by Peter Temple
Operation Gomorrah, it was called. How did they choose the name? Whose idea was that? Gomorrah, one of the cities of the plain. The Hamburg fires burnt for nine days. Forty thousand people died, most of them women and children. Nine days of hell, the dead lying everywhere, rotting in the heat, black swarms of flies over everything, and then the rats, thousands of rats eating the bodies. Anselm remembered reading the planner of the raids’ words:
In spite of all that happened in Hamburg, bombing proved a relatively humane method.
Air Vice-Marshall Harris.
Relatively. What was the Air Vice-Marshall thinking of? Relative to what? Auschwitz? Were there relatively humane ways of killing children? Relatively speaking, where did Bomber Harris’ raids rank on the table of twentieth-century horrors that had at its head the cold-blooded annihilation of Jews and Gipsies and homosexuals and the mentally infirm?
Not a cheerful line of inquiry, Anselm thought. Turn to other things. What would Alex want to know? What would he tell her? He didn’t want to tell her anything. This was a mistake, the product of loneliness. His life was full of lies, he could lie to her. But she was trained in lie-detection, she would know. Did that matter? Wasn’t lying the point? You were supposed to lie. The truth was revealed in your lies, by what you tried to conceal. Telling the truth ruined the whole exercise. There was nothing under truth, beyond truth. Truth was a dry well, a dead end. You couldn’t learn any more after you knew the truth.
Anselm walked down Milchstrasse, feeling dated, dowdy. Poseldorf was as smart as it got in Hamburg. The Zwischenzeiten was over now, the people were in winter gear. Shades of grey this year, grey flannel, grey checks, grey leather, soft grey shirts, grey scarves. Grey lipstick even.
Eric Constantine, wanted man, he’d bring the hire car back in a week; people would be waiting. What would happen to him?
Too late. Baader was right.
In the cafe, O’Malley was at a corner table, in a grey tweed suit, in front of him a small glass and a Chinese bowl holding cashew nuts.
‘More to your taste than Barmbek?’ he said.
It was a French sort of place, darkish, panelled, a zinc bar, dull brass fittings, freckled mirrors, paintings that impoverished artists might have traded for a few drinks, new-shabby furnishings.
‘It’s marginal,’ said Anselm. ‘It’s better than all brown. What’s that you’re drinking?’
‘Sherry. A nice little amontillado fino. Want one?’
‘Please.’ He’d only had two beers and an Apfelkorn all day. He looked around. The man behind the counter was talking on the phone. He had a cleft in his chin and highlights in his blonde hair.
Without moving his head, O’Malley caught the man’s eye. He pointed at his glass, signed for two.
‘So, what are these blokes talking about?’
‘We got an earlier conversation. With the Israeli. The katsa. Want it?’
O’Malley finished his sherry. ‘That’s extra, is it?’
‘Well, yes. Five hundred, that’s in the basement. We’ll throw in the pictures.’
‘And steak knives?’
The barman arrived with the sherries. He said to O’Malley in English, Irish in his English, ‘You must try the dry oloroso, it’s exceptional, very nutty.’
‘I have no doubt I will,’ said O’Malley. ‘Again and again. Thank you, Karl.’
When the man had gone, Anselm said, ‘You’re a stranger here, then.’
‘He’s a computer bloke, made a few quid in Ireland, now he’s realised his dream, come home, opened this little bistro.’
‘German?’
‘Certainly. From Lubeck.’
‘Ireland. Isn’t there something wrong with that story?’
O’Malley shook his head. ‘Change, John, the world’s changed. Narratives don’t run the same way any more. All the narratives are at risk.’ He drank some sherry. ‘Of course, you’re in the cyberworld most of the time, that’s not real. How are my blokes?’
‘They’re worried. This Spence who is actually Richler is threatening them. The deceased Lourens in Johannesburg apparently left something dangerous behind. Kael is agitated. May I ask what you actually want from these people?’
O’Malley looked at him for a while, rolling sherry around his mouth, his cheeks moving. He swallowed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you may not. But since you take secrets to the grave, I’ll tell you. My clients are looking for assets, thirty, forty million US Serrano and Kael handled in the early nineties. Falcontor. Did they say that name?’
‘Yes. Richler.’
O’Malley looked interested. ‘Richler?’
Anselm tried the sherry, drank half the small flute. He remembered the British embassy in Argentina when the Falklands business was beginning, his first war, standing in a high-ceilinged room in Buenos Aires, drinking sherry with the press attache. She had narrow teeth and she talked about the international brotherhood of polo. ‘It’s so unfortunate because of course we’re both polo-playing nations so there’s always been a real affinity…’
Later she made a pass at him. He took the pass. Her husband was an art dealer, that was all he remembered. That and the bites on his chest, tiny toothmarks like the attack of a crazed ferret.
‘Whose money?’ Anselm said.
O’Malley smiled, the canines showing. ‘Well, that’s an awkward one, boyo. This is money without provenance, without parentage. Conceived in sin, sent out to make its own way in the world. It doesn’t belong to Serrano, that much is certain.’
He chewed a cashew nut, picked up the bowl, turned it in a big hand. ‘They found bowls like these in a Chinese galleon lying on the bottom of the sea, hundreds of years old, I forget how many. Amazing, no?’
‘I’m not sure,’ said Anselm. ‘Amazing’s not what it used to be. I presume these people are all lying to each other.’
‘It’s a way of life for these blokes. Their relationships are based on porkies. Darling, promise me you’ll never tell me the truth.’
Four people came in, three young women, tall, anorexic, bulemic too probably, and a small man, plump, no trouble keeping food down. It was all shrill laughter, hair moving, hands moving, waving, shrieks, going over to the owner and kissing him on both cheeks. Anselm felt the need to be outside. Not an urgent need, just a strong wish to be in the open.
He put the small tape case on the table. ‘I suppose we can skip the condom routine here. If you want to go on, tell me tonight. This isn’t getting easier. It may have to be on Kael and he’s hypochondriac.’
‘I’ll ring,’ said O’Malley. ‘I’ll have a little listen and ring. And since when do you know who’s a katsa and who isn’t?’
‘Everyone knows.’
Anselm walked to Fahrdamm and the luck was his again, the ferry was coming in, nosing in to the jetty, a bump, two bumps. He sat on deck and smoked, cold wind wiping the smoke from his lips. The dark came suddenly and the shore lights came through the trees and lay on the water like strips of silver foil, bending, turning.
33
…LONDON…
The man opened the door within seconds. She knew he had heard the gate’s small noise, not so much a screech as a scratch. It was not a timid opening. He opened the door wide.
‘Yes?’
‘Good evening. Sorry to bother you,’ said Caroline.
‘Well then don’t.’
Nothing of the courtly doorman about him, not a smiling doorman this. Just a big bald man in shirtsleeves, a wide man, downturned mouth, pig-bristle grey eyebrows.
Caroline had her card ready. She offered it to him. He looked at it, held it up to his face, looked at her, no change in expression.
‘Yes?’
‘It’s Mr Hird?’
‘It is.’
‘Could we talk? It won’t take long.’
‘About what?’
‘Something that happened at the store yesterday.’
‘Don’t talk about what happens at work. That’s company policy. Goodbye.’ Hi
rd didn’t move.
Caroline took the chance. ‘Can I bribe you?’
He touched his nose with a finger, pushed it sideways, sniffed. ‘No.’
‘Is that a no or a maybe?’
‘It’s a no. Come inside.’
They went down a cold short passage into a cold room that looked unchanged for fifty, sixty years, a sitting room from around World War Two. The armchairs and the sofa had antimacassars and broad wooden arms. Two polished artillery shells flanked the fireplace. Above the mantelpiece was a colour photograph of the Royal Family-King, Queen and the two little Princesses. A collection of plates and small glass objects stood on mirror-backed glass shelves in a display cabinet with ball-and-claw feet.
‘Havin a glass of beer,’ he said. ‘Want one?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Sit down.’ He left and came back with two big glasses of beer, tumblers that bulged at the top.
‘Well, what?’ he said, sitting down.
Caroline sat and drank a decent mouthful. She moved to put he glass down, didn’t for fear of marking the chair arm.
‘Put it down,’ Hird said. ‘Not a museum. Looks bloody like it but it’s not.’
She put the glass down, opened her bag. ‘A man was shot in the store yesterday. On the third floor.’
Hird looked at her, drank beer. It left a white line on his upper lip and he didn’t remove it. ‘Entirely possible,’ he said, ‘I’m down on the ground, noddin and smilin.’
A black cat came in, fat, gleaming, silent as a snake, glided around the room, around chair legs, around Hird’s legs, brushed Caroline’s ankles. She failed some feline test and it left.
Caroline took out the security camera photographs of Mackie, held them out. ‘He might have left through your door,’ she said, she didn’t know that. ‘Can you remember seeing him?’
Hird put down his glass, took the pictures, held them on his stomach. He looked at them, gave them back to her, said nothing, drank some beer.
‘Recognise him?’
‘Busy store. How many people d’ya reckon go through my door every day?’
‘He’s on camera going through your door. The question is whether you remember him.’
‘They send you around here?’
‘No. Only my mole knows I know.’
She was lying. She had no mole. Store security denied all knowledge of the incident.
Hird kept his eyes on her. He had a big drink of beer. Caroline matched him. Their glasses were down to the same level.
‘A mole in security?’
‘Yes.’
‘He’d tell you what’s on the street cameras.’
‘There’s some problem there.’
‘So how’d you know where to come?’
‘It’s my business to find out.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Right. Saw your name in the paper. That Brechan. Shafted the bastard, din you. Shafter shafted.’ He laughed, he enjoyed his joke. ‘Bloody rag, your paper.’
Caroline shrugged, said, ‘I gather the Prime Minister reads it.’
He laughed again. ‘Bloody would, wouldn’t he? See which Tory prick’s been up a kid’s bum last night. Course the lovin wife’ll give the bastard an alibi, won’t she?’ His voice turned to purest Home Counties. ‘We were at home all evening, officer, just the two of us, a quiet dinner, watched some television, had an early night.’
‘So you saw this man,’ said Caroline as a matter of fact.
Hird nodded. ‘This an interview? Read me name in the paper?’
‘No. Just background. No name. Nothing that can identify you. I promise.’
He studied her, drank some beer. ‘Just looked odd,’ he said. ‘Then I saw his hand up to the chest, blood comin out between the fingers.’
In her heart, she felt the spring of pleasure uncoil at her cleverness. ‘Did security see him?’
‘Nah, been called away.’
‘You didn’t tell them?’
Hird studied her. ‘What’s your mole say?’
‘He says he’s not aware of any report.’
‘Well, there you have it.’
‘So the man went out the door and…’
‘I went out, just to the corner to have a look-see. Deserted me post. Sackable offence. Still, had a customer’s welfare at heart, din I?’
‘And?’
‘Well, he was pretty normal, not wobbly, but he wasn’t walkin too straight. Bit of bumpin. Went into Brompton, though he might be heading for the tube. Then these two fellas come along, they were lookin for him, that’s for sure.’
‘And?’
‘Well, he keeps goin up the street, then he crosses and he gets on the back of this motorbike.’
‘Waiting for him? The motorbike?’
Hird shook his head. ‘In the bloody traffic, couldna been. He just stood there, then he got on the back of the bike. Another fella come from somewhere, he was runnin at them, then off the thing went like a rocket. Yellow helmet, one of them big helmets, spaceship helmet. Know what I mean?’
‘And the men?’
‘Buggered off.’
‘Didn’t get the number of the bike, did you?’
‘Too far.’
Caroline nodded, finished her beer, got up. ‘Thanks, that’s a big help.’
Hird stood up, not easily. ‘Can’t see how.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ said Caroline.
They left the room. He went first. On the way down the passage she found a fifty, rolled it up. He opened the front door. She went out, turned.
‘Well,’ she said. She tapped the side of her nose with the rolled note, offered the roll. ‘We were at home all evening, officer, we watched television…’
Hird laughed, gave her the nod, nod, wink, wink, took the note and put it in his shirt pocket.
‘Keep insertin it up the bastards,’ he said.
34
…HAMBURG…
Inskip was watching the vision from some pale anonymous formica-walled airport terminal, views of queues, of passengers, close-ups of faces when their turns came at the counter. He jumped from queue to queue, face to face.
‘Real time in Belgrade,’ he said. ‘It’s a feed to the people who sold them the system. Quality control purposes.’
‘Very nice,’ said Anselm. ‘What’s our interest?’
‘Intellectual, for the moment. Another breakthrough in techniques of invasion. I thought that earned praise.’
‘It does. You’re a promising person.’
Inskip sniffed. ‘That’s a theatrical sniff,’ he said.
‘Don’t get to the theatre much.’
‘Moving on, I have the new London subject’s hire car in a parking garage near Green Park. Bill’s mounting, they’ve run a check on it.’
Eric Constantine. The name stuck in his mind.
‘Probably a dead end then,’ said Anselm. ‘I’m going home.’
‘Do you do that?’ said Inskip.
Anselm was packing up when the phone rang.
‘It’s yes,’ said O’Malley.
Anselm rang Tilders.
‘Yes,’ said Tilders. ‘They understand this is going to be difficult?’
‘Yes.’
‘Wish us luck.’
‘I do. Luck.’
Anselm had no urge to run home, walk home. He went out into the cold, misty night and, for the first time, took the sagging BMW car home. Outside the house, he got out and opened the wooden gates. It was a fight. Bolts and rusted hinges contested his wishes. He parked in front of the garage. No car had stood there for a long time, on those brick pavers.
Standing on the dark threshold, looking for the key, and inside, when he was sitting in the kitchen, glass in hand, he thought again about his Moritz: pro-Nazi. An anti-Semite. He looked like some count painted by von Rayski. And I look like him.
Anselm went to the photographs on the wall, the photographs Alex had looked at on the first night. There were dozens, going back more than a century-for
mal portraits, groups, weddings, dinners, sailing pictures, pictures taken at balls, in the garden, on the beach at Sylt, pictures of children, children with dogs, him with his parents and Lucas, Gunther and his wife, him with his grandfather in the garden, both with forks, big and small. No photograph of anyone who could be Moritz.
Surely Moritz could not have missed every single photographic occasion?
He went back to the kitchen, sat down. Alex. He should telephone her and say that he had changed his mind, apologise for wasting her time in Stadtpark. He had enjoyed talking to her, he could say that, but he didn’t want to talk about the past.
The telephone rang and Anselm knew. He let it ring for a while and then, suddenly fearful that the ringing might stop, he went to answer it.
Alex’s apartment was the size of a house, on the third floor of an old building in Winterhude, built between the wars, an Altbauwohnung.
Anselm said, ‘May I lie on a couch? Or have I suggested that before?’
Alex Koenig smiled. ‘You have and you may not. I’ve got coffee. Or brandy and whisky. Some gin left. I like to drink gin in summer.’
She was all in black, a turtleneck sweater and corduroy. Her hair was pulled back. Anselm thought she looked beautiful and it made him even more uneasy.
‘You can’t drink gin after sunset,’ he said.
‘Yes? Is that a British rule? It sounds British.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘But you’re not British.’
‘My mother’s family are English.’
‘Ah, mothers. They like rules. Impose order on the world, that’s a mother’s primary function. There is also beer and white wine.’
‘White wine, thank you.’
She left the room and he went to the window. The curtains were open and he looked out at the winter Hamburg night, moist, headlights, tail lights reflected on the shiny black tarmac skin. The streetlamps made the last wet leaves on the trees opposite glint like thousands of tiny mirrors. He turned, noticed the upright piano, an old Bechstein, went across and opened it, he could not resist. His right hand played. The piano was badly in need of tuning. So was his hand, he thought.
