A Dead Man In Trieste

Chapter Nine

Koskash was taken away by the police; and the next morning Seymour went to the police station to find out what had become of him. He went first to Kornbluth. Kornbluth looked uncomfortable and said: ‘It is nothing to do with me,’ After a moment he added: ‘You will have to see Schneider.’ And Seymour realized that this was one which involved the other sort of police. ‘There are two sorts of police in Trieste,’ Alfredo had said: the ordinary ones, the municipal police, and the special sort that you didn’t have in England.

‘Yes, we are holding him,’ said Schneider.

‘On what charges?’

‘He has not been charged yet,’ said Schneider, ‘but they will include committing acts which are against the interests of the State. These are serious charges. And there are others.’

‘May I see him?’

‘Later.’

‘I shall, of course, be sending a report to London.’

‘And we shall, of course, be lodging a formal protest about the Consulate’s behaviour.’

This, thought Seymour, was looking increasingly like something the Foreign Office was going to have to sort out and not him. In fact, he would need to tread very delicately. If he didn’t watch out he would be drawn far beyond any of the roles he was supposed to be filling, whether of King’s Messenger or of policeman.

‘What would be the nature of your protest?’ he asked.

‘Allowing diplomatic premises to be used for improper purposes.’

‘I am not sure it was allowed. Whatever Koskash was doing, he was doing on his own.’

‘Of course you would say that.’

Seymour was silent: because, of course, if what Koskash had said was true, it had been allowed: by Lomax.

‘I am just a Messenger,’ he said, ‘and it would not be proper for me to anticipate what my government’s response will be.’

‘Quite so,’ said Schneider.

‘I am merely making enquiries so that I can report more accurately what has happened.’

‘Of course.’

‘Actually, I am not quite sure what did happen. Perhaps you can inform me.’

‘First,’ said Schneider, ‘there is something that you must explain: your own presence there.’

Seymour hesitated, then decided that nothing was to be lost by telling the truth: up to a point.

‘I suspected that something might be occurring that was in need of explanation.’

Schneider nodded.

‘We, too. We have been watching the Consulate for some time. There was a suspicion that Consulate staff had been assisting people of interest to us to leave the country illegally. Through the provision of false papers. I arranged for two of my men to present themselves to the Consulate — ’

‘One moment; not to the Consulate but to a person in the Consulate, who was acting without the Consul’s authority.’

‘So you say. Yes. However — ’

‘And when they presented themselves. .?’

‘Papers were issued to them. On that basis I ordered Mr Koskash’s arrest.’

‘What does he say?’

‘Nothing yet. We questioned him last night and we shall continue the questioning this morning.’

‘Are you in a position to tell me the identity of the people for whom the papers were being made out? In general terms, that is. Their nationality, for instance,’

‘They were Serbs. Students.’

Seymour thought quickly. There was not much he could do about this. In fact, he had better stay out of it. It was definitely something for the Foreign Office to sort out. The only thing in this that concerned him was Lomax’s role in it; and, perhaps, the less said about that, the better.

‘I am sure London will be as distressed by this incident as I am,’ he said smoothly, ‘and while I cannot anticipate what they will say, I am confident that they will express their regret that one of their employees, a local employee, of course, should have behaved in such a way.’

He felt slightly uncomfortable saying this. He quite liked Koskash and felt he was letting him down. But he could see no alternative. On this, Koskash was on his own. The most Seymour could do for him — and this was probably in the interests of Britain as well — was to play the thing down. ‘While, I am sure, they would not wish to condone the incident, I wonder if it should not be kept in proportion? After all, from what you say, these were only students — ’

‘Mr Seymour,’ said Schneider, ‘do you have the faintest idea what you are talking about?’

Seymour swallowed. Perhaps he was not doing as well at the diplomatic business as he had thought he was doing.

‘I am, of course,’ he said hastily, ‘only a Messenger.’

‘Yes. So you say. Well, Mr Seymour, here in Trieste students are not, perhaps, as they are in England. They are not schoolchildren. We are not talking about making faces at the teacher or throwing chalk. We are talking about throwing bombs. All across the Empire there have been incidents. And that is reality, Mr Seymour, not vague possibility.’

‘But why — ’

‘Serbian, Mr Seymour. Serbian. They were Serbian students.’

‘Yes, but — ’

Schneider sighed.

‘You really do not know, do you? Perhaps you really are just a Messenger. Or perhaps it is Trieste is such a small place to people in London, perhaps they think that it is so small that nothing important can happen there. Well, let me tell you, Mr Seymour, that if they think that, then they are mistaken. Because one thing is bound to another thing and great things are bound to small.’

He stopped and looked at Seymour questioningly.

‘You know, at least, that two years ago we took Bosnia under our protection?’

‘Of course,’ said Seymour, in injured tones, grateful to the newspaper seller for what he had learned from him. ‘Everyone knows that!’

‘They had, of course, been under our protection for the previous thirty years, but that was by international mandate. It was time to tidy things up. So, as I say, we took them — ’

‘Over,’ said Seymour.

‘They joined the Empire. Naturally there were people who were opposed. And not just people, countries. If you can call Serbia a country.’

‘Serbia was against it?’

‘Violently. In all senses. And especially the young. The students in the universities, the young officers in the army. Passionate without quite knowing what they were being passionate about. Now, of course, there are many students throughout the Empire, students of all nationalities: Hungarian, Slovakian, Montenegrin. . We pride ourselves on that. And among them are Bosnian students, now part of the Empire, unwillingly, and Serbian students, always likely to cause trouble. So, well, they caused trouble. And, naturally, we have had to crack down on them.’

‘I can see that,’ said Seymour, ‘but why crack down so heavily? Does not that, with the young, lead to more trouble? If you do it with too heavy a hand?’

‘Too heavy a hand?’ said Schneider, astonished. ‘But this is serious, Mr Seymour! We are not talking about regulating football on the playing-fields of Eton. Although from what I hear of English playing-fields. . No, Mr Seymour, we are talking bombs. Bombs!

‘And we are not talking about bombs just in Trieste. Or even Vienna. We are talking about bombs right across Europe. Do you understand that, Mr Seymour? We are talking war. Because, you see, one thing is bound to another, and great things are bound to small. Let us say, for instance, that one day, in some small place, call it Trieste, some foolish student throws a bomb and kills someone important, a Governor, say, or a member of the Royal Family. And suppose we learn that a certain country is responsible. Call it Serbia. Then Austria-Hungary will not take that lying down. They will say to that country: you must do something about this. And if you don’t. .

‘And now the problems really start. For Russia says: leave Serbia alone, we will not have this. And Germany, perhaps, says: you keep out of it, we stand by our Hapsburg allies. Countries are bound by treaties. They are obliged to act if the treaty is invoked by some country to which they are allied. One thing is bound to another, great things are sometimes bound to small. A bomb thrown in Trieste could set off a chain of events which could lead to war. Yes, war, Mr Seymour. I see you doubt me. But I am telling the truth, believe me. One little thing could pull in another bigger thing and then another thing. You go down to your taverna at night and you sit drinking and you think the world is secure, safe. There is order and you take it for granted. But I think that peace in Europe is like a house of cards. One card falls and then all the others fall with it.

‘So you see, Mr Seymour, this is not a matter of students playing games. They may be playing games, but I am not. I do not want that first card to fall here in Trieste. That first bomb to be thrown. And so … so I take students seriously. And especially those students of yours, Mr Seymour. Because I know it is not chalk that they have been getting ready to throw, but something else,’

Seymour walked away from the police station smarting, feeling that he had been given a history lesson which he didn’t need. Or perhaps he did need it. International politics hadn’t figured high on the curriculum of a policeman in the East End. Nor had Bosnia, Serbia and the rest of them — indeed, the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire — loomed large in what he had done at school. When Seymour had left school at fourteen, the teachers had not yet got round to Bosnia. Of course, he knew something about Central Europe from his work with immigrant families in the East End but there were gaps. Bucovina, for example, where was that? Hands up all those who could place Bucovina!

Not Seymour. He was beginning to regret his lack of knowledge of the international scene. Perhaps he had better get along to the library with Maddalena and do some reading.

But what a load of codswallop it was! All that talk about war! Not a chance, thought Seymour. The sort of rubbish that military-minded people, whether in the army or high up in the police, were always talking. And all that stuff about one thing being bound to another, great things to small! Suppose small things were small? Suppose the students were just making faces, throwing chalk? Overreacting as Schneider was doing would just make things worse, turn all the Maddalenas into real revolutionaries!

No, it was all codswallop. And probably all Koskash had been doing, out of the misguided goodness of his heart, was giving some naive youngsters a helping hand. It had been wrong of him but not very wrong and Lomax had probably been right to go along with it. From what Maddalena had said, it was the kind of thing that he, with all his evident sympathy for people and underdog causes, would do. Not exactly what he should be doing as Consul, of course, but. .

All the same, Seymour was uneasy. What was it that Schneider had said at the end? That he knew that they were not just chalk throwers. Was that just talk? Or did he really know that? Because if that was indeed the case, then Koskash might have been doing rather more than giving some innocents a helping hand. And if Lomax had condoned it, then, perhaps, he, too, was in a lot deeper than he should have been.

The trouble was that if it was just a question of helping relatively innocent students to escape, Seymour could see no reason why that should have led to Lomax being killed; whereas if Lomax had been involved more deeply in the kind of thing that Schneider was hinting at then Seymour could see quite a few reasons why he might have been.

Yes, there they were again sitting at the table. Didn’t they ever do any work? Or were artists in Trieste al fresco too and just sat around drinking? A good life for some, thought Seymour.

Marinetti was handing round some sheets of paper. He gave one to Seymour. Seymour read:

Coffee

Sweet memories frappées

Marmalade of the Glorious Dead

Roast Mummies with Professors’ Livers

Archaeological Salad

Stew of the Past, with explosive peas in historical sauce

Fish from the Dead Sea

Lumps of blood in broth

Demolition Starters

Vermouth

‘What the hell is this?’ he said.

‘It is the menu for the celebratory dinner after my Futurist Evening,’ said Marinetti. ‘You, too, are of course invited,’

‘Well, thank you. But. .’

He looked at the menu doubtfully.

‘It certainly whets the appetite,’ said Luigi; uncertainly, however.

‘But why does it do so, in a manner of speaking, back to front? asked Lorenzo.

‘Because my Evening will set out to reverse normality,’ said Marinetti.

‘Oh, I see. Silly of me not to spot it.’

There was a little pause. Then Alfredo said:

‘Does that mean that the Future is actually the Past?’

‘No, it doesn’t,’ said Marinetti, annoyed. ‘It suggests that we enter the Future by embracing disorder.’

‘Oh.’

Then Luigi said:

‘But why, in that case, are you having the dinner after the Evening? Why not have it before?’

‘Because,’ said Marinetti, glaring, ‘there are dozens of things I still have to do before the Evening can get off the ground. Otherwise there will be bloody chaos!’

Seymour stood there, holding a copy of the menu in his hand, nonplussed.

It was no surprise, when he got back to the Consulate, to find Mrs Koskash standing at the door. He let her in. She was dry-eyed and composed and sat down, apparently relaxed, in the chair he offered.

‘Tell me what happened,’ she said.

When he had finished, she sat thinking.

‘Did they go into the Consulate?’ she asked. ‘Was he actually inside when they arrested him?’

‘They went in,’ said Seymour. ‘But then he came out. I think he was actually outside when he was formally arrested.’

Mrs Koskash sighed.

‘The fool!’ she said. ‘If he had stayed inside they couldn’t have arrested him.’

‘I think he may have known that. He said, though, that he had done enough harm to the Consulate as it was.’

Mrs Koskash sighed again. She sat for a moment looking down at her feet.

‘I should not have persuaded him,’ she said.

‘No,’ said Seymour. ‘And you did persuade him, didn’t you? He wouldn’t have done it if you hadn’t talked him into it. He is not a Serb, after all. But you are, aren’t you? And I think you were the one who thought it up. You’re practical, aren’t you, and committed. You organize things, not just for the Serbs but for the local Socialists. And perhaps others as well.’

‘I am active, yes,’ said Mrs Koskash. ‘A lot of people aren’t.’

‘And caring, I think. So I think you might well have set up an escape route for dissident Serbs.’

She did not deny it.

‘I am sorry about using the Consulate,’ she said softly.

‘And your husband? What about using him?’

She looked at him hard.

‘That is something I have to work out for myself. Perhaps I shall go to them and say: “You have arrested the wrong person. Koskash is not to blame. I am the one you want.” However, that is no concern of yours.’

She stood up.

‘I have come to ask you for something. It is this. Will you please go and see him in prison? They will agree because you come from the Consulate.’

‘I will certainly go and see him.’

‘Every day,’ she insisted. ‘While you are doing that they will not beat him up.’

Seymour was left alone in the Consulate. It suddenly came home to him. He was the only member of the staff left.

And he wasn’t even, strictly speaking, a member of the staff. A moment of panic seized him. Suppose someone came along wanting the Consulate to do something? Seymour wouldn’t be able to do it, that was for sure. He’d have to fob them off, say the Consulate was closed or something. In fact, he’d better put up a notice to that effect right away

But — just a minute — could a Consulate be closed, just like that? Didn’t diplomatic representation sort of go on independent of hours? And, anyway, who was Seymour to close a Consulate down? Wait a minute, wait a minute, things were getting out of hand. Jesus, he had only just joined the Diplomatic Service and here he was wanting to close half of it down. Well, not quite half of it. Trieste wasn’t quite that important, but it was important, Schneider was not the only one who had said so. Suppose something major blew up? An international crisis or something? Look, hold on, he told himself, you’re just an ordinary policeman, you’re not the bloody Prime Minister, leave it for him to sort out.

And at that moment there was a knock on the door.

A small boy was standing there. Well, not a small boy, a youth, but dressed in uniform. Someone official, anyway.

‘Yes?’

‘Are you the Consul?’

‘Pretty nearly,’ said Seymour.

‘Message for you, sir,’ said the youth, handing him a letter.

Seymour took it. The boy saluted smartly and moved away.

Seymour looked down at the letter stupidly. It was addressed to him.

But how could it be? It wasn’t from his mother or his grandfather and no one outside his family knew he was here. He turned it over and looked at the postmark. Manchester? But he didn’t know anyone in Manchester and certainly no one in Manchester knew him. He broke the envelope open. Violet Smethwick? He had never heard of anyone named Smethwick, let alone Violet. Why should anyone named Violet be writing to him? He turned over in his mind, a little uneasily, the various women he had met recently but couldn’t place this one.

He started to read the letter and for a moment couldn’t make any sense of it at all. And then he realized. Violet. Auntie Vi. Lomax’s Auntie Vi!

He stuffed the letter away in his pocket. He’d look at that later. Meanwhile there were more important things to do. He went back to being Foreign Secretary.

No, the first thing to do was notify the Foreign Office in London and suggest they did something about it. The second was to modify the notice he had been planning to put up. Closed — He crossed that out and altered it. Temporarily Closed for all but Essential Business.

And if any of that came along he would refer it to London. That was it! This was beginning to sound like Senior Management. Much more of this and he would declare himself Ambassador.

He put the notice up on the door. If by any chance some business turned up he would make a careful note of it and leave it for someone else to sort out. And meanwhile, perhaps, he could get on with what he had come to Trieste to do, which was to find out what had happened to Lomax.

First, though, there was a report to write.

It was some time later that he remembered the letter he had stuffed in his pocket. He took it out now and read it through properly.

It was indeed from Lomax’s Auntie Vi and a reply to the letter he had sent. She thanked him for writing. A letter had arrived from the Foreign Office that very same morning, she said, but it was not the same thing. Somehow on a thing like this it helped to hear from someone personally. Seymour had mentioned the pleasure which Lomax seemed to have found in his new posting. She said that something of that pleasure had come through in his letters home.

She caught herself up. Well, she hoped it had been a home to him. He had come to them from Dublin as a boy of eleven when his mother, Auntie Vi’s sister, had died. He had been a shy, odd little creature, she said, who had found it difficult to settle in. For a long time his only interest had been stamps. He had been quite bright, though, and had done well at school. They had been surprised all the same when he had chosen to apply for the Consular service; and even more surprised when he had been accepted. Perhaps it was the stamps that had put it into his mind. No one in their family, which was a decent, honest one, had ever done anything like that before. His mother, Auntie Vi said, would have been proud of him.

She said nothing about his father. He would have been Irish, perhaps? That might account for the Dublin. Died, possibly, like his wife? Or simply disappeared from the scene. Disappeared from Auntie Vi’s scene, anyway.

She said that although they had not seen Lomax for some time, they would miss him. Not being blessed with a child of their own, they had always treated him as a son. He had in turn looked on them as his parents. He had written to them regularly from his various postings all over the world and had sent them little presents, souvenirs, really, which were all they would have of him now but which at least would be a constant reminder of him.

She thanked Seymour again for his kindness in writing and said that if he was ever near Warrington he should call in; although she imagined that was not very likely. She expected he was always, like Lomax, in some other part of the world.

Seymour had the sense of a decent family stricken. With his own acute sense of family, he could guess how they felt. He was glad he had written.

He thought over what she had said. So Lomax had originally come from Ireland. He wondered if that accounted for his friendship with James and his helping him over the cinema business. Perhaps, too, it had stirred old loyalties and old attitudes, an old nationalism that went back to childhood, ever a romantic siding with the underdog which seemed suddenly relevant again when he came to Trieste.

There was a knocking on the door. Someone was trying to get in. He had forgotten he had locked it. He went to the door and opened it.

A man was standing there who seemed vaguely familiar. He clicked his heels.

‘Rakic,’ he said.

Seymour remembered him now. He was the man who had talked to Marinetti about hiring the Politeama for his Futurist Evening. Someone to do with Machnich.

‘You are the Consul?’ he said.

‘No.’

The man corrected himself.

‘Of course not. Lomax was the Consul. And Lomax is dead. But you. .?’ He seemed puzzled. ‘I thought they said that you — ’

‘No,’ said Seymour. ‘I am just here temporarily. Passing through. I am a King’s Messenger.

‘King’s. .?’

‘Messenger. I carry messages. Diplomatic ones.’

‘Ah, yes, I see. And what, exactly, are you doing here?’

And what, exactly, business was it of his, thought Seymour, reacting to the tone?

‘Carrying messages,’ he said, however. ‘I just happened to be here when Lomax was found.’

‘Ah, yes. So you are nothing, then.’

‘I wouldn’t quite put it like that,’ said Seymour.

The man seemed to realize how he sounded.

‘I am sorry,’ he said, though only half graciously. ‘I meant, in the context of Trieste — ’

‘I am passing through,’ said Seymour. ‘And you?’

He had had enough of this boorish questioning.

‘Machnich sent me.’

A little unwillingly, Seymour showed him in. They sat down in the inner office. Rakic looked around curiously at the walls.

‘Decadent,’ he pronounced.

‘Out of the usual, definitely.’

Rakic shrugged. The pictures did not really interest him.

‘You come from Machnich?’

‘Yes.’ Rakic studied him for a moment. ‘He has heard about Koskash,’ he said.

‘Yes?’

‘It is of concern to him. Will you tell me, please, what happened?’

Seymour hesitated. Why should he tell this man?

Rakic evidently guessed what he was thinking.

‘Perhaps you do not know. Machnich is a Serb.’

‘Koskash is not a Serb.’

Rakic made an impatient gesture with his hand.

‘It was to do with Serbs. Did they not explain that to you?’

‘Why should that matter to Machnich?’

‘Because he is a Serb, as I say. He is a big man in Trieste. The biggest Serb. And so the other Serbs look to him. When something happens that affects Serbs, they turn to him. And so he needs to know what happened yesterday.’

Rather grudgingly, Seymour told him as much as he knew.

‘The two who came and asked for papers, they were Schneider’s men, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘So Schneider knows.’

It was a statement rather than a question and did not need answering. Seymour had a question of his own.

‘And Machnich knows, too, does he? About the escape route?’

Rakic did not answer him directly.

‘Machnich looks after his own,’ he said.

‘The Consulate was being used illicitly,’ said Seymour coldly.

Rakic gestured dismissal again.

‘Lomax knew.’

He seemed to be thinking.

‘You will be staying here?’ he said. ‘Until someone else comes out?’

‘Probably.’

‘Then you must go and see Koskash.’

‘I may well go and see him.’

‘See him. It is important. He is weak. His wife is strong, but he is weak. You must see him every day.’

Seymour made no reply.

‘Every day!’ insisted Rakic.

‘Why is Machnich so concerned?’ asked Seymour.

‘As I told you, because this touches the Serbs.’

‘Not because it might touch him?’

Rakic laughed.

‘That, too, no doubt,’ he said drily. It was the first time the obsessive single-mindedness had lifted. ‘However,’ he said, ‘that is not his only concern. He looks after his own, as I have said. And Mrs Koskash is a Serb.’

He sat there looking at Seymour. He seemed to be weighing him up.

‘She must not be left on her own,’ he said.

Then he seemed to make up his mind. He stood up.

‘Machnich wishes to see you,’ he said. ‘The Stella Polare at eleven. Tomorrow.’