’s eyes warned him he should.

  ‘Here,’ the man repeated.

  The boy’s throat was tight enough to strangle him.

  Inside, he was screaming. Outside, outside it was important that nothing showed. He tried to keep his face a mask. Bland, polite, attentive. The kind of face the man’s eyes could pass over without finding anything to object to. But the man put out his other hand, took the boy’s chin and turned it to the light.

  ‘I slipped,’ the boy said.

  He said it too hurriedly. His next words were slower, blander, stripped of emotion. ‘Running in a corridor. It was stupid of me.’

  The man sighed.

  ‘Boys will be boys,’ he said.

  The boy knew the rules. Move slowly. No noise. Speak when spoken to. No answering back. Above all, never stare a grown-up in the eyes.

  The rules were simple. Easy to understand and easy to obey, once you understood the price of disobedience. That thought was enough to knot his stomach, to pull it tight to his spine. He’d learnt to sense the slightest shifts of mood. To know exactly where grown-ups were standing.

  Who was angry; who wanted to be angry. Who was simply bored. He should have kept better control of himself.

  He needed to be polite.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, taking the little box.

  ‘Open it, then.’

  He already knew what was inside.

  What was always inside boxes handed to the select few after the guests had gone, daylight was due and it was time to be returned to school.

  Corgi, said the box. Jaguar 2.4.

  He opened the end flap, being careful not to tear the cardboard, slid the little diecast Corgi toy on to his hand and made himself smile.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  The man smiled back. ‘My pleasure.’

  36

  Most of the riders gathered in the pub car park were dressed in ratcatcher – tweed coats and tan breeches – as befitted a local foxhunt in the cubbing season. The cubs were near full size, if not yet sexually active, and still lived in their family groups. The hounds were mostly young too. Although there were a few experienced pairs to stiffen the pack.

  This was a midweek hunt, nothing fancy and certainly not worth getting dressed up for, even if it had been the right part of the season for that sort of thing. There were three old hands, a couple of local teenagers, including a new girl from the village. For the most part, though, it was what you’d expect. Local farmers and the local vet, the landlord of the posher pub, a retired brigadier with nothing better to do, and an incomer from London who’d bought the Hall …

  He was an appalling rider, but a generous contributor to hunt funds. This helped Robby Croft, the master of the hunt, overlook the newness of his clothes, his lumpen children and the vulgarity of his oversized car. People like this had become necessary if hunting was to survive.

  ‘Sir …’

  A young man Robby didn’t recognize had drawn alongside. He was well turned out in a Harry Hall jacket, had a good seat and seemed polite enough.

  The master smiled.

  ‘I just wanted to present my compliments.’

  Robby looked at the young man, little more than a boy really, and wondered if he should know who he was.

  ‘
My Great-Uncle Max asked me to present his compliments.’

  ‘Max …?’

  The young man nodded and the master smiled, leaning across to shake hands. ‘How is the old rogue?’

  ‘Old, and roguish.’

  Both men laughed; and then the hunt moved off, slowly through the village, and carefully over the crossroads, where drivers who didn’t understand horses sometimes went too fast. They turned up the side of St Peter’s and under a yew tree, through the lych gate and out into Farmer Clark’s fields.

  The young man rode well, stayed in his saddle and didn’t falter at the jumps. Invariably, he went over rather than round. The master liked that in a man. Robby was aware, as they drew ahead of the others, that he was riding a little too fast, approaching his jumps a little too harshly.

  And at some point, and Robby wasn’t quite sure when, the boy had stopped trying to keep up with the master and the master had begun trying to keep up with the boy. The rest of the hunt was half a field behind now, with the whippers-in and the hounds slightly off to one side. He should slow, they both should. But it was a long time since Robby had ridden like this. It made him feel young.

  The gate they galloped for was a high one.

  Edging his horse slightly forward, the master jerked his chin to indicate he had precedence, and the boy nodded, falling back slightly. Exactly as it should be. Using his heels, the master nudged his horse, felt it adjust its stride and head for the gate. At the last moment, Robby realized the boy had drawn alongside and intended to jump too. Yanking on his reins, the master felt his animal shy and felt himself thrown. It was a bad fall.

  The boy just about made it over, landing in brambles that slashed his face and left his hands and wrists bleeding. He was trying to stand when the hunt rode up. ‘Stay still,’ a middle-aged woman ordered.

  When he ignored her, she dismounted.

  ‘You could be concussed,’ she said. ‘You might have internal injuries. You might have fractures.’ Seeing his look, she added, ‘I’m a doctor.’ Glancing at the gate, she said, ‘What happened?’

  ‘I don’t know. I really don’t.’ The boy sounded bemused. ‘I had the jump. The master indicated that I had the jump.’

  ‘You’re lucky to be alive.’

  The boy nodded. ‘He’s …?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘As a dodo.’

  37

  Tom woke under a bridge in half-darkness, his temples hammered by a hangover louder than any cathedral bells. He knew on waking that he needed to hide the notebook. The reasons caught up with him a second later. He’d be a fool to try to cross the Wall carrying it. The last thing London needed was for him to be captured and deliver it straight into East German hands. If he could have called Caro’s father, he would. If he could have got a message to Henderson …

  Neither of those was possible.

  His best hope, perhaps his only hope, was to get home and tell Century House where it was hidden. Someone less compromised could retrieve it. He had no idea what the Greek letters meant; if alpha was better than beta or gamma. He simply knew Sir Cecil was dead and his memoirs probably burnt. He claims to have a complete list of everybody implicated.

  This was it. Tom was sure of that.

  Flicking it open, Tom skimmed the list, looking for the names he’d recognized earlier. A Cabinet minister. A war hero. An entertainer, newly knighted for his charity work, and known to be a personal friend of the PM. All marked alpha. Sir Cecil was the same. Tom flicked forward, trying to remember where in the notebook he’d seen Lord Brannon’s name. Alpha again.

  Since he couldn’t cross the Wall as Tom Fox, he’d have to cross it as someone else. Someone who wasn’t being hunted. Throwing off his jacket, Tom rolled from the ledge on which he lay, descended to the water’s edge and stripped off the maroon and gold Dynamo shirt he’d obviously swapped for his own. He scooped cold water on to his aching head and splashed it under his arms, hoping that the vomit he needed to wash from his shoes was someone else’s.

  It probably was. His mouth tasted dry but not foul.

  Tom refused to acknowledge the things in the tunnel with him. He refused to let them out from the walls. Having pissed and shat, he wiped himself Arabic fashion and rinsed his fingers in the river, kicked litter over his dirt, and emptied his pockets, looking for what would effectively be a dead-letter drop for whoever came to collect the notebook.

  The ledge where he slept was too obvious. An indentation just inside the tunnel too shallow. There was a cast-iron bridge though, rising in an arch and dropping to the opposite bank. It was old and black, studded with bolts holding its girders together. Tom chose a join between struts, as awkwardly placed as possible. His fingers came away sticky with grease and grime.

  Around him he felt the darkness settle.

  Until finally it became simply the start of daylight; and he became a man in a strange city suffering the after-effects of an unsettling dream. It had been close, though. Had it got any worse he’d have been kneeling by the river’s edge, vomiting. The monsters would have crawled from the walls.

  38

  The sun rose inexorably, glittering on the river’s surface and burning away the shadows under his bridge until Tom had no choice but to face the light. So he abandoned the place he’d slept and began walking. A man walking purposefully looks like he belongs. Belonging is the first step to being invisible.

  The Dynamo football shirt helped.

  You’re a Berliner, Tom told himself. This is your city. This is where you belong.

  A traffic policeman looked at him and Tom made himself nod. A second later, the man nodded back and Tom kept walking, his pace steady. He was hungry and thirsty and imagined he looked hung-over. He just hoped he didn’t look too much like a fugitive who’d slept rough under a bridge.

  It was a poster that stopped him.

  Not the propaganda one, showing bright-faced schoolchildren holding hands as they strode into the future. An advertisement for Giselle. The prima ballerina looked enough like Frederika to remind Tom that that’s where he should have been going. She’d sent the note that brought him to the flat. He needed to know who’d been threatening Sir Cecil – more importantly, why. She might also know if he’d made a copy of his memoirs.

  It was the hope of finding a copy that decided Tom.

  He’d have to risk seeing her.

  A map outside Alexanderplatz station helped him identify the gym where Frederika taught. It showed train, tram and bus routes in East Berlin. A smaller map showed Greater Berlin, and, beyond that, East German countryside. West Berlin was simply blank. A featureless, unannotated white space that ate half the city.

  Stepping back, Tom bumped into a teenager.

  When the boy swore, Tom swore back, his Russian raw and brutal. The boy’s stammered apology confirmed his suspicions. The Soviets might have returned this part of the city to its inhabitants but they’d never left in spirit.

  The gym was red-brick, with faces carved above each window and tendrils of ivy carved down their sides. The plaque over its front door read 1905.

  A weedy path led down one side and Tom took it.

  The morning was already hot enough for a sliding door into the gym to be open, and Tom stopped to watch. A troop of bare-chested boys vaulted a horse, using a springboard for takeoff. Each waited his turn, made the same vault and ran back to rejoin the queue. They went round twice before Tom stopped watching.

  An open door beyond revealed a stairwell and he hesitated.

  Fire exit, read a sign. Keep shut.

  A door off the stairwell led to a changing room where a boy sat vestless on a bench nursing his sprained wrist. It was only when the child stood that Tom realized the shorts were a skirt and she wasn’t a boy at all.

  ‘Frau Frederika Schmitt?’ he asked.

  The girl pointed her finger at the ceiling.

  39

  Returning to the path, Tom found a fire escape leading to open doors above. The steps were black, painted
with something that was failing to kill the rust that kept breaking through. The music coming through the doors sounded like seventies disco. Actually, it sounded like a bad imitation of seventies disco.

  The track ended, and there was sudden silence.

  When it started again, Tom heard grunts, thuds and the sound of a girl flipping herself across a thin mat. She finished her routine just as Tom reached the top of the steps. He watched her steady herself, arms thrown out and torso pushed forward, her feet trying to hold their place.

  Momentum carried her a half-step forward.

  She looked so mortified that Frederika limped over and wrapped an arm briefly around her shoulders, before putting the child’s arms back where they’d been, bending her spine so her torso came forward, and tapping the girl’s stomach to lessen the curve. ‘Again,’ she ordered.

  The girl launched herself across the floor, her feet barely touching the boards as she somersaulted and twisted and backflipped to the opposite corner. This time she landed perfectly and stood quivering.

  Frederika nodded.

  Another girl clapped and Frederika scowled, turned to reprimand the girl and saw Tom backlit in the doorway. He thought for a second that she hadn’t recognized him. Until her scream said she had.

  Pure fury. It echoed off all four walls.

  Her students froze, open mouthed.

  ‘Run,’ she told them. ‘Fetch help.’

  They began to edge towards the door and Frederika moved to stand defiantly between them and Tom. ‘You don’t touch them,’ she said.

  ‘I didn’t kill Sir Cecil.’

  ‘Liar …’

  He only just blocked the fingers clawing for his face. Grabbing her wrists, Tom narrowly avoided a knee to his groin and finally wrestled Frederika to a standstill. She spat at him. Her glare so fierce he had no doubt she’d kill him if she could.

  ‘Who was threatening him?’

  ‘You were. It must have been you …’