‘OK, Thomma,’ said the voice reassuringly. ‘I’ve got that. Who is looking for you?’
‘Cicero. Cicero from the school.’
‘I can tell you are in a phone box. Please tell me the number written on the phone.’ Thomma read it out. ‘That’s good. Is there anywhere near the phone box safe for you to hide while I contact Miss Kingly? It will take me about fifteen minutes to do so, then I will ring the phone box and tell you what to do.’
‘I can hide in the trees across the road but I don’t know if I’ll hear the phone ringing.’
‘If you can’t hear it, come back to the phone box in fifteen minutes and ring me again. Have you got a watch?’
‘No,’ said Thomma, ‘but I can see the clock on the church tower. It says ten past six.’
‘OK,’ said the man. ‘If you don’t hear the phone ringing, call me again when it says half past six.’
‘I have no more money.’
‘Can you remember four numbers?’
‘Yes.’ That was something he was good at.
The voice spoke four numbers, enunciating each one slowly and clearly. He made Thomma repeat them back, then the voice said, ‘Dial these and you won’t need money. You’ll get straight through to me.’
Thomma put the phone down and ran back across the road to the trees, the four numbers embedded in his memory. He crouched down in the bracken, his eyes firmly fixed on the church clock.
A hundred and twenty miles away the phone rang in Peggy Kinsolving’s bedroom. She reached an arm out of the bedclothes and picked it up.
‘Morning, Peggy,’ said a cheerful voice. ‘Duty officer here. Sorry to disturb your beauty sleep. I’ve got a bit of an odd one for you. Young man or boy, sounds Middle Eastern but speaks good English, says he got your number from – sounded like Miss Curling.’
‘Girling,’ interrupted Peggy.
‘Ah good, you do know something about it then. He says she’s dead – “They say she committed suicide but she can’t have, because she was going to take me to church.” That’s what he said – maybe you can make sense of it. He also says he’s escaped from the school, but someone called Cicero is looking for him and he’s scared. He’s been hiding in a wood across the road from the telephone box. I told him to get back in hiding and I’d ring the box at half past six and tell him what to do. I gave him the emergency number in case he didn’t hear the phone ringing because he has no more money to ring again. Over to you. Hang on – just getting a fix on the phone box… It’s in a village about nine miles from Southwold in Suffolk.’
Peggy looked at her bedside clock. It was six seventeen. Wide awake now, she was thinking fast. ‘Get on to Suffolk Police HQ. Ask them to go and pick him up and take him somewhere safe and look after him. If they get any enquiries from the school – it’s called Bartholomew Manor – tell them to stall them. Don’t admit they’ve got the boy. Either I or Liz Carlyle will be coming up to talk to him asap. If they are reluctant to get involved, tell them to consult the Chief Constable. He’s called Richard Pearson and he knows about the case.’
‘OK, Peggy. Received and understood – will do.’ He rang off.
At six thirty the duty officer’s phone rang again. He had just finished talking to Richard Pearson, the Chief Constable who had authorised the pickup of Thomma from the village.
‘It’s Thomma here,’ said the small voice on the phone plaintively. ‘What shall I do?’
‘Can you see the village shop from where you’re hiding?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, get back undercover and watch out for a police car. It will be a white car with Police written on the side. It will stop right by the shop and you should run as fast as you can and jump in. They will look after you until Miss Kingly can get up there to talk to you. Is that OK?’
‘Thank you,’ said Thomma and he put the phone down and ran back across the road to wait.
40
Dieter had lived a lie for so many years that it had become his companion and his security blanket. The truth of his background had long ago faded. If someone had flourished a magic wand and said, ‘You no longer have to pretend. Now you can be Dieter Schmidt again,’ he would have been terrified. As far as he was concerned, Schmidt no longer existed. For Dieter, his lie was his real life.
That his masters had never pressed Dieter Nimitz, their creation, into service had previously never bothered him; he had always been sure that one day they would appear like a tailor with a long unpaid bill and expect him to pay up. The payment could be anything, he had reckoned, though since they had been the ones who’d pushed him to take the job at the European Commission, he had always assumed these long-time masters of his would want him to supply information about the EU. How he would respond when they did appear was something he had asked himself from time to time, but the question was always left hanging in the air; he didn’t know the answer.
All these assumptions now seemed utterly misconceived. To have accepted the destruction of one’s real identity to live as someone else was a betrayal of oneself. It had seemed worth it while it had a purpose. To find out now that there was no purpose at all to a lifetime of deceit was too much to bear. Especially when it turned out that the role he had for so long thought was assigned to him had actually been given to his wife, Irma.
He wondered what would happen now that he had confided in Matilda and she in turned had talked to her husband, who was part of British intelligence. It seemed impossible that he would be allowed to stay in his Brussels post. The British intelligence people would feel obliged to discuss his case with their German counterparts, and one of these services would in turn speak with the security people at the Commission. The best outcome he could envisage for himself was early retirement, though probably without a pension, and the thought of returning to live in Hamburg with Irma seemed almost as bad a punishment as a prison sentence. Irma. The mere thought of her now filled Dieter with disgust. His disaffection with his wife had been tolerable only because he always had Brussels to look forward to. Without that, his life would be hell.
It was a tradition of the house in Blankensee that on Saturday evenings Dieter cooked supper, the only occasion on which he was allowed in Irma’s kitchen. This afternoon he shopped locally, while Irma stayed at home doing her paperwork. He bought chicken and vegetables, ingredients for a stir-fry, something Irma didn’t like very much, which in his new-found fury and despair made him all the more eager to prepare it. ‘Too spicy,’ she would complain when Dieter made a hot sauce to liven it up. This evening he found himself adding even more spice than usual.
He was wearing a long striped apron and using his favourite knife, a Japanese chef’s enamel blade with a deer horn handle that had been given to him by a delegation visiting the Commission. Chop chop chop it went through the carrot he was cutting into batons, then chop chop chop through the three heads of garlic he would add to the stir-fry. The two chicken breasts were thick, and he hacked them into pieces, venting his frustration and anger on them.
‘You’re making a lot of noise.’ Irma had come downstairs and into the kitchen without him hearing her. She was dressed as for work, in a grey jacket and skirt, a pair of carpet slippers the only concession to the weekend. With her short cropped hair and stocky figure, she was a dour sight.
He shrugged. ‘Sometimes I think I’ve been silent for too long.’