A Man Lies Dreaming (3 page)

‘Good?’ I said.

‘Wonderful.’

I slapped the glass out of his hand and it smashed to the floor, the brandy spilling on Hess’s hand. I heard chairs scraping back, saw three men rise and marked them. Hess shook his limp hand then sucked on his fingers. He stared at me mournfully. ‘Bring me a napkin, please, Emil,’ he said. He gestured at his men and they sat down again. ‘You have an escort, these days,’ I said.

‘These are dangerous times,’ Hess said. ‘A man needs must take precautions.’

The big barman brought over a silk handkerchief. It was embroidered with RH. Hess wiped his hand clean fastidiously and gave it back. ‘Thank you, Emil,’ he said.

I stared at him across the table. ‘I meant no disrespect,’ he said.

‘I’m sure that you didn’t.’

‘What is it?’ he said.

‘I need information.’

He nodded. ‘I heard you were working as a private investigator,’ he said.

‘You heard correctly.’

His eyes grew as soft as his face. ‘They called you the Drummer,’ he said.

‘I have always fought,’ I said. ‘But I have always fought for order.’ I took a sip of my cold tea. ‘There must be order in all things.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course.’ He loosened his tie. ‘What do you need to know?’

‘I am looking for a girl. She would have been coming from Germany, to London.’

‘I see. Without papers, naturally.’

‘Yes.’

‘Such a thing is not impossible, for a price,’ he said.

‘Tell me, Rudolf,’ I said. ‘Do many people disappear, en route from Germany?’

‘Disappear how?’

I said, softly, ‘She was a Jewess.’

He stared into my eyes. ‘Wolf …’ he said.

‘Don’t.’

‘For the sake of my love for you,’ he said. ‘Don’t ask me.’

‘I need to know.’

‘There are doors which are best left closed,’ he said. He pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘For the sake of our friendship.’ He looked at me curiously. ‘What do you care what happens to a Jew?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Come and work for me,’ he said, impulsively. He saw my face. ‘With me, I mean. There is money to be made, power. I am someone here, Wolf. I am a man of influence.’

‘Hess,’ I said, ‘you are a pimp and a thief. You have traded your honour for cash.’

‘Don’t use those words.’

‘What words would you have me use?’

He laughed at that. ‘Perhaps I’ve merely outgrown you,’ he said.

‘You have been reduced,’ I said. ‘While I remain the same. My integrity cannot be purchased so cheaply.’

‘You are a shadow of what you once were. A ghost.’ He laughed again, a sad, bitter sound. ‘You died in the Fall; what is left of you makes a mockery of what you once were.’

I stood up too. He was taller than me, but he had always been the smaller man. ‘Please,’ he said, again. ‘Do not go asking such questions, mein freund.’

‘Give me a name,’ I said.

Hess sighed. He reached into his breast pocket and threw down on the table a
carte de visite
. I picked it up. Printed on thick, expensive paper, it contained an address in the East End and nothing more. On the back, a symbol I had not seen in some time: it was a swastika.

The night was full of eyes, watching. Wolf made his way out of the Hofgarten. At the end of the street the same group of Blackshirts was beating a man lying on the pavement. The man had curled in a foetal position, his hands uselessly covering his head. The Blackshirts wore thick-soled boots and they were kicking the man savagely. A pair of policemen were watching from the sidelines without expression. The air was scented with the smell of men’s sweat and blood and violence. It was a smell Wolf knew well, had in fact delighted in. Two white teeth lay on the ground beside the victim. Wolf paused as he walked past them. One of the Blackshirts wiped sweat from his face with the hem of his shirt. ‘What are you looking at,’ he said. Wolf shook his head. He walked on. Behind him the victim was whimpering in a broken voice. Oswald Mosley stared down at Wolf from the public walls, smiling winningly. Wolf walked on.

There were eyes in the night, watching. He felt shadows gathering about him and he stopped and started, dawdling in front of shop windows, trying to catch a reflection, a clue as to the unseen watchers’ identity. Perhaps there was no one there. But he could scent them, hunters in the night. He had used the name Wolf in the 1920s and now he used it again, in London. He had always felt himself to have an affinity with wolves.

The
carte de visite
was in his suit pocket. He did not like seeing Hess again, did not like being reminded of what had passed. How Hess had risen while he himself fell. There was a dull ache in his left leg. It had broken in the camp and never healed properly, and ached in the cold. He had been there three days short of five months when he escaped. Sometimes he missed Germany with a powerful ache, with every fibre of his being. He knew he was unlikely to ever see her again.

The ’40s were coming. Christmas was in the air and along Charing Cross Road early decorations were already going up. A man behind a cart was selling roasted chestnuts. He had the swarthy complexion of a gypsy. The city was filled with refugees from the Fall, but the borders were closing, and tensions were mounting everywhere. Wolf bought the evening edition of the
Daily Mail
and glanced at the headlines as he walked. ‘Duke of Windsor in Support of Mosley’ said the front page. Well, no surprise there. The abdicated king had been a keen supporter of Wolf’s own politics, too, back when Wolf still had politics. He was a fool to marry the American woman, though. Love was a weaker force than hate, and Wolf could not help but despise the former monarch for that.

There. Was that a shadow moving behind him? Wolf ducked into an alleyway. A man in a black suit with an unremarkable face. But the man continued past, seemingly oblivious. Wolf emerged from the alleyway. He found himself by Collet’s Bookshop, still open at this hour, coffeehouse revolutionaries conspiring amidst leftwing pamphlets and communist propaganda. The man in the black suit had disappeared. Wolf walked on, stopped by Marks & Co. to browse the books outside. Popular fiction, books thumbed and marked. Dashiell Hammett’s
The Maltese Falcon
. A row of P.G. Wodehouse novels. Another copy of
The Hobbit
. A review copy of Anthony Powell’s
From a View to a Death
. But Wolf had little love for the weakness of the English tongue. German had a martial tune; it was neither tarnished nor afraid. He walked on.

Oxford Street coming up, Wolf walking aimlessly, checking his reflection in shop windows. He had black hair receding at the temples, a high forehead, a strong chin, ears sticking out slightly. No moustache. He could no longer abide the moustache.

There!

He turned suddenly and rapidly and began to walk with purpose the way he’d come. A second youngish man in a black suit and tie like an underemployed undertaker had begun to turn the other way, too late. In moments Wolf was on him, grabbing the man by the lapels, slamming him against the brick wall. He pressed his face close into the stranger’s. ‘Who are you?’ he said, speaking low. ‘What do you want?’

The man didn’t struggle. ‘Excuse me, pal,’ he said, ‘I think you got the wrong idea there.’

Despite his diction his accent came across loud and clear and American. Wolf released him. The man had not struggled though he looked like he could have put up a fight, had he wanted to. Under the cheap suit was a body kept trim and in shape. ‘Why are you following me?’ Wolf said. The man looked embarrassed.

‘Do you know the way to the British Museum?’ he said. ‘This damn city can be confusing. I think I lost my way somewhere.’

‘Yes, you did,’ Wolf said. He stared hard at the man. ‘The museum is closed.’

‘It is?’

There was a twinkle in the man’s eyes. Wolf’s hands tightened on the man’s lapels. The man still didn’t struggle. He seemed to regard Wolf with some irony. It was not a quality Wolf possessed, or much appreciated.

‘Where is your friend?’ Wolf said.

‘Excuse me?’

Wolf spat. His phlegm hit the brick wall over the man’s shoulder and slid down, slowly. ‘I won’t give you and yours a second warning,’ he said. He turned just as abruptly and walked off. He did not watch to see if the other man was following him still.

*    *    *

In Berwick Street the whores were busy at their trade. The watcher in the dark had seen the detective exit his office and speak to the young German whore and to the coloured one, and seen him leave, but he remained behind. He had time. All the time in the world. He eyed the whores.

He was wrapped in shadows. He was like a ghost, or H.G. Wells’s invisible man. In his invisibility there was power. He felt the knife under the coat. The smoothness of the grind versus the sharpness of the point and edge. How good it felt. He watched the whores, watched a sailor talking to the young German, or was she Austrian, he understood only hazily the difference but it didn’t matter. The sailor took her by the hand and they vanished into the shadows. He felt the knife, stroking the metal. They couldn’t see him, nobody could. All he had to do was choose. He felt so hard, painfully so, but it was a good pain: it was a pain of anticipation. Soon. He had no need to rush. Waiting was half the pleasure, though perhaps he did not see it that way. It was just a fantasy. He wouldn’t do anything. Not yet. But he could imagine it, standing there, watching the women, holding his knife. The things he would do to them. They didn’t even see him. But he saw them.

Later he saw the detective come back. A small figure, so unremarkable. But you couldn’t be deceived by appearances. It was for the detective that he was doing this. He watched the man’s weary steps. The detective passed so close to him, nearly brushing against him, and he held his breath, but the detective didn’t even notice him. No one ever did. Once the detective was past he pressed his back against the bricks and watched the whores again, his hand in his pocket. He was so hard and then he was soft and there was a pleasant warmth. He wasn’t going to do anything. Not yet.

But soon.

*    *    *

In another time and place Shomer lies dreaming.

When Wolf returned it was late. He climbed the steps slowly. He rented a small bedsit next to his office. When he pushed the door open he found an envelope on the floor where it had been pushed through under the door. It was a heavy cream paper. His name was written on the back in a beautiful hand, in black ink. He picked it up and hefted it. There was no postmark. It must have been hand-delivered. He thought he knew the handwriting. He carried the envelope across the room.

Wolf’s accommodation consisted of a bed and a desk and a kitchenette. The only decorations were the books. They lay everywhere, on the floor, on the windowsill, on the desk. A sea of books, their pages like waves.
Sometimes he thought he would drown in words, all those words
.

Wolf set the envelope on the bed and went to boil water for tea on the hotplate. The room had a gas heater operated by coins. He inserted money into the device, willing it to work. The room was cold and when he exhaled a fog rose from his mouth like a shroud. When the tea was ready he carried it with him and sat hunched on the bed as close as he could to the radiator. His leg ached dully. He sipped his tea. His eyes were still irritated by the smoke from the club. The money from the Jewish woman was still in his pocket. He kept his coat on. He set the tea on the windowsill and reached for his letter opener. Inside the envelope was a card printed on expensive paper.
Sir Oswald and Lady Mosley request the pleasure of your company
. The address was the Mosleys’s house in Belgravia. The date was for two days hence: a Friday. Wolf fingered the worn hem of his coat. He could not afford to hire a suit, and his clothes sat uneasily on him.

He turned the card over. On the back, in the same rich black ink and impeccable handwriting, Diana had written:
My dear Wolf, it has been so long since we had the pleasure of your company. Oswald will be so happy to see you as, of course, will I
. She had signed it with her name, and Xs and Os. Underneath, a P.S.:
Unity may also be in attendance
.

Wolf slid the invitation card back into its envelope. He drank his tea. He rose and washed the cup in the sink thoroughly and left it to dry. He hung up his coat. He sat on the bed and then stretched out on his back, staring up at the ceiling. The past was re-emerging, threatening to catch up to him. He had not seen Oswald and Diana since their wedding, in ’36. He had been their guest, but no longer an honoured one. Things were different, after the Fall.

What did it mean, to be invited, now? What did Oswald want with him? Wolf was under no illusions. Oswald wanted something. They were the same in many ways; though he, Wolf, was strong and Oswald was weak. Had always been the weaker man.