hospital coming hesitantly from it in an official voice. It had been late, he had been dog-tired, ready for bed, knowing he should not avoid the private room for another night and day where she was slowly, certainly dying — and then there had been the message. The pain and the guilt had been equal and immediate. The guilt had remained while the pain eased during the months after the funeral.
Now, this message was meaningless. Sufficient only to raise a small anger. It was also a rope that tied him to a chair, immobilising him. He would be unable to assist Massinger and Aubrey now, he realised that.
Someone had killed Schroder; someone had burgled his flat. KGB, or KGB-linked— had to be. They were worried, and it wasn't Aubrey they wished to protect. It had to be Babbington.
Where was Aubrey? his thoughts demanded as he switched off the voice that had now become unctuous and only served to remind him of his guilt at the lonely death of his wife — the coma she was in did not excuse him, the fact that she would not have spoken, would not have recognised, not even known him…
Where was Aubrey? If he could talk to Aubrey, he might still be able to help.
Otherwise — nothing.
'I went into the Russian Sector of Berlin to meet Clara's husband,' Aubrey was saying. 'Karl Elsenreith, formerly of the SS — Amt VI, to be exact, the department concerned with foreign intelligence under Schellenberg — and now working for new masters. The Russians. For a department of the NKVD.' Aubrey studied his audience for a moment, then continued to recite his narrative towards the high ceiling and the long-chained chandelier. 'Karl Elsenreith dared not return to the Allied Zone, or to the West. He was a native Berliner and his part of Berlin, or what remained of it, was occupied by the Russians. As for his wife, I am sure he thought it an inconvenience that they had become separated — but he had found consolation for his loss elsewhere.'
'The Russians trusted him?' Massinger asked.
'They used him. They appreciated his talents. He had a comfortable flat, a mistress, an income, and an immunity from his former life and associates. In fact, his only problem was that some of those less savoury old friends, senior officers, kameraden, popped up now and again, asking for help. Money, papers, passage out of the Russian Sector, the Russian Zone of Germany. What could he do? He could never be certain the organisation might not destroy him. if he refused… so, he began to help. On my — final visit to the Russian Sector, I went at his request.'
Aubrey paused and Massinger, after looking at Margaret, asked: 'Why?'
Margaret flinched. She had half-turned in her chair, away from Aubrey. She seemed sunk in some private world of her own.
'He had heard of my — association with Clara. Evidently, he still cared something for her… or so I thought when I received his message. He promised me — certain valuable information if I guaranteed I would do everything in my power to help her, look after her. But he could not, dare not come out — so I crossed into the Russian Sector.'
'And—?'
'It was a trick. I was blinded by the chance of success, and by the nobility I envisaged for myself making promises about my mistress to her Nazi husband!' Aubrey was mocking himself. Then he added: 'Elsenreith was a charming, attractive, poisonous young man. I saw why Clara had been attracted to him, even though he no longer wore that obscene and glamorous uniform — and then I saw why he had really asked me to come. I was becoming too much of a nuisance to the Russians in matters of intelligence. They wanted me removed from the board — once I had given them all the names in my head, of course.'
'But you escaped?'
'I did.'
'How?'
'With help. People who helped me because they could not afford to see me broken. My people. It was during one of my transfers from prison to their headquarters — Elsenreith's office, to be exact. The car was ambushed and I was smuggled away from the scene and back into the Allied Sector.'
'And that's it?' Massinger asked. 'All of it?'
Aubrey shook his head softly, but Margaret caught the gesture.
'What else is there?' she challenged.
'My dear — there is no easy way to tell you this. The information that Elsenreith gave me — that he had promised me as a lure and supplied out of amusement because it was intended I should never be free to use it — was the name of the man in the Allied Sector into whose care and protection he consigned those kameraden who periodically embarrassed him by appearing with demands for help.'
Hatred was clear on Margaret's face. 'And—? And—?'
'My dear, it was your father…'
'No!' she wailed, and yet Massinger knew that, hearing it from Aubrey, she had immediately begun to believe it. Believing him to be her father's murderer, she had also in her own mind to believe all he confessed.
'How could he?' Margaret sobbed, but she wished only to hear of opportunity, not motive.
'It was easy for him, my dear. He was in command of so much valuable paperwork. New identities were easy.'
'Then why?'
'Because he was a soul in torment,' Aubrey announced. The words, the compassion with which they were said, stunned Massinger. 'A soul in the most grievous torment.'
'Oh God,' Margaret sighed lifelessly.
'And?' Massinger pressed.
'I killed him.'
The words hung in the still, warm air of the room, followed by a silence that seemed endless, inescapable. Massinger thought they would remain forever at this exact stage of emotion and knowledge. He could not see ahead, or see beyond.
Eventually, Margaret said in a stilted, dull voice: 'You are his murderer, then?'
Aubrey nodded gravely. 'In the struggle, it was the pressure of my finger that squeezed the trigger of his gun. Yes, my dear, I am guilty of your father's death.'
Margaret seemed spent. She neither moved nor spoke in reply. Her face was turned into the armchair, her legs ungainly spread out, her feet turned awkwardly, as if she had been thrown into the chair. One shoe was half off her foot. She might have been a costume dummy rejected by a fashionable shop.
Massinger cleared his throat and said, 'What hold could they have had over him, Kenneth? How could they make him do it?'
Aubrey spread his hands. 'Quite easily,' he said. 'What he confessed to me, I believed. He had known many prominent German diplomats and soldiers and civil servants before the war. Many of them became his friends, as they did of many Englishmen of his class in the 'thirties — our age of innocence. At Cliveden, in London — parties, operas, shows, brothels, hunts, shoots… the same faces. Hopeful, confident, blond young men. Castleford admired, imitated, sympathised. Oh, I don't think he did much more than many others. Certainly, there is no suggestion that he was false once war was declared, even though he thought it lunacy on behalf of Poland, and further and greater madness when we allied ourselves with barbarian Russia in '41.'
'But, before…?'
Aubrey waved his hand for Massinger to desist. 'I think only indiscretions, loose talk — no secrets. No more than a friend at court, so to speak.'
'So — what hook did they have in him in 1946?'
'A generous gesture. An old friend, one of the blond young men from Cliveden and all the other country houses and the brothels, appeared. He recognised Castleford in the street. He'd been skulking about the city for weeks, a hunted man… you can hear it pouring out, I imagine?' Massinger nodded. 'Castleford helped him with a set of forged identity papers which described him as a Pole — a former POW, now a displaced person. The man got away. And sent his friends, one after the other. An endless queue, all wanting new papers, new identities. You see, we'd been catching a lot of the smaller fry whose papers were second-rate and poorly produced. They needed other outlets, fresh supplies. English papers, duly signed by Castleford and people he controlled who were not in the know. Elsenreith sent people, too. Probably, he sent people like himself, SS now working for the Russians. I had to plug the leak, close up the hole. I don't know whether or not the first young man who approached Castleford — he'd
