‘He was sitting just there,’ Crabbe whispered, but by then Turner had flung open the glazed swing door and was standing inside the restaurant, glaring through the cigarette smoke at each table in turn. A loudspeaker barked a message about changing at Cologne. ‘Gone,’ Crabbe was saying. ‘Sod’s flown.’
The smoke hung all around, lifting in the glow of the long tube lights, curling into the darker corners. The smell was of beer and smoked ham and municipal disinfectant; the far counter, white with Dutch tiles, glinted like an ice wall in the fog. In a brown-wood cubicle sat a poor family on the move; the women were old and dressed in black, their suitcases were bound with rope; the men were reading Greek newspapers.
At a separate table a little girl rolled beermats to a drunk, and that was the table Crabbe was pointing at.
‘Where the kiddie is, you see. He was having a Pils.’
Ignoring the drunk and the child, Turner picked up the glasses and stared at them uselessly. Three small cigar ends lay in the ashtray. One was still slightly smouldering. The child watched him as he stooped and searched the floor and rose again empty handed; she watched him stride from one table to the next, glaring into the faces, seizing a shoulder, pushing down a newspaper, touching an arm.
‘Is this him?’ he yelled. A lonely priest was reading Bildzeitung in a corner; beside him, hiding in his shadow, a darkfaced gypsy ate roast chestnuts out of a bag.
‘No.’
‘This?’
‘Sorry, old boy,’ said Crabbe, very nervous now. ‘No luck. I say, go easy.’
By the stained-glass window two soldiers were playing chess. A bearded man was making the motions of eating, but there was no food before him. Outside on the platform a train was arriving, and the vibration shook the crockery. Crabbe was addressing the waitress. He was hanging over her, whispering, and his hand was on the flesh of her upper arm. She shook her head.
‘We’ll try the other one,’ he said, as Turner joined them. They walked across the room together, and this woman nodded, proud to have remembered, and made a long story, pointing at the child and talking about ‘der kleine Herr’, the little gentleman, and sometimes just about ‘der Kleine’, as if ‘gentleman’ were a tribute to her interrogators rather than to Harting.
‘He was here till a few minutes ago,’ Crabbe said in some bewilderment. ‘Her version, anyway.’
‘Did he leave alone?’
‘Didn’t see.’
‘Did he make any impression on her?’
‘Steady. She’s not a big thinker, old boy. Don’t want her to fly away.’
‘What made him leave? Did he see someone? Did someone signal to him from the door?’
‘You’re stretching it, old son. She didn’t see him leave. She didn’t worry about him, he paid with every order. As if he might leave in a hurry. Catch a train. He went out to watch the hoo-hah, when the boys arrived, then came back and had another cigar and a drink.’
‘What’s the matter then? Why are you looking like that?’
‘It’s bloody odd,’ Crabbe muttered, frowning absurdly. ‘What’s bloody odd?’
‘He’s been here all night. Alone. Drinking but not drunk. Played with the kid part of the time. Greek kid. That was what he liked best: the kid.’ He gave the woman a coin and she thanked him laboriously.
‘Just as well we missed him,’ Crabbe declared. ‘Pugnacious little sod when he gets like this. Go for anyone when he’s got his dander up.’
‘How do you know?’
Crabbe grimaced in painful reminiscence: ‘You should have seen him that night in Cologne,’ he muttered, still staring after the waitress. Jesus.’
‘In the fight? You were there?’
‘I tell you,’ Crabbe repeated. He spoke from the heart. ‘When that lad’s really going, he’s best avoided altogether. Look.’ He held out his hand. A wooden button lay in the palm and it was identical to the buttons in the scratched tin in Königswinter. ‘She picked this up from the table,’ he said. ‘She thought it might be something he needed. She was hanging on to it in case he came back, you see.’