Quayle stopped the engine and sat, grainy eyed and tired, easing the ache in his shoulder. It still ached when it was damp and raining. He was confidant they had not been followed. He had seen the figure on the motorbike, but not since the outskirts of Sion; that was back in Switzerland and felt like a century ago.
“We leave the car here and walk. There’s a small hotel round the corner. Der Leibling. It sells rooms by the hour. No questions. It will do us for the moment.”
Holly didn’t care. All she wanted was a bath and then a bed.
They checked in, Quayle playing the hick country boy in perfect coarse southern German while Pope and Holly waited in the lounge. He paid extra for clean sheets, smiling like a fool as if it were normal and then, carrying them over his arm, he trudged up the stairs after his new bride and her father who went everywhere with her.
Behind them, the clerk sniggered to himself, pocketing the money. That afternoon, as they slept, he handed over the shift to his replacement and went to drink Schnapps and play cards with his friends and he related the story of the stupid ploughboy.
One of his friends was a sometime pimp, sometime thief and full-time informer. He had been asked by his owner to look out for three strangers: two men, one older than the other, and a girl. The owner wasn’t Federal Police or even City of Munich Police. He was something to do with the Bundesnachrichtendienst, the BND, Germany’s Secret Service, and he paid well in street currency for information. Cocaine could be very profitable indeed. He smiled and drank, played cards, and bought his rounds, feeling up the whores like a rich man. Only then did he convince his friend, the hotel clerk, to point out the ploughboy, promising him a cash reward. Together they walked back to the hotel and sat in a bar opposite until eventually they were rewarded. Quayle walked across the street to a Turkish take-away and, twenty minutes later, walked back into the hotel carrying his food.
Later that night, the informer phoned his contact. The man was away, he was told, but would be back the next morning. And so, driving his dilapidated old car round to the man’s apartment, he slept in the back seat, waking whenever he heard a car arrive to see who climbed out.
Just before five, by which time his back was truly aching, he saw his contact step out of a taxi and ran to join him, hoping that the three hadn’t left the Die Leibling yet. This information, he thought, had to be worth ten grams at least.
After the security service man had listened to his gabbled story, he took the lift up to his apartment and returned immediately with an envelope of photos. These he laid out beside a vase of wilting flowers on the doorman’s desk and asked the informer to point out the man he had seen. He’d shown them seven times that day to informers all over Southern Germany and was surprised when the man went unhesitatingly to Quayle’s picture.
“You’re sure?”
“Ja. That was him. What’s it worth? Fifteen, eh?”
“If it is him, and if they are all there, then maybe five,” the BND man said with some distaste.
“Five! Nien!”
They began to haggle and, finally settling on eight grams of the drug, the BND man got onto the phone, trying to rustle up some help. Fifteen minutes later, a three man team picked him up on the street and, as they drove, they loaded guns on the back seat. There was no talk. The English bodyguard who had disappeared was now confirmed as being with them. He was rated as number three in Europe and, two days ago, he had killed the number two like he had been an amateur. There was no doubt about it: they were scared of the English Mr Pope.
Quayle pulled his sweater over his shirt, combed his hair quickly and picked up his jacket. Holly was in the small bathroom still brushing her teeth, and he looked across at Pope who stood ready by the door.
“I’ll get the car, bring it round the back in the alley. I’ll pick up some rolls and cheese too. Be about ten minutes.”
Pope just nodded. He didn’t ordinarily eat in the mornings. All he wanted was a cup of tea and that was always a problem in Europe. They only drank tea when they were ill. After last night he felt good, well rested, even in spite of the arguing whores and drunken singing that sporadically shattered the peacefulness through which he’d slept.
Locking the rickety door behind Quayle, he waited patiently for Holly to finish. He knew her routines now. After the toothbrush, she did her hair, long sweeping strokes of the brush that reminded him of his boyhood in London, watching his mother sitting at her dresser. While he waited, he crossed to the window and, careful not to reveal himself, looked out upon the Munich street. A van making early deliveries was unloading sacks of potatoes and a young boy was stacking beer barrels outside a bar. Men in working clothes walked the pavements in twos and threes towards a small factory somewhere nearby and a lone taxi prowled for a fare. He had wanted to be away by now – but the garage where they had left the car didn’t open until 5.45.
Holly stepped from the bathroom, clutching a toilet bag. “Sorry,” she said cheerfully. “Ready at last! I’ll just bung this in here…” She bent over her hold all and, unzipping it, pushed the toilet
