The Girl in Berlin (8 page)

McGovern knew something was wrong. He didn’t know how he knew, as Kingdom’s demeanour never changed, but
know he did, as if he sensed an inaudible batsqueak vibration, an electrical tingle you could barely feel. ‘Why d’you think he went to Deal, sir?’ He’d finally fixed on ‘sir’, because you couldn’t go wrong with that.

Kingdom did not reply. The chilly spring wind whipped round them. The trees, thick with bursting green foliage, the lilac hanging heavy and scented and the long laburnum tails of sickly yellow, all this vegetation was sinister with new life, aggressively sap green, the grass almost emerald, the sky a blinding white-grey, the flowers garish in a direct clash between new growth and the cruel denial of warmth. Nature green in tooth and claw. McGovern found it oppressive and suddenly wished he were back in Scotland. On a day like this it’d be properly wet, raining in Glasgow, but the vegetation wouldn’t be so far in advance of itself and the weather.

Kingdom pulled a copy of
The Times
from under his arm. It was folded to show the obituaries page. ‘Take a look at this.’

The early death – from alcohol, illness or both – of Bill Garfield, the writer famous and admired for his stand against tyranny of all kinds, the socialist who’d denounced Stalin, had already caught McGovern’s attention. He’d read his books and liked them, if not quite as much as he’d hoped to.

‘I thought you might think of going to the funeral. Funerals are so interesting, don’t you think? You never know who may turn up at a funeral. When my father died, three of his mistresses put in an appearance. Mamma wasn’t too pleased, as you can imagine.’

McGovern swallowed. The scenario was so alien he almost laughed, but that would have been inappropriate. Or so he thought until Kingdom added: ‘I thought it was rather amusing, myself. Might be useful to see who turns up at this one. Harris is sure to be there, so you should go anyway. You remember I said we put a tap on his hotel telephone? It was just on the off chance. We thought he’d be careful not to use it. On the
contrary. He rang some leftie mate of his. They’re going to it together. What does that tell you about Harris?’

McGovern wasn’t sure whether the question was rhetorical or not. ‘He’s careless, or stupid or naive.’

‘Exactly. The latter I think, don’t you?’

‘I suppose he knew Garfield in Spain.’ McGovern was guessing, but Kingdom said:

‘Good man. You’ll know they were on the same side and yet on opposite sides – of the same side, so to speak. Harris was a communist, but Garfield supported the Trots and the anarchists. Most discouraging, the way comrades fall out, don’t you think? Must be very tiring.’

McGovern smiled. He was thinking of his father’s occasional tirades against Trotskyists, ‘ultra leftists’ and others who deviated from the party line. ‘I liked Garfield’s essay on Englishness,’ he said.

‘Appealed to you as a Scot, did it? I thought it was unutterable crap.’

‘We’re going to a funeral, Jarrell. Famous writer. Died of drink. Probably.’

‘How very sad, sir.’

‘Bill Garfield. Heard of him?’

‘Of course, sir.’

They alighted from the Bakerloo line at Kensal Green and at once saw the cemetery stretching back alongside the Harrow Road, flanked by a high wall, which shielded it from the general decay of the area. Inside, however, they found a different kind of decay in the flat but uneven sprawl of monuments to the dead. The place seemed deserted. The two of them loitered uneasily along the nearest path.

‘Won’t we be noticed? Won’t they think it odd, complete strangers at their friend’s funeral?’

‘They’ll not be bothered,’ said McGovern, and quoted Kingdom: ‘You never know who’ll turn up at a funeral.’ But he wasn’t wholly convinced. After a moment he added: ‘Your hair’s awfully conspicuous, Jarrell. Even with the hat.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’ Jarrell tried to squash his new trilby even further down on his head, but the red hair still stuck out.

‘You’ll have to get it dyed.’

‘
Dyed
?’

‘Dyeing it will nae turn you into a fairy.’

They had obviously taken the wrong path, because before long it led them to an ivy-covered bank and beyond that rusted railings, and what must be the Regent’s canal, so they retraced their steps and started again, this time turning right along a wider avenue. The neglected mossy graves, interspersed with vaults, stood all unevenly on either side. It was a peaceful place, rather as McGovern imagined an ancient ruin would be peaceful.

‘The crematorium must be at the far end,’ said McGovern uncertainly, but they walked forward and eventually found that it was.

A large group – a small crowd even – had gathered at the entrance. It was easy enough for McGovern and Jarrell to loiter at the edge. At the funeral of a known figure like Garfield, there would be quite a few unfamiliar faces and hangers-on, different groups who didn’t know one another.

A hearse crawled along the avenue, followed by a Daimler. Pale, indistinct faces stared blankly from its windows, as if the chief mourners were bewildered to find themselves in this situation. Funerals seemed always to take place in slow motion.

‘Keep your eyes open,’ muttered McGovern unnecessarily to his sidekick, ‘look out for Harris.’ He recognised some of the more famous among the gathering mourners, observing them as closely as he could from the discreet standpoint he and Jarrell had chosen. More beards and unconventional dress than
you would usually find at a funeral, he thought. There were some homburg hats and bowlers, but a good proportion of the men were defiantly bareheaded and along with the formal suits there were corduroy trousers and even a tweed jacket here and there. The clothing of the female mourners was even more varied, some outfits startlingly flamboyant.

As the mourners began to file slowly into the chapel he noticed two latecomers striking along the avenue. He nudged Jarrell.

Harris was of the bareheaded brigade, but wore a heavy herringbone overcoat and carried a briefcase. His companion was shorter, slighter, and even thinner. His handsome face with high cheekbones and dark eyes was shadowed by a showy fedora. Not something you’d wear if you were trying to be inconspicuous.

‘I don’t think we’ll go in,’ said McGovern. ‘We’ll wander a wee way away and wait for them to come out.’

He smoked to pass the time and he and Jarrell walked among the gravestones peering at the names of the dead. When the mourners emerged the two policemen strolled cautiously nearer. Harris appeared, still with the man in the fedora. Now they were talking to a short, heavy, elderly man, walking slowly forward, one on either side of him. The old man was carrying a holdall and stopped to pull a weighty-looking package from it. This he handed to Harris, who put it in his briefcase. All three then wandered away in the direction of the canal. The detectives followed them at a distance.

At first they kept the trio in sight without too much difficulty, but the back end of the cemetery adjacent to the canal was quite overgrown with richly sprouting ivy and tangled brambles bursting fiercely out of the earth, fertilised by so much human bone meal, and abruptly Harris and his two companions disappeared behind a wall of undergrowth and shrubs. ‘Where the hell are they?’

Jarrell shook his head. ‘They must be there, where it’s all overgrown.’

‘Can’t follow them there. They’ll hear us even if they don’t see us and they can’t get far because of the canal. We’ll hang about nearer the chapel, catch them again when they come back.’

Knots of mourners were still chatting on the path, with that sense of dislocation only a funeral can induce. It was some time before Harris and his companion reappeared, walking briskly past the chapel and towards the exit.

The old man was no longer with them.

That was strange, but McGovern knew they had to follow Harris. However, the two men outpaced them and when they reached the exit they were only in time to see them in the distance as they jumped onto a number 18 bus, and to watch as it lumbered away towards Paddington.

‘Actually sir,’ said Jarrell, ‘I think I know who the old man is. I saw a photo of him in
The Listener
.’

McGovern hadn’t thought anyone read
The Listener
, a digest of radio programmes. How typical of Jarrell.

‘There’s a programme about him this evening, an interview. His name’s Konrad Eberhardt. He’s some German scientist. Came over here before the war.’

‘That’s very smart of you, Jarrell. Sharp eyes and good memory.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

That evening at home McGovern switched on the wireless to hear the Eberhardt interview. But it had been postponed.

eight

T
HE PALLOR OF THE
evening sky was rapidly deepening to a mysterious blue. Searching along the railings, Charles Hallam found a rusted gate and stepped out onto the edge of the water. Beyond the canal, the backs of warehouses and derelict buildings, junkyards and gasometers loomed and the solitude of the canal was only enhanced by the murmur of traffic from the great city beyond, like the breaking of waves on some distant man-made shore. The canal stretched ahead of him, a bend obscuring the way forward as it blurred into dusk.

But the towpath was not this side. It was on the opposite bank. He could not walk home along the canal from here. He advanced on a ledge of land alongside the water, pushing past buddleia and hawthorn, but met a tangle of brambles. There was no way forward. He would have to turn back through the cemetery, now thick with twilight. To gather his courage before venturing back among the graves, Charles stopped for a moment to gaze at the black water. It shivered sullenly, bearing slowly along its flotsam of bits of wood, a creamy foam gathering against planks, a tangle of metal caught on a branch. Then he saw something bigger and heavier in the water. It rolled slightly, sickeningly large, an indistinct shape that, as he watched, heaved slowly sideways to reveal a pale blur. A face,
like a swimmer coming up for air, then once more submerged.

A body.

He stared transfixed, paralysed, trapped between the water and the cemetery at his back, where the graves gleamed in the fading light. They unnerved him. Gathering in the dusk they’d developed a silent half-life, patiently waiting as if for those they sheltered to emerge. Then, acting without thought, instinctively, he swung round and launched himself towards the rusty gate, knocking against it as he fled past, running madly towards the exit.

But the entrance gates were locked. His heart pounded in his chest, he was sobbing for lack of breath. He forced himself to stand still, take stock. There must be a way out. There had to be. The wall was high, too high to climb. He followed it, forcing himself not to panic, to move slowly, to calm himself with the thought that there
was
a way out. He followed the wall, stumbling through shrubs, tripping over loose gravestones and imagining a night among the graves, a nightmare, the horror of hours in this uninhabited yet peopled graveyard.

But where the wall ended was the driveway to the crematorium. Its wooden gate was easily climbed.

The relief of finding himself in the Harrow Road exhausted him. He leaned, shaking, against the cemetery wall. What an idiot to have panicked like that. After a few minutes he started to walk mechanically along the road.

The slowly turning body … should he go to the police? But they’d think he’d imagined it. They’d want to know what he was doing in the cemetery. As he walked on it began to seem like a dream. Perhaps he
had
imagined it. That made it worse. The image had swelled out of his mind, some sick, haunted thought, a secret he could share with no-one.

He walked until he came to a part of the town where the lights were brighter and there was noise and laughter and life on the streets. Of the men, many were black. Some hurried,
some loitered, some walked with white girls. It was a different, unfamiliar world, but he was too drained to feel curious about a scene he might otherwise have explored. Only then did he think of a bus and rode the 31 back to Camden Town. After that there was the final walk to Primrose Hill where the canal ran alongside their house.

The body; he shivered. It might be floating closer and closer to this very spot, rolling and heaving towards him. He stood on the little bridge next to the house and peered along the darkness of the water, lit just here by the light from the kitchen. The canal was flat and still, but he stood there for ages, unable to tear himself away.

It was an effort to go in. His mother, Vivienne, whose life had seemed to lose all purpose since she ceased dancing, was back in the mental hospital. In her absence his father had seen fit to invite his widowed sister and her daughter, Charles’s cousin, to stay with them. Their visit, and especially its indeterminate length, unnerved and irritated Charles. Luckily he himself was only home for forty-eight hours. He stood in the hall and took a deep breath.

‘You’re late, Charles. We were wondering where you’d got to.’

‘I’m sorry, Aunt Elfie. I lost track of the time.’

‘This is Mr Kingdom. He was a friend of your uncle’s.’

From the doorway Charles took in the tableau. The stranger was standing with his back to the marble fireplace, smoking, with a glass in his hand of what looked like whisky. He was tall and attractively sleek. He stared out opaquely at Charles, and he was almost but not quite smiling. And wasn’t he wearing an Old Etonian tie? Without doing anything, he dominated the room. Aunt Elfie and Judy looked tentative beside him, almost apologetic, but Kingdom was the sort of man who would never apologise for his presence. ‘Your aunt tells me you’re doing the Navy Russian Course.’

‘That’s right, sir.’

‘Enjoying it?’

‘It’s very interesting.’

‘What made you choose it?’

‘Well … it seemed better than doing a lot of square-bashing and then going to Germany or Cyprus or somewhere. I mean, going to Germany would be interesting, of course, but not as a conscript.’

‘Germany certainly is interesting, but you’re right. Everything depends on the circumstances. You’re good at languages? Reading modern languages later on? Elfie says you’re going up to Oxford.’