by R. J. Dillon
‘You will be harassed, you will be unable to follow the trail,’ said Döbeln, plunging his hands back into his overcoat pockets. ‘That will lead to your arrest and create a difficult scenario for Berlin and London to resolve.’
‘What are the terms?’ he asked almost too dispirited to care.
‘In Cologne we have suffered also, as your Service has suffered in the past. From weakness, from poor morale, from betrayal also,’ began Döbeln and Nick was struck by the conciliatory tones that only come with rehearsal. ‘Our problem is heightened by the future, how we construct Germany’s new role. Allegiances with old enemies is easy to preach, but difficult to pay for. Your findings, your conclusions are to be shared with Berlin and Washington.’
‘No.’
‘This is not an offer, but a condition. Any cooperation we provide is non-attributable. You should go carefully.’
‘So you get more bargaining power for a say in which way Europe and Moscow cooperate?’ said Nick, shaking his head. ‘Of course Germany striking out, forming its own special relationship with the States or Moscow means Paris is going to be mightily upset.’
‘This is non-negotiable,’ Döbeln warned. ‘Requests should be made through Herr Balgrey. Now, if you will excuse me, I have other business.’ With a slight nod Döbeln set off down the walkway.
‘This is absurd, Jack, just too much.’ Nick threw off Balgrey’s arm, going after Döbeln. Filling the exit a policeman barred his way, one hand poised over his holster.
Out of breath, Balgrey landed at Nick’s side.
‘Have some sense, old son,’ he said pulling for air. ‘What’s the big problem with sharing all of a sudden? Don’t we have barter? Don’t we need friends any more?’
‘Mine are dead, Jack, what’s your excuse?’ said Nick in a fury. ‘You’re as bad as London now get off my back.’
‘And you’re the bloody saint aren’t you? You and your pious cause of doing what’s right. You share, you hear. There’s no failure in that for Christ’s sake.’
Two kids on skateboards came round a path at speed, saw the gathering and changed their minds about going onto the ice without even bothering to stop.
‘Who tipped them off, Jack?’ demanded Nick. ‘Who put Cologne on my tail?’
‘The Americans, who else, old son,’ said Balgrey. ‘London have been bleating for me to keep you on a short chain, but I thought I’d give you some distance, what with your wife being caught up in it.’
‘That’s very decent of you Jack.’
‘Look old son, once Downing Street turned our product gathering into a manic obsession with suicide bombers, Washington stepped in. Your not so good friend Mitchell Harney has been through Europe cutting deals faster than a rep chasing his Christmas bonus. Harney is Cologne’s new best friend. You know how he operates.’
Nick certainly did, and he knew that Harry Bransk was always seeking out avenues to exploit, a merchant who peddled information for pure profit.
‘Harney’s trying to have me run me out of town, that it Jack?’ said Nick, for the first time hearing the traffic; movement without shape, a constant stream of mechanical groans hardly ever changing pitch.
‘Cologne are not stupid, they’re playing it both ways.’
‘Maybe I’ll just ignore their offer, sod London too, do it on my own.’
‘Let’s not push at the same button old son, we could end up with a lot of trouble.’
‘Can’t have trouble can we Jack?’
‘Not at my age, old son.’ Jack mulled over a point for a second or two, then ventured a question: ‘Know anyone called Sabine?’
‘Why?’
‘The name’s come up in a couple of conversations, all of ‘em connected to Harney.’
‘Never heard of it,’ said Nick.
‘No worries,’ said Balgrey, tucking in his scarf.
‘Just one thing, Jack?’ Nick asked ready to leave. ‘Are you going to play London’s game?’
‘That would be telling, old son, wouldn’t it.’
‘Secrets, Jack, they’ll be the death of you.’
‘Of us all, old son, of us all.’
But Nick never replied, on his way already stamping solemnly away, the snow gently starting to fall once more.
• • •
The Numa Theatre was not one of Hamburg’s most celebrated venues as it lay so far off the beaten track, in a part of the city Nick’s father would have described as bohemian; a refuge for anarchists and those groups of a similar persuasion who refused to swim in the mainstream. Beside double sheet steel doors, a man in his thirties was waist deep in the engine compartment of a clapped out bus.
‘This the Numa Theatre?’ Nick asked, taking shelter from the driving snow behind the propped bonnet.
Barely noticing Nick or the weather, the man grunted at a rounded nut, his spanner continually slipping off it. His faded military overalls were a bottle green, soaked by the snow. Dropping the spanner in the toolbox at his feet, the man straightened out. His head completely shaven held dozens of snowflakes in place of hair, and for a second before they dissolved gave him the pasty head of a clown.
‘What’s left of it,’ he said, wiping an oil streak off his nose with a frayed sleeve. ‘The place is dropping around us. No safety certificate, no performing licence, no one coming through the front door.’ He offered a chesty laugh. ‘We owe you money too?’ he demanded sharply.
Nick humbly shook his head. ‘You heard of Sabine?’
‘A weirdo. Who knows where she is. One day to the next, she’s making big plans. I don’t think she even knows herself what she wants to do. Go round the side to the blue door, up the steps, watch for the floor, down the corridor and ask for Anke. If anyone knows where that cuckoo is, she might.’
‘Thanks.’
But Nick received no reply. The man, back in the engine this time armed with a smaller spanner, set about the nut cursing it to the end of the world and back.
The blue door sagged forlornly on its hinges supported by a mop bucket. In a vehement Gothic burst someone had taken the trouble to write STAGE DOOR, and next to it a poster announced dates in different cities for the theatre group, though half of their forthcoming tour was already cancelled.
Inside, the stale air was full of sound that seeped down from above him, and from a radio playing far away Nick could just pick up Kasabian’s Club Foot. Tiny bulbs burned dimly and he could vaguely make out the last rung of an iron staircase. He climbed carefully the whole thing swaying under his feet, reaching a gallery propped across girders. The diamond grating lifted at each step, and he remembered the warning only after a section nearly tipped him over. At the end of a whitewashed brick corridor damp and cold, a backstage area built over the stage opened out; low and dim, veins of calcified wire tacked unevenly along the bricks. Half eaten by shadow, a woman in a brown fur coat had her back to him, doubled over a wicker basket tugging and cursing, straining at the task.
‘Anke?’
She sucked in a mouthful of air and spun round.
‘What’s it to you?’ she spat, pushing by him to yell down the corridor. ‘Emmerich, do you hear me you idle bastard? Emmerich, you’d better have that lighting gantry down and stored and start on these baskets. I’m not breaking my back for you. Emmerich, Emmerich, do you hear?’
A cloudy reply came from above or below and she shook her head in disgust. She was in her thirties with long auburn hair and a plain tired face, unremarkable but for its hardness.
‘So,’ she said swinging past him. ‘I’m still waiting?’
‘I’m trying to get some information on Sabine. Someone told me she came here for help, said it was a refuge? You are Anke?’
‘I’m Anke and this is a refuge, well one aspect of it. The girls come here expecting confidentiality and that’s what they get. I’m busy, you’ll have to find your own way out.’
With a flick of her head she climbed over the basket leaving Nick no option but to follow.
; ‘Wrong way,’ she said, removing costumes from twisted rails with one hand, the other dropping them into a basket.
‘Sabine’s dead, an overdose,’ Nick said.
‘Shit, no way.’ She sat heavily on a backless chair and her upturned face had a startling clarity. ‘Christ… I mean. Hey Körbl, you there?’ she called to a thin shadow outside. ‘Go find Emmerich, tell him it’s urgent.’
They shared a moment of reflection together. Nick and Anke, a woman he barely knew; as though Sabine was their best friend, someone they’d known for a lifetime at least.
‘Did she come here for help?’ Nick wondered.
‘Sure she was here. We got to know her pretty well. I don’t know the date, we get so many coming here for their last chance. Most of the women are sex workers, strippers, showgirls, this place allows them to get involved with drama as a form of therapy,’ Anke explained. ‘Did,’ she added. ‘They do workshops here in their spare time and when they think they’re ready, move on to a hostel where their pimps and dealers can’t touch them. If they’re desperate, scared or in danger, they sometimes sleep here.’
‘Who are you anyhow?’ Anke asked, as though it was an issue she should have dealt with sooner.
‘Someone interested in why Sabine died,’ Nick said.
Without revealing what she made of him, Anke took a tobacco tin from a pocket in her bib and braces and set about rolling a cigarette with slim fingers that had no colour, each nail bitten square. She struck a match, touched the paper until it flared as the flame hit the seam of tobacco.
‘You didn’t like her?’
Anke took a long smoke her brown eyes unblinking, scanning Nick’s face all the while.
‘Sabine was Sabine, I don’t have to like everyone,’ she explained, the rancour twisting her lip.
Nick watched Anke give a benign smile as if this information was something she preferred not to share.
‘She was lost,’ put in a deep voice from the door.
‘Emmerich,’ Anke called, but Emmerich dragged away the basket and Nick concentrated on Sabine.
‘You don’t think she had the nerve to leave the Brazillia?’ he asked, wondering if she might have made it to the refuge if Nick hadn’t crossed her path.
‘We all lack courage,’ said Anke. ‘Look at us here. We’ve all been together a lot longer than we’d like to think, idealists who want to escape. We’re not exemplary citizens.’
‘Did she ever talk about herself?’
Anke trapped the cigarette between her fingers, took one last draw and put it out with her heel.
‘You mean how that caring family of hers threw her out? How she began working as a prostitute at fifteen? Yes, she talked about that in some of her lucid moments.’
‘What about her boyfriend?’
Abruptly she rose to her feet, her expression wary, her fists clenched tight pressed rigidly to her sides.
‘Just who are you?’ she snapped. ‘You ask a lot of pretty sharp questions. You ask them, you ask them…’
‘In a very professional style,’ offered Emmerich’s deep voice. Barely thirty, a couple of days’ stubble clinging to his strong jaw his head rested languidly on the door; a symbol of confidence or a posed piece of performance kept as evidence of a creative soul.
‘Meet Emmerich,’ said Anke. ‘Our sometime artistic director, our inspiration, our biggest bore.’
‘Our mysterious visitor,’ he said with a sneer. ‘What is it you do? Ah, you never told Hans outside did you?’
‘I find people,’ stated Nick. And to prove it he handed Anke a card, printed that very morning in a fast print shop selected from its inexpensive range.
After reading the card Anke passed it over to Emmerich who batted it away, a man not used to inconvenience or unnecessary and insignificant distractions. ‘What has poor little Sabine done this time?’ Emmerich asked with a brilliant smile, spreading his arms in a mock stage display of horror.
‘I didn’t have chance to ask her, she’s dead.’
It was hard for Nick to tell if Emmerich’s flinch, his sudden movement was shock at an unforeseen loss or an actor disguising another reason why Sabine was so well remembered.
‘How well did you know her?’
‘Meaning?’ demanded Emmerich.
‘Relationships, they can be very messy. But I don’t suppose that you had….’
‘Show him where she kept her things,’ said Emmerich. ‘He’d better talk to Gottfried.’
‘Gottfried and Sabine… they were friends,’ explained Anke, showing Nick down the corridor to a plain door that someone had laughingly painted a star on. As soon as Anke swung back the door Nick saw a room stripped to the bare essentials, nothing belonging to Sabine left for the curious to tag and label, no more artefacts dropped on her rush through life.
‘I’d warn you that Gottfried is very sensitive about Sabine,’ she said. ‘Love can deceive us all.’ And with a smile she closed him in, her voice lifting in an order as she went back to the packing.
The room had three metal bunk beds giving it the air of a cell. Bare mattresses, a couple of them badly soiled held no blankets or sheets, just rolled or folded sleeping bags for women desperate to escape men. A sink stained from coffee dregs had a threadbare towel hanging from a tap. Beside an arrow slit meshed window, a tall wide chest with nothing but newspaper as lining in any of its drawers. Upending a cabinet Nick discovered nothing more exciting than a manufacturer’s stamp, worn, unintelligible with age. Not hearing the footsteps, he spun far too quickly for his ribs when a gentle cough came at his back.
‘Anke said Sabine is dead,’ began Gottfried sadly. ‘An overdose?’
Nick read the hesitation as Gottfried came further into the room. He saw too a flash of recognition as Gottfried glanced at one of the bottom bunks; memories either good or bad and the discomfort of having to face them.
‘Someone gave her a pure fix. I’m sorry.’
‘She promised me…’ Gottfried approached a different bunk with reluctance, his stiff shoulders buckling under a shiver. He picked a piece of mattress clear of stain and sat down.
‘She wouldn’t be a user again?’ Nick finished for him. And Gottfried nodded, holding one hand tightly in the other. ‘Was she your first lover?’ asked Nick bluntly.
‘And if she was?’ Gottfried, said, disgusted by Nick’s seedy assertion. ‘What business is it of yours? What we had meant something to both of us.’
‘I’m sure it did. I’m only here to help. I want to find the person who betrayed her, who killed her.’
Turned to the window, Gottfried presented a narrow silhouette against the bright haze cast by the snow. He dragged his feet against the bare floorboards, a tiny piece of grit trapped under one sole scratching the dull varnish.
‘Emmerich says that you might be police, you might not. You could be undercover or something else?’
‘Don’t you ever make up your own mind?’ asked Nick. ‘You seem to take a lot of what Emmerich says as fact. Has it always been like that? He make all the decisions for you? How long have you known him?’ Nick wondered naturally, totally relaxed.
Consoled by Nick’s change of direction Gottfried shook his head and turned from the window, his suspicions momentarily discarded.
‘Three years give or take,’ he said sensing Nick’s willingness to listen. ‘It was good in the beginning before Emmerich came on the scene,’ he said under his breath, his face hardening. Gottfried prepared for another push, another question but Nick, content for Sabine’s part-time lover to recount his story unhurried, made no other sound. And after this depressing silence, Gottfried drew out his first meeting with Sabine, forced to talk away the pain.
‘She walked in off the street one day. Flashed a smile at everyone and gave me a pat on the head. They all thought it a great laugh, the baby of the company gets the right show of affection. Emmerich made it last for weeks, patting my head whenever he got the chance.’ His face dark, consumed by the shadow from the w
all, he muttered something to himself and got off the mattress.
‘And when she left, you ceased to be lovers?’
Lashing out with a foot Gottfried sent an empty plaster box skidding away.
‘That’s something you need to know? For what? What does it matter?’
‘It will help me find her killer.’
‘Sabine didn’t leave me,’ he announced, the anger rushing up into his eyes. ‘She left this place and Emmerich. She added me to her list of clients that first night she walked in if that’s what you need to know. Only she didn’t make a charge, did it for herself and me. I must have been lucky okay. I was maybe the first man that she let make love to her for free. You got enough now?’
Voices reached them from the corridor heading towards them, low then high. Anke and Hans the mechanic paused at the door.
‘You okay, Gottfried? You want Hans to throw him out? See if he’s a cop by the way he lands?’
‘I’m fine,’ he said waving them away.
‘She’s the boss is she?’
‘Anke is the Numa,’ said Gottfried. ‘It was her idea, she hires and fires, makes all the moves.’
‘She choose who gets a second chance, who gets to escape their problems?’
‘Better you ask her yourself.’
‘Sabine grateful for the chance?’
Gottfried glanced at him, unsure where he was being led.
‘She never said,’ Gottfried answered in a sulk.
‘Did Sabine ever speak of other friends?’ asked Nick, making another long approach. ‘Particular friends such as girlfriends, best friends, maybe even boyfriends? Someone that she thought she could really trust? A good friend to talk to?’
‘She spoke of no one.’
‘Tell me,’ insisted Nick helpfully, ‘there must have come a time when you discussed the past? A mutual liking for something that let her talk about her friends?’
‘Sometimes, when she was down we’d talk about her life before here,’ Gottfried retorted sullenly. ‘We slept together, had a few good times to remember. Does that make me responsible for her?’
‘But enough for her to return when she needed help perhaps, when she was desperate, or in trouble? If she had no one else she could trust, or who cared about her, is that when Sabine came to you?’ Nick asked quietly. ‘When would that have been? When did Sabine come back here?’ Outside in the snow the bus backfired, spluttered then finally died all together.
