I acknowledge that I have shamed my family by my actions on the night of 20 April 1945, and have contaminated the blood strain of my relatives.
Rolf Hegner
He watched the seals roll on the sandspit and heave their bulk towards the water. They basked, they dived, and had innocence.
He had sat beside the bed in the clinic, had held his uncle's hand and comforted him. He had believed him to be a good man. His own innocence had gone inside the lawyer's office. A week afterwards he and Gertrud had fled the city where the school was and he had set up home on the island, hoping to distance himself from the torments… His family, his blood, his guilt, which lit a fierce fury in him.
'How long have you been here?' A harsh voice rang in Alicia's ear.
It was her aunt – her housekeeper and minder.
The refuge for Timo Rahman's wife was the summer-house among the tall oaks at the back of the house.
When self-esteem fled her, when she lay on her back and he slept beside her, snoring through his open mouth, when the isolation of her life seemed to crush her, she came to the summer-house. He never did.
Everything inside the main house had been changed after he had purchased it: new kitchen, new decoration, new carpets and curtains, new furniture, all in the style that he believed was suitable. Outside, the flowerbeds had been uprooted, then turfed over: an ornamental garden would require continuous attention, would need maintenance from strangers or would become a wilderness. Only the summer-house was hers. Built of old, untreated timbers and planking, nearly waterproof, it was set against the fence and the hedge – and the security wire on stanchions, the alarm sensors – and was masked by trees from the rear windows of the house. It was hers because he had no interest in it. He never sat, relaxed. He never idled, and the clock was an enemy to him.
The dawn light was behind her aunt, silhouetting her stout peasant hips and shoulders.
'I could not sleep,' Alicia said feebly.
All areas of her life had been arranged. The marriage in the mountains of Albania had been arranged by her father and his father. The timing of her two daughters' conception had been arranged by Timo and a gynaecologist in the city. The fitting out of her home in Blankenese had been arranged by Timo and her aunt. The schools for the girls had been arranged by Timo and a lawyer who lived four streets away. Her clothes were chosen by her aunt, and the food for the family meals… Everything arranged, everything chosen. She was decorative, expected to stay attractive and keep her waist narrow, but she was not required to make any contribution to her husband's life. Beyond the hedge, the fence and the wire were the gardens of German women – smart, chic professionals – whose names she barely knew, whose lives she could hardly imagine, whose language she did not speak. Only in the summer-house could she find peace. The aunt had travelled with her from Albania, but the woman's loyalty was first to Timo Rahman.
'You could catch a chill out here.'
'I needed the air,' Alicia said limply.
'You want for nothing.'
'There is nothing I want.'
The aunt bored on: 'You have the love of your husband and your children.'
'I do.'
'You have a home to be in, and a bed.'
'Yes.'
'And a husband you should please.' The aunt leered.
What she knew of sex, how to 'please' and where her hands should go, had been taught her by the aunt, a demonstration with the woman's coarse hands guiding her fingers over the body flab – but what she had learned had been used to conceive the daughters, then to try for a son. When the boy-child had not come
– as if it were understood between them – Timo no longer pulled her over and hoisted up her nightdress.
He had no other woman, she knew that. She thought he had no more interest in fucking her, doing what dogs did in the village high up in the mountains, or goats or sheep. He had no need of her. She had love of a sort and children and a home, and emptiness.
She pushed herself up from the cushions on the bench, and followed her aunt back to the house.
The cold fanned her skin, and thin sunlight fell on her.
Malachy stepped off the train. He had walked through the night and believed he had defeated the cameras. Instead of taking a train from Pluckley or Ashford, he had gone north to Wye, hammering out the miles on country lanes. He had taken the first service of the morning, wool hat still down and collar still up, that meandered off towards Canterbury. He had walked out of the station there, as if that was his destination, had headed for a car park, had pocketed his hat and folded his coat, then kept it under his arm, unrecognizable, when he had gone back to the ticket office. The London train staggered into the city. All that told of his night's work was the faint smell of petrol on his sweater and the scorch in his trousers where the first flames had lashed back through the broken window of the living room.
He stepped out of the carriage and was carried on by the wave of the London workforce that hit the platform. He felt no elation, no excitement, no pride – but knew he climbed the ladder. If the garage had not been empty, if the house had not been silent and all windows closed, if the stable with the restless pony had not been well distanced from the house, would he still have broken the window and splashed the contents of the canister inside against curtains, down on to carpets and lit the coil of paper?
'I don't have to answer that,' Malachy murmured to himself. 'I take what I find.'
Chapter Nine
Voices from the darkness of the parking bay, his and the one from the masked mouth inside the car.
'You did well, you don't have to do more.'
'You don't know what I have to do.'
'You've been as far as you can go.'
'Wrong. You cannot understand.'
'I know about you, read it in files. I have the picture of it.'
'Wrong. Paper doesn't tell it.'
'Three strikes, all well done. It's enough.'
'Wrong. Doesn't purge it.'
'The next step is too far, Malachy. It's what I'm telling you, too bloody far.'
'Wrong. Nothing's too far if you've been where I have.'
'Walk away. You've done all that was asked of you, and some. Forget it.'
The darkness of the parking bay swamped him and around him was the new quiet of the Amersham. In the afternoon he had heard the same voice, now muffled by a face covering, then by a thin adjoining wall. He had unlocked his door, closed it after him, gone fast down the steps and waited at the bottom of the stairwell. He'd heard, faint and far above him,
'You look after yourself, Millie, you take care. I'll see you.' He had waited. The heavy shoes had clipped down the steps and when the detective had stepped off the last, Malachy had stood in front of him. 'Call me, please call me,' Malachy had said, and the detective had walked by him, no response on his face, as if nothing had been said. He had gone to his car and had not looked back, and Malachy had climbed the steps, put the bolt back, turned the key and waited.
Three rings late in the night, then silence, then three more rings pealing in the room.
'What is the next level?'
'The next level, pal, would put you way out of your depth. For sure, you'd sink.'
'I sank once.'
'At the next level, they kill. Last one was dumped over a cliff, went down into the sea, but he didn't drown… Was dead already, tortured and then dead.
Late on his payments – only this isn't being late on a credit agreement for a living-room suite and getting a rap from the finance company. The repossession order is a sentence of death. Every bone in his body was broken, and that was before he went over the cliff.
Scrub it out of your head.'
'When I sank I hadn't the courage to end it. They took everything from me. Any self-respect and I'd have put myself away. They didn't leave me anything.'