A nervous voice: ‘Who is it?’
He called softly, ‘It’s Josh Mantle. I need to speak. Would you let me in, please?’
A lock was turned. The door with the nailed plywood panel was opened.
‘I’m afraid I need some help, just couldn’t get away earlier.’
She led him into the kitchen. The cat was asleep in a cardboard box on the floor. She went to the cooker, lit the gas ring, put the kettle on it. He smiled. ‘Too right, I could murder for a cup of tea.’
She stood by the gas ring, as if to take the heat from it.
‘Mrs Barnes, what I agreed to… Go to Berlin, yes. Bring back Tracy, yes… But I didn’t stop to reckon. Where do I find her? Where do I start to look?’
Disappointment creased her face, worried at the wrinkle lines. He thought she was the sort of person to whom promises were made, broken.
‘Did Tracy have an address book?’
‘Not here.’
‘Did she have a particular friend in the Corps, someone she’d have confided in?’
‘Not mentioned to me.’
‘Are there letters from anyone in the Corps?’
‘Not letters.’
‘I don’t know where to look.’
‘There wasn’t letters. There was a Christmas card, years back.’
‘Who was the card from, Mrs Barnes?’
‘From her commanding officer in Berlin. He sent her a card the first Christmas after she came back from Berlin.’
‘You don’t have that card, Mrs Barnes…?’
She left the kitchen. He drummed his fingers on the table and the cat stared at him. He went to the cupboard on the wall and took two mugs. If he did not know where to look, there was no point in travelling to Berlin. The kettle whistled. He rehearsed what he would tell her. He did not think she would complain that he had promised: she looked to him as though she had lived a life of disappointment. He wondered where her husband was, Tracy’s father. Dead or walked out? He would extricate himself from his promise and he would tell the bastards, Greatorex and Wilkins and Protheroe, that it had all been a mistake. He made the tea. They’d smirk, pull long faces, tell him it was for the best, that it wasn’t the sort of business the firm went running after.
She laid the bundle in front of him. The Christmas cards were held together with an old elastic band. They were all cheap, except one: pheasants in snow on expensive paper. The Special Branch searchers had missed the collection of Christmas cards.
To Tracy and family,
With all seasonal good wishes,
Col. Harry Kirby DSO… and Frances…
The Bothy, School Lane, Sutton Mandeville, Wilts.
‘He just sent it the once. Just the first year after she’d come back from Berlin, after he’d retired. Didn’t send one the next year. Is that any good?’
Yes, he would have owed her a card. She might have won the Colonel – her ‘Sunray’ – his medal.
‘That’ll do me fine, Mrs Barnes. That gives me as good a start point as I could have hoped for.’
She had hung back, and Hansie’s father had talked with the man, Joachim – low voices as if the danger still confronted them – at the door of the apartment.
Most of the bulbs of the block were gone. They had passed drunks, young men, and her foot had struck a syringe. The lift had broken and they had climbed eleven ffights of stairs. She had hung back, not interfered. As if she had brought him determination, Hansie’s father whispered at the man, Joachim, and jabbed at his chest with the crown of his old stick. The man, Joachim, spoke, and fear lit his face. He turned away, slammed the door on them, and the lock was turned.
When they were in the darkness outside, Hansie’s father said, ‘Perhaps, Tracy, now that you have seen the fear, you do believe me. There were one hundred thousand of them, they did not disappear. They are here, around you, on the street with you, close to you. They have the network and the organization, and the power – why my friend Joachim still has the fear. I tell you, Tracy, if you threaten them, they will take you between their fingers and break you as if you were a dried branch. It is the way that they know, their old way. There are two thousand people working on the administration of the files. This week she does the night shift.’
The wind caught them. They stood on the pavement near the tunnel down to the U-Bahn of Magdalenen Strasse. The great tower blocks before them diverted the wind into chilling corridors. She held his arm and gripped the threadbare sleeve of his coat. They waited outside the entrance to the old headquarters of the Staatssicherheitsdienst. Past midnight. A trickle of men and women, huddled in heavy coats, scurried towards the U-Bahn tunnel.
The woman was wrapped tight in scarves and a woollen hat and gloves. The light hit the heavy spectacles on her face.
‘Joachim and I, we thought once that Hans and Hildegard would come together. It was before we knew of you, Tracy.’
Tracy said, ‘Then tell her it’s for love, and twist her arm till it hurts, till she screams.’
He sat on his folded coat. The darkness was around him. His fingers brushed the earth in front of his feet. He could feel the strong stub stems of the daffodils that he had planted the last summer and he touched them with a reverence. He only ever came to the grave at night.
‘What I’m saying, I was a lamb to the slaughter. The money was the final straw. I mean, she must have got the money from her savings tin, pitifully little, and she’s trying to give it me. No, Libby, I couldn’t have come and told you about it, about taking her money or about turning my back on her. You’d have given me a grade-one rollicking. I always do that, Libby, wonder whether you’ll give me a rollicking or that little tap of the hand, approval. Yes, well, you’ll need to know about our Tracy, our Corporal Tracy Barnes… She’s opposites, you understand. She’s sweetness and vilely rude. Sour, cheeky and funny. You like her, you detest her. She makes you feel important, she rubbishes you. Tough as an old boot, small and vulnerable. She is utterly sensible, she is lunatic. It’s because of what happened to her, what she lost, that she can be so hideous. I won’t get any thanks from her but, you have to understand, I don’t have the chance, not any more, to do many things that are worth doing, and she’s worth crawling on a limb for. I’m going to Berlin, Libby, to try to bring her home. She has travelled to Berlin to find evidence against the man who killed her boy, but the man is protected.
It’s like she’s putting her hand into a snake’s hole. Don’t worry, I’m not about to embark on anything idiotic. I’m going to Berlin to find her and to frogmarch her to the airport. I’m going to bring her home. She taunted me, Libby, she asked me if I compromised
And something else, the only thing we have in common, her and me. The person we loved was taken from us. Before you ask, she’s not at all beautiful, not even very pretty, so don’t get any dumb ideas… Goodnight, watch for me…’
He wiped his eyes, once, hard. An owl was hooting in a tree nearby. He picked up his coat. The time he spent at the cemetery, alone, was precious to Josh Mantle. He started to grope his way towards the wall where his car was parked.
Chapter Five
In the half light of dawn, a smear of red sun behind the trees, the man stood on the lawn and the terrier yapped and jumped against him until he threw the tennis ball. The man’s silver hair was unbrushed and wild on his head and fell over the darkened lenses of his spectacles. He was unshaven and he wore his pyjamas, slippers and dressing gown. Josh Mantle watched from the gate on the road at the edge of the village. The dog chased the ball, caught it in the air as it bounced, and ran back towards the man. Josh learned from what he watched. The dog was close to the man and the man bent down but could not take the ball until the dog brought it right to his hand.