Orders from Berlin (22 page)

‘And you’re sure it’s him?’ Trave asked. He had to admit that the new evidence sounded compelling, and it made him uncomfortable to realize that he was disappointed by the new developments. He didn’t want Brive to be guilty. He wondered whether his obsession with 59 Broadway and its occupants had warped his view of the case.

‘I’m positive he did it – have been from the first time I clapped eyes on the bastard,’ said Quaid expansively. ‘Some people have got a nose for a good wine; I’ve got a nose for guilt. You know me – I rely on my instincts, and they haven’t failed me yet.’

One thing Trave had to admit about his boss was that he was a skilled interrogator. It wasn’t just instinct that Quaid relied on to get results. He was an expert at pushing his questioning powers to the legal limit. He knew when to press a suspect hard and when to pretend to be his friend, and he was prepared to be patient if necessary, and flexible too. He adapted his tactics as he went along.

Trave was impatient to find out what Brive had to say, but Quaid insisted on waiting until after lunch to start the interview – enough time for Brive to have been softened up by the extra unpleasantness that Quaid had ordered to accompany the booking-in procedure. The strip search was humiliating; it undermined the suspect’s mental defences. And the wait in the windowless holding cell was calculated to induce panic.

‘First things first,’ said Quaid, rubbing his hands together in anticipation while he and Trave waited for Brive to be brought to the interview room. ‘We need to get our doctor friend to waive his right to counsel. That’s vital. We’ll never get anything out of him once he gets his solicitor here.’ Quaid sounded like a professor giving a master class to a specially chosen student.

‘This is an outrage. I’m innocent of all charges,’ said Bertram angrily, resuming his protest where he’d left off before as soon as he’d sat down, pushed into the waiting chair by Constable Twining. ‘I want my solicitor.’

‘Why?’ asked Quaid.

‘Why? Because I’ve got rights. Don’t tell me I haven’t.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of doing so, Doctor,’ said Quaid, sounding like the living embodiment of the voice of reason. ‘I just wanted to know why you feel you need a solicitor. I mean, if you’ve got nothing to hide …’

‘I don’t have anything to hide.’

‘I’m glad to hear it. But then I don’t quite follow why you need representation. You’ll be telling us the truth whether you have a solicitor here or not, won’t you?’

‘Of course I will,’ said Bertram. ‘What do you take me for?’

‘Well, then, wouldn’t it be simpler for you just to do that and then we can all go home?’ Quaid asked pleasantly. ‘I’m sure you’re a busy man, Doctor, and that you’ve got better things to do than sit around in that cell twiddling your thumbs while we wait for your lawyer to get here. Transport is very bad today after the bombing last night, but I think you already know that. It could take hours.’

‘Oh, very well,’ Bertram said crossly. ‘Let’s get on with it.’

Quaid showed no sign of excitement at having got what he wanted. He continued asking his questions in the same level, even-handed way that he’d adopted at the start of the interview, and Bertram didn’t seem to know how to respond. It was as if he’d expected rudeness and aggression from Quaid, following on from their encounters in Albert Morrison’s flat on the night of the murder and then in his own earlier that morning, and now didn’t know how to handle this new polite and reasonable version of the inspector.

Quaid began by summarizing the demands from Bertram’s creditors. He showed Bertram the dates on their letters and demonstrated how the pressure had built in the weeks leading up to Morrison’s death, and then he laid out the blackmail letters one by one on the table and held up the incriminating photograph that he’d shown Trave before the interview began. Bertram flushed and turned away, hiding his eyes with his hand. Trave could sense his growing desperation.

‘How old is the young man beside you on the bed?’ asked Quaid.

‘I – I don’t know,’ Bertram stammered.

‘Fair enough. I’m sure we can find out for ourselves if it should prove necessary,’ said Quaid.

‘What do you mean,
necessary
?’

‘Well, the blackmail will be important prosecution evidence if there’s a trial. I’m sure you can understand that. The letters and the photograph explain your state of mind, and if the young man was under age, then that just makes it more likely that you’d resort to desperate measures to keep the blackmailer from going public—’

‘But I didn’t resort—’, Bertram began.

‘Hear me out, Doctor,’ said Quaid, holding up his hand.
‘There’s another side to the coin. If you plead guilty, then the
letters and the photograph don’t need to come out. They could be our secret. If you like, I could even pay a visit to whoever it is who’s been persecuting you for the last twelve months. A few carefully chosen words of warning and that would be an end of the matter. I can be quite persuasive when I want to be. I can assure you of that.’

‘But I can’t plead guilty to something I didn’t do,’ said Bertram, squirming in his chair. There was a plaintive note in his voice now, almost a wail.

‘But you did do it, Doctor. Look at this cuff link your wife found in your desk this morning. It matches one found on the landing outside your father-in-law’s flat, just near where you pushed him over the balustrade.’

‘That’s not mine,’ said Bertram sharply.

‘Not yours! Then what’s it doing in your desk?’

‘I don’t know, someone must have put it there. I’m being framed,’ Bertram said shrilly. ‘That’s what’s happening here. You’ve got to listen to me – whoever put that cuff link in my desk is the one who killed Albert. You need to find out who’s been in my flat. You need to ask Ava.’

‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary,’ said Quaid. ‘It’s your desk, and your wife found the cuff link in the top drawer this morning. I assume you’re not suggesting she put it there?’

‘No, of course I’m not—’

‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Quaid, cutting Bertram off e
ven thoug
h he looked like he had more to say. ‘And what about your sudden appearance at the murder scene?’ he continued, piling on the pressure. ‘How do you explain that? No one called for your assistance.’

‘I was concerned about my wife …’

‘And yet you’d never gone over there to see if she was
all right before. The Blitz had been going on for more than a
week and she’d been over at least four times to check on her father when there were raids, without any sign of you showing up. Why did you choose that particular night to
pay a visit?’ asked Quaid. ‘And why did you run up the stairs
and try to interfere with the evidence in your father-in-law’s flat the first chance you got?’ he pressed when Bertram did not answer.

‘I was looking for the will,’ Bertram said. ‘I admit that. But I didn’t kill him. I swear it.’

‘Okay, so let me see if I’ve got this right: you needed his money and you got him to change his will to leave it to you, but then you had nothing to do with his death. That singular piece of good fortune just happened to fall into your lap at the very moment when you needed it the most. Is that really what you’re telling us?’ asked Quaid, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

‘Yes, you’ve got to believe me—’

‘But I don’t,’ said Quaid, cutting Bertram off. ‘I don’t
have
to believe you. I’m a rational man just like Detective Trave here, and what you say makes no sense, no sense whatsoever.’ Quaid paused, scratching his chin with his forefinger as he maintained his observation of Bertram, who was continuing to squirm about in his chair. The inspector reminded Trave at that moment of some cold-blooded scientist watching the effect of an experiment on some miserable laboratory animal.

‘Listen, Dr Brive, I think you need to carefully consider your position,’ said Quaid, looking as if he had come to a decision. ‘If we can’t reach an accommodation, you and I, then you’ll be tried for murder – premeditated murder – and you don’t need me to tell you what the sentence is for that. Maybe you’ll get lucky and you won’t hang, but then again maybe you will. It’s a nasty way to die, Doctor, I can assure you of that. The noose is supposed to break your neck, but it doesn’t always work out that way. Strangling on the end of a rope, twisting around in mid-air, trussed up like a turkey … I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.’

Quaid paused, letting his words sink in. Bertram’s face had turned white as alabaster. He was gripping the table in front of him with both hands.

‘But it doesn’t have to be that way,’ Quaid continued. ‘If you’re man enough to own up to what you’ve done, then I’ll make sure you’re only charged with manslaughter. You’ll be sentenced on the basis that you didn’t set out to kill your father-in-law but that you pushed him over the balustrade during an argument that got out of hand. You’ll serve a few years and then you can come out and carry on with your life, and no one need know about the blackmail problem. I’ve already told you I’ll see to that. Now what do you say? No one could say that that’s not a fair offer.’

Bertram was writhing more than squirming now, and he kept putting his hand up to his neck, pinching the skin around his Adam’s apple. It was as if he were unconsciously seeking the bow tie that Twining had removed from him during the strip search and had not given back. Or maybe he was thinking about the noose, Trave thought with sudden understanding.

‘I need some time – time to think,’ he said eventually.

‘Certainly,’ said Quaid. ‘A very reasonable request. You can have as long as you need.’ Turning, he pressed a buzzer on the wall, and within moments Constable Twining appeared in the doorway.

‘Take Dr Brive to his cell,’ Quaid ordered. ‘And give him a cup of tea and a ham sandwich. He looks like he needs it.’

Quaid seemed in no hurry to resume. He read his newspaper from cover to cover and then methodically worked his way through a pile of official papers on his desk until Twining reappeared. An hour and a half had gone by – Trave had timed it on the clock.

‘The prisoner is asking for you, sir,’ Twining said deferentially. ‘Says he wants to talk.’

‘All right, bring him back,’ said Quaid with a sigh. ‘Let’s see if he’s willing to listen to reason.’

Bertram looked as nervous as before when he came into the interview room, but he seemed determined too, as though he’d come to a decision and was resolved to go through with it.

‘You’ll put what you told me in writing, will you?’ he asked Quaid. ‘So you can’t go back on it?’

‘Certainly,’ said Quaid. ‘I’ll sign my undertaking at the same time as you sign your confession. Detective Trave here can witness our signatures. Will that work for you?’

Bertram nodded. He looked like a beaten man. ‘I don’t want to see my wife if she comes here looking for me,’ he said. ‘I can’t face her, not any more.’

Heydrich dismissed the Lisbon courier with a cursory salute and slit open the package with a silver paper knife adorned with an eagle and swastika – a present from his wife on the occasion of his last birthday. The report was in English but he could read the language fluently. He grimaced at one point, but then nodded twice at the end as if satisfied with its contents and picked up the telephone. He was in luck. The Führer was in Berlin and would see him that afternoon.

Heydrich sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, allowing his mind to travel back six years to when he’d first met Charles Seaforth on a warm September day just like this one, with the sun shining down on Berlin. It was a good time, full of promise. Hitler had succeeded to the chancellorship a year earlier, and the transformation of the country
was already under way. The currency was stabilized, rearmament had begun, and you could sense the country’s new-found sense of purpose wherever you went. Heydrich’s star was on the rise, following that of his master. Three months earlier, Ernst Röhm and Heydrich’s other rivals in the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing, the SA, had been dispatched on the Night of the Long Knives, and his power base in the Gestapo and the SS was now unchallenged. Years of consolidation lay ahead as the party took control of every facet of life in the new Reich, but the way ahead was clear.

Seaforth had come to Germany ostensibly on a covert operation to recruit agents for the British Secret Service, but his real purpose had been to seek out Heydrich and enlist in the service of the Führer. Heydrich had never encountered an enemy agent who displayed such a single-minded eagerness to betray the country of his birth. He had wanted money, but not an excessive amount, and Heydrich had sensed from the outset that the motive of financial gain was entirely secondary to his new recruit’s passionate, overarching desire to hurt England. This was what mattered to him – he appeared to have no great intrinsic interest in or enthusiasm for National Socialism and the new order in Germany. The resurgence of German power was important to him because he believed that it would lead to war. His certainty on this point had surprised Heydrich. War with England had seemed far from inevitable back in 1934, with a sympathetic government at the helm in London and the Führer moving cautiously step by step to consolidate his power. But Seaforth had been proved right, and his accurate prediction of the future had increased Heydrich’s respect for his new agent.

Seaforth’s hatred for his country was the reverse of everything that Heydrich stood for. Heydrich prided himself on his patriotism, but here he was, placing his trust in a man who wanted to commit high treason. Why? Partly, of course, because Seaforth’s story made sense. Heydrich had verified the details, and Seaforth certainly had no reason to love England after all that had happened to him. But Heydrich also instinctively recognized that the wellspring of anger that drove each of them forward was essentially the same, even if it led them in opposite directions. Heydrich had been enraged by the November criminals who had signed away the fatherland in 1918, just as Seaforth abhorred the British generals and politicians who had sent their people to die in droves year after year in the mud of Flanders and northern France. Only their conclusions separated them: Heydrich wanted to change his country, whereas Seaforth wanted to destroy his.