by Craig Thomas
"Paul," he acknowledged quietly. "Mrs Massinger, I—"
"You?" It was like a curse.
Clara was mysteriously shaking her head in vehement denial, or to indicate that Aubrey was mistaken in revealing himself. Aubrey came to Margaret's chair, and studied her. She glared at him, then her gaze turned aside. Aubrey continued to study her for some moments, then turned to Massinger. His expression was kindly, sadly-wise.
"Is your wife ready for the truth she has come to hear?" he asked Massinger.
"Yes!" Margaret snapped in a hoarse voice.
Massinger pondered, then slowly nodded. Clara looked at her watch.
"Kenneth — I have appointments this afternoon. I must change. My apartment is at your disposal." Clara's lips demonstrated a fleeting smile. Aubrey nodded. It seemed that something passed between them, brief and secret like a coded message; it appeared to be affection, at least.
"Very well, my dear. It's my responsibility, anyway. I must explain everything. I need the help of these people, both of whom are dear to me."
"Then be careful," Clara warned.
"No, the time for caution is past. You run along, my dear."
Clara left the room with only a brief nod towards the Massingers. Surprisingly, she lightly pecked Aubrey's cheek. The old man seemed warmed by the gesture. He lowered himself onto the sofa as the door closed behind Clara, his gaze directed at Margaret. Then, without preamble, he began talking.
* * *
Zimmermann switched on his answering machine — his secretary was still at lunch and he had been out of his office for almost an hour — and listened to the familiar voice. Only its content was unexpected; disturbing and enraging. It was the Chancellor's senior private secretary.
"The Chancellor wishes you to take a week of the leave at present due to you, Herr Professor. This unfortunate matter of the suicide of a prisoner only hours after you interrogated her must be properly investigated. The woman's lawyers and family are prepared to make an embarrassing public display of their feelings — and of their suspicions that the nature of your questions disturbed the balance of her mind…"
The message continued. There was no order for him to present himself to the secretary or the Chancellor or to make himself available to any investigation. He was to be away from the scene until the fuss died down. There was no reference to any connection between the suicide of Margarethe Schröder in Cologne and the burglary of his apartment. A public fuss concerning a senior officer of the government, albeit one unelected, was the only thing of significance.
Zimmermann remembered another answerphone, years before, and the message that his wife had died in hospital coming hesitantly from it in an official voice. It had been late, he had been dog-tired, ready for bed, knowing he should not avoid the private room for another night and day where she was slowly, certainly dying — and then there had been the message. The pain and the guilt had been equal and immediate. The guilt had remained while the pain eased during the months after the funeral.
Now, this message was meaningless. Sufficient only to raise a small anger. It was also a rope that tied him to a chair, immobilising him. He would be unable to assist Massinger and Aubrey now, he realised that.
Someone had killed Schröder; someone had burgled his flat. KGB, or KGB-linked— had to be. They were worried, and it wasn't Aubrey they wished to protect. It had to be Babbington.
Where was Aubrey? his thoughts demanded as he switched off the voice that had now become unctuous and only served to remind him of his guilt at the lonely death of his wife — the coma she was in did not excuse him, the fact that she would not have spoken, would not have recognised, not even known him…
Where was Aubrey? If he could talk to Aubrey, he might still be able to help.
Otherwise — nothing.
* * *
"I went into the Russian Sector of Berlin to meet Clara's husband," Aubrey was saying. "Karl Elsenreith, formerly of the SS — Amt VI, to be exact, the department concerned with foreign intelligence under Schellenberg — and now working for new masters. The Russians. For a department of the NKVD." Aubrey studied his audience for a moment, then continued to recite his narrative towards the high ceiling and the long-chained chandelier. "Karl Elsenreith dared not return to the Allied Zone, or to the West. He was a native Berliner and his part of Berlin, or what remained of it, was occupied by the Russians. As for his wife, I am sure he thought it an inconvenience that they had become separated — but he had found consolation for his loss elsewhere."
"The Russians trusted him?" Massinger asked.
"They used him. They appreciated his talents. He had a comfortable flat, a mistress, an income, and an immunity from his former life and associates. In fact, his only problem was that some of those less savoury old friends, senior officers, kameraden, popped up now and again, asking for help. Money, papers, passage out of the Russian Sector, the Russian Zone of Germany. What could he do? He could never be certain the organisation might not destroy him. if he refused… so, he began to help. On my — final visit to the Russian Sector, I went at his request."
Aubrey paused and Massinger, after looking at Margaret, asked: "Why?"
Margaret flinched. She had half-turned in her chair, away from Aubrey. She seemed sunk in some private world of her own.
"He had heard of my — association with Clara. Evidently, he still cared something for her… or so I thought when I received his message. He promised me — certain valuable information if I guaranteed I would do everything in my power to help her, look after her. But he could not, dare not come out — so I crossed into the Russian Sector."
"And—?"
"It was a trick. I was blinded by the chance of success, and by the nobility I envisaged for myself making promises about my mistress to her Nazi husband!" Aubrey was mocking himself. Then he added: "Elsenreith was a charming, attractive, poisonous young man. I saw why Clara had been attracted to him, even though he no longer wore that obscene and glamorous uniform — and then I saw why he had really asked me to come. I was becoming too much of a nuisance to the Russians in matters of intelligence. They wanted me removed from the board — once I had given them all the names in my head, of course."
"But you escaped?"
"I did."
"How?"
"With help. People who helped me because they could not afford to see me broken. My people. It was during one of my transfers from prison to their headquarters — Elsenreith's office, to be exact. The car was ambushed and I was smuggled away from the scene and back into the Allied Sector."
"And that's it?" Massinger asked. "All of it?"
Aubrey shook his head softly, but Margaret caught the gesture.
"What else is there?" she challenged.
"My dear — there is no easy way to tell you this. The information that Elsenreith gave me — that he had promised me as a lure and supplied out of amusement because it was intended I should never be free to use it — was the name of the man in the Allied Sector into whose care and protection he consigned those kameraden who periodically embarrassed him by appearing with demands for help."
Hatred was clear on Margaret's face. "And—? And—?"
"My dear, it was your father…"
"No!" she wailed, and yet Massinger knew that, hearing it from Aubrey, she had immediately begun to believe it. Believing him to be her father's murderer, she had also in her own mind to believe all he confessed.
"How could he?" Margaret sobbed, but she wished only to hear of opportunity, not motive.
"It was easy for him, my dear. He was in command of so much valuable paperwork. New identities were easy."
"Then why?"
"Because he was a soul in torment," Aubrey announced. The words, the compassion with which they were said, stunned Massinger. "A soul in the most grievous torment."
"Oh God," Margaret sighed lifelessly.
"And?" Massinger pressed.
"I killed him."
The words hung in the still, w
arm air of the room, followed by a silence that seemed endless, inescapable. Massinger thought they would remain forever at this exact stage of emotion and knowledge. He could not see ahead, or see beyond.
Eventually, Margaret said in a stilted, dull voice: "You are his murderer, then?"
Aubrey nodded gravely. "In the struggle, it was the pressure of my finger that squeezed the trigger of his gun. Yes, my dear, I am guilty of your father's death."
Margaret seemed spent. She neither moved nor spoke in reply. Her face was turned into the armchair, her legs ungainly spread out, her feet turned awkwardly, as if she had been thrown into the chair. One shoe was half off her foot. She might have been a costume dummy rejected by a fashionable shop.
Massinger cleared his throat and said, "What hold could they have had over him, Kenneth? How could they make him do it?"
Aubrey spread his hands. "Quite easily," he said. "What he confessed to me, I believed. He had known many prominent German diplomats and soldiers and civil servants before the war. Many of them became his friends, as they did of many Englishmen of his class in the 'thirties — our age of innocence. At Cliveden, in London — parties, operas, shows, brothels, hunts, shoots… the same faces. Hopeful, confident, blond young men. Castleford admired, imitated, sympathised. Oh, I don't think he did much more than many others. Certainly, there is no suggestion that he was false once war was declared, even though he thought it lunacy on behalf of Poland, and further and greater madness when we allied ourselves with barbarian Russia in '41."
"But, before…?"
Aubrey waved his hand for Massinger to desist. "I think only indiscretions, loose talk — no secrets. No more than a friend at court, so to speak."
"So — what hook did they have in him in 1946?"
"A generous gesture. An old friend, one of the blond young men from Cliveden and all the other country houses and the brothels, appeared. He recognised Castleford in the street. He'd been skulking about the city for weeks, a hunted man… you can hear it pouring out, I imagine?" Massinger nodded. "Castleford helped him with a set of forged identity papers which described him as a Pole — a former POW, now a displaced person. The man got away. And sent his friends, one after the other. An endless queue, all wanting new papers, new identities. You see, we'd been catching a lot of the smaller fry whose papers were second-rate and poorly produced. They needed other outlets, fresh supplies. English papers, duly signed by Castleford and people he controlled who were not in the know. Elsenreith sent people, too. Probably, he sent people like himself, SS now working for the Russians. I had to plug the leak, close up the hole. I don't know whether or not the first young man who approached Castleford — he'd whored with him, shot with him, ridden with him, got drunk with him, I heard all this from Castleford — was genuine or a trap. He served the purpose of a trap, anyway."
"And so it went on?"
"For almost a year. Long before I got to Berlin. I didn't know why Castleford disliked me so much from the outset. I think now he was afraid of me. Clara — our involvement with her — was a blind-alley. She explains nothing, except perhaps the chance Castleford saw of winning her over and using her to keep a check on me. It never reached that stage."
"What happened — at the end?" Massinger breathed. He saw Margaret become immediately alert. The room was already becoming dark beneath the late afternoon's leaden sky. The windows rattled slightly in the gusts of wind. Yet he could quite clearly see her shoulders tense, her head become more upright.
"A struggle for the gun. I had listened to him for what seemed like hours. I had come to charge him, arrest him. Even when I saw the gun, I imagined his suicide, so desperate and tormented did he seem. Instead, he intended to kill me. We struggled, and he was killed. He died almost at once. It took me many hours, almost until daylight, to hide the body in a cellar and bring about the collapse of enough remaining masonry to effectively bury him. That is what happened. I have, if you wish to see it, a fuller written record which Clara has kept for me for almost forty years. I came here, desperate to destroy it." He looked directly at Margaret. She was watching him like a creature prepared to spring. "Now, you may have it, if you wish. It is yours by right, I almost think…"
Margaret lunged out of her chair, her loose shoe almost tripping her. She stood in front of Aubrey, fists clenched, her whole body quivering, shoulders hunched towards him. Her small frame threatened him. Aubrey sat very still, his face tired but still wearing the sadly-wise, apologetic expression it had worn during much of his narrative. It seemed to defeat any physical intention on her part. Instead, she scrabbled her missing shoe onto her foot and immediately plunged towards the doors as if escaping a fire.
Massinger stood up. "Margaret—!"
She slammed the doors violently behind her. Massinger made as if to follow her, limping suddenly from the renewed ache in his hip.
"Paul!" Aubrey warned. "Paul — not yet. Let her have a little time to herself."
Massinger was halfway to the doors, alert for the noises of Margaret's retreat, then his shoulders slumped and he turned towards Aubrey.
"You're right," he admitted. "I wouldn't know what to say to her. You're right…"
* * *
"The Elsenreith woman's gone out — there's only a maid in the place, apart from our friends."
"We can't involve the maid or her mistress, Wilkes — not at this stage. They're Austrian citizens. You're certain all three of them are there? Aubrey himself is there?"
"All three."
"Then you'd better get on with it. Take them to the house. Keep them there until I arrive."
"Very good."
"Be careful with the maid. And with your cover story. For the moment, the Massingers are only being detained in connection with their attempts to aid and abet Aubrey. Nothing more than that. Whatever they think or say to the contrary, that's your story."
"Understood. When will you be here?"
"Tomorrow — I have a number of important committees and appointments. Just hold them until I arrive."
"Very good."
* * *
She was dazed by her misery and by the betrayal she felt taking place within herself; parts of her mind — memory, thought, feeling, intuition, guilt — were already siding with Aubrey, accepting the terrible, haunted figure her father had become at the end. She had begun accepting the struggle with the gun, the intention to murder that Aubrey had recognised almost too late…
She struggled into her coat, dropped her handbag in the hall, gathered it up and clutched it against her, fumbling with her buttons. She pushed against the door, then remembered to pull the latch. The darkening air outside was chilly, empty. She went out into the courtyard. The fountain sprayed out almost horizontally in a gust of wind, the green plants looked dead as their leaves moved stiffly. The cold wind buffeted her, as if attempting to force her back into the house. She had seen the bodies rolled into the mass grave filled with lime on the grainy newsreel as Aubrey was speaking, the bulldozer's blade shovelling at the white, stick-like limbs and the lolling skull-like faces. The awful striped pyjamas and the Stars of David…
Now, the image would not leave her. She had seen it first as a child, part of a documentary history of the war on television. Now, it had become personal, attached to her like a leech or a disease. She could not rid herself of it. Her father did not deserve the image, not now that she knew the whole and exact truth, but everything to do with him was horrible, awful, foul…
She scuttled beneath the archway into the Stephansplatz. The cathedral's bulk was grim and sooty in the dark air, its darkness heightened by the street-lamps. Horrible. A soul in torment. Even the man who had gone to arrest him, who had killed him, had said that. Everything lost — he had lost everything — helping them — !
The voices of relatives pursued her across the Stephansplatz. Aunts and uncles, grandparents — even her grandmother on her mother's side — especially her, because her father had been anti-Semitic, that much she knew. He had ad
mired the Nazis, befriended them — yes, she knew that, too. In the 'thirties, he had not been like many other brilliant young men — he had eschewed Communism from the beginning of his student days.
The voices clashed and reiterated in her head, and her shoulders and head ducked as if to avoid the missile-voices in the dark windy air just above her. Hurrying across the square in the beginnings of the rush-hour, she looked old, weak, and pursued by an invisible cloud of stinging insects.
The hardest knowledge of all was to know that he had been destroyed long before he was killed. That knowledge erased, cancelled out, expunged all other images of him, all his earlier manifestations. He was no longer the man she remembered, the man her mother.had gone mad through loss of… the man smiling into the camera and the sun or coming through the dappled light beneath the apple trees towards her childish swing…
Up, up — further, further — push harder, harder…
Their joined laughter on the summer air. Her dress flying up in the breeze of her upswing, obscuring the view of the Downs, his hands catching at the seat of the swing lightly, then pushing strongly — catching the ropes of the swing at last, when she was giddy and almost frightened — catching her in his arms…
He was gone, that father. It was darker here, and musty rather than fresh. The air was still… All those fathers were gone.
Destroyed. Robert Castleford had disintegrated.
Still, musty air. The reflected glow of street-lamps through high windows. Patterned windows. High, unearthly voices, as from the distant end of a tall tunnel.
She shook her head. More images of distress. She went on shaking her head, twisting her body as if she were held powerfully from behind. She was trying to escape the truth, deny it—
Because she believed!
She believed Aubrey. He had confessed to her father's murder. The rest of it, too, was the truth. Truth from an old man. She knew it was true. Just as she knew her father had been to Cliveden, had travelled and stayed with influential friends in Germany in 1937 — she had seen the snapshots; dead boars, wooden hunting lodges, feathered green hats and leather shorts or green plus-fours — black uniforms, too… her father had been laughing in almost every picture… her maternal grandmother had been half-Jewish and now she understood the old, old woman's suspicions of her son-in-law.
