The Girl in Berlin (20 page)

‘That’s difficult. But, for example, what about your fiancée? She must have an interesting story.’

‘Frieda?’ Harris frowned. ‘What about her?’

‘Well, for example, she and her father were refugees. Where did they come from? That could be interesting. Back home we’ve rather lost sight of all the refugees and what they went through.’

‘Well, naturally, there’s not much sympathy for the Germans.’

‘Some of them were victims too. They weren’t all dyed-inthe-wool Nazis.’

Harris sighed. ‘They did come from an interesting part of Germany. From Thuringia, they lived near an industrial town called Saalfeld. Down there they hadn’t really experienced much of the war until fairly late on, in some rural areas they’d
really been quite protected from it, or that’s what Frieda’s told me. It wasn’t until right towards the end, spring 1945, that things got bad. The Americans arrived and bombed the town and the people fled and hid in the wood and in tunnels that were there because of the iron-ore mines. But the Americans moved on because it had been decided Thuringia would be part of the Soviet sector. So they became refugees, Frieda, her sister and her father. Her mother died the year before, I think. Her aunt, her father’s sister, was supposed to be living in Berlin, so they came here instead of crossing over into Bavaria, though they never found her. But they got here at least. It was very hard. I don’t know how they survived. Frieda won’t really talk about it. Well, she met a British colonel who took an interest in her, she admitted that, but she’s never … I don’t know what sort of relationship it was, but you can guess. Then her little sister died and they moved back into the Soviet sector. That was unusual – the movement’s all the other way, so it’s possible Schröder was up to something in the British sector. He probably had some black-market stuff going on, but he wouldn’t have been alone. Perhaps the authorities got wind of it. He has a past too, I expect, though of course it’s never mentioned and then again so many have a past. Funnily enough, whether he was some sort of Nazi or not, he’s managed to worm his way in with the communists. God knows how. I think he knows something about some of what they got up to in Thuringia – there was a settling of scores down there – social democrats murdered, that sort of thing. That might even be why they moved across to the East, he wangled a room in a flat through his new friends or something. I thought of trying to get in touch with Colonel Ordway when I was in England – that was the British officer she knew – to see if he knew anything about it, but I just didn’t have time.’

‘That is an interesting story,’ said McGovern, ‘but I’d need to know more, to flesh it out a bit.’

Harris leaned towards him. ‘Frieda’s frightened of her father. He’s a very unpleasant man. She deserves something better,’ he said, ‘and if I decide I’m staying here, at least I’d like her to still have a chance—’

‘You think
I
could help her?’

Now Harris’s smile was embarrassed. ‘Well … I didn’t mean exactly … But she just has to get away from her father.’

‘So you’re minded to stay here yourself?’

Harris smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. ‘I left England under something of a cloud. And I told you I was a member of the Communist Party there. I thought it would be a fresh start in a new, socialist country. Unfortunately I got into a bit of trouble here as well – a … a thing with a boy. It’s not exactly illegal over here, but the authorities don’t like that sort of behaviour, so the quid pro quo was it could all be brushed under the carpet if I kept an eye on Schröder.’

‘But I thought you said he’s on good terms with the East Germans.’

Harris smiled. ‘He is. But that doesn’t mean they trust him. No-one trusts anyone. That’s one of the reasons I’m not happy here. There’s too much surveillance. In Schröder’s case they thought
he
could do a bit of informing. Anyway, they don’t like him quite as much as he thinks they do. I can’t stand the man, so in one way I don’t mind keeping an eye on him. But it’s not a pleasant situation, it’s not how things should be.’ Harris looked at McGovern with another of his grim smiles. ‘And the fact is I’m damn lonely. The only person I can talk to is Frieda and of course she doesn’t really understand.’

Harris, his pent-up misery unleashed, talked in a raw, unguarded fashion, describing his isolated, uncertain existence, a stranger in a strange land. When they parted, he gave McGovern his address.

‘I’m afraid it’s unlikely I’ll be paying a second visit.’ The detective felt almost guilty, as if he were letting Harris down.

‘Well, if you do, you’ll look me up, won’t you. But all things considered I probably shall go on with my plan to return – when things have died down a bit. I just don’t know what to do really. If I don’t help Frieda get away I’ll feel rotten, but – God, I don’t know what to do. Go or stay. God knows. What do you think, Roberts?’

McGovern purchased a second postcard from Kurt’s kiosk in the foyer. ‘Your friend,’ said Kurt, ‘the one I saw waiting for you earlier. A German gentleman came enquiring about him – after you left. You want to be careful, sir. It’s so easy for someone to disappear in Berlin.’

McGovern ate in the hotel dining room and afterwards sat sunk in one of the deep lounge sofas with a German lager, the taste of which he didn’t much like, in front of him. Harris was a baffling enigma. So open about working for the East Germans, pouring out his troubles like that to a journalist – that was hardly the behaviour of a spy or a double agent. Perhaps he truly believed that he could shift his sense of responsibility for the German girl, for his fiancée, on to a stranger.

McGovern tried to imagine how Kingdom would have interpreted it. And the more he thought about it, the more disturbed he became. He remembered Victor Jordan’s suggestion: that Frieda Schröder might herself be a spy. So Kingdom would probably have drawn the conclusion that the whole of the Harris sob story was nothing but a ploy to get Frieda safely into England to do whatever she was told to do.

But Kingdom was a cynic. McGovern, for all his years in the police force, was not. And he had taken to Harris. It might be a hard-luck story or he might be a noble failure, but McGovern’s instinct told him the man was too transparent, too naive to have been completely lying.

Frieda though – that was a different matter.

nineteen

M
CGOVERN STOOD BY THE WINDOW
in DI Slater’s office. The room was superior to his own, because the window looked out on an actual side street, not a light well. It was also larger than his own punishment cell of a room. He still in some ways preferred his little secret den, because it was hidden away from casual visitors. Also, the assignment of rooms wasn’t a slur on him personally. It simply proved that the Special Branch in general was held in low esteem. And yet what they did was more important than ordinary detective work: defence of the realm.

He’d returned from Berlin only the previous evening and still felt bewildered and unsettled. He’d by no means got a handle on his impressions, but it couldn’t be discussed with Slater. He badly needed someone to confide in, but he hardly knew Slater, who was genial enough, but seemed unwilling to put himself out unduly. McGovern had been completely frank with Jarrell, but the sergeant was too inexperienced to give him real moral support and anyway he knew even less than McGovern.

‘Cushy number. A nice little trip to Berlin in the middle of the Eberhardt investigation. What was that all about?’ Slater grinned. ‘Like I always say, the Branch don’t know they’re born. Sitting about reading books one day – off to foreign parts
the next. But Berlin – outside the normal Special Branch remit, ain’t it?’

McGovern smiled.

Slater gazed reflectively back at his new colleague, but when it became clear he wouldn’t get any more out of him, said: ‘What can you tell me about Konrad Eberhardt then? I’m not familiar with the political side of the case.’

‘I don’t know if there is a political side, other than that Eberhardt was originally a political exile. And that he was a scientist, not involved in nuclear physics, but who knew Alan Nunn May. And Klaus Fuchs. Why don’t you just run through it for him, Jarrell?’

Manfred summarised the German’s history in a few concise sentences. He ended with: ‘I expect you know, sir, that he was going senile, his idea of going back to Germany may have been a sign of that.’

Slater nodded. ‘But what’s any of this got to do with someone slinging him into the canal?’

‘Perhaps someone wanted to stop him going back to Germany,’ said McGovern. ‘He talked about going back, but if his brain was giving out, that could have been some mad idea that bore no relation to reality. All the same, someone might have thought he was planning to return.’ He paused, working out how much to say about Harris. ‘Two Communist Party members were seen with him at the funeral at Kensal Green Cemetery after which Eberhardt was found in the canal nearby. They can’t be ruled out as suspects. We saw them talking to Eberhardt. They wandered off among the graves out of sight and later we saw the two of them, but by that time Eberhardt was no longer with them.’

Slater said: ‘You’re assuming Eberhardt died without ever having left the area, then?’

‘Seems a reasonable assumption.’

‘So these Reds of yours could definitely have had something
to do with it. Well – everything to do with it. They didn’t want him going back to Germany and so … That makes it sound almost like a kind of assassination.’

‘Assassination’s a bit strong. And there’s a problem with the motive. We’ve been told they, or one of them at least,
wanted
him to return to East Germany. And it seems a wee bit unlikely they’d murder Eberhardt at the funeral. Very risky.’

‘Could someone else …? Who was at the funeral? Whose funeral was it?’

‘Bill Garfield? You know – the writer. A radical, well known, so it was quite a large gathering, lots of literary types. He and Eberhardt were friends. And there was nothing suspicious about Harris being there either. He’d met Garfield in Spain, both of them were there in the civil war.’

‘Why would anyone murder someone at a funeral? But he
was
murdered after the funeral,’ said Slater. ‘Christ! That means we have to try to interview everyone who was at the bloody crematorium. But there’s no way of even knowing who was there. I’ve looked at the canal along there. The cemetery goes up to the edge of the water, there isn’t a path that side. So the killer must almost certainly have come
from
the cemetery. That doesn’t
prove
it was someone from the funeral he’d been to. He might have lingered on, he might have wandered around in a confused state and been attacked by some opportunist, for money—’

‘There was no money in his wallet,’ said Manfred.

‘Right. So it probably was an ordinary robbery with violence that ended up as a murder,’ said Slater, ‘but what you say about your men – you’ll interview them, won’t you. Have them in for questioning.’

‘We’ll try. You’ll still have to interview any of the mourners you can get hold of, though, won’t you.’

‘That’ll be a hell of a job. You were there. How many of them were there, would you say?’

McGovern thought about it. ‘Seventy? Eighty?’

‘And how do we find out their names? Anyone can turn up at a funeral. God!’ Slater stood up and stretched. ‘Let’s continue this over a jar.’

In the cosier surroundings of a pub popular with the CID Slater felt evidently more comfortable. Several CID turned up and there was no further discussion of the Eberhardt case. Slater appeared to feel he’d done enough work for the day. With a familiar sense of being vaguely out of place and slightly alienated, McGovern made his excuses. His next job, he decided, was to try to interview Alex Biermann.

Alan Wentworth had worked hard on the Eberhardt programme. He had edited and re-edited the transcript of his interview with the old man, but in the end everyone had agreed that it could not be broadcast. Instead he had cobbled together an
in memoriam
programme splicing slivers of the few more coherent bits of the interview into discussions of Eberhardt’s work and reminiscences from friends and colleagues. It was to go out on Sunday. He was deeply dissatisfied with it, but at the same time pleased it would be broadcast, because he was convinced that Miles Kingdom had tried to make sure it wasn’t.

He hadn’t reacted at the time, but afterwards was furious to think that he hadn’t challenged Kingdom’s suggestion at Wimbledon that the Eberhardt interview might be spiked. The idea that the Secret Services might interfere with freedom of speech appalled him. In theory he knew that sort of thing happened, that information did get suppressed from time to time – and had to be. Perhaps his liberal outrage was just naive. But it was one thing to know about it in the abstract and quite another when it was a concrete fact and you were the person being asked to suppress the information.

He’d had a few dark moments when he’d imagined Kingdom
telephoning Dinah and just subtly raising the ghost of a doubt in her mind – as a punishment because he’d pressed ahead with the Eberhardt programme. Yet it all seemed so ridiculous. It could not possibly matter for the programme to go out. It contained nothing remotely subversive or secret.

Nevertheless, the fact remained that the programme as it stood was deeply unsatisfactory.

‘Konrad Eberhardt left Germany in 1938 and arrived in England to a life of exile. He has described his childhood as completely uninteresting, a typical Prussian bourgeois family upbringing. Unlike many today, he had no time for the fashionable interest in childhood and its significance, rejecting the ideas of Sigmund Freud as romantic and irrelevant, above all as completely unscientific. Yet that stern and highly moralistic upbringing stood him in good stead and gave him the courage to resist the Nazis when so many of his compatriots were dazzled by the Führer.’

McGovern was seated in his dusty sitting room. He listened attentively to the broadcast, hoping for useful information. Fragments of an interview were spliced into the narrative, which told of Eberhardt’s promising career, a career that stalled once the Nazis came to power. Yet he had not left Germany until 1938, when he finally came under suspicion for having, he claimed, helped some Jews to leave the country. At that point he managed to get away, a dangerous journey with his wife, Gerda, first to France, then to Britain.