I snatched a gun and they ran away.”
“From you?”
Anja shrugged.
“I had a gun, although—”
“Although?”
“There was shooting before, outside. That’s why they left the gun.”
“Harris told me there was a dead man outside the flat. Was that one of them?”
“No, sir. I don’t know who that was.”
The mechanic looked at the floor and rubbed the back of his neck again, this time with his bare hand. Anja watched him and wondered if he ever managed to get all the oil off his skin or if it was there all the time, like a scar.
He looked at her again.
“You don’t know who your dad is getting or why the Americans want them?”
“No.”
The heater popped in the corner.
“My father will reward you,” she tried again, but the mechanic just sighed by way of reply.
“The front gate is locked,” Jack said as the office door clicked shut behind him.
The mechanic nodded slowly, barely lifting his head. He finally stood up, then picked up a battered blue hardback notebook off the desk.
He opened the cover and flipped through a few pages before lifting the heavy receiver of the phone that was sitting on a shelf next to the window, all the while looking at Anja. He dialed a number out of the book.
He stopped dialing and went back to looking at Anja, who, in turn, stared blankly back.
“What you doing?” Jack asked.
The mechanic ignored him.
Anja heard the click and the voice at the other end of the line, faint and female.
“Hello?”
“It’s the garage. I need to speak to Sir James, about the service for the car.”
“Hold on, please.”
The mechanic looked at Anja. She thought he was sad, but it was hard to tell.
Anja heard a male voice from the phone, louder but still a long way away. “Hello?”
“Hello, sir, I need to discuss your car, that service we do for you, the special one, it is very important.”
“How important?”
“Very, very important, sir. Something has come up that you really need to know about.”
There was a pause, then the voice on the phone again.
“Can you call me back on the other number?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Five minutes, exactly.”
“Five minutes, sir.” The mechanic put the phone down and Anja looked at him.
“Who was that?”
“The man who will know what to do.” The mechanic searched in his pocket for loose change and pulled out a few coins. He looked at Jack. “I’m going to ring him from across the road. You watch her. Don’t let her out of this office, do you hear me?”
Jack nodded and the mechanic took a heavy coat from a hook on the far wall. He nodded at Anja and then opened the door as Jack moved out of the way.
“Is he going to take her?” Jack asked quietly.
“That’s not your problem.”
Jack lowered his head and the mechanic stared at him a moment before nodding to Anja and leaving the office.
Anja waited until the mechanic had walked past the window before finally speaking to Jack.
“Who is ‘he’?”
Jack raised his head.
“You don’t want to know.”
THE SUN WAS well hidden behind clouds when the mechanic exited the building onto the street outside. The garage was half buried under railway arches just off a main road, so he had to walk for two minutes until he made it to the public telephone box on the corner of Christian Street.
In another call box, five miles away, there was barely half a ring before the receiver was picked up.
“Hello?”
Pips sounded, then the mechanic pressed the connect button.
“Hello?”
“Chestnut,” said the voice on the other end, and waited for the correct response.
“Crimson,” the mechanic replied, slightly embarrassed to be using code words and playing spies.
“What do you want?”
“H, from Whitechapel, do you know who I mean?”
“Yes.”
“He brought a girl to my place this morning.”
“Lucky him.”
“She is a German girl. Just a kid, SS officer’s daughter. I think you need to speak to her, sir.”
“Name?”
“Is it all right to say on the phone?”
“What is her name, man?”
“Koehler, Anja Koehler.”
“Is it, by God?”
“She has a very interesting story. She says two Americans kidnapped her and her mother to blackmail her father.”
“Americans?”
“That’s what she says.”
“Any names?”
“Not yet.”
“We need a proper interrogation.”
“She’s a child, sir.”
“I’ll send a car; keep her warm for me.”
“She’s only a child, sir. Will you—”
The phone in his hand went dead and the mechanic lowered the receiver slowly onto its cradle. He paused, looking out of the window at the passing scene; he felt insulated in the phone box and allowed himself a moment before exiting.
Back into the real world.
CHAPTER 19
THE INTERVIEW ROOM was cold. They’d taken Koehler’s coat, his suit jacket, his tie, his shoes, his watch, and his belt. He was sitting on a wooden chair that was slightly too small for him, at a table in the center of the bare white room, deep in the darkest bowels of Scotland Yard.
He stared at the empty seat opposite, rocking forward an inch or two as he considered swapping it for the one he was sitting on. He knew they would put him, as the suspect, in a smaller chair; it was a clumsy old trick he’d used himself a million times. They’d want to dominate the suspect, crowd him, make him feel small as they battered him with questions and God knows what else.
He looked at the white walls. It didn’t look like fresh paint, which was a good sign. It meant that no blood had been splashed around recently.
He wondered when being beaten up in a cell had become a concern for him.
Koehler stood up, walked to the door, and reached for the handle; he was surprised at his embarrassment as he turned it slowly. It was locked. He frowned and paced back to the table, taking the interrogator’s seat.
Fuck them.
It was another ten minutes before he heard the door unlocking behind him.
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