The Waiting Time (6 page)

They walked on the pavement. The women with their shopping and their raised umbrellas flowed around them.

‘I was wondering, Mr Mantle, were you ever in the police?’

‘I wasn’t, no.’

‘Didn’t think so. If you had been, at your age all you’d be interested in was growing bloody tomatoes in a greenhouse — wouldn’t have put the work in.’

He said quietly, ‘It wasn’t that complicated. If there was an industrial estate then it stood to reason that someone was coming or going, or looking through the window, or had gone outside for a smoke. Someone must have seen the lorry hit him.’

‘We’d had posters up, all the usual appeals, nothing. Nobody wants to get involved. How many did you go and see? A hundred?’

‘Might have been more.’

‘You found the star witness, Mr Mantle, and I didn’t. You put that scumbag away, and I didn’t. You should feel quite proud for having done the graft, stood up for her when we failed her.’

‘Decent of you to say it,’ he said.

‘Gives you a good feeling, doesn’t it, if you’ve given your hand to someone when nobody else will? Fox and Hounds, yes? Wish I had. You’re only a legal executive, aren’t you?’

‘Afraid I’m not quite that, not qualified yet. Just a glorified clerk.’

They went inside. The pub had opened only minutes earlier. The bar smelt of yesterday’s beer and the polish on the tables. The barrister was clapping his hands, the beam of success on his face, for the attention of the woman behind the bar, who stubbornly polished glasses. The senior partner, Bill Greatorex, was talking with the widow. She wasn’t listening — she caught Mantle’s eye. She was a pretty young woman. She’d dressed in black for the court, skirt and jacket, and deep tiredness showed round her eyes. He’d thought of her, and her small children, all the hours that he’d tramped round the industrial estate in search of a witness. He’d kept her in his mind through all the disappointments and all the shaken heads and all the dismissals from those who hadn’t the time to stretch their minds back to the moment of the death of her husband. The barrister bellowed, ‘God, there’s a serious risk in here of death from thirst.’

She walked away from Bill Greatorex, left him in mid-sentence and came to Mantle. The detective constable backed off. ‘What they tell me, Mr Mantle, is that that bastard who killed my Bob, if it had been left to the police, would have been fined five hundred pounds and banned for twelve months. Because of you, he’s been put away for three years where he can’t drink, drive, kill. Me and the children, all the family, we’re very grateful.’

‘Thank you,’ he said.

She reached up, rather too quickly for him, took his face in her hands and kissed his cheek. ‘Very grateful.’

She was gone, back to Greatorex. The barrister had the barmaid’s attention and was reciting the order.

The detective constable was beside him again. ‘Don’t think I’m out of order, Mr Mantle, but what age are you? Fifty-three, fifty- four? I’ll bet you’re on the money a twenty-year-old would get, a kid with spots all over his face. What that tells me, and I’m no Sherlock, you’ve a bit of a history.’

‘A bit,’ he said. ‘You’ll excuse me.’

He went towards the door. He heard the shout of the barrister behind him, what was ‘his poison’, pint or a short? He went out onto the street. He did grubby little case-work in a grubby little town, and across the road was a grubby little court-house. He walked back in the drizzle to the offices of Greatorex, Wilkins & Protheroe. He touched the place on his cheek where she had kissed him, then took out his handkerchief and wiped the skin hard.

The sleep was in her eyes and her head rocked. She sat on the bed. The food on the tray beside her was untouched.

Perkins yawned, grinned. ‘Yes, Tracy, we know there was a man-hunt on the base, across the peninsula where the base was — actually most of it’s a wildlife park now, we know that from radio traffic. Yes, we can assume that Hauptman Krause would have been called out from Rostock when the Soviets started howling. The radio traffic ended, and we didn’t have a monitor on their landlines. We have a lost agent, we have the assumption that Krause arrived in that area at some time that evening. That is not evidence of murder. You should try and get some sleep. As soon as you’re asleep, I’ll wake you and I’ll ask you again about evidence...’

‘Bloody movement, at last.’

‘You going to do a note?’

They were old friends, good friends, and had to be. For twelvehour shifts they shared sandwiches and body odours and a plastic piss bucket.

‘What Mr Fleming said — doesn’t want to wait for the tape to be transcribed. . . They’re waking him.’

‘You got good German?’

‘Good enough, and Italian and French. If my water’s right I’ve good Lebanese Arabic.
. .
His two minders are in...’

‘Arabic’s a right bastard.’

‘Here we go.’

The parking meters where the van was parked were covered over — they always carried the hoods so they could stop where it was best for the reception.

(Conversation started, Room 369, 12.11 hours.)

KRAUSE: They come to Rostock, they come pushing their noses

— (Indistinct) — I deal with it. I and my friends, I take what

action...

MINDER 1: But, Dieter, there is nothing to find, you gave your word to the Committee.
. .
(Indistinct.)

The van was in front of the hotel, in a side street. On the roof was a small antenna, inconspicuous, but sufficient for quality reception from the microphone in the third-floor room.

MINDER 2: You told us that all compromising files were cleaned. If there was evidence of crimes against human rights, a problem—

KRAUSE: There is no evidence because there was no crime.

MINDER 2: We have an investment in you, we have the right to your honesty. If there was a problem.
.?
(Indistinct.)

The two men were in the closed rear of the van. A different team had put the microphone in position so it was not their concern whether it was in the room telephone, the bedside radio, the television zapper or behind a wall socket. They were concerned with the reception from it and immediate translation of the conversation.

KRAUSE: There is no problem. Now, I want to shit and wash — I tell you, if anyone comes to Rostock and tries to make a problem — (indistinct) — I don’t ask your help. My friends and I remove the problem, if anyone comes to Rostock. Can I, please, shit...

MINDER 1: We cannot accept illegality.

KRAUSE: Do not be afraid, you will not hear of illegality, or of problems. You want to come with me and see me shit?

(Conversation ended 12.14 hours.)

‘You may, Tracy, be under the misapprehension that I am some sort of policeman. Not true, couldn’t care less about prosecuting you. What I care about is that you called Hauptman Krause a murderer. Let me backtrack, Tracy. The last days of the regime and the Stasi were frantic, burning, shredding and ripping the key files. Everything was on file, you know that. The fires couldn’t handle the weight of paper they tried to destroy, the shredders failed, and they were reduced to tearing paper with their hands — what we’d call the removal of evidence. OK, the very heavy stuff went by air to Moscow, but it was left to the lowlife guilty men to do the slog for themselves, burn and shred and tear. Hauptman Krause would have reckoned to have sanitized his past. . . That’s December ‘eighty-nine. Let’s jump to March ‘ninety-seven and yesterday. Krause is the star billing now. He’s important to his new friends, and they are not, I assure you, going to chase after evidence that knocks him down. If there is evidence, if you have evidence, then we can demand that he is charged with murder, prosecuted. I can’t go digging for evidence, Tracy — that’d be a hostile act against a beloved and respected ally. I have got to be given it, have to be handed it. Tracy, what is the evidence?’

Mrs Adelaide Barnes, Adie to her friends at bingo on Fridays and in the snug lounge of the Groom and Horses on Saturday nights, had two jobs through each working day of the week. She trudged home in the last light of the afternoon, and her feet were hurting. Buses cost money, and there wasn’t much money in cleaning. The chiropodist cost a fortune. She walked in pain at the end of each day back to Victoria Road. Her street, little terraced homes, was off Ragstone Road, almost underneath the railway embankment. Two things were worrying Adie Barnes as she turned off by the halal butcher’s on the corner, went past Memsahibs, the dress shop, the Tandoori take-away and into Victoria Road. At the afternoon house she hadn’t left a note for the lady to say she’d finished the window cleaning fluid, and that bothered her. Her second worry was that she hadn’t been able to speak to her Tracy last evening, and she must try again tonight. That nice Captain Christie, that her Tracy spoke of so well, had been short with her.

She saw the big police wagon half-way down Victoria Road, and the police car. She saw her neighbours, the Patels, the Ahmeds, the Devs and the Huqs, standing in the street with their children.

As fast as her bruised and swollen feet could take her, she hurried forward. The door of her house was broken and wide open, the wood panel beside the mortice lock splintered. She stopped, breathing hard, and a policeman carried two bin-liners out of her front door and put them in the wagon. She pushed past her neighbours, and through the little open gate. The policeman with the bags shouted after her.

Her hall was filled with policemen and men in suits, and there was a young woman in jeans and a sweater with a yapping spaniel on a leash. One of them in a suit came to her. It was like she’d been burgled — not that the thieves had ever been in her house, but they’d been in the Patels’ next door, and she’d seen the mess when she’d gone to make Mrs Pate! a good cup of tea. Adie could see into her living room: the carpets were up and some of the boards, and there were books off the shelf, and the drawers were tipped out.

‘You are Mrs Barnes, Mrs Adelaide Barnes? We have a warrant issued by Slough magistrates to search this property because we have reason to believe that a possible offence under the Official Secrets Act may have been committed by your daughter. I apologize for the mess we’ve left you. I can provide you with a list of items taken from your daughter’s room for further examination. If you find that anything not listed is missing, if you find any of your possessions to be broken, then you should put that down in writing and send it to Slough police station. I regret that I cannot offer you a fuller explanation, and I wouldn’t go bothering the police because they are not authorized to make any statement on this matter.’

She stood in front of him in shock.

He shouted past her, ‘Get that door fixed, made secure.’

The yapping of the spaniel filled the hail. In the kitchen, down the end of the hall, was the fridge-freezer her Tracy had bought her. On top of it, crouched, arched, was Fluff. She wished that the young woman in jeans would let go the bloody leash so that the spaniel could jump at Fluff and have its bloody eyes scratched out. Behind her she could hear the hammering of nails through plyboard and into the old wood of her front door. She started up the stairs.

A young constable was on the landing. He looked at his feet. He whispered, ‘We’re really sorry about this, love, all of us locals are. It’s a London crowd in charge, not us. I shouldn’t tell you... We weren’t told what they were looking for — whatever, they didn’t find it.’ He went down the stairs heavily, noisily.

Tears welled in Adie Barnes’s eyes. She was in her Tracy’s room. Her Tracy’s clothes were on the floor, carpet up, boards up. She heard the quiet, then the noise of. the wagon engine starting. Her Tracy’s music centre was in pieces, back off, gutted. Her Tracy’s bookcase had been pulled apart. The books were gone. Her name was called. Her Tracy’s bear — she’d had it since she was eight — was on the stripped bed and it was cut open. Mr Patel was at the door of her Tracy’s room.

Mr Patel was a good neighbour. Some of the old people at bingo on a Friday, those who had been in Victoria Road for ever, said there were too many Asians, that they’d brought the road down. She’d never have that talk. She thought Mr Patel as well mannered and caring as any man she knew, and Mr Ahmed and Mr Dcv and Mr Huq.

‘It is disgraceful what has happened to you, and you a senior- citizen lady. You should have the representation of a solicitor, Mrs Barnes. A very good firm acted for us when we bought the shop. I think it is too late for tonight...’

In ten minutes, with her coat on and her best hat, ignoring the pain of her feet, Mrs Barnes set off for the offices of Greatorex, Wilkins & Protheroe in the centre of Slough. The offices might be closed, but it was for her Tracy, and she did not know what else she could do.

* * *

‘Only a stenographer in Berlin, weren’t you, Tracy? So you wouldn’t have understood much about the intelligence business. I doubt you were alone, doubt that the people running Hans Becker knew much more than you. Did they tell you, Tracy, that running him was in breach of orders? Doubt they did. The running of agents was supposed to be given to us, the professionals. You made, Tracy, the oldest mistake in the book. You went soft on an agent. You couriered to him, didn’t you? Slap and tickle, was there? A tremble in the shadows? So, it was personal when you beat three shades of shit out of Hauptman Krause. Why him, Tracy? Where’s the evidence? You want to talk about the murder of your lover boy, then there has to be evidence . .