The German Numbers Woman (18 page)

‘I was in your room a few days ago, to see if it wanted cleaning. You'd gone off to do your good deed for the blind man. Your wastepaper basket was full. You always empty it to save me the trouble, I know, but I couldn't help noticing what was written on the sheets.'

A queue of traffic stalled them on the way to Rye. ‘Oh, it was just rubbish for putting in the stove.'

‘Why burn it, though? They collect waste paper in the village. Every bit counts.'

‘Only newspapers. Anyway. I like to burn it, because strictly speaking it's against the law to write such stuff, even though I only do it out of curiosity. I've a passion for poking my nose into other people's business. The world's full of shortwave listeners doing the same. It passes the dead hours when I don't know what to do with myself, between getting work on the boats.'

She saw little point continuing because, after all that, it was his problem, or business. Even so, he had stopped talking, and somebody had to break the silence now that the air inside the car thickened, and not only from cigarette smoke. She could tell he was worried because, going towards Folkestone, he drove as carefully as if the car had L plates. ‘These transcripts, I found them absolutely fascinating. I'd never known they were like that.'

‘Like what?'

He sounded irritated, or nervous. He was both, but she went on: ‘All to do with smuggling, from various government stations it looked like, and the police in France, as well as diplomatic traffic. Priceless. But dynamite as well, I should think, wouldn't you?'

‘What else do you expect me to take? Weather forecasts get boring after a while.'

‘But couldn't all that information be useful to somebody?'

‘It could, I suppose.' The Merc in front seemed to be slowing, so he flashed and shot out. As he drew level the Merc, with four youths inside, increased speed, and both went nearly a ton along the flat before Richard got in because another car was heading towards them. Then he noticed the Merc behind trying the same trick on somebody else. No use slowing down, and starting a fight with four of them.

‘I'm hoping to get out of this car alive,' she said. ‘I don't fancy life as a basket case.'

‘You can't blame me for that.' He picked up the new mobile phone and punched in 999. ‘Police? There's a Mercedes' – he gave the number – ‘with four lads inside on the A259 east from Rye, playing murder games when people try to overtake.' He put it down. ‘You saw what they did.'

He didn't like people on the road who broke the law, she knew. ‘But those papers, don't you pass some of the information to other people?'

Changing his mind about stopping on the coast, he turned onto a winding lane towards higher ground in the distance, as if starting a circle to get back home. ‘I hate that road on Sunday.'

‘I see what you mean.'

‘No, I don't pass it on.'

‘Is that the truth?'

The truth was what he told her whether it was true or not. A woman who didn't believe your lies when you said they were the truth ought to be sent packing because there was no greater injustice. The relationship was intolerable from that point on. He might not believe certain things that she told him but he could never let her suspect it. He pressed the tab to let fresh air into the car. ‘Why should I lie?'

She only knew that he was lying. ‘I wouldn't know.'

‘Have I ever lied to you?'

‘Only by not telling me things.'

‘There was never any point in telling you what you didn't need to know.'

‘There is that, I suppose.'

He laughed inside, which gave his face a grimmer expression. ‘There certainly is.'

‘On the other hand,' she said, ‘we
are
married, which means we're fairly close, shall I say. Everything that happens to me, I tell you.'

‘That's not the same.'

‘I like to think it is.'

So would he, but wasn't able to. Silence was the best policy, though once something had a grip on her mind there was little hope.

‘For example,' she said, ‘when I read such things from those papers I wondered about the smuggling part, and wondered whether you have anything to do with it.'

‘You would, wouldn't you? That's normal. But the answer is still no.' He hoped that would satisfy her, but it didn't. It never had. He took a sharp corner in the lane and bumped a verge below the hedge, which was just as well because a car coming overfast barely missed him, a mere tick on the wing mirror. The answer had to be no, and no again, till the end of time.

‘I can't believe it.'

She was doing well as an interrogator, so would he have to stop the car and tip her out, as the only way of bringing it to an end? ‘Why not?'

‘It's a feeling.'

‘Oh, well, is that so? We all have them.'

‘Based on evidence. I've got to believe what's before my eyes. You don't sit at that radio day in and day out for fun. I can't believe it. I don't think I ever did. The stuff you take is lethal. You sell it to whoever it's useful to. They must pay you a pretty high price. I would, if I was in their game.'

‘You have a good imagination.'

‘I don't need much of one to think that.'

‘I'm sure I would.'

‘You're not me.'

‘No, I'm not.' If they fell to bickering maybe the argument would go away. He joined a B road heading towards a village, the church tower visible. ‘We'll find a pub there. I could do with a drink.'

So could she. To question him further would be futile, and demeaning since he would admit nothing. In any case she knew the truth, and would have to be satisfied with that, and with him knowing she knew. Like so much else in their life it would remain unspoken, just another sore festering in the relationship, but one so charged with danger and ruination that destruction seemed the only prospect. She couldn't live in peace with it, which he didn't know, or didn't want to know, or was incapable of knowing. Or he just didn't care, or couldn't afford to care.

When they first got together and she had taken him to meet her father he had said, as soon as Richard went down the road for some cigarettes: ‘What do you want to marry somebody like that for? I wouldn't trust him an inch. He's as sly as they come. I can see it in his eyes. I'll be worrying every minute you're with him' – or words to that effect. Well, he didn't worry for long, because a heart attack took him off three months later. But it was galling that he'd been right. ‘I'm hungry as well.'

They gave their orders for the meal, and stood at the bar, Amanda with a pale sherry, and he a vodka with a cube of ice. ‘You know I love you, don't you?' he said.

‘Yes, but I wish you trusted me as well. Or doesn't your sort of love include trust?' She'd intended not harping on it anymore, but was upset, fighting back tears, so it just came out. ‘I always thought it did, or at least I hoped, but I know different now.'

‘Oh, don't say that.' He felt like throwing the vodka into her face. Nothing less would stop her, so he had to stand there and take it till she packed it in. The pub was full of the green wellie brigade, as he had known it would be from the phalanx of Volvos and Land-Rovers outside. Braying voices made it hard to hear, their faces too close. ‘I trust you as much as I would trust anybody.'

‘Oh, thank you very much,' she scorned.

He turned, to look across the dining section. ‘They're taking long enough with our bloody meal. I suppose they want us to order more drinks. They never miss a trick in these places.'

‘I think I'm going to need another, in any case.'

‘I can't, though, because I'm driving.' A number was called. ‘That's ours.'

She was no longer hungry, but split the fillets of fresh mackerel in two, and ate a piece with some bread. Lack of honesty had given him an appetite, not surprising. He was empty but for the telling of lies, and it seemed as if his body was also empty, the way he was eating. In his certainty he had all the answers, and therefore more inner peace than she could ever have with him. The distance was increasing between them, which touched her with despair, and made her wonder whether she shouldn't walk out now, just go, leave him to it. Surely one of the green wellie brigade would give her a lift back to town. The older she got the more she needed to be close to him, but as time went on such a necessity had less importance on his part. He didn't want it, and maybe never had, though there had been some promise in the early years.

‘You're being unreasonable, in quizzing me.' His first course finished, he was disturbed at her not eating. ‘I thought we were coming out to have a pleasant meal.' He refilled her glass with white wine. ‘But something has got into you.'

‘It's nothing.'

‘Oh yes, it is.'

Now
he
would put on a show of understanding her. Either that or he would be angry. He was so simple it was impossible not to know him, and they had been through the same pattern many times. After needing to be close she no longer wanted his sympathy, or whatever it was. She only wanted to finish the meal, clear out, and go home. ‘Let's not talk about it.'

‘A minute ago you wanted to.'

‘Now I don't.' He looked miserable. No doubt he felt it. She hoped so, but that too was a show. ‘There's no point talking if you can't tell the truth.'

Their plates were taken away. ‘I wish to God I worked in a bank, or some sort of nice nine-to-five office. You'd like that, I'm sure. Then I could amuse you with all the scandal and tittle-tattle I'd heard during the day.'

She laughed at the idea, not wanting to, but it tripped out. ‘I just expect you to be what you are.'

‘That's exactly what I am. But you don't like it.'

‘No, but I like you.' All said and done. ‘And I love you, that's what I know.' She asked herself if it were really true, whether she was telling the truth only to emphasise his lies, but if she wasn't, which seemed more and more likely, let him be deceived for a change. She would say anything at the moment to ensnare him and get a straight answer. After she had read those sheets of incriminating paper she had screwed each one up and thrown it back into the basket so that he wouldn't know they had been disturbed. He must have burned them the following day, all but the most blatant drug-related transcript, which she kept hidden, without knowing why. Anyone she showed it to would realise straight away what it was. She imagined the police going crazy at the sight of it, and sending a dozen squad cars to get him. But oh damn, they could take her away as well, on the assumption that even if she wasn't as deep in it as he was she might well have something to tell them.

‘I just ask you to trust me,' he was saying, ‘because if you can't, there's not much point in staying together.'

It was as if she had caught him having an affair. Once she had, and he insistently denied it, his last ditch ploy for defence was that he would pack his bags and go if she didn't believe him. Such ultimatums were childish and base. Those without trust and honesty were never able to grow up, be mature, responsible, and truly loving. ‘I don't trust you,' she said, by now enjoying the rack of lamb. ‘How can I? If you tell me I'm wrong, in the face of such black and white evidence, what can I think?' He really wasn't worthy of straight talking, didn't deserve it, was best left alone.

He wondered if others in the same game had this kind of trouble with wives or girlfriends. They probably told them all about it, boasted even, but threatened to disembowel them if they breathed a word. Either that, or they kept their mouths firmly shut. It was a career exclusively for button lips, as Waistcoat had said. They told their women to mind their own business, and they did because they didn't want to lose such an easy going life. He couldn't trust Amanda because she was a different type of woman. Reaching across, he laid a hand on her wrist. ‘Look, since you know about it, why keep on asking me if it's true?'

She smiled. ‘All of it, though?'

‘Up to my neck.'

There, it was done, said. She would never breathe a word, of course. Maybe someone else would have taken his messages and plastered them all over the district as handbills, but not her. They went on eating. ‘You're a difficult bastard.'

He seemed about to laugh. ‘Am I?'

She had always known it, but hadn't thought to tell him. What greater proof of love can there be than that your partner gives you something to churn up your liver about? ‘You certainly are.'

‘I try not to be. I just don't want you worrying.'

‘Oh thank you very much again.'

Neither of them could do anything about that. If his boat went down she didn't want to go with it. Love was love, but self sacrifice was unhealthy. ‘I feel much better now it's in the open.'

‘So do I,' he admitted, unable to know whether he did or not, but there was no doubt he felt better at having made her happy, marvelling at how easy it had been, though far from assuming he had been right to capitulate, wondering if she realised what she had got herself into. At least he'd make sure to burn everything in the basket from now on. Lifting his glass, he looked into those palest of blue-grey eyes which he had found so sexy in the beginning and still did: ‘Here's to us, darling.'

She clinked his glass. ‘Who else? We have to stick together' – though I hope not till the edge of doom, at least not if I know it. Her hard won victory brought a steely attitude into her thinking not known before. He still didn't trust her, and never would, even though it might be to his advantage to do so. He was just hell bent on destroying himself.

THIRTEEN

After dark, when nothing more of significance could be expected to come through, Richard thought of sending a morse letter to Howard, but he hadn't reckoned on the difficulty of filling a half hour tape, or deciding what sort of items to mention. Nothing in common between them beyond the hobby of shortwave eavesdropping, he had no notion where to start. In any case he had never written a letter of more than a few lines in his life, and to concoct one at eighteen or twenty words per minute by morse code would have to cover at least two pages of transcript. He needed to think of something that even Howard hadn't heard on the radio. Ordinary chatter of everyday life would be too much like cheating. The main thing was to begin.