Little Grey Mice (16 page)

Elke glanced anxiously around the restaurant. ‘Why say that?'

‘His wife has extended her stay at a spa, right?'

‘That's what he said.'

‘And he'd already bought tickets for a concert?'

‘Yes.'

‘Is Günther Werle a liar?'

‘Certainly not!' said Elke defensively.

‘So why can't it be a perfectly ordinary gesture, with no strings or hidden meaning attached, from a man whose wife is away?'

There was no reason whatsoever, Elke conceded. She felt admonished. ‘It just seemed … not right.'

‘It could only not be right if you let it develop otherwise,' said Ida, with relentless logic if difficult syntax. ‘I think you'd be a fool, not to go. You like music and it's not often you get the chance to hear it performed by an orchestra as good as that.'

‘I suppose …'

Ida added to their glasses and said: ‘What's the attraction of living as you do, practically as a recluse?'

There isn't any attraction at all, thought Elke: I hate it. She said: ‘I don't live practically as a recluse. I just don't get the opportunity all that often to go out in company.'

‘So now you have!' said Ida, triumphantly. ‘Take it!'

Elke guessed that Gerda Pohl had led the gossip about a relationship between herself and Günther. But now Gerda wasn't in the department any longer: not that there would have been any likelihood of Gerda or anyone else learning of the outing anyway. Still reluctant to make a positive, personal decision, Elke said: ‘I'll see.'

‘Go!' urged Ida. ‘Where's the harm?'

Ida was wearing the suit and shawl she had worn that night to Kaufmannstrasse, and Elke thought her sister looked elegant. ‘How's Horst?' she asked.

Ida shrugged. ‘He claims to have started to write something. I don't expect it's anything more thanb “Chapter One”. '

‘Don't ridicule him all the time,' urged Elke, in a sudden plea. ‘I don't want to hear any more about what's happening between you and Horst and anyone else and I think the way you disregard and diminish him as you're doing is wrong.'

Ida sat with her glass suspended halfway to her mouth, openly surprised by the outburst. Elke was surprised at it herself. Ida said: ‘Forgive me, if it distresses you!'

There was a brittleness in her sister's voice and Elke thought, further surprised, that it could become an unprecedented dispute between them. ‘My distress isn't important,' she said. ‘It's Horst's distress that matters.'

‘I doubt that he notices,' said Ida, uncaring.

‘Of course he notices!' said Elke, exasperated. ‘Remember what you accused me of, for visiting Ursula every Sunday? You said I did it because I felt guilty of something. Don't you think there's a lot of guilt at what you're doing with Kurt in the way you're behaving towards your husband?'

‘Quite the little analyst!' said Ida.

Their roles were reversing again, Elke decided. She hadn't liked it on the previous occasion but she did not feel so discomfited now: maybe it was because Ida was not collapsing, as before. Whatever, it was probably the time for her to withdraw. ‘I don't want to debate it. It was just something I wanted to say.'

‘Bravo!' said Ida. The sarcasm did not work and they both knew it. Ida flushed.

Elke decided the lunch was ruined and that it was her fault. Did it matter? It
had
been an opinion she'd wanted to express, rare though such an experience was for her. She tried to think of a subject to raise between them but couldn't: they'd talked about the children before she'd mentioned the invitation to the Berlin Philharmonic concert and there was nothing more to say about Horst Kissel. There was the business of Gerda Pohl, but Elke didn't think her sister would be genuinely interested in that. Who else would be?

Elke imagined her sister was having the same difficulty, but Ida abruptly confessed: ‘It's getting pretty serious between Kurt and me.'

‘On whose part? Yours? His? Or both?'

Ida considered the demand. She smiled, but only slightly, shaking her head. ‘His, I guess.'

‘How?'

‘He wants us to go away together. Only for a vacation: a week, something like that.'

‘How could you do that?' Elke decided, positively, not to be judgemental. If she were the only person to whom Ida could talk then that was the role she'd play. A sounding board. Adviser, maybe, if advice was sought. But not a judge. What criteria did she have to judge morals?

‘I don't see how I could,' admitted Ida, at once.

‘Do you want to?'

Ida shrugged, uncertainly. ‘I don't know.'

‘What about him?' asked Elke. ‘What family does he have, apart from a wife?'

Ida stretched across the table, taking Elke's hand. ‘Use his name,' Ida asked, her face very serious. ‘It wouldn't hurt to use his name, would it?'

Elke was dismayed at the anguish on her sister's face. She said: ‘What family does Kurt have?'

‘A daughter. Twelve. I've seen a picture. She's very pretty.'

‘What about the wife you met at dinner? Is she pretty, too?'

‘You really think that reminder was necessary?'

‘Why not?' Where was the decision not to judge?

‘I think you could easily …' started Ida, but stopped.

‘What?'

‘Nothing.' Ida had almost accused her sister of envy: her stomach knotted in horrified awareness of how such a charge would have sounded against someone like Elke.

‘What?' insisted Elke, again.

Ida fervently sought a way out. ‘I was going to say I think you could easily be risking what there is between us. Which would have been absurd. It was silly anger: not thinking. I'm sorry.'

Elke relaxed, smiling. ‘I shouldn't have said it, either,' she conceded. It had, she supposed, been an argument of sorts.

‘I don't think I'll do it,' said Ida. ‘Try to get away, I mean.'

‘It'll just make things even more difficult,' Elke told her. ‘Do you really want that?'

‘No,' said Ida, sincerely. ‘I certainly don't want any more difficulties than I've already got.'

That night, walking Poppi, Elke made the decision definitely to accept the concert invitation. It was positively ridiculous, ever to have had doubts: she simply didn't have the experience.

‘Moscow considers it's dangerous,' Jutta insisted. ‘You'll have to come into direct contact with the police.'

‘That's the whole point!' argued Reimann, frustrated by the objections. ‘The police will give me inherent credibility: honest men seek assistance from the police, not dishonest ones!'

‘Too much can go wrong.'

‘Have Moscow agreed?' Reimann demanded. In Jutta's thin-walled apartment they were both speaking quietly and playing the stereo loudly as an additional precaution against being overheard.

‘They want to know if there couldn't be another way.'

‘If I believed there had been another, more effective way I would have suggested it instead.' In his impatience, Reimann wondered if the reluctance was entirely from Moscow. To Jutta this would be his moment of contact with Elke, the very moment when his relationship with the woman would hopefully begin.

‘You're sure?'

Reimann refused to argue any further. ‘Do they have enough men available?'

‘Yes,' she conceded.

‘And they'll be in place, ready, as I've ordered?'

‘Yes.'

Reimann smiled, satisfied. It was good being the person able to dictate the action, after so long being the obedient subordinate. He wondered how long it would be before Jutta recognized the change.

Chapter Twelve

Elke felt inexplicably happy; happier than she had for months. And at the same time calm. She decided that the calmness – the absence of any baseless apprehension or tension – contributed largely to the other more obvious feeling. There were other factors, of course. After the initial instinctive unease, the unwillingness to accept any change in established patterns, she was coming to enjoy the shifting relationship between Ida and herself. It was no longer one-sided. Now Ida needed her, as a confidante and an adviser, and Elke liked the reversal of dependence. She didn't want the cause to last – and hoped she'd correctly detected a cooling of the affair on Ida's part when they lunched – but didn't believe things would ever go back to how they had been before, with herself forever subservient and forever led by her elder sister. They were more equal now. Equal in what? Mistakes, perhaps. She'd made a mistake. And now Ida was making hers. Just as easily Elke found that a sober reflection, a temporary dip in her unusual happiness. If this was the equalizing mistake, she hoped Ida's was not as irreparable as hers had been.

Elke edged the freshly washed and polished Volkswagen out on to Adenauerallee, that highway she seemed to know so well, shrugging the thought away. She didn't want a reason for the adjustment between herself and Ida. It had happened. That was enough. The reason wasn't important: wasn't necessary to isolate. What about other factors? She began to ignore what came to mind but finally refused herself. Why not consider it? She
was
looking forward to the concert, with Günther. As he said he was looking forward to escorting her, when she'd accepted. Soon – within days – they would have to make arrangements. Would they meet at the concert hall? Or would he collect her? Better to meet at the hall. Less complicated. Less … just better. What if he offered to pick her up? It would be rude to refuse. If he did she would have to invite him in, either before or after: further rudeness, if she didn't. Most definitely before, if he insisted on coming to Kaufmannstrasse. She would have to get something in to drink, to avoid being as unworldly as she had been with Ida. Basic courtesy to do so. What? She didn't know. What had Dietlef drunk, when they'd been together? Beer, she remembered: beer was all that students and postgraduates ever drank. Günther Werle didn't seem the sort of man to drink beer. Wine, perhaps. It might be wise to get in some whisky or schnapps, as well. Near the centre of the city, Elke smiled abruptly: it was not a problem. She could ask Ida, at lunch. Ida would know. The reliance was still two-way.

The car-parks were full, but today that did not cause Elke the irritation it might have done. She made a protective tour around familiar streets and succeeded with a meter on Engeltalstrasse. Before lifting Poppi from the vehicle she ensured it was parked evenly between the lines of the designated space, paid and then returned for the dog.

It was getting hotter, warming up but not yet boiling like the ‘Bonn kettle'. The sun felt comfortable upon her face: she hoped Ursula would feel like walking in the grounds tomorrow. Ursula had not resisted at all on the last few Sundays. It had to be something to do with the newly-prescribed tranquillizers.

The produce market was not crowded and although she did not intend to buy anything Elke lingered among the stalls, smiling at traders shouting their wares, shaking her head to those who picked her out openly to offer samples. She hesitated, too, at the flower stalls further on. If Günther came into the flat it would be nice, proper, to have fresh flowers. But they wouldn't be fresh by then, would they? Better to wait, nearer the day: nearer the day they would have decided anyway if they were going separately or together.

Clara, the waitress Elke never called by name, was waiting to greet her by the accustomed table inside the Bonner Café. Elke accepted the coffee and consulted the menu before choosing the apple cake they both knew she would order.

‘Cream?' the girl suggested, as she always did.

‘No thank you,' Elke refused, as she always did.

And outside but unseen, concealed by the jewellery shop window, Otto Reimann smiled, already convinced that everything was going to work as smoothly as he'd planned it should.

Reimann considered the most difficult part – the part he could do nothing to anticipate – was already resolved exactly as he wanted it to be because there had not been a restricting car-park vacancy when Elke reached the centre.

The expert observation, a lot of which he had confirmed for himself, had given Reimann precisely the time of Elke's regular Saturday morning departure from Kaufmannstrasse. But Reimann had still been waiting early, to allow for any deviation from normal. Which there hadn't been. The short drive into the city had been just as uneventful, so it had only been about the parking that Reimann had known any concern. Engeltalstrasse could not have been better. Knowing Elke's destination Reimann had not needed to maintain any further pursuit. Instead he'd found his own parking place on Spessartstrasse and still been early for his rendezvous with Jutta, to identify both parking positions, aware more than at any time since this new operation had begun how completely their positions were switched.

‘So far it's going all right.' A begrudging concession.

‘It can only fail if you and the others make mistakes now.' He hadn't quite intended it to sound like a threat.

‘I don't make mistakes,' she'd come back at him, defiantly.

‘Let's hope there isn't a first time. And that the others aren't careless,' had been his retort, just as forceful.

Elke left the Bonner Café at ten thirty, the recorded time in the observation files. And as the files predicted, she turned left towards the bookshop and the cathedral. Reimann went in the opposite direction, back through the produce market. The already identified telephone was conveniently near the corner of Spessart. He hurried his approach, to create the breathlessness of a supposedly anguished man, and babbled the beginning of his emergency call so that the receiver had to interrupt to make him repeat the report of his car's theft. He did, with an account of actually seeing the crime being committed, too far away to intervene but able to give the direction in which the car had been driven away. He added the location from which he was speaking and promised to wait until the police arrived.