He was inside.
He could watch from here, learn of the movement of the house. The house, the home of Timo Rahman who was the godfather of the city of Hamburg, was the last step of his journey. He crawled on old dried wood and… There were short pants of terror. His movement across the floor made a rumbling creak on the boards and the pitch of the breathing grew more frantic. He had been long enough in the darkness to see in the gloom. The pants came from the outline of a body, the head softened by a mass of hair. A girl or a woman… She was whispering to him but Malachy did not understand the words. If she screamed… Yes, Malachy, yes – what? If she screamed, if she brought the men from the house, if she screamed and he had to jump at the wires strung from the stanchions – what?
He had never, in violence, touched a woman. If she screamed… What price his journey, what price his crusade? The voice had gone, replaced by a whimper of tears. A hand caught Malachy's shoulder. He went to tear it clear and realized in that moment that its grip did not threaten him. He felt the hand, a jewelled ring and a smooth ring. It held his, but not to restrain him. The woman sobbed softly and he loosed his hand from hers.
He backed away, scraping his body across the boards.
Outside, at the back of the summer-house, he chose his exit route. He reckoned he could jump from the roof of the building, could clear the wires that were linked to the stanchions. No other way. He clawed his way up, then slithered on the sloped roof and old leaves cascaded down. She did not scream. A woman had wept, had held his hand, and Malachy's thoughts blurred. Too soon, he jumped. Too soon because he should have allowed time to regain concentration. He scrambled to gain leverage and his shoes kicked air but he was short of the fence and the barbs held him.
His fingers, grappling, caught the tumbler wire. His body swung. Brian Arnold had described it: the fugitive on the wire, the alarms screaming, the guards coming and the scrape of an automatic rifle being cocked. The wire held his coat, and he felt panic – so long since the last time, but as bad. He heard a door behind him snap open and the scream.
The aunt hitched her skirt, shouted over her shoulder and ran.
The light on the console by the door winked angrily on red.
She thought her shout loud enough, from the kitchen, to be heard in the dining room, that it would bring the Bear lumbering, but fast, after her. She knew every button on the console and charged towards the sector of the fencing where the wire had been tripped.
With a rolling stride, from her stiffened old joints, she crossed the lawn and as she came to the summer-house she saw, behind its low, sloped roof, the figure of a man struggling to free himself.
She yelled again to the Bear.
She was a tough woman, past sixty, but muscled.
An upbringing in a mountain village bringing water from wells, heaving stones to make fields' walls, walking to a distant road where a bus sometimes came, enduring the harsh conditions of childbirth, burying a husband, had given her strength. Her years in Blankenese, watching over her niece, had not dulled her determination. She had no fear. At the wire, shoes flailed on a level with her head.
She reached up, caught a shoe, lost it, then held the ankle. For a moment she clung to it, then it was torn away. She caught the hem of the long coat.
The heel of a shoe banged against her forehead, dazed her. A toecap caught her mouth, split her lip, and she spat away the broken tooth cap. She clung to the coat. She heard the voice of the Bear. Her fingers clawed into the coat, and the man inside it writhed – and then he was gone.
She had the coat, which sagged down and swamped her. It was a blanket on her head. As she threw it off, the aunt saw the body – a sharp moment
– astride the fence and then he jumped. She stamped in fury, frustration.
The assistant deputy commander broke the fall, and the breath squealed out of him.
Polly grabbed the man's arm and pulled him up, her grip loose from blood spilling out. She heard Konig, cursing, follow her up the path between the fences.
Slithering, stumbling, they reached the side road.
The man she held started to struggle as if his own fall, on to Konig, had first winded him but now he fought for his life. Not in time. The arm she held at the elbow was dragged back and she heard the metallic click of handcuffs closing, then the belt of a fist into the man's head. They careered down the side-street and towards the lights of the main road.
Konig gasped, 'There's a firearm, legally held, in the house. If we're found we're fucked – no questions – we're dead.'
'Don't you carry a weapon?'
'What? Use it in defence of a thief, an intruder?
Grow up, child.'
'A thief?'
'An idiot.'
They passed the gate and lights now shone down on the garden and the front of the house and she heard the confused yells behind the steel plates and the thickened hedge. Between them, they pulled the man, each holding one of his arms and he was limp.
His shoes scraped on the pavement. What had happened coursed in Polly Wilkins's mind.
Konig had parked his unmarked car at the main road. He had pointed out to her the camera half hidden by branches, on his orders in place for three days, and had murmured wryly that it was 'for statistics of traffic analysis, and in no way contravening the Human Rights of Timo Rahman by-intrusion', had explained that to go to an investigating judge for authorization would have risked involvement with a corrupt official. They had been in front of the house, walking briskly, when they had heard the first shrill shout. They had found the path between the fences and been drawn down it towards the yelling and screaming. When the struggle was at the far side of the fence they had stopped. He had come over, clothes ripping, had been on top of the fence, outlined against the night, then had dropped on to Konig. What she recalled most clearly of the man as she had lifted him was the smell of old, stale dirt.
They reached the main road, turned the corner, and behind them heard the scrape of the gates opening.
Doors zapped as they ran to the car. They pitched the man on to the floor space between the seats, and Polly went in after him. From the car's roof light, she saw the man's face, then Konig's door slammed shut and they accelerated away.
She grinned. 'Not much of a return for all the drama, Johan. Your catch looks and stinks like a damn vagrant.'
Dazed and numbed – as he had been once before -
Malachy lay prone, not in a gutter but on the carpet of a car's floor.
Against his face, holding down his head, was the smooth, warm, stockinged ankle of the woman. He did not know what havoc he had left behind him or what chaos lay ahead.
Chapter Thirteen
'My name is Malachy David Kitchen, and my date of birth is-'
'We know your date of birth.'
'-and my date of birth is the twenty-fifth of May, 1973.'
'And your blood group is O positive, and your religion is Church of England. I think we have covered that ground.'
They had taken his wristwatch, shoe laces and belt.
The German swung the dog tags in circles. He sat hunched on the mattress, rubber sheeting around thin foam, on the concrete bench that was the cell's bed.
The German was propped against the concrete slab, the table, beside the lavatory, and the woman leaned against the closed door and held the passport lifted from his hip pocket.
'My name is Malachy David Kitchen, and my date of birth is the twenty-fifth of May 1973.'
She said, 'And your passport lists your occupation as government service.'
The German said, 'Your military number is 525 329.
It is late, I want my bed, and you should tell me why you were at the house of Timo Rahman.'