Nightfall Berlin

by Jack Grimwood

  Frau Eisen reached for the study telephone and hesitated.

  Shrugging, she pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, wrapped it around her hand, and lifted the receiver, dialling through to her office. It was the Stasi rather than the local Volkspolizei she called. Amelia’s German was good enough to understand that. Frau Eisen was talking to her boss from the sound of it.

  ‘No point, sir,’ Frau Eisen said.

  Someone on the other end spoke firmly.

  ‘Of course, sir. I should have thought of that.’ Putting down the phone, she turned to Amelia. ‘I am to tell you that your father has had a heart attack.’

  ‘He’s what!’ Amelia stared at her.

  ‘He has had a heart attack. An ambulance will be here soon to take him to hospital. We will put a notice to that effect in the papers.’

  ‘He’s been murdered.’

  ‘It would be best if we agreed he’s ill.’

  ‘Best for whom?’

  ‘For everyone,’ Frau Eisen said firmly.

  Amelia shut her eyes and opened them again.

  Her father looked old and fragile, his cheeks sunken, his hands as liver-spotted as his face. His nose had spider veins and his eyes were cloudy. He stank of old age as well as death. She wondered what he’d hoped to gain by uprooting everybody’s life at this age.

  Somehow, she’d expected him to be younger.

  If she’d thought of him at all, it was as the age he’d been when he defected. Still handsome, his hair still thick and swept back, his face strong and without jowls. That was how he looked in the photograph the papers used. It was how he’d look in the photograph they’d use when they came to write …

  ‘We must go,’ Frau Eisen said.

  ‘I’ll just …’

  Frau Eisen shook her head. ‘This a crime scene.’

  For a heart attack, Amelia wanted to say. She controlled herself.

  25

  Antoine le Clerc was on the ninth day of a six-day package holiday, which was three days longer than he could afford. And it wasn’t really a holiday anyway. Travelling as a tourist had been easier than admitting he was a photojournalist and trying to wrangle a work visa. He’d thought that extending his stay would be cheap, East Berlin being communist and all, but the rate of exchange was murderous, and he lacked the nerve to use the black market, even though he’d smuggled in $100 for that very purpose.

  In his rucksack he carried a worthy-looking paperback on Plattenbau, the East German system of constructing apartments from concrete slabs. The cameras in his bag were not those for photographing buildings, however.

  His 35mm Leica, with its red dot painted out, was his go-anywhere/pass-unnoticed item of choice. He had a Nikon SLR too, although he’d had to leave his fuck-off telephoto at home. He’d fitted it with an innocuous 35–105mm Nikkor, stacked up on thirty-six-exp fine-grain, and trusted to good light, God and his developer. The camera he wore in public was a 35mm Praktica.

  Nothing should be read into that. He’d bought it secondhand because it was East German and he hoped it would give him a talking point if stopped by the Volkspolizei. So far he’d been lucky.

  His fear was that this wouldn’t last.

  Four days ago his Stasi shadow didn’t turn up until lunchtime.

  The day after that, after Antoine bought himself a Lenin badge and a biography in English of Premier Honecker, and spent the entire afternoon in a café, religiously reading the biography, this shadow hadn’t bothered to show up at all. Antoine imagined he was at home, filling out fake reports that read took photographs, took photographs, took photographs, boring, boring, boring …

  So now Antoine was eleven floors up, in a poky little Plattenbau flat overlooking Nikolaiviertel. The flat had been assigned to the grandmother of the receptionist from his hotel. The bed behind him was a ruin of stained sheets, the sink stacked with dirty crockery, the grandmother with her brother in the country, and the girl dressed and safely back at the hotel for her afternoon shift.

  When three women, the last of them a famously reclusive East German gymnast he’d only just seen rush in, exited Sir Cecil’s apartment beside stretcher-bearers, Antoine realized his luck had changed. The man on the stretcher wore an oxygen mask and had a surgical cap tied under his chin.

  The little party stopped at the rear doors of an ambulance, and Antoine made himself slow the shots down. The gymnast’s face was in ruins. Mascara streaking her cheeks and her mouth twisted in despair.

  Syndication rights.

  He could buy himself a new car with what that shot would earn.

  Antoine had come to Berlin to get pap shots of Sir Cecil. His best hope had been to capture the traitor with his daughter, preferably leaving for the airport.

  Now …

  Taking a final shot as the ambulance pulled away, with a police car in front and another behind, Antoine wound back his film, flipped open the camera and removed the canister, loading new film from habit.

  Looking up, he saw a second stretcher.

  There were no paramedics this time, no police, no flashing lights and no oxygen mask. Simply an arm dangling over the side, and a sheet drawn up to indicate he was dead. No ambulance, either. Two men stashed him in a baker’s van. By then, Antoine had fired off all thirty-six frames and was reloading. All he needed now was to get himself out of East bloody Berlin.

  Buy himself a car? He’d be able to afford a house.

  Antoine didn’t simply have the shots this time. He had the story, and a big one.

  26

  The first thing that Tom did on returning from Sir Cecil’s was order himself a bottle of Riesling. He made sure the receptionist understood he wanted it well chilled. And then, his wine having been delivered to his room at the Palasthotel, he removed the bottle from its bucket and pushed his fist into the ice.

  After dealing with his burnt hand, he washed down four paracetamol, demolished three handfuls of peanuts, and sat back to think through what he’d just found. Sir Cecil and Evgeny dead and no sign of Frederika.

  He’d looked, fearing that he’d find her murdered too.

  But the flat was a ruin, Frederika nowhere to be found, and Sir Cecil’s memoir in flames in the fireplace. He’d no sooner finished looking for her than the buzzer announced visitors at the main door. The two women he’d seen on his way out, mostly likely.

  Sir Cecil’s being threatened. We need to meet – Frederika.

  That was the note that had drawn Tom there. Had she fled? Had she been taken? He doubted she’d been killed. At least, not there. And if she had, it was cleanly and her body had been removed.

  That’s what a professional might have done.

  Neither Sir Cecil’s nor Evgeny’s murder had looked professional though. Tom wondered whether either of the women at the door had got a good look at him. With luck they hadn’t and he’d taken care, both coming and going, to check that he wasn’t being followed. As much as anyone, even someone with his background, could be entirely certain of that in a place like East Berlin.

  Pouring himself a glass of the Riesling, Tom began to examine the scrap he’d dragged from the fireplace in Sir Cecil’s flat. The half-page was singed and blackened, its words single-spaced and typed on a manual. There was no smudging on the rear to suggest the person typing used carbon paper.

  Appendix 13: The Importance of being Lady Windermere by Messrs Blackburn & Wakefield. It appeared to be a cast list.

  Uncle Max – Freddie Brannon

  Violet – James Foley

  Aunt Agatha – Robby Croft

  Philodendron – Cecil Blackburn

  Flo – Anthony Willes-Wakefield

  Little Peter – Henry Petty

  Tom recognized Sir Cecil’s name, obviously. Willes-Wakefield, he’d been a society doctor who disappeared, no one knew where. Henry Petty’s Hamlet at the National was famous. As for Lord Brannon, anyone over a certain age remembered the outrage that greeted his murder. Photographs of his grandchildren walking behind his coffi
n had been everywhere. As had a shot of splinters of dinghy floating on the lake.

  It should have been obvious they’d know each other. Men of that background invariably did. If this was the standard of the rest of his memoirs they hardly seemed worth burning. Never mind killing their author with a crowbar.

  Blinded – saw something he shouldn’t. Tongue cut out – said something he shouldn’t. Ears removed – heard something he shouldn’t. Hands off – took something he shouldn’t. Bollocks gone – that one was obvious. Staving in someone’s chest with a crowbar didn’t suggest a message.

  It suggested panic or fury.

  Perhaps both.

  And there was Evgeny. Soviet ex-Para. Built like a brick shithouse and too young to have run to fat. Tom could have taken him, maybe. He wouldn’t have looked forward to it though. There were only two ways to get a ligature round someone like Evgeny’s neck: have unusual speed and skills, or have him trust you. So … one of Evgeny’s own? KGB? Possibly Stasi?

  Tom tried to remember more about the two women entering Sir Cecil’s building. One definitely wore Stasi uniform, the other had flowery boots. If he could remember that much, chances were they’d remember something about him.

  That thought didn’t make Tom feel any better.

  Who gained from Sir Cecil’s death? Who lost? That was the question he needed to answer. Did the GDR gain in not losing a famous defector? Did they lose in not ridding themselves cleanly of someone they might want off their hands? They’d been at pains to say they respected Sir Cecil’s decision. That could be a bluff, of course. How about the Brits? Did London want to save itself the embarrassment of putting him on trial?

  Much simpler to refuse to let him return.

  And Eddington, Tom’s father-in-law, had seemed entirely genuine in his desire that Tom should change Sir Cecil’s mind about not leaving. He’d need to call Eddington later. That would be a fun conversation. Assuming Tom could find a way to word it to give Eddington the bad news without making it obvious to the Stasi that Tom already knew.

  Could Sir Cecil’s family have been behind it?

  Revenge for his desertion, distaste at the thought of his return, greed in not wanting to share any wealth he’d left behind? All possible, but who would they have found to kill him for them? Far easier to express disgust and simply disown the man. If not Sir Cecil’s family, how about his friends?

  Three police investigations into Patroclus might be hard to fix, but not impossible. A lot could turn on the strictures put on the enquiries. What if Patroclus still existed? Well-connected, far-reaching, spider-like …

  Sir Cecil had been careful to mention the name in his letter to The Times. What if Sir Cecil’s old friends weren’t keen to see him return?

  It took reception several minutes to connect him.

  ‘How are the party preparations going?’ Eddington asked. ‘Any closer to arranging transport for our guest?’

  For a second, Tom almost told the truth, but it was an open line and telling Eddington what he knew would be telling the Stasi that he knew it too. He wasn’t here in any official capacity. It felt too big a risk to take.

  ‘I’m working on it.’

  ‘I knew we could rely on you. Anything I can do?’

  ‘Do you know if all the guests want everyone to come?’

  Tom listened to the silence as Eddington tried to unpick that. ‘You mean,’ Caro’s father said, ‘might some not like the latest invitation?’

  ‘Slightly stronger than that.’

  ‘Ah. Might some of them object to there being a party at all?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tom said. ‘That’s it exactly.’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Eddington said. ‘Shall I ask around?’

  ‘Keep it discreet,’ Tom said. He took a deep breath, wondering how close he dared come to the truth. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It’s possible they may get their wish. The party may need …’

  ‘Postponing?’

  ‘Cancelling even.’

  ‘Dear gods, Tom …’

  ‘I’m going to call Caro now.’

  ‘She’s out.’

  Tom wanted to ask how Eddington knew that.

  ‘What time’s she back?’ he asked.

  Caro’s father hesitated. He knew that Tom had noted the slight hesitation because his answer was altogether too abrupt. ‘No idea, I’m afraid.’

  When Tom returned from taking a shower, his bedside telephone was ringing. ‘Caro?’ he said.

  ‘This is Henderson. Where have you been?’

  ‘Having a shower.’

  ‘You’ve seen the news?’

  ‘What news?’

  ‘Sir Cecil’s had a heart attack.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘It’s just been reported on GDR TV. His daughter flew in to bring him home and found him on the floor. Apparently, she’s in hospital, sedated. So they’re saying.’

  Fuck, Tom thought. Flowery boots.

  ‘His daughter?’

  ‘I know. When did you last see him?’

  It was a day for lying. ‘The night he told me he’d changed his mind. I’ve been trying to fix a meeting ever since. With Frederika saying tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow …’

  ‘We’ve asked the GDR for an update.’

  ‘I should get back to West Berlin.’

  ‘Good idea,’ Henderson said. ‘No … Wait.’

  Tom could hear the words, Yes, I’m sure, down the line. ‘We’ve just heard Amelia Blackburn’s been released. They’ve put her in a car back to the Palasthotel. Perhaps it’s worth your trying to have a word with her.’

  And if she recognizes me?

  ‘Look,’ Tom said. ‘Her father’s just,’ he caught himself, ‘had a heart attack. I doubt she’ll be hanging round the bar.’

  ‘I’d be in the bar if I’d found my father like that.’

  And so would I, Tom thought, celebrating probably.

  ‘Go see,’ Henderson said. ‘Find out if he told her anything about his memoirs.’

  Tom thought of the pile of ash in the fireplace. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll go down now.’ He said it more to get Henderson off the phone than from any belief Amelia Blackburn might show up.

  ‘Let me know if you discover anything.’

  ‘Will do,’ Tom said.

  ‘It can wait until tomorrow.’

  In other words, don’t for God’s sake say anything over the phone with a tape spinning and a Stasi clerk standing by to translate it, type it up and pass it on to her boss the moment the call’s done. Which was exactly what would happen with the conversation they’d just had. Henderson had mentioned Blackburn’s memoirs. Tom wondered if that was intentional and decided it must be. He spent the rest of his way downstairs wondering why.

  27

  The moment Tom settled into a banquette in a darkened corner of the Palasthotel’s main bar, a pretty blonde girl slid herself on to the red velvet bench beside him. She was wearing an evening dress cut to show her breasts and a smile so knowing it looked practised. Her English was good though.

  ‘Aren’t you going to buy me a drink?’

  Tom put his hand on her knee, slid it a few inches higher and felt her freeze. Her smile relaxed itself a few moments later. She leant in close and let her dress fall away. Her nipples were sharp and he could see to her navel.

  ‘You see those two over there?’ Tom said.

  She looked towards the table he indicated.

  ‘They’re Australian. They were talking last night about how easy it is to make a profit out of you lot because you don’t really know how the market works. They’re signing a big contract soon. Apparently the price you quoted them is ridiculously cheap. They’d have been willing to pay fifty per cent more.’

  The young woman looked at him.

  Tom shrugged apologetically. He felt sorry for her and that didn’t make him like himself any better. Either she was a prostitute, and that was a hard way to earn a living, or she was Stasi, and he wasn’t sure that wasn
’t worse. Especially if her orders involved following the deception through to the end.

  ‘Australians are richer too,’ Tom added.

  Just in case she really was a working girl.

  After she’d gone, he ordered himself a Glenfiddich and a small jug of tap water, tipping a splash of it into his whisky glass as he watched her settle beside the two Australians. One of the men suggested they swap places. After which she sat between them.

  Stasi, Tom decided.

  She was trying much harder than she had with him.

  That was good. Very good. It meant the Stasi hadn’t nailed him as the man coming out of Sir Cecil’s flat when Sir Cecil’s daughter was waiting to go in. If they had … it wouldn’t be a girl in a bar they sent across. It would be police, armed and unforgiving. And he’d be heading for a court where the verdict had probably been decided in advance. Tom tried to remember if East Germany had the death penalty. He had a nasty feeling they probably did.

  28

  ‘I think you should see this, sir.’

  Henderson’s assistant put the copy of Le Monde on his desk.

  A huge photograph on the front page showed Amelia Blackburn, face stricken and eyes haunted. A stern-faced Stasi woman stood opposite. Underneath were smaller photographs. Two of stretchers. The man with the oxygen mask must be Sir Cecil. The other undoubtedly his minder.

  Henderson chewed his lip. Some heart attack.

  ‘Go,’ he told her.

  His assistant went.

  An ambulance stood in the shadow of a huge bronze of St George killing the dragon, and in the shadow of St George’s horse, his hands pushed into his pockets, stood Tom Fox. ‘Oh fuck,’ Henderson said.

  He peered at the shapes on the stretchers. The oxygen mask over Sir Cecil’s face was obviously supposed to make people believe he was alive. Maybe he was alive? Henderson’s moment of hope faded as he re-examined the minder’s stretcher. Blackburn carried out following a heart attack, while simultaneously and entirely coincidentally, his minder’s dead body disappears into a baker’s van?