He leapt to his feet as he shouted his rage at the council’s verdict. How could five people have voted against him? Then he remembered Steinbeck’s words spoken at the top of the Laber Mountain. ‘Klauss had many friends on the committee and his honour and reputation carried a lot more weight than the allegations of a beautiful young widow.’
The ringing of the church bells drew Cavendish out on to his balcony. He instinctively picked up his cigarettes on the way, by way of association ‘balcony’ implied ‘cigarette’.
Lighting his cigarette, he looked towards the source of the sound, where the onion dome top of the Rococo-style church was clearly visible from his vantage point to his right. He felt his left temple throb; he hoped the nicotine would assuage his rage and he transferred his gaze to the crucifix sat atop the pinnacle of Kofel, gleaming in the April Sunshine.
Today was Karfreitag, Good Friday, an important day in the predominantly Catholic world of Bavaria. Although not a devout believer himself, he had none the less been indoctrinated with strong Catholic traditions and the baggage was hard to shake off. He would visit his mother for the traditional Easter meal on Monday.
This year would certainly be different, for it was to be the first with his fiancée, Magda. His engagement was a subject that he tried not to dwell upon, for like most things in his life, his engagement was far from straightforward and not of his making.
He conceded that Magdalene von Stromberg was a pretty girl. She was young, only twenty years old, and from a once wealthy family with an aristocratic past. Few people would have said that Marchel Cavendish was handsome, maybe interesting, perhaps even striking if they were feeling generous, but certainly not handsome. He knew of course that his engagement was the result of his ineffectual relationship with his mother.
He laughed at the irony of his situation when he considered that his peers had just tried him in his absence for ‘gross negligence’. By some arcane yet contemporaneous law within the firm, he could not be accused of manslaughter or murder as he had killed one of his equals. Yet he could not stand up to his mother, it was she who had arranged the engagement, believing that he was too old to be single and that tongues were starting to wag.
If only his mother knew how he consciously had to restrain his philandering nature that he had evidently inherited from his father. A simple truth was that he had never been able to defy his mother’s wishes and things were unlikely to change.
He glanced at his Breitling watch and silently cursed. Magda was due to arrive by train from Munich in the afternoon. He took one last draw on his cigarette before returning to read his assignment for a third time. He had to put the tribunal behind him, Horst was correct; he had to ensure that the trip to England ended in nothing but success.
He had to seek atonement for the killing of the rapist Klauss.
Cavendish was shaken from his reverie by the strident chime of the doorbell. He walked slowly across the wooden floor of the lounge, having first hidden the documents, and carried on into the hallway and descended the stairs to the apartment door. His mind was clouded with conjecture; it was too early for Magda’s arrival. He peered through the spy hole and relaxed when he recognised the person standing impatiently on the doorstep. On opening the door, he immediately turned his back on his guest and bounded up the stairs two at a time whilst shouting over his shoulder.
“Be sure to lock the door after you!”
Cavendish was leaning with an assumed nonchalance against the doorframe that separated the lounge from the small kitchen as his visitor finally made it into the living room.
“I suppose you want coffee?” he asked with mock distain.
“And it’s lovely to see you too, Marchel. I’m well thank you,” said Christina Kretschmer, Cavendish’s twenty-five year old half-sister. Cavendish smiled warmly at Tina’s contemptuous reply.
Despite his denial to Steinbeck, Tina was the beneficiary of his first phone call from the Laber summit after the news of the tribunal’s decision. He had only known Tina since Christmas yet there was little that she did not know about him or his clandestine world.
“Well a coffee would be fine but how about a hug first?” suggested Tina.
Cavendish leant forward and embraced her; she was a good deal shorter than her half-brother and rested her cheek against his chest as she wrapped her arms around him. He was tall at six foot three inches but as Tina embraced him, she was reminded of how much weight he had lost during the past few months.
Cavendish seemed reluctant to end the clinch; she enjoyed his hand stroking her back through the thin material of her summer dress, his other hand placed gently on the back of her head. Her cropped brown hair still felt damp under the pressure of his caressing hand.
It was Tina who spoke, her voice muffled by his tight embrace.
“Christ, Marchel, if you get any thinner you’ll get blown away. Even I might start kicking sand in your face. You’ve got to start eating, no excuses now you know the verdict.” She chided him softly as if he was one of her pupils in her primary school class and broke the embrace.
“Make that coffee,” she ordered as she walked towards his desk. “Was the Grieving Widow here last night?” she added, using Dagmar Klum’s oft-used epithet. Cavendish looked at her suspiciously, thinking of Steinbeck’s warning to him.
“Yea, she was, how do you know?” he asked suspiciously.
“I’m a woman, Marchy. I can bloody smell her, this place reeks of Dagmar Klum!”
“Really?”
“Jeez, you men are so stupid sometimes. Where are your cigarettes?”
“On the desk,” declared Cavendish. Tina found the packet of West, extracted two cigarettes and tossed one to Cavendish.
“There, enjoy the illicit pleasure of smoking indoors,” she said as she lit her own cigarette and wafted the smoke around the room. “You can blame me when Magda gets here and complains about the obnoxious cigarette stench.” Cavendish grinned approvingly at Tina.
“Do you mind if I take a quick look around,” she asked, “you know, do a proper ‘mummy’ look before Magda gets here. God knows what you've left lying around for her to find.”
Tina disappeared into the hallway whilst Cavendish made the coffee. He was just about to pour when he heard Tina cross the wooden floor of the lounge. The inelegant clumping stopped at the entrance to the kitchen and the ensuing silence compelled him to look towards the doorway.
She leant provocatively against the doorframe, much as he had done upon her arrival. Her left arm was raised above her head, placed against the frame, supporting her leaning torso. She raised her right arm level with her narrow shoulders, drawing Cavendish’s attention to what was clutched between forefinger and thumb.
“So you had a good tidy up, did you?” asked Tina, as she too stared at the object she was holding with such disdain. “So what do you call this?” she asked, nodding at the item.
“I’d call it a bra, in a very fetching shade of light blue,” replied Cavendish dispassionately.
“Yours is it, Big Brother. The rumours about you true then?” Cavendish laughed generously and Tina smiled along with him; it had been a long time since she had seen her half-brother laugh so freely.
“I presume it belongs to Dagmar,” she commented disparagingly, “it um, looks a little too generous even for the voluptuous Magda.”
The smile slowly faded from Cavendish’s face as he stared with his piercing pale blue eyes at Tina. She involuntarily flinched; it was with such an expression that she could see the professional Cavendish, not the mummy’s boy, which she and the world all too often saw. What he said stunned her.
“Tina, I have to go to England. Come with me, I don’t want to go alone. I hate the place; it’s a shithole full of assholes. Please, come with me.”
“Marchy, I can’t. I’ve lessons to prepare. Take ...” Her words trailed off before she mentioned his fiancée’s name and she repressed the compelling compulsion to agree to his request. “You know I can’t
come, Marchel. How are you getting to England?” asked Tina.
“By the Adenauer,” he stated unenthusiastically.
“Wow, travel in style, don’t we. Tell you what, why don’t I give you a lift to the airfield?”
CHAPTER 3. A BLIMP ON THE LANDSCAPE.
The parish church of Oberammergau had just finished tolling the fourth hour of the afternoon when Cavendish returned to his apartment and heaved a huge sigh of relief as he closed the door behind him.
He had endured lunch at his mother’s house with Magda and Tina as stoically as he could. His father had made his excuses not to be there, no doubt visiting his latest acquisition, by all accounts a blonde Russian administrator who worked at the NATO school where he lectured. Magda had remained with his mother and was not unduly surprised or upset when he announced his imminent departure for England to procure antiques and artefacts on behalf of Horst Steinbeck.
The majority of Untersuchers, the firm’s colloquial name for investigators, were German and certainly, there were no British Untersuchers. That came as no surprise, for Great Britain was believed to be a cultural backwater by the firm.
It was widely held that most of the treasures that Britain possessed had been stolen from other countries during their days of empire and that the majority of their great ecclesiastical buildings had been destroyed, gutted or plundered during their heretical periods of the Reformation and the Civil War. Neither Napoleon nor Hitler had desecrated their countries like Henry VIII or Cromwell. Like many of his peers, Cavendish was no anglophile despite his English father and family connections.
He was of the misguided opinion that he spoke English fluently. His vocabulary was better than most of the indigenous English population, but as he had failed to learn from his experiences in Bavaria, it is one thing to be acquainted with the words and another to speak the language. To the casual listener he was undoubtedly not a native of the British Isles for he had an odd accent that betrayed his German mother tongue. He would generally leave the English listener with the impression that he was not one of them, that he was a foreigner.
Cavendish brewed a coffee and set his mind to the task ahead. This was going to be an important case for the Untersucher medius. Anymore perceived foul ups would end of his career and he could not contemplate any other way of life. Being an Untersucher brought him power and prestige. Without the title, his life was meaningless.
The plan was to drive to Friedrichshafen in the late afternoon on Easter Monday and stay in an hotel overnight. He was delighted to accept Tina’s offer to drive him and he had subsequently booked her a room. He took little pleasure in driving, even in Germany, which possessed possibly the finest road system in the world (in his biased opinion). The thought of driving in England filled him with dread.
Cavendish heard Tina open the front door with his spare key and she skipped into the small kitchen where he awaited her arrival. He considered she possessed an uncompromising optimism that he found perplexing and beguiling in equal measure.
She wore the same summer dress that she had sported the previous Friday, which accentuated her narrow boyish hips, with the addition of a cardigan and a lightweight jacket carried over her arm in acknowledgement of the cool evening ahead.
“Ready for the big adventure, Herr Untersucher?” she asked brightly with an excitement that he wished he shared. He made no reply but studied her open generous face, feeling curiously jealous of the kids she taught at the school in Steingaden. She was nothing like the teachers he had endured at his German boarding school.
In truth, he felt anything but an Untersucher wearing his old white tee shirt and jeans. His mother had reproached him for not dressing up for Holy day lunch and he chose to display the petulant indifference of the spoilt single child that he was as his contemptuous response.
“I’d better go and change,” he said sharply.
“Into what?” she asked with an inquiring smile.
“A butterfly,” he replied charmingly, almost as if she had put the words in his mouth. She side stepped to allow him to vacate the kitchen and swiped him playfully on his backside with her hand as he passed by.
He preferred to travel light; a holdall would contain all he needed. The bulkiest object was a smart light blue formal jacket to which he added a few plain white shirts, underwear and toiletries. His ‘uniform’ of the Untersucher was a pair of slate grey turn-up trousers, open neck white shirt and a pair of black Oxford-style leather shoes. A knee length black woollen overcoat completed the ensemble. Cavendish was tall but possessed a narrow sinewy frame and the coat added necessary bulk and gravitas to his appearance.
Once dressed, he returned to the lounge where Tina was sitting curled up on the sofa cradling her coffee mug in both hands.
“My my, Herr Cavendish, what a difference a few clothes make to a man,” noted Tina, amazed by the transformation which transcended the sartorial.
Cavendish walked to the Manet portrait featuring the girl serving at the bar of the Folies Bergere and swung it back to reveal a wall safe. He twisted the combination lock eagerly; keen to remove the contents within. The safe contained various documents required for the assignment and finally he extracted what he considered the last item to complete his assumed identity of Untersucher.
It was a brown leather shoulder holster that would not have looked out of place in a thirties gangster movie. The holster housed his 1955 model Colt Python, which was one of Cavendish’s few concessions to the theatrical. A modern lightweight automatic would have been a far more suitable firearm but he adhered to the adopted conceit of his profession by adopting a weapon of character as opposed to practicality.
Tina frowned as she watched him place the weapon in his holdall.
“Do you have to take that wretched thing? They don’t have guns in England, you won’t need it.”
“Company policy, it is the physicality of my authority,” quoted the investigator. Tina scowled; she hated guns and knew all too well the trouble they had caused him in Prague.
It was a beautiful afternoon for a drive through the stunning scenery of southern Germany; the first golden flowers were emerging in the Bavarian meadows. Their route took them north to Landsberg before sweeping southwest to head for Lake Constance and Friedrichshafen, a drive of two hundred-kilometres. Friedrichshafen was in holiday mood as Tina parked the Golf in the hotel car park by the Lake. That evening they dined in the quiet hotel restaurant.
“Tonight I’m going to have a drink,” announced Cavendish defiantly as they sat in a secluded corner overlooking the lake.
“Are you sure, Marchy? You’re not a drinker,” replied Tina, aware of his low tolerance to alcohol.
“I kept off it because of the hearing, but tonight, sod it! It’s my last evening in Germany. As my French relations would say, ‘beware perfidious Albion’!” Cavendish attracted the attention of a waiter and ordered a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, his preferred grape.
“Why do you hate England so much, Marchy? You’re half English for goodness sake!” enquired Tina as she sipped the expensive wine.
Cavendish exaggeratedly shrugged his shoulders and peered outside to the water’s edge where his eyes became entranced by the reflected light from the hotel as it danced and shimmered on the lake’s tranquil surface.
“The truth is I don’t hate England. I have many happy memories as a boy visiting my Grandparents. It was always like going home, despite what my mother said. But you grow up; I went to school and University in Germany and been here ever since. When you are not born German, you have to work twice as hard to prove that you are. Yes?”
“I really couldn’t say, Marchy. You seem very much German to me.”
Cavendish eagerly swallowed his wine and poured them both another generous measure. Already he could feel the effects of the alcohol blurring his mind.
“Okay, if you once liked England, why don’t you try you embrace it again? Remember those good days. Don’t go there with your ‘Germanic superiority’,
” Tina rolled her head sarcastically, “become one of them, they’ll like you for it. You must know someone over there, you were only there last year, so who do you know?”
“Well, I’ve to meet Simeon Goldstein and his brother Miles; they are old family friends on my mother’s side.”
“Well there you go, who else?”
“There’s Josh Houghton, he’s a police officer and official liaison between the firm and the authorities in the UK. I’ve met him many times at various conferences. Trouble is, after the last case we worked together, he was suspended. He was reinstated eventually. There was also a photographer guy, Thomas Beckett. Trouble is, he ended up in hospital at the end of the case.”
“Jeez, Marchel, do all your cases end up with suspensions and hospitalisation?” asked Tina with alarm.
“Of course not!” replied Cavendish a little too loudly, “well some of them, admittedly. But it’s never my fault,” he added unconvincingly.
“Well, ‘mister’ Cavendish, I suggest you contact this Houghton bloke and Beckett. I’m sure they will be pleased to see you.” Cavendish gave Tina a hard, quizzical stare. “Come on Marchel, it’s a good job I know you. Anybody would think you were an ogre, one thing I do know about you is that you like putting yourself down. God knows why with a scar like that but women like you well enough,” she grabbed his hand and held it tightly before continuing.
“Only joking, bruv. I also don’t know why you think men dislike you so much.” Cavendish could offer no sagacious reply and so ordered another bottle of wine before disappearing to the toilet.
Inconsequential small talk accompanied their meal before they retired to the lakeside terrace to smoke. Cavendish swooned as his inebriated legs failed to coordinate with his dysfunctional mind. Tina stood beside him with her cardigan around her shoulders and trembled with the chill of the evening.
Alert to her shivering, he removed his blue jacket and wrapped it tenderly around her shoulders. Placing his left arm around her, he drew her in against his body as they watched the moored boats on the lake sway in the gentle evening breeze.
Denied to all but Ghosts Page 3