Little Grey Mice (18 page)

‘There's the train,' he suggested. ‘But a taxi might be quicker: certainly more comfortable. It's no more than a suburb, after all.' He'd shown almost sufficient consideration: to prolong the meeting much further with suggestions of assistance would be a psychological mistake.

He was right: Bad Godesberg
was
a suburb. The idea of taking a taxi still seemed extravagant. ‘A taxi would be more convenient,' she agreed. He appeared an assured man.

‘Is there anything else we should discuss?' asked Reimann.

Elke was flattered to be offered the dominant role. She shook her head and said: ‘Not that I can think of.'

‘Anything else I can do to help?' It was not a contradiction of the previous decision. He shifted in his seat as he asked the question, indicating a desire to end the discussion: the offer was the final, obvious politeness.

Elke recognized it for what it was. ‘No,' she said, collecting up her handbag and reaching down, to untie Poppi. ‘You've really been extremely kind.'

Reimann insisted on escorting her to a taxi. He held the door for her to enter but didn't immediately close it behind her. He bent in and said: ‘I know it seems bad, but cars can be repaired to look as good as new.'

‘I hope you're right,' said Elke. He'd put the incident into its right perspective, not allowing it to inflate into a major catastrophe, as she had initially done.

Perfect! decided Reimann, triumphantly, as he watched the taxi pull away: absolutely perfect.

Ida had prepared a salad lunch, with nothing to keep hot, so the only inconvenience was the delay of Elke's arrival. Elke was the centre of everyone's attention, the person who had been involved in a positive adventure. It was an unusual and not displeasing experience. She found herself talking in Reimann's tone of voice, treating it as a misfortune but not a disaster, and at one stage Kissel said, with some admiration: ‘I think you're being very philosophical about the whole thing.'

It was not until they were in Ida's car, driving back towards Bonn, that the two women discussed Otto Reimann in anything like detail.

‘What was the amazing coincidence?' demanded Ida.

‘He's practically identical to Dietlef,' Elke disclosed. ‘Not in attitude, I don't mean. He's much more charming: kinder. Just like him in appearance.'

‘Jesus!' exclaimed Ida, looking across the car. ‘How did that make you feel?'

‘I don't know,' said Elke, inadequately.

The diary entry that night was fuller than it had been for a long time. She wrote:
Car badly damaged in a hit-and-run accident. The man innocently involved was extremely kind. Very unhappy.

It was a positive decision not to record the physical similarity to the man who had abandoned her.

Reimann could not have cared less about getting a quick repair estimate for the cars. He went to the garage that afternoon to discover if the police had examined his car forensically, hoping to find fingerprints, for instance. He knew, of course, there would be no trace from such professionals, but it was the sort of question that might possibly be relayed from Moscow and he wanted to have a reply instantly available. The police hadn't shown any scientific interest whatsoever in the Mercedes. Reimann endured the price-hiking discussion with the foreman about the extent of the damage, accepted the insistence that any estimate would take several days and left promising to keep in touch by telephone.

He actually did telephone instead of personally visiting the police headquarters, playing the necessary role of a concerned car owner. He patiently waited through several department transfers before being connected to an officer who regretted there had not been an arrest. The Porsche, which turned out to have been stolen too, had been located within thirty minutes of the Engeltalstrasse collision, abandoned across the river in Limperich. There was a higher than normal number of alerts out for other vehicles reported stolen that day. The officer was sorry. Reimann said he understood.

Because it was the weekend, with the possibility of other tenants being at home in the block, Reimann waited until darkness before crossing the city to Nord-Stadt. As a further precaution, he telephoned ahead to warn Jutta. And despite her assurance that it was safe, he remained cautious entering the building, confident when he eventually did so that he reached her apartment undetected.

‘Scotch or schnapps?' she said.

‘Scotch.'

Jutta made the same for them both, with ice, and tuned the radio until she found thumping pop-music. ‘There's a package on the hall table: it's the format for the article you're supposed to write next week.'

‘I'll pick it up as I leave.' There had been two already. It was childishly simply, like colouring by numbers; there was a framework of the article with gaps which had to be filled in with the latest statistics and information. Always, however, there were accompanying briefing notes so that if there was any query or later discussion upon what he had supposedly written he would be able to handle it. Equally efficient, Reimann had always learned the instructions by heart.

‘They want a complete report.'

Reimann knew there had been insufficient time for such a demand already to have come from Moscow: it was clever of Jutta to introduce the demand directly after the mundane operational business of how he was supposed to work. Careful against the self-satisfaction sounding too obvious, he said: ‘Quite simple. Everything went exactly as planned and expected. There's been an encounter and a definite reason for my making contact with her again.'

‘Do the police suspect anything?'

‘Of course,' said Reimann at once, showing up the question for its carelessness. ‘They suspect thieves tried to steal my car and crashed it in the attempt.'

Jutta coloured, slightly. ‘It was quite an ordinary interiew then?'

‘Quite ordinary,' he assured. ‘Those are the honest facts, aren't they?'

‘There could have been problems, getting away from the crash.'

‘But there
weren't
were there?'

‘What about the woman, now that you've met her?'

A professional or a personal query? Reimann wondered. He said: ‘Highly strung. Almost hysterical. Insecure, which is perhaps surprising, considering the responsibility of the job she has. Works hard – and quite well – at concealing it.'

Jutta raised her eyebrows at the fullness of the assessment. ‘To our advantage?'

Professional, judged Reimann. Cautiously, he said: ‘I don't know, not yet.'

‘Did she show any responses?'

‘Tell Moscow I think there was a recognition: certainly something.'

‘Tell
them?' questioned Jutta, challenging.

They remained staring at each other for several moments. Reimann said: ‘Don't pick fights, Jutta! Please!'

‘I don't intend there to be one.'

‘Good. You'll tell Moscow?'

‘I think we should be careful, don't you?'

‘One of us should,' said Reimann, pointedly.

Predictably Jutta refused him the last word. ‘Yes,' she agreed. ‘One of us. Why don't you keep it in mind?'

Chapter Thirteen

Elke's life away from the ordered smoothness of the Chancellery was suddenly filled with too many distractions and demands, some trivial, some not. She became aware of the obvious, practical problems – trivial to many but not to her – of visiting Ursula the day after the crash. Ida said a taxi would be a ridiculous expense and offered to take her. Elke accepted at once and just as quickly wished she had not. Ida was late reaching Kaufmannstrasse, even later getting them to the home, and on the way announced she couldn't wait for as long as Elke customarily stayed. Returning to Bonn, Elke wondered whether her sister was using the trip to see her stuttering lover: the insistence on providing transport had been hurried, a seized-upon idea. She waited for Ida to start talking about the man but she didn't, which Elke decided was probably a confirmation that Ida was on her way to see him. Elke recognized it as an uncharitable doubt, but couldn't lose it.

Getting to the Chancellery became an ordeal. She tried the train that ran parallel with Adenauerallce, but even though she attempted to maintain her early arrival, ahead of the rush-hour, there were still too many people jostled and packed around her, stifling her with their closeness.

The garage seemed surprised to receive her call, having talked only to Herr Reimann, who'd said he would handle any queries. Elke insisted that was not so, that she wanted to deal with everything concerning her own vehicle, and made them amend their records with her address. The estimate was still being prepared and would not be available for several days: the Volkswagen was the more extensively damaged of the two vehicles: the work was going to be expensive.

Günther Werle was excessively considerate. He immediately offered her whatever time off she needed to settle the formalities, gave her an introduction to his own lawyer if she needed legal advice and, guessing her travelling problems, proposed he should collect her in the mornings and return her in the evenings. It would have meant a considerable detour at the beginning and end of every day because he lived at Bad Godesberg, although in a more expensive residential part than Ida. Elke refused. Apart from extending his travelling time it would also have meant her being unable to prepare everything in advance of his getting to the office. It would also have resulted in their publicly entering and leaving the Chancellery together, which would have been quite improper, despite the true innocence of the situation. So Elke arranged a temporary account with a taxi firm.

She did take advantage of Werle's time-off suggestion when her insurance company spoke on the telephone of complications over her claim. The insurance official she met was an unsympathetic, unsmiling man with dandruff and a squint, who talked too long and officiously of the need to establish responsibility and guilt. There was little that could be done, he feared, until the police concluded their inquiries: certainly no repairs could be authorized to the Volkswagen to incur expense that might be recoverable from another guilty party. The police regretted no final report could be made to any insurance company while the investigation remained open.

Frustrated, and feeling an increasing helplessness confronted by bureaucracy she expertly recognized but of which, until now, she had rarely been a victim, Elke went to Werle's lawyer. The man was unexpectedly young, far more sympathetic, and did not use the cumbersome language of the insurance inspector, but he was matchingly depressing. Of course he would represent her and would press strongly for an early settlement. But these were always slow-moving situations: insurance companies procrastinated until the last moment to avoid paying out and equally to prevent expending a pfennig more than their legal minimum. Like everyone else to whom Elke had spoken, he was sorry.

But not as sorry – or as emptied or exhausted – as Elke.

There had been other, mercifully few, times like this, times when personal problems had engulfed her, as personal problems always did. Occasions she'd needed help she couldn't find: and didn't know where to look – not even to Ida, who had always helped as much as she was capable of helping anyone. The pregnancy and the birth, of course: far more important – the whole episode initially far more catastrophic – than whatever was or was not happening now. That final reluctant acceptance that there was no alternative to Ursula's admission to the clinic. Catastrophic again. And lesser things: the trivial, ordinary, seemingly easy things. Negotiating the long-term lease at Kaufmannstrasse. That had been a torment for Elke, a woman on her own: not knowing – not
completely
knowing, despite the conveyancing lawyer's advice – whether it was a good or bad decision. Even purchasing the Volkswagen (The right car? The wrong car? The right price? The wrong price?) that was now the cause of this new upheaval, this personal earthquake that would have been a minimal tremor on others' Richter scales.

Just as it had seemed a minimal tremor upon the personal Richter scale of a brown-eyed, attentive and strangely recognizable man named Otto Reimann, whose business card described him as the Bonn correspondent for an Australian magazine group. Throughout, Elke found herself thinking a lot about Otto Reimann and supposed it was because of the remarkable similarity. She had expected him to contact her. She recognized there was no specific need, their having exchanged all necessary detail at the scene, but she'd imagined there would be
some
further communication. A wrong expectation? Obviously so. What was there to talk about, apart from commiserating? The only possible interest, tenuous even then, was whether he'd heard if the people who'd stolen his car had been caught. Was there any other reason? What about to apologize? But apologize for what? He hadn't been at the wheel when it had happened; if he had the accident would have been quite straightforward and there wouldn't be all this difficulty.

Elke waited four days, before trying to call him. She had no definite question and most certainly no other reason for telephoning other than the accident. Her only hope was to hear something, to be told something, that would enable her to hurry the procedure up, to get her car back on the road and to settle at least the practical disadvantage of the crash.

Reimann was at Rochusplatz when the call came. He sat staring at the telephone, expressionless and unmoving, curious to know if it was Elke, but with no intention of lifting the receiver to find out. He knew it would not be Jutta. Their identification code was two rings, disconnect, one ring, disconnect, two rings, disconnect, answer on the next dial. And it didn't matter if it was any of the West German ministries or press spokesmen, all of whom now accepted his accreditation and knew his home telephone number to announce a sudden press conference or a news release. He could pick up any of that later from the press bureaux. There was nothing waiting for him when he checked, so he guessed it probably had been Elke Meyer. He was at the apartment when she tried the following day. He didn't answer then, either. Convinced it would be Elke, he thought: I have to lead, you have to follow, even in something as inconsequential as a telephone call. That's the only way it's ever going to be. Wait, Elke: wait until I'm quite ready.