‘What about my shoe? You could bite on that.’
‘I am in no position to bargain. The offer of your shoe is acceptable.’
I took it off, held it over his mouth and looked with horror as he raised his head towards it. He said, ‘I’m sorry, it might scuff the polish a bit.’
‘It’s OK, there’s a shoeshine kid at the Cliff Railway Station.’
‘Make sure he doesn’t overcharge you. Farewell, Tiresias, I forgive you.’ He clenched his teeth on the shoe and closed his eyes.
I watched for a second or two, holding the struggling mouse by its tail. I put the mouse back into its cage and tore the shoe out of Caleb’s mouth. I sat down onto the floor, defeated by either his magnificent spirit or a magnificent bluff.
Caleb opened his eyes and saw my dejection. ‘Please don’t take it to heart,’ he said. ‘It isn’t easy to torture a man to death. Very few people are capable of it. I tried telling those people from Odessa, they were the same when they tortured me. I said to them, “Don’t regard my refusal to tell you what you want as a criticism of your skills. You are excellent torturers, all of you.”’
I smiled weakly and said, ‘I bet they were glad to see the back of you.’
‘They were.’
I began to wrench to nails from the floor. Once one arm was free Caleb used it to pull the other one off the nails.
‘Would you like a drink?’ he asked. ‘It is Christmas.’
I nodded dully and he brought a bottle of sherry from out of the shadows and took a swig from the bottle. He handed it to me. ‘Sorry I don’t have glasses. I never get visitors.’
I drank from the bottle. We sat on the floor and said nothing for a while. Scenes like that are hard to follow. The torturer drinking a Christmas toast with his victim – there’s no protocol to observe.
Eventually Caleb said, ‘This Hoffmann guy, he sure has caused a lot of trouble.’
‘If he exists.’
‘’Course he exists. He stole my bleeding coat, didn’t he?’
‘Then why don’t you know who he is?’
‘I do know.’
‘You know?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you let me do the “mouse tunnelling through your stomach routine” and you wouldn’t say?’
‘You didn’t ask me who Hoffmann is, you wanted to know about our secret shame. I will never tell you that.’
I looked at him once more in astonishment.
‘Oh, Lord, yes! I can remember it as if it was yesterday – I was lying wounded in the field hospital and he came and took my coat and left me to freeze to death. I told my interrogators all about that bit. I didn’t tell them that the item they were looking for was no longer in the coat, that I had taken it out.’
‘Let me guess: you can’t tell me what it was because it’s connected to your secret shame.’
‘That’s right.’
I sighed. This was turning into a very exasperating Christmas.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m just a bit taken aback that you were prepared to die a few seconds ago and now you’re telling me this.’
‘But there’s nothing to hide any more about Hoffmann. You can walk down to the Pier and see him.’
‘Don’t tell me he’s the laughing policeman.’
‘He’s appearing at the carol concert tonight.’
‘I thought that was just a wild rumour.’
‘Oh, no. That Tadpole girl has been giving out leaflets. Come and be redeemed. Hoffmann will expiate the sins of all towns-people who turn up tonight. Tickets five pound. There’s a leaflet here somewhere.’
‘I guess they’ll have sold out by now. Just my luck.’
‘You’re better off not going. There’ll be a riot when they find out who it is.’
‘So who is it?’
‘Hoffmann’s not his real name. That is just a . . . what do you call it? Acronym or something. It’s from my torture dossier. That’s quite a famous item in the world of the spooks. Those guys who tortured me wrote everything down in German. The name comes from the letters HFM which were scribbled as an abbreviation on my dossier. From “
‘No.’
‘I told them, you see, about the coat. How I lay there coming round from the anaesthetic and everything was all misty and confused; I looked up and saw this blurry face. The only thing I could remember about him was the horizontal crease in his face that looked like a smile. So they called him “Horizontal Crease Man”. In German that’s “
Chapter 22
The Prom was a mixture of late-winter afternoon greys: mist and drizzle and drab, brooding cloud; a filmy luminescent quality to the light that gave the faintest whisper of snow. There was only one way to describe a light like that: plangent. Never before had I longed more deeply, or more simply, for the chaste and temporary purification that snow brings. I wandered along the Prom towards Sospan’s kiosk. Up by the kids’ paddling pool I could see the lone figure of Eeyore on his way to the Pier with a donkey for the crib at the carol concert. I could tell from the slight limp in the donkey’s step that he had chosen Abishag this year. He saw me and waved. Outside the bandstand a group of men in dark coats held silver tubes of metal and blew into them. It sounded hopeful.
Sospan poured out a mug of mulled wine and handed it to me. ‘On the house,’ he said, and we chinked mugs and wished each other a better year next year.
‘I suppose you’ll be going to the concert, then?’ he asked.
‘Maybe. What about you?’
He looked sheepish. ‘Oh, I might pop my head round the door later.’
It meant that he wouldn’t.
‘Who do you reckon it is, then?’ I said, changing the subject. ‘This fat guy in the red and white coat. Is it Odin or the fourth-century Bishop Niklaus?’
‘That’s an easy one. It’s Odin.’
‘You sure he’s the man?’
‘Has to be. How would a fourth-century Christian bishop be able to deliver all the presents and put them in your pillowcase?’
I chuckled politely. ‘But he doesn’t really put the presents in the pillowcase, does he?’
‘Who doesn’t?’
‘Father Christmas.’
Sospan look puzzled. ‘Who does, then?’
Llunos pulled up in a prowl car. ‘I can’t stop,’ he said. ‘I have to go back to the hospital.’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s holding on. Maybe she can make it.’
‘The Lord will provide,’ said Sospan in clear defiance of the available evidence.
Llunos looked annoyed and pulled me over to the railings. The sea was going out, and down below the wet shingles gleamed in the streetlight. The sea returned and gently sucked. You could watch it for hours.
