“Did ye find out how easy it is to get to it?”
“No, but we’ll have a look tomorrow. The Navy probably wants a report from the Bureau so we’ll need all sorts of useless facts to pad it out. But what worries me more just now is Mr Cross Senior. He’s never heard any talk about dear old chum, Jim Spencer.”
“With being in the Navy, the boy’d be away a whole lot and making all sorts of friends,” O’Gilroy said sagely. “Anyhow, best mumble and be short on words. Ye know? – just like an Englishman.”
The big bright windows of the Yacht Club gazed out across its railed garden of well-clipped shrubs, across the harbour road, and onto a gently swaying plantation of bare-masted yachts. And a larger-than-life statue of Krupp the Cannon King gazed with them, justifiably, since he had paid for it all.
The front rooms were all laughter and loud talk. In a small, quiet back room, Mr Cross, seventyish and with a sad spaniel face and big white moustache, half got up to shake Ranklin’s hand and say: “Very good of you to come,” without much meaning it.
The other two men introduced themselves: Kapitanleutnant Reimers, slim with a sharp imperial beard in uniform mess dress, and police Hauptmann Lenz, a burly man of about forty who, oddly, had a more weatherbeaten face than Reimers the sailor.
Ranklin sat down. Cross went on staring at a full glass of schnapps, then said wearily: “You knew my boy?”
“We hadn’t met for some time, until the other day in Amsterdam. And when I heard … I still can’t believe it. How could it happen?”
Cross obviously wasn’t going to say anything, so Lenz had to. “On Saturday,” he announced formally, “there was much drinking …” Cross shook his head; Lenz went on: “Perhaps Leutnant Cross also – here at the Club he was with friends, then they to the Weinkeller went. I do not know why he is at Holtenau. The night-watch telephoned.”
“And you went out there?” Ranklin asked, adding quickly: “I saw the report at the vice-consul’s. You knew Lieutenant Cross already?”
“Do you speak German well?” Reimers asked. His English was far more fluent than Lenz’s and, oddly to Ranklin’s ear, had a slight American accent.
“Just schoolboy level,” Ranklin said, trying for a charming smile.
A servant quietly put an unasked-for glass of schnapps in front of Ranklin and three of them drank with polite formal gestures. Cross did nothing.
“I had met Leutnant Cross when he visited here before,” Lenz said firmly, looking squarely at Ranklin.
Ranklin just nodded, closing the subject, and asked Cross: “Is there anything I can do, sir? Anything at all?”
“Very good of you,” Cross mumbled automatically, but then roused himself. “Yes, there’s one thing: if you could go through his kit in his room, get it packed up and sent home – and if there’s anything – like letters, you know – you think his mother shouldn’t … I can’t face it.”
“Of course.” It was what you did for the battlefield dead: sifted out letters, photographs, perhaps a diary, that didn’t fit the image of a young hero so heroically dead.
But he instinctively glanced at Reimers for permission, and got an official nod, confirming his feeling that the Naval officer was in charge. But in charge of what?
Cross levered himself to his feet. “I’ll get back to the hotel. Will you be here in the morning?”
“I don’t yet know where I’m staying …”
Reimers said: “You can take Lieutenant Cross’s room, if that suits you.”
That was a stroke of luck. No, it wasn’t: it kept Ranklin where Reimers could find him.
And it confirmed Reimers’ influence: Club rooms would be rare pearls in Kiel Week, even to Club members. But it still suited Ranklin – particularly the idea of getting at Cross’s papers.
“That’s very kind of you. Perhaps the Club could suggest a small hotel for my man-servant?”
That flummoxed them. Perhaps they hadn’t thought of a spy (and he must remember they would suspect him if they had suspected Cross) bringing along a valet. That might reduce the suspicion. Anyway, another nod from Reimers dumped the problem on Lenz.
They escorted Cross to the entrance hall and into a waiting cab, then got O’Gilroy summoned from down among the kitchens. Since Reimers was quite blatantly listening, Ranklin had to stay in Character.
“Gorman, I’m staying here tonight to sort Dickie Cross’s things. They’re putting you into some hotel. Have you got enough money?”
“I wouldn’t be knowing, sir.” O’Gilroy did mournful truculence infuriatingly well.
“Here’s a double crown, then. It’s worth about a pound and I expect plenty of change, And don’t go off boozing in the waterfront bars. They may speak English, but they’re no place for you while you’re in my service. How you behave reflects on me just as much as the state of my shoes does. I shan’t need you until 8.30 tomorrow, but I expect you on the dot and sober. Good night.
“These Irish,” Ranklin complained, once O’Gilroy had gone off with Lenz, “they’re completely lost once they’re abroad. Or they behave as if they’re in the jungle.”
“You have not had him long?”
“I haven’t been home long.”
A Club servant picked up Ranklin’s bags and Reimers led the way out: the room, it appeared, was next door in a large annexe covered with gable roofs, turrets, bay windows, wooden-railed balconies and all the other trimmings of a grand German guesthouse.
The room itself was high-ceilinged if not very big, with heavy curtains hiding the view east across the Harbour. And there were enough of Cross’s belongings scattered about to give it an occupied look.
“Put them down anywhere,” Ranklin told the servant. “Don’t bother to unpack.” He wanted nothing disturbed until he could do it himself.
Reimers dismissed the servant but showed no sign of following. In fact, he promptly sat down in a comfortable flowered-chintz chair and took out a small cigar. “Do you mind? Thank you. You don’t live in London, then?”
“Oh, no. India. Lahore.”
“And you work for the Government?”
“I was in the Civil Service until a few years ago. D’you know India?”
“I’m sorry to say, no. Only America.” Since Germany’s few colonies were all in Africa or the Pacific, Reimers’s sea-going career sounded rather misdirected. “And what do you work at now?”
“I supply stuff to the Government,” Ranklin said casually, knowing how that would strike Reimers, although James Spencer probably wouldn’t have. He had confessed to being a Kaufmann, a merchant, definitely not of the officer class. No matter that Krupp himself had been a Kaufmann, nor that this Club, the whole sport of yachting, existed only because of rich merchants obeying the Kaiser’s drang nach the sea. The Prussian officer class wanted no part of such nonsense.
And absurdly, Ranklin wanted to wink and confide: “I’m only pretending; really, I’m an officer.” Perhaps Prussian and English attitudes weren’t all that different.
To his surprise, Reimers just nodded. “Government contracts? A good foundation for any business. If you don’t rely on them too much.”
Turning to the corner washbasin to scrub off the day’s travel, Ranklin felt unsettled by Reimers’ refusal to be a typical officer. And increasingly wary of him. As he dried himself, he looked around the room: there was a large sealed envelope on the table by the window.
“That is what Hauptmann Lenz took off the body,” Reimers said. “Mr Cross senior had it sent up here.” He stayed where he was as Ranklin opened the envelope, so presumably he’d seen it all before.
Anyway, there was very little to see: some coins, a packet of cigarettes, a box of matches, a broken watch, some bank-notes and a restaurant bill. Clearly, all the papers had got wet: they were crumpled and stained and the cigarettes had dried to a solid cake.
“Damp? In a dry lock?”
“No lock’s ever really dry. The bottom is thirteen metres below the sea, and with rain and seepage … They keep pumping it out, but …”