A Man Lies Dreaming (24 page)

Authors: Lavie Tidhar

BOOK: A Man Lies Dreaming

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We stood over the corpse. Morhaim nodded wordlessly and a policeman in thick boots rolled the body onto its back. But even before he did I knew who it was. I stared down at Rudolf Hess’s bloodless face. His head was twisted at an unnatural angle, the grass framing it almost gently, like a crown. He was as dead as anyone I ever saw.

It was Saturday. As Wolf stared down at his one-time companion the church bells began to ring from across the park, from Kensington and from Bayswater. Beyond their huddled group, people went about their lives, strolling in the park, admiring the trees and the autumn colours, enjoying the brisk chill air. People were on their way to church or to market. Life went on everywhere at once: the ducks stared disinterestedly and the swans preened on the calm surface of the water.

‘Who did this?’ Wolf said. His voice was low.

‘I understand you saw him recently?’ Morhaim said. ‘There is a club he frequented. Owned, in fact. The Hofgarten on Gerrard Street. I understand it is popular with German émigrés … of a certain bent, anyway.’

‘I … was there, yes.’

‘I understand that you had a fight.’

‘Please!’ Wolf was agitated. ‘This is persecution! First the whores, now this?’

‘Can you identify the victim?’

‘What for? It is quite obvious that you know who it is.’

‘Who is it?’

‘Hess. Rudolf Hess. He is … he was a businessman.’

The young policeman with the thick boots snorted. Morhaim silenced him with a gesture. ‘You knew each other before? In Germany?’

‘You know that we did.’

‘In fact you were in prison together, were you not, Mr Wolf?’

‘This is irrelevant!’

‘Can you tell me what you talked about? When you last saw him?’ Morhaim consulted a notebook. ‘November 7th?’ he said. ‘It was a Tuesday.’

‘It was last Tuesday.’

‘Indeed?’

Wolf said, ‘You are well informed.’ He stared down at Hess’s lifeless face. ‘He was a good man,’ he said.

‘What did you talk about?’

Wolf waved a hand. ‘Old times,’ he said.

‘Were you close in recent years?’

‘We did not see each other often.’

‘And yet you saw each other twice in the space of a week? Following which Mr Hess’ – Morhaim gestured at the corpse – ‘was found earlier this morning in a fatal condition.’

‘I did not murder Rudolf!’

‘Then who did, Mr Wolf?’

‘I don’t know.’

Morhaim nodded. ‘Thank you.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I said, thank you, Mr Wolf.’ He waited a beat. ‘You can go.’

‘Is that
all
?’

‘I’m afraid we
are
rather busy … was there anything else you wanted to add?’

‘No.’

‘Then goodbye, Mr Wolf. I’m sure we’ll meet again.’ He gave a faint half-smile. There was nothing warm in it, nothing at all. ‘Who knows what we’ll find floating in the duck ponds next, eh?’

Wolf stood there, glaring. He wanted to wipe the smirk off the inspector’s face. But the man would not look away and, at last, Wolf about-turned and stalked off.

Wolf’s Diary, 12th November 1939

On Sundays, London becomes almost bearable. I did my laundry. I saw Martha, the woman who lived down the hall. The corpulent old bitch came and stood in the doorway of the washroom and regarded me with her arms crossed as I washed my clothes in the bathtub. ‘You wash like a woman,’ she said.

‘Don’t you have any pigeons to poison?’ I asked. She chuckled. ‘Soon, ducky,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit early in the day.’

I thought of the families who came to Trafalgar Square to look at the pigeons. At this old woman smiling at the children like a lost aunt, and selling their parents a small bag of seeds; the children scattering the feed in an arc, the grey birds descending. Pigeons were like Jews: as many as you killed there were always more to take their place.

I scrubbed bloodstains out of my clothes. The tub filled with pink swirling shapes. ‘Been in a spot of trouble, have you, ducky?’

‘None of your God damned business.’

‘Heard you was out on the street, night someone took a knife to old Gerta,’ she said.

‘I didn’t do it.’

‘No one saying that you did, ducky.’

‘A friend of mine died yesterday,’ I told her. I don’t know why I told her that.

‘I’m sorry to hear it.’

I shrugged. Lathered up soap. ‘He was weak. The weak die.’

‘And the strong survive,’ she said. There was a sad note in her voice I couldn’t interpret. ‘You and me,’ she said. ‘The pigeons and the whores.’

‘He was so loyal,’ I said. ‘To his last breath, he was loyal. I value loyalty.’

‘Heaven knows there’s little enough of it to go around,’ Martha said.

‘Someone killed him. Drowned him in the ponds in Hyde Park.’

‘That’s nice.’ She gave a shuddering, dramatic sigh. ‘It’s so peaceful there. I went once, with one of my old johns. He liked to do it in nature, you see. He was French.’ She shrugged, as if that was explanation enough for everything. ‘It must be a nice place to die.’

‘I hadn’t thought of it that way.’

‘Do you ever think how you will die, Wolf?’ she said. The conversation was turning morbid but somehow I didn’t mind. My mind had been occupied with death, of late.

‘I always thought I’d die in the course of my duty,’ I said. ‘Serving the Fatherland. It hasn’t worked out that way.’ I thought of the Americans’ offer. I wondered if they were still shadowing me. No doubt they could make life difficult for me, if they so chose. To return to Germany … it was a dream, a sweet dream, but nothing more. And if, by some insane miracle, their
coup d’état
succeeded … what then?

I would become their puppet.

‘I would have liked to die peacefully,’ I said, ‘in my sleep. With a book on my chest and a woman beside me and my dogs at my feet.’

‘How … pleasant.’ There was a rude loud sound and a look of surprise momentarily suffused Martha’s face, followed by a bellowing laugh.

‘God damn it, Martha, that stinks!’

‘I knew I should have laid off them Brussels sprouts,’ she said, fanning the air. ‘Well, I better go. When is your friend’s funeral?’

‘I don’t know. The police haven’t released the body yet.’

‘Will you go?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Goodbye, Wolf.’

‘See you later, Martha.’

She left me alone with her stink still in the air. I scrubbed blood off my clothes and watched the soapsuds form in the bathtub, pink and red, pink and red.

Wolf’s Diary, 13th November 1939

On Monday I went back to the Jewish Territorialist Organisation but the lights weren’t on. There was no sign of Goodman or the typist and a notice on the door simply said ‘Closed’.

I made an anonymous phone call to the police and watched the flat on Threadneedle Street. I ate a sandwich and drank lemonade. The police arrived promptly enough but, as I suspected, the flat was empty and seemed to have been that way for a couple of days. I crumpled the paper I had used to wrap the sandwich and put it and the empty bottle of lemonade back in my bag, to dispose of later. I loathed litter.

I had come so close! That mannish Jew bitch had been all but in my grasp and I let her slip away. It seemed obvious to me now that Judith Rubinstein’s escape had been facilitated by her Palestinian comrades. Either they had struck a deal with my former associates or they had known to hijack the shipment of illegals before it was delivered into that loathsome Barbie’s hands. Either way I now had no idea where she was, and I had lost both her and the terrorists threatening Mosley.

I had hit a temporary dead end. It was in the nature of such work, and yet I felt angry. I wanted those Jew conspirators caught. I could only hope that the Blackshirts who had unwittingly come to my rescue the night I trailed Bitker had put some of them into hospital.

Hospital!

I returned to my office and set to work. For the next hour I dialled the local hospitals. No luck! Wherever my Palestinian terrorists went, it was not to a public hospital.

‘
Himmel, Arsch, und Zwirn
!’ I said, with feeling.

Wolf’s Diary, 14th November 1939

‘What do you mean Mosley is not there?’ I said.

‘
Sir Oswald
is not here.’

‘Sir Oswald, yes, fine. Where is he?’

‘I’m afraid Sir Oswald is unavailable at the moment, sir. Would you care to leave a message?’

‘No, I do not
care
to leave a message! Who is this?

‘Thomas Alderman, sir.’

‘Alderman? Who the hell are you?’

‘I’m Sir Oswald’s assistant, sir. One of his assistants.’ An embarrassed hesitation on the line. ‘We met, briefly? At Sir Oswald’s soirée?’

‘Did we? Well, Alderman, is Lady Mosley there?’

‘No, sir. I’m afraid no one is available. It is the elections, you see. The final push and all that? Sir Oswald is speaking to supporters around the country all week.’

‘And Lady Mosley?’

‘She is with Sir Oswald, sir.’

‘I don’t like your tone, Alderman.’

‘Sir?’

‘Tell him I called. Tell him I expect to hear from him!’

‘Of course, Mr … Wolf?’

‘You know bloody well who it is,’ I said, slamming down the receiver.

The sheer arrogance of it all!

Wolf’s Diary, 15th November 1939

‘Hello?’

She had the kind of breathless voice that promises sin, that teases you with it. I hated her and wanted her and I didn’t lie to myself about it. I never lie to myself. It is the core of my strength.

‘Miss Rubinstein.’

‘Wolf!’ Her voice changed, became a delighted tinkle. I pictured her urinating on herself, surrounded by silk sheets. ‘Is there progress on my sister’s case?’

‘It has become somewhat more complex than I at first anticipated.’

‘What does that mean?’

It means a terrorist conspiracy, I thought, but didn’t say. And a dead man in a pond. I was trapped in a maze, beset on all sides by those with evil intentions. I alone was pure of thought and deed. Were I ever asked to offer my observations on the art of detection – for which I am uniquely qualified – I would say that a good detective is but a soldier in the universal chaoskampf, the cosmic battle with anarchy.
Murder is a frustration not just of the individual: it is a frustration of the race
. Indeed, I had written several times to the
Private Investigator’s Gazetteer
, of Boston, Massachusetts, offering to share my views on detection – on condition, naturally, of receipt of a modest author’s fee – but had yet to receive a reply. The impudence of those Americans!

For murder is a simple art – if it can be said to be any art at all – and it seems to me it is merely a question of
scale
. I believe it was that French scientist, Rostand, who wrote that if you kill one man, you are a murderer, yet if you kill millions, you are a conqueror. I would have been a conqueror!