them – Jorg Brandt’s to Hoffmann, Heinz Gerber’s to Siehl, Artur Schwarz’s to Fischer, and Willi Muller’s he slipped between the beer glasses to Peters. For each of them there was a responsibffity. He laid his hand, palm down, on the table. Hoffmann’s covered his. Siehl’s covered Hoffmann’s. Fischer’s covered Siehl’s. Peters’ covered Fischer’s. He felt the weight of their hands on his.
They went their ways.
He walked in the shadowed streets towards his car.
He could see the body of the boy, moving in currents of water, held by the weighted pots, flowing against the sand bottom of the Salzhaff. There were crabs crawling at the eyes of the boy, and molluscs fastened to his lips. Eels writhed on the legs and arms. For six nights now he had seen the body and heard the laughter of the boy, mocking and taunting.
He ran, as if when in his car he would no longer see the boy.
Josh slept. A ragged, tossing, restless sleep. He was too tired to dream.
Chapter Nine
The banging split his mind. He hadn’t dreamed. He was dead to the world. He jerked, like a convulsion. The sheet and the two blankets came off his body, along with the coat that had been on top of them. The banging belted at the door.
‘Are you in there, or aren’t you?’
He yawned, gulped. The cold of the room came around him. Bright, brittle sunlight streamed through the thin material of the curtains. He shivered. There was no heating in the room. He blinked, tried to focus his eyes, looked at his watch.
‘If you’re there, then bloody well say so.’
It was past ten o’clock. God, he’d slept nine hours, dead, without a dream. He had been able to do without sleep in Ashford or Osnabruck, when he’d worked the night shifts merging into the day shifts at the Mansoura prison in Aden… but Josh Mantle was fifty-four years old and he had missed a whole night’s sleep on the step beside the door at Saarbrucker Strasse. He checked that he was decent, that he wasn’t hanging out of his pyjama trousers, had his coat wrapped tight around him. He turned the key.
She stood in the corridor. She looked at him, made him feel so feeble. She looked from his unshaven face to his coat tight around him, to his waist, to the pyjamas and down to his bare feet.
She grimaced. ‘Christ, that’s a pretty sight.’
‘I’m sorry, I overslept.’
‘Old for it, are you? Need your sleep, do you?’
He bit his lip. ‘I apologize. I’ve slept three hours longer than I intended.’
‘I’ve been sitting in that damp, grotty, freezing bloody room and waiting. What you’ve done, sir,’ she sneered on the word, ‘is bugger up the day, don’t you know.’
‘I said that I was sorry.’ She was dressed in her heavy walking shoes and jeans, the thick sweater and the new anorak. He stood aside so that she could come into the room. He went, dazed, across the room and moved his clothes from the one wooden chair. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter, I hadn’t intended that we’d do much.’
‘That’s good, “intended”. That’s bloody rich. “I hadn’t intended” – great, terrific!’ She had mimicked his words in a west London whine, the drawl of an officer thrown in. ‘You’re taking a bloody liberty.’
‘What I was trying to say…‘ He stood in the centre of the room, clothes of two days’ wear in hand. ‘I was trying to say that I hadn’t intended we’d do much today – get everything in place, think through…’
Her face lit, mock amazement, savage. ‘You have a misapprehension, sir. Do you think I came out here, one hope in my mind, that Mr Mantle would come running after me? Mr Mantle, bloody white armour, shining, and necessary to me? Can’t do it without Mr bloody Mantle, after he’s had his sleep.’
He said, ‘It’s right to plan, take time over it, plan routes and schedules. You work it out, don’t just pitch in, you weigh the options. We plan today, work it through, we go to Rerik tomorrow. Have to have decent maps, have to know what we’re doing.’
‘I’m going out.’
‘That’s not clever.’ Trying to be reasonable and patient.
‘Then I’m not clever, but I’m going out.’
‘Where? Where are you going?’
‘Where I’m not suffocated by you. Where you’re not breathing down my bloody neck.’
‘You want to be stupid and unprofessional, see if I care.’
The sneers had gone, the taunts were wiped away. She said, ‘We were in Rostock a few hours before we went to Rerik, before it was dark and he took the boat, before Hans went… We went from here up the river to Warnemunde, and we walked on the beach there and on the breakwater. Do you know about being in love, Mr Mantle?’
‘Not a lot.’ His temper had melted. She was the child, the innocent.
‘I want to go on the beach, on the breakwater, where we were. I want to be alone, just with him. I want to be with him, alone with him… I had to drive, after we’d been on the beach and the breakwater, to Rerik because he was too screwed down tight, clawed up, to drive himself. He was dead a few hours after we’d walked on the beach and the breakwater.’
She told him where she would be, and he would get a map after she’d gone and find the place. She had sledgehammered at him, the emotions rioted in him. He wished he could take her in his arms, comfort her, hold her, but he was fifty-four years old and knew so little about love.
‘Just give me two or three hours… It’s where we were.
Come and get me. We’ll talk it through, your plan. We’ll have a bloody great meal, and double chips, and a bloody great big bottle. I have to be with him.’
He said gruffly, choked on it, ‘Fine, that’ll be fine. And go carefully.’
She smiled, sadness and youth, a love that he was not a part of. He heard her go away down the corridor and listened for her singing until he could hear her no longer. He stripped and washed in ice-cold water. The sunlight had gone from the window, the clouds massed low above the roof tops. The room was greyer without the sunlight, without her.
He had made good time. He had left Savignyplatz too early to disturb Rogers: he had paid his bill and slipped away.
He rather enjoyed the quiet of the car, the radio turned low.
As he drove towards the outskirts of the city, ignoring the Dummerstorf-Waldeck turning, he considered the priorities of his day. First priority, a good hotel, if that were possible in Rostock. Second priority, to telephone Helen. Couldn’t remember, not to save his life, whether this was a day on which she had morning, afternoon or evening classes. He tried to call most days when he was abroad. Third priority, to telephone Basil. He called Basil his best friend, and Helen called him his only friend. He sat next to Basil in the Riverside Stand, season-ticket holders. He would not be back for Fullham against Bristol City, division two. He disliked the thought of Basil sitting next to an empty place and, if he was away over a home game, always rang him at the car-repair yard to suggest that Basil should call by at Hampton Wick and collect his ticket and take someone else. The fourth priority, to telephone Mr Fleming, just a progress report. Fifth priority, to search out the man who could tell a story, guaranteed to amuse, about the wife
It was important to Albert Perkins to have a day ahead of him filled with priorities. He braked hard, swerved for the slow lane at the sign for Rostock Sud. He saw the parked car. With a slight gesture, insufficient to arouse attention, he raised his hand so that it would block a view of his face. He noted the man with the trimmed beard and the scars.
He had heard, walking on empty streets away from Savignyplatz, in his imagination, the night before, the howl of a wolf. He smiled, satisfied, because his prediction had been proved correct. The pack had gathered. He drove towards the towering spires of the old churches, and the old walls of the city. The car at the slip-road, watching the traffic off the Autobahn from Berlin, told him that they had slipped through in the late evening. The young woman, if she listened to Mantle, stood a chance of achieving the policy objective, if she listened.
