The Contract (8 page)

'We don't have to get married, well not in a hurry anyway.'

He put his hands to his chin, rubbed at the skin. 'There was no more compelling reason for Willi Guttmann's defec- tion than that you had told him you were pregnant and that he must stand by you?'

'About right, yes.'

'And now that you are no longer pregnant, what do you think should happen?'

'Well, he's free, isn't he?'

'Free to do what?'

'He can go home, if he wants to,' she blurted. 'He's under no obligation to me.'

'He's defected. For your sake he has made himself a traitor.' The Consul paused, sighed. 'There is no second chance, there is no change of mind.

He came across and that's that. He is somebody that we are interested in, that his own side cares about . . . Willi Guttmann no longer has a home.

'It was as much his fault as mine.'

'Do you still want to marry Willi Guttmann, make the rest of your life with him?'

'I don't know.' The certainty was gone, the radiance had dripped away.

Just a secretary, one of a hundred, and the prettiness trodden out of her.

'The relevant authorities will inform Guttmann of what you've told me.'

'It's not just me that's to blame . . .'

'Get out, Miss Forsyth. Get out of this office and never come near it again.'

She didn't understand, he knew that, and his anger was wasted on her.

She hadn't the smallest comprehension of the squalid mess she had left behind her. He tried to recall the face of the boy under his wet and sleeked-down hair, and could remember only the way that he had stood beside the girl and held her hand and looked with love at her and trembled from the cold of the lake.

He walked to the door and opened it and then went across the hallway and unlocked the front door. She hurried past him and when she was gone he heard only the sharp clatter of her heels on the steps.

They stayed up late in the sitting room.

The terms of reference for the evening had been set by Mawby. No shop talk, no gossip about the Service. This was a night off for all concerned, the last they would have, Mawby had said, this was the team familiarising with its selection, learning the mannerisms and habits and pecu- liarities. There was a bottle of whisky on the table and crystal glasses and the level of the drink slipped as the tongues loosened and the laughter echoed from the walls. Mawby played host, his back to the fire, orchestrating the enter- tainment, involving the players, and did it skilfully.

Henry Carter talked of a strike-bound family hotel on the Costa del Sol with guests cooking and washing and making their beds, and a suspicion of cholera up the coast. Adrian Pierce recounted his Cambridge days and the homosexual don who took tutorials in a satin dressing gown and the chase around the table and the flight back to his room. Harry Smithson, a leer at his face and a grin at his mouth, told of the 19-year-old second lieutenant that was himself and the posting to occupation forces in Germany and the favours that could be gained for a pair of soft stockings and a bar of milk chocolate.

Happy, friendly, nonsense talk, and Mawby allowed Johnny to remain on the fringe, to enjoy but not to contri- bute. Sizing them up, weighing them, and he could bide his time over the development of the relationships. No fool, Charles Augustus Mawby. Nobody's fool.

Johnny basked in quiet pleasure because this was how it had been sometimes in the mess, and he was the moth drawn to an old flame.

Johnny had laughed and chuckled at the private faces of the men in the room. Carter for whom nothing worked and the tale was of chaos and failure. Pierce, whose sarcasm was vital and cutting. Smithson the cynic, believing in nothing, trust- ing nobody.

Content to be in charge, giving them their heads and for a purpose, Mawby dispensed the whisky.

And it was good to be part of something again. The noise of the room highlighted the narrowness of the escape bolt that Johnny had chosen for himself in Cherry Road. Run away, hadn't he? Sprinted for cover after the awfulness of the trial. Shunned contact with the great outside and leaned on his frail mother for support. Not healthy, but inevitable. What would any of these men have done if they had sat in the wide dock of the Crown Court in Crumlin Road? Would thay have bounced back and erased the memory of the mili- tary escort across the city each morning and afternoon, and the stern-lipped warders with the keys and chains and trun- cheons? The whisky helped the memories to run, and with the clock chimes Johnny's attention to the jokes and anecdotes became weaker, was replaced. What did these men know of trial for murder?

Nothing, Johnny, but that's not their fault. And they were doing their best to make him forget. But they knew ... of course they bloody knew.

The court of the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland. A high and red-painted ceiling, ornate moulding, hanging lights, a garish wallpaper, layers of scrubbed duck green paint over the dock and the benches for the lawyers and the journalists and the public. The Lord Chief Justice, without hostility or kindness, asking and probing, writing his answers with a creaking pen. Counsel for the prosecution,

the disbelief at his raised eyebrows and the voice that carried the quiet, incisive questions. The father of the girl and her brothers, all in a line, all hunched and staring at Johnny, their eyes never leaving him, all loathing him for the irreplaceable loss that he had brought to their home. Carter and Pierce and Smithson knew of it. Mawby would have read the file, read of the accusation and the defence before he sent his minions to bring Johnny to London. To bring the poor fool who would do what he was told so that he might regain his stature as a free man.

37

Pathetic and snivelling they seemed to him now, his court- room explanations.

'It's different when you're sitting here, things don't happen the way you've put it, not when you're on the ground . . .'

' It happened very quickly. It's not like being sat in a cinema and watching it on a screen . . .'

'Yes I did think at the time that the person I fired on was holding a gun.

I thought that my life was endangered, my life and those of the men who were with me . . .'

' I was confronting an armed terrorist, that's all I thought. . .'

And the deathly hush of disbelief. Always the unforgiving silence in the court and the wait for the Lord Chief Justice to look up from his ledger and for Counsel to frame his next question. A desperate quiet focused on the man who sat in the low witness box in a clean shirt and plain tie and a sports jacket.

Counsel turning the screw, driving it deeper. 'The suggestion I put to you, Captain Donoghue, is that you believed your military rank and the special nature of your duties put you above the law. I suggest that you wilfully ignored the standard procedure of issuing a challenge before opening fire. I suggest that you were prepared to shoot dead any person, terrorist or civilian who approached the cache.'

'It wasn't like that. ..'

What was it like, Johnny? Johnny still and damp in the bracken and under the bramble of the hedge, and the figure bending at the fox hole, the flicker of the plastic fertiliser sack as it was drawn clear, the bag pushed back into the hole. The figure rising short and lightweight onto the feet and then the gun presented to him . . . not a gun, Johnny, a col-lapsible umbrella. One shot from the Armalite, half a scream and a tumbling shape. Got the fucking pig, the corporal behind him said. Radio for Quick Reaction Force. Land- Rover in the lane within ten minutes, and a voice calling from a farm house in the hill, calling a girl's name in panic and desperate fear.

Pierce drawled through his story, acting out the parts with his eyes and his hands. '. .. he liked the Grammar School boys best, reckoned he stood a better chance of buggering them, because they weren't part of the scene at Trinity, they'd be frightened of getting packed off home. He was a cheeky old turnip. One chap came along to read an essay when he'd a late date afterwards at the Nurses' Home, he was smothered in after shave and talc. The old fellow went quite bananas, hardly gave the lad time to get his script out of the bag . . .'

Maeve O'Connor shot through the right breast, stone dead. Johnny heaving his guts into the hedge. Why a girl, for the love of God? The corporal whimpering like a badger with a leg in a gin trap. The tongueless journey in the Land- Rover to Keady police station. The telephone message from Brigade headquarters; say nothing, sign nothing, name and rank and nothing more. The arrival of the Army Legal Service officer, and the men from Special Investigation Branch and the 38

faces of contempt and disapproval and Johnny not shaved for three days and needing a hot meal and a clean bed.

Smithson shook his shoulders in laughter as he talked. '. . . for a pound of sausages you could find a biddy who would actually chuck her old man out of bed and send him to sit downstairs to wait till you'd finished.

And when you came down the stairs then he'd thank you for coming and say that he hoped you'd call again. Bloody marvellous time we had . ..'

The girl's cousin had found the cache. A combat jacket, a black beret, a Luger pistol, a packet of industrial detonators. Found it when out with the farm dog that had sniffed at the hole. Reported it, and a Catholic too.

Done his duty as a citizen. And the family had talked of it inside their home and Maeve O'Connor had heard the chat when she'd gone to her Auntie for supper, and she was a child and she was curious and no one had thought it necessary to warn the family to stay clear. Maeve O'Connor with a pale and pretty face and freckles and a smear of terror, shot and killed because Johnny Donoghue hadn't challenged, had believed he was fighting a war, had thought a teenage shadow was his enemy. On trial for murder, facing the full majesty of the law, with a life sentence to serve if the case went against him. j

They don't care, these people. Charles Mawby and Henry Carter and Adrian Pierce and Harry Smithson, they don't give a shit. There's a job to be done in Germany, and Johnny's the one they want for it.

'You're very quiet, Johnny,' boomed Mawby.

'Don't expect him to compete with Harry,' said Carter.

'You'll have one for the stairs?' Mawby surged forward with the bottle.

'Just one more, a small one. Then it'll be my bedtime.'

'Quite right.' Mawby was filling Johnny's glass. 'A dose o Pierce and Smithson does more damage than a litre of this poison.'

They all laughed and Johnny with them. He had the righ to join them, hadn't he? He was on the team, integral to it And in the morning the work would start.

In his darkened bedroom Willi heard the feet on the stair case, and the voices that drifted through his door. He curle< under his sheet and blankets to find warmth.

The changes in the household had not been explained t( him. Carter had merely said that new men would meet hin in the morning, bringing new questions, that he must answe them as best he could. Perhaps in the morning he would ask again when Lizzie and he would be reunited. But he asked that each day and the answer was always vague and no one would give him a definite date. Why did they want to know of his father?

Why was his father the only subject that Carter had discussed for two days? What was their interest in an old man? The noise had died in the house, but the climb to bed by the company from below had wakened Willi, left his mind clear and alert. Sleep would come hard for him now.

He dressed fast, fingers fumbling with the buttons of his tunic. Frantic and quick and hurrying because he had looked at his watch and dived from the bed. And she had been faster, drawing on her pants and fastening her skirt, thrust- ing a sweater over her head, ignoring her tumbled hair.

'They'll kill me if I miss the train,' he muttered as if from her he might find relief from the punishment.

'Keep your feet still,' Jutte snapped, knotting his boot laces, catching the contagion of his fear.

Ulf Becker turned towards the bed, dishevelled and disturbed, creased and used. 'Will they come back?'

'Not till tomorrow, I told you. I'd do it later.'

'I'll get extra duties for a month.'

The girl grabbed at her small handbag. Together they fllung themselves through the front door, Ulf stumbling with the weight of his canvas issue grip bag. Running down the stairs because it was always too long to wait for the lift, running and hoping that they met no one, running into the night air and feeling the draught of the wind catch at their laces.

Hand in hand on the pavement and then the girl's hesitation, she pulling one way, he another.

'We should take the U-Bahn to Alexander Platz, then the S-Bahn. . .'

'We don't have time, we have to run to the S-Bahn.' Ulf's anger rose as the cool of the evening sobered him.

'It is quicker to go to Schilling Strasse and the U-Bahn.'

'We have to go direct to the S-Bahn.' Ulf shouting his argument and using his strength till the girl allowed herself to be pulled. Ulf sprinting and the bag handle cutting at his palm, its bulk banging against his knee.

Jutte beside him with the long and sleek stride. Where did the girl find the speed ? Where did she find it after what she had done to him on her mother's bed? Down Lichtenberge Strasse, past the great edifices of the blocks of flats, past the blank windows, past the drawn curtains, past the emptied play grounds with the children's apparatus. Feet hammering on the pavement, echoing and raucous. Down to Holzmark Strasse. No one on the street to impede them, cars only distant and no hazard. Running across the road where there were pedestrian crossing lights, running on the pavements. Heaving chests and her breasts bouncing in the movement, his hand aching at the weight of the bag.