The Third Man (10 page)

       "I'm sorry, sir."

       "Forget it. It's just one of those things."

       His young enthusiastic voice (if only one could still feel that enthusiasm for a routine job: how many opportunities, flashes of insight one misses simply because a job has become just a job), his voice tingled up the wire: "You know, sir, I can't help feeling that we ruled out the possibility of murder too easily. There are one or two points..."

       "Put them on paper, Carter."

       "Yes, sir. I think, sir, if you don't mind my saying so (Carter is a very young man) we ought to have him dug up. There's no real evidence that he died just when the others said."

       "I agree, Carter. Get on to the authorities."

       Martins was right! I had made a complete fool of myself, but remember that police work in an occupied city is not like police work at home. Everything is unfamiliar: the methods of one's foreign colleagues: the rules of evidence: even the procedure at inquests. I suppose I had got into the state of mind when one trusts too much to one's personal judgement. I had been immensely relieved by Lime's death. I was satisfied with the accident. I said to Martins: "Did you look inside the newspaper kiosk or was it locked?"

       "Oh, it wasn't exactly a newspaper kiosk," he said. "It was one of those solid iron kiosks you see everywhere plastered with posters."

       "You'd better show me the place."

       "But is Anna all right?"

       "The police are watching the flat. They won't try anything else yet."

       I didn't want to make a fuss and stir in the neighbourhood with a police car, so we took trams—several trams, changing here and there, and came into the district on foot. I didn't wear my uniform, and I doubted anyway after the failure of the attempt on Anna, whether they would risk a watcher. "This is the turning," Martins said and led me down a side street. We stopped at the kiosk. "You see he passed behind here and simply vanished—into the ground."

       "That was exactly where he did vanish to," I said.

       "How do you mean?"

       An ordinary passer-by would never have noticed that the kiosk had a door, and of course it had been dark when the man disappeared. I pulled the door open and showed to Martins the little curling iron staircase that disappeared into the ground. He said, "Good God, then I didn't imagine him..."

       "It's one of the entrances to the main sewer."

       "And anyone can go down?"

       "Anyone."

       "How far can one go?"

       "Right across Vienna. People used them in air raids: some of our prisoners hid for two years down there. Deserters have used them—and burglars. If you know your way about you can emerge again almost anywhere in the city through a manhole or a kiosk like this one. The Austrians have to have special police for patrolling these sewers." I closed the door of the kiosk again. I said, "So that's how your friend Harry disappeared."

       "You really believe it was Harry?"

       "The evidence points that way."

       "Then whom did they bury?"

       "I don't know yet, but we soon shall, because we are digging him up again. I've got a shrewd idea, though, that Koch wasn't the only inconvenient man they murdered."

       Martins said, "It's a bit of a shock."

       "Yes."

       "What are you going to do about it?"

       "I don't know. You can bet he's hiding out now in another zone. We have no line now on Kurtz, for Harbin's blown—he must have been blown or they wouldn't have staged that mock death and funeral."

       "But it's odd, isn't it, that Koch didn't recognize the dead man's face from the window."

       "The window was a long way up and I expect the face had been damaged before they took the body out of the car."

       He said thoughtfully, "I wish I could speak to him. You see, there's so much I simply can't believe."

       "Perhaps you are the only one who could speak to him. It's risky though, because you do know too much."

       "I still can't believe... I only saw the face for a moment." He said, "What shall I do?"

       "He won't leave his zone now. The only person who could persuade him to come over would be you—or her, if he still believes you are his friend. But first you've got to speak to him. I can't see the line."

       "I could go and see Kurtz. I have the address."

       I said, "Remember. Lime may not want you to leave the Russian zone when once you are there, and I can't protect you there."

       "I want to clear the whole damned thing up," Martins said, "but I'm not going to act as a decoy. I'll talk to him. That's all."

14

SUNDAY HAD laid its false peace over Vienna: the wind had dropped and no snow had fallen for twenty-four hours. All the morning trams had been full, going out to Grinzing where the young wine was drunk and to the slopes of snow on the hills outside. Walking over the canal by the makeshift military bridge, Martins was aware of the emptiness of the afternoon: the young were out with their toboggans and their skis, and all around him was the after-dinner sleep of age. A notice-board told him that he was entering the Russian zone, but there were no signs of occupation. You saw more Russian soldiers in the Inner City than here.

       Deliberately he had given Mr. Kurtz no warning of his visit. Better to find him out than a reception prepared for him. He was careful to carry with him all his papers, including the laissez-passer of the four powers that on the face of it allowed him to move freely through all the zones of Vienna. It was extraordinarily quiet over here on the other side of the canal, and a melodramatic journalist had painted a picture of silent terror: but the truth was simply the wide streets, the greater shell damage, the fewer people—and Sunday afternoon. There was nothing to fear, but all the same in this huge empty street where all the time you heard your own feet moving, it was difficult not to look behind.

       He had no difficulty in finding Mr. Kurtz's block, and when he rang the bell the door was opened quickly, as though Mr. Kurtz expected a visitor, by Mr. Kurtz himself.

       "Oh," Mr. Kurtz said, "it's you, Rollo," and made a perplexed motion with his hand to the back of his head. Martins had been wondering why he looked so different, and now he knew. Mr. Kurtz was not wearing the toupee, and yet his head was not bald. He had a perfectly normal head of hair cut close. He said, "It would have been better to have telephoned to me: you nearly missed me: I was going out."

       "May I come in a moment?"

       "Of course."

       In the hall a cupboard door stood open, and Martins saw Mr. Kurtz's overcoat, his raincoat, a couple of soft hats and hanging sedately on a peg like a wrap, Mr. Kurtz's toupee. He said, "I'm glad to see your hair has grown," and was astonished, in the mirror on the cupboard door, to see the hatred flame and blush on Mr. Kurtz's face. When he turned Mr. Kurtz smiled at him like a conspirator and said vaguely: "It keeps the head warm."

       "Whose head?" Martins asked, for it had suddenly occurred to him how useful that toupee might have been on the day of the accident. "Never mind," he went quickly on, for his errand was not with Mr. Kurtz. "I'm here to see Harry."

       "Harry?"

       "I want to talk to him."

       "Are you mad?"

       I'm in a hurry, so let's assume that I am. Just make a note of my madness. If you should see Harry—or his ghost—let him know that I want to talk to him. A ghost isn't afraid of a man, is it? Surely it's the other way round. I'll be waiting in the Prater by the Big Wheel for the next two hours—if you can get in touch with the dead, hurry." He added, "Remember, I was Harry's friend."

       Kurtz said nothing, but somewhere, in a room off the hall, somebody cleared his throat. Martins threw open a door: he had half expected to see the dead rise yet again, but it was only Dr. Winkler who rose from a kitchen chair, in front of the kitchen stove, and bowed very stiffly and correctly with the same celluloid squeak.

       "Dr. Winkle," Martins said. Dr. Winkler looked extraordinarily out of place in a kitchen. The debris of a snack lunch littered the kitchen table, and the unwashed dishes consorted very ill with Dr. Winkler's cleanness.

       'Winkler," the doctor corrected him with stony patience.

       Martins said to Kurtz: "Tell the doctor about my madness. He might be able to make a diagnosis. And remember the place—by the Great Wheel. Or do ghosts only rise by night?" He left the flat.

       For an hour he waited, walking up and down to keep warm, inside the enclosure of the Great Wheel: the smashed Prater with its bones sticking crudely through the snow was nearly empty. One stall sold thin flat cakes like cartwheels, and the children queued with their coupons. A few courting couples would be packed together in a single car of the Wheel and revolve slowly above the city surrounded by empty cars. As the car reached the highest point of the Wheel, the revolutions would stop for a couple of minutes and far overhead the tiny faces would press against the glass. Martins wondered who would come for him. Was there enough friendship left in Harry for him to come alone, or would a squad of police arrive? It was obvious from the raid on Anna Schmidt's flat that he had a certain pull. And then as his watch hand passed the hour, he wondered: was it all an invention of my mind? are they digging up Harry's body now in the Central Cemetery?

       Somewhere behind the cake stall a man was whistling and Martins knew the tune. He turned and waited. Was it fear or excitement that made his heart beat—or just the memories that tune ushered in, for life had always quickened when Harry came, came just as he came now, as though nothing much had happened, nobody had been lowered into a grave or found with cut throat in a basement, came with his amused deprecating take-it-or-leave-it manner—and of course one always took it.

       "Harry."

       "Hullo, Rollo."

       Don't picture Harry Lime as a smooth scoundrel. He wasn't that. The picture I have of him on my files is an excellent one: he is caught by a street photographer with his stocky legs apart, big shoulders a little hunched, a belly that has known too much good food too long, on his face a look of cheerful rascality, a geniality, a recognition that his happiness will make the world's day. Now he didn't make the mistake of putting out a hand—that might have been rejected, but instead just patted Martins on the elbow and said, "How are things?"

       "We've got to talk, Harry."

       "Of course."

       "Alone."

       "We couldn't be more alone than here."

       He had always known the ropes, and even in the smashed pleasure park he knew them, tipping the woman in charge of the Wheel, so that they might have a car to themselves. He said, "Lovers used to do this in the old days, but they haven't the money to spare, poor devils, now," and he looked out of the window of the swaying rising car at the figures diminishing below with what looked like genuine commiseration.

       Very slowly on one side of them the city sank; very slowly on the other the great cross girders of the Wheel rose into sight. As the horizon slid away the Danube became visible, and the piers of the Kaiser Friedrich Br? cke lifted above the houses.

       "Well," Harry said, "it's good to see you, Rollo."

       "I was at your funeral."

       "That was pretty smart of me, wasn't it?"

       "Not so smart for your girl. She was there too—in tears."

       "She's a good little thing," Harry said. "I'm very fond of her."

       "I didn't believe the police when they told me about you."

       Harry said, "I wouldn't have asked you to come if I'd known what was going to happen, but I didn't think the police were on to me."

       "Were you going to cut me in on the spoils?"

       "I've never kept you out of anything, old man, yet." He stood with his back to the door as the car swung upwards, and smiled back at Rollo Martins, who could remember him in just such an attitude in a secluded corner of the school quad, saying, "I've learnt a way to get out at night. It's absolutely safe. You are the only one I'm letting in on it." For the first time Rollo Martins looked back through the years without admiration, as he thought: "He's never grown up." Marlowe's devils wore squibs attached to their tails: evil was like Peter Pan—it carried with it the horrifying and horrible gift of eternal youth.

       Martins said, "Have you ever visited the children's hospital? Have you seen any of your victims?"

       Harry took a look at the toy landscape below and came away from the door. "I never feel quite safe in these things," he said. He felt the back of the door with his hand, as though he were afraid that it might fly open and launch him into that iron-ribbed space. "Victims?" he asked. "Don't be melodramatic, Rollo, look down there," he went on, pointing through the window at the people moving like black flies at the base of the Wheel. "Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving—for ever? If I said you can have twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stops, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money—without hesitation? or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax." He gave his boyish conspiratorial smile, "It's the only way to save nowadays."

       "Couldn't you have stuck to tyres?"

       "Like Cooler? No, I've always been ambitious. "But they can't catch me, Rollo, you'll see. I'll pop up again. You can't keep a good man down." The car swung to a standstill at the highest point of the curve and Harry turned his back and gazed out of the window. Martins thought: one good shove and I could break the glass, and he pictured the body dropping among the flies. He said, "You know the police are planning to dig up your body: what will they find?"

       "Harbin," Harry replied with simplicity. He turned away from the window and said, "Look at the sky."