The Girl in Berlin (21 page)

The whole progamme was jerky and disjointed. There were inconsistencies and gaps. McGovern gained no clear idea of the dead man’s scientific career, why it failed to flourish once he was in London, or why he was released from internment so swiftly. The snippets of interview with the old man and his hoarse, heavily accented, tobacco-laden voice, struck
McGovern as both poignant and pointless. Towards the end, asked about Germany as it was now, his feelings about it and whether he wished to return, he almost shouted: ‘Return to Dresden? Dresden no longer exists! Dresden is a pile of rubble.’ And then, in a completely different tone of voice: ‘I still have family there. My aunt – to survive the Dresden fire storm and still live to be ninety! They want me to return.’

Finally, Eberhardt spoke of an autobiography and how it would ‘spill the beans’.

The programme over, McGovern switched off the wireless and went for a walk. It was odd that the programme had failed to mention Eberhardt’s suspicious death, but then it was surprising the programme could be transmitted at all when the case was ongoing, but perhaps the format had been chosen for just that reason: it was a general assessment of his life and work, not an investigative piece about a murder.

The McGoverns lived in a grim, redbrick mansion block in Eastcastle Street, near Oxford Circus. Some of the flats were used by the BBC, some by government departments. Others were rented or leased to odd households, mostly old inhabitants who’d been there since before the war. There was something secretive about the silent stairwells and clanking lift shafts, but it was convenient – within walking distance of Whitehall – and Lily loved its proximity to the shops and, more importantly, art galleries and museums.

On this Sunday evening Oxford Street and its side streets and alleys, so busy on weekdays, were deserted and silent, yet free of the withdrawn and sullen atmosphere of parts of Berlin. There was hardly any traffic and even most of the pubs were shut, devoid of custom on the Sabbath. McGovern felt particularly lonely. He walked towards the Tottenham Court Road until he came to the Academy Cinema, but he didn’t feel like going to see the French film that was showing, or, indeed, seeing any film on his own, so he turned back and
walked north past Broadcasting House towards Regent’s Park. The day was still and light, but he hardly noticed. He was sunk in something that hardly qualified as thought, ruminating on Colin Harris and Konrad Eberhardt.

As he walked he puzzled over the old man’s autobiography. They’d found no such manuscript among his papers. Perhaps it didn’t exist; an old man’s senile rambling. Perhaps, on the other hand, Harris had it. Perhaps some secrets were hidden in the document. Perhaps it really was a bombshell waiting to be lobbed into the public realm. He should have somehow got hold of it when he was in Berlin, but how could he have? He hadn’t known about it then.

Later, alone in the flat, he tried to assemble the information he’d gathered into coherence.

One: Harris and Eberhardt had known each other and done some sort of business together. The communist, Biermann, was mixed up in that too. The two of them were the last persons – or so it appeared – to have seen Eberhardt alive. McGovern hadn’t risked a mention of Eberhardt’s name to Harris when he’d talked with him in Berlin. That was a pity, but couldn’t be helped. He had to bear in mind that Harris might be Eberhardt’s murderer, but, if so, why? To prevent the old man’s return to Germany must be the obvious answer. Yet Biermann had prepared the tickets.

Two: Harris’s main preoccupation had been – or apparently been – to get Frieda Schröder away from Germany. That might be because she was a spy … As a seasoned investigator McGovern knew he should discount anything Harris said – about his doubts, his misery, his sense of dislocation. It was probably all a smoke screen to disguise his true purposes. And yet …

Three: Kingdom had specifically asked that McGovern be involved with the Eberhardt case. He’d instructed him to attend the mortuary and discuss the case with forensics. McGovern
felt fairly sure Kingdom had not told the truth, or the whole truth, about the reason for his interest in Harris. The Burgess–Maclean connection wasn’t credible; therefore it had to have to do with Eberhardt.

Four: and that led on to something that McGovern found most uncomfortable: Victor Jordan’s reservations about Kingdom. He’d praised him to the skies as the war hero and great interrogator, yet everything he’d said had subtly undermined that praise. To liken him to Robespierre, the French Revolutionary leader who might have been incorruptible, but had unleashed the Terror – that was strange. Ruthless. A committed anti-communist. That picture was rather at odds with McGovern’s Kingdom: cool, cynical, sceptical. Jordan’s attitude had also, subtly, communicated something different from his actual words. However, just as McGovern disbelieved in the theory of Harris as murderer, so he equally didn’t accept Jordan’s view of Kingdom as less than outstanding at his job.

Five: then there was the question of the dubious Dr Hoffmann. The reason Feierabend had put him in touch with McGovern was clear, indeed it was the only thing that was clear: Hoffmann had been in a position to introduce him to Harris. So what was the connection between Harris and Hoffmann? Was it simply through Frieda’s father? And since Feierabend seemed to have his finger in many pies, couldn’t he have managed to introduce him to Harris himself?

Six: Frieda had had a British ‘protector’, a Colonel Ordway, with whom Harris had thought it might be useful to get in touch. Perhaps that
would
be a good idea. Perhaps the Colonel had had something to do with Schröder’s alleged black-market scheme. But Gorch would never agree to that. To attempt to delve into Frieda Schröder’s past was by some distance a step too far.

Seven: Eberhardt had mentioned an autobiography. A book that would ‘spill the beans’.

McGovern wrote it all down and read it through. At first it seemed not to help at all. Nevertheless, when he read it through a second time he recovered a memory. When Harris and Biermann had been talking at the cemetery with Eberhardt, a parcel had changed hands. Eberhardt had had a package he’d given to Harris, who’d slipped it into his briefcase – a briefcase, which was an odd thing to bring to a funeral.

Perhaps that was the autobiography. The autobiography might be the key.

twenty

C
HARLES HALLAM CAME HOME
after lunch on Sunday to find Aunt Elfie’s Old Etonian boyfriend seated with the family in the garden. It felt peculiar, as if Kingdom had been there all the time, a fixture since Charles’s earlier weekend leave.

This leave was only twenty-four hours, but soon he’d be free of the Navy altogether. Oxford was just about appearing over the horizon and he was feeling happier than he had for many months. He was finally beginning to make romantic headway with Christopher. More importantly, his mother was home again.

Dad had written to say she’d left hospital – but where was she? Not in the garden. It was not his mother, but the tall, blond Englishman who lolled in the hammock, which looked as though it might collapse under him at any moment.

Charles had a horrible, hollow feeling in his stomach as he greeted the little group with a perfunctory wave. Perhaps Vivienne was still in the asylum, perhaps she hadn’t come home after all. Looking at his father, he said rather desperately: ‘Where is she?’

John Hallam stood up. ‘She’s resting. She’ll be so pleased to see you, Charles.’

And Vivienne was pleased to see him. She was in her old
place, reclining on the chaise longue in the ground-floor drawing room. A little more haggard each time she came home, a little thinner, and her black hair was streaked with grey, her eyes wells of vagueness; she lifted her languid arms. ‘Darling! How absolutely wonderful to see you.’

‘It’s wonderful to see you too.’ Charles bent to kiss her and the movement turned into a rather desperate hug, so intense that he felt close to tears. But as he moved out of the embrace to sit by her feet at the end of the sofa sadness overwhelmed him, for he knew that there was just somehow less of her than there used to be. She was still lovely, marvellous Vivienne, whom he loved so much, but part of her personality seemed to have drifted away, so that she became forgetful and as if nothing, not even he, her son, meant as much as in years gone by.

‘I did terribly well in my Russian exams,’ he told her, ‘and soon I’ll be shot of the whole boring business of National Service.’

‘That’s marvellous, darling,’ she said, but her gaze wandered away from him and vaguely round the room.

‘How are you feeling?’ He watched her, full of apprehension.

‘I’m feeling fine.’

They never talked about the hospital.

‘I interrupted your rest,’ he said.

‘I’m glad you did, darling. It’s so nice to be home. But now, if you don’t mind, I’ll carry on dozing a little longer and then I’ll come down to the garden and join you all.’ As he reached the door, she said: ‘Who is that man who was here at lunch? I’ve met him before, haven’t I, only I can’t remember—’

‘I think Dad’s hoping he’ll propose to Aunt Elfie.’

‘Oh … what an idea.’ Vivienne giggled. ‘But what does he
do
? No-one told me what he does or who he is, you see.’

‘He’s a journalist, I think.’

In the garden Aunt Elfie and Judy cleared the coffee cups and the glasses and Charles’s father went to phone the hospital
where he worked. Kingdom stood up. He offered Charles a cigarette. Charles, who did smoke, refused, because there was something patronising in the gesture with which the older man proffered the silver cigarette case. It seemed silently to suggest that Charles was to be treated as an adult, but only out of the goodness of Kingdom’s heart.

‘So your days on the Russian course are nearly over. How did it go?’

‘I did okay, actually.’

Kingdom looked at him, appraising him, Charles felt. ‘Tell me about it – your impressions, what you’ve learned.’ He sat down again, this time on one of the wicker garden chairs, and gestured at the seat beside him.

Despite himself, Charles was flattered by the attention. He tried to make his account sound both modest and amusing. Kingdom was, after all, not patronising him. He was genuinely interested. After a while, when Charles ran out of things to say, Kingdom rose to his feet once more, extracted a card from an inner pocket and handed it over.

‘I know it’s much too early – you’ve your years at university in front of you, but if you ever feel you might like to have another chat, do get in touch, won’t you.’

‘Thank you very much, sir.’

‘You obviously have a gift for languages. Pity not to use it really. But maybe you’ll end up preferring to stick to the Roman Empire, rather than dealing with ours or what remains of it.’

Charles smiled politely at this odd remark. Only later did he work out what he thought Kingdom was actually hinting at.

It was Sunday and a hot one at that, and McGovern was to meet Kingdom by the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens.

‘Sorry I’m late. I was having lunch with friends. An idyllic
scene, don’t you agree?’ Kingdom gestured at the little boy poking with a stick at his toy boat bobbing just within reach, at the nanny rocking a pram the size of an Edwardian pony carriage, and at a whole family, well dressed, dark, olive-skinned, whose three children, all with curly hair like bunches of grapes, tumbled their expensive clothes in the dust. One of the women in the group reminded McGovern a little of Lily.

Kingdom was staring ahead. ‘You’ve seen the detective in charge of the Eberhardt investigation? What’s going on? I heard the broadcast. I was bloody furious it went out the way it did. That bit at the end about an autobiography – what the hell’s that about?’

McGovern decided for the moment not to mention the parcel that had been exchanged in the cemetery. It might not be the autobiography and if it was, he should have remembered about it sooner. Further, Kingdom might blame him for not having managed to get hold of it, for not having asked Harris about it, and for not having informed Kingdom. So he merely said cautiously: ‘We found no manuscript in the house. Maybe there isn’t one. Perhaps it doesn’t exist. It might be a delusion, part of Eberhardt going a bit senile.’

‘Possibly. You may be right. This friend of Harris, Biermann? Was that the name? Have you interviewed him? He might well know about it.’

McGovern knew he should have already made enquiries. ‘It’s possible he has the manuscript. If it exists, of course.’

‘Yes. If it exists. But have you seen him?’

‘I only got back on Thursday. I’ve not had the time. I had to see CID about it, it’s technically their case, after all.’

‘Oh – CID.’ Kingdom gestured dismissively and dragged on his cigarette as he gazed out over the pleasing vista of parkland, the green lawns and trees thick with foliage. The noise of traffic was muffled, just soothing urban mood music for the peacefulness of the scene.

‘What sort of information might the autobiography contain?’

‘Oh, use your imagination, man,’ said Kingdom irritably. ‘What the hell do you think? Nuclear stuff …’

‘But he wasn’t engaged in nuclear research.’

‘No, but he knew Fuchs. He may have got hold of all sorts of bits of embarrassing information. But anyway – what about Harris? What do you really think he’s up to?’

McGovern hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. ‘I don’t think he had anything to do with the Burgess and Maclean business, if that’s what you mean.’

‘The Burgess and Maclean
business
, as you call it,’ said Kingdom wearily, ‘is a hell of a lot more than just another
business
, another little irritation in the vast and interminable locust plague of life’s little irritations. It’s not a mosquito bite, you know. It isn’t the common cold. More like bubonic plague.’

‘I didna mean—’

‘What Harris is up to is part of what you went to Berlin to find out, isn’t it.’

‘I managed to get an introduction. I met him a couple of times. It seems like he’s changed his plans. He’s not so keen to come back here any more. Harris did mention Burgess and Maclean. He was very disapproving. Spying has nothing to do with communism, he said.’