Our Friends in Berlin Read online

  ‘Another step back, if you please, Constable. First, remove that gun beneath your coat and place it on the desk. That’s the way. Now, those handcuffs of yours – on with them. You too.’ He pushed the other copper into a chair, and held the gun over him while he handcuffed himself.

  He turned to Marita. ‘I’m sorry that you’ve chosen to doubt me. Though not half as sorry as these two will be.’

  ‘What are you going to do with them?’ she said.

  ‘Thanks to you they now know who I am. So I must make sure they don’t go telling.’

  Grigg, hearing the implication, looked at Hoste in alarm. ‘Now see here –’

  ‘Quiet. Step over to that door, both of you.’

  Marita, rising from behind the desk, said, ‘You’re taking quite a risk, abducting two policemen in broad daylight.’

  Hoste stared at her. ‘You think they’re going to see daylight? Goodbye for now, Mrs Pardoe. I feel sure we’ll meet again.’ At that he pointed the gun and opened the door. ‘This way.’

  Grigg turned an imploring face to Marita. But she only watched, apparently fascinated. Hoste moved them at gunpoint out into the corridor. ‘You. Towards the stairs.’ The two men began shuffling up the corridor, as meek as cattle. When they reached the top of the stairwell, Hoste cocked the gun and waited for them to turn. Their faces looked pale.

  Hoste glanced down the well. ‘You’re probably thinking I’m not going to fire. Too many people around, it would attract attention. You’re right. Better, as you’ve probably said to many a miscreant, to go quietly. Over those banisters. A broken neck won’t be as clean as a bullet, but …’ He looked at Grigg, then at the other. ‘Who’s going first?’

  There was an awful silence as the two men stood, glassy-eyed, immobile. ‘You can’t –’ Grigg began, but his voice failed him.

  ‘Can’t? But I can. And I must.’ He raised the gun. He could hear Grigg’s breathing go shallow as he backed him against the banister rail. Suddenly Marita’s voice, half amused, called them to a halt. She had stepped as silently as a cat up the corridor. ‘Mr Hoste. Let them go. These two are not policemen – they are hired players in my little charade.’ Grigg and his partner, white-faced, stood looking at one another, relieved. (‘Thought I was a goner,’ Hoste overheard one of them say while Marita uncuffed them and sent them on their way.)

  When she invited him back to the office she opened her desk drawer and took out a bottle of Scotch and two glasses. She poured and handed one to Hoste.

  ‘A peace offering,’ she said. ‘I apologise for that subterfuge just now, but I had to be certain. The police have spies everywhere.’

  Hoste raised his glass. ‘I’m pleased to meet you at last. You have quite a reputation among the people I associate with.’

  She eyed him over her glass. ‘I had often wondered if Berlin would ever succeed in planting an agent here. They have tried before.’

  ‘I know. And all of them exposed. That’s why they recruited me – a native.’

  ‘Your circle … how many do you run?’

  ‘Between twenty and thirty, at any one time. And you?’

  ‘I have a small band of like-minded people to call on. Those two you just met, for example. One has to be careful, though. The remnants of Mosley’s mob are generally unreliable. No sense of discipline – or style.’

  Hoste smiled. ‘On that score I fear you may be no more impressed by the type I recruit. But they are loyal.’

  Her voice became more confiding. ‘And what of Amy Strallen?’

  ‘I hardly know her. As soon as I learned that you two had been friends I kept her under watch. Then it was a matter of baiting the trap.’

  ‘So she believes you’re from the Revenue?’

  ‘She has no reason to believe otherwise.’

  Marita paused for a beat, then said, ‘Did you ever consider recruiting her?’

  He shook his head. ‘I didn’t get the sense she was sympathetic to our – What, am I wrong?’

  She pulled an ambiguous expression. ‘There was a time, in Germany, I thought Amy was … susceptible. Attending a rally at Nuremberg indicates at the very least a degree of interest. Sometimes I thought I detected rather more than an interest. An enthusiasm.’

  Hoste pictured her in his mind’s eye. ‘You know her far better than I. My first impression wasn’t – but she seemed bright. Capable. If you think she’s worth cultivating …’

  ‘I do. But let us agree – she must not know we have met. Better to work on her independently, then compare our findings.’

  Hoste half smiled at her deviousness; like a good chess player, she always planned a couple of moves ahead. He couldn’t be sure she was right about Amy Strallen; if she was, he had misjudged her. He finished his Scotch, and rose to leave. Marita watched him narrowly, like a cobra eyeing a mouse. They were allies, for now. But there was no friendliness.

  ‘By the way, that Browning you took from him. May I have it?’

  He handed the gun to her. She removed the magazine and examined it.

  ‘So you really would have dispatched two unarmed men in cold blood?’

  ‘Did you doubt it?’

  She seemed to consider the question. ‘No. That you didn’t give me away when you could have done was the moment I knew. I’m glad I didn’t have to take any drastic measures –’

  ‘Such as?’

  For answer she opened her drawer and took out an old-fashioned revolver. She squinted down the barrel. ‘I would have put one right behind your ear.’

  Hoste nodded. He knew – he had an instinct – that it wouldn’t have been the first time she had killed a man.

  7

  Amy ran her eye down the list of the day’s appointments, who all happened to be women. She regarded their female clients in a kindlier light: they tended to be more accommodating, more willing to take a chance with what was on offer. In interview men could be so brusque – unforgiving. Perhaps they knew that the numbers weighed heavily in their favour. There were far more single women out there searching than there were single men to supply them. Sometimes a sentence in their application forms leapt off the page and caught at her heart.

  My sweetheart was killed during the war. If I can find someone like or as near as possible to what he was I should be very grateful.

  Someone who will be a pal in every sense of the word.

  Someone willing to marry an unmarried mother.

  They were not all so sympathetic, of course. Women could be as imperious as the men.

  Not a schoolmaster, clerk or parson. Nice hands rather important.

  I am private secretary to a duke. Any man must be of my own standing.

  No bridge, pub crawling, golf, passion for ‘The Club’.

  A knock came at her office door, and Miss Ducker announced her ten o’clock client. A woman in her mid-thirties entered, mid-brown hair, neat and well put together but awkward about her height (she half stooped to hide it). The smile she offered Amy was shy, possibly resigned, as if her presence there was the result of a practical joke. Her name was Georgina Harlow. She asked if she could smoke, and Amy pushed an ashtray across the desk towards her. Her voice carried a slight sibilance that reminded Amy of a girl she had known from school with a lisp.

  After she had been through her details, there was a long pause before Miss Harlow spoke. ‘I’m not really sure I should be here.’

  ‘Oh. Why do you say that?’

  ‘Well, my work as a civil servant keeps me so busy I hardly have a moment for … anything else.’

  Amy tucked in her chin. ‘I’m sure even the Civil Service allows its employees some leisure. All work and no play …’

  Miss Harlow nodded, as though she saw the justice in this. But there remained in her demeanour something unresolved, withheld.

  ‘I can’t spare many evenings,’ she said shortly. ‘And with this wretched war one can’t be certain whether tomorrow will be here or not.’

  Amy put down her pen and looked at he
r. ‘Miss Harlow, forgive me. It seems as though you’re putting obstacles in the way before we’ve even begun. Our job is to introduce people to one another with a view to a long-term relationship. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. But we have to ensure your basic willingness to be available. D’you see?’

  Miss Harlow looked down and with a movement of her shoulders signalled her unhappy assent. Sensing the need to tread carefully, Amy spent a few minutes discussing the kind of husband she might be looking for. On her application form the woman had been modest to the point of reticence, specifying merely that he should be older, enjoy ‘hikes’ in the countryside, and not mind that she spend time with her invalid mother.

  ‘That isn’t an awful lot to go on. One has to consider a man in terms of his character. What would you say is the most important quality?’

  A silence intervened as Miss Harlow stared off into the distance, lost in thought. ‘I should like – that is, I should hope he was gentle.’

  Amy nodded her encouragement. ‘That’s a start. What else? Perhaps think of men who have courted you before –’ It occurred to her almost instantly as the wrong thing to have said. Miss Harlow’s expression recoiled in a wince of mortification.

  ‘I’m afraid I have little experience to call on in that respect,’ she said quietly. Then she raised her eyes to Amy. ‘None at all, in fact.’

  Amy tried to cover her surprise, though it must have been clear on her face. That this woman – good-looking, with nice manners and a respectable job – should have gone unclaimed her whole adult life … ‘I’m sorry, I oughtn’t to – I find it hard to understand, that’s all. You seem to me so … eligible.’

  For a moment Miss Harlow seemed on the verge of tears. But she managed to compose herself. ‘I once thought so myself. But over the years I found – I realised – I simply don’t fit in. I don’t know why.’ She paused, and smiled sadly. ‘Oh, I’ve always had friends, and colleagues, of course. I know that I can “get on” with people. But whatever it is that attracts a man, I don’t have.’

  Amy said, as gently as she could, ‘So … why now?’

  ‘I don’t know. Time was when I hoped to have a child. That’s probably out of the question now. But I can’t quite give up the idea that – well, that I won’t go through the rest of my life alone.’

  Here was courage, Amy thought, voiced so meekly it might have escaped notice. She had checked Miss Harlow’s age: thirty-seven. That would be no disadvantage for a man; he could even afford to wait a few years. But the approach of forty was a black cloud hanging over a woman still hopeful of marriage. Wasn’t this precisely where her job could make a difference? The bureau wasn’t merely a clearing station for society’s unmarried flotsam and jetsam. It could do people a genuine service in rescuing them from an abyss of lovelessness.

  She beamed brightly at her client. ‘Miss Harlow, I can understand how you had to nerve yourself to come here. It’s not easy to admit to this sort of inexperience. But I’m glad that you have, and in return I’m going to try my very best for you.’ She put forth her hand across the desk. ‘Shall we make it a deal?’

  Miss Harlow, surprised, but clearly grateful, took Amy’s hand in her own.

  Amy reread the letter she had received a few days ago, hardly more able to credit its contents now than she had then.

  Dear Miss Strallen,

  I have been meaning to write to you these last weeks, but business obligations prevented me. I would like to thank you for that most generous gift of yours, and hope you will allow me to take you to dinner one evening. I have in mind a place that does not trouble overmuch about food coupons.

  If such an invitation is agreeable to you, would you kindly let me know if next Tuesday would be convenient?

  Sincerely yours,

  Jack Hoste

  It was typed, somewhat unfortunately, on Inland Revenue-headed paper, and felt like something he might have fired off to a professional acquaintance; its stiff Edwardian tone made her giggle. But then, as she knew, Hoste was a queer sort of fellow, and there was every chance he had composed such an impersonal letter in good faith. She could not deny harbouring a certain curiosity about him.

  Tuesday came round, and at seven Amy left the office and walked out onto Brook Street. They had arranged to meet at a restaurant in Soho. The violet light of an early-May evening swarmed over the rooftops, and despite the ruin and rubble of half-gutted buildings that she passed on the way, a feeling of lightness possessed her. She had already made a start on finding a gentleman for Miss Harlow and in the course of an hour’s consultation with Jo that afternoon they had picked out three promising candidates. Jo had advised Amy not to raise her hopes, especially in the light of Miss Harlow’s particular history, but Amy’s enthusiasm was irrepressible.

  Hoste was already there. His welcome bemused her, for in those first few seconds it seemed to suggest that they never had met. She was disconcerted, especially since their getting together was his idea, not hers. The wariness in his eyes soon dissolved, however, and he was back to being almost sociable again. They both drank gin.

  She gave a little laugh and said, ‘I was worried for a moment that you’d not recognised me.’

  He made a face. ‘Really? Well, if I hesitated it was because you look – I don’t know – changed. Your hair, I think?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, smiling. ‘I had it coloured, but I thought –’ She stopped herself; she had assumed he wouldn’t notice. Men often didn’t. Perhaps he was more observant than he appeared. ‘Not on duty tonight?’

  ‘No. Even an ARP warden gets a pass now and then. That’s why I suggested we meet this evening. Ah …’ The waiter had arrived, and they ordered. Cod in a cream sauce, boiled potatoes and beans – as good as a feast. Amy steered her gaze around the dining room, mutterish with talk; people were absorbed, faces canted towards one another, smiling, or earnest, oblivious to all else. She caught Hoste’s eye again.

  ‘It’s odd, sometimes you look at people and wonder if they’ve forgotten all about the war – blanked it from their mind.’

  ‘Maybe they have. Most people just get on with it, don’t they?’

  ‘Like you. You’re very philosophical.’

  Hoste considered this. ‘Well, I’ve lived through one before. Fought through it, in fact.’

  ‘Oh.’ This hadn’t occurred to her.

  ‘Joined up when I was eighteen. Stationed at Ypres with the Hampshires, and six weeks later got a Blighty. When I returned to the front more than half the lads I knew were dead. So perhaps it did make me philosophical.’

  ‘But you must have been frightened, too?’

  ‘Of course. I mean, when you’re being shelled and you see the fellow in the trench next to you get a –’ He halted for a moment. ‘But the strange thing was, I knew – for an absolute certainty – that I would survive.’

  ‘How? How could you possibly know?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. I just did.’

  They were silent for some moments, before she gave a regretful half-laugh. ‘Did you ever imagine fighting another war?’

  ‘Well … what happened afterwards, at Versailles – that was asking for trouble. The Allies oughtn’t to have humiliated Germany like that. It made another war almost inevitable.’

  Amy narrowed her eyes. ‘I was still a girl when the last war ended. You would see men in the street, maimed, or blind, selling matches on trays. I remember thinking how terrible that was, after what they’d been through.’

  ‘Did it make you angry?’

  She looked at him, hearing something in his tone. ‘I don’t know about angry. Ashamed, certainly. We sent off all those young men to fight for us – “for king and country” – and did nothing for them when they came back. Did you feel angry?’

  Hoste sat back in his chair. ‘No. Just relieved, to have got out of it alive. And I was fortunate in having a job to go to.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I was clerk at a bank
in Lewes.’

  ‘Is that where you come from?’

  ‘Not far. A village called Wivelsfield. A proper country mouse.’

  She smiled. ‘Until you got to London –’

  ‘– and became a town rat.’ He said this with an odd emphasis.

  Their food had arrived, and they both had lager to go with it.

  ‘And yourself? – a Londoner?’ Hoste went on.

  ‘Actually, no, I was born in Epsom. My parents only moved to London when I was in my teens. Then I lived in Oxford for a few years while I did secretarial training.’

  ‘Where you met Marita Pardoe.’

  ‘Yes. Did you find out anything else, by the way – where she might be?’

  He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. Probably lying low somewhere. It surprises me, though, that she never got in touch with you.’

  Amy paused in her eating. ‘Why are you surprised?’

  ‘I suppose because – from what you told me – you were fast friends. Close enough, for instance, to holiday in Nazi Germany.’

  ‘I went there for the walking, not for the Nazis. Much as you did, I think.’

  ‘True. But no one ever took me to a rally at Nuremberg.’ She felt him watching her as he spoke. ‘Did it not strike you at the time as a queer thing to do?’

  She put down her fork and looked at him. ‘You’ve asked me about this before. It may seem odd to you, but at the time I didn’t really think about it. Marita was a strong-willed person. She had a way of persuading you to do things, and though it was no personal longing of mine to attend a rally I agreed to go. In hindsight, I suppose it was a mistake.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You sound almost disappointed, Mr Hoste. Would you prefer me to be a secret admirer of the Reich?’