with today, Roy?’
‘No.’
‘Well, thank you kindly for calling Hayes and Paulsen Private
Bank.’
He puts the receiver down, furious. He tries Vincent once more
but there is still no answer. He leaves a message.
There is nothing else for it. He’ll have to return there. He needs
to think. Son missed flight. Delayed two days. It’ll have to do. He’ll go back first thing tomorrow.
He rings the number at the house. The answering machine clicks
in. Betty must be out drinking tea again. Or having a nap. Impa-
tiently, he says, ‘Pick up, Betty,’ but she does not. He leaves a message telling her that his son has been delayed and he needs to pick up a 249
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couple of things. He will return the next morning. It is thin but
needs must. She’ll never suss.
3
The key scratches on the lock. They look at each other for a moment as if to confirm what they have agreed. Andrew picks up the two tea mugs and goes into the kitchen, leaving the door ajar.
It has been a tiring day and night. They paused only briefly at her home, so that she could collect some clothes and apologize to her
children for her change of mind. They climbed into Andrew’s big
car and he drove down the A1 at some miles above the speed limit.
On the way he booked hotel rooms and she spoke briefly with Ste-
phen, who retrieved the key of the house from the letting agents.
They arrived at the hotel at ten in the evening. Stephen met them
in the lobby. ‘Didn’t reckon on seeing you quite so soon,’ he said.
‘It just didn’t feel right,’ she replied.
‘There’s no guarantee he’ll come back.’
‘There are few if any guarantees in this world. But I think he
won’t be able to stop himself. The thought of all that money dan-
gling there will torture him. And of course he won’t be able to
contact Vincent. He’ll risk it just this once, with some cock- and- bull story.’
‘But won’t he be suspicious at the disappearance of the keypad?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. He’ll simply think he’s left it here by accident. He’s becoming forgetful. It won’t have occurred to him that
you might have pinched it when you fetched his bag. On one level
he’s suspicious, on another he’s so utterly credulous.’
She was exhausted, her limbs ached and her head was throbbing.
The next morning she suspected she might have been slightly irrit-
able with Stephen. She slept well, however, and woke refreshed.
And now the key is slotted hesitantly into the lock.
‘Well then,’ she says when he enters. ‘I got your message.’
He stands in the middle of the room and looks around as if
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stunned. It is a few moments before he says, ‘Good Lord, what’s
happened here?’
He sees Andrew in the kitchen and glares balefully at him.
Andrew regards him mildly in return but says nothing.
‘Who’s he?’ he asks, placing his overnight bag on the floor.
‘Robert was delayed?’ she says.
‘Yes. His flight was cancelled. He flies in tomorrow morning. I’ll
meet him then.’ He speaks the words almost in an absent chant.
‘Yes, yes,’ she says. ‘Of course you will.’
‘I’ll book into some hotel . . . But what’s happened, Betty? What
on earth is going on?’ He stares at her.
‘I was rather hoping the penny might have dropped,’ she replies
calmly. ‘Or maybe it has. Whatever, as these young people say. It
makes little difference. We’ll get there in the end.’
‘What are you talking about, Betty? And who’s he?’ He jerks his
head in the direction of the kitchen.
‘Oh, that’s Andrew. Are you all right, dear?’
‘Yes. Fine,’ calls Andrew.
‘Andrew’s here just in case.’
‘In case of what?’
‘How is Robert, by the way? He must be annoyed to have been
‘He’s all right. He phoned from Sydney airport.’
‘Did he really? To your mobile? That must have been expensive.’
‘Yes. Well, he had to. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known.’
‘Strange,’ she says with a tone of inattention, yet still looking
him in the eye. ‘Hasn’t your mobile phone been cut off ?’
‘How do you know? Has a letter come?’
She says nothing.
‘Well, he may have left a message at reception in the hotel,’ he
says. ‘I get a bit forgetful these days.’
‘Yes, you do, don’t you? I rather thought you were meeting him
at the airport.’
‘Oh yes. Change of plan,’ he says with greater confidence.
‘Change of plan all round, it would seem.’
‘What do you mean?’
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‘Isn’t it sinking in? Just a little? It’s very disappointing. I always thought you were on the ball. Shall we sit?’
She sits on one of the chairs and he takes the other. He looks
around the bare room again and says, ‘What is this, Betty? What’s
going on?’
‘I’ll take it slowly, shall I?’ She looks at him with an expression of concern, as if his well- being is paramount. She holds up an envelope. ‘I’d written you a note. But I thought it wasn’t really adequate.
Or fair, come to that. So I decided it was best to do this face to face.
Besides, there’s been a change of plan on my side too. I’m so glad
you decided to come back.’
‘What makes you think I wasn’t coming back? After I’d met
Robert.’
She sighs and waits briefly.
‘Never mind. Let’s persevere, shall we? Now, where exactly to
begin? At the beginning or the end?’
‘I never did pretend to understand you, Betty. But you’ve really
got me this time. What’s happened? Talk to me, Betty.’
She simply smiles at him.
‘Don’t worry about it. We can sort it out. When I get back from
London. Meanwhile, I must get on. I just have to pick up a couple of things from upstairs. Then we’ll order a taxi and I’ll check you in at one of those motorway lodges for a couple of nights. When I’m
back we can sort it all out. Been in worse scrapes than this in my life, I can tell you.’ He grins reassuringly.
‘I’m sure,’ she says.
‘So I’ll just pop upstairs and then we’ll be off.’
She reaches into her handbag as slowly he levers himself up.
‘Would it be this that you forgot?’ She holds out the Hayes and
Paulsen keypad and he is still, looking at it.
‘Now are things beginning to take shape?’
He sits back down again, heavily. His expression is unchanged.
‘My career’s taught me the benefit of careful research. I’ve an
inkling you tend to do a once- over- lightly and then leave it at that.
It’s all there, you know. My work and my life, more or less. Available to all- comers, or at least most of it, if you’d cared to look at it in 252
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depth. Gerald couldn’t credit it. But I knew you. I knew your arro-
&nbs
p; gance. I recognized you as soon as I met you in that awful pub. The photographs were helpful. But when I met you in the flesh, it was
so clear. Even I thought it was a bit risky at that point. We all did.
But we didn’t account for your obliviousness. Your single- minded
pursuit of the mark. It had been some years, I suppose. And I was
somewhat at an advantage. But still.’
She smiles sweetly.
‘What are you trying to tell me? That you’ve been trying to con
me? If so –’
‘I think on reflection we’ll start somewhere near the beginning.
With a little boy – rather a large boy actually. Hans Taub.’
He looks up quickly. There is the minutest pause of less than a
half- beat before he says, ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Hmm. I was expecting you to say that. But you are Hans, aren’t
you?’ She looks at him questioningly.
‘No, of course not. Come on, Betty. I’m Roy. You know that. I’m
not any, what was it, Hans?’
‘So you don’t know of a Hans Taub?’
‘I never said that. As it happens a German I worked with straight
after the war was called Hans. He was my translator. Taub was his
second name, I think. When I was stationed in Hannover. He met a
tragic end, though.’
She is nodding. ‘Yes. Killed in the line of duty by a fugitive, I
believe.’
He looks astonished. ‘That’s right. I was with him at the time.’
‘You were, weren’t you? So very much so. It was a strange affair,
wasn’t it? You and he were so alike, all the contemporaneous state-
ments say. We’ve been able to track down a couple of the old staff
from the Hannover office. They’re almost as old as we are now.
They talk fondly of the Gruesome Twosome. And what I love about
official records is that they’re so, well, official. One delights in seeing the emotion behind the officialese. The British account is patently designed simply to placate the Russians and put the whole incident
behind them. It’s so transparent. I’d have loved to see the Russian report, to compare and contrast. But of course that would be
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impossible. We had to make do with second- best, which was good
enough. The old East German records. We only began looking in
2001 and it had all been lying there for more than ten years since the Wall came down. At first it didn’t occur to us to look there. I use
“us” in the liberal sense of course. I really mean Gerald and his help-mates. He’s the researcher whose services I paid for. Stephen’s boss.
He pretended to be my son, Michael. But no doubt we’ll come to
that later. Am I taking this too quickly for you, Hans?’
He looks at her and glares.
‘Where was I? Oh yes. One of Gerald’s people was doing a
research project on the Stasi and thought she’d just have a quick
look. By quick look, I of course mean a matter of weeks going
through the 1950s records. We academics love that sort of thing –
you know, needles in haystacks. And there it was. A joint approach
by the East German espionage agency and the Soviets to the aide of
a junior defence minister in 1957. Unsuccessful, it seems, and the
aide disappears from view. To a casual observer it’d mean very little.
Just one of those Cold War pranks. But to us . . .’
‘What does this have to do with me?’ he asks with a note of
petulance.
‘Everything, of course. The approach was made to a certain Roy
Courtnay. And Courtnay is such an uncommon name. There were
several things that were important in that report. One of them was
a reference to that incident in 1946 where Hans Taub was allegedly
killed. In the little dossier was a summary of the Russian officer’s report from the time. He was under the distinct impression the survivor was Hans Taub. But he let it pass.’
‘We only met Karovsky for an afternoon. He was very
unhelpful.’
‘Yes. Karovsky was the name. You’ve a good memory for names.
He was convinced enough that it was Hans Taub to track the man
down later in London and to attempt to blackmail him. Shall we
move on?’
‘Do what you want.’ He shrugs his shoulders.
‘Am I boring you? The other interesting thing was that Hans Taub
was apparently instrumental in denouncing a wealthy family to the
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SS in 1938. The Schröders. The parents were executed and the chil-
dren sent to the camps. Taub’s father fled Germany with his son.
His mother wasn’t so fortunate. So the East Germans were keen to
talk to Taub. Or is it Courtnay? Which shall we settle on?’
He looks up at her, wary. ‘Please yourself. It’s all Greek to me. He was a nasty piece of work, then, this Taub. I didn’t know any of this when he was working for me.’
‘Yes. He was only fourteen in 1938. Which raises a point of what
I suppose you’d call academic interest.’
‘Yes?’
‘At what age can we take true responsibility for our actions? The
legal age of responsibility in this country is ten. Do you think you had responsibility for your actions when you were fourteen, Hans?’
He grunts.
‘Personally, I think Hans was well in charge of his own thoughts
and actions. He was disgusted with the Schröders, he was disgusted
with his liberal parents, but most of all he was disgusted with himself. So he flailed out. He even had a written contract with the
Gestapo. Karovsky was going to confront him with it in 1957. I think Hans knew full well what he was doing to Albert and Magda
Schröder, and to Hannelore, Charlotte, Anneliese and Lili.’
‘This is nonsense. I’m Roy Courtnay. I grew up in Dorset. I went
to war. I’ve lived a life. So what?’
‘Indeed you have. We’ve been through it all. The convalescence,
Lord Stanbrook – his personal archive, to which Gerald gained
access, gave us a lot of detail – London and all those adventures
afterwards. You were quite elusive, but then Gerald is very good at his job. As were his assistants.’
‘This is nonsense. Where’s your proof for any of this?’
‘Proof ? Well, Gerald’s done a pretty through job. History gener-
ally isn’t about proof. It’s about the truth, or as close to it as we can get.’
‘There’s nothing, is there? What’s this got to do with you any-
way?’ He is red in the face.
Andrew starts moving towards the living room, but Betty says,
‘It’s all right. Hans isn’t going to do anything rash. Are you, Hans?’
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‘My name is not Hans,’ he says through gritted teeth.
‘No. I thought you wouldn’t be satisfied,’ she continues blithely,
as if he has not spoken. ‘I anticipated you might require something more compelling than mere historical commentary. Do you remember our trip to Berlin?’
‘Yes,’ he replies dully.
‘Wonderful, wasn’t it? The sunset over the Spree. The Berliner
Philharmoniker in full flow. I did think we needed some time to
ourselves, though. You seemed some
what jaded and bored.’
He allows her to continue.
‘I thought I’d go back to those lovely villas near the Tiergarten. In fact I knocked on one of the doors. No, I’m teasing you now. I’d
made the arrangements weeks before. The owners were delightful.
They were only too happy to let me have a look around. I hope
you’re keeping up, Hans.’
He is sullenly silent.
‘There was a specific purpose. We weren’t there just to see the
house in which the Schröders lived. We trooped up to the first floor.
There was Albert’s study, newly done out and very high- tech. None of that horrid dark wood any more. Rather oppressive, I always
used to think. A bit intimidating. We looked in one of the bed-
rooms. They’ve all been carpeted now, with a rather plush pile in a tasteful shade of beige. I’m afraid we had to prevail on them to pull up a small corner. They didn’t mind at all, since it was for a good cause. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you, my dear?’
‘I don’t have a clue.’
‘Bear with me, please. When we pulled back the carpet it was still
there.’
‘What,’ he says with forced patience, ‘was there?’
‘The gap between the skirting board and the floor, of course. And
even more surprisingly after all these years, so was the locket. We could see it with the help of a torch but we couldn’t reach it. The owner of the house managed to winkle it out with a screwdriver. I
will get to the point, I promise. In fact I’m there, almost. We managed to retrieve the letters and the locket. But of course it was the locket that was of greatest importance.’
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‘Oh, really.’
‘The letters were the ramblings of a silly little girl. But the locket contained your hair.’
‘My hair? What do you mean, my hair?’
‘Don’t you remember? It was in my room. I persuaded you to let
me have a lock. You had obviously had second thoughts, though,
and you were glowering madly. A bit like you are now. But I pressed on regardless and pretended I hadn’t noticed. Gay as a spring lamb.
You got very angry when I cut off rather more than you bargained
for. I laughed. But of course you remember. Happy days.’
She beams at him and sighs.
‘Of course one applies one’s intellect to such situations. And
technology too. Recovering the locket wasn’t simply a matter of