Berlin Blind

by Alan Scholefield

  ‘Do we take him?’ Inge whispered.

  ‘Until we reach the car,’ Bruno said.

  They got into the boat, Muller cast off and lowered the propeller into the water. He touched the engine covering. ‘She’s still warm,’ he said.

  Bruno and Inge crouched down, but Spencer collapsed on to the deck planking.

  Muller started the engine. It fired first time with an enormous roar. He swung the boat into the channel that led to the lake. Then the mist was broken by an incandescent light. As they raced towards open water, they saw the police launch Biber. Its searchlight punched through the mist like a laser.

  ‘Halt!’ a voice shouted.

  The cruiser was gaining momentum. There was a gap between the Biber and the reeds and Muller aimed her bow at it and at the same time he opened the throttle wide. The boat shot forward. Other lights appeared on the Biber's deck. In the mist they looked like sparklets. Then there was firing. Muller took the first burst in the chest and fell over the engine. He grasped the tiller, trying to keep himself upright. The boat swung wildly, first one way, and then, as he struggled, the other. The bow ripped into the reeds and the boat was still. Water was pouring in where the hull had been holed.

  Inge leapt ashore. The firing continued. She stumbled, crashing through the reeds. There was another burst. Pieces of splintered reeds shot up into the air as the bullets cut into the thick bed. She screamed and fell, got up, fell again, and then there was silence.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ Bruno shouted.

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘I have the Englishman Spencer.’ He turned to Spencer. ‘Get up! Get up!’ Spencer pulled himself to his feet and stood swaying. ‘If you shoot now,’ Bruno shouted, ‘you will kill him.’

  The boat was held by reeds and they were able to step ashore. The water was up to their knees. ‘Move!’ Bruno said, encircling Spencer’s neck with his left arm.

  They went forward into the reed bed. The water that had seeped into his clothes when the boat was holed, and the shock of the cold water on his legs helped to revive him. They went through the reeds like Siamese twins, the umbilicus of Bruno’s arm joining them.

  Spencer could hear voices, some from where the Biber had been and others, obviously the police, coming down from the house to the water’s edge. But they had moved some distance and the mist was thick. The police were making so much noise themselves that no one could hear them.

  There was a shout of triumph well to their rear and Spencer thought they must have found Muller’s body. They came to the tall barbed-wire fence that ran down into the water and turned inland to follow it, leaving the reeds behind. The underbrush was still thick and Spencer realized they were making for the fallen tree. If Bruno got over the fence into the forest the police would need dogs to find him, and he doubted they had brought dogs. Which meant that once over the fence Bruno might be safe and once he felt safe Spencer knew that his own life would be over. He knew Bruno would not shoot him because the noise of the shot would reveal his presence. He would probably use the gun like a club and smash in his skull as he had smashed in the skull of Mrs Mentzel. Then anger returned, saving him from fear.

  They came to the tree and he knew that this was where Bruno was going to kill him. They would have to clamber over separately. Bruno would have to release him. Looking at it from Bruno’s viewpoint, anything could happen. Spencer might make a run for it; he, Bruno, might slip and the noise of the gun would be a liability. Spencer was facing the fallen tree when he felt the constriction of Bruno’s arm slacken. He put his foot against the trunk and pushed as hard as he could. His body flew back into Bruno’s, knocking him to the ground.

  ‘Here!’ Spencer shouted. ‘Here! Over here!’

  He began to run, still shouting. Bruno fired from less than thirty feet. The heavy bullet caught Spencer in the left shoulder, spinning him round and knocking him to the ground.

  Bruno fired again but Spencer had fallen among the trailing branches of the tree and the bullet was deflected. It was a big beech with a number of large branches, some of which had broken in the fall. Spencer pulled himself in, burrowing among them like a wounded animal. Bruno fired again. Bark flew from a branch in front of Spencer’s face.

  ‘Here!’ he shouted again, ‘Here!’

  He caught a glimpse of Bruno’s face only feet away. He was sweating, his eyes seemed mad. There was one major branch as thick as a man’s waist behind which Spencer had taken refuge. Now, as Bruno moved towards him, he tried to penetrate even further among the branches, but they formed a lattice-work, a screen through which he could not push. He stared at Bruno, hypnotized by the effort it was costing the fat man. He was groaning and grunting and dragging himself along on his elbows, his need to kill Spencer overwhelming everything else.

  Spencer searched desperately for something with which to defend himself. Suddenly it was like being in the cellar again after the bombing of Berlin. He could not move and the wolf was coming for him. His hand closed on a stone as it had closed then on a piece of rubble. Bruno had reached the large branch and was pulling himself into a kneeling position. He held the gun in both hands, resting it on a branch. Spencer was unable to draw back his arm far enough for a proper throw. He flicked the stone. It hit Bruno on the cheek, but not hard enough to injure. Bruno brushed at it with his hand then bent carefully to take aim again. There was something implacable, remorseless, in the way he slowly brought down the gun barrel. There was a noise behind him and, abruptly, he began to move backwards. Someone had grabbed him by the ankles and was pulling him bodily from the tree. There was a sound of threshing, of branches breaking and of blows, and then silence.

  By the time they had helped Spencer out, Bruno wras standing handcuffed to two policemen, his head bowed, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

  There were eight or ten plain-clothes men, some with handguns and one or two with sub-machine guns. In the centre of the group Spencer recognized a Tyrolean hat with a large pheasant’s feather on one side. Underneath it was the baggy-eyed face of Chief Superintendent Karl Hoest.

  ‘Good day, Herr Spencer,’ he said, and then he saw the blood on Spencer’s coat. ‘It it bad?’

  ‘I don’t know. It’s numb.’

  ‘Come, we must get you to a doctor.’

  He said something quickly in German and one of the officers took Spencer’s arm and they moved down towards the lake. He turned to look at Bruno but the fat man was staring down at the ground.

  The Biber had come into the turning circle and was at the small jetty.

  ‘How did you know?’ Spencer said.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘All this.’

  Hoest smiled wearily. ‘You found out for us.’

  Hoest and Spencer and the officer helping Spencer led the little group down the slope. A plain-clothes man came running up, his trousers wet to the thighs. ‘We have found the woman,* he said. ‘She’s dead.’

  Hoest said, ‘That makes everybody.’

  As he said it a figure rose from the reeds in front of them. At first in the mist Spencer thought it was another plain-clothes policeman and then he saw it was Lilo. She was holding a gun in both hands and was aiming at his chest. He stopped. Terror gripped him. He opened his mouth to shout: ‘Why?’ and then she fired.

  He heard a cry behind him. He began to turn. As he did so one of the plain-clothes men returned the fire. Lilo seemed to jerk backwards as if on a string and lay on her back in the reeds. Bruno would also have fallen but he was held up by the handcuffs. She had shot him near the mouth and had blown away a portion of the back of his head.

  *

  They were in an ambulance on the autobahn to Berlin. Lilo lay on the bunk on one side. A doctor was giving her blood. Hoest and Spencer sat on the opposite side near the rear doors. Spencer was still suffering from the blow to the head. ‘You used her,’ he said. It was the second time he had made the accusation.

  ‘I won’t deny it,’ Hoest said. ‘But she used us,
too.’

  ‘You sent her to London. You sent her to meet me. All this shit about being a journalist - ’

  ‘That was true. She had been a journalist once.’

  ‘You knew she was with me all the time. You knew exactly what I was doing every minute.’ He thought of the lunch-time lovers in the Beetle. He thought of Lilo and himself in bed together. Had they known of that, too?

  ‘That is what we hoped. But you did not cooperate with us and later she did not cooperate with us.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘We followed you ourselves.’

  ‘You used me as the stalking horse. But it went wrong, didn’t it?’

  ‘Only when Lilo played her own game. I became suspicious. Right at the end. Yesterday. So we began to follow both of you.’ Spencer recalled the telephone call in Lilo’s apartment. It must have been one of Hoest’s men checking on her.

  Hoest nodded. ‘We know now she went to the hotel after you had left. The porter gave her the address he had found for you.’

  ‘I thought she was one of them,’ Spencer said, his mind still on the house.

  ‘She didn’t report in as we had planned,’ Hoest said. ‘Two or three times we had no idea where she was. That was when I began to have suspicions.’

  Lilo groaned and the doctor bent over her again. ‘I thought...’ Spencer began, and then he paused. ‘I don’t know what I thought.’

  ‘Did you think she liked you? More than that?’

  ‘I had no right to.’

  ‘It’s easy to make a mistake.’

  ‘It wasn’t a mistake! You don’t know. I went to her apartment. I saw her child. What will become of him?’

  ‘Don’t worry, we’ll look after him. He’s with his grandmother now.’

  ‘Peter,’ Spencer said. ‘That’s his name. Peter.’

  ‘Yes,’ Hoest said wearily. ‘I know.’

  Suddenly Spencer said sharply, ‘How could you let her get involved in this?’

  The doctor turned to them. ‘Please lower your voices!’

  ‘Didn’t I tell you?’ Hoest said.

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘She came to us. I have known the family for years. I knew her father. She offered to help. That’s why we sent her to London. It was her idea. We had a feeling even then that there were things you had not told us.’

  ‘But why? That’s what I don’t understand. Why?’

  ‘She is Riemeck’s widow.’

  ‘You mean the man — ? That Riemeck!’

  ‘That’s right, Herr Spencer. The policeman who was tortured and killed in your house. And did she never tell you about her father?’

  ‘A little. He was used as a hostage in a terrorist raid. And then they shot him.’

  ‘That is correct. But after he was killed the authorities released a group of terrorists they had in gaol. So his life went for nothing, you see. No one was punished. Just the opposite; people were freed. It is understandable that when her husband was killed she said to herself, perhaps it may happen again. Perhaps no one will be punished. Or if they are punished, it will mean a few years in gaol and then some other terrorist will release them. It was better, you see, to have him dead. That way she could make sure. You must understand that. It is what you tried to do yourself. You and Lilo were after the same man. She knew it, you did not.’

  Spencer held his head in his hands and after a moment he said dully, ‘I thought I was using her. But she was using me — and you were using us both.’

  ‘Don’t feel too badly. It worked. We have had a big success. The case is closed, yes?’

  Was there something behind the words, did Hoest know about him? What, Spencer wondered, would have happened if Hoest had not had his ‘big success’? Would he have exposed him? He found he no longer cared. His thoughts were on Lilo. He watched the doctor’s back as he bent over her, wondering what was happening, wondering if he should ask; but would he want to know the answer?

  The ambulance took them to a hospital in the centre of the city. They kept Spencer in Casualty and the last he saw of Lilo was on the stretcher being wheeled away towards the emergency theatre, a doctor hurrying beside her holding the drip.

  His own wound was less serious than they had thought. The bullet had passed through the muscle just under his shoulder. They patched him up, put his arm in a sling and said he could go. But he stayed in the hospital with Hoest. They sat in a corridor waiting for news. They sat for a long time without talking, for there was nothing to say now.

  A doctor finally came to them. He began to speak to Hoest.

  ‘How is she?’ Spencer said, breaking in.

  ‘It is too early to say. The bullet is against her spine.’

  Abruptly he blurted out, ‘I want her to get the best. I’ll pay. Don’t worry about the money.’

  They looked at him in distaste. The doctor said, ‘Our medical care here in Germany does not depend on what you can pay.’

  ‘Come,’ Hoest said, and put his hand on Spencer’s arm and led him away.

  They went out into the bitter evening. ‘What are you going to do?’ Hoest said.

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Go back home. Try and forget I know it is hard, but it is the best way.’ He held up a hand to call his car. We will drop you at your hotel.’

  Spencer shook his head and, without saying anything further, turned and walked away along the pavement. His arm was throbbing, and he was feeling the pain. In a strange way it seemed to clear the muddiness from his mind and also it was something he could share with Lilo.

  Before he had walked half a mile his thoughts were probing at the future. He had told Hoest he did not know what he was going to do. But he did know. He was going to wait. And every day he was going to visit the hospital. And he was going to her apartment. And he was going to find out where her mother lived. And he was going to see the child...

  He began to walk a little faster. He went round the Breit-scheidplatz in Budapesterstrasse. This was the way he had often walked in the past with Bruno. But the past was gone. He walked on, a pale-faced man with his arm in a sling, utterly alone in the early evening crowd.

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