The Girl in Berlin (23 page)

Rather, thought McGovern, as though ‘ordinary people’
were a different race from intellectuals. But Biermann was young and idealistic. And ideals weren’t a bad thing, after all.

The sound of the front door opening was followed by: ‘Hullo! Alice?’

‘We’re in here.’

Alex Biermann stood in the doorway, as untidily dressed as the girl and in similar clothes, but unlike her, he seemed deeply suspicious. ‘What’s this all about?’ He advanced into the room, but remained standing.

McGovern and Jarrell stood up. ‘We’re investigating the death of Konrad Eberhardt.’

Biermann examined their police cards closely, then sat down abruptly on the arm of the sofa, close to Alice. ‘About time someone’s doing something about that. You don’t seem to have taken much notice of it so far. How many weeks is it now?’

‘We’re doing our best. We wondered if you could tell us about the last time you saw him, at Bill Garfield’s funeral.’

‘Oh, that’s it. I see. I suppose your lot were crawling all over the funeral, spying on the Reds to see what they’re up to these days. Which in the case of that lot is nothing very much. I wouldn’t even have called Garfield a socialist any more, if he ever was one.’ He looked down at his girlfriend with a look McGovern interpreted as one of affectionate resignation. ‘What have you been telling them, then?’

‘We were just talking about the dead man,’ said McGovern quickly, ‘and how fond you were of him.’

‘I’ll get some more tea. You’d like some, wouldn’t you, Alex.’ She gathered up the cups and left the room.

‘I suppose she’s been talking a lot of nonsense,’ said Biermann ungraciously.

‘We came to talk to you about the funeral. With so many people there it’s difficult for us. In theory any of them could be a suspect.’

Biermann snorted contemptuously. ‘They’re all talk, that lot. A few of them probably hated Konrad, but … no.’ He shook his head.

‘Do you know any of them? It would be helpful to have some names.’

Instead of answering the question, Biermann said: ‘I knew Konrad since before I left Germany with my family. Got on with him better than with my own father. I suppose you think I might have had something to do with his death, but you’re wrong. I was really cut up about it.’

‘Why should we imagine you had anything to do with it? You and Colin Harris were among the last to see him alive, but why would you kill your old friend, Mr Biermann?’

‘Oh, is this all about Colin? For God’s sake, why don’t you leave him alone?’

‘It’s all about solving a crime, Mr Biermann. And Konrad Eberhardt was a controversial character, wasn’t he? Former friend of Klaus Fuchs suddenly returning to East Germany? He had a reputation as an anti-communist. It seems very odd he wanted to go back, doesn’t it, Mr Biermann?’

Biermann’s glance sharpened. ‘Do detectives usually bother with things like that?’

‘Things like what, Mr Biermann?’

Biermann shrugged. ‘Well – ideas, I suppose. Politics. Other than that you’re the arm of the state. I suppose you saw him as a subversive.’

‘Leaving aside the politics, Mr Biermann …’

Biermann smiled. ‘Is it possible to do that?’

‘We’re just interested in his murderer. Who may have been at Garfield’s funeral. We’re simply interested in who was there.’

But Biermann said he hadn’t noticed who was there. He’d spoken to Eberhardt about the journey to Germany. The idea was Eberhardt would travel with Colin Harris as far as Berlin, but
he couldn’t get the old man to concentrate on these plans.

When the mourners were dispersing, he looked for Eberhardt, but couldn’t see him. He went back to the wake. Mrs Garfield – Georgina – had persuaded him to stay on long after the others had left. ‘She was a bit upset and we had some more to drink and I tried to comfort her and – well, things got a bit out of hand. I suppose I’d drunk rather a lot. She certainly had. Old Garfield had been ill for a long time, you know, and I don’t suppose … anyway he was much older than her … and when people are upset, they can behave a bit unpredictably, can’t they? I feel bad about the whole thing now. I shouldn’t have let Konrad out of my sight. I thought he could look after himself, but he obviously couldn’t.’

‘Did Colin Harris go to the wake? You and he left the cemetery together.’

‘Oh, so you
were
there. No, he didn’t. Said he didn’t like that sort of occasion.’

McGovern decided to call it a day. ‘Thank you for talking to us, Mr Biermann. If you do remember the names of anyone there, it could be very helpful.’

He was almost out of the front door when he suddenly turned back. ‘Just one last thing – what about the autobiography? He mentioned an autobiography in the radio broadcast that went out last week. What’s that all about? He gave Harris a parcel. When you were all in the cemetery.’

Biermann took it like a slap in the face. ‘That’s nonsense. There isn’t one.’

‘There wasn’t a book, a manuscript in the parcel?’

‘No. As if it’s any of your business.’

‘What if it wasn’t an autobiography? Or if it was an autobiography that included political information or possibly information about scientific activities that would be useful to East Germany?’

Alex Biermann stared at McGovern. ‘You people live in
some kind of fantasy land. You see traitors everywhere.’

The two detectives walked up the straggly little street to the main road.

‘He knew who we were, didn’t he,’ said Jarrell. ‘He knew we weren’t just ordinary CID.’

As McGovern sat in Slater’s office to discuss what had so far been achieved, his irritation level had within minutes mounted to the point at which he was going either to have to leave or to lose his temper. Slater’s response when McGovern reported on the interview with Biermann was an unhelpful, ‘Why don’t you bring him in for questioning? Rough him up a bit?’

‘He could be a suspect,’ piped up Jarrell, ‘except that he seems to have been the only person in the world who actually liked the dead man.’

‘He was the last person to see the dead man alive, for Christ’s sake. Along with this subversive you were supposed to be watching. Your surveillance doesn’t seem to have been very successful,’ said Slater. ‘A murder was committed while you were actually shadowing a potential suspect.’

‘Thanks for pointing that out.’ McGovern gritted his teeth.

‘But Biermann has to be on the list,’ said Jarrell, changing tack, perhaps just to annoy his superiors. ‘He was present at the funeral and he had an interest in persuading the old man to return to Germany. Suppose the old man suddenly changed his mind—’

‘Again.’

‘And that didn’t suit Biermann,’ Jarrell continued. ‘Which would suggest Biermann had some special reason for wanting him back there – for example, that he was in contact with the East German government, that he was working for them.’ Jarrell looked at his audience triumphantly. ‘And then there
was this red herring, when he suddenly told us about his … his
dalliance
with the widow, Garfield’s wife.’

‘Dalliance!’ Slater burst out laughing. ‘Are you some kind of bloody poet? He was having it off with Garfield’s widow? My God, she’s a bit past it, isn’t she! He’s half her age.’ The idea seemed to scandalise Slater.

‘I think she’s only in her forties.’

‘Well, she looks older.’

‘It’s irrelevant. Jarrell’s right, it could have been meant to divert our attention, but it doesn’t lead anywhere. Other than that, he didn’t tell us anything we didn’t know already. What about the mourners you’ve seen?’

The project of interviewing the mourners would get nowhere, McGovern knew. At best it would involve hours of work for almost no reward. He was glad it was largely Slater’s job rather than his.

‘We’ve interviewed five so far,’ said Slater. ‘Needle in a bloody haystack. And probably there isn’t even a fucking needle. None of them would have known for certain Eberhardt would even be at the funeral. Which means it wasn’t premeditated.’

‘Anything useful?’

‘Not much. Of the five, three were no use at all. Then there was a woman who hinted she had an affair with him, didn’t speak well of him, but it was all a long time ago; and there was another émigré exile, a writer called Theodor Strauss. He certainly knew Eberhardt. And he definitely disliked him, wasn’t at all complimentary about the old man. Didn’t like Garfield either, described him as a phoney hero, full of bombast and posturing about Spain, claiming to be the great International Brigade hero, when almost all the real heroes were dead. Strauss seemed to think Eberhardt dying at a funeral was rather a joke or even poetic justice, although he didn’t say why. He described his relationship with Eberhardt as the result of exile, feverish, exaggerated. But the interesting thing from our point of view
is he said no-one could ever trust Eberhardt. He wasn’t reliable. He was always changing his views. And he said one thing to your face and another behind your back. They were interned together, but Eberhardt got out very quickly and Strauss said he always suspected him of being an informant. Reporting to the authorities about other internees.’

‘An informant: that’s interesting. But that was just during the war. Unless he was now informing on Alex Biermann – or on Colin Harris … but he was confused. He was unlikely to be much use as an informant any more.’

‘A funeral seems a rum place to murder him. If there really was a
plan
, if it was premeditated, why not do it in his home in Deal?’ pondered Slater.

‘Yes,’ chirped up Jarrell. ‘There he was, he lived alone, it wouldn’t be difficult to break into the house. His murderer may have been known to him. He might have let him in.’

‘But he wasn’t killed in his own home, so that’s irrelevant,’ snapped McGovern.

McGovern pictured the confused old man wandering about in the cemetery and perhaps accidentally straying out onto the edge of the canal beyond the rusted gates. If someone had followed him, he might not have noticed the hostile intent when that person approached him. But the confusion raised again the question of whether this really was a murder. ‘Someone who was confused could possibly have somehow tripped, fallen over, knocked his head and then fallen into the canal.’

‘We’ve been through all that,’ said Slater. ‘The white coats are still insisting it’s unlikely.’

‘There’s one thing you didn’t mention, sir,’ said Monkhouse, Slater’s sour-faced sergeant, with whom McGovern had clashed what seemed like weeks ago. ‘Strauss said he looked round some of the graves and noticed someone loitering around nearby.’

‘Thanks for reminding me. Yes, I left that out. A big man,
there was nothing special about him, he said, but somehow he didn’t look like the other mourners. Which makes me think,’ concluded Slater with an air of triumph, ‘that it
was
just a robbery after all.’

Which meant, thought McGovern, that his colleague wasn’t going to put himself out unduly to solve this particular crime. A body in the canal was nothing unusual after all. A crime that often went unsolved – although less so, when an identity was established. Slater would haul in a couple of villains, try to stick it on one of them, and if nothing came of it, well, Eberhardt had no relations and seemingly no friends and the whole thing would soon be forgotten. He left the office in a grim frame of mind. Things were going nowhere and he had to report again to Kingdom. He’d at least have the stuff about Biermann to show for his efforts.

twenty-two

T
HE RENDEZVOUS WAS AT
the Natural History Museum on a wet Wednesday afternoon. McGovern found Kingdom in a distant deserted room devoted to reptiles. Stuffed snakes were displayed in frozen, writhing positions in glass cabinets. No visitors had penetrated this far, and its dusty specimens amounted to nothing but a surplus of useless information. McGovern disliked snakes and their petrified malice preserved beneath glass in this forgotten corner of the vast building made his flesh crawl.

Kingdom leaned against a wall by the window. ‘I’ve spent hours with that fucking pansy, Blunt, but I can’t pin him down.’ He brought out his cigarette case. ‘You’ve seen Biermann, then?’

This time McGovern owned up about the parcel he’d observed change hands in the cemetery. ‘But Biermann categorically denied any knowledge of the autobiography.’

‘Why the hell didn’t you tell me this before?’

‘I personally doubt any autobiography exists.’

‘The fact that Biermann denied it makes it all the more likely it
does
exist, in my view. And if it does, Harris has it. Well, now you’ll definitely have to make another trip to Berlin. If there’s a manuscript, we have to get it back.’ His eyes flickered, darted to and fro as if an unseen enemy lurked even in this cemetery of serpents.

‘The Super will no stand for me having another wee holiday in Berlin.’

‘He will if I ask him nicely.’

‘About the Eberhardt case,’ said McGovern, ‘I’ve talked to CID. They’ve interviewed several individuals who were at the funeral, but they’re no closer to finding the murderer.’

‘I don’t give a fuck who murdered Eberhardt. What’s important is what he was up to.’

Kingdom’s brutal indifference to the death startled McGovern, but he ploughed on. ‘Someone Slater, the CID man in charge of the case, interviewed suggested Eberhardt might have been an informant. I thought – is it possible he was working for the East Germans after all? We had him down as an anti-communist, but if he really did want to return, then perhaps he was working for them all along.’

‘An informant?’ Kingdom paced round the cabinets looking or pretending to look at the snakes. ‘It’s an interesting idea, but I doubt it. But if it were true, of course, then the autobiography would become more important. A possible coup for the Russians, or the East Germans.’

‘That’s not the way information would be passed on, though,’ objected McGovern.

‘But if it were some kind of propaganda coup. That’s what “spilling the beans” would mean, isn’t it? Something intended to be published, to make a splash, create a scandal.’

McGovern knew he didn’t want to believe in the autobiography. He didn’t want to believe that Harris could be mixed up in something like that. If Harris was really the courier in charge of a damaging document to be given to the East Germans, then in McGovern’s eyes Harris would become a kind of traitor. But Harris was an idealist. In
his
mind it wouldn’t be treason. In his eyes it would be … what would it be? An exposure of the corruption of Cold War politics on both sides? A plague on both your houses?