‘You did, of course, caution her first?’
Christie shook his head.
‘She was told her rights, was offered a solicitor?’
Christie grimaced.
‘Before her room was searched, did you have her permission? Did you have the written authorization of the camp commander?’
Christie’s chin hung on his chest.
‘During the interrogations did you use profanities, blasphemies, obscenities? Was she threatened?’
Christie lifted his hands, the gesture of failure.
Perkins savaged him. ‘If she had said anything to you, fuck all use it would have been. Oppressive interrogation, denial of rights, refusal to permit medical help. This isn’t Germany, you know. It isn’t Stasi country. Get out.’
They went. Christie called his dog. Perkins kicked the door with his heel. It slammed. Christie and Johnson stood in the corridor.
Johnson understood the tactic: Officers rubbished by a civilian in front of a junior rank so junior rank would bond with civilian. Basic stuff. The hatch in the cell door was open. They could hear him. He was brusque.
‘Right, Miss Barnes… Tracy, isn’t it? I’ll call you Tracy, if you’ve no objection. I’m rather tired. I had a long day, was about to go to bed, and I was called out. I don’t expect you’ve slept, so let’s do this quickly. I deal in facts, right? Fact, ‘eighty-six to ‘eighty-nine, you had lance-corporal rank. Fact, ‘eighty-six to ‘eighty-nine, you were a stenographer with Intelligence Corps working out of Berlin Brigade, room thirty-four in block nine. Fact, in November ‘eighty-eight, Hans Becker from East Berlin was being run as an agent by room thirty-four. Fact, on the twenty-first of November ‘eighty-eight, the agent was lost while carrying out electronic surveillance on the Soviet base at Wustrow, near to Rostock. I’m sure you’re listening carefully to me, Tracy, and you’ll have noted that I emphasized “lost”. Fact, on that date, Hauptman Krause ran the counter-espionage unit at the Bezirksverwaltung des MfS in Rostock. All facts, Tracy. The facts say an agent was “lost”, the facts say that Hauptman Krause was responsible for counter-espionage in that area. The facts don’t say murder and they don’t say killing. Do you have more facts, Tracy? Not rumours running up the walls of room thirty- four. Got the facts or not got the facts? Got the evidence of murder and killing or not got the evidence?’
From the corridor they strained to hear her voice, a whisper or a sobbed outpouring, and they heard nothing.
‘I’m tired, Tracy. Can we, please, do this the easy way?’
Johnson thought it was what a hangman would have said:
‘Right then, sir. Let’s get this over with, no fuss, nice and simple, then you can go off, sir, and get nailed down in the box and I can go for my breakfast.’
He thought she would be looking back at him, distant, small. He realized she was like family to him. Who spoke for her? Not him, not Ben Christie, no damn man, not anywhere.
‘Tell you what, Tracy. You try and get some sleep. Soon as you’re asleep I’ll be told. I’ll come and wake you, and we’ll start again. There’s an easy way, Tracy, and a hard way. What I want to hear about is facts and evidence.’
The lorry driver spat. The target of his fury was Joshua Frederick Mantle. The spittle ran on the back window of the taxi and masked his face, which was contorted in rage.
The prison officer tugged sharply on the handcuffs they shared, jerked the lorry driver from the window.
The lorry driver was driven away, the taxi lost in the traffic.
He watched it go. He wasn’t wearing a raincoat and the drizzle flecked his shoulders. It wasn’t necessary for him to have stood ten minutes at the side gates of the court. He had gained little from having waited, from having seen the last defiance of the lorry driver, except a small sense of satisfaction. A detective constable wandered over to him, might have been about to cross the road but had seen him and come to him. His eyes followed the taxi until a bus came past it.
‘You going over the pub?’
‘Wouldn’t have thought so. Got a deskful to be getting on with.’ He had a soft voice for a tall man.
‘Come on – don’t know whether I’ll be welcome, but she’ll want to see you.’
He hesitated. ‘I suppose so.’
The detective constable took his arm and led him into the road. They waited a moment at the bollard half-way across.
‘Mind if I say something, Mr Mantle? Whether you mind it or not, I’m going to say it. Times in this job I feel proud and times when I feel pig sick. I feel good when I’m responsible for a real scumbag going down, and I feel pig sick when it’s my lot or Crown Prosecution Service that’s chickened out. First time I’ve watched a private prosecution… Come on, through the gap.’
They hurried across the road, and again the detective constable had a hand on his arm. ‘Why I’m pig sick, Mr Mantle, it was your witness statements that nailed him. I worked eight months on that case and what I came up with was judged by CPS as sufficient only for “without due care and attention”. What you got was “death by dangerous driving”… Fox and Hounds they were going, wasn’t it?’
They walked on the pavement. The women with their shopping and their raised umbrellas flowed around them.
‘I was wondering, Mr Mantle, were you ever in the police?’
‘I wasn’t, no.’
‘Didn’t think so. If you had been, at your age all you’d be interested in was growing bloody tomatoes in a greenhouse – wouldn’t have put the work in.’
He said quietly, ‘It wasn’t that complicated. If there was an industrial estate then it stood to reason that someone was coming or going, or looking through the window, or had gone outside for a smoke. Someone must have seen the lorry hit him.’
‘We’d had posters up, all the usual appeals, nothing. Nobody wants to get involved. How many did you go and see? A hundred?’
‘Might have been more.’
‘You found the star witness, Mr Mantle, and I didn’t. You put that scumbag away, and I didn’t. You should feel quite proud for having done the graft, stood up for her when we failed her.’
‘Decent of you to say it,’ he said.
‘Gives you a good feeling, doesn’t it, if you’ve given your hand to someone when nobody else will? Fox and Hounds, yes? Wish I had. You’re only a legal executive, aren’t you?’
‘Afraid I’m not quite that, not qualified yet. Just a glorified clerk.’
They went inside. The pub had opened only minutes earlier. The bar smelt of yesterday’s beer and the polish on the tables. The barrister was clapping his hands, the beam of success on his face, for the attention of the woman behind the bar, who stubbornly polished glasses. The senior partner, Bill Greatorex, was talking with the widow. She wasn’t listening – she caught Mantle’s eye. She was a pretty young woman. She’d dressed in black for the court, skirt and jacket, and deep tiredness showed round her eyes. He’d thought of her, and her small children, all the hours that he’d tramped round the industrial estate in search of a witness. He’d kept her in his mind through all the disappointments and all the shaken heads and all the dismissals from those who hadn’t the time to stretch their minds back to the moment of the death of her husband. The barrister bellowed, ‘God, there’s a serious risk in here of death from thirst.’
She walked away from Bill Greatorex, left him in mid-sentence and came to Mantle. The detective constable backed off. ‘What they tell me, Mr Mantle, is that that bastard who killed my Bob, if it had been left to the police, would have been fined five hundred pounds and banned for twelve months. Because of you, he’s been put away for three years where he can’t drink, drive, kill. Me and the children, all the family, we’re very grateful.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
She reached up, rather too quickly for him, took his face in her hands and kissed his cheek. ‘Very grateful.’
She was gone, back to Greatorex. The barrister had the barmaid’s attention and was reciting the order.
The detective constable was beside him again. ‘Don’t think I’m out of order, Mr Mantle, but what age are you? Fifty-three, fifty- four? I’ll bet you’re on the money a twenty-year-old would get, a kid with spots all over his face. What that tells me, and I’m no Sherlock, you’ve a bit of a history.’