‘Any number, eh?’
Careful… There was no way he could offer Hilde Sprenger from Cologne as an example.
‘Well, there’s your colleague for a start. And Wieking. Anyway, it’s true: they’d never have got this far without female suffrage.’
It was almost as if he could hear his own father talking, and he knew he had overstepped the mark. He waited for Charly’s response. She stood with her lower lip trembling. He wanted to go to her, take her in his arms, and tell her he didn’t mean it, but she reacted first with a hard slap, before turning on her heel and exiting the room, slamming the door behind her.
He stood rooted to the spot and moments later heard the front door snap shut. Still he couldn’t bring himself to move. His cheek was on fire, but he didn’t care.
At least she was getting some fresh air.
74
Hannah wakened to the sun shining through the window and the sound of pots and pans clattering. From the kitchen next door the smell of coffee wafted towards the bed.
The bed!
She still had to pinch herself to be sure she wasn’t dreaming. She was in a proper bed, where she fell asleep in the evenings and wakened the next morning. Free to go at any time.
Even so, things with Felix weren’t quite as she would have liked. Generous as he had been, at night he sought payment for his largesse and Hannah wasn’t prepared to oblige. Whenever he touched her, she was reminded of the Crows, who had taken what they wanted just so long as they were drunk enough.
Felix wasn’t like that, he respected her ‘no’, but it did nothing for his mood, which had deteriorated so much his place had ceased to feel like home. She couldn’t give him what he wanted, and her plan was to wait for the first really warm spell to leave for somewhere she could start afresh. Until then she would continue to wash his dishes, put his dinner on the table and do whatever else was required. Except for one thing.
She shuffled into the kitchen and couldn’t believe her eyes. Felix had made breakfast. Alongside a pot of coffee, he had managed to get hold of a few bread rolls. No one had done this for her before. No one had done anything for her before. Felix was the first. All right, maybe Fritze too.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I was just about to wake you. Coffee?’
She nodded and blinked into the sun, smiling at him.
‘Sit.’ He poured.
‘What a beautiful day,’ she said.
‘Spring’s around the corner.’
They sat drinking coffee and dipping their bread rolls, until she felt compelled to break the silence. ‘Maybe we should head out to the country,’ she suggested.
‘Can’t. There’s something going down.’
‘Can’t they leave you alone on Sundays?’
‘Not them. I’m working alone.’
‘What?’
‘I got a tip-off. No need for them to know. That way it might be worth it for a change.’
‘But how are you going to manage? On your own…’
‘Not quite on my own.’ He looked at her. ‘You’re coming on look-out duty.’
Now Hannah understood what breakfast had been about. She had been worried he might ask her something like this ever since she’d moved in; ever since she’d discovered he owed his comforts to a burglary ring. It was no secret and she had cottoned on pretty quickly. ‘I don’t know.’
Felix looked at her in astonishment and anger. ‘Where d’you think the money comes from? I thought you liked sleeping in a bed, but maybe you prefer life on the streets?’
‘No, no.’ Hannah was startled by his sudden unfriendliness. ‘I was just…’ She shrugged. ‘How are you going to get rid of the swag without the gang finding out?’
‘If that’s all your worried about, you can rest easy, it’s all in hand.’
‘I was just saying.’
‘Once it’s done we’ll go somewhere nice, just the two of us. Promise. Cinema, dinner, dancing.’
He came across as a slightly hapless lothario. Perhaps that’s just how he was, and he was better at practical things. Where talking wasn’t required.
He hadn’t told her where he was going to break in or what he was going to steal. It couldn’t be anything heavy since they weren’t even taking a handcart, let alone the truck the ring used to stow their loot, and which he was sometimes permitted to drive. That’s what he claimed, but Hannah suspected he was showing off. A burglary ring would never let a boy without a license behind the wheel.
Whatever, right now, they were on foot, crossing the Thielen Bridge towards Kreuzberg until Görlitzer Bahnhof, where they walked through the dark, piss-stained Görlitzer pedestrian tunnel to reach the other end of the station. From there it was under the elevated railway at Schlesisches Tor, until, finally, reaching a small square, they turned into a blind alley somewhere between Köpenicker Strasse and the Spree.
The cobbled path where they halted was like a cross between a factory site and a rear courtyard, surrounded as it was by dilapidated brick buildings, which could have been large workshops or small factories. The blind alley ended at a loading dock from which several doors led into the heart of one of the buildings. The colour had started to flake from the signs. OHLIGS CABINETMAKERS, Hannah read, next to an enamel sign advertising spark plugs. Was this even public land?
‘Don’t worry,’ Felix said, his voice low. ‘It’s only busy during the week. Right now there isn’t a soul for miles.’
‘What about the people who live here?’
‘They won’t come near the yard. Besides, they’re all at worship. The Protestants in the Emmaus Church, and the Catholics in the Liebfrauen.’
‘What about the Jews?’
‘There’s only you.’ Felix fetched his picklocks from his pocket and made a serious face. ‘No point being scared. Keep your eyes open, and if you see anyone, whistle.’
‘Whistle? Isn’t that a little obvious?’
‘A tune, so that no one gets suspicious. As if you’re just whistling to yourself. Clear?’
She nodded, and Felix jumped onto the ramp, where he fiddled around until a door opened and he vanished inside.
75
He missed the dog most of all. At night when she lay at the foot of the sofa it felt as if he had found a friend. It wasn’t easy getting used to life on the streets again after two nights under a warm blanket with a roof over his head, and two days in which he realised there was such a thing as family, or at least such a thing as home.
Herr Rath had been right to show him the door. A boy like Fritze Thormann didn’t belong in Charlottenburg, not in an apartment like that with a couple soon to be married. Still, something in him didn’t understand why he had been chucked out. He ought to have been grateful for the ten marks. Instead, not for the first time, he had choked back tears.
Idiot, why do you have to kid yourself? Stop dreaming! Open your eyes and see life for what it is!
Then there was the dog… He wondered if he should get a thing like that, then he wouldn’t be so alone. A dog could protect him, even if it would make finding a bed that much harder. Already he had been forced to sleep rough, since his old haunts were taken and for the first time in weeks he had failed to find anywhere new. At least it wasn’t so cold now, spring was on its way, not that he slept any better for it.
Luck had deserted him, even begging wasn’t the same. In the meantime he had given up any hope of seeing Hannah again. If this cripple really did mean to kill her then it was best she keep a low profile, but he still caught himself looking for her, begging at a new station each day. As he spoke with people and kept an eye out for cops, time and again he found his gaze drawn to girls who resembled her.