into his garden they went inside.
They had nothing to say to him, and he made no secret of his opinion that they were intruders and unwelcome – but his death would come, and their liberation.
He said, 'I cannot imagine a life so detached from reality. They say that even when his wife was alive he was no different.'
She said, 'That woman, she must have suffered. It is not possible she could have been the same.'
'You never see newspapers outside the house for the rubbish, you never hear a radio. There is no television. He must know nothing of the world he inhabits.'
'Would not know about the economy, its down turn? The unemployment…'
'Would not care, isolated here.'
'Would not know about the war, in Iraq? Not know about the terrorists… '
'Ignorance – stubborn, obstinate, hate-filled ignorance. So pathetic, to be at the autumn of life and to realize, deep in your heart, that you will do nothing in your last days that is valuable, nothing that is respected.'
A memory for both of them, when they had packed up the house at the end of the last summer and loaded the trolley to wheel it to the ferry, had been the lowering and gloom-laden face of Oskar Netzer behind a grimy window. At home in Duisseldorf, each time they spoke of their neighbour, anger grew, and they had to stifle it or accept that he hurt their love of the island and their small home.
He poured the last of the wine from the second bottle into his wife's glass. 'You are right, my love. He would reject any action that made him loved, respected.'
She drank, then cackled in laughter and the drink spurted from her lips. 'Sorry, sorry… His ducks will love him. The bloody ducks will mourn him when he's dead, no one else.'
The wind hit their windows and the rain ran on them, and the curtains fluttered, and next door to them – unloved – their neighbour slept.
'You can take him. Please, get him out of here.'
'Don't know that I want him.'
'Remove him, Miss Wilkins.'
'If you say so.'
She had sent her signal, encrypted on the laptop.
Coffee had kept her awake while she'd typed. She followed Johan Konig out of the side room and back into his office.
'Squeeze it from him, why he was at the Rahman house.'
'Without your help?'
'If I hold him I have to charge him and put him before a court. It is not a road I wish to follow.'
'Understood.'
He passed her the plastic bag, then turned his back on her. For a moment she looked around the bare room, which, she had decided, displayed a man's aloneness and a life without emotion. She fastened on the one item that showed humanity – a photograph of a hippopotamus in a muddied river with a white bird on its back. In her imagination, she delved into Konig's past. Perhaps a holiday in east Africa with a wife or a partner, and that was a favourite picture.
Maybe the wife or partner had now left him or had died. She reckoned it involved a sadness. She betrayed herself, her eyes lingered too long on it.
'It is the better to understand them,' Konig said.
'What do you mean?'
'The better to understand them in Berlin, now in Hamburg.'
She said quietly, 'I assumed it was something personal.'
'God, no… The better to understand the men who control organized crime, to understand Rahman. The hippopotamus is the society in which we live, and the bird is the godfather. The egret, the bird, is not the enemy of the hippopotamus. Instead it fulfils a need of that great creature by picking off its back the parasites that will damage its skin. It is a symbiotic relationship – the hippopotamus provides sustenance for the bird, the bird returns gratitude by cleaning the hippopotamus's back. They need each other. Society wants drugs, prostitutes and sex shows, and the godfather gives it. He does not leech the blood of society, he merely provides a service that is demanded. That is why the picture is there, to remind me of reality.'
'What is the relationship between the bird, the godfather and terror cells?'
He pressed a small button on the leg of his desk.
'Again, symbiosis. The bird goes wherever there are parasites. Parasites are money. The terror cells have money, safe-houses and conduits for weapons. If there is benefit from co-operation you will find the egret there. Do not imagine, Miss Wilkins, that Timo Rahman steps back on the dictates of conscience or morality when there are parasites to feed off. The picture tells me much.'
She grimaced. 'I suppose so.'
'Take him.'
She held the plastic bag. 'Yes, I will.'
A man stood in the outer door, blinking in the bright light and she recognized him as the one who had brought the relays of coffee since they had emerged from the basement cell block.
'May I offer you advice? The power of Timo
Rahman in this city stretches far, wide. He has a network of clan leaders, who control the foot-soldiers. All of them will, by now, be out searching for an Englishman who dared to violate 'sacred' territory, Rahman's home. Keep him safe, Miss Wilkins, or he will be hurt, severely, and so will you, if you are with him. I warn you, and you should listen to me.'
'That's a cheerful message to start the day.'
The night-duty man led her away along the corridor. They went down three floors in an elevator.
Down more flights of stairs. She realized then that none of the big battalions marched with her.
She had no weapon and no back-up to call on. The cell door was unlocked. He lay on the bed.
She threw the plastic bag at his head and it cannoned into his face. His eyes burst open.
'Come on/ she snapped. 'My options were shifting you out or learning more about the hygiene habits of hippopotami -1 chose you. Move yourself.'
He looked up at her, eyes glazed with bewilderment, and shook himself.
From the bag, he took the belt and slotted it into his trousers. He laced his shoes, put the watch on his wrist and hung the tags at his throat. Then she took him out into the last of the night's darkness.
His train had been delayed, a points failure on the track south of Lincoln, and the taxi queue at the station had been endless. By the time he returned to his office, the bells behind Big Ben's clock face were chiming midnight. Gaunt found the signal. Because it rambled and was strewn with typescript errors, he thought his precious Polly suffered acute exhaustion.
Most of the others of her age who had desks scattered through the building popularly known as Ceausescu Towers – but not Wilco – would have gone to their beds and then, after toast and coffee, have composed a report without errors of syntax, punctuation, spelling. She had responded, and he blessed her, to her understanding of urgency.
The signal, and he had read it four times before he unfolded the camp-bed and shook out the blankets, was a masterclass in confusion – yet there was clarity.
A clear enough link, he believed, now existed between a fugitive escaping from Prague, a co-ordinator, and a considerable player in Hamburg's community of organized crime, a high-value target.
The lights switched off, his jacket and waistcoat, shirt, tie and suit trousers over the hanger on the back of the door, his shoes neatly laid at its foot, he stretched himself out on the bed, and spread a blanket over him. God, was this not business that should be consigned to the young? Work tossed in his mind, and in his hand – gripped tight – was the sheet of paper that described a man rescued from the security fence around that HVT's property. A name, a date of birth, a six-digit service number, a blood group, an occupation of government service, a tongue that stayed silent and a British-issued passport.
Confusion, because he did not know whether Polly Wilkins had blundered on something of importance or was distracted by an irrelevance.
And no way of telling, not till dawn, not before the banks of government computers in the outposts of the
