The Secret of Spandau (33 page)

‘Good man,' said the General, raising his goblet.

It is doubtful whether Julius heard the tribute. He had already collapsed, lolling over the arm of the chair, taking huge, stertorous breaths, which stopped before the General put down his glass.

Red had phoned for a taxi and it was waiting beside the derelict Volkswagon by the time he got downstairs with Heidrun and Jane. He sat beside the driver, leaving the women in uneasy proximity on the rear seat. The clock on the instrument panel showed 11.05 and the streets were quiet, except for a party of teenagers throwing beer-cans into the Havel from Juliusturm Bridge.

Cal's lodging in Old Spandau was over a small petrol station and repair garage, which probably kept the rent down in what an estate agent would have described as a much sought-after locality. Red settled the fare and they climbed the iron staircase at the back of the building and pressed the bell on Cal's door. No lights showed in the flat and there was no response. The venetian blinds on the nearest window were in the open position, but it was too dark to see inside.

It was a solid wooden door, not the sort that yields to a shoulder. ‘Keep your hand on the bell, love,' Red told Jane. ‘I'll be back in a tick.' He clattered downstairs and into the garage, where he had noticed someone still working. ‘The tenant upstairs, the American, do you know him?' he asked, crouching beside the feet projecting from under the chassis of a Volvo.

‘No.'

‘Seen him today?'

‘No.'

‘See anyone else go up there?'

‘No.'

‘Thanks. I'll borrow this.' Red picked a spare inspection-lamp off the floor. Consistent at least in his indifference, the mechanic carried on with his work while Red returned upstairs.

He shone the lamp through the adjacent window, which turned out to be the kitchen. They could see a cut loaf, a coffee-mug and a magazine open on the table.

He handed the lamp to Jane and climbed over the iron railing onto the window-ledge. It projected enough to give him a foothold if he held on to the shutters at the sides. He wanted to reach a second, larger window, probably part of the living-room.

‘Red, that's dangerous!'

‘Just hand me the lamp when I say,' he told Jane as he edged towards the second shutter. ‘OK.' Gripping the top of the shutter with his right hand, he took the lamp in his left and continued the manoeuvre.

He had to make an over-long stride to the second ledge, but with the help of the shutter he got there and shone the beam into the room.

He had half-expected what he saw, but he still felt a sudden pricking of the skin and the nausea rising in his stomach.

‘Red, what is it?' Jane called out.

He didn't answer. Close to the window, stretched across the floor in the fawn-coloured jacket he had been wearing that morning, was Cal, his head angled against the base of an armchair in a position that would have told anyone he was dead, even without the blood that had seeped from the exit-wounds at the back of his skull.

Red swung the lamp hard at the sash-window and smashed a hole large enough to get his hand through and free the catch. He shoved the window upwards and climbed inside.

Cal had been shot twice in the face, one bullet passing through the left eye and the other through the cheekbone, close to his nose. It must have happened hours ago, because the blood on his skin had dried and rigor mortis had tightened his jaw and neck.

Red shook his head and said out loud, with crass inadequacy, but in genuine pity, ‘You didn't deserve this, mate.' He thought back to his last sight of Cal, waiting for a bus back to Spandau – with Valentin close behind him.

Valentin. While the other two had murdered the old woman, Valentin must have followed Cal here and conned his way into the flat and gunned him down. Why? What had Cal done to be picked off by an assassination squad?

The girls were shouting and ringing the bell. Red knew he must shake off the paralysing sense of outrage. He had seen gun-deaths before, in battlefronts and once on a hijack he had covered, but this was the first time he had personal knowledge of the victim. He picked a newspaper off the armchair and spread it over Cal's mutilated face. He got up and switched on the light. Then he went to the front door and let them in. Jane peppered him with questions, but Heidrun tried to push past, so he grabbed her arm.

‘Listen to me, will you? Cal is dead, shot through the head. It must have happened this morning.'

Silence for a moment.

‘Who?' mouthed Jane without saying the word.

‘Valentin.'

‘How can you be certain?' asked Heidrun in her sing-song intonation, which suddenly sounded insufferably sanctimonious.

‘He was with the others who killed the old lady. He was tailing Cal when I last saw them.' He took a tighter grip on Heidrun's arm and asked her in German, ‘For the last time, what can you tell me about that guy?'

She glared back at him defiantly and traded scorn for distrust. ‘Are you deaf, or something? I told you everything. I told you he was violent, but I didn't think such a thing as this was possible. Let me pass, please. I want to see him.'

She didn't want to see him at all. She just wanted to evade more questions. It showed in her face. Red shoved her roughly against the wall and closed in, bringing his face up to hers. He was barely able to control the anger he felt. ‘Who's behind Valentin?'

She pressed her lips together until they whitened.

‘Answer me, whore!'

She spat in his face, a frothy gob of spittle that stung his left eye.

He slapped her hard across the face and back-handed the other cheek on the return.

Behind him, Jane cried out in protest, speaking his name.

A bead of blood formed on Heidrun's lower lip and rolled down her chin. She bucked her knee hard into his groin, and the pain seared through his testicles. He shouted and swayed away. As she aimed another kick between his legs, he had the wit to grab her foot and twist it hard, jerking her off balance. She fell heavily.

Then Jane acted. She threw herself on Heidrun like a wrestler and got an arm-lock on her, tightening it until she screamed with pain. Red couldn't stand upright, but he crouched against the wall and gestured to Jane to ease the grip.

Heidrun moaned.

‘I think she'll talk now,' said Jane.

Heidrun shook her head, but it was unconvincing. She sheered away in fear as Red came closer.

He told her, ‘They beat Edda Zenk with a pistol. They cut up her face before they killed her. Those are the people you helped. Are you going to force me to do it their way?'

‘No!' Terror showed in her eyes.

Jane said, ‘Red, you don't have to hit her again.'

He grabbed a hank of Heidrun's hair. ‘Who do they work for?'

She whispered, ‘The East.'

‘The KGB?'

‘I don't know. It was never told to me.'

He tightened his grip. ‘You're a fucking KGB agent.'

‘Not an agent. I'm of no importance.'

‘But you're on the payroll?'

‘Once you start, it's forever.'

‘You were planted on Cal?'

‘Yes.'

‘Because of his job in Spandau? They wanted to know if Hess told him anything?'

‘Yes.' She added quickly, ‘I learned nothing of any use.'

‘He didn't fancy you.'

Stung into defiance again, she flung back, ‘He didn't get much chance, did he?'

He kept his eyes on Heidrun's, though he guessed the effect of the rebuke on Jane. ‘Valentin was your case officer, is that the word?'

‘I suppose so.'

‘You set Cal up, and they got what they wanted and murdered him.'

‘Please let me go, Red.'

He nodded and moved away. He had learned enough. Jane, too, released her hold, allowing Heidrun to stand up.

Red said to Heidrun. ‘You were going in to see Cal. Why don't you take a look at him? See what your friends did to him.' He let her go past him into the living-room and said in a hollow voice to Jane. ‘That was pretty sick-making. I'm sorry.'

She shook her head in a way that signified understanding, if not acceptance. She felt shamed by the violence, her own as well as Red's, but that was unavoidable. The verbal abuse had been harder to take. She had known without being told that he had slept with Heidrun, but she had hated hearing it thrown back at him, like muck. Yes, she felt pretty sick.

She said flatly, ‘Shouldn't we call the police?'

He summoned the faintest grin. ‘My mates from headquarters?'

‘Heidrun will have to talk to them,' Jane emphasised. ‘If she tells them everything …'

‘We'll be here all night answering questions,' commented Red. ‘There's something more important to do.' And intuitively, with startling clarity, he envisaged a way to do it. He had always been governed by impulse, and often it had failed him; but this was irresistibly simple, brilliant and timely. Mad, quite mad, but right. If he never lived to do anything else, he was going to try this. He took hold of Jane's hand. ‘We said we owed it to Dick to discover the truth about Hess. Do you still believe that?'

‘Of course, but—'

He cut in excitedly, ‘I reckon we owe it to Cal and Edda Zenk as well, don't you?'

She saw the point of that, but she was still at a loss to understand what Red intended. ‘Well, yes, but now that Cal is dead, we've lost our line into Spandau. How will we ever get in touch with Hess?'

‘I'll go in and talk to him,' Red answered with absolute seriousness.

She screwed up her face in mystification. ‘What?'

‘I'm going to bluff my way in there.'

‘That's crazy, Red.'

‘Maybe, but the crazy ideas sometimes work.'

‘You can't walk into a prison.'

He smiled. ‘I'm not going to walk in, darling. I'm going to run. I'll put on Cal's tracksuit and cap and jog over there, just like he does. I know the routine, don't I?'

She was practically bereft of words. ‘It isn't possible.'

Heidrun's discouragement was suddenly added to Jane's from the living-room doorway. ‘Only a fool would try it, Red. They have orders to shoot.'

He answered, ‘They don't shoot the bloody warders.'

‘Even if you got inside, they'd arrest you before the gate was closed.'

‘Who? The military? It's the Russian month for guard-duty. They bring in a new set of soldiers every time. Those boys don't know one warder from another.'

‘Red, you haven't planned this. You haven't thought it through,' Jane tried to impress on him.

‘He's mad,' said Heidrun.

‘It wouldn't surprise me if the bloody Russians have a go at Hess after what's happened,' Red persisted. ‘Somebody in Spandau needs to be told about the carnage out here. The old man is in real danger.'

‘Who are you trying to convince?' asked Heidrun.

Red crooked his finger at her. ‘Come here.'

She shrank back into the room.

‘I said come here.'

She hesitated, fearful of more violence. ‘I'm sorry, Red. I don't want you to get shot. That's why I said those things.'

He continued to beckon her with his finger and by degrees she came, until she stood just out of arm's reach in front of him.

He said, ‘Take off your trainers.'

She obeyed.

‘Now take out the laces and hand them to me.'

When that was done, he made her face the wall while he bound her wrists. ‘You're too bloody dangerous to let loose, he told her. ‘If I was one of your mob, I'd kill you, wouldn't I?' He led her into Cal's bedroom and, with help from Jane, finished the job of trussing her up, finally tying her to the bed itself with strips of sheet. She made no resistance, realising, probably, the truth of his remark.

That accomplished, he stripped to his underwear, took Cal's tracksuit from its hook on the bedroom door and changed into it. ‘I need your help, love,' he told Jane. ‘In the back pocket of my trousers is a small wallet with my press-card. Got it?'

She picked the trousers off the floor. ‘Yes.'

‘Somewhere in there is a scrap of paper with three phone numbers, right?'

‘Is this it?'

‘Great. The first number will get you the chief warder's room in Spandau Prison. There's a public phone in the U-Bahn Station at the end of Breite Strasse, where the taxi put us down, OK? Tell the guy on duty that you're speaking for Warder Calvin Moody. Cal had some aggro with a break-in at his flat and that's why he's reporting so late, but he's on his way, and should be with them in twenty minutes. Leave it at that. Nothing else. Can you do it, love?'

‘Of course, but—'

‘Then I want you to take my own clothes back to the flat. You'll get a taxi in the same place, no problem. The key's in the pocket and money as well.' He winked at her. ‘You'll find a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label beside my bed. Have a good slug.'

She wasn't capable of smiling any more, even for Red.

He still had something else to ask. ‘Also by the bed is an address book. Look up a guy called Willi Becker. He lives in the Chamissoplatz, in the Kreuzberg section of the city. If anything goes wrong, anyone gives you flak, anything, go to Willi. Don't phone. Go and see him. Tell him where I am, why, everything he wants to know. Willi is OK. He'll take care of you. Got all that?'

Jane whispered that she had. She tilted her head towards the bedroom. ‘What about her?'

‘Forget her. If you feel inclined, you can make another call in the morning and tip off the law.'

Jane clung to his arm as he tried on a pair of Cal's jogging shoes. She held back her tears, but only just. ‘Red. It's too dangerous. It can't possibly work.'

‘I almost believe you, love,' he admitted, ‘but if I don't try, I can't live with myself – or anyone else.' He drew her to his chest and they held each other for a couple of seconds. They didn't kiss.