David John - Flight from Berlin

‘It’s definitely yours, miss.’

She opened the envelope, and a silver key fell into her hand.

‘Excuse me, Mr Blount?’ The grocer, already halfway down the road, turned. ‘Which item did you find this in?’

‘Your cream jacket, miss.’

Her bolero jacket. When had she last worn that? Certainly not since Berlin.

Not since…

And then it came to her.

The old man awkwardly embracing her. At the time she had thought it strange, even in that melee of reporters surrounding them, shouting questions. Now she remembered, and she understood.

Please… keep it safe.

‘J akob Liebermann gave you this?’

Denham turned the key over in his hand and examined it under the lamp in the drawing room.

‘I think so.’

‘You think so? Eleanor, do you realise-’

‘I told you. I didn’t realise. He said, “Please, keep it safe.” I didn’t know what he meant, and then he gave me this funny hug, and I thought how weird, but I had no idea he was dropping something into my pocket.’

‘And it didn’t occur to you that what he’d said might be significant?’

‘For your information, mister, he had a pack of reporters on him like bloodhounds with only me to protect him, and it was on a day when one damn thing had been happening after the other…’

‘Fine, darling, but how is it that seven months on you’ve never found this?’

Eleanor collapsed onto an armchair and pressed her fingers to her temples. ‘I have a lot of clothes,’ she said in a level voice. ‘I didn’t try not to find it. I’m sorry, okay? I guess it’s what happens when you shack up with a spoilt little rich girl…’

Her eyes began welling with tears.

Denham gave her his handkerchief. ‘I’m sorry. Here, I’ll pour us both a whisky…’

He put the key down on the coffee table. It was about three inches long, heavy, plated with nickel, and had a subtly ornamented handle, as if it might open a reliquary or a jewel box.

‘It’s a beautiful thing,’ he said, handing her a drink. ‘Let me see that envelope it was in again.’

She fetched the crumpled blank envelope from her handbag. The flap had been sealed with a licked adhesive, and she’d torn it open along the top.

He held it up to the lamp, then carefully pulled the triangle flap away from the back.

‘Got it,’ he said.

‘Got what?’

‘Look.’

Written inside in pencil, in a small, faint hand, were the numbers

1451.

‘What does it mean?’ she asked.

‘My guess is that this key opens a safe-deposit box. The question is, a safe-deposit box where?’ He was still holding the envelope flap up to the light. ‘Hand me that key again.’

Eleanor passed it to him, and he held it under the lamp, tilting the silver object to the sharp light. Engraved along the ridge of its rounded handle he saw the words ADALBERT amp; SONS LOCKSMITHS, ENGLAND.

T he next morning they were at the Public Records Office on Chancery Lane in time for its opening, and asked to see the register of all banking houses licenced to trade in England. Together they sat on a green banquette in the reading room and opened it. There was no institution by the name of ‘Liebermann,’ so they began to study the others, the long alphabetical list of banks maritime, merchant, public, and private.

‘There are so many,’ Eleanor said.

‘You’re in the banking capital of the world.’

When no name of any meaning leapt out they turned to the lists of stock brokerages, investment houses, and moneylenders. It did not help that what they were searching for was not at all clear.

By late morning they had almost finished the register. Feeling cast down they joined the lunchtime crowd of print workers and secretaries on Fleet Street, collars turned up and hats pulled down against the bitter wind. For a halfpenny Denham bought a bag of hot chestnuts, which they shared as they walked. Tiny flakes of snow had begun to fall, stinging their faces. The smoke from a brazier, the unseasonal cold, and the drab people trudging the sidewalk like a beaten army all seemed to add to a sense of defeat.

‘What now?’ she asked.

After lunch Eleanor returned alone to the Records Office to run her eye over the remaining pages of the register.

A dead loss, she thought. By the time she had reached the Z entries in the final columns, she had her coat on ready to leave. She closed the register with a thump, returned it to the librarian on the issue desk, and was through the lobby door to the street when something made her slow and stop in her tracks.

Without thinking, she turned around and began to walk back.

She couldn’t have said where this feeling came from. Some sense was making her react to whatever she’d seen a moment ago. Years of swimming had taught her to trust her instincts.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she said to the librarian. ‘May I see that register again?’

Eleanor turned immediately to the final page, and her eye went straight to it. Goose bumps rose on her arms.

The very last entry, on the very last line, was for the Zavi-Landau Bank, a private concern whose registered business address was 20 Idol Lane, London EC3. An asterisk next to the name referred her to a note at the end of the entry in tiny print: ‘*subsidiary of Liebermann-Landau Bank GmbH, Berlin.’

If the Zavi-Landau Bank had chosen its registered City premises with the intention of discouraging visitors and deterring business, it could not have done much better than Idol Lane. But for the brass plaque over the bell, no passers-by would have known it was there, even if they had walked down the ancient passageway every day of their lives. The tall Georgian building, darkened by centuries of smog, shared the bend with a draper’s shop and a sliver of a timber-framed drinking establishment, from which came low laughter and the smell of stale beer.

The bell produced no sound they could hear, so Denham struck the wrought iron knocker, so heavy he could barely lift it. The blow reverberated.

‘Someone’s coming,’ Eleanor said.

Denham wondered with a sudden embarrassment how they were going to handle this. They had nothing but a number and a key, and no document to prove that they’d come at the behest of an associate of the bank. And so he found himself smiling inanely at the bearded young man who opened the door.

‘You have an appointment?’ he asked, giving them each a wary look. He wore a black silk embroidered waistcoat, a white shirt, and a black frock coat.

‘We’ve come on behalf of a German client,’ Denham began, ‘perhaps even a director of the bank’s…’

The man glared at them, his jaw tensing very slightly.

‘… whose name is Jakob Liebermann…’

The listener hesitated, resolving some internal dilemma, then said, ‘Please come in.’

They followed the man into a dim vestibule that led to a small old-fashioned banking hall with a polished wooden counter. Beyond that was an office area of desks, each lit by a green banker lamp. The four or five clerks working there were dressed the same-wearing black silk waistcoats, white shirts, and yarmulkes. One was making heavy work of a mechanical adding machine, whose noisy tap and clunk filled the room.

The young man showed them into a wood-panelled, windowless salon furnished with high-backed leather armchairs. He turned on the lights, asked them to wait, and left. They sat down, looking around. On the wall was a lithograph of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. A small brass bell lay on the coffee table in front of them.

Eleanor said, ‘I’ve got the creeps already-’

‘I am Abner Landau,’ said a papery voice. A stooped man stood in the door. Watch and chain, white beard, and pince-nez gave him the air of a senior judge. He did not offer his hand. Behind the low white bristles of his eyebrows, his eyes were anything but welcoming. ‘Please understand that we avoid using names here for our clients’ own protection. Our services are conducted with discretion and, whenever possible, anonymity. But since Mr Liebermann’s name has been aired, and because Mr Liebermann is not exactly a client, what is your business on his behalf?’