The big head jerked up and the stinking smoke from the cigarette billowed into Albert Perkins’s face.
‘Never bank on permanence, eh, that’s what I say, fatal to believe anything lasts for ever. The Wall came tumbling down. The wonderful little state ended in the gutter. Files were opened and identities were matched to codenames. You would have been slung out on your ear. Big job, big status, down the tube. What do you do? A bit of translation work if you can get it? You’re sixty years old, on the scrapheap because you backed the wrong horse, miserable mean little pension. Not much thanks for dishing the dirt on a part-time student – Eva Krause. What’s keeping you here? Let me list what you resent, shall I?’
Albert Perkins smiled, icily. It was not in his nature to feel pity. A man made his bed, he must lie on it. He stood in the American’s damp room and his presence emphasized the man’s failure.
‘You resent the new unemployment – two in five Rostock males, from the Rathaus statistics, out of work or being trained for work that does not exist. You resent the new poverty – the city is the poorest, as measured in per capita income statistics, in Germany. You resent the dumping of immigrants – gypsies, foreigners – in hostels in housing estates like this crap place. You resent the new crime – muggings, beatings, thievings, pick- pocketing, prostitution, protection racketeering. You resent the new drug culture – cannabis available and Ecstasy, crime syndicates bringing in the heroin and cocaine. You resent the new men in town – the Wessis come to take over the Rathaus, the police, the schools, business. Most of all, what you resent is the big message – everything you did in forty years was second rate, was rubbish, should be replaced. I think, my friend, that you should go home. Where is it? Is there an old mother there who’s never had a letter? You need me, my friend, because I can speak on your behalf to my American colleagues. I trade, life for me is a market-place. You talk to me about Eva Krause, and I talk to colleagues about forgetting the dumb stupidity of a twenty-year-old signals kid forty years ago.’
Albert Perkins believed the screw should be turned tightly, but always slowly. The maximum pain, the greatest hurt, was in the slow turning of the screw. He would come back the next day for his answer. A discussion on Eva Krause in exchange for letters being written to Immigration, Defense and the FBI. The American would brood on it overnight. He would be washed in sick sentimental memories of his mother and white bloody fences and apple bloody pies. The room was darkening. There was the glow of the single bar of an electric fire.
‘I’ll see myself out. You shouldn’t think of me as an enemy, was once but not now. You should think of me as your last best chance. There’s nothing left for you here. I’m trading that chance for the dirt, what’ll make me laugh, on the wife of Hauptman Krause. Have a good evening.’
‘Where is he?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘He said he would drive us.’
‘Yes, he said that.’
‘Where the hell is he?’
‘You do not, Christina, have to use foul language.’
‘He said he would drive us and he isn’t here: He said he would watch every match I played and he was late last night and went early. He said he would bring me a racquet from London and there was no racquet.’
Eva said flatly, ‘Your father is very busy.’
‘What does that mean, “busy”? Why does he lie?’
‘You should not speak of your father like that. Are you ready?’
The girl, her daughter, with her ugly, snarling face, flounced up the stairs. Eva Krause stood by the front door and put on her coat. He had said there was a problem that could lose them everything. She checked in her handbag for the car keys. He had touched the sleeve of her coat and the gold bracelet on her wrist, as if they, too, could be lost. She waited and ificked her fingers in impatience.
Christina stamped down the stairs, her bag scraping against the paintwork of the wall, and she carried an armful of racquets. When Eva Krause had been a girl of fourteen years old, her sports kit would have gone into a big paper bag and she would have been proud to own one racquet.
‘You have everything? You have checked?’
‘I have everything except my father, who has lied to me.’ Eva Krause locked the door behind her.
Through the late afternoon, through the evening, the five men searched the city and watched the roads out of Rostock. Two at any one time on the exit roads to the south and west that could lead to Bad Doberan and Kropelin and on to Rerik, three at any one time cruising the central city streets. Easier for them to watch and search now because all of them knew the face of the young woman. For Krause, the time for the tennis match, second round, came and went. They watched the exit roads, they idled in their cars in the old city and the new city of Rostock. Each yearned to see her, recognize her, to have the second chance to finish with the problem.
He knocked. He gave his name quietly.
There was loud music and shouting and laughter from the floor above and the floor below. Seamen filled all the rooms of the pension except those on their floor. He thought the crew big enough to have brought a bulk carrier or a container ship to Rostock but he did not know whether their language was Swedish, Finnish or Norwegian.
Josh knocked, gave his name, unlocked the door.
He had, in the Army vernacular, torn a strip off her. He had put her in the car, swerved off down the road, come close to crashing a lorry because the tension was still eating into him, driven back to the pension, and marched her up the stairs as if she were a foul little brat spoiling a family outing. He had taken her to her room, given her his tongue, and locked her in. He had sat in his own room, cold and damp, on the bed, gripped his hands to contain the trembling, and failed.
He turned the key and carried in the food boxes and the beer cans, his bedding, the mattress and a pifiow.
He dropped the bedding and the mattress, used his heel to close the door behind him. He groped for the light switch. She was in bed, where he had told her to be. She had found more blankets from the shelf at the top of the wardrobe. Her clothes were scattered on the floor, her underwear, jeans, sweater and walking shoes. Only the shoulders of the pyjamas showed above the sheet and the blankets. He had made, again, a child of her. She hadn’t spoken to him in the car, hadn’t bloody thanked him, or apologized to him for rubbishing his advice. He had gone out only when the night closed on the city. She looked up from the pillows.
‘Have to eat – have to eat something, damned if you deserve anything.’
He was stern because he had been frightened fit to crap and angry because he had been frightened fit to piss. The big eyes gazed at him from the pale face, from the pillows.
He put the food boxes on the bed. She sat up for him and he rearranged the pillows behind her back, as he would have done for a sick child. The burgers would have cooled and the sauces would have congealed. He opened the boxes. She wore thin cotton pyjamas and he could see the shape of her beneath the material. He gave her the coat from the floor and she hooked it round her shoulders. Her face was filled with the burger and chips. He pulled the ring on a beer can, passed it to her, and she lifted her knees, gripped the can between them, against the blankets. He sat on the end of the bed.
Her mouth was full. She pointed with a chip at the bedclothes behind him, and the mattress.
‘What’s that for?’
He flushed. ‘I am sleeping in here.’
Her eyebrows arched, as if the life returned to her, the mischief. ‘Please yourself.’