‘Exactly! All for what? What possible reason could I have for inventing such a story? It would make you look stupid, for sure. It would make your lives more difficult to a very slight degree; but neither of those two goals is of the slightest interest to me. Why would I care?’ He paused, then added thoughtfully: ‘Tell me, did a tradesman come round a few days ago selling AGC?’
‘What’s AGC?’ I said.
‘Anti-glare coating for your incident board.’
‘Yes,’ I said just as Calamity stammered ‘No.’
She and I exchanged glances. Elijah smiled and looked at the incident board. It was as if the gods had been waiting for this moment: the clouds parted and a blade of fierce sunlight stabbed the gloom in the office and bathed the incident board in bright golden light. And yet, glare-free, not a single detail was obscured. Whatever the salesman’s motives, you couldn’t help but admire the quality of his AGC.
‘It is a common m.o. for a Pieman to employ,’ said Elijah with studied nonchalance.
‘So what do we do, then?’ I asked, hating myself for being sucked into his absurd charade, but unable to resist. What if he was telling the truth? What if there really was a Hoffmann and, by compromising the Pieman, I blew the only chance to catch him that had presented itself in twenty years?
‘What you do,’ continued Elijah, ‘is absolutely nothing. You carry on as normal – sticking your leads up on the board and doing nothing to indicate that the Pieman’s cover has been blown.’
‘But what if more people die?’
‘Certainly more people will die. Do you think this is a game? More people will die, many of them innocent. But their deaths are of no consequence when set against the greater prize, Hoffmann.’
‘We can’t do nothing.’
‘What are you talking about? Can’t do nothing? Of course you can. Doing nothing is one activity that falls within the power of just about anybody. Even a nincompoop like you can do nothing. If I asked you to undertake some strenuous or difficult mission you might be justified in complaining, but here I am asking you to do nothing and you act as if it were an endeavour entirely beyond the wit of mortal man. You can certainly do nothing, and that is precisely what you must do. In the meantime I will speak to my organisation and seek instruction. A Pieman is a difficult infestation to deal with. It demands patience, and guile, and, above all, subtlety.’
‘Can’t we just follow the boy who delivers the pies?’ asked Calamity.
‘You think he won’t be waiting for that? You think the Pieman is a fool?’
‘Aren’t you worried?’ asked Calamity.
‘About what?’
‘If a name goes up on the incident board, the person gets whacked, right?’
‘That in broad outline is the essence of a Pieman manoeuvre, yes.’
‘What if we put your name on the incident board?’
He paused. A look of mild panic discomposed his features and his skin drained of colour. He swallowed. ‘Little girl, I must ask you not to joke about such a thing. That would be tantamount to murder. You would be assassinating me.’
‘Doesn’t sound like such a bad idea,’ I said. ‘Tell me who Hoffmann is, and maybe we won’t do it.’
‘You joke.’
‘No. It seems an excellent idea.’
Elijah opened the desk drawer and pulled out a bottle of Captain Morgan.
‘Help yourself,’ I said.
He unscrewed the cap, took a drink straight from the bottle and said, ‘Hoffmann is a man who once stole a coat.’
The old man stared at the bottle, swirled the rum arond, deep in thought. We waited. Nothing happened. A lorry passed by in the road outside, making the windows rattle.
‘Is that it?’ I asked.
‘Was it a nice coat?’ said Calamity.
‘In terms of tailoring I think it was undistinguished. At least, as far as I recall, neither the cut nor the quality of the cloth has ever been a feature of this case.’
We nodded. Calamity wrote down in her notebook, ‘Not the quality.’
We waited for a minute or so but there was no more.
I said, ‘Your name is Elijah, right?’
‘Yes, you may call me that.’
I pulled out an index card and began to write. ‘That’s good. I’d hate to kill the wrong man.’
‘W-what are you doing?’
‘What does it look like? I’m putting your name on the board. See? Elijah, brackets, infuriating jerk. That’s you, Pumpernickel, you in the silly hat.’
He slammed his hand down on top of mine. ‘No, please. Please, you mustn’t.’
‘Start talking, then. A bit faster this time. And forget the Talmudic mystery tour.’
He took a gulp of rum and began again.
‘The coat belonged to a man called Caleb Penpegws. It was stolen from him as he lay on a stretcher in the infirmary recovering from his wounds after the Mission House siege in Patagonia. You are familiar with that terrible conflict?’
‘Yes, we’ve heard about it.’
‘But of course the coat did not originally belong to the young soldier. He bought it from a woman, a Mata Hari, so they say, who stole it from the reading room of the Buenos Aires public library.’
Calamity jotted that down.
I asked, ‘Is Caleb Penpegws the one who was tortured and used to cry out “Hoffman!” in his nightmares?’
‘His nightmares are not a feature of the case but it is quite possible. As a wearer of the coat he would certainly have been tortured.’
‘Who by?’
‘Members of a secret organisation known as ODESSA, which you may have heard of. Created during the final days of the Second World War, its aim was to help high-ranking members of the SS escape from Europe. The usual route was through Switzerland, to Italy, from there by boat to North Africa, and from there to Lisbon before embarking for South America. To many countries, but predominantly to Argentina – it was run at the time by the Perón government, which had some sympathy for the Nazi fugitives.’
‘And why were they interested in Caleb Penpegws’s coat?’
‘Because, of course, it was not his coat. He bought it from the Mata Hari and she had stolen it from the reading room of the library. It originally belonged to a man called Ricardo Klement who owned a dry-cleaning business in the city.’
‘Why did ODESSA want his coat?’
‘Because Ricardo Klement was not his real name. His real name was Adolf Eichmann, one of the most high-ranking Nazis to evade allied capture in 1945. You may know what happened to him. He was kidnapped in 1961 by the Israeli Secret Service, outside his house in Garibaldi Street in the San Fernando district of Buenos Aires. From there he was taken to Jerusalem and tried and eventually executed for crimes against the Jewish people. All this is a matter of historical record.
‘During interrogation Eichmann told his captors about an item in his possession, one of truly epoch-making significance; so much so that it has since been eagerly sought by just about every intelligence agency in the world – by Mossad, and ODESSA, and the CIA, and M15 and Welsh Intelligence, and countless others. I am not at liberty to disclose the precise nature of this item, except to say it was in the pocket of the coat the day it was stolen from the reading room of the Buenos Aires public library; stolen by the Mata Hari, if she existed.’ He paused as if reflecting, then said, more to himself than to us, ‘Because I have my doubts; the long toll of the years has eroded my certainty in certain aspects of Eichamnn’s testimony. He claims she seduced him, that it was a honey-trap, and that she took him to an apartment opposite the railway station where she prepared a dish of lamb and cheese for him. Can such a thing be possible? Lamb and cheese?’