The Girl in Berlin (24 page)

‘Well, McGovern?’

‘You may be right.’

‘Well, see to it you find out. And do the necessary.’ He was silent for a while. Then: ‘What else about Biermann?’

‘He’s a busy wee man. It was he who planned Eberhardt’s return to Germany. Now he’s joining the workers on the buses. He’s even investigating some Ukrainians in the north because a fellow Party member suspects them of being fascists who fought with the Waffen SS.’

‘How very fanciful.’ Kingdom moved restlessly along the display, gazing into the cabinets. ‘Look at this one. One wouldn’t want to meet that in the jungle. Were there snakes in the desert? I suppose they were frightened away by the noise.’

‘When you say “do the necessary”, what exactly do you mean?’

‘You know what I mean. I told you from the start. See he doesn’t return. And find out as much as you can about his fiancée’s unpleasant-sounding father.’ He walked to and fro. How restless he was. ‘I want to know what Harris is up to with the woman’s father. Is it just that he happens to be the father of the woman he loves – if we can believe that? Or is the real connection with Schröder
père
?’

‘Harris talked about Thuringia. Schröder came from that part of the world.’

‘Really?’ Kingdom’s gaze was as penetrating and opaque as ever. And then he smiled. ‘You know what Thuringia is famous for, don’t you?’

McGovern shook his head.

‘Uranium. That’s where the Soviets get the uranium to make their bomb.’

When Lily heard that McGovern was to return to Berlin, she made a brief trip to London. They spent an intense day at the Festival
of Britain, she trying to conceal her anxiety, he trying to reassure her. The breeze whisked them across the bright, chilly open spaces between the exhibition buildings. A fountain spouted at intervals, its jet blown about by the wind. There was something flimsy about the light, efficient structures to which they were directed along a pre-chosen path by the Festival programme. If you do it in the wrong order it won’t make sense, the brochure warned. They dutifully queued for the Dome of Discovery; in fact, there was a lot of queueing, and McGovern felt it was all a bit too didactic, almost preachy. They were being told to have fun and it wasn’t spontaneous. He didn’t feel at home among the low-rise buildings, the self-consciously modern murals, the spindly furniture and manicured spaces.

But the Festival lifted Lily’s mood. For a while she forgot to be anxious. She loved the clean buildings and bright colours. ‘At least they’re trying,’ she said. ‘It’s a glimpse of the future, isn’t it. An end to austerity.’

McGovern tried to match her mood, but only when they made love late that evening did he briefly lose himself in their mutual surrender. And even then, afterwards, sleep wouldn’t come, for his thoughts circled round the remembered figure of Frieda Schröder; the gaunt face of Colin Harris and all his confused attempts to do the right thing; the ebullient Alex Biermann, so full of hope and energy; and Kingdom. Most of all he thought about Kingdom and about what Kingdom expected of him. Once it had seemed clear, but he could no longer read Kingdom’s moods. Perhaps he had never been able to, perhaps he had never understood him. But he was determined to do what he’d decided to do before he left for Germany; and resolved to make it count when he got there.

twenty-three

T
HE SUN BEAT DOWN
out of a hot blue sky as McGovern and Jarrell cruised through the south London suburbs and onto the Brighton road. It had taken McGovern many hours to locate the man he was looking for, but his success had buoyed him up. For weeks he’d felt himself a pawn in a game he didn’t understand, but now he’d taken the initiative in seeking out Frieda Schröder’s former ‘protector’, Colonel Ordway. With luck, no-one would know, but if they did, so be it. He didn’t care if it got him into trouble later.

Jarrell drove and McGovern had the map. After Haywards Heath he started to give instructions. They turned off the A23 and were soon driving along winding lanes between high hedges. Jarrell’s driving, poor at the best of times, became even more erratic, but the whole landscape was deserted and they encountered not a single oncoming vehicle. The land slumbered in the Sunday sunshine. McGovern found the lush green countryside almost too rich in its overpowering greenness, the trees sinking under their weight of foliage.

‘Here it is, I think.’

The ancient house, made of rosy brick and rust red tiles, stood some way back from the road and was approached by a dirt track. They bumped along until it widened into a gravel drive.

The man waiting by the open front door was tall and lean.
A brown tweed cap perched forward on his head to shade his eyes. He stepped nimbly forward and held out his hand. ‘Inspector McGovern?’

‘Aye.’ He shook hands. ‘And this is Sergeant Jarrell.’ Ordway invited them into the dark panelled hall and thence into a long drawing room, also panelled. They eased their way past ancient sofas and rickety side tables and out into the sunlight again. The Colonel had evidently been seated at a garden table reading the
Sunday Telegraph
.

‘I’m drinking whisky,’ he said. ‘What about you?’

Jarrell refused. The Colonel poured him plain water from the jug and strong doses of the finest Islay single malt for McGovern and himself. ‘As a Scotsman you’ll appreciate this.’ He drank. ‘What’s all this about then? Berlin after the war, eh? Old history now. Don’t you have enough to do in London? I hear the whole place is chock full of Jamaicans these days. God knows we didn’t fight the war for that. Still, you know what you’re doing I suppose. Fire away.’

McGovern began carefully. One foot wrong and the Colonel might kick up a fuss. That mustn’t happen, because neither Gorch nor Kingdom knew that he and Jarrell were here. ‘It’s a delicate matter, sir. And it’s strictly off the record. We’re investigating the murder of a German who’d been living in this country for many years, since before the war, an anti-Nazi. He was apparently planning to return to East Germany when he was murdered. There are links to Berlin and in the course of our investigations we’ve run up against a family there, well, a man and his daughter, Thomas and Frieda Schröder. I understand you knew them when you were in Berlin with the occupying forces after the end of the war. We wondered if you could tell us anything about them and particularly the father.’

Colonel Ordway looked extremely taken aback, but he recovered in double-quick time. ‘Little Frieda Schröder? Good God. I always wondered what happened to her.’

‘I’m sorry to bring it up, sir, but we’re interested in Schröder’s activities at the time.’

The Colonel sipped his whisky. ‘You probably know I had a brief liaison with Frieda Schröder. My wife’s at the church rearranging the flowers for evensong. Can’t stand all that bloody claptrap myself, but women like it. In any case, I’ve got no secrets from her. She’s no fool. She knows what happens in wartime. It was a rotten show having to leave Frieda like that. But what could I do? I told her to apply to the work scheme, the North Sea scheme it was called, for German women in West Berlin. There were private employment agencies too. I might have wangled work for her through one of those. She seemed to like the idea, but then all of a sudden her father and she decamped to the Soviet sector. Extraordinary thing to do.’ He drained his glass and refilled it. ‘He worked at Buchenwald, you know, the concentration camp, during the war. They lived down in that part of the world, Saalfeld in Thuringia. Buchenwald wasn’t far from the town.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘I see you’re shocked. You’re wondering why he wasn’t prosecuted, hanged or at least sent to prison. But there were so many – and a lot of them got away with it. Some of them were just doing what they were told, of course. But he was one of the ones who thoroughly enjoyed it. That’s the impression I got, anyway. He was a cruel man. A crook as well. He had something going in the British sector, Frieda used to drop hints; he was hand in glove with someone, the black market, I suppose. Well, I thought I should try to do something about it, but then, all of a sudden he moved them back into the Russian sector, and the North Sea scheme was only for females in the Western sectors, so that was that. Never could understand why he moved them back like that. Thinking about it though, maybe he knew I smelled a rat. Possibly he had friends in high places. Who knows? Or Frieda may have let slip I was on to
him, I don’t know. It’s a long time ago now.’ He sighed, puffing out his lips in a gesture of – defeat? Regret? Guilt? McGovern couldn’t tell.

The Colonel leaned forward. ‘But what exactly is it you want to know? What’s behind all this? What’s it got to do with this old bird who’s died?’

‘It’s a security matter, sir. The security services are on high alert after the missing diplomats business. I’m not at liberty to go into the details, but we believe the man, Schröder, may be relevant to our enquiry.’

‘Burgess and Maclean. Bloody fools. Something rum going on there. Never trust a queer, that’s what I say.’ The Colonel brought out a pipe and was carefully filling it with tobacco from a shabby leather pouch, pressing it down into the cup of the pipe, lighting it, starting to puff. ‘But that doesn’t entirely explain it. What could have induced men like that? Siding with the Reds! Unbelievable. Mind you, I voted for Attlee’s lot myself in forty-five. Thought we needed a change, Labour government, something different. Never cared for Churchill myself. Yes, something different was needed. But now they’ve gone bloody mad. I’ve never dared tell the local Conservative Party. I’d be out on my ear, court-martialled in short order, I dare say.’ He laughed. ‘I think it had something to do with what I saw in Berlin, in Germany, back then. Bit of a shock to the system, as a matter of fact. But that’s a far cry from betraying your country, although some of my neighbours around here wouldn’t see much difference. But I’m sorry – you were saying—?’

‘Is there anything more you can tell me about Thomas Schröder? You’re suggesting someone in Allied command was protecting him?’

‘I wouldn’t go that far. It was just a thought. More likely he just fell through the net. Impossible to prosecute everyone, old chap. We did our best, but … the ones that got away were many and various. Or it’s possible he
was
interrogated, but
managed to conceal his past … or—’ he paused and frowned, sucking his pipe. ‘You see, as soon as the Russians ceased to be our glorious allies and were enemy number one again, which happened pretty damned quickly, the secret services were on the lookout for anyone who could help when it ceased to be a matter of bringing Nazis to book and became all about the crusade against communism: Nazi intelligence officers who had useful information, or Ukrainians and Latvians and all the rest of them from the SS Waffen divisions in that part of the world.’

Jarrell had been very quiet all afternoon, but now he sat up: ‘Ukrainians?’

‘They hated the Russians,’ explained Ordway. ‘Saw them as occupiers, hated them worse than the Germans. All about nationalism, you see. Some of them were patriots, some of them were hard-core Nazis themselves. None of that applied to Schröder, of course.’

McGovern said: ‘So what you’re saying is that when Allied interrogators came across Nazis who could be useful against the communist threat, they let them go in return for their cooperation.’

‘Yes. I don’t know how that would apply to Schröder. He was just a slippery customer. It wasn’t as if he’d been in Nazi intelligence or anything useful like that. But perhaps he was useful in some other way.’

‘The black market?’

‘Possibly. I don’t know. I used to think there was something going on. Frieda was very cagey about things, but you got the feeling things weren’t right.’ The Colonel sighed. His pipe made a little popping noise. He smiled apologetically. ‘Brings it all back, you know. Lovely girl. I never could understand why she didn’t just get out when she could. But, as I say, I got the feeling Schröder was up to something. So possibly things got too hot for him in the British sector. That may be why
he cut and run. You know, we treated them decently on the whole, the Huns. Most of them – well, the last thing they’d do was move to the Soviet sector. I tried to make a few enquiries about Schröder, but there was so much going on, so many much bigger problems, basic things like food and water, we were trying to set up an administrative regime – in the midst of all those atrocities, starvation, ruin, corpses …’

‘So what Schröder did – move out of the British sector and into the Soviet one – wasn’t usual?’ McGovern knew this already, but he asked the question anyway.

‘It certainly wasn’t. I told Frieda she didn’t have to go with him.’ He paused again. For a second McGovern thought the older man was close to tears. ‘Look – there are things, events, mistakes that come back to haunt you. And Frieda was one of those. I always felt I could have done more to help her. But in the end I just said goodbye and came home.’

‘Perhaps I will have a wee drop more after all.’ McGovern wanted to gain time. ‘She wants to get over here now,’ he said, ‘she’s desperate to get away.’

‘
What
?’ Ordway’s eyes were very round and blue.

‘There’s an Englishman she wants to marry.’

Ordway snorted. ‘You can bet your bottom dollar her father’s behind that too. He’d sell his daughter, he’d sell
himself
if there was a few bob in it for him. He’s probably in with the commies now, he’s probably done some crooked deal with them.’

‘You mean she might be sent here on some sort of spying mission?’

‘Don’t know about that. More likely her father thinks he’ll get over here on her coat tails. If he’s not in with the East German government. Poor little girl.’ The Colonel’s pipe popped and puffed. It went out. He poked it with a pipe cleaner, lit it again. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘she did hate her father … and yet in a way she didn’t. She
could
have got away if she’d really wanted to.’

twenty-four

T
HE RECEPTIONIST AT THE
Hotel Am Zoo, a middleaged man who looked like a professor and had only one arm, recognised McGovern. ‘Good day, Herr Roberts.’ The thin smile was a concession, a recognition of McGovern’s status as a returning patron. ‘You have a room at the front. A Herr Harris has left a message to say he will meet you here at six o’clock.’