XPD (29 page)

‘You should have phoned me, Mr Stein.’

‘No good phoning you,’ growled Stein, still continuing to eat the potatoes. ‘They only allow you one completed phone call and I was chasing my goddamned lawyer from bar to restaurant to nightclub.’

He finished the potatoes, took the slice of buttered toast and got to his feet. The smell of the jail was still on him. ‘I’ve got to take a tub,’ said Stein. ‘Change out of these stinking clothes.’

‘It must have been terrible for you, Mr Stein.’

‘Goddamned Fascists,’ said Stein. ‘I told them that too. I said, I fought a war to get rid of Fascists like you. I told them.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They laughed,’ said Stein. He shrugged. He was getting used to people laughing about the war. Billy Stein had been laughing about it for years. Why get mad because other men’s kids laughed too?

Stein got to his feet, pulled off his tie and loosened his shirt collar. Restlessly, he went to the fireplace and moved some of the china ornaments as if looking for something.

‘Are you all right, Mr Stein?’ the housekeeper asked. She had never seen him like this before.

‘They laughed,’ said Stein again. His talk with Jerry Delaney had reawakened his memories; his night in the county jail had given him too much time to brood. There was the other half of the story. He remembered telling it again and again to the untidy little captain from the judge advocate’s staff who had shouted with rage and called Stein a liar.

Delaney had told the same story of course. Delaney was his buddy, a tall gangling youth with a long neck and the awkward physique of a boy who had not yet grown to manhood. Major Carson was the only old-timer with the column that day. Carson had fought in France in the First World War. He was a plump, grey-haired man, his nose and cheeks red from the cold, early-morning parade grounds and evenings of cheap booze which had made up his years in the peacetime army. ‘No need for binoculars,’ he had told Lieutenant Pitman when they saw the smoke. ‘The Germans are over the next hill, kicking shit out of the supply column.’ He parked his chewing gum on the armour plate and looked down at his map case as the next salvo sounded. Stein was watching him closely; he did not flinch. The inquiry had tried to brand Carson as a coward, but a coward would have remained with the column, not tried to take a jeep across the open country to tell the battalion what was happening. ‘I’ll need a driver,’ said Major Carson.

‘Take young Stein,’ said Lieutenant Pitman. ‘The kid’s too young for combat.’

‘They all are,’ said Carson without looking up from the map. ‘And if the Germans are this far …’ he stabbed at the shiny transparent map cover, ‘the whole damn shooting match is surrounded – CCA, regimental combat team, the whole works … shit! The top brass are as dumb as ass-holes, Pitman.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Pitman, who had consistently tried to reduce such disrespect for authority amongst his men.

Carson looked at him and smiled. Pitman was ten years older than most of these kids and trained at the Point, but his experience of real soldiering was pitifully inadequate. His uniform was brand new, his tie folded neatly into his shirt, his waterproof jacket without a stain. Pitman was smaller than the rest of them, and the heavy automatic pistol and full canteen of water sagged on his belt. His fieldglasses were like a millstone round his neck. As his eyes swept quickly round the horizon – seeing only the black stony hills that had put them out of radio contact with headquarters – his steel helmet clanged against the armour plate of the M-3.

Major Carson put an arm round his shoulder in a gesture that was at once paternal and confiding. ‘You get these kids down into the gully, Lieutenant, and pull back parallel to the Sbeitla road.’ There was more smoke followed by the drumbeats of the guns. ‘Could be the Germans will try to push through here all the way to Kasserine.’

‘Kasserine?’ said Pitman. It was unthinkable.

Carson was fingering the map again. His nails were worn short, his hands stained with oil and nicotine, and his fingers marked with tiny scars. They were the hands of a man who liked to take engines apart. ‘Don’t get any ideas about winning the Medal of Honour. They’ll elbow this little caravan without pausing. Go back along the gully, and get the hell out of here.’

‘We’re tank destroyers,’ said Pitman. ‘You want us to run?’

‘Get my jeep, kid,’ Carson shouted to Aram Stein. To Pitman he said, ‘Get these museum pieces out of here, Lieutenant. And that’s a goddamn order. Understand?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Pitman giving the major an exemplary salute. Carson climbed into the jeep without even looking back.

Lieutenant Pitman took off his helmet and ran a hand round the sweaty leather of its liner before putting it back on his head and tugging the chinstrap tight. He was on his own now; commanding the whole column in the face of the enemy, just as he had so often dreamed of doing. ‘There’s a soldier coming up the track,’ he said but his words were drowned by another explosion, this time from down the hill. Only Stein realized what had happened, perhaps because he had spent so much time dreading it. ‘Aram,’ he shouted. He jumped out of the M-3 with uncharacteristic agility, and ran down the hill like a madman. ‘Don’t move, Aram. I’m coming. Stay just where you are. I’m coming, Aram. Aram!’

But Aram Stein would never move again, neither would Major Carson. The jeep had hit a Teller mine half a mile down the track, its wreckage was bent and the tyres aflame. The bodies were cruelly dismembered. ‘Aram!’

‘Can I get you anything else?’ asked the housekeeper.

‘I’m going to have to talk to Billy,’ Stein told her. He had pampered the boy too much; he must start involving him in the real problems. Stein was tired. From now on Billy would have to help, really help.

‘Yes, Mr Stein,’ said the housekeeper, puzzled that Stein should thus confide in her. ‘Don’t forget that your telephone is still switched over to the answering machine.’

Chapter 26

It was almost eight years since young Billy Stein had been in London. That visit had been with his mother and father – a special vacation to celebrate his parents’ wedding anniversary. They had taken him to all the usual tourist treats: the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace, a visit to a musical show, a trip on the Thames, lunch at Simpson’s in the Strand, not forgetting to tip the man who carved the roast meat. It had been pleasant enough as an interlude, but London had not attracted any of the Stein family enough to make them want to return. The chilly climate, with frequent rain showers which always seemed to catch them unprepared, made them miserable, and the hotel had been neither heated nor air-conditioned. They had all sneezed, he remembered.

Little had changed since those days. The parking problem was horrendous, the taxi service inadequate, the telephones arcane and the food not to his taste. Billy Stein had spent most of his life in Southern California and now he was rarely happy anywhere else.

These factors all militated against the young Stein in his mission to London to discover, at Stein senior’s request, what Mr Paul Bock had to tell them. Even in this luxury hotel near Park Lane, Billy Stein did not find things easy. The room-service waiter was Portuguese and could not comprehend Billy’s breakfast order. The British morning newspaper was even more bewildering – devoted almost exclusively to the parochial activities of British trade union leaders, plus passionate analysis of recent British exports and some incomprehensible accounts of cricket. The headline said ‘Hanging: No by 119. MPs’ verdict in the great debate.’ He laid the newspaper aside and turned his attention to breakfast. Tinned orange juice, a smear of scrambled eggs and some shrivelled fragments of bacon. He poured the coffee and sighed deeply. Why had he let his father bully him into coming to London? He could have been eating his usual sliced fresh pineapple with real cream and good coffee, in the shade of the palm trees, looking at the map, deciding where to fly for an afternoon of swimming or surfing or skiing. He switched on the TV but got only a snow storm of static and a loud hiss. He shut his eyes and swallowed the hotel coffee.

He had still not recovered from the jet lag and the misery of his trans-Atlantic flight. The temperature of the ‘Japanese towels’ had been little different from that of the martinis with which he had tried to expunge memories of the reheated meat and vegetables that was the first-class dinner. The oppressive mediocrity of the in-flight movie was relieved only by the banal chatter of the flight crew and the sound of a passenger snoring loudly in the row ahead. Billy Stein arrived in London exhausted, and found a helpful driver who took him to his hotel for what he later discovered was nearly four times the regular taxi fare. Once in his comfortable hotel room, he slept for nineteen hours. And so it was that Billy had done nothing to contact Paul Bock until Friday – a week after the message had been left on the answering machine, and four days after Boyd Stuart’s visit to York Way.

Even on Friday Billy Stein had to make three attempts before getting the address from the secretarial agency. After a late breakfast he put on his raincoat and hat and ventured into the chilly London summer. A taxi took him to Jimmy’s Militaria and he became more and more depressed the nearer to it he came. The squalid houses and littered streets did not fit with the polite and carefully modulated voice he had heard on the recording machine.

‘Here we are, guy,’ said the taxi driver. A jumbo jet passed over so low that Billy Stein had difficulty hearing him. He held out a handful of change and let the driver help himself. The driver muttered a protest at this extra chore but helped himself anyway.

Billy Stein cupped his hands to peer beyond the ‘closed’ sign into the gloomy interior of the shop. There was an immediate incongruity in the way these slim-hipped shop window dummies, styled to look as modern as possible, capered and cavorted in the clumsy military attire of long ago. They made a weird group, these Nazis, in their dress swords and daggers, accompanying hussars and cavalry officers, dented suits of armour and a headless corporal of marines. Obviously bought second-hand, these figures bore their broken limbs, missing feet and scarred cheeks with inscrutable fortitude. It was like a morgue, thought Billy, and shivered again.

There was no answer to the bell. He looked at the lock on the shop door. It was older than most of the antiques displayed in the window. Furtively he looked up and down the street. Whether this was a hoax or not, he had no intention of coming 6000 miles without some further investigation. He used a penknife to hold the latch bolt and applied his formidable strength to the door. It creaked, strained against the woodwork and broke open with a snapping of rotten wood.

Billy Stein moved inside and closed the door, propping a large bomb against it to keep it shut. Stealthily, he picked his way between the swastika banners and the rows of breastplates, swords and guns. From upstairs he heard music: Bach played on a solo guitar. He looked inside the back room which was almost filled with cardboard boxes. Beyond them there was a cobbled yard no larger than a phone booth and on the far side of it the door of an outside WC. There was a dirty sink there, spattered with red stains.

Billy Stein went back through the shop and ascended the stairs as quietly as he could. The music seemed to be coming from the floor above. At the landing he paused. The music stopped as he listened outside the door. A man’s voice said, ‘That was Bach’s Suite for Lute, No 2 in A minor, played by Carlos Bonell.’ He realized that it was a BBC announcer, coming from a radio, and turned the knob carefully to open the door.

It was a large room, looking out over the slate roof of the downstairs toilet to where a stunted little tree fought for sunshine in a yard which looked exactly the right size and shape for an execution. There was a lot of furniture in the room – several old armchairs and a large sofa with a spring visible through the torn fabric. Leaning against the fireplace were half a dozen very large, gold-painted picture frames, and a faded red sun umbrella advertising Coca-Cola. Everything smelt of cats and cooked cabbage.

He went through the room to the door of the next one. It was a heavy door, buried under layer after layer of cheap paint. Someone with yearnings for the creative arts had drawn wavy lines using a comb on the wet paint in an attempt to simulate wood graining. He leaned against the heavy panelled door. It was locked but the key was on the floor. He picked it up and fitted it in the lock. Through the door he could hear the guitar music starting again.

Whatever he expected to see in the room it was not two men lying full length on the bed. Almost everything in the room was covered in blood, including two workmen’s overalls which had been bundled up and pushed into the fireplace with the brass fire irons.

The men on the bed were dead. One was Paul Bock and the other was Jimmy. Billy Stein had no way of knowing who they were, because their killers had hindered identification by cutting away the hands and heads of both men.

Billy stood in the doorway speechless. He was not sure how long he stared at the two headless men on their blood-soaked eiderdown but he suddenly heard the radio announcer state that the next piece of guitar music was by Albéniz. He backed out of the room and closed the door more forcibly than he intended. He sat down in the ancient armchair and felt his heart beating as if his whole body was about to explode. Subduing his panic, he retreated the way he had come, closing each door behind him. He could still hear the guitar music.

Billy realized how much an investigation would be hamstrung by the absence of dentistry evidence, or the fingerprints of the victims, but there was something diabolical about men so malevolent that they could hack off heads and hands of their victims.

It was an hour afterwards, while Billy Stein still wandered aimlessly through the grubby back streets of King’s Cross, that he realized that his own fingerprints would be liberally distributed at the scene of the murder. But he had no intention of returning there. He asked a passerby to direct him to Park Lane. He had walked as far as Warren Street underground station in light rain before he was lucky enough to find a taxi. Once inside the cab he buried his head in his hands. It was hard to believe that yesterday he’d had no problem more pressing than whether to change the oil filter on the engine of his plane.