I got to my feet. Herr Spiegel lay on the ground, face upwards, a large dark stain spreading across the breast of his jacket.
I bent down and took Lancing’s parcel from Spiegel’s pocket. As I stood up I saw Vérité standing by the tamarisk bushes. She just stood there without movement or sound, a tall, slim figure in a skirt and blouse, a silk scarf loose about her throat, a thin band of ribbon across her hair. I gave another look at Herr Spiegel and then went across to her. I took her free hand and held it.
She went on staring past me at Herr Spiegel and, in a voice which seemed a hundred miles away, she said, “I followed him from the hotel....” Her hands went up to her eyes, shading them, and I saw her shoulders shake.
I put out an arm to pull her to me, to put a hand round her shoulders and hold her against whatever it was of memory and horror that my gun blast and the sight of Spiegel’s body had brought back, but she turned then and looked at me, and I saw her come back like someone from the dead to the present, a whole life slipping from her, her face drawn and suddenly stubborn with the effort she was forcing on herself.
She said, “You’re hurt.”
Her hands went to my shirt front and she began to unbutton the shirt. I was aware of the wet warmth down my left side. I slipped out of the shirt. As I raised my arm, the blood ran fresh. She picked up my shirt and now, completely herself, began to tear strips from it.
“It’s only through the loose flesh. There’s no real harm done.”
She held my arm, twisting it slightly to get at the wound, and I stood in the darkness, letting her bandage me. When she had finished, I got the whisky flask and insisted that she should drink. She did, shuddered as the spirit hit her, and then handed it back to me. I took a greedy pull.
I made her go back along the shore a little way. When she was gone, I took Spiegel and dragged him some way up the hill and well off the track. I left him in the cover of a thick growth of bushes, but before I left I went through his pockets. There wasn’t a thing on him that was worth taking. In the dell I found the rapier and the cane, slid the blade into it and tossed it far out into the lake. With any luck he would lie there for a few days before anyone found him. By then I meant to be out of Yugoslavia.
I put what was left of my damaged and stained shirt on, and then slipped my pullover over it, and we walked back to the hotel lakeside. Vérité said very little on the way back. She had made arrangements for us to have dinner, then cross the lake in the motor-boat and take the local bus the few miles down to Polace. The steamer did not go until half-past four in the morning, and for the few hours we had to wait in Polace the hotel authorities had hired rooms for us in one of the houses on the quayside. This, she said, was the usual arrangement for tourists.
We shouted across to the hotel from the lakeside and the rowing-boat came over and picked us up. Up in my room I took a shower and was finishing the last of my whisky when there was a knock on my door and Vérité came in. I was in my dressing-gown and pants, sitting on the edge of my bed.
She came over to me and said, “Slip that gown off.” She had a roll of clean bandage in her hand.
I pushed the gown back off my shoulders, and said, “Where did you get that?”
“I always have some first-aid stuff in my case.”
“Perhaps I should start carrying some, too.” I raised my arm and she began to take the old bandage off, then swabbed the wound with some stuff from a bottle that stung like hell. When she had finished I slipped the gown up over my shoulders and stood up.
I put my right hand on her shoulder and I felt her tense under my fingers. I leant forward and kissed her gently on the cheek. Then I stepped back and nodded at my whisky flask. “There’s still a little left. Like some?”
She shook her head.
I said, “Do you want to hear why Spiegel went for me?”
I knew at once that I’d said the wrong thing. The sight of his dead body, the sound of the shot were all too fresh in her mind.
“Later.” She turned away and left the room. I cursed myself but it was too late.
I went over and locked the door and then sat down on the bed and opened Lancing’s little parcel.
Inside were a couple of sheets of notepaper, folded around a cellophane envelope which held a colour transparency slide, and a small studio photograph of a girl.
I took the photograph first. She was about Katerina’s age and build, but a little taller, blonde and a dish. On the back of the photograph was a printed trade heading – Spartalis Photos. Akti Possidonus, Piraeus, T.411–45. Underneath this, written in pencil, were some notes made by Lancing, I guessed, probably just before I got out
