and we don’t entertain the pub with the story.’
‘That’s it?’
Colley took off his glasses, looked for something to clean them with, found a crumpled tissue and breathed on the filthy lenses. ‘Well,’ he said, not looking at her, rubbing glass, ‘some good can come out of a cockup. You never know.’
She waited. He didn’t look up, started on the other smeared lens. He wasn’t going to say any more, she was dismissed.
She left, feeling the tightness in her chest, the sick feeling.
One day she would kill Colley. Tie him to a tree in a forest, torture him and kill him. No, torture him and bury him alive, shovel damp soil alive with worms onto his head, into his mouth, watch his eyes.
But she knew that what she hated most was not Colley.
No, she hated herself for being so stupid as to go to him, to trust him.
26
…HAMBURG…
He found her on the university website.
A homepage carried a photograph, properly severe. He went to her curriculum vitae. It listed at least two dozen articles. She had been a visiting fellow at the Harvard Medical School. She was on the editorial board of
There was an email address. Anselm stared at the screen for a while, then he opened the mailer, typed in her address. Under Subject, he put: Rudeness, contrition.
In the message box, he typed: We could meet, for a walk perhaps. John Anselm.
He felt relieved after sending the message and went back to the logbooks. The phone rang.
‘It’s done,’ said Tilders. ‘Some luck too. Two for the price of one.’
‘Not a concept known to this firm,’ said Anselm. He didn’t know what Tilders was talking about. They must have got the bug on Serrano earlier than expected.
His email warning was blinking. He clicked. Alex Koenig.
The message was: A walk would be nice. Does today suit you? I am free from 3 p.m.
Anselm felt flushed. He couldn’t think of anywhere to meet her, and then he thought of his childhood walks with Fraulein Einspenner in Stadtpark. He hadn’t been there in thirty years.
She was waiting in front of the planetarium, formally dressed again, wearing her rimless glasses. There weren’t many people around, a few mothers with prams or pushers, lovers, older people walking briskly.
She saw him from a distance, didn’t look away, watched him approach.
‘Herr Anselm,’ she said, long and serious face. She held out her right hand. ‘Perhaps we start again?’
‘John,’ said Anselm.
‘Alex.’
They shook hands.
‘Shall we walk?’ she said.
They walked on the grass, away from the building. There wasn’t much left in the day. A wind had come up, serrated edge of winter, hunting brown and grey and russet leaves across a lawn worn shabby by the summer crowds.
‘Well,’ she said, not at ease. ‘You know what I do for my living. You are not still a journalist.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m in the information business.’
‘Yes?’
‘We gather it and sell it.’ That was true, that was what they did. He didn’t want to tell this woman the sordid truth but he didn’t want to lie to her, he’d told a lot of lies, most of them to women.
They were at the road. She stopped and turned. He turned too and they looked back at the planetarium: it was big, solid, domed, towering over the parkland, a faintly sinister presence, alien in its setting.
‘That’s an Albert Speer kind of building,’ Alex said. ‘Hitler must have liked it. It says, look at me, I’m huge.’
‘Well, I don’t want to stand up for Adolf ’s taste in architecture but if you have to have water towers, it’s not too bad.’
‘Water tower? I thought it was a planetarium.’
‘Now it is. It think it was built as a water tower. We could have coffee, something.’
He needed a drink, he hadn’t had anything to drink all day, nothing at lunch time, he usually drank beer from the machine in the basement.
‘Yes, good. Do you know where?’
‘I think so. It’s been thirty years, almost that.’
They set off again, crossed the road. She took big strides, he’d always had to shorten his stride with women, the women he remembered walking with. That was not many. He remembered one. He remembered walking in Maine with Helen Duval, she complained constantly about being bitten by midges, then she tripped over a root and claimed to have sprained her ankle. They were within sight of the cabin he’d hired. That was as far as they ventured.
‘You’re a medical doctor,’ he said. ‘As well.’
‘In theory,’ she said. ‘In practice, I can’t even diagnose myself. I get flu and I think I’m dying. You came to the park when you were young?’
‘I was brought to see the birds. They used to have wonderful exotic birds and all kinds of fowls, these huge fluffy things, golden pheasants, I remember. May still be here somewhere. Do you enjoy what you do?’
She had taken off her glasses. He hadn’t noticed her do that.
‘I suppose so.’ She looked at him, looked away. ‘Yes. Well, I do what I do and I don’t give much thought to whether I enjoy it. It’s not that…it’s not a question that arises. It’s my work.’
She was not used to being asked questions.
‘Hot chocolate with rum,’ said Anselm. ‘That’s what we should have.’
‘Right.’
‘The woman who brought me here always had one. She used to give me a teaspoonful. That’s where it all began. My decline.’
A waitress in black with a white apron came and he ordered two, stopped himself ordering a drink as well, asking her whether she wanted a drink.
‘What brought you to hostages?’ said Anselm.
He wasn’t looking at her, he was looking at the people. He had been doing that since they entered, doing an inventory of the people in the big room. Then he realised she would notice that and he looked at her. She’s pretending she hasn’t noticed, he thought, she’s wary. She thinks I’m capable of repeating last time’s performance.
I am.
‘Well, most of the post-trauma research in this area has been on large groups,’ said Alex. ‘I’m interested in the dynamics of survival in small groups.’
‘What about personality and life history?’
She smiled. ‘You didn’t take well to that. May I say that?’
Anselm nodded. ‘Certainly. To my shame. Did it come under the heading of an extreme reaction?’
‘Mild, I’d class it as mild.’
‘On the extreme scale.’
