Turner looked pointedly at the broken mouth and smiled.
‘You sod,’ he said with satisfaction. The lip was badly cut as well, though not as badly as Turner’s.
‘Please?’
‘Sod,’ Turner explained. ‘Sodomite.’
‘Shut up,’ said Bradfield.
The steps commanded a view of the entire square. Already the afternoon had turned to twilight; the victorious arclights divided the numberless heads into white patches which floated like pale discs upon a black sea. Houses, shops, cinemas had fallen away. Only their gables remained, carved in fairytale silhouette against the dark sky, and that was the second dream; Tales of Hoffman, the woodcut world of German make-believe to prolong the German childhood. High on a roof a Coca-Cola sign, winking on and off, tinged the surrounding tiles with cosmetic pink; once an errant spotlight ran across the façades, peering with a lover’s eye into the empty windows of the stores. On the lower step, the detectives waited, backs towards them, hands in pockets, black against the haze.
‘Karfeld will come in from the side,’ de Lisle said suddenly.
‘The alley to the left.’
Following the direction of de Lisle’s outstretched arm, Turner noticed for the first time directly beneath the feet of the scaffold a tiny passageway between the pharmacy and the Town Hall, not more than ten foot wide and made very deep by the high walls of the adjacent buildings.
‘We remain here, is that clearly understood? On these steps. Whatever happens. We are here as observers; merely observers, nothing more.’ Bradfield’s strict features were strengthened by dilemma. ‘If they find him they will deliver him to us. That is the understanding. We shall take him at once to the Embassy for safe custody.’
Music, Turner remembered. In Hanover he tried when the music was loudest. The music is supposed to drown the shot. He remembered the hair-dryers too and thought: he’s not a man to vary the technique; if it worked before, it will work again, and that’s the German in him; like Karfeld and the grey buses.
His thoughts were lost to the murmur of the crowd, the pleasurable growl of expectation which mounted like an angry prayer as the floodlights died. Only the Town Hall remained, a pure and radiant altar, tended by the little group which had appeared upon its balcony. The names rose in countless mouths as all around him, the slow liturgical commentary began:
Tilsit, Tilsit was there, Tilsit the old General, the third from the left, and look, he is wearing his medal, the only one they wanted to deny him, his special medal from the war, he wears it round his neck, Tilsit is a man of courage. Meyer Lothringen, the economist! Yes, der Grosse, the tall one, how elegantly he waves, it is well known that he is of the best family; half a Wittelsbach, they say; blood will tell in the end; and a great academic; he understands everything. And priests! The Bishop! Look, the Bishop himself is blessing us! Count the movements of his holy hand! Now he is looking to his right! He has reached out his arm! And Halbach the young hothead: look, he is wearing a pullover! Fantastic, his impertinence: a pullover on such an occasion! In Bonn? Halbach! nu toller Hund! But Halbach is from Berlin, and Berliners are famous for their arrogance; one day he will lead us all, so young and yet already so successful.
The murmur rose to a roar, a visceral, hungry, loving roar, deeper than any single throat, more pious than any single soul, more loving than any single heart; and died again, whispering down, as the first quiet chords of music struck. The Town Hall receded and the scaffolding stood before them. A preacher’s pulpit, a captain’s bridge, a conductor’s rostrum? A child’s cradle, a plain coffin of boldly simple wood, grandiose yet virtuous, a wooden grail, housing the German truth. Upon it, alone but valiant, the truth’s one champion, a plain man known as Karfeld.
‘Peter.’ Turner gently pointed into the tiny alley. His hand was shaking but his eye was quite steady. A shadow? A guard taking up his post?
‘I wouldn’t point any more if I was you,’ de Lisle whispered. ‘They might misunderstand you.’