and John was still ducking and weaving over a Yorkshire pudding. It was ignoble.
‘Do you remember the film-maker?’ asked Roza.
‘Blimey I haven’t thought of her in thirty years.’
‘You would ask about the Shoemaker so I would ask about her. It was the only way to shut you up.
‘Ha, yes, that’s right. Dear oh dear, I was pushy in those days.’
‘I think you’d have given your back teeth for that interview I’m sorry it wasn’t possible:
‘No matter. I got you instead.’
‘Yes, John, you did.’
Back teeth? Was that a reference to the Dentist? Was she slowly eating him up? Was she getting ready to spit out the gristle of what she knew? John made a kind of dash for the door.
‘She came to London, too, you know?’
‘Really?’
‘Yes:
‘Brought a film with her. She’d lined up a string of clips… the forces of order at work, from fifty-six to eighty- one. Not that subtle, I have to say but hard-hitting. It was shown on BBC2. Unfortunately — ’ one finger strayed near his dark glasses — ‘I never got to see it.’
She was drinking some wine. There was no soft thud: the glass didn’t return to the table… she was watching again, cautiously She was thinking, appraising, making a decision. Oh God, what was she going to say now? Or was that last, pointed reference to his blindness going to save him? Had he silenced her with a bid for pity?
‘What happened?’ she asked, very quietly.
‘I went off the rails… well, off the road actually Hit a tree.’
‘I’m sorry.
‘Don’t be. As a kid I always tried to see in the dark. That’s why I’d eaten the carrots.’
The smell of bread and butter pudding was almost loud, the promised tang of raisins taking the top note.
‘I’d better be going.’
John didn’t argue. He’d won match point with a blow below the belt. Or had he? He just didn’t know But he wasn’t going to stay in the ring to find out. He said how pleased he’d been to hear her voice and natter about the old days. And she was silent, feeding her arms into her coat, settling her hat, working her fingers into the gloves. At the door a cold blast of air swept off Hampstead Heath, bringing back the recollection of snow in Warsaw, and tanks and soldiers. Suddenly her hands grabbed his arms and squeezed them hard. Her fingers were on him, as his had once been upon her in that dreary flat, when he’d seen the bullet beneath the mirror; when he realised how close to suicide she’d sailed. He could feel the desolation breathing mist in the darkness.
‘Goodbye, John,’ she said, ‘and thank you.
Thank you? What for? Throughout a seemingly endless night John gnawed at his thumb bone to keep his teeth from tearing off his nails. He curled up, writhing with anxiety. What for? A Yorkshire pudding that rose to the occasion? Or that punch to the kidneys? The wind moved listlessly across the common. A car crawled to a halt and then pulled away rapidly… it had to be a taxi. Feet stumbled on the pavement. Another gust of wind, stronger this time, rattled the bay window downstairs. At times, he didn’t like the wind. It carried too many sounds, too many signals. It made him feel confused.
When morning came John made a pot of strong coffee, chilled by a certainty that had grown as the heath fell silent. She hadn’t taken back her request for help. Surprised by his blindness, Roza hadn’t mumbled, ‘Forget what I said on the phone.’ She still wanted justice. She was still looking to him with that bullet in the background, despair misting her eyes.
After four large cups of Fair Trade Arabica from Peru, John picked up the phone and dialled one of the few numbers he knew by heart. All his life he couldn’t commit them to memory. Finally the Old Duffer put him through.
‘Anselm?’
‘Yep.’ The goat had managed it. ‘What’s up?’
‘I need a lawyer.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
A special kind of quiet reigned over the empty corridors of the IPN. Most of the staff had gone home. The outcome of Sebastian’s research lay on a long mahogany table in a large conference room. There were two sections of material, but each had their own piles with individual sheets laid out for ease of reference. The matching chairs on one side had been pulled back to the wall, allowing Sebastian and Anselm to move freely as if they were choosing what to eat at a self-service counter. Heavy gold curtains had been drawn. Ornate wall lights cast a pleasant, soft light. Sebastian had made coffee and the woman in white had found some Austrian biscuits. There was an unmistakable atmosphere of finality, embarrassment and secrecy which was odd because the substance of everything on the table would soon be on the TV and plastered over the front pages of the national press.
‘I’ll start with Klara,’ said Sebastian, moving to the far end of the table. He’d taken off his jacket and thrown it on the back of a chair. ‘Her file is missing. Maybe it went into one of the shredders. Its absence is unfortunate but not fatal to our purpose. There are lots of clues left behind and they give us a fairly clear picture of her value as an agent and the kind of work she carried out.’
He pointed at an open ledger, very much like a school attendance register. His finger tapped ‘Klara Fielding’ in a left-hand column. Alongside, to the right, was the agent name: JULITA.
‘While we have confirmation of her recruitment,’ he said, loosening his tie, ‘we don’t know whether she was a volunteer or whether she agreed to co-operate following an approach. The timing is significant. She goes into the book within a month of her marriage. That suggests a friendly tap on the shoulder after the exchange of rings:
Confirmed by her friends, thought Anselm. They’d found her changed by close proximity to English phlegm. She’d lost her sense of fun.
‘Obviously as the wife of a British diplomat, she was a well-placed and potentially high-value source.’ Sebastian stepped from left to right, drawing Anselm along. He picked up a sheaf of photocopied correspondence. ‘She didn’t disappoint. This letter is typical and shows what kind of material she was feeding to her handlers. When Churchill went to Washington in January fifty-two to show the world that the Brits and the Americans were ever the best of friends, JULITA had reported that there were, in fact, strong differences over policy to the Middle and Far East, defence strategy and the supply of US steel. I suppose Klara just listened to table talk and repeated what she’d heard.’ Sebastian tapped an annotation at the bottom of the page. ‘But it was important: this missive was copied to Vyshinsky in the Foreign Affairs Department in Moscow Klara was listening for Stalin. She’d become his ears in the British Embassy’
Sebastian shuffled further to the right.
‘Now these are as frustrating as they are enticing.’
Three books lay open in a line, like new acquisitions in a public library, the pages chosen to seize the curiosity of anyone who happened to pass by.
‘It seems Klara’s value was domestic as well as foreign. These are entry and exit registers. They show that Klara attended various locations, presumably to report back to her handler or other interested parties. The addresses are revealing, as are the names of the persons she met. Klara was talking to members of the Public Security Commission.’ Sebastian spoke with heavy significance, but it was lost on Anselm, so he spelled out the implication. ‘The Commission coordinated the Terror. Presumably Klara had information on friends and contacts of the UK government. Or the Commission was asking her to keep an ear to the ground about certain people. Without her file, we’ll never know’
He moved a step to the left, stopping in front of the third volume. Slowly he ran his finger across the bottom of the page as if to underline an entry.
‘JULITA came to Mokotow in nineteen fifty-two,’ he said, drily ‘She’d an appointment with Major Strenk. I’d love to know what they talked about.’
‘Me, too,’ said Anselm, managing to make a contribution at last.
