Exposure (10 page)

He'd pushed his glasses up onto his forehead, his eyes narrowed in concentration. ‘I may have missed something, but what?'

‘There's only one way to find out,' Julia answered. ‘How's your German, Ben?'

He looked up. ‘Pretty good – why?'

‘Because I think we should go to Nessenberg. Can you take a few days off?'

‘I haven't been away from the office in God knows how long. I've plenty of time owing to me. Brennan would love warming my seat for a bit.' Brennan was one of his assistants, and Ben suspected him, as he suspected everyone, of eyeing his job.

‘Then that's settled,' she said. ‘Wednesday suit you?'

‘Wednesday's fine,' he agreed. ‘You don't take long making up your mind, do you, J?'

‘What's the point of waiting – anyway, it would help if I was out of my flat for a bit. Felix is looking for somewhere else to live. It'll give him time.'

He said, ‘It's none of my business, but I'm glad you didn't chicken out. It's about time he got off his butt and looked after himself.'

‘Don't be too hard on him,' she said. ‘He took it very well; I don't want to be unkind. We did have some very happy times together.'

‘Glad to hear it,' he sounded snappish. ‘You'd better book the flight and the hotel – the Nessenberghof is a good one, or it was when I was there. May have changed now; ten years is a long time. We'll need to hire a car.'

‘I'll get that organized,' Julia promised.

‘Right,' he stood up. ‘How long do you reckon to stay?'

‘As long as it takes. I can't help it, Ben. I just have this gut feeling. It all starts with Phyllis Lowe.'

‘It ends with her, that's the trouble,' he answered. ‘I'll be off now.' He had reached the door, when she said, ‘I'm off, too. Why don't we stop off and have a drink on the way home. I could do with one.'

Ben took his glasses off and stuffed them into his breast pocket.

‘Well, I've no pressing engagements for this evening. Why don't we make it dinner?'

‘I don't see what they hope to find out in Germany,' Evelyn Western pointed out. ‘All that's been gone over and over and nobody got anywhere.'

She was driving to London with her husband. The glass partition was shut, so the chauffeur couldn't hear their conversation.

‘That's exactly what I said to Julia,' he answered. ‘But she's got some idea in her head about the woman who brought the bastard to England. There's no record of her dying when King's biographer says she did. She's following up on that. I don't believe it matters. He's lied about himself so often, one more lie doesn't make much difference. Good thing is she persuaded Harris to work on it with her. He said no to me. I told you.'

‘You can't blame him after last time,' his wife said.

‘I hadn't any choice,' Western insisted. ‘They'd found Richard Watson. I had to back off.'

‘I know,' she placed her hand over his, comforting him.

‘It might have been a bluff, but I couldn't risk it. The honours list was up for confirmation, we were going at full throttle with the TV franchise – I
had
to pull Harris off the story.'

‘We should have gone to see him,' she said slowly. ‘I said so at the time. But you wouldn't listen to me, Billy.'

‘I knew him, you didn't,' he retorted. ‘He wasn't the sort to be bought off. That's all King needed – proof that I'd been to see Watson or made some attempt to bribe him. Then he'd have crucified me.'

‘He's going to do that now,' Evelyn answered. ‘It's just a matter of time.'

‘Time is what it's all about,' he said. ‘He wants the
Herald
, and he's waiting for the right moment before he pulls the rug out on me. But I'm going to get there first, Evie. I'm going to show him up as a liar and a crook, and nothing he says will be believed after that.'

‘And you really believe that Julia can do it?'

‘With Harris to help her – yes. I have to believe it. I have to.'

Evelyn Western looked out of the window. It was raining and the glass was blurred and opaque in the failing light.

‘I wish he was dead,' she said.

Western didn't answer. He had thought that often enough. It was the last desperate option. But he didn't say so to his wife.

4

Harold King swivelled his chair so he could look out of the enormous plate-glass window. It offered a magnificent panoramic view of London, with the silver sweep of the Thames so far below it looked like a ribbon. In the distance he could see the pointed towers of Westminster and the House of Commons. Once, when he had made his first million, he joined the Liberal Party; he liked the idea of becoming an MP. He had stood during the next by-election and been roundly defeated by the Labour candidate. Since then he had conducted a merciless campaign against the MP in particular and the Party in general. The defeat had wounded his pride, and he never forgave anyone or anything that touched his self-esteem. Beyond the Commons lay his ultimate goal. The Lords.

But that was some way in the future. That would be his next target after he had increased his power and sphere of influence by the acquisition of the
Sunday Herald
. And with it the political journalists that had made the newspaper famous, and the financial section that was so well respected that it had inside information from the Treasury and the Chancellor's office. Western had built himself a power house in that newspaper.

He had recruited the best people, paid them the top salaries and got himself a life peerage. He was the friend of ministers in the Government and courted by the Opposition. He was everything that Harold King intended to be at the apex of his own career. And his train of thought, sunny and optimistic on that morning, like the weather outside his window, switched to something his daughter Gloria had said on their way home from dinner at Mario's. He listened to Gloria. She had his sharp eye for people, his jungle instincts.

‘Did you know that woman, Daddy – the one with the red hair?' He'd felt his wife's eyes on him, knew that she tensed against some discovery of a fresh liaison, which Gloria would have enjoyed bringing into the open. Gloria didn't care if he slept with women. She knew she was the only one that counted.

‘No, why? I know who she is – she's a journalist on the
Herald
. Why, Gloria?'

‘Because she was looking at you, Daddy. The way you look when you hate somebody.' His wife made a mistake, partly from relief.

‘Don't be silly, why should some stranger look at your father like that?'

‘Shut up,' he said curtly. ‘Gloria notices things. I got the same feeling. Funny you felt it too, sweetheart. Maybe I should run a check on her.'

He hadn't done anything about it until now, when one thought led from the
Herald
to its staff members.

He reached into a silver box and brought out a cigar. He smoked, and he ate what he pleased. He had the blood pressure of an eighteen year old. He enjoyed flaunting it in the face of his doctors, proving that the rules for lesser men did not apply to him. And he was as potent as ever. Joe took care of that side of his life. Joe took care of a lot of things.

Julia Hamilton. He'd follow Gloria's instinct. Joe could nose around and see what he could pick up on her.

He dialled an outside number. A woman on the other end said that Joe was in the sauna.

‘Tell him I'll boil his ass if he doesn't get out of there. Now.' He didn't have to hold more than a couple of minutes.

‘Mr King – sorry you had to wait.'

‘Tell that stupid cow not to fob me off when I call,' King snapped. ‘I want you up here right away. I've got something for you.'

‘Give me fifteen minutes,' the man called Joe said.

‘Ten,' King commanded and hung up.

On the other end of the line, the man standing soaked in sweat, with a towel wrapped round his middle, turned to the coloured girl.

‘Next time my boss calls, you just say hold on and get me – you understand?'

She had big, frightened dark eyes. ‘I'm sorry, Joe – I'm sorry.'

‘Next time', he said, ‘you will be. Now get my fucking clothes.'

Nessenberg was much smaller than Julia had expected. It curled up like a cat, snug, neat and prosperous. It was unaffected by the turmoil of reunification and the problem of refugees from the war-ravaged Balkans. The Nessenberghof was still there. Harris remarked that it looked exactly the same as it did ten years ago.

It was comfortable and conservative. Their rooms were pleasant with views over the garden at the rear.

‘It feels strange,' she said. ‘I've never been to Germany and it's not what I expected. Everyone smiles and seems so friendly.'

‘And so they are – the south isn't like Prussia; the southerners are famous for their charm, and for being the cradle of the bloody Nazis. I've found it easier to deal with the easterners. The Berliners are something else again. A race on their own. You'd like them. They enjoy life, and they stuck out after the war with that bloody Wall running through the middle of them. You must go there one day.'

‘How do you know it so well?' she asked him.

‘My wife is German,' he said. ‘We used to come over for holidays. I got to know the country and to like it.'

‘I didn't know you were married.'

He brushed it aside. ‘I'm not; we got divorced fifteen years ago.'

‘Do you have children?' Julia asked him. They were drinking coffee after a snack lunch in one of the cheerful cafés in the main street.

‘Two. Son and daughter. I don't see much of them. I don't see them at all,' he remarked, and there was a bitter note in his voice.

‘I'm sorry,' she said awkwardly. ‘It must be hard for you.'

‘They took their mother's part. That was it. I didn't try to argue the case. They were old enough to make up their own minds.'

It must have been a bad divorce; she didn't like to pry any further. To her surprise he started to talk. He drank his coffee and leaned back in his seat and said, ‘I met Helga when she came to stay with my parents as an exchange student. My kid brother went over to her family to learn German and she came to us to learn English. She was very pretty. Blonde, blue eyes, real
Herrenvolk
type. Nice girl, too. I fell like the proverbial ton of bloody bricks and married her. I was a reporter on the
Birmingham Advertiser
. We lived in a rented flat and she went out to work as a mother's help. We hadn't any money, but we were pretty happy. Shame it all went wrong.'

Julia leaned a little towards him. It still hurt, she could see that. No wonder he said his German was good.

‘What went wrong?'

‘I moved to the
Herald
,' he said flatly. ‘We'd been in Birmingham for twelve years. We owned a nice little house in the suburbs by then, she had a lot of friends, local bridge club, golf twice a week – solid middle-class lifestyle. The kids were at school and doing well. I was News Editor of the
Birmingham Post
by then, and it was a good job. But I wanted more challenge, J. I didn't want to stand still. And a job on the
Herald
was the big opportunity. So I took it and moved them all down to London. Long and short of it was, Helga hated it, the kids hated it, and I escaped into my work. We rowed, I stayed out more and more – it's not difficult in our job, you know that – and in the end she left me. Moved back to Birmingham, got a job, met another man and remarried. End of story. Want some more coffee, or shouldn't we try and make a start?'

He'd said all there was and he wanted to close the topic. Julia said, ‘Yes, but thanks for telling me about it. Where do we start, Ben?'

‘No harm in retracing my steps. We start with the Bauhaus. The Town Hall and the records office. They weren't very helpful last time, but now we're all one happy European family, it may be easier.'

‘May I ask the reason for your request?' The clerk at the enquiries was a woman in her middle thirties; she wore the disdainful and suspicious look common to civil servants the world over. What, it conveyed, did these foreigners want, asking to see the old records of the late nineteen forties …?

Ben answered. ‘We're trying to trace a missing relative.'

‘You've left it rather late, haven't you? A German national?'

‘No—' Julia interrupted. They were speaking in English. ‘My uncle. He had no nationality; he was in the DP camp.'

The woman raised her thin eyebrows. ‘Then we would have no records of anyone like that. I don't know who would; it's so long ago. I'm sorry.'

She had turned away in dismissal when Ben said, ‘But you would have records from the British Control Commission. I saw them here some years ago. And I found some documentation. My friend's uncle was discharged into the surety of an English woman working among the refugees. This was sanctioned and approved by the military authorities and he was allowed to live here with her.'

Julia took it up again. She felt that Ben had antagonized the woman. She tried a soft approach. ‘If we could just look and see if there is anything connecting her with him afterwards. It means so much to my mother, and she's in poor health. There might be some clues we could go on. Please?'

There was a hesitation, then with a slight shrug of resignation, the woman did her good deed for the day.

‘You can look through what we have,' she said. ‘But I don't see what you hope to find. Unless you missed something last time.' She spoke curtly to Ben.

‘That's why we need to look again,' Julia headed him off. ‘Just to make sure. I'm very grateful to you.'

‘Sign this form please. I'll get someone to take you down when it's been authorized. Sit over there; I don't know how long it will be.'