Dying to Tell (14 page)

"What is?"

That she may be' he winced as he spoke 'telling the truth."

Things look better in daylight, so they say. There was certainly plenty of daylight around when I surfaced late the following morning. The Berlin sky was cloudless, the air crisp and clear. I stumbled down to breakfast, reflecting that maybe the literal dead end Rosa Townley had offered us was the truth after all and that maybe it was best it should be. Where that left Rupe was a moot point, of course. But knife-wielding nutters definitely weren't my company of choice, so it was tempting to think that moment to quit I'd told Echo hadn't yet arrived ... was just about to.

It was a surprise to find Hashimoto in the restaurant, sipping tea and leafing through the European edition of the Wall Street Journal. I had him down as a dawn break faster To be honest, I'd been looking forward to forking my way through some bacon and eggs with only my thoughts such as they were for company. I did my best not to look disappointed.

"How are you feeling, Lance?" Hashimoto enquired.

"Not sure. How do I look?"

"In the circumstances, quite good." He smiled weakly. "I have been busy."

"You surprise me."

"I have spoken to Frau Voss."

"Have you now?"

"Frau Townley had already done so, of course."

"Preparing the ground, no doubt."

"No doubt. But ... we shall see. We are to meet Frau Voss for tea this afternoon."

"I'm sure it'll be a charming occasion."

"Are you being ... sarcastic, Lance?"

"Can't imagine why you should think that."

"Mmm." He eyed me thoughtfully. "I know the perfect antidote to sarcasm."

"You do?"

"Yes. And between now and tea with Frau Voss ... I think I will administer it to you."

An hour and a half later, we were clambering out of a taxi in front of two stone elephants flanking the entrance to Berlin Zoo. "Animals, Lance," Hashimoto announced, as we queued at the ticket office. They clear our minds of all the nonsense we fill them with."

"If you say so, Kiyo."

"Did you not have a pet when you were a child?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"We just weren't that kind of family." (I dimly recalled a dog being debated at some point. My father vetoed the idea on the grounds that I was nuisance enough around the house without some pooch to feed and walk.) "You?"

"No." Hashimoto shook his head sadly. "There was no room."

"Domestic quarters at the Golden Rickshaw a bit of a squash, were they?"

"Oh yes. But..." He puffed out his cheeks. "I still miss those days, even so."

The tone was set. Hashimoto veered between nostalgic yearnings for a lost childhood and rapt gapings at the animals as we trailed around the zoo. The thought that flitted across my mind seen one manic ally depressed tiger aching for a chance to rip your throat out, seen them all went unexpressed. As a way to kill time, I supposed it wasn't too bad, though I could have thought of better. But there was no magical mind-clearing of the kind Hashimoto had promised. I was immune.

But Hashimoto wasn't. And that, I belatedly realized, was the point. We were there more for his benefit than mine. He was particularly drawn to the orangutans. Gazing at them as they lolloped around their enclosure, sometimes hiding under pieces of sacking, sometimes casting us soulful glances, he suddenly said to me, "What really matters in life, Lance?"

"Happiness, I guess."

"And what makes us happy?"

"Oh, the usual stuff."

"What would be usual .. . for an orangutan?"

"Oh, I don't know. Money's out. Travel too, for this lot. Drink and drugs aren't on the agenda either. There's sex, I suppose ... in the season. And feeding time. At all seasons."

Hashimoto frowned solemnly at me. "You are confusing happiness with pleasure, Lance."

"Am I?"

"Do you think they trust each other?"

"Orang-utanishly .. . yeh."

They do not tell lies?"

"Well, they can't, can they?"

"But we can."

"Yeh."

"It is our choice."

"Yeh."

"So, I choose not to."

"Well, that's good."

"I know what is in the Townley letter."

For a moment, I thought I had to have misheard. "What?"

"I know what is in the Townley letter," he repeated.

"But .. . you said .. ."

"I lied."

"Bloody hell." I stared at him, genuinely aggrieved.

"I am sorry."

I waited for him to continue, but he showed no sign of doing so, returning his placid gaze to the orangutans. "Kiyo," I prompted.

"Yes, Lance?"

"Apology accepted, OK?"

"Thank you."

"What's in the letter?"

"Ah." He nodded slowly. "Of course. That is the trouble with telling the truth." Then he smiled. "It does not always make you happy."

We went to the snack-bar, bought a couple of hot drinks and sat outside by an ornamental lake. It was too cold in the milky sunlight for the other customers. We had the lakeside seats to ourselves. Hashimoto lit a cigarette and huddled down into his coat. I waited as patiently as I could for him to tell me what I obviously wanted to hear.

Eventually, he said, "This is the truth, Lance."

"Good." There was a long pause. "Well?"

"I cannot tell you."

"What?

"My sister told me. Because she had to. She never would have done if Rupe had not stolen the letter. She would have kept it secret .. . for ever."

"Since Rupe did steal it, don't you think I ought to be told?"

"No. For everyone who knows, there is the danger that they will tell. I promised Mayumi I would keep her secret. And I was taught to keep my promises. But I do not have to lie to you to do that."

"I'm really glad you're off the hook, Kiyo. No lie, no tell. That's just great."

"Now you are being sarcastic again."

"That surprises you, does it?"

"No. It disappoints me."

"So, we're both disappointed."

"You should not be. When Mayumi told me what the letter contained, I was angry. I did not welcome the knowledge. It is a burden I would prefer not to bear. I do not want to inflict it on you. You are better off you are safer not knowing."

"I'll just have to take your word for that."

"You must trust me, Lance. We must trust each other. If we find Stephen Townley .. ." He sighed. "Then I will tell you what is in the letter."

"Breaking your promise?"

"Yes. Because then .. ." He looked past me, into some future he seemed to see more clearly than me. "Then I will have to."

Pressing Kiyofumi Hashimoto to reveal what he'd decided to keep to himself was likely to be about as rewarding as trying to persuade a captive tiger to look contented. We called a truce on the subject and paid a visit to the aquarium before leaving the zoo.

We emerged into the early-afternoon bustle of the shopping centre of West Berlin. I recognized the ruined tower of the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche from my 1984 trip with Rupe and took Hashimoto into the new octagonal church next door to admire the encircling blue glass walls. We sat there in silence, lost in our own thoughts, till our appointment with Hilde Voss drew near and it was time to go.

As we started down Kurfurstendamm towards the Cafe Kranzler, Hashimoto glanced back at the bomb-blasted relic and its ultra-modern successor. "My sister remembers the bombing in Tokyo at the end of the war," he said. "She thinks I am lucky not to have been born sooner."

"She's probably right."

"But only probably. I always tell her: the future will show whether I was lucky to be born when I was."

"Can't argue with that."

"No one can argue with the future, Lance."

"Just as well we don't know what it contains, then."

"Oh, yes." He nodded thoughtfully. "It truly is ... just as well."

Our immediate future lay in the hands of Hilde Voss. She was waiting for us when we reached the Kranzler - a small, bright-eyed woman in a long red coat, with a flowing scarf, a purple beret and far too many rings and bangles. Physically, she hadn't aged as well as her old friend Rosa Townley. She looked, in fact, about ten years older, despite the dyed hair visible under the beret. The cigarettes she was coughing her way through at a sapping pace had to be one of the reasons. Mentally, however, she was in good shape.

"I told Rosa you wouldn't believe me," she announced as soon as our tea had arrived. "Why should you? I am her friend, not yours."

"Tell me about Stephen Townley," said Hashimoto mildly. "We ... are open-minded."

"Open-minded?" She laughed uproariously at that until the cough doubled her up.

"How would you describe him?" I asked.

"Stephen? He was a good-looking boy. And Americans, here in the Fifties, well, they were the boys to go for. But Stephen .. ." She shrugged. "I never trusted him."

"Why not?"

"Because there was darkness in his heart. I see these things. I sense them. I always have. Rosa saw only ... the handsome face, the broad shoulders ... and the passport to the land of cookies and Cadillacs."

"You're saying he was an evil man?"

"He had evil in him. And it came out. He did not ... treat her well. But ... he took her to America, which is what she wanted."

"Except that now she's back here."

"What we want changes as we grow older."

"When did you last see him?" asked Hashimoto.

"Stephen? When he and Rosa left for America in nineteen fifty-five."

"Never since?"

"Never."

"Quite a while," I said, not bothering to disguise the thought that led to.

"A long time, a short time. For me it makes no difference."

"Come on. You can't claim to have known him well."

"Nein. But you couldn't forget Stephen once you'd met him. He stayed with you."

"At least until nineteen seventy-two."

"I see people in dreams. I see events. It is not my fault. Believe me, mein Junge, it is more of a curse than a blessing."

"What did you dream about Townley?"

"His death. May second, nineteen seventy-two."

"You know the exact date?"

"I looked it up. I keep a record of my dreams. You want to see?" She pulled a dog-eared diary out of her handbag. I could see the year embossed on the cover. A page was marked. She held it open in front of us. We craned forward as her index finger tapped at the place. Dienstag 2 Mai. Below that, in tiny handwriting, was the phrase Todestraum: ST. "Dream of death," she said slowly. "Stephen Townley."

"Well, that clinches it, of course."

"Believe me or not," Hilde snapped the diary shut. "I don't care."

"How did you see him die?" asked Hashimoto.

"Why do you want to know, if you don't believe I did?"

"You may be able to convince us."

"I doubt it." She put the diary back into her handbag and rattled her way through another cough. Oddly, it seemed to calm her down. Her gaze drifted out of focus. "Somewhere hot. Florida. Mexico. I don't know. There were palm trees. And sweat on the faces of the men who killed him. It was night there too. They had ... long knives. They cut him deep. There was much blood. He died badly. In much pain. The hot blood drained out of him, into the hot night. I saw it." She shuddered. "I felt it."

Hashimoto glanced at me, looking to see what my instinctive reaction was. I'm not sure I had one. It sounded convincing enough, whether you bought the whole second-sight thing or not. But Hilde was no fool. And Rosa certainly wasn't. They were capable of cooking this up between them -well capable.

"Is this what you told Mr. Alder?" Hashimoto asked.

"Ja. That is what I told him."

"How did he react?"

"He did not say much. He listened. He went away."

"Did he believe you?"

"I think ... he did not want to believe me. But later ... he may have."

"Did he contact you again?"

"There was only one meeting."

"When was that?" I chipped in.

"Early September."

"Can't you be more precise? A lady who keeps such meticulous records as you .. ."

She sighed theatrically and fished her current diary out of her handbag, then propped some half-moon glasses on her nose to consult the entries. "The sixth," she announced after a few moments.

"And where did you meet?"

Another sigh. "Here."

This very cafe?" I glanced around, as if trying to picture the scene.

"Ja," growled Hilde, pitching her voice low enough to set off another cough.

"Where is he now?" I asked when the cough had subsided.

' Wovon re den Sic? She stared at me uncomprehendingly.

"I'm asking you where Rupe Alder is now, Frau Voss. With your powers of clairvoyance, that should be no problem, surely."

"You think you are funny, mein Jung eT

"Perish the thought."

"I do not order the things I see. I do not control them. Your friend, Herr Alder, he .. ." She swatted at some invisible fly -or at me. "He has not come to me. Living or dead."

"Pity. I was hoping you might be able to clear the whole mystery up for us. But I was obviously hoping for too much."

Hilde stubbed out her cigarette violently and eyed me across the butt-choked ashtray. "Much too much."

"What do you think?" I asked, as soon as we were out of the cafe, leaving Hilde to her cakes and cigarettes and astral visions.

"I do not know, Lance," said Hashimoto. The important question is: what would Rupe have thought?"

"Same as me. That she's an old fraud."

"You do not believe she has .. . second sight?"

"Nope."

The diary entry from nineteen seventy-two was .. . impressive."

"Well, it didn't impress me."

"Mmm."

"Kiyo?"

He stopped and looked at me. "It is less straightforward than you seem to think, Lance."

"How?"

"Frau Voss may have seen this vision and believed it proved Stephen Townley was dead. Frau Townley may have believed it also. Whether it is true or not whether he actually died in the way she described, whether he is dead at all is not really the point. If they genuinely believe it, then obviously Frau Townley does not know where we can find her husband. In that case