The German Numbers Woman

  Or was he? There was a slight envy in his tone, at the ups and downs of other men, of men who could see and had to take all that was thrown at them. ‘Don’t be. She’d been meaning to do it from the first moment she saw me and, since I’d been waiting for it, it came as no surprise. Life’s calmer, which is no bad thing.’

  ‘Is that the truth?’ Howard said. ‘Has she really gone?’

  ‘Ah, here’s our steak and chips.’ He pressed out his cigarette. ‘She certainly has. Nothing like it for clearing the decks. I’d been dreading it every minute for years, but now it’s happened I feel light-headed with freedom. The only thing is, if I get too happy I might not do my work so well. I could get careless.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think there’s any chance of that with you,’ Howard said. ‘Happiness takes more care of a man than misery.’

  ‘Ah! You think so? In my trade it’s better to have neither one thing nor the other. Nothing to think about except your work.’

  ‘Do you have much these days? Will you pass me the salt? If I search for it myself I might knock it for six.’

  ‘A certain amount. Time goes by when there’s nothing, and suddenly the big trip is on. Shall I put the salt on for you?’

  ‘I can do it. You’ll be going far?’

  ‘Maybe. It’s a millionaire’s yacht, a hundred-and-fifty footer, with good engines, and I’ll be part of the crew.’

  He was a quick eater, Howard surmised. ‘It sounds a good life, but I suppose dangerous at times.’

  ‘I’m used to it. But you’re right, though I wouldn’t want to do anything else. Nothing else I’m fitted for.’

  ‘That’s a blessed state. At least you’re fixed in your purpose, and know where you stand.’

  Howard felt him smile. ‘You could say that. I’m handy of course with the radio on such trips, and you can understand how they appreciate it.’

  ‘You mean using beacons for navigation?’

  ‘Oh, all sorts of things. I listen out for the good and the bad, you might say.’

  ‘If I’d had my sight I might well have gravitated to the same sort of work. I’d certainly give at least one of my arms to do what you do.’

  Richard felt pity for him, though only for a moment. ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘As much as I can be sure of anything.’

  ‘You’d have been good at it, no doubt about it, with all those juicy items you pick up.’

  Time again for a little silence, Howard decided, even if only to eat. He turned his head as if to look around the room, then concentrated on getting food from plate to mouth. The room seemed full, which explained Richard’s low tone while talking. He wanted no one to overhear. Well, neither did Howard, who felt comfortable in the controlling role of the conspirator.

  ‘For instance,’ Richard said at last, ‘these women you were hearing.’

  ‘Judy?’

  ‘You seem to base a hell of a lot on that contact.’

  ‘Well, I got in on the picture, didn’t I? But you had my report, and know as much as I do.’

  Richard seemed to think about it. ‘Perhaps. But it was like a story you made up.’

  Howard laughed. ‘Exactly. That’s what I told myself, and yet it all dropped into place. I imagine you would have come up with the same story, based on the evidence I got. Your intuition would have led you onto the same track.’

  ‘Maybe. But how right would I have been?’ He tapped his glass. ‘Another drink? I’m having one.’

  You’re going to need it more than me. ‘Half a pint, then.’

  He went to the bar and, while waiting, Howard surmised he was being looked at, so went on eating as if knowing he wasn’t.

  ‘But how much of a story do you think it was?’ Richard put the tankard into his hand.

  Howard set it down, quite capable of picking it up himself. ‘Don’t think I told you one half.’

  Richard’s pint clicked against his plate. ‘You mean you could make up an even more fantastic tale?’

  ‘Certainly. One which might get a good deal closer to the truth than fantasy. The more my mind worked on it, that is.’

  ‘I wish I’d waited till your next letter then. It would have made another of my days.’

  ‘I dare say it would. It might have made several.’

  ‘Well, tell it to me, if it won’t wait.’

  ‘Oh, it will wait right enough. Me having so little meat to put in my letters, I prefer to spin them out. That was certainly a nicely cooked steak. And the chips were just how I like them. You picked a good place.’

  ‘I sometimes come here with the crew, when we’re back from a trip.’

  So he’d been more than a few times to Rye, and bringing in what? ‘You can read me the dessert menu, if you would.’

  He seemed glad of a hiatus in their indeterminate chatter. ‘I can recommend the hot apple pie and mince tart, with cream.’

  ‘I’m ready when you are.’ Howard was also calm, and happy to wait for confirmation of his ideas about the future. He tasted his beer while Richard gave the order. Soon enough there would be time to tell Richard what he knew, or thought he knew, which was the same, or it would be in the end. Loud talk came from the door, and a clash of cutlery from the bar.

  ‘I need another drink,’ Richard said. ‘But that will be my last. How about you?’

  ‘I could run to the same again.’ Maybe he couldn’t, but he lived on two levels as far as drink went, alcohol kept in one compartment and clear faculties in another. Unless he had too much, which he never would. To be abstemious about his drink might bring suspicion, or distrust. All the same, much of him regarded Richard as a friend, a fellow sparks, a comrade in arms who’d had the generosity to invite him out, and who in the last months had made his life more interesting, probably more so than since he had been blasted into sightlessness. He liked him as much as you could like someone you would never fully know, and probably never be able to trust. A certain density of friendship had settled around them, in a situation so fraught with unknowingness that it could only strengthen the connection.

  He put the glass into Howard’s hand. ‘Here’s to your health.’

  ‘And yours.’

  They forked at their dessert. ‘I have a liking for sweet things,’ Howard said. ‘And this is delicious.’ Certainly more palatable than Laura’s often too health-conscious food. ‘It must have been good, coming here when you had landed, after all that salt water.’

  Richard laughed. ‘Yes, we had plenty of that, smack in our faces at times. But about this woman talking to her girlfriend?’

  ‘There’s no more to tell than I’ve let on already. She was on a boat called the Daedalus. You know who Daedalus was, in the old Greek mythology?’

  ‘I’ve forgotten.’ He hadn’t. ‘A blacksmith?’

  ‘Something like that. Artificer. He had a son called Icarus, and he made them both a pair of wings to fly to Italy. The father told the son not to go too close to the sun in case the wax melted. Of course, the bloody silly youth did, and he falls into the drink. Father flies on. I love those old legends.’

  ‘So her boat was called Daedalus?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re sure of that?’

  ‘Still is. I must have heard her say it fifty times. And the other woman was – is – the Pontifex. Which means pope or priest. But what’s in a name? Judy and Carla had a natter every night, until recently. They were sweet on each other, you might say. But from the few hints I got they were involved in some very funny business, going from one place to another.’

  ‘What business, do you think?’ He had finished his dessert, and lit a cigarette. ‘Did you get any idea?’

  ‘You seem to like the story. It’s got you hooked.’

  ‘I’m just interested.’

  ‘So was I. Who wouldn’t be? You can see how it would grab me, can’t you?’

  ‘Here, have one of mine.’ He passed a cigarette, and held the match. ‘The whole thing sounds fa
scinating, just the sort of storybook thing to talk about over lunch. And you said you weren’t very good at conversation!’

  ‘The thought of boring people horrifies me.’

  ‘You’d never do that. But what business did you decide they were in?’

  ‘It isn’t what I decided. It’s what I gathered.’

  ‘But not definite?’

  ‘Oh, definite enough for me. They go smuggling, from one place to another. Unloading stuff from Turkey and the islands. The cargo comes from Russia and places in central Asia. Or maybe from the Far East. The Golden Triangle, isn’t it called?’

  The silence was heavy, didn’t last, though long enough for Howard to know that he had scored: a bull’s-eye, with buckshot.

  ‘That’s a lot to assume, all the same.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have thought so if you’d heard what I heard.’

  ‘But what, exactly?’

  He shifted in his seat, as if to get closer. ‘Unfortunately, I didn’t have my tape recorder on, otherwise I would play it so that you could hear why I knew they were working the rough powder trade. Opium maybe, mostly.’

  ‘Opium? Did they say that?’ Anything more specific, and Howard would be lying.

  ‘As far as I heard.’ Keep it indefinite. ‘Tons of it. More than you could get from all the Flanders poppies put together, it seemed.’ The fact that Richard kept him on this topic, as he had known he would, told Howard more than he had been certain of before the meeting. ‘I suppose if I was a right thinking law abiding citizen I might put a word in somebody’s ear about it.’

  ‘And why didn’t you? Don’t you, I should say?’ It’s because he’s still not sure, or he’s lying. He’s in the airy realms of yarn telling. But if he isn’t, and his intention is hinted to Waistcoat, there’ll be a contract killing on his head before he can find the Belisha beacons to cross the road.

  Howard felt hot ash on his wrist, a bit of cigarette paper attached, but let it burn out – Richard noticed – without flinching. ‘It’s because that isn’t all. I could be waiting for something more to develop.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like what? Something so big it gives me palpitations.’ He regretted more than at any other time that he couldn’t see Richard’s face on coming out with: ‘The Azores.’

  ‘I’d better get the bill.’ Richard knew that if he couldn’t stand the heat he had better get out of the kitchen. The blind man was playing cup and ball, and scoring every time, the only good being that he didn’t see the jolt of his hand when he said Azores – though he recovered sufficiently to say: ‘We were made to recite a poem at school about the Azores. Didn’t it go something like: “At Flores in the Azores Sir Richard Grenville lay” – I forget the rest. I hated it.’

  ‘Tennyson,’ Howard said.

  ‘Yeh, the old bastard. But what about the Azores?’ he went on, calmly now.

  ‘Oh, yes, well, there’s going to be the biggest pick-up of the lot from there. Isn’t that enough?’ He stopped, feeling a fly on his hand and waiting to swat it. It flew away, as if disturbed by the tension in his veins. ‘Very big, all lined up.’

  ‘You heard that?’

  ‘In no uncertain terms.’

  No more fucking about, he decided. ‘When?’

  ‘In September, late, towards the end. But even they don’t know the exact date. Not yet. I’ll find out. I’m glued to the radio every night.’

  ‘They’re still talking?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they be?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They’re in love, you see. Indiscreet, perhaps, but not too much so. It’s just that someone like me can put the bits and pieces together, and come up with the right answer.’

  Richard had to play the only card possible, though with little hope of winning. He lit another cigarette, in spite of a sore spot in his chest, sent the smoke drifting over Howard’s empty plate. ‘Supposing I were a detective putting all the pieces together. I have to assume so, to be part of the game.’

  ‘It’s certainly absorbing us,’ Howard grinned.

  ‘Well, it’s such a good story. The end of it all for me would be that, finally, I wouldn’t believe there was any reality to it. Absolute garbage. I’d like it for the story – who wouldn’t? – but not for the truth.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe two people chatting on the radio would be so careless, and give away a scheme that might put them and a few others away for twenty years.’

  Howard moved spoon and fork around on his plate. ‘You could be right.’

  ‘I’m sure I am – would be, I mean.’

  But why so sure, on any terms? Truth was often, as he had heard, stranger than fiction, and instinct a sure guide to sort out both, the final lock on what was what. He was tiring of the cat-and-mouse zig-zags, ‘And yet.’

  ‘Yet what?’

  ‘My deductions are spot on. A few holes left, but not many. When they’re filled in I shall know what to do.’

  All was lost for a moment, with knobs on, forcing Richard to say: ‘Will you promise you won’t do anything until you’ve talked it over with me?’

  It was hard at times when you were blind not to think that others couldn’t see either, so Howard’s smile was more than ruthlessly put down, Richard only catching a figment of pain on his lips. He knew now all he needed to know. ‘If you’d like me to, out of friendship, yes. I’ll keep it to myself.’

  A laugh was necessary, to cover the fact that he felt a mere child. ‘Not that. Why should it be? I only ask because maybe the final story will be more finished if we put both our heads together. It’s such a good one. I like talking about it, that’s all.’

  ‘All right. I’ll keep to that,’ regarding Richard’s request as an attempt to save face.

  Which promise was the best Richard knew he would get out of such a subtle antagonist, at least until he had spoken to the others. ‘Before going back, let’s drive down to Dungeness.’

  ‘I’d like that.’ He knocked a chair over while standing up, which Richard righted in an instant. ‘We can watch the fish swimming in the warm water from the power station. Laura told me about them when we were there before.’

  TWENTY

  On the way to town Richard thought he would listen, for entertainment, to the latest morse letter from Howard. Each note’s absolute regularity could almost have been made on a machine, but after the initial greetings, and enquiries after health, he realised that the forthcoming text would be special and create no laughter. There was something eerie about the self-assured patter of his sending.

  He spun the tape back several times to check that he had heard correctly. Can I credit it? he asked himself, and a solid no was the response. The aura of a bad dream was hardly calculated to calm his mind. Certainly a fantasy on Howard’s part, though he couldn’t deny that it was one which cemented their relationship even further.

  He had been thinking, Howard said – he certainly had – but what he proposed, what he in fact demanded in a way not much short of blackmail, must have been in his mind far earlier than the time of their lunch together. That Howard had a unique mind compared to his own he had never doubted, though whether it was because of his affliction – so called: he was beginning to wonder – or because he would have been that way as a perfectly sighted man, he didn’t know. All he was sure of was that the association might land Howard in such a quantity of drek that it would bury him even above his unseeing head.

  As far as Howard went, and Howard was more than acute enough to know it, he had nothing to lose or, being as blind as a bat, assumed he hadn’t, but Richard, as far as he himself was concerned, had everything to lose, which could also be said for the rest of the crew. Howard must obviously realise as much, but didn’t bring the factor into his calculations. Had he been normal, and sent a handwritten letter, there would have been something to hang him by, but the dear and imperious morse, which only the two of them in the local circle could read, enc
losed them in secrecy and implicated Richard also, which Howard well knew, in his peculiar and illuminated ruthlessness.

  Richard didn’t know what to do, yet there was only one thing he could do. The sentences came clear and pat, no more dissimulation or hiding what Howard wanted. And what he did want was preposterous. It was unbelievable. ‘I seem to have the whole key to your expedition in my hands, even down to the details.’ He was lying, but that wasn’t significant anymore, though a blind man lying could be alarming enough to set the klaxon shrieking.

  Howard would know that Richard would know that he was lying, which was all part of the net he was casting. ‘It is up to me whether or not to blow the gaff on you and the rest. I could do it at any hour I chose, whether you go on the trip or not. Nothing would be easier. As you know, however, telling what I know to the police would put me on the wrong side of the law for listening, an anomalous position with regard to my conscience, but I expect they would forgive me for that.’

  What a mealy-mouthed old bastard! though Richard admired his subtlety and dexterity, especially when he went on: ‘Informing a third party would in any case allow me to get used to being against the law, so having contemplated such a course I can feel no qualms by going even further, even the whole hog, you might say. In my life a little chaos, and even danger (though I don’t anticipate that) can do no harm. Rather, it has an attraction which I find hard to steer away from.

  ‘What I propose then, want, demand if you like, is that you somehow or other take me with you to the Azores, on any pretext – I don’t care which you have to choose – but get me on that boat. If you want absolute secrecy from me as to why you are going then I can guarantee it hand on heart. After all, what can a blind man be witness to? That I go with you is the only condition for my silence, and from then on I will take my secret to the grave, as melodramatic as that may sound. I’m all set for it, nothing will stop me, and you have no other way out except to make sure I go with you.’

  Oh, yes there was a way out, but it was one which Howard’s imagination seemed not to have thought of, unless he just wasn’t saying. He lacked one of his five senses already, but could be deprived of the others, could lose even the use of his legs, or his hands or, worst of all, his ears, which could cut him off from life and mischief altogether. Maybe he knew this, well aware of the odds but, as before, thought he had nothing to lose, and because of one paltry affliction was prepared to gamble his empty life away.