A Small Town in Germany Page 8

  ‘No one.’

  ‘Had a full count, have you? No little long-legged bird from Registry?’

  ‘People are constantly on leave; no one is unaccountably absent.’

  ‘Then why didn’t Harting take leave? They usually do, you know. Defect in comfort, that’s my advice.’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘You weren’t close to him?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘What about his friends? What do they say?’

  ‘He has no friends worth speaking of.’

  ‘Any not worth speaking of?’

  ‘So far as I know, he has no close friends in the community. Few of us have. We have acquaintances, but few friends. That is the way of Embassies. With such an intensive social life, one learns to value privacy.’

  ‘How about Germans?’

  ‘I have no idea. He was once on familiar terms with Harry Praschko.’

  ‘Praschko?’

  ‘We have a parliamentary opposition here: the Free Democrats. Praschko is one of its more colourful members. He has been most things in his time: not least a fellow-traveller. There is a note on file to say they were once friendly. They knew one another during the Occupation, I believe. We keep an index of useful contacts. I once questioned him about Praschko as a matter of routine and he told me that the relationship was discontinued. That is all I can tell you.’

  ‘He was once engaged to be married to a girl called Margaret Aickman. This Harry Praschko was named as a character reference. In his capacity as a member of the Bundestag.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘You’ve never heard of Aickman?’

  ‘Not a name to me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Margaret.’

  ‘So you said. I never heard of any engagement, and I never heard of the woman.’

  ‘Hobbies? Photography? Stamps? Ham radio?’

  Turner was writing all the time. He might have been filling in a form.

  ‘He was musical. He played the organ in Chapel. I believe he also had a collection of gramophone records. You would do better to enquire among the Junior Staff; he was more at home with them.’

  ‘You never went to his house?’

  ‘Once. For dinner.’

  ‘Did he come to yours?’

  There was the smallest break in the rhythm of their interrogation while Bradfield considered.

  ‘Once.’

  ‘For dinner?’

  ‘For drinks. He wasn’t quite dinner-party material. I am sorry to offend your social instincts.’

  ‘I haven’t got any.’

  Bradfield did not appear surprised.

  ‘Still, you did go to him, didn’t you? I mean you gave him hope.’ He rose and ambled back to the window like a great moth lured to the light. ‘Got a file on him, have you?’ His tone was very detached; he might have been infected by Bradfield’s own forensic style.

  ‘Only paysheets, annual reports, a character reference from the Army. It’s all very standard stuff. Read it if you want.’ When Turner did not reply, he added: ‘We keep very little here on staff; they change so often. Harting was the exception.’

  ‘He’s been here twenty years.’

  ‘Yes. As I say, he is the exception.’

  ‘And never vetted.’

  Bradfield said nothing.

  ‘Twenty years in the Embassy, most of them in Chancery. And never vetted once. Name never even submitted. Amazing really.’ He might have been commenting on the view.

  ‘I suppose we all thought it had been done already. He came from the Control Commission after all; one assumes they exacted a certain standard.’

  ‘Quite a privilege being vetted, mind. Not the kind of thing you do for anyone.’

  The marquee had gone. Homeless, the two German policemen paced the grey lawn, their wet leather coats flapping lazily round their boots. It’s a dream, Turner thought. A noisy unwilling dream. ‘Bonn’s a very metaphysical place,’ de Lisle’s agreeable voice reminded him. ‘The dreams have quite replaced reality.’

  ‘Shall I tell you something?’

  ‘I can hardly stop you.’

  ‘All right: you’ve warned me off. That’s usual enough. But where’s the rest of it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you mean.’

  ‘You’ve no theory, that’s what I mean. It’s not like anything I’ve ever met. There’s no panic. No explanation. Why not? He worked for you. You knew him. Now you tell me he’s a spy; he’s pinched your best files. He’s garbage. Is it always like that here when somebody goes? Do the gaps seal that fast?’ He waited. ‘Let me help you, shall I? “He’s been working here for twenty years. We trusted him implicitly. We still do.” How’s that?’

  Bradfield said nothing.

  ‘Try again. “I always had my suspicions about him ever since that night we were discussing Karl Marx. Harting swallowed an olive without spitting out the pip.” Any good?’

  Still Bradfield did not reply.

  ‘You see, it’s not usual. See what I mean? He’s unimportant. How you wouldn’t have him to dinner. How you washed your hands of him. And what a sod he is. What he’s betrayed.’

  Turner watched him with his pale, hunter’s eyes; watched for a movement, or a gesture, head cocked waiting for the wind. In vain. ‘You don’t even bother to explain him, not to me, not to yourself. Nothing. You’re just … blank about him. As if you’d sentenced him to death. You don’t mind my being personal, do you? Only I’m sure you’ve not much time: that’s the next thing you’re going to tell me.’

  ‘I was not aware,’ Bradfield said, ice-cold, ‘that I was expected to do your job. Nor you mine.’

  ‘Capri. How about that? He’s got a bird. The Embassy’s in chaos, he pinches some files, flogs them to the Czechs and bolts with her.’

  ‘He has no girl.’

  ‘Aickman. He’s dug her up. Gone off with Praschko, two on a bird. Bride, best man and groom.’

  ‘I told you, he has no girl.’

  ‘Oh. So you do know that? I mean there are some things you are sure of. He’s a traitor and he’s got no bird.’

  ‘So far as anyone knows, he has no woman. Does that satisfy you?’

  ‘Perhaps he’s queer.’

  ‘I’m sure he’s nothing of the sort.’

  ‘It’s broken out in him. We’re all a bit mad, aren’t we, round about our age? The male menopause, how about that?’

  ‘That is an absurd suggestion.’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘To the best of my knowledge, yes.’ Bradfield’s voice was trembling with anger; Turner’s barely rose above a murmur.

  ‘We never know though, do we? Not till it’s too late. Did he handle money at all?’

  ‘Yes. But there’s none missing.’

  Turner swung on him. ‘Jesus,’ he said, his eyes bright with triumph. ‘You checked. You have got a dirty mind.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s just walked into the river,’ Turner suggested comfortingly, his eyes still upon Bradfield. ‘No sex. Nothing to live for. How’s that?’

  ‘Ridiculous, since you ask.’

  ‘Important to a bloke like Harting, though, sex. I mean if you’re alone, it’s the only thing. I mean I don’t know how some of these chaps manage, do you? I know I couldn’t. About a couple of weeks is as long as I can go, me. It’s the only reality, if you live alone. Or that’s what I reckon. Apart from politics of course.’

  ‘Politics? Harting? I shouldn’t think he read a newspaper from one year to the next. He was a child in such matters. A complete innocent.’

  ‘They often are,’ said Turner. ‘That’s the remarkable thing.’ Sitting down again, Turner folded one leg over the other and leaned back in the chair like a man about to reminisce. ‘I knew a man once who sold his birthright because he couldn’t get a seat on the Underground. I reckon there’s more of that kind go wrong than was ever converted to it by the Good Book. Perhaps that was his problem? Not right for dinner parties; no room on the train. After all, he was
a temporary, wasn’t he?’

  Bradfield did not reply.

  ‘And he’d been here a long time. Permanent staff, sort of thing. Not fashionable, that isn’t, not in an Embassy. They go native if they’re around too long. But then he was native, wasn’t he? Half. Half a Hun, as de Lisle would say. He never talked politics?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You sensed it in him, a political spin?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No crack-up? No tension?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about that fight in Cologne?’

  ‘What fight?’

  ‘Five years back. In the night club. Someone worked him over; he was in hospital for six weeks. They managed to hush it up.’

  ‘That was before my time.’

  ‘Did he drink a lot?’

  ‘Not to my knowledge.’

  ‘Speak Russian? Take lessons?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did he do with his leave?’

  ‘He seldom claimed any. If he did, I understand he stayed at his home in Königswinter. He took a certain interest in his garden, I believe.’

  For a long time Turner frankly searched Bradfield’s face for something he could not find.

  ‘He didn’t screw around,’ he said. ‘He wasn’t queer. He’d no friends, but he wasn’t a recluse. He wasn’t vetted and you’ve no record of him. He was a political innocent but he managed to get his hands on the one file that really matters to you. He never stole money, he played the organ in Chapel, took a certain interest in his garden and loved his neighbour as himself. Is that it? He wasn’t any bloody thing, positive or negative. What was he then, for Christ’s sake? The Embassy eunuch? Haven’t you any opinion at all’ – Turner persisted in mock supplication – ‘to help a poor bloody investigator in his lonely task?’

  A watch chain hung across Bradfield’s waistcoat, no more than a thread of gold, a tiny devotional token of ordered society.

  ‘You seem deliberately to be wasting time on matters which are not at issue. I have neither the time nor the interest to play your devious games. Insignificant though Harting was, obscure though his motive may be, for the last three months he unfortunately had a considerable access to secret information. He obtained that access by stealth, and I suggest that instead of speculating on his sexual proclivities, you give some attention to what he has stolen.’

  ‘Stolen?’ Turner repeated softly. ‘That’s a funny word,’ and he wrote it out with deliberate clumsiness in tall capital letters along the top of one page of the notebook. The Bonn climate had already made its mark upon him: dark dabs of sweat had appeared on the thin fabric of his disgraceful suit.

  ‘All right,’ he said with sudden fierceness, ‘I’m wasting your bloody time. Now let’s start at the beginning and find out why you love him so.’

  Bradfield examined his fountain pen. You could be queer, Turner’s expression said, if you didn’t love honour more.

  ‘Will you put that into English?’

  ‘Tell me about him from your own point of view. What his work was, what he was like.’

  ‘His sole task when I first arrived was handling German civilian claims against Rhine Army. Tank damage to crops; stray shells from the range; cattle and sheep killed on manoeuvres. Ever since the end of the war that’s been quite an industry in Germany. By the time I took over Chancery two and a half years ago, he had made a corner of it.’

  ‘You mean he was an expert.’

  ‘As you like.’

  ‘It’s just the emotive terms, you see. They put me off. I can’t help liking him when you talk that way.’

  ‘Claims was his métier then, if you prefer. They got him into the Embassy in the first place; he knew the job inside out; he’s done it for many years in many different capacities. First for the Control Commission, then for the Army.’

  ‘What did he do before that? He came out in forty-five.’

  ‘He came out in uniform, of course. A sergeant or something of the sort. His status was then altered to that of civilian assistant. I’ve no idea what his work was. I imagine the War Office could tell you.’

  ‘They can’t. I also tried the old Control Commission archive. It’s mothballs for posterity. They’ll take weeks to dig out his file.’

  ‘In any event, he had chosen well. As long as British units were stationed in Germany, there would be manoeuvres; and German civilians would claim reparations. One might say that his job, though specialised, was at least secured by our military presence in Europe.’

  ‘Christ, there’s not many would give you a mortgage on that,’ said Turner with a sudden, infectious smile, but Bradfield ignored him.

  ‘He acquitted himself perfectly adequately. More than adequately; he was good at it. He had a smattering of law from somewhere. German as well as military. He was naturally acquisitive.’

  ‘A thief,’ Turner suggested, watching him.

  ‘When he was in doubt, he could call upon the Legal Attaché. It wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea, acting as a broker between the German farmers and the British Army, smoothing their feathers, keeping things away from the press. It required a certain instinct. He possessed that,’ Bradfield observed, once more with undisguised contempt. ‘On his own level, he was a competent negotiator.’

  ‘But that wasn’t your level, was it?’

  ‘It was no one’s,’ Bradfield replied, choosing to avoid the innuendo. ‘Professionally, he was a solitary. My predecessors had found it best to leave him alone and when I took over I saw no reason to change the practice. He was attached to Chancery so that we could exert a certain disciplinary control; no more. He came to morning meetings, he was punctual, he made no trouble. He was liked up to a point but not, I suppose, trusted. His English was never perfect. He was socially energetic at a certain level; mainly in the less discriminating Embassies. They say he got on well with the South Americans.’

  ‘Did he travel for his work?’

  ‘Frequently and widely. All over Germany.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he knew the Army inside out: he’d get the manoeuvre reports; he knew their dispositions, strengths, he knew the lot, right?’

  ‘He knew far more than that; he heard the mess gossip up and down the country; many of the manoeuvres were inter-allied affairs. Some involved the experimental use of new weapons. Since they also caused damage, he was obliged to know the extent of it. There is a great deal of loose information he could have acquired.’

  ‘Nato stuff?’

  ‘Mainly.’

  ‘How long’s he been doing that work?’

  ‘Since nineteen forty-eight or -nine, I suppose. I cannot say, without reference to the files, when the British first paid compensation.’

  ‘Say twenty-one years, give or take a bit.’

  ‘That is my own calculation.’

  ‘Not a bad run for a temporary.’

  ‘Shall I go on?’

  ‘Do. Sure. Go on,’ Turner said hospitably, and thought: if I was you I’d throw me out for that.

  ‘That was the situation when I took over. He was a contract man; his employment was subject to annual revision. Each December his contract came up for renewal, each December renewal was recommended. That was how matters stood until eighteen months ago.’

  ‘When Rhine Army pulled out.’

  ‘We prefer to say here that Rhine Army has been added to our strategic reserve in the United Kingdom. You must remember the Germans are still paying support costs.’

  ‘I’ll remember.’

  ‘In any event, only a skeleton force remained in Germany. The withdrawal occurred quite suddenly; I imagine it took us all by surprise. There had been disputes about offset agreements, there were riots in Minden. The Movement was just getting under way; the students in particular were becoming extremely noisy; the troops were becoming a provocation. The decision was taken at the highest level; the Ambassador was not even consulted. The order came; and Rhine Army
had gone in a month. We had been making a great number of cuts around that time. It’s all the rage in London these days. They throw things away and call it economy.’ Once more Turner glimpsed that inner bitterness in Bradfield, a family shame to which no guest alluded.

  ‘And Harting was left high and dry.’

  ‘For some time, no doubt, he had seen which way the wind was blowing. That doesn’t lessen the shock.’

  ‘He was still a temporary?’

  ‘Of course. Indeed his chances of establishment, if they ever seriously existed, were diminishing rapidly. The moment it became apparent that Rhine Army must withdraw, the writing was on the wall. For that reason alone, I felt that it would have been quite mistaken to make any permanent arrangement for him.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Turner, ‘I see that.’

  ‘It is easily argued that he was unjustly treated,’ Bradfield retorted. ‘It could equally be argued that he had a damn good run for his money.’ The conviction came through like a stain, suppress it as he might.

  ‘You said he handled official cash.’ Turner thought: this is what doctors do. They probe until they can diagnose.

  ‘Occasionally he passed on cheques for the Army. He was a postbox, that was all. A middle man. The Army drew the money, Harting handed it over and obtained a receipt. I checked his accounts regularly. The Army Auditors, as you know, are notoriously suspicious. There were no irregularities. The system was watertight.’

  ‘Even for Harting?’

  ‘That’s not what I said. Besides, he always seemed quite comfortably off. I don’t think he’s an avaricious person; I don’t have that impression.’

  ‘Did he live above his means?’

  ‘How should I know what means he has? If he lived on what he got here, I suppose he lived up to them. His house in Königswinter was quite large; certainly it was above his grade. I gather he maintained a certain standard there.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Last night I made a point of examining his cash drawings for the last three months preceding his departure. On Friday, after Chancery meeting, he drew seventy-one pounds and fourpence.’

  ‘That’s a bloody odd sum.’

  ‘On the contrary, it’s a very logical sum. Friday was the tenth of the month. He had drawn exactly one third of his monthly entitlement of pay and allowances, less tax, insurance, stoppages for dilapidation and personal telephone calls.’ He paused. ‘That is an aspect of him which perhaps I have not emphasised: he was a very self-sufficient person.’