Exposure (9 page)

‘Nobody even knows his real nationality. He says he's Polish … but he speaks German like a native son … He could be anything.'

She remembered Ben's description of Harold King. He'd anglicized the name he'd given himself in the camp. Koenig. King. Some subtle indication of the man he would become perhaps, or a mere fancy on her part, looking for motives … She started to read again. He had been released into the care of an UNRRA official who stood surety for him and obtained a set of temporary papers from the British Control Commission in the Munich area. The copy of the document showed faded signatures: the Control Commission Officer in charge of refugees, a Major Grant, and the UNRRA official, Phyllis Lowe. A woman had got Hans Koenig out of the camp. The rest was Ben's work, the result of his detailed and careful investigation into what happened after that. Phyllis Lowe had continued to work with the United Nations organization among the refugees for another six months. She had lived in requisitioned accommodation in Nessenberg itself, and the young man had stayed with her. She had employed one of the many destitute German civilians to teach him English. The man had been a schoolteacher, and exempt from the Army because of a club foot.

At the end of the six months, Phyllis Lowe had resigned her job and returned to England, taking Hans Koenig with her.

And there, like a line drawn across the page, Ben had come to a dead end. There were no official records, nothing. Nobody in Nessenberg knew Phyllis Lowe or remembered the young man. The schoolteacher had died in 1953 and his family had left the district. The work of UNRRA went on for several more years before it was disbanded.

Phyllis Lowe went to England with her protégé. Dead stop. Everything known about Harold King from the fifties onward, came from one source. Himself. Harris had included the relevant chapters on King's early life from the biography he had had printed by one of his own publishing companies. The hack wrote movingly of his time in the camp, and of the English lady who had rescued him. She came across as a kind-hearted spinster who treated him as a substitute son, and died tragically of cancer a few months after bringing him to England with her. She had bought him a few hundred pounds of savings certificates, and with this he had founded his fortune.

It was the standard story, part tear-jerker, part eulogy. With his benefactor's small legacy, King, as he now called himself, bought a stock of remaindered books and an old van. He sensed that people needed escapism. They were sick of war and hungry for entertainment.

Everyone wanted books, and books was what King gave them. He travelled the country, selling from his van, buying up books wherever he found them, renting a small shop that became a chain of retail book shops, then a printing business and in the early sixties he had enough money to acquire a small publishing company that had gone broke publishing quality books and unknown authors. King had pulped the whole stock. The hack made the act of vandalism sound like an instance of his genius. King recruited his own new authors, and King Publishing was born. ‘I sold dreams to people,' was the famous quote, ‘because I had a dream myself. And I made it come true.'

Ben Harris added his own footnote to the story.

King's stable of writers specialized in crime novellas. Cheap to produce, cheap to sell. Lurid mass-market trash that peddled violence and sex in tune with the new fashion for permissiveness. They made a fortune for him. This was well known; he boasted of it, sneered at his critics and branched out into soft-porn magazines.

Nothing new there. But Harris had ferreted out a less well-known detail of how he founded his publishing empire. He had lent money to the philanthropic owner of that early publishing house, promising to maintain its literary standards, and then called in the loan without warning.

The man had lost his business and died penniless a few years later. No-one had bothered to ask what had happened to him.

It was a technique King had perfected over the years. He had a sixth sense; he could smell a business in trouble as a predator smells blood. He bought into them, usually under nominees, then took them over and turned them into profitable enterprises that he either sold on or enlarged for his own purposes. Within twenty-five years he had acquired a major publishing house, two quality London monthly magazines, and a substantial stake in Midlands Independent Television. Besides property interests, and a construction company engaged in building work in the Middle East.

It was common knowledge, and he announced it regularly, that his next project was to run his own national newspaper.

At forty he had got married to a beautiful model, who had done a stint as an actress, and told the world that from now on he was going to be a family man. The string of mistresses he ran with maximum publicity were sent packing. There were no more photographs of King at functions and first nights with ‘friends' hanging on his arm.

There hadn't been a whisper of a woman since. King was presented as the devoted husband and father of his little Gloria. And it had all begun with a kind-hearted English lady in a camp full of refugees in ravaged Germany after the war. Hans Koenig, the nameless, hopeless young man, traumatized by his experiences, had touched her heart. And when she died, leaving him friendless in England, he swore to justify her faith in him. There was another famous quote. ‘She believed in me. I wasn't going to let her down. I owed it to her to get out and make a success.'

It was an incredible story. A sharp dealer, a tough business opponent, a genius without mercy for those less able than himself – a man without morals or scruples who didn't give a damn for his reputation. The sentimentalist beating his breast about his benefactress. The faithful husband and doting father. The impulsive philanthropist who helped orphaned children in Romania, and saved a football club because the players came to see him.

The man whose most dangerous adversaries had met violent deaths. Julia closed the file. Incredible was the right word.

She was in the kitchen eating breakfast when she heard Felix come in. She had managed to sleep for a few hours; it had been fitful and troubled by dreams related to what she had read. She felt a little jump of anxiety as the kitchen door opened.

‘Hi,' he said. ‘I'm back.' He came in and closed the door. He looked puffy eyed and unshaven. Julia looked at him and thought that wherever he'd spent the night, there hadn't been a razor.

‘Hello,' she said. She spread marmalade over her slice of toast.

‘Any breakfast for me?'

‘Yes, if you make it,' she answered.

‘Oh. Still hating my guts, are we? Any use saying I'm sorry? I behaved like a stupid shit last night.' Julia had never heard an apology from him before. And with painful insight she knew why. He'd been with a woman. He was feeling guilty because he'd slept with someone else. She sighed.

‘There's plenty of coffee. Sit down, Felix. Don't worry. I'm not hating anyone this morning. I think it's time we had a talk.'

‘I meant it,' he said. ‘I was bloody to you. I'll make it up to you.' He reached over and caught her wrist. ‘Kiss and make up,' he suggested. He brought her hand up to his mouth and licked her palm.

Julia pulled sharply away. ‘That won't work any more, Felix.'

He shrugged. ‘OK, if you're still humpy with me—' He picked up a mug and poured coffee. ‘What do you want to talk about? Got any aspirin? I shouldn't have had that second Armagnac.' He tried a grin, making a joke of it. It had always worked with her before. The cheeky-boy act followed by a good session on the mattress. She shook her head. ‘I meant what I said last night. That's why I don't want to sleep with you this morning. I don't want to go on living with you any more. It's not working for either of us. Is it – truthfully?'

‘It's working all right with me,' he said. ‘I don't make demands on you, Julia, you do your thing and I do mine.'

‘You did your thing last night, didn't you?' she said it calmly and he reddened. ‘I don't want to hear about it – it doesn't matter. It just proves what I'm saying. We don't love each other, and now we're not even friends any more.'

He sipped his coffee. ‘We never were,' he said, surprising her. ‘All we ever really had was sex. I loved it with you and you couldn't get enough of it with me. But we didn't have a lot in common. Ambition maybe. I always felt you wanted something more, some kind of emotional hook. I wasn't ready for it. I'm still not. Sorry.'

‘I'm sorry too,' Julia said. ‘But we did have some happy times, so don't let's forget that. I know I won't. You'll find someone else, Felix. If you haven't already.'

He looked at her honestly. ‘I haven't,' he said. ‘I've had the odd bonk here and there. Like last night. But it didn't mean anything. I think a lot of you Julia. I mean it. You're bright, I admire that. You'll go far up the old ladder. And one day I'll be up there too. What do you want me to do – move out?'

‘Yes,' she said slowly. She chided herself for being so tired that she felt very near to tears. Not enough sleep, that was all. She'd be too busy to be lonely. ‘Yes, but I don't want to rush you. You've got to find somewhere else that suits you. We can – well, keep out of each other's way till you do. I've got to go, Felix, or I'll be late.'

‘I've got to shower and shave,' he agreed. ‘Or I will have the Warbler giving me black looks. I'll see what I can fix up. And do me a favour, will you? Don't cry. We'll always be friends.' He sat on at the table when she hurried out. It was a pity. He felt depressed. She was a great girl. But she was right. He'd started cheating on her in the last year.

His afternoons weren't always spent at the squash court or the gym. It was time to move on. Time to get out from under her shadow. Spread his wings on his own account. Some of his friends had been telling him that for a while now. She was just that bit older and she had the status and the money. Deep down he felt belittled and he was beginning to resent it. So he cheated on her. Which didn't enhance his self-image. He got up, dropped the mug in the sink and went out to get ready for work. He heard the front door close and knew that Julia had gone.

‘Well?' Ben Harris asked. ‘Where are you going to start?'

Julia said, ‘Right at the beginning. Page one, line one. How do we know Phyllis Lowe is dead?'

He looked up sharply, scowling. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Did you check? Has anybody seen a death certificate? No, they haven't. Everyone took King's word for it. So I sent someone down to St Catherine's House first thing this morning to look up every Phyllis Lowe who died between April and June in 1949. Those are the dates given in that load of rubbish he had written about himself. Cancer was diagnosed in April, just as the daffodils came out, and she died as the roses bloomed in their back garden. No-one called Phyllis Lowe died in the London area in that year during that period. In fact –' she put the list in front of him, ‘– the only single women of that name who died of cancer in the whole of London during that year were all fifteen to twenty years too old to be her! See for yourself.'

Ben scanned the list.

‘Christ,' he muttered. ‘You're right. But let's say he gave all that crap to his author, about the date and time of year – just to make it sound good – it doesn't mean she didn't die—'

‘But not when or where he said,' Julia pointed out. ‘Ben, this could be a wild guess, but I'm going to follow it up.'

He said, ‘What's the wild guess?'

‘I think she may still be alive. And if she is, I want to talk to her. Now, let's work out where we start looking.'

‘UNRRA had records of all their personnel. They must be somewhere, and they'd give her family personal details – home address, next of kin, that sort of stuff. But, J, it's forty years ago—'

‘I know,' she agreed. ‘But didn't people have ration books, identity cards? Listen, they've traced medical records back to the First World War just recently. They'd been lying about in local hospitals and nobody had bothered to throw them out. I've got a good team of researchers.'

Ben Harris said, ‘How about the area where King says he was living with her – it's in that book – the house with the fucking roses in the back garden. Tell them to try the local doctors. Some of these practices keep medical records for years – even after the patient's dead – nobody bothers to chuck them away—'

‘And,' Julia interrupted, ‘if they moved on, their records were forwarded to the new doctor. Tell me,' she changed the subject suddenly, ‘why do you think King lied about her? It wasn't just to make a good sob story. Why not tell the truth instead of inventing a whole scenario?'

‘Because the truth wasn't quite as pretty as the lie,' Ben Harris said.

‘Then we've got to find it out,' Julia told him.

She tapped the file with one finger.

‘Everything else came to a dead end. You went to Germany, you went to Nessenberg; there was a record of a Hans Koenig among the ten thousand DPs who were there in forty-nine. We know this woman got him out and took him in to live with her. Then she says she's going to England and that's the last anyone hears of her. He could have entered this country illegally and made up the whole story.'

Ben Harris had a rare smile. She saw it then.

‘I'd love that,' he said. ‘I'd really love to prove something like that. Just for starters. How many people can you put on to this?'

‘You tell me,' Julia answered. He considered. ‘Three pairs. A pair works better in this kind of job; one sees something the other one's missed. Two to work through the Hammersmith medical centres, ask around the neighbourhood where this. Phyllis Lowe had a house – if she did – two to track down any former British employees of UNRRA, and another couple to go back to Nessenberg and do a better job than I did. UNRRA worked very closely with the military authorities, but also with the German civil administration.'