The German Numbers Woman Read online

  In the tape he went on to indicate – and Richard even in his mind saw the rather large but delicate fingers manipulating the key with a certainty that he would get what he wanted – that since he poured all his thoughts on the matter into such a message his obsession would have to be satisfied. He ended by saying that on the kind of trip he envisaged – a little sugar on the pill – he could act as second radio man and tune into any station whose information might be vital for making the trip safer for all on board. He thought of everything, this final snippet at least giving Richard a line to suggest if Waistcoat’s reaction turned out to be rougher than he hoped.

  Richard regretted getting to know him, yet if he hadn’t he would not have won his confidence, and found put what he listened to. Also, it would be a godsend for the others to be aware of a break in their security. A man with the use of his eyes may have thought little of the chatter going on between two women, but the one in a million chance of a blind man hearing it had let him put clues together and figure the whole thing out. Richard had been on hand to know, luckily, but he hardly saw himself being thanked for the priceless information that had been hammered into his brainbox.

  Going into the flat on Harley Street, he couldn’t imagine the redecorations had been done specially for the penultimate countdown briefings, though Waistcoat may have had such an object in mind, since he would be coming on the boat with them. He never thought he had much aesthetic taste (having left it to Amanda, who had) but puke yellow in the recesses, offal white for the ceiling, and snot green for the rest, obviously seemed more than all right to Waistcoat, who stood by the mantelpiece beneath the fake ‘Last Supper’ with a finger in each lower pocket. Such bizarre choices didn’t much matter to Richard, whose stance was bolstered by a little private knowledge about the forthcoming expedition, something they would learn soon enough.

  Waistcoat was as close to an affable mood as he could get, as he poured white wine, even though he thought it much too good for them, since they wouldn’t know mouthwash from the best Bordeaux, or a vintage from recently established vineyards in the north of England.

  Richard glanced around the room as if seeing everyone for the first time, a villainous lot of proficient seamen whose faces he hoped belied their true character. On the other hand it was often difficult to decide whether the face showed its true self, or whether the true self was hidden by the face. All he knew was that the right behaviour was guaranteed in a crisis. He had sailed with them before, had no qualms, and supposed it was likewise, their glances so quick as he came in that no optical instrument could measure them.

  Killisick’s large head and small body made him look frail, but Richard knew him as a strong little man, in that he had once slung a vat of boiling stew over someone who, he found out, had taken his false teeth – resting in a mug on the bread bin – and wouldn’t say where they were hidden. Bald and fair skinned, always with a smile while working at his stove, he was known as so ingenious a cook that if need be he could produce a cordon bleu blow-out in a force nine gale from a couple of seagulls and a bucket of kelp.

  Richard was so engrossed in weighing up his shipmates’ qualities that for some moments he wasn’t aware of Waistcoat talking, though didn’t suppose he had missed anything important.

  ‘It’s a long time since we had such a big job on, and I’ve called the six of you together just to make sure you know it, and how vital it’s going to be. We’re taking a big boat, which signifies you’ll be in the lap of luxury. But I’ll need all the hands I can get, so I’ll be on board from start to finish. You’ll have to watch yourselves, that’s all I can say. We don’t want any fuck-ups this time.’

  Waistcoat’s choice of language made it easy to know what ran through his mind – a cross as he was between a panther and a south London slum kid. A certain tension among the members of such an organisation – if you could call it that – was healthy enough, and Richard had no difficulty plugging into it, knowing that in any emergency they would fuse into an acceptable unity rather than the other way round – except that introducing the matter of Howard’s demands right now might have a spectacular effect, Waistcoat’s temper always fragile when any grains of sand fell into the meticulousness of his Swiss watch arrangements.

  ‘There’ve never been any fuck-ups,’ Scuddilaw said. ‘That’s not what we’re here for. Never have been.’ Richard had seen him do the most backbreaking work for longer than anyone else, without complaining. He had a squat compact body, thick ginger hair low on his brow, and grey glinting eyes that gave nothing away. All they knew about him was that he exercised several hours a day to make himself look more and more as if he had nothing inside but concrete. ‘We all know well enough what to do once we’re at sea.’

  ‘I know,’ Waistcoat said, ‘but we’re motoring a long way this time, and I’m not telling you where it’ll be yet, because of security.’

  A belligerent murmur came from George Cleaver. Over six feet tall, wary and erect, in his conventional three-piece suit, with a gold watch chain leading into a waistcoat pocket, he always stood by the door of whatever room he was in, as if ready to jump clear at a sudden inrush of police. He spoke little, but when he did those nearby listened, especially at sea when they wanted to know where they were, because he was known as the best Atlantic navigator in the trade. ‘We aren’t a bunch of school kids.’

  ‘Nor old women, either,’ Scuddilaw said. ‘We don’t just want to know where we’re going the day we get on board.’

  Cannister, an ex-trawlerman who, Richard smiled, seemed to have polished his earring, and shampooed his ponytailed hair to come to the meeting, backed him up.

  ‘All right, then,’ Waistcoat said. ‘I know I can rely on you lot as far as security is concerned. But I’m only not telling you yet in case there’s a change of plan. I don’t expect there will be, but you never know. All I do know, though, is that none of you will be disappointed. When this trip’s behind you, you’ll all be plenty satisfied.’

  Since Richard had been told a fortnight ago he wasn’t much concerned whether the others knew or not where they were going, but he didn’t want to openly announce that security had already been cracked by a blind man at his wireless. He must wait for an opportunity, meanwhile hearing Waistcoat say they would be crewing for him on a pleasure cruise, but that the boat on the return trip would be packed with four hundred kilos of cocaine in watertight kitbags which, Richard reckoned, would be worth something like forty million on the UK market. If they were caught with such an amount they would never walk on daisies again, but if they brought it off the pay could only be called retirement money – though it was hard to imagine any of them getting out of the game. They would go on for more, and more, and still more, not solely out of greed, but because buccaneering was in their blood.

  ‘It may be,’ Waistcoat was saying, ‘that we’ll be shorthanded on such a big boat, so I might ask Oswald Beck if he can spare a couple of weeks from his posh pub, see if he can’t tear himself away from them ivory-handled beer pumps, and his barmaid with the big tits.’

  Hard not to laugh, or be seen not to. ‘He won’t come,’ Cannister said. ‘I called there for a pint last week. The bastard made me pay for it.’

  ‘He’s gone soft,’ Paul Cinnakle said. He paused in filing his nails, a man whose clothes almost matched Waistcoat’s expensive style. Richard had heard him scornful of those who in their gear could mix freely and unnoticed among people on the street – at least they could these days, with so many weirdoes about. Maybe for such an attitude Waistcoat sometimes seemed suspicious of Cinnakle, though he had no reason not to trust such a proficient engine man, unless he regarded him as being after his job, or at least that he would like to give it a try, though Richard knew there wasn’t a hope of him coming to within a sniffing distance of a skipper’s aftershave.

  ‘That’s for me to decide,’ Waistcoat responded, his look as if to say: ‘And don’t you forget it. In any case, it’s no business of yours, fuck-face.’ He ca
me over to Richard, who held out his glass for a refill. ‘You look like you’ve got something on your plate.’

  The others were talking among themselves, as if no longer interested in the trip. ‘No, I’m all right.’

  ‘Any comments on the arrangements?’

  ‘They seem fine to me. We’ve been through them often enough.’ He drank, more to be sociable than for the quality: Waistcoat’s posh wine merchant had filled the bottles with acidy plonk, and stuck fancy labels on them. ‘I’d prefer a word with you afterwards, Chief, if that’s in order.’

  ‘With you it always is. Anything serious?’

  ‘Could be important, though I expect it’ll be all right.’ Might as well let him have an indication, though the momentary shade on Waistcoat’s face showed that he suspected something disagreeable. A man who had pulled himself out of the mire to become more than a millionaire was alive to every nuance. The only thing in his life was a controlled drive for the visible yet unattainable object, not seen by anyone else but to their cost if they knowingly – or unknowingly for that matter – stood in his way. So he kept ahead of others with an energy common in those who had dragged themselves from the lowest of the low, the sort who thrived on the versatility of his malice (which was as close to evil, in Waistcoat’s case, as a person of limited intellectual ability could get) and also luck, as well as a certain off-hand skill when dealing with someone more powerful in the game.

  ‘I’m dying to hear about it, so I’ll get rid of this lot,’ which he soon did, for there was no one who wasn’t glad to go. ‘All right, the show’s over – but finish your wine first, if you like.’

  Richard’s problem was how to begin.

  ‘Sit down,’ Waistcoat said. ‘The hoi-polloi’s gone to the steak house, so tell me what’s on your mind.’

  He pulled his chair close. ‘You know I’ve been sending in wireless signals over the years, from various places?’

  ‘You’ve been well paid, haven’t you?’

  ‘It’s not that.’

  ‘What the fuck is it, then?’

  ‘I struck up an acquaintance a few months ago with another chap, who does the same thing as me. He just listens, but does nothing with what he gets. Out of interest, you might say. It was a chance meeting, and just as well it took place. I kept tabs on him, got to know everything he pulled off the air.’

  ‘Yeh, well, so what?’

  ‘He didn’t only get Interpol and such things. He heard small boats, yacht traffic, people chatting to one another. He also got Russian planes on the eastern runs, and much else. In short, he’s cracked our whole operation. He knows we’re going to the Azores, and has a good idea of the date. He also knows why we’re going. He’s more than clever at putting two and two together. I’m sure nobody else could have done it. But he’s priceless, and we’ve got to take him into account.’

  Waistcoat’s complexion was far from rubicund at the best of times, but this revelation downed it a notch or two towards the wedding-cake colours of his interior decoration. He unpeeled a cigar, twitched flame out of his lighter. ‘Does he know your line of work?’

  He’d been expecting the question, though not so early on. ‘No chance. He hasn’t a clue. I know more than anybody how to hide such things.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’

  Richard would take no side from him, chief or not. ‘Yes, you can bank on that.’

  ‘Well, who is he?’

  ‘An ex-RAF chap. He lives on the south coast. He’s the best wireless operator I’ve ever come across.’

  ‘Apart from yourself.’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Even better, by the sound of it. But what are we going to do with him?’

  ‘There’s no chance of him giving us away.’

  ‘You mean he wants paying off?’

  ‘We could kill him,’ Richard said quietly.

  ‘You keep your suggestions to yourself.’

  It was a reasonable one, but good to dispose of before the notion came to Waistcoat. ‘I may be able to come up with something helpful.’ Calmness was the only way to keep Waistcoat from your or anybody else’s throat.

  ‘That’ll be the day.’ He snapped the cigar in two and prepared to light another. ‘The whole fucking trip jeopardised. It’s all set up, and there’s no way out. I can’t credit it. You’re the bringer of bad news.’

  Richard lit a cigarette, glad to note that his fingers were steady. ‘He’d be a first rate hand on the boat.’

  ‘What are you trying to tell me?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting anything, but there’s going to be a lot for me to do at the wireless, and standing watches as well. Precautions are going to be necessary, and I’ll have more than a job on. I can’t attend to everything.’

  ‘Does he have a sheet?’

  ‘Clean as laundered snow.’

  ‘Would he be willing?’

  ‘He put it to me himself, but I had to turn him down.’

  ‘Stupid bastard. Always keep people on the hook.’

  ‘How was I to know? I couldn’t give him any sort of go-ahead, not without talking to you first. But he’d be willing, I know. I could soon win him back, talk him round. Wouldn’t cost you, either. So much a day maybe, and a bit of bonus when we got back.’

  Waistcoat appeared to think, unusual when with someone else, afraid the workings of his face would show too much. He looked beyond Richard, into the wall, as if seeing to the horizon beyond; much as he must have done to while away the days in his prisons of the past, hoping his endless animal stare would burn through concrete. There was no disturbing him. Leave him alone, let time and the information take its toll. Don’t offer a way out but rather allow his brain to grow its own ideas, the more the better, and whatever he comes up with, imagine the choice is his – if you’re happy for your judgment to be based on his apparent cunning.

  If Richard’s mind could be compared to the circuit diagram of a radio set (as unfortunately so could Howard’s, which had started all the trouble) you could base Waistcoat’s on the cruder mechanism of a one-armed bandit. A radio set, though more complex, could throw you half across the room with shock if you made a mistake while powering it to the mains. A one-armed bandit might fall and crush your foot after a too-enthusiastic pull at the handle, but at least there might be a river of money in its wake. As a piece of engineering it was far simpler, and more old fashioned, less useful from a worldly view than a high-powered multiband radio.

  ‘I’ll have to leave it to you,’ was all Waistcoat could say. ‘But you say he’s all right?’

  It was the moment to faint, or run screaming from what looked like becoming the ruination of his life, but an inborne sense of destiny, which he in no way liked, forced him to say: ‘I’ve never known a man more like one of us who isn’t in it already.’

  ‘That’s all right, then.’ Waistcoat seemed almost happy, as Richard had to be, but he added: ‘It’s your skin as well as mine. If I didn’t know you were one-hundred-per-cent reliable I’d see him myself beforehand, but we’re too close to the day, and I’ve still got a lot to do.’

  The glint in his eyes never died. Even when he slept their piercing tipped beadiness was live under the lizard lids, burning into his dreams, the eyes of a killer, and whoever they were turned on in anger knew the threat they posed, and felt lucky to walk out of the door unharmed. Richard wondered whether he had been born with such malevolent eyes or they had developed out of a lifetime of circumstance. One thing he knew: Waistcoat had a villainous soul, and Richard wondered about the state of his own in that he recognised it so clearly.

  Driving through the rush hour of south east London, in fits and starts from one set of traffic lights to another, and jammed in a queue to get through New Cross, he surmised from what he knew that Waistcoat had been a south London youth, brought up in the sharp brutality of its ways. He had been through the hardest time any kid could, was maybe one of seven or eight, with the old man on and off in prison, at which time
s his mother would go on the game to make ends meet, and savage treatment she got for it when the man came out.

  He pictured Waistcoat bright and innocent in appearance, but eternally on the lookout for anything of use or value, holding back from outright muggery through fear of retribution at the copshop if caught. Even so, he was kicked around by his parents when they were together, so knew what violence was all about, until he learned to avoid such trouble. At the age of eleven or twelve, when his father stood up to boot him, he took out a flick-knife lifted that afternoon from a stall in Bermondsey – and was never threatened again. Whatever tolerant softness had been in his eyes – and it could only have been enough to cajole, wheedle or deceive – faded on knowing he had to be in charge of himself before he could control others.

  Thus Borstal was a better school, where he absorbed the rules quicker than any of his intake. To know something was better than not to know, or to pretend not to know; and promised an easier time than if you were ignorant or resentful. To be more aware than others was an advantage. The more you knew the better. Those who ran the place had power, and if you didn’t try to break yourself against it they made life easier for you because then they didn’t have to work so hard, and a better time was had by all.

  In any case, in the phrase of the time, he had never had it so good. Such assurance of food on the dot, clothes and a roof made it a doddle to tolerate a place where he could look after himself with no trouble. Not that he liked the screws or the governor. He didn’t have to. He wanted to get out as soon as they would let him go, and meanwhile learned new ways of thieving, though not so useful because how come those who gloated over them had got caught? They were only useful in pointing the way to tricks that would be more successful.