Funeral in Berlin (7 page)

‘Do you have any particular book in mind, sir?’

‘Start at A or the shelf nearest the door and see what you can learn by Christmas.’

‘You’re joking, sir.’

‘I never joke, Chico. The truth is quite adequately hilarious.’ Jean found the file and left the office without saying anything, which is generally a bad sign in one way or another.

Chico came round the desk. ‘What are you marking?’ he said.

‘Confidential,’ I said. ‘If you’ve got no work to do, fix the electric fire. The plug has gone wrong.’

‘Yes sir. I’m rather good at that sort of thing.’

He picked up the fire and unscrewed the plug
with a sixpence. I went back to
It pays to increase your word power.

‘What does “sibling” mean, Chico?’ I asked.

‘No idea, sir.’ He’d spent three years at Cambridge, getting his gown tangled in bicycle chains and he couldn’t do the
Daily Telegraph
crossword without cheating. There was silence until he began to tell me the plot of a film he’d seen the night before. I made a note of the title.

Chico gave me the plug. ‘I’ve lost the very tiny screw under your desk, sir,’ Chico said.

‘Beat it, Chico,’ I said. ‘I need the oxygen.’

He made for the door. ‘And take your bloody file with you,’ I said. ‘You’re not passing it on to me.’

The outside phone rang. It was a clear GPO line without gimmicks that we have listed as the ‘Ex-Officers’ Employment Bureau’.

‘It’s Sam,’ said the caller.

‘Not Sam, Sam the…’

‘Samantha,’ she said. ‘Samantha Steel.’

‘Hello, how are you?’

‘You should know,’ she said.

‘Just as great without eyebrows,’ I said.

‘That’s what the milkman said this morning.’

‘A man of fine judgement.’

‘Are you coming over?’

‘Yes, I’ll come across and get you right away.’

‘Come across, you ghoul, but don’t count on anything.’

J’adoube: a word used to indicate that a player
intends to touch a piece but not move it.

Friday, October 11th

Samantha lived in the sort of road where driving schools teach people to turn round. Beyond the Sickertian backwaters of Camden Town there is a salient of quiet houses where once lived the mistresses of Victorian businessmen who couldn’t get one in Hampstead.

The ivy-encrusted fortress was set well back into the garden, and a modern sign, ‘Heathview House—service flats’, looked odd tacked to the Gothic entrance. Statuary in the garden glowered motionless through the shrubbery like jungletrained guerrillas. I pushed open the turquoise front door and stepped in. Stained glass printed great shapes of thin sunlight across the marble floor like someone had been hurling bottles of ink around. Whoever had divided the house into flats was
making enough money out of it to put framed prints and fresh flowers in the hall. A tall Gothic tracery window, rich with a tortuous pattern of huge yellow flowers, illuminated the staircase. The light held the dusty air in suspension and I climbed the stairs like a fly fighting its way out of amber.

The door at the top of the stairs bore a typewritten card: ‘S. Steel,’ I pressed the bell-push and heard a noise like someone had walked into a xylophone.

Samantha Steel came to the door wearing a bathrobe and a towel around the head.

‘Who are you?’ she said. ‘The Fuller Brush man?’

‘I’m from American Express,’ I said. ‘It’s OK to drink the local water.’

‘I was in the tub,’ she said.

‘Maybe I can help.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Go and build two drinks and give one to me.’

I walked into the lounge. It was about thirty foot of ankle-high carpeting from silk wall to silk wall. The cocktail cabinet was in the corner. I opened it and was socked in the head by a pink neon. I groped inside the cabinet among a platoon of bottles, mixed a martini and slammed ice into it.

The bathroom was all mosaics and radiant heating. A low marble table held three dozen bottles of lotion and salts and above that there was a huge pink mirror and a complexity of stainless steel shower fittings.

The bathtub was made of some sort of black stone. Samantha was in it. She was wearing half a dozen bracelets and a string of pearls.

‘Don’t stand there. Gimme the drink,’ said Sam. Five feet ten inches isn’t very tall, but when it’s horizontal in a black bath it takes you a devil of a time to look at it.

I said, ‘Do you always wear your accessories in the bath?’

She grinned. ‘Accessories always—jewellery sometimes.’ She sipped the drink. ‘The hell you put in it?’

‘Vermouth and gin,’ I said.

‘It’s filthy,’ she said. ‘Pour it away and do it again.’

I brought her a much stronger mix. She downed it in one gulp and climbed from the bath dripping and dancing across the carpeting, gleaming with silver, diamonds and wet skin. She began to dry herself in a brisk, sexless sort of way.

‘Put some music on,’ she yelled, draping a huge red bath towel around herself. I opened the gramophone and switched it on. The pickup arm moved across the black shiny disc and Claire Austin sang ‘I’m Through With Love’ like she meant it and the backing was all a backing could be. Sam had picked up her cigarettes and I was ready to give her a light.

‘Down, ghoul. None of that, buddy boy.’

‘I was just going to light your cigarette,’ I said.

‘I’ll manage,’ she said. She flicked the corner of
the Camels pack, put the cigarette in her mouth and lit it. She inhaled the smoke with a cheeksunken concentration and blew a great warm happy cloud of smoke across the room. Her eyes were enormous and they studied me carefully as I sat on the sofa. The room was furnished with the sort of expensive, impersonal taste that landlords save for wealthy foreign transients. There were lots of satin-shaded tablelamps and glass ashtrays as big as hand basins. Sam walked across to the sofa where I sat.

‘You are the best thing that ever happened to me in this crummy town,’ she said. ‘Where were you hiding?’

‘I was waiting outside the Overseas League,’ I said. ‘But you never showed up.’

She sat down next to me. Her skin was warm and damp and her body smelled of fresh talcum powder and Pepsodent.

‘You can kiss me,’ she said. Her head lolled back on the sofa and her eyes closed. I did it without hurry.

She got to her feet. ‘I’m not a crumpled five-pound note,’ she said. ‘I don’t need smoothing out.’

She walked across to the cocktail cabinet stroking her upper arms and using her elbows to keep the towel in place. She poured herself a drink and turned round to face me with a charming, big, dentifrice-ad smile. She said, ‘There’s a new kind of tranquillizer on the market; it doesn’t soothe you…’

‘It makes you enjoy being tense,’ I finished sourly. She nodded and tipped her drink into her face.

‘This isn’t the ladies’ bridge club,’ I said. ‘Any time that entertaining me becomes a strain just let me know.’ She nodded again and gave me a long hard look. The player was still emitting the silk-and-sandpaper voice of Claire Austin.

‘Stop pouting and put some clothes on,’ I said. She came across and kneeled on the sofa. Her forehead was large and under it her milky grey eyes studied each part of my face in turn. When she smiled her face wrinkled far too much, but now when she spoke her voice was fresh and childlike and there was none of the hardness left.

‘If you say so,’ she said. I kissed her very gently on the lips.

‘I say so,’ I said. ‘Get dressed and we’ll take a ride into the English countryside.’

‘After that?’ she said.

‘A concert or a theatre.’

‘After that?’

‘Dinner.’

‘After that?’

‘We’ll see,’ I said. She smiled wickedly. Then as suddenly her mood changed. ‘I’d like a concert best,’ she said. ‘At the Royal Festival Hall it’s…’

‘Charles Ives and Alban Berg,’ I finished.

‘And Schönberg,’ she said. ‘They are playing Schönberg’s “Variations for wind band”. It’s my
very favourite. Do let’s go. I’ll wear my flame chiffon dress. Can we?’

‘Certainly,’ I said. ‘It will be easy to get tickets; no one seems to like modern…’ She kissed me again and a strand of hair was mixed into our kiss. As she pulled her head back from me her eyes were shiny—not with soft dewy tear-drops but wet as though she had bathed her eyes—and long strands of hair were gummed across her cheeks. I waited for her to say something that would match the soft vulnerability of her damp smudged face. She said nothing. I had a feeling that she had never said anything without first considering the consequences. Or perhaps once she had.

She pushed my chest away roughly and yelled, ‘My neutralizer.’

‘What?’ I said. She broke away from my embrace.

‘My neutralizer,’ she said again. ‘My home perm, I should have put it on ten minutes ago. Now it’ll be all frizzy.’

She disappeared into the bathroom, unwrapping the towel from her hair and leaving a long stream of monosyllabic Anglo-Saxon four-letter words. I removed a long silky hair from my mouth and poured myself another drink. The hair had been dyed but what was unusual about that?

Even a pawn can make a ‘double attack’.

Friday, October 11th

Damp leaves shone underfoot like a million newly struck pennies. Ferns had shrivelled to intricate bronze abstract sculptures and shiny leaves were suspended magically in space from invisible twigs.

The pub wasn’t yet in sight and we stood for a moment in the churchyard listening to the whining and rustling and looking at the gravestones which shone in the failing light. Samantha read the large curlicue lettering aloud.

Praises on stones are titles vainly lent.

A man’s good name is his best monument.

Thomas Merrick. Died August 15, 1849.

She moved through the soft light like a wraith. ‘Here’s a crazy one,’ she called.

Here lies the dust of Billy Paine.

Whole undisturbed may he remain.

On this date that he was slain.

Many a kind thought died in Paine.

From underfoot the sweet smell of damp grass rose like perfume. Birds were still singing in the trees that stood across the major surgery of sunset like massed artery forceps. Sam insisted upon looking into the tiny church. The door opened with a vibratory screech. A small hand-lettered notice pinned to the door read: ‘All brass rubbing suspended until further notice.’ Inside the semiprecious light of the stained glass softly dusted the smooth, worn pews, and a complex of brass candlesticks glinted like a medieval oil refinery. Sam held my hand very tightly.

‘You are the best thing that ever happened to me,’ she said as though she meant it.

The pub was crowded when we got there. Men in rough-knit cardigans were lying at attention in the best armchairs and making a big thing about being local residents.

‘I say, Mabel,’ one of them shouted to the barmaid, ‘how’s about another noggin of the usual all round?’ A man with a paisley scarf tucked inside an open-necked shirt was saying, ‘He’s the best damn photographer in the country but he’s a thousand guineas a shot.’

A man with suede chukka boots said, ‘Our deep
-frozen fish-fingers nearly beat him. I said, “Make the beastly things out of plaster, old boy; we’ll get the piping-hot effect by burning incense.” We did too. Ha, ha! Put the sales up six and three-quarter per cent and he got some kind of Art Director’s award.’ He laughed a deep, manly laugh and sloshed down some beer.

Sam hadn’t let go of my hand. We walked across to the bar and sat on the high stools where girls with camel coats and cowboy boots and black tights were drinking Pimms Number 1 and exchanging West End hairdressers.

‘Two large bitters,’ I said. Through the window the moon was yellow like a low-power bulb in a blue velvet room.

‘Do you ever imagine what it would be like to be on the moon?’ Sam said.

‘Nearly all the time,’ I said.

‘Serious,’ she squeezed my hand, ‘serious, ghoul.’

‘What would it be like?’ I asked.

‘Spooky but wonderful,’ she said.

‘Like you,’ I said and meant it.

Sam picked up her bitter and pulled a face at me. Outside there was the brutal noise of a sports car starting. It scattered a little gravel against the window and broke wind into the damp night air.

Sam was right about the Schönberg ‘Variations for wind band’. I’d wanted to go on account of the Charles Ives ‘Three places in New England’, because I liked the crazy military band sequence, but the
Schönberg was something else again. Everyone likes to convert people to something they like. Sam was no exception. She was being laughing and loving and little-girlish. I was a sucker for erudite little girls. We had dinner in Kensington in a poky little two-room place where the menu is as big as a newspaper and everything that can be flambé is flambé.

We moved through the powdered shoulders and borrowed evening suits and Sam felt out of place because she didn’t have elbow-length gloves with jewelled bangles over.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘You’ve got a great face.’

She poked her tongue out at me.

‘Don’t be sexy,’ I said and the waiter heard me and Sam blushed like a beetroot, which surprised me.

We both liked the same things. We both liked oysters without melon. ‘I like oysters without dressing,’ Sam said.

I raised my eyebrow at the waiter but Sam saw me and gave me a vicious kick in the ankle. The steak was OK and I was strong-willed enough not to hit the sweet-trolley too hard. We’d finished coffee by half past midnight and as we drove home I parked the car near the Serpentine in the Park. Sam said that if we were on the moon we could see which half of the world was sleeping.

‘And we’d be the only people who could still see the sun.’ I said.

‘I would love that.’ It began to rain as I restarted the car.

‘Come and explain why at my place,’ I suggested.

‘My place,’ she said. ‘I still haven’t got my eyebrows.’

‘Tomorrow I’ll buy a complete range of eyebrow pencils and keep them in my flat,’ I promised. She held my arm tight.

I rang the chimes at Sam’s front door. ‘Don’t do that,’ Sam said. ‘I have quiet neighbours.’ She opened the door with a flourish and flipped the light switch.

It wasn’t hard to recognize the signs. Burglars open chests beginning with the bottom drawer, so that they don’t have to waste time shutting each to get at the next. Sam stood looking at the mess—clothes everywhere and wine spilled across the rug. She trapped her lower lip under her teeth and flung it forward in a heartfelt monosyllabic obscenity.

‘Shall I phone the police?’ I asked.

‘The police,’ said Sam scornfully. ‘You mean that your police in England won’t trample around the place like idiots, ask a million questions and end up doing sweet FA?’

‘They will,’ I said. ‘But they are very nicely spoken.’

Sam said she would like to be alone.

‘Whatever you wish,’ I said, for I knew how she felt.

When I got back to my flat I phoned Sam. She didn’t seem nervous or too distressed.

‘She seems OK,’ I said to Austin Butterworth, after replacing the receiver.

‘Good,’ he said. Austin was sitting well back in my most comfortable armchair supping my favourite whisky and being as modest as hell. ‘Run of the mill job,’ he was saying, ‘French windows with slide bolts—child’s play. People are so silly. You should see my place, that’s really well protected against burglars.’

‘Is it?’ I said.

‘Of course,’ said Ossie, ‘you have to pay to have the best protection but it beats me why people are so mean.
After
—that’s when they get properly equipped,
after
they’ve been done.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I made a lot of mess,’ said Ossie.

‘I noticed,’ I said.

‘Modus operandi,’ said Ossie mysteriously. ‘Sometimes I’m neat, sometimes I’m messy. It keeps the Yard puzzled.’

‘I’ll bet it does.’

‘Mind you,’ said Ossie, ‘thanks for the old one-two on the door bell. I’d quite forgotten how the time was. I had to scarper when I heard you at the door.’ He tugged at his nose and gave a little smile.

‘What did you make of it?’

‘Well,’ said Ossie cautiously. ‘Unmarried girl living alone. Lots of men friends. Gets three hundred dollars per week from Chase Manhattan Bank, New York.’

I nodded.

‘United Nations Plaza Branch,’ said Ossie. He was proud of being thorough.

‘US passport in name of Samantha Steel. Israeli passport in name of Hanna Stahl showing same girl but with blonde hair. Quite a lot of jewellery—expensive stuff, no rubbish. Real mink coat. Real.
I
could get a thousand quid for it. So legit, it would be worth three or four.’

‘Would it?’ I said. I poured more refreshment and Ossie removed his boots and a pair of scarlet socks which he arranged in the fireplace.

‘I don’t say she’s a whore,’ said Ossie, ‘but she’s got a good standard of living.’ His socks were steaming in the heat of the fire. ‘Educated,’ said Ossie.

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘All kinds of books—psychology, poetry, all sorts of stuff.’

I went and made coffee while Ossie dried his feet. Outside the weather was terrible; the rain trickled constantly against the windows and there was a hollow drumming sound as torrents of it roared along the guttering and spilled over in great sheets that crashed on to the concrete of the back garden. By the time I returned with the coffee, Ossie had unpacked his little Gladstone bag. There were a couple of tiny jemmies and a Stilson wrench and a lot of lock-picking devices that Ossie had made himself. There were two yellow dusters, a pair of carpet slippers and a Polaroid Automatic 100 camera.

‘Like this,’ said Ossie. He held the set of Polaroid
photos for me. Only one of them was of interest: a view of a box-room showing a bench with a monocular microscope—a professional-looking job with revolving objectives and some chemical gear—mounted specimens and test tubes. It was the titles of the books on the bench that I wanted to see.

‘It’s no good,’ I said. ‘I can’t read the titles even with a glass. Don’t you remember any of them?’

‘I told you,’ said Ossie. ‘I was going to write some of the titles down when I heard you bash the door bell. I can go back—it’s easy.’

‘No, don’t do that. Just try and remember one title.’

We sat there, with me looking at Ossie’s funny bulbous old face and Ossie’s bright little eyes gazing in the fire and trying to recollect the brief glimpse of the books.

‘For instance,’ I prompted, ‘did any one of them say “enzyme”?’

‘Luvaduck,’ said Ossie, his face glowing with a huge smile of content. ‘That’s it, you’ve said it, “enzymes”, they nearly all were about enzymes.’

He couldn’t remember the full titles but I knew he wouldn’t make them up. He was one of the best B & E
¹
men we had and one of our most reliable retainers.

‘How did you know?’ said Ossie.

‘I just guessed,’ I said. ‘She just seemed the sort of girl who would be interested in enzymes.’