Josh snapped his fingers for her attention. She looked at him, caught the tension lines in his face. She came to the window. He pointed to the car, to the two men in the front, and to the man who stood on the pavement. She would have seen his face, his carefully trimmed beard, and maybe the scar lines on his face.
The bell rang, incessant, in the room.
She said, distant, ‘It’s Dieter Krause.’
Josh raked the room. There was no back-exit fire escape, and no access hatch from the ceiling in the roof. There was a window out of the kitchen – to God knew where. So hard to think… The bell howled at him.
He snatched up his bag and looped the strap over his head. He ran into the kitchen. She took the cue from him. He was wrenching open the window. She was heaving the rucksack straps over her shoulders. The wind blistered the outside wall at the back of the block. He looked down at a closed yard, with rubbish bins, lines for drying washing, three floors down. A narrow platform of stone below the window ran the length of the back of the block. He took a huge, deep breath. She was behind him, close to him. The width of the stone platform was the length of his shoe. He looked into her eyes and saw fear and bloodyminded determination. He had done a course, a long time ago, too many years ago, rock-climbing, ropes, instructors and full safety equipment. ‘Never look down, old cocker,’ the instructor had said. He jerked his head up so that he no longer saw the rubbish bins in the yard and the washing lines. For a moment, Josh Mantle hesitated, then swung his legs out through the window. The wall against him was rough stone set with patches of cement that would have been used to repair the old bomb and artillery damage. The bell behind him rang, and the wind sang against him. He edged away from the window.
‘Tell them not to open the door, tell them we need time. Time is critical to us. Don’t look down.’
She came after him through the window. He reached to take her hand and she held it so tight that he cursed. He felt her fingers, stiff, free him. He edged away from the kitchen window and faced the wall. His hands splayed as he tried to find security from the wall, to balance himself. He crabbed sideways along the platform. He heard the pant-whistle of her breath behind him.
He felt the bite of the wind because he had forgotten his coat, as she had forgotten her anorak, and he remembered what she had put into its pocket.
There was a drainpipe ahead of him, his target.
He saw where the paint had peeled off it and where the screws that fastened it to the wall had come away. Some years, the drainpipe would have been blocked and the rain would have run down the stonework of the wall beside it. He saw where the mortar between the stones, near the pipe, had cracked or fallen out, and more corrosion from the filth in the rain. There was no turning back. The pipe was inches from his fingers. They brushed against its chipped paint. One more step. The wind gusted. He rocked. One hand against the stone of the wall and finding every crevice and every ridge, one hand touching the drainpipe. He felt the slip below his foot.
The stone hit the concrete of the yard below and broke apart on impact.
He looked back. One stone had gone. Like a gap in teeth. He wanted to talk to her, help her, give her strength, and his voice was stifled dead in his throat. She must step across the gap. He was committed to her. He had made his bloody promise to her. He held the drainpipe with one hand, and grasped her wrist with the other. He steadied her over the space in the stone platform. He brought her wrist to the drainpipe, put her fingers on it. There was terror in her eyes. He looked up. The drainpipe passed the window of the floor above, then the guttering, then the sloping tiled roof above.
He croaked, ‘Can you do it?’
‘You’ve all the ideas. Any alternatives?’
‘I don’t know how secure the drainpipe is.’
‘Well, you go first, then we’ll bloody well find out.’
She loathed him, he thought, because he had made her show her fear. He loathed her, he thought, because she would not let him help her conquer the fear.
He depended on the fastening of the screws that held the drainpipe to the wall and climbed. His shoes found the smallest indents in the stone. His fingers ached to breaking point. He lay on the tiles and his shoes found a hold in the old gutter. His breath came in sharp pants. There was lichen and moss on the tiles, in the gutter.
‘Do I bloody stay down here? Are you having your bloody afternoon sleep up there?’
He was old, stupid, fucked-up – had to have been to have committed himself to her. He wedged his knee and his thigh into the gutter. One hand to push into the gap of a broken tile and try to find a secure hold, one hand to reach for her. He felt her fingers in his, and pulled. He heaved her over the gutter and onto the tiles.
They crawled over them. The lichen and the moss gave them grip. There was the sound of loud, raucous music.
Going slowly, stopping, assessing where the grip was best, where the tiles were damp, treacherous. He pointed to the end of the roof, to the top of a rusted straight ladder.
They were above the window the music came from. He heard the whip crack of a tile breaking behind him and turned. There was something manic in her face. She was standing, swaying to the beat of the music, hips gyrating. She had come through the barrier of fear. She mocked him. Her hips moved as if she was a strip-show dancer.
He went down the ladder and didn’t stop to help her. It led to a flat roof. Another ladder at the far end. He heard her coming after him but did not turn to face her. The second ladder, in good condition, came down into the yard of a motor-repair business. He walked briskly towards the open gate, through the graveyard of Trabants and Wartburgs with the wheels off, bonnets up, interiors ripped out, past the mechanics. His chest heaved. She ran behind him, to catch him. They stood on the pavement.
Josh said, grim, as if it hurt, ‘You’ve made a mistake, a bad mistake.’
She caught his eyes, blazed at him, ‘Have I? What mistake have I made?’
‘He’ll break in there.’
‘So he breaks in.’
‘You left your coat.’
‘So I buy another coat.’
‘You left your coat for him to find, and I left mine. But in your coat were the names, your precious eye-witnesses. Your coat tells him you were there, the names tell him where you’re going.’
‘Does it?’ The laughter sparkled in her eyes.
‘That was your mistake.’
‘Was it?’ Her shoulders shook gently with the laughter.
‘It’s bloody serious.’
She took his hand. She gazed into his face. She held his hand across her breast. She ran her tongue over her lips. She forced his hand against the warmth and softness of her breast. She squeezed it tighter on the softness and warmth, and he felt the folded paper.
‘Put it there when you were asleep. Needed your sleep, didn’t you? I didn’t have to sleep.’
‘Well done, you did well.’
‘You didn’t do bad – for an antique.’
They ran towards Prenzlauer, for the labyrinth of streets and the shelter of the tower blocks between Moll Strasse and Karl Marz Allee.
‘When do we go to Rostock? Do we get a car? Car is fastest. Do we go now to Rostock?’
‘Shut up, can’t you?’ Josh panted. ‘Shut your bloody little mouth so that I can think.’
They ran to be clear of Saarbrucker Strasse, until they could run no more.
They had watched him ring the bell, walk back, look up, go again to the bell and keep his finger on it. They had watched him as he had stood clear of the street door, raised his foot, hit the door with the sole of his shoe. Raub had gasped. The door had swung open. Goldstein had thought that the door of his grandfather’s home would have been kicked in.
They had sat in the car in silence and waited.
The engine ran, the heater blew warm air on them.
He came back through the door. His face was ashen.