William Boyd - Restless

As I hung up a knock came on the door that led down from the flat to the surgery below. I opened the door to find Mr Scott standing there, beaming, as if – through the floor – he'd heard me say 'twinge of toothache' and had bounded upstairs to minister to me. But behind him was a hot, short-haired young man in a cheap dark suit.

'Hello, hello, Ruth Gilmartin,' Mr Scott said. 'Great excitement. This young man's a policeman – a detective, no less – wants to have a word with you. See you later – maybe…'

I showed the detective into the sitting-room. He took a seat, asked if he might remove his jacket – steaming hot outside – and said his name was Detective Constable Frobisher, a name I found reassuring, for some perverse reason, I thought, as DC Frobisher hung his jacket carefully over the arm of a chair and sat down again.

'Just a few questions,' he said taking out and flicking through his notebook. 'We've had a request from the Metropolitan Police. They're interested in the whereabouts of a young woman named… Ilse Bunzl.' He pronounced it with care. 'Apparently she's called this number from London. Is that right?'

I kept my face impassive. If they knew Ilse had called here, then, I reasoned, somebody's phone must be tapped.

'No,' I said. 'I never got a call. What was her name again?'

'Ilse Bunzl.' He spelt her surname.

'I teach foreign students, you see. So many of them come and go.'

Detective Frobisher made a note – 'teaches foreign students' no doubt – asked a few questions (Was there anyone I was teaching who might know this girl? Were there many Germans signed up to OEP?) and apologised for taking up my time. I showed him out the back door, not wanting to increase Mr Scott's glee. I hadn't lied – everything I had said to the policeman was true.

I walked back through the hall, wondering where Jochen was, then I heard his voice – low, nearly inaudible – coming from the sitting-room: he must have slipped in behind us as we left, I thought. I paused at the door and peered through the crack by the hinge and I saw him sitting on the sofa, a book open in his lap. But he wasn't reading, he was talking to himself and making little placing gestures with his hands as if he were sorting out invisible piles of beans or playing some invisible board game.

I felt, of course, a spontaneous, engulfing, near-intolerable surge of love for him, all the more acute because it was voyeuristic and he had no idea I was watching – his unselfconsciousness was as pure as it could be. He set his book aside and went to the window, still muttering to himself but now pointing things out, in the room and out of the window. What was he doing? What on earth was going on in his head? Who was that writer who said that 'people lead their real, most interesting lives under cover of secrecy'? I knew Jochen better than any being on the planet, yet in some sense, in some degree, the guileless child was already beginning to develop the opacities of the growing boy, the youth, the adult, where the veils of ignorance and unknowing existed even between the people you were closest to. Look at my mother, I thought, wryly – not so much a veil as a thick woollen blanket. And no doubt the same could be said from her side, I reflected, and coughed loudly before I stepped into the sitting-room.

'Who was that man?' Jochen asked.

'A detective.'

'A detective! What did he want?'

'He said he was looking for a dangerous bank robber called Jochen Gilmartin and did I know anyone of that name.'

'Mummy!' He laughed, jabbing his finger repeatedly at me – something he did when he was either particularly amused or extremely angry. He was pleased; I was worried.

I went back to the hall, picked up the phone and called Bobbie York.

New York . 1941

IT WAS TOWARDS THE middle of November that Eva Delectorskaya took the call from Lucas Romer. She was in the Transoceanic offices one morning, working on the spiralling ramifications of her naval-manoeuvres story – every newspaper in South America had picked it up in one way or another – when Romer telephoned himself and suggested meeting on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum. She took the subway to 86th Street and walked down Fifth, crossing the road from the grand apartment buildings to be closer to Central Park. It was a cold breezy day and she tugged her hat down over her ears and knotted her scarf higher round her throat. There was a scatter of autumn leaves on the pavements – or fall leaves on the sidewalks, as she should learn to call them – and the chestnut sellers were out on the street corners, the salty, sweet smoke from their braziers wafting by her from time to time as she sauntered down towards the great edifice of the museum.

She saw Romer standing waiting for her on the steps, hatless and wearing a long dark grey overcoat she hadn't seen before. She smiled instinctively, happily, thinking again of their two days in Long Island. To be in New York in November in 1941, going to meet her lover on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum seemed the most normal and natural of activities in the world – as if her whole life had somehow been steering her in the direction of this particular moment. But the realities massing elsewhere behind this encounter – the war news she'd read in the newspapers this morning, the Germans advancing on Moscow – made her realise that what she and Romer were experiencing was, in actual fact, utterly absurd and surreal. We may be lovers, she reminded herself, but we are also spies: therefore everything is entirely different from what it seems.

He came down the steps to meet her. She saw his frowning, serious face and wanted to kiss him, wanted to go immediately to that hotel across the road and make love all afternoon – but they didn't even touch; they didn't even shake hands. He circled round her and pointed to the park.

'Let's go for a stroll,' he said.

'Nice to see you. I've missed you.'

He looked at her in a manner as if to say: we simply can't talk to each other like this.

'Sorry,' she said, 'Chilly, isn't it?' and walked briskly ahead of him into the park.

He increased his speed and caught up with her. They walked along the pathway in silence for a while and then he said, 'Fancy a bit of winter sunshine?'

They found a bench with a view of a small valley and some craggy rocks. A boy was throwing a stick for a dog that refused to chase it. So the boy would fetch the stick, walk back to the dog and throw it again.

'Winter sunshine?'

'It's a simple BSC courier job,' he said. 'To New Mexico.'

'If it's so simple why don't they do it?'

'Since the Brazil map they want to seem extremely kosher. They're a bit worried that the FBI might be watching them. So they asked me if someone from Transoceanic could do it. I thought of you. You don't have to if you don't want to. I'll ask Morris if you don't fancy it.'

But she did fancy it, as she knew he knew she would.

She shrugged. 'I suppose I could do it.'

'I'm not doing you a favour,' he said. 'I know you'd do a good job. A good secure job. That's what they want. You pick up a package and you give it to someone else and you come home.'

'Who'll run me? Not BSC.'

'Transoceanic will run you.'

'All right.'

He gave her a piece of paper and told her to read it until she'd memorised the details. She studied the words that were written down, remembering Mr Dimarco at Lyne, all his tricks, match colours to words, match memories to numbers. She handed the piece of paper back to Romer.

'Usual telephone code to base?' she asked.

'Yes. All the variations.'

'Where do I go after Albuquerque?'

'The contact there will tell you. It'll be in New Mexico. Possibly Texas.'