Gerald Seymour - The Waiting Time

It was the statement of murder. He signed the evidence statement of murder in cold blood. She had the notepad. She pulled open her coat and she hitched up her sweater and T-shirt. He saw the pale skin of her stomach as she slid the notepad under the waist of her jeans. against her skin. The triumph blazed on her face.

Josh pointed up to the radio that was nailed above the cooking stove. He said, softly, ‘Who hears the radio, Willi?’

The mumbled answer. ‘Rescue, they hear it, the marine police, Customs.’

‘Can you hook into Rostock police?’

‘For a year we have been able to – they ask us to radio them if we have suspicion of narcotics’ smuggling from the sea. We can reach the police at Rostock.’

‘Do it, please – and, Wihi, thank you.’

The young man stood. He moved as if the life were beaten from him. He went to the radio, switched it on and turned the frequency dial. There was the howl and the crackle and the static. Just old, just tired, just flattened, Mantle took the microphone.

‘For Police Control at Rostock – this is Warnemunde-based trawler, identification call sign whisky alpha roger, figures zero seven nine. Are you hearing me, Police Control at Rostock? This is Warnemunde-based trawler, whisky alpha roger zero seven nine… Are you receiving?’

Albert Perkins leaned far back in his chair.

‘You people, you won’t mind me saying it, you try too hard… All this business about getting to top table, sitting down with us and the Agency, you’re trying to run before you’ve learned to walk. Don’t take offence, nothing personal.’

His feet were on the table and the soles of his shoes faced Ernst Raub. In short bursts he had, through the late afternoon and the early evening, maintained the mischief. A technician at the control desk, sharp movement, hunched forward and pressed the headphones closer to his skull.

‘Really, you’d have been better advised – and I speak in friendship to give this sort of business to the professionals. I mean, passing over all the Iranian stuff for the Saarbrucker Strasse address was ridiculous. We benefited hugely, but where did the trading get you? You’re out of your depth, and it shows.’

The technician, hand above his head, waved for his supervisor and passed him a second pair of headphones.

Raub broke. ‘Yesterday, for twenty years, because it was necessary, we obeyed your patronizing instructions. Today, for twenty years, because it is advantageous, we tolerate your arrogant postures. Tomorrow, the future, we will ignore your-’

The supervisor threw a switch on the console. The voice boomed out, from the loudspeakers, across the control room.

‘I am Joshua Mantle, British national. I am with Tracy Barnes, British national, and Willi Muller, German national. I am bringing the trawler, call sign whisky alpha roger zero seven nine, to Rerik harbour. Arrival at Rerik is estimated at twenty-one thirty hours. I require police assistance at that location for the arrest of Dieter Krause – kilo roger alpha uniform sugar echo – former Hciuptman in the Rostock offices of the Staatssicherheitsdienst, for the murder on the twenty-first of November nineteen eighty- eight of Hans Becker, formerly resident at Saarbrucker Strasse, Berlin.’

‘Oh dear.’ Albert Perkins swung his feet off the table. ‘A shame, seems tomorrow may be too late.’

The voice, distorted, had faded but came again.

‘The charge against Dieter Krause will be supported by the written and signed statement of Willi Muller, trawler deck-hand, a witness to the murder. Over. Out.’

The voice died, was gone. The static screamed through the control room until the supervisor flicked the switch and killed it.

‘Bad luck, an open transmission, so many people would have heard that. How embarrassing. Can’t shove that under the carpet, can’t ignore evidence…‘ Albert Perkins stood. He smiled abject sympathy. ‘I’d much appreciate accompanying you, hitching a ride down there.’

He drove on the road between Kagsdorf and Rerik. He could no longer see the trawler. There were high trees beside the road. It did not seem important to Dieter Krause that he could not see the lights of the trawler. He knew its destination.

‘Where is he?’

‘If he were able to be here, he would be.’

‘Stupid selfish bastard. He knows I never play at my best when he doesn’t watch me – where is he?’

Eva Krause hit her daughter across the face. She picked up the bag and the tennis racquets and threw them out onto the pavement. She dragged her daughter into the street and locked the door behind her. She wore the old clothes, taken from the one suitcase she had kept. The skirt was long and plain. The shoes were imitation leather and would let in water if it rained. The blouse was a size too small and buttoned modestly to the neck, the coat was thin and dull. She was the FDGB organizer, the woman who sat in the meetings at the Neptun shipyard and dreamed of the apartment in the Toitenwinkel district, the wife of the Hauptman who worked from the second floor of the building on August-Bebel Strasse. She tossed the bag and the racquets onto the back seat of her car, and pushed her daughter down into the front seat. The skirt, the shoes, the blouse, the coat had been the best clothes she had owned. She had seen them that day. She always wore her best clothes when she went to the apartment in the Toitenwinkel district. She had seen them on the video, scattered on the floor, that day, beside the bed.

She drove. Her daughter was sullen quiet beside her.

Josh gave the wheel to Willi Muller. He felt faint. The wind had gone and the sea had calmed. He thought he might be sick and went out onto the deck. They were coming past the peninsula that masked the lights of Rerik. The stink of the fish carcasses was around him. He reached for the spotlight, aimed it at the peninsula shore, and called to Willi to give him the power. The beam burst out across the water and onto the shoreline of the peninsula. The light found the beach where the boy would have landed, and came to the squat concrete bunker where the radar had been housed, which had been his target. The trawler edged along the coast. Near to the end, where it was little more than a spit of sand and dune grass, the beam of the spotlight settled on a low tree, broken and dead, and a big bird flapped mutely away beyond the range of the cone of light. Tracy was beside him, and put her hand on his arm.

Josh said bleakly, You’re never free of ghosts, Tracy, they cling to you and they suck you dry. You should never walk with ghosts.’

She laughed. ‘That’s right bullshit, Josh.’

They rounded the headland. The lights of Rerik were ahead of them, across the Salzhaff. He called out to Willi Muller that he should switch off the lights on the trawler, all the lights, and the night darkness fell on them… He thought the boy had died for nothing.

‘We did it, Josh, we did it together. God, I’ve been a proper little bitch to you, don’t think I deserved you. You’ve been fantastic, wonderful.’ She lifted her head, she kissed his cheek. He stared out towards the lights and the piers of Rerik. ‘You all right, Josh?’

He pushed her hand off his arm.

He took the Walther pistol from his pocket, checked it, armed it.

He called through the wheelhouse door: ‘Willi – the officer, the Hauptman, will be on the pier. He will kill to preserve your silence. I am in the front. She is behind me, you are behind her. We stand in front of you, Willi.’

They came in fast towards the piers.

He stood where the longest one rose from the shingle and weed of the beach. Josh saw him. There was a light close to the road, behind him, that outlined Dieter Krause. Josh saw that he stood motionless at the far end of the longest pier.