flooring. A knock.
‘Please, sir, what do I do. It’s Tracy’s – Corporal Barnes’s – mum on the phone for her.’
Ben opened the door. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘She always rings this night, this time, clockwork.’
The girl, lance-corporal, Karen something, fat ankles, pointed down the corridor to the pay phone. The receiver was dangling. Just what he bloody needed… He went over and picked it up. He waved the hovering lance- corporal away.
‘Hello, Captain Christie here. Good evening… I’m sorry, Mrs Barnes, very sorry, but she’s not available… What? Could you speak up?… No, I can’t say why. I can only say that Corporal Barnes is unable to come to the telephone… Afraid I don’t know when she’ll be available. Goodnight, Mrs Barnes…‘ At every door on the corridor a face was watching him. He said, loudly, that if there were more calls from Corporal Barnes’s mother, she was to be given the camp number and extension number of the Adjutant’s office, manned through the night… The lie hurt him, hurt him as deeply as seeing bloody Johnson handling the underwear she wore against her skin.
Christie smiled, spoke gently. ‘It’s Karen, isn’t it? Come here, please. I’m not going to bite you. Actually, I need a bit of help.’
The girl soldier with the fat ankles came, hesitating, forward.
‘Corporal Barnes is in, I have to say it, a packet of trouble. Yes, you’ve heard, everybody’s heard. I want to help her, but for me to help her then you have to help me. Please… did something happen this morning, anything, anything unusual? I need your help.’
The blurted answer. ‘Nothing was different, it was all just usual. There was all the din in here at get-up time… You know how it is. Downes was bawling she was late with her period, Geraghty was giving out she’d got no clean knickers, Smythe’s got a new CD player that’s a right blaster. All bloody noise in the corridor. I went to her room, lost my tie. She gave me her spare. She was just sitting on the floor, hadn’t got her skirt on, quiet as a mouse, in front of the fire. She was humming that bloody song, so old, what she always sings. She was all gruff, about the tie, but it’s only an act. She comes over all heavy, but that’s not real. She lent me the tie, she didn’t give out that I was late on paying her what I owe her, what I borrowed last week. Under the gruff she’s all soft. I owe her, half the girls in the block owe her, but she doesn’t chase it. But for all that she won’t be friends with us. I asked her to come with us to the pub tonight, no chance. Just sits in her room. She’s done nothing in that room to make it her own like the rest of us have. No mess, no muck in there, everything tidied. She’s older than the rest of us, right? Keeps herself to herself. We don’t know nothing about her. Just her work, all she seems to live for, no boys, no fun. She pushes you away, but you get underneath and she’s really kind… I brought her over a message from Admin this afternoon, for you. She was down on the floor with your dog, she was feeding him the biscuits she keeps in the safe. She was singing to the dog, same song… Some old Irish thing… She’s sort of sad, really. She makes out she doesn’t need us, doesn’t need anyone. That’s sad, isn’t it? I can’t help you, Captain, honest. Your question, there was nothing different about her… I’m sorry.’
She fled down the corridor, past the watching faces.
He let himself into the room. He stepped over the bent-back vinyl. The sweat ran on Johnson’s forehead. Johnson pointed to a board, lifted it and a section came away cleanly, as if the work of loosening it had been done long before. He reached into the hole and lifted out the black and white photograph protected in Cellophane wrapping. Greyed buildings, a greyed street, greyed and broken pavings, a greyed road sign. The light was in Tracy’s face and on her cheeks and at her eyes, the love light. A boy held her, grinning as if proud to have her close to him. They were the brilliance in the greyness of a street, buildings and a pavement.
‘Sorry,’ Perry Johnson said. Seemed so damn tired. ‘Old eyes aren’t what they were, can’t read that street sign.’
Ben Christie held the photograph close to his face, squinted at it. ‘The sign is for the junction of Prenzlauer and Saarbrucker…’
‘Thought so. Give it me back, please.’
‘Where’s that?’
Up from his knees, Johnson brushed his uniform trousers. ‘Berlin. Prenzlauer Allee runs east from Alexanderplatz. A bit further up than Karl Marx Allee, on the other side, is Saarbrucker Strasse. She looks rather young – I’d say it’s ten years old. The junction of Saarbrucker Strasse and Prenzlauer Allee, ten years ago, was in East Berlin. That’s the wrong side of the Wall, that’s enemy ground… Oh, God…’
‘Do we hear skeletons rattling?’
‘Shit, man, do we need imbecile banalities?’
The room was to be sealed.
She had not moved, knees tucked against her chest and arms around her knees.
The drip of Johnson’s questions: ‘You were posted to Berlin, start of ‘eighty-six to end of ‘eighty-nine?… This photograph was taken between the start of ‘eighty-six and end of ‘eightynine?… Who are you with in the photograph?… How did you know of former Stasi official Dieter Krause?… You accused Krause of murder, the murder of whom?’
No word from her, staring back at them, no muscle moving on her face.
Christie wanted only to give her comfort. ‘Tracy, you have to see that you’re not helping yourself. If something happened in Germany, involving Krause, tell us, please.’
Away down the corridor the radio played quietly on the sergeant’s desk.
‘You’re a bloody fool, young woman, because the matter will now pass out of our hands, out of the hands of the family of the Corps.’ Johnson walked out of the cell.
Christie looked back at her. He looked for her anger, or for her bloody-minded obstinacy, or for fear, or for the cheek in her eye. She stared through him, as if he were not there.
Chapter Two
He was in the bathroom, standing at the basin in warm flannel pyjamas with his mouth full of toothpaste when the telephone rang downstairs in the hail. It was Albert Perkins’s night as standby duty officer (home). He spat out the toothpaste, rinsed his mouth and hurried downstairs.
‘Perkins here… Good evening, Mr Fleming… No, not inconvenient… Hadn’t gone to bed… How can I help? Secure? Just hold a moment, please…’
There was a switch at the side of the base of the telephone and he nudged it forward. All section heads, like Mr Fleming, and all stand-by duty officers (home), like Albert Perkins, had the equipment at home to make and receive secure calls.
‘On secure now, Mr Fleming. How can I help?… Yes, I’ve paper and a pen..
He listened. He scrawled on a pad: ‘TEMPLER BARRACKS, ASHFORD – INTELLIGENCE CORPS. KRAUSE, DIETER, exMfS – RYKOV, PYOTR, col, DefMin staff – WUSTROW base, w. of ROSTOCK.’
The grin formed on his face. ‘She did what?’
He wrote the name, ‘BARNES, TRACY, cpl.’
‘In the officers’ mess? That’s choice.. There’s a fair few I know who wish they’d the bottle, kick the Hun where it hurts – sorry, Mr Fleming. What it’s all about? Is that it? No problem… I’ll come in and get some files and then get down there… I have authority, I take the reins, yes?… No, I haven’t been celebrating, I can drive. I’ll be there about three, I’ll call you in the morning… No problem at all, Mr Fleming, goodnight…‘ He pushed back the Secure switch.
He climbed the stairs. He dressed. Work suit, that day’s shirt and tie, clean socks. He hadn’t had a drink that evening at home, just a Coca-Cola with the take-away pizza, and a coffee. In the kitchen, on the sideboard, were the four birthday cards, from his wife, Mr Fleming, his friend in the Supporters’ Club and Violet in the typing pool. He had not been out to celebrate his fiftieth birthday because Helen was still at the art class she taught that night of the week and she usually stayed for a drink with her class, and he wouldn’t have had alcohol, anyway, if he was standby duty officer (home). He tore the note from the pad beside the telephone and pocketed it. Then he ripped out the four sheets of blank paper underneath, as was his habit, took them into the living room and tossed them on the low fire behind the guard. He wrote a brief note of explanation on the pad to his wife and offered his love. He
