Chapter Three

The clouds pushed hard down over the honeycomb of small streets between Willow Lane and the railway line and the River Lune. The slate roofs shone with a dull polish, the first fires of the day had been lit and thrust thin grey spirals into the early day. The brickwork of the houses, terraced and semi-detached in haphazard pattern, was weathered red, and solid. This was Lancaster, a county town rich with history, its castle a monument to the work of five centuries before, its prospects in decline, its usefulness outgrown. Not that there was such history in Cherry Road, but the houses had a steadfast, enduring appearance.

In the terraced homes the layout was uniform and identical for all.

A narrow hallway with a front sitting room leading off and behind it a parlour where the chairs were comfortable and the television stood in glossy splendour permitting the sitting room to be left for best. At the end of the hall and beyond the bent staircase was the kitchen with a back door into a stone flagged yard. Upstairs was one large front bedroom and then space only for one smaller bedroom, and the bathroom. Not a large house, but sufficient for the needs of Johnny Donoghue and his mother.

When he had first come home to live here, a year and a half ago, he had tried to freshen and brighten the old house, to warm its walls with colour, and for months he had busied himself with his paintbrush and his electric drill and the ladder he stored in the yard.

A little paradise, his mother called it, the nicest house in Cherry Road, and didn't the neighbours admire the effort he had put in? Nothing more to do now at the weekends, and so Johnny could lie in his bed, lie on his back and brood.

His mother had adapted well to the changes of fortune that had cudgelled Johnny Donoghue. Few enough mothers could have acted out the pretence that a catastrophe had not struck at their lives. A tiny nest-fledgeling of a woman but with strength, and the bitter disappointment at Johnny's plunging fall had been carried in her short, scurrying stride. Tough as a boot, he thought her, and it was right that he should have come back home to live and find himself again.

Born in 1945, the only son of Herbert and Charlotte Donoghue. The first six years of his life eked out in married quarters of the British Army of Occupation in Germany. His father had been an officer, but made up from the ranks, and was promoted to Captain when aged 43 and two decades older than most of the other men in the mess. Just a small gratuity had been paid him when he left the army and then there was a hardware shop that was open six days a week in the centre of Lancaster and behind the Town Hall. The King's Commission was exchanged for trade, Saturday night drinks in the mess for glasses of beer in the British Legion, card games for dominoes. And with his only child reaching for his ninth birthday, Herbert Donoghue had without warning or previous illness fallen dead across the wide counter of the shop. Hard times for a widow. The business was sold up, the house purchased outright because Charlotte Donoghue said the home was the bedrock of the family, four mornings a week cleaning for a family that lived in a big house out on the Heysham road.

When he lay in bed of a morning at the weekend and gazed at the flower print curtains, Johnny Donoghue thought often of his childhood.

Johnny at eleven winning a scholarship to the Royal Grammar School and being given a new shirt as a reward. At fifteen collecting a Modern Languages prize for his German and mother sitting in the Great Hall of the school and beaming her unashamed pride. At eighteen leaving school with a clutch of examination passes and a glowing testimonial from his headmaster. At nineteen getting a scholarship to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and going away on the train from Lancaster station with his mother's waving handkerchief the last glimpse of home.

At twenty-two at Passing Out, and at the march past in front of the College, back straight, arms straight, and wondering how his mother was coping out there amongst all the other families who had come to watch their sons. A small woman in a green coat, with a hat she could not afford, and they had left The Academy by taxi queuing at the exit gate with the Daimlers and the Bentleys and the Jaguars.

With his knowledge of German, backed by good school French, he was just what they wanted, they said, in the Intelligence Corps. A fine future was predicted. Straight indulgence, that's what it was, even to think back, because those days were gone, obliterated.

Ten years after entering the army, ten years after winning his dress sword, Johnny Donoghue had walked from the station to Cherry Road, dressed in slacks and a sports jacket. Uniform sold, mess bill paid up, an engagement ring returned by a civil servant's daughter. An embarrassment to his friends, a wound to his mother. In his suitcase he brought his boots, and three plate silver mugs awarded for marksmanship the sole relics of a military career. Awkward in his disgrace, embittered by the treatment meted out to him, Johnny had come home.

After a full breakfast Adrian Pierce and Harry Smithson paid their bills and checked out of the Royal King's Arms Hotel. From the cut of their suits, the trim of their hair, the knot of their ties both were plainly southern creatures. Strangers in Castle Park and heading for Willow Lane.

'Do you think he'll be easy, Harry?'

'Not too easy I wouldn't have thought.'

'Not after what they did to him.'

'There are always casualties, bound to happen when you put troops in to do policemen's work.'

'A bit hard, to charge him with murder.'

'Bloody ridiculous.' They were crossing the railway bridge and Smithson paused to watch an express train rocketing beneath them.

'A dreadful place that Belfast. I go down on my knees each night and pray God I'm not sent there.'

'Keep your nose clean on the German Desk and the Lord will look pleasantly upon you. Not much of a place this, either.' Smithson sniffed unhappily at the air. They crossed Willow Lane and Smithson glanced at the scribbled directions given him by the hotel porter.

A damn good career officer, that's what Johnny Donoghue was in the mind of Adrian Pierce, damn good till they posted him to Army Headquarters at Lisburn, Northern Ireland. He'd taken the file from Smithson, read it in bed, tried to colour the portrait of the man they were sent to collect. A damn good career officer, a captain knocking on major.

Expert on Germany, steady and reliable. But the great appetite of the Northern Ireland commitment for manpower meant that Intelligence Officers must be seconded from the main battle forces of northern Europe to the twilight of counter-insurgency just past the British back door.

It had been a surveillance stake out. Donoghue and two squaddies lying up in a hide for three days and nights to watch an explosives cache and a figure approaching it at night, trousers and anorak, and it was raining and there was something in the hand. Perhaps he should have challenged, that was procedure. But why the hell should he have done that with three hundred soldiers dead and buried and the police and reservists to keep them company? Why the hell should he? Fire first and ask questions later, that's what any other army does.

The poor bastard must have damned near died of shock when he found he'd hit a child, a fifteen-year-old girl… must have fetched his food up at the very least. Not Guilty, of course. Not Guilty of murder. But the stain was there, and the judge's sarcasm. Cutting words that read no less viciously on paper than they would have sounded in the Belfast Crown Court. And nobody had wanted to know Johnny Donoghue afterwards. No celebration party back at Lisburn. Just a chilly goodbye and an escort to the RAF wing at Aldergrove Airport. Now he was back home with his mother. Now he was teaching German at night classes at the Technical College. And Smithson had said that Donoghue wouldn't be easy. Who'd blame him for that?

They walked into Cherry Road.

'Number 14,' said Smithson.

In the bathroom at the back of the house, standing at the basin in pyjama trousers, his face wet with shaving cream, Johnny Donoghue heard the beat of the knocker on the front door. Not Mrs Davies from next door because she'd know that his mother was at the shops, and she never came before eleven to share a pot of tea. Not the milk bill, not the paper bill because they came with the delivery. Who would come that early to Cherry Road? Not the meter reader, not on a Saturday morning. He cursed and scraped on with the plastic handled razor. Another knock.

His mother always left the front sitting room window ajar, so they'd know there was someone in the house. And he'd left the curtains drawn.

He sluiced the soap off his face. A fine sight he'd look, dark hair and therefore a dark beard and half of it scratched off and the other cheek set with bristles and alive. He pulled his dressing gown off the hook on the back of the door, slipped it on and tied the belt.

'Coming,'Johnny shouted.

There was an answering note. A high, clean call of thanks. No hurry.

A voice of the middle class, of the south. Johnny paused a moment on the stair in indecision, and then opened the front door. The morning light struck him and he blinked. The two men were in shadow, their features indistinct.

'Mr Donoghue? Mr John Donoghue?' The older man spoke. Police?

Army? London, anyway.

'That's me.'

'I'm Harry Smithson.'

'My name's Pierce.'

'Can we come in?' Smithson asked. Not happy at having to ask, not happy on the pavement.

' It depends what you want.'

Smithson looked around him, the automatic response. The glance over each shoulder as if in Cherry Road there might be a listener or an eavesdropper. His voice dropped. 'We were sent from London to see you, Mr Donoghue. It's a government matter.'

'Who sent you? What do they want?'

'It would be better inside… it's not trouble, Mr Donoghue, nothing like that.' Pierce seemed the same age as Johnny and better equipped to communicate.

He would have liked to send them away, liked to have spun them round and packed them away up the road, but they'd crucified him, hadn't they? A government matter, and that pricked his interest. He'd had his fill, the overbrimming cup, of men on government business. The army's Special Investigation Branch detectives who had taken his statement. The solicitor appointed to prepare his defence. The barrister paid out of public funds who represented him in court. The pin-striped suit who had come from Ministry of Defence and said that Guilty or Not Guilty there would be no place for him again in Intelligence Corps. But a government matter… and not trouble… his curiosity won through.

'You'd better come in.'

Strange how a house could quickly lose its warmth when outsiders came. Johnny apologised for the size of the living room, scuttered forward to retrieve his cigarettes and matches, to empty last night's ashtray into the grate, to gather up yesterday's newspaper, to smooth down the cushions on the sofa. And he hated himself for his concern.

'I'll go up and get dressed. Make yourself comfortable.'

'Thank you, Mr Donoghue.' Pierce was conciliatory. 'We're sorry to be barging in so early.'

Johnny nodded, then closed the door behind him and went up the stairs to his room. He dressed in the shirt hanging from his chair, the underclothes that were on the floor, searched for his shoes, took socks from the drawer. The shave would wait. Below him he heard a key in the door, the chatter of a farewell from his mother to a friend. He shoved the shirt-tail into his waist and went to the top of the stairs. The front door closed.

'Mum,' he called.

She stood small in the hallway, engulfed in her coat, wispy grey hair protected by a scarf, shopping bags around her. 'Have you done your breakfast, Johnny?'

'There's some men in the front, came to see me. I'm just dressing.'

'Would they like some tea?' The thin piping voice. After all that had happened this woman could not believe that men who came to the house could be unwelcome.

'They'll not be staying long enough for tea, don't bother, Mum.'

Not having any bastards in dark suits with the whiff of London on them make his mother fuss round to get the best china out and rinse the milk jug and flap herself as to whether the room's tidy enough. He heard her go to the kitchen, and he came down the stairs and into the front room. They were where he'd left them, close together on the sofa and they smiled as if in a chorus act and stood up.

'So how does a government matter affect me?' Straight into the eyes of Smithson, because he'd be the spokesman.

'Quite right, Mr Donoghue, we shouldn't waste time. We shouldn't beat about the bush…'

'Correct.'

'Mr Pierce and I work for that part of the Foreign Office that concerns itself with intelligence gathering…'

'Identity cards, I'd like to see them.'Johnny held out his hand, watched amused as the two dug in their wallets. He took the two plastic coated cards complete with the polaroid photographs. Access to Century House, London, Wl. Good enough.

"Very wise, Donoghue,' Smithson said. 'With your background you will know of the work initiated at Century

House. We've been asked to offer you a job, Mr Donoghue.'

Johnny squinted across, slant-eyed, at the two men. Too bloody early in the morning to be concentrating.

'Why me?'

'In London they think you fit the scheme of things,' Pierce said quietly.

'This is nothing to do with Intelligence Corps. Fresh faces, fresh work.'

'What does it involve?'

'We haven't been briefed, not fully, only that it involves a show in Germany.'

'And that's all you're going to tell me?'

'That's all we can tell you,' Smithson said.

'When do I have to make my mind up, by what time?'

Smithson looked at his watch. 'We're taking the lunch- time train to London. It's our hope that you'll accompany us.'

Johnny slumped back in his chair, closed his eyes, blacked out the sight of the two men opposite him. Nothing more to be said was there?

Couldn't be anything else. Of course they wouldn't travel north and march into the front room of a terraced home and then talk matters of National Security. All that would be in London, and there was no way of finding out more about what was asked of him without getting on the train to the big city. And the more they tell you the harder they'll make it for you to escape. Step onto that train, Johnny, and you're in, the clock hands will turn back… and they're asking for you, all nice and polite and they're asking for you. Sent these men up to this Godforsaken town on a Saturday morning because it's Johnny Donoghue they want, because Monday's too late for them.

What to do, Johnny?

He sat a long time and the quiet burrowed through the room. He'd been kicked bloody hard in the teeth by the establishment. But now they wanted him back. They wanted the man from Cherry Road. He'd never live with himself if they walked back to the station empty-handed.

Johnny smiled, open and wide, the trace of a laugh.

'If I'm to go to London I'd better finish shaving,' he said.

The door was closed on the messenger and Doctor Otto Guttmann carried the suitcase back through the hall of the flat and into the small, pinched living room. He placed it on the floor, in the centre of the carpet and stood quite still and gazed down at the black leatherette case. He saw on its handle the baggage tag for Geneva, and attached by string was a cardboard label that carried the name and address written in a familiar and beloved hand. He looked up then at the plain wooden cross hung from the wall, contemplated it, as if it were a guarantor of strength.

Otto Guttmann was tall, well shouldered, a large and imposing figure, but the sight of the suitcase magnetised his eyes and bowed his body.

The messenger had known what he brought, had hurried to deliver the case and be away.

Memories bounced into Otto Guttmann's mind. Memories of a small boy laughing and bickering with his father and mother on picnics on the Lenin Hills outside the city. Memories of a child dressed and scrubbed for school. Memories of a teenager complaining of lack of attention.

Memories of the adulthood of his son and the pride of the boy that by his own efforts he had achieved selection to the interpreter school of the Foreign Ministry.

Such a short time ago, it seemed, since Otto Guttmann had seen the case open and the clothes and trivial possessions placed in it and then its top pushed down and zipped and the lock fastened, and he heard again the laughter and excitement before the departure to the airport. The first time that one of his children had left the nest that he had made of the flat after the death of their mother. He stared down at the bag and in his hand was the key that the messenger had given him and he knew that by himself he lacked the will to open the fastenings. Old men can cry, are permitted to weep, it is the young who must not demonstrate their feelings of sorrow at bereavement. The tears came slowly and then rained on and on.

Why had Willi been out on the lake in the darkness?

Why had he taken a boat when the harbours were deserted? Why could they not even produce a body for a father to bury?

His daughter had come into the room behind him, quiet as a gazelle, respectful of his mood. He started and shook himself as her hand linked under his arm and her fingers gripped at his elbow. A girl nearly as tall as himself. As the daughter of an old man should be, the prettiness of a picture, the strength of a buttress. She eased up on her toes and softly kissed his tearstained cheek.

'I heard the bell, but I didn't think it would be this, not so early.'

'They said that they would bring it today, they said that in the letter from the Ministry.'

The letter from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had scarred him. Hand delivered as the telegram had been five days previously. The letter had been confirmation of the unthinkable and had irrevocably destroyed the chance that some terrible mistake had been woven around the family.

'You want to open the bag, Father?'

'We should.' His voice had a husked control.

'The car will be waiting

'This once let it wait.'

Erica Guttmann carried the suitcase to her brother's bedroom, and her father followed. It was a tiny cubicle of a room that Willi had used, but then there had been no com- plaints; a three-bedroomed flat was a rare privilege, was the evidence that Otto Guttmann had been accepted into the elite of the establishment. A poster from the Olympic Games took pride of place on the wall in front of them, the symbol of the yachting competitions fought out in the Baltic city of Tallin. On another wall was a large framed colour photograph of a crew at work in the interior of a Soyuz space craft. A desk that was bare and cleaned. A radio with chrome finish on a low table and the pile of cassettes neatly stacked beside it. Curtains that had been drawn in the awful moments after the telegram had arrived. The single bed with gaudy coverlet where Willi would have slept the last two nights if he had returned with the delegation from Geneva.

The room of Otto Guttmann's son, the room of Erica Guttmann's brother.

She lifted the bag onto the bed.

'It is best that it's done now,' she said.

The key turned smoothly in the lock. The top garments spilled out and across the bed cover and with a careful discipline she began to make piles around the suitcase. Trousers and jackets, shirts and vests and underpants, ties and handkerchiefs. The shoes she put on the floor. She felt the brooding, wretched presence of her father, but did not look round at him, continued with her task, and then she sighed as she reached the bottom of the bag and the thick, dear plastic sack in which her brother's personal possessions had been packed. She bit at her lip, and emptied the contents onto the bed. A wallet that had been his father's present for his eighteenth birthday. A silver ink pen that had been Erica's gift at the last Christmas. A photograph frame that held in its three compartments pictures of father and sister and the three together in the sunshine of the Archangelskoye Park with Willi shining in his happiness and rising half a head above those who looked down at the picture. The girl heard her father's choked breath and his hand came to rest on her shoulder.

'Go and get your work ready, Father. I will finish it.'

He obeyed and the door closed behind her. She slid the clothes into the drawers of a chest, shovelled the possessions back into the sack and found room for it under the bed, hidden by the fall of the coverlet. Time when she came home for her to be more thorough. It was horrible for her father that there was nothing tangible for him to fasten to. No funeral, no rites, no burial… and if at some future date the remains of Willi were recovered from the water and returned to them then the wound could only be reopened and the pain reawakened. The stupidity of the boy but she must not think ill of him, not now, not ever again.

She walked out into the hall, easy and graceful on her feet, swung back her head loosening the shoulder length of corn silk hair and pulled on her coat. Otto Guttmann waited by the door with his overcoat, gloves and scarf, and wearing on his face the conquering burden of age and extreme tiredness. For a moment they embraced, tight and clinging, arms close around each other, and then she had the key in her hand for the front door and they went out onto the landing and she shut the door of their home and locked it.

Henry Carter knocked tentatively at Mrs Ferguson's sitting room door, was told to enter, but stood in the doorway to deliver his message to the lady who rested her sewing across her lap to hear him out.

'Mr Mawby's just been on the telephone. There's going to be a bit of a party here for the next few days. He will be back himself and there's three more coming tonight, they'll all be in time for dinner

… if that's possible? Mr Mawby asked me to apologise for not having given more notice.'

'It'll be no trouble.'

'Something a little unusual, I think,' Carter confided.

'I like the house full. It's such a waste when it's empty.'

'It'll be a bit like the old days.'

'And that'll be welcome,' she said placidly.

Carter closed the door on her privacy. He walked into the main sitting room and pondered his own instructions, changed again by London. The boy, Willi, was to talk about his father. His personality, not his research work. Everything about the man himself, his habits, his interests, his life-style. Another blow at the consistency that Carter had been trained to believe was the hallmark of the debrief.

Could they really be thinking of bringing Otto Guttmann out of East Germany? The repercussions if it went sour, by God. Carter felt his knees weaken and flopped into an armchair. Perhaps he was going too fast. Perhaps, but where else did the trickle of circumstantial information point?

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