Exposure (11 page)

It was a full half-hour before a girl came with the form duly signed and countersigned. Ben murmured to Julia, ‘I think she's a dyke. I wasn't getting anywhere.'

‘You should try turning on the charm,' she whispered back.

‘Haven't any.' He followed her down the stairs into the lower floor.

There was the musty smell of disuse and slight damp, and the artificial light emphasized the bare and ugly room with its stacked files and the metal table with a single hard chair.

The girl spoke in German. ‘The file for the Control Commission on refugees in 1949 is number 17203. I can leave you. You have two hours before we close. There's a bell by the door. Please ring when you have finished.'

‘I will,' Harris said. He gave her a big smile, and said to Julia, ‘Was that better?'

‘Not much. She thought you were going to bite her. Leave the soft soap to me, Ben. It's not your style. Now – I'm in your hands.'

‘Nothing!' Ben Harris exclaimed. The air was dusty and cold; their time was almost up. ‘Same stuff. No clue. Phyllis Lowe got him out of the camp, we know where they lived – I tried that and it wasn't even the same house any more. Official notification she was leaving for England. Nothing –' he repeated. ‘Come on, J, we're wasting our time here.'

Julia leant on the table; her elbows hurt from the hard surface. There was dust in her throat from the old paperwork and her hands were dirty. ‘It can't be right,' she said. ‘It can't just stop like that. It doesn't read right. Ben – if we can come in here and be left alone with this stuff, what's to stop someone else coming and taking something out?'

‘What? You suggesting King's been here?'

‘I think someone has. Look, don't you realize that there isn't any address or reference given for Phyllis Lowe apart from the bare details of her position with UNRRA. They wouldn't have accepted her guarantee for a displaced person without knowing she was a respectable, responsible person. She'd have had to make an official application to start with. There's no copy of that. No copy of the officer dealing with it replying, or giving his recommendation. Just that one release document. Let me have another look at it. Let's see the page numbers.'

He turned the file backwards. ‘There,' he said. ‘No luck. No page number. Nothing else was attached. But you're right. There would have been correspondence, references, all that sort of cross-checking. Why the hell didn't I see it before?'

‘Because you weren't looking,' she said. ‘What you saw was what's been left for anyone to find. Proof that she got King out and then applied to leave the country with him. You didn't look because you weren't looking for Phyllis Lowe. You were looking for something about King. Wait a minute – this signature – Major Grant.' She stood up quickly.

‘Ben, if we can track him down, we'll get the information.'

‘If he's alive,' Harris said slowly. ‘There were some very young Majors at the end of the war. He could be in his seventies. You're pretty bright. Major A. B. Grant, liaison officer UNRRA. Right there, under the signature. Let's go. We can get someone working on it right away.'

She shivered; the temperature had dropped and the room with its dusty archives was dank and cold. The files had been doctored. Which meant that they were on the right track. Harold King had built up Phyllis Lowe into a surrogate mother. But he didn't want the world to know any more about her.

Harris rang the bell, and after a few minutes the same girl came in. She was obviously anxious to get rid of them. It was time to close the offices. ‘You are satisfied?' she asked.

‘Yes, thank you. We found some useful information,' Ben answered.

‘Sign here please.' She put a release form in front of them; it was an undertaking that file no. 17203 had been examined and returned and that nothing had been altered or removed. ‘Both signatures, please,' she said.

Ben pushed the form across to Julia with his pen.

‘You must have a lot of these,' he remarked. ‘Do you keep them all?'

‘There's not so many,' the girl told him. ‘Not for such a long time ago. We have everything up to date on computer now. But this old stuff –' she raised her shoulders slightly. ‘– it just lies here getting dusty. One day someone will clear it out. We could use the space.'

‘I'm sure,' Ben agreed. ‘How long have you worked here?'

‘Three years. Thank you, Fräulein,' she took the form from Julia.

‘Where will you keep this form?' he asked her. She moved to the door, urging them out. ‘We don't keep it. It goes on computer. Excuse me, but we must hurry. I'll take you upstairs.' She locked the filing room behind her, and their steps clattered on the stone floors and up the stairs to the main office. They stepped outside into the late-afternoon sunshine.

He called out, ‘
Danke schön
,' and the girl said,
‘Bitte,'
and shut the door.

Julia and he began to walk to the hired car.

From the ground-floor window, the girl watched them go. Then she went into the receptionist's office and called out ‘Frau Walter?' No answer. She had gone on the tick of the clock, as she always did. Other members of the staff were talking and getting their coats on as they prepared to leave. The old porter-cum-caretaker would lock all the doors and check the windows before he too left.

The girl picked up the telephone in the office and punched a number. It was an answering machine at the other end of the line. She spoke quickly, but clearly. ‘This is Minna. An English couple came here, poking round the exchange commission file – 1949. I'll take a note of their names.' She hung up, looked round to make sure nobody had seen her make the call. Then she joined the trickle of secretaries and local officials leaving the Bauhaus.

‘I've got a friend,' Ben said, ‘he's got contacts in the War Office. He might be able to check on the records.'

‘You've got friends everywhere,' Julia remarked.

‘Part of my job,' he answered. ‘Contacts are eighty per cent of getting a story first. I did this guy a favour a few years ago. A well-known General was caught buggering rent boys in some gay club. He was retired on the usual grounds, ill-health. He'd been a good soldier and he had friends. They didn't want to see him crucified. I killed the story.' He looked at her. ‘I'm old-fashioned, J. I don't believe in character assassination just for the fun of it. Even though it sells newspapers. They'll find Major A. B. Grant if he's still alive.' He checked his watch. ‘Too late to call up now. I'll get on to him in the morning. I know a nice little restaurant where we could have dinner, if you like – if it's not closed down.'

‘Why not? I'll meet you in the bar at eight.'

‘Seven,' Ben corrected. ‘This is provincial Germany. They eat early.'

Felix had found a one-bedroomed studio in Pimlico. The girl he had casual sex with noticed a ‘to rent' sign in the window of the converted house and rang him to suggest he looked at it. He knew that it was close to where she lived, but shrugged that off.

She was a fun girl, but he wasn't going to get involved. He had packed up his clothes and the stereo and his CDs; it was lucky Julia was going to be away. Meeting, however briefly, in the flat would be awkward for both of them. He had arranged to sleep out for the two nights before she left. He felt no animosity towards her.

He was surprised to feel relieved that the relationship was over. He had never admitted to himself until then that, in spite of his determination to be independent and live his own life, he had found the last year increasingly oppressive. He owed Julia, and he didn't feel comfortable. That discomfort had made him more selfish and wayward to offset the obligation. I'm a free man, was what he was saying to her and to himself, but it hadn't been true. Toy Boy had stung her to indignation. Typically he had shrugged it off, but he recognized that it was just bravado. The jeers had rankled, and he had punished Julia by being extra macho in his attitude. His dominance was sexual, and he used it to subdue her, and even inflict little humiliations. He looked round the flat they'd shared together, at those bloody awful pictures she was so pleased with, and heaved a huge sigh of relief that it was over. And because the burden was lifted, he left her a note.
Hope I haven't left too much of a mess. Thanks for some great times. I'm at 832 8474, if you feel like a drink some time. Felix
. That made him feel better still, and he went out with his belongings with a light heart and put the keys back through the letter-box. The retired detective keeping watch from a parked car on the opposite side of the street saw him go. He'd been one of a forty-eight-hour watch on the place, ever since Joe said he wanted it staked out. The woman had driven off with luggage, and now the boyfriend had moved out. It was clear for them to get into the flat.

Joseph Patrick was a fixer. He'd learned to manipulate from his childhood in a Dublin orphanage. They'd given him the surname Patrick because he'd been dumped on the doorstep on St Patrick's day. He was a small, weedy child, who had to use his wits to survive the bullying of bigger boys and the pitiless Christian discipline of the Brothers who were in charge of human refuse like himself. Bastards, slum children, abandoned through shame or cruel economic necessity. Children from respectable families who were smitten by death or debts or the curse of alcoholism. The orphanage opened its doors to them all. Few left unscathed when they reached adulthood. Joe Patrick learned two lessons in survival very quickly. Make yourself useful to the people with the power, that applied equally to the bully boys who ruled inside the dormitories and the members of staff who ruled the whole community, and never, ever, give trouble or support anyone who did. He knew no loyalty except to himself. He conformed to the rigid religious routine without absorbing any moral sense. He became known as someone who would run errands, spy on troublesome fellows, accommodate homosexual demands if they were made upon him. He left the orphanage with a good reference from the Brothers and an introduction to a small shopkeeper who employed youths at their behest. Within three months Joe had opened the back door to a gang that beat the old man unconscious and robbed the till. They knocked Joe on the head for good measure, so he was not suspected.

His entry into the criminal community of the city was on the same pattern as life in the orphanage. He made himself useful and he didn't show a high profile. He knew he was much cleverer than the men who gave him a few quid for doing their dirty work, watching shops or private premises that were targets for burglary.

He went on to scout for girls likely to turn prostitute, hanging around the bars and pubs, looking for runaways or teenagers who wanted drugs. He supplied the drugs, and introduced the users to the pimps who ran them. He had a couple of tarts himself, and he beat them as mercilessly as he had been beaten as a child, if they slacked off or tried to keep some of the money. He was tall and thin, with Irish good looks and bad teeth. He combed his curly dark hair and dressed in trendy clothes, and the police employed him as a snout. It was a dangerous tightrope, even for someone as agile as Joe Patrick. He had a drinking partner, a drunken copper who had more in common with the crooks he spent his time with than the Force. It was time for Joe to get out of Dublin. The word was out for him. Time to get out while he was still on two legs. Joe took the advice. He had some money, a lot of clothes, and an address his pal had given him. He went to London and introduced himself to a small, seedy firm of private detectives.

They hired him as a legman.

And that was how Harold King found him. He'd worked for King for eighteen years, starting with a small surveillance job on a journalist who had written uncomplimentary articles about King Publishing and its pornographic output. Joe was told to dig dirt. He didn't find any so he supplied it. He still ran two or three girls on the side, and he set the journalist up with one of them. He photographed her giving him a blow job in the back of the car. There were no more articles about King's porno magazines. Impulse and curiosity made King ask to see him.

The man had initiative. Nobody had told him to set up the victim. King saw the cheap, flashy man in his mid twenties, with all the cunning of the petty criminal in his sharp eyes. But there was a brain under the mophead of curls. King sized him up and came to a decision.

He could use someone like this gutter rat. And he would always be able to control him. He looked him up and down and drew on his big cigar and said, ‘You want to work for me?'

The bad teeth, legacy of poor diet and neglect, fanned out into an ingratiating smile. ‘Sure. Sure I do.'

‘And you don't mind what you have to do?'

The shoulders lifted under their over-wide pads.

‘I'm not partic'lar. Whatever.' He had a thick nasal Dublin whine that offended King. It would amuse him to take this piece of human garbage and remodel it.

‘Then see a dentist and get something done about your teeth. If you work for me you look the way I want you to. You talk the way I want and you dress the way I tell you. Understand me?'

Men with power over him had been talking to Joe Patrick in those terms all his life. He had no pride, only a price.

He ran his hand through the curls on his head.

‘You're the boss, Mr King. That's great by me.'

As he waved him out of the office, King called him back suddenly.

‘And get that nit nest cut off!'

Joe Patrick had been his man ever since. He was barbered and well dressed now, his accent smoothed into phoney American; when he went to the States to sort something out for King he lapsed back into the brogue. He had a smart flat off Hyde Park and he drove a BMW. He was a businessman, with cards printed to prove it. Joseph G. Patrick, export import, and an office address in Covent Garden. He lived with two coloured girls and he had supplied King with women since he married and the ‘starlets' and ‘models' he liked to be seen with in public were given the shove. No girl who serviced King would have dared talk about it. Joe Patrick had maimed women if they crossed him.