Len Deighton - Spy Hook

We sat in silence, watching the street where traffic raced past and some people waiting to cross the road were hunched against the bitter-cold wind. 'There is the matter of inheritance,' I said finally. I suppose we'd both been thinking of Lisl all the time.

'The hotel?' said Werner.

'You might work yourself to death and then find she's left the place to a dog's home.'

'Dog's home?' said Werner puzzled. It was of course an entirely English concept: old German ladies were unlikely to bequeath their entire estates for the welfare of unwanted canines.

'To some charity,' I explained.

'I'm not doing it to get the house,' said Werner.

'No need to get irritable,' I said. 'But it's something you should settle before you start.'

'Don't be stupid, Bernie. How can I sit down with Lisl and tell her to write her Will in my favour?' I didn't try to answer through the sudden bellow of discordant sound that came from the jukebox. But after a few bars to test it the mechanic switched it off and started to replace the coloured panels.

'She has no other relatives, does she?'

'Yes she has,' said Werner. 'There was a sister who died in the war and another – Inge Winter – even older than Lisl. She used to live in France. Childless and probably dead by now. Lisl said I met her once when she came to Berlin but I don't remember it. She has some sort of claim to the house. Lisl once told me that her father left it to both daughters but only Lisl wanted to live in it. But it was half Inge Winter's. And apart from the sister, there could be relatives of Lisl's late husband Erich. I must talk to her again.'

'If Lisl said half the house belonged to her sister, the sister might be a signatory for the bank loan.'

'I know,' said Werner rubbing his moustache. 'I was wondering if that's why the sister came to Berlin.'

'You'd better ask the bank,' I said.

'The bank won't reveal anything to me without Lisl's permission.' He rubbed his moustache again. 'It itches,' he explained.

'It will have to be sorted out,' I said. 'I'll talk to her.'

'No you won't,' said Werner immediately. 'It would spoil everything. It's got to look as though I want to go and run the place. It's got to seem as though she's doing me the favour. Surely you see that?'

It was a long time before I nodded. But Werner was right. He must have spent a lot of sleepless nights working it all out. 'Shall I find out if the sister is still alive?' I offered to do it more because I wanted to appease my conscience than because I thought it would lead anywhere, or be of any practical use.

Perhaps Werner understood what my motives were. He said, 'That would be really useful, Bernie. If you could find out about the sister that would be the most important problem solved. I've got the last address she used in France. I got it out of that big green address book Lisl keeps in the office. I don't know when it dates back to.' He looked across to the bar counter where Willi Leuschner had been operating the chrome espresso machine, and said, 'Willi's coming with the bread pudding.'

'And about time.'

'He'll want to sit down and chat,' Werner warned. 'Don't mention anything about the hotel for the time being. I'll phone and give you the sister's address.'

'Take a day or so to think it all over,' I suggested. Willi was coming this way now, carrying the desserts and the coffees and some Kipferl – sweet crescent-shaped biscuits – that always marked the end of any of Werner's diets. 'It's a big step.'

'I've thought it over,' said Werner firmly and with just a trace of sadness. 'It's what I've got to do.'

France, I thought. Why do I have to say such silly things? How the hell am I going to get time off and go to France to trace a sister who is undoubtedly long since dead and gone? And anyway wasn't one Lisl in my life enough?

'We could have bought a microwave oven,' said Gloria suddenly and spontaneously.

'Is that what you want? A microwave oven?'

'With the money this damned flight is costing us,' she explained bitterly.

'Oh,' I said. 'Yes.' She was making a list in her head. She did this sometimes. And the longer the list got the more bitter hatred she had for the air line and its management. Fortunately for the air line's management none of them were sitting in the seat next to Gloria on the flight to Nice. I was sitting there. 'It's a rip-off,' she said.

'Everyone knows it's a rip-off,' I said. 'So drink the nice warm café , unwrap your processed fromage and enjoy the ambiance .'

The Plexiglass windows were scratched so that even the dense grey cloud looked cross-hatched. Gloria did not respond, nor eat the items set before her on the tiny plastic tray. She got nail varnish from the big handbag she always carried, and began doing something with her fingernails. This was always a dire portent.

I suppose I should have told her, right from the beginning, that our journey was made to fulfil a promise I'd made about finding Lisl Hennig's sister. I should have realized that Gloria would be angry when the truth was revealed, and that I'd have to tell her sooner rather than later.

Looking back on it, I don't know why I chose the airport departure lounge to tell Gloria the real reason for the trip. She was unhappy to hear that this was not actually the 'mad lovers' weekend' that I'd let her think of it as. She called me names, and did it so loudly that some people on the next seat took their children out of earshot.

It was at times like that I tried to analyse the essence of my relationship with Gloria. My contemporaries – married men in their forties – were not reluctant to give me their own interpretations of my romance with this beautiful twenty-two-year-old. Sometimes these took the form of serious 'talks', sometimes anecdotes about mythical friends, and sometimes they were just lewd jokes. Oddly enough it was the envious comments that offended me. I wished they would try to understand that such relationships are complex and this love affair was more complex than most.

Sitting on the plane, with no work to do and nothing to read except the 'flight magazine', I thought about it. I tried to compare this relationship with Gloria to the one I'd had with Fiona, my wife whose fortieth birthday would be coming up soon. She'd always said she dreaded her fortieth birthday. This 'dread' had begun as a sort of joke, and my response was to promise that we'd celebrate it in style. But now she'd be celebrating it in East Berlin with Russian champagne no doubt, and perhaps some caviar too. Fiona loved caviar.

Would I have got as far as London Heathrow with Fiona and still been trying to pretend that we were embarking on some madcap romantic escapade? No. But the fact of the matter was that such a romantic escapade would have had a very, very limited appeal to my wife Fiona. Wait a moment! Was that true? Surely the real reason I wouldn't have told her that this was a 'surprise getaway' was that my wife would not have believed for one instant that a sudden invitation to fly to Nice would be a romantic escapade. My wife Fiona knew me too well; that was the truth of it.

But at Nice the sun was shining, and it did not take very much to restore Gloria to her usual light-hearted self. In fact, it took no more than renting a car for our trip to the last known address of Inge Winter. At work Gloria had seen me dictating and conversing in German, and sometimes my imperfect Russian was used too. So she was ill-prepared for my halting French.

It went wrong right from the start. The beautifully coiffured young French woman at the car rental desk was understandably irritated when I tried to interpose news about my need for a car into a private conversation she was having with her female colleague. She didn't hide her irritation. She spoke rapidly and with a strong Provencal accent that I couldn't follow.