A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY by John le Carré

‘Precisely. And the very fact that he made use of the infor­mation at all would tend to exonerate him from the charge of acquiring it.’

‘The trouble is, you see,’ Turner said, ‘Leo’s only half a lawyer: a hybrid. We have to reckon with the other half as well. We have to reckon with the thief.’

‘Yes.’ Bradfield was distracted. ‘And he has taken the Green File.’

‘Still, as far as Siebkron and Karfeld are concerned, he seems to have got near enough to the truth to be a pretty serious risk, doesn’t he?’

‘A prima facie case,’ Bradfield remarked, examining his notes once more. ‘Grounds for reinvestigation, I grant you. At best, a public prosecutor might be persuaded to make an initial examination.’ He glanced at his telephone directory. ‘The Legal Attaché would know.’

‘Don’t bother,’ Turner said comfortingly. ‘Whatever he’s done or hasn’t done, Karfeld’s in the clear. He’s past the post.’ Bradfield stared at him. ‘No one can prosecute him now, even with a cast-iron confession, signed by Karfeld himself.’

‘Of course,’ Bradfield said quietly. ‘I was forgetting.’ He sounded relieved.

‘He’s protected by law. The Statute of Limitations takes care of that. Leo put a note on the file on Thursday evening. The case is dead. There’s nothing anyone can do.’

‘There’s a procedure for reviving it-‘

‘There is,’ Turner conceded. ‘It doesn’t apply. That’s the fault of the British as it happens. The Hapstorf case was a British investigation. We never passed it to the Germans at all. There was no trial, no public report, and when the German judiciary took over sole responsibility for Nazi war crimes we gave them no note of it. Karfeld’s whole case fell into the gap between the Germans and ourselves.’ He paused. ‘And now Leo’s done the same.’

‘What did Harting intend to do? What was the purpose of all this enquiring?’

‘He had to know. He had to complete the case. It taunted him, like a messed-up childhood or a life you can’t come to terms with. He had to get it straight. I think he was playing the rest by ear.’

‘When did he get this so-called proof?’

‘The thesis arrived on the Saturday before he left. He kept a date-stamp, you see; everything was entered up in the files. On the Monday he arrived in Registry in a state of elation. He spent a couple of days wondering what to do next. Last Thursday he had lunch with Praschko-‘

‘What the devil for?’

‘I don’t know. I thought about it. I don’t know. Probably to discuss what action they should take. Or to get a legal opinion. Maybe he thought there was still a way of prose­cuting-‘

‘There is none?’

‘No.’

‘Thank God for that.’

Turner ignored him: ‘Or perhaps to tell Praschko that the pace was getting too hot. To ask him for protection.’

Bradfield looked at Turner very carefully. ‘And the Green File has gone,’ he said, recovering his strength.

‘The box was empty.’

‘And Harting has run. Do you know the reason for that as well?’ His eyes were still upon Turner. ‘Is that also recorded in his dossier?’

‘He kept writing in his memoranda: “I have very little time.” Everyone who speaks of him describes him as being in a fight against time… the new urgency… I suppose he was thinking of the Statute.’

‘But we know that, under the Statute, Karfeld was already a free man, unless of course some kind of stay of action could be obtained. So why has he left? And what was so pressing?’ Turner shrugged away the strangely searching, even taunt­ing tone of Bradfield’s questions.

‘So you don’t know exactly why? Why he has chosen this particular moment to run away? Or why he chose that one file to steal?’

‘I assume Siebkron has been crowding him. Leo had the proof and Siebkron knew he had it. From then on, Leo was a marked man. He had a gun,’ Turner added, ‘an old army pistol. He was frightened enough to take it with him. He must have panicked.’

‘Quite,’ Bradfield said, with the same note of relief. ‘Quite. No doubt that is the explanation.’ Turner stared at him in bewilderment.

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *