‘I would assume, sir — but, of course, I don’t know, because courts and the police are outside my experience — that Simon will be released, then summonsed to appear in court. He’ll end up with a criminal record and a driving ban for something between a year and eighteen months.’
‘For definite?’ she asked.
‘Yes, ma’am. Only in the most exceptional circumstances would there be — I assume — an acquittal and no criminal record, or just a fine and no driving ban.’
‘I like you, Johnny.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
‘We have both found your work satisfactory, and the children like you.’
‘Thank you, ma’am.’
He saw Josef Goldmann look at his wife, and he saw her, almost imperceptibly, nod agreement. The Bossman’s eyes lifted, would have focused on Viktor, who was behind him. Then the hesitation … Carrick thought he had taken advantage of a situation — dumped on Simon Rawlings, whom he had never seen drink alcohol and whose breath had never smelled of it … who had been the saviour of his life, possibly, and his leg, probably. Then the hesitation was wiped.
‘You will take his place, Johnny. I offer you his position.’
‘That’s very kind, sir. I am very happy to accept. Only thing, sir, I’ve a family matter tomorrow evening that’s important to me. I’d be grateful if I could be excused duty then — Simon was covering for me. Thank you, sir, thank you, ma’am. Goodnight.’
He was gone. Viktor watched him go through the door, but Carrick didn’t meet his eye. A cell door had slammed shut, but for Carrick another had opened wide — he couldn’t fathom it, just couldn’t. But climbing the ladder would make life harder, would demand more care on the legend’s preservation, would expose him to more thorough inspection.
He wiped the mud, clods of it, from his boots. Then he took the sheet of old newspaper, passed to him by Mikhail, and cleaned the leather. If there had been a stream nearby, or a pond in the trees, he would have washed them. It was not the interior of the car that should be protected, but his grandmother would scold him if he came back to their home and tramped dirt on the floors. He worked hard at the sides, soles and uppers of his boots and did not finish until he was certain they would leave no mess on the carpets. Mikhail watched him. Satisfied, Reuven Weissberg put his boots back on, laced them loosely and opened the car door.
He never used the rear seat when Mikhail drove him and they were alone. They rode together always, in silence if he wished it and in conversation if he did not. Sometimes he would give Mikhail the role of sounding-board and demand his opinion, and sometimes he would ignore him. The former KGB officer would not have dreamed, or dared, to take the liberty of commenting on plans and intentions unless requested to do so. Two differences existed. Nobody paid Reuven Weissberg. He paid Mikhail. He was a Jew and Mikhail was not. But, other than his grandmother, no one was closer to him than his minder. And such a man as Reuven Weissberg, who was now in his fortieth year, needed protection. He could provide it, could put a secure krysha above the head of a businessman, a politician or an oil man, but his success required that an altogether more carefully built roof covered his own scalp. Once, that cover had slipped. Mikhail carried a Makharov in his belt and a PPK in the glove compartment, and he would have said that Mikhail’s loyalty to him could not be doubted. Once, Mikhail had been tested. It came at a price.
It would take them six hours to drive to the apartment. They would be back in the early morning, before the dawn washed thinly over the city, but his grandmother would be up and dressed, waiting for him.
Mikhail would take a route carrying them first due south to the town of Chelm, which they would skirt, then reach the feeder road for the highway to Lublin. Lublin to Warsaw, and Warsaw to Poznan. After Poznan they would join the best road in Poland, then cross the frontier. An hour after negotiating Immigration and Customs, when staff were either in their huts or asleep, he would be back at the door of his home, and his grandmother would greet him, and he would hold her frail, aged body in his arms.
He paid many men for their services, drivers and couriers, thieves and killers, but none was allowed to be as close to him as Mikhail, who slept in the next room and carried the weapons, and who could scent danger. He’d always had that skill, which had failed him only once — and had many times served him well. Weissberg tolerated minimal familiarity from this one man, a degree more than he would have accepted from Josef Goldmann, whose talent was in the manipulation of money.
The car pulled away, left the parking area empty behind them. The lights swept over the trees where, buried from sight, was the house built of wood planks — and inside a barking dog but not its owner. The beams flared back from the tree trunks.
‘You don’t believe I’ll find the grave.’
Mikhail went at speed on the forest road and perhaps did not care to taunt him. ‘If you want to find it, I believe you will. I understand why you search.’
Ahead, an owl flew low, was caught by the lights, veered from them and was lost in the trees. He had promised his grandmother that he would find it, and her life was ebbing.
‘When we come back … How many days?’
‘Five.’
‘Then I’ll look again.’ He let his hand rest lightly on Mikhail’s arm, near to the wrist and the fist that held the wheel. ‘It is demanded of me.’
He closed his eyes and shut out the view of trees, pines and birches, racing past, and in his mind he heard the story of what had been done to Jews in the forest.
Innocence is gone. I think I was lucky — or stupid — to have known innocence for a whole week.
I am in Camp 1. I sleep in the top bunk of three in a dormitory barracks for women, and I am the youngest there, more a girl than a woman. The first nights I cried myself to sleep and the women around me cursed and said I disturbed them. I cried because I wanted to be with my family, close to my father and mother, everyone else. ‘Why are you making such a noise?’ I was asked, many times in the first night and the second. Each time I told the questioner I wanted to be reunited with my family, that I was fearful they would be shipped on to the east, to the new settlements, and that I wouldn’t be with them. Some women swore at me, and others tittered … but it was a week before I was told, and innocence was lost.
In the first week I did not go out of Camp 1. All I saw of the world was the sky. I saw clouds, rain, and for two days there was fierce sunshine. There were men in Camp 1 but we were forbidden to speak to them, and the open ground inside the wire was patrolled by Ukrainians under the supervision of German officers. On the third day, a male prisoner was shot by an officer. He was in the ranks lined up for roll-call. It was dawn. He was sick. Those on either side of him tried to hold him upright, but he slipped from their grasp and fell in front of the officer. Then he vomited on the officer’s boots. The officer moved his boot from under the man’s head and away from his mouth, and took a pistol from the leather holster that was on his leather belt. He cocked it, aimed for the man’s head and fired. The bullet broke open the man’s skull, and there was blood with the vomit on the boot. He lay where he had been killed through the roll-call, and he was taken away only when we were sent to the workplaces. I couldn’t believe it, but he was dragged to the gate of Camp 1 by the same men who had tried to support him. They each had a leg and dragged his body as if it were a sack of rubbish.