A SMALL TOWN IN GERMANY by John le Carré

‘Here,’ he said, handing him the envelope. ‘Here’s your ticket.’ His expression said, ‘Now go back to where you belong.’

‘Ready when you are, old son,’ Crabbe whispered from his habitual patch of darkness. ‘You see.’

The waiters were quiet and awfully discreet. Crabbe had asked for snails which he said were very good. The framed print in their little alcove showed shepherds dancing with nymphs, and there was just a suggestion of expensive sin.

‘You were with him that night in Cologne. The night he got into the fight.’

‘Extraordinary,’ said Crabbe. ‘Really. Do you like water?’ he asked, and added a little to each of their glasses, but it was no more than a tear shed for the sober. ‘Don’t know what came over him.’

‘Did you often go out with him?’

He grinned unsuccessfully and they drank.

‘That was five years ago, you see. Mary’s mother was ill; kept on flogging back to England. I was a grass widower, so to speak.’

‘So you’d push off with Leo occasionally; have a drink and chase a few pussycats.’

‘More or less.’

‘In Cologne?’

‘Steady, old boy,’ said Crabbe. ‘You’re like a bloody lawyer.’ He drank again and as the drink went into him he shook like a poor comedian reacting late. ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘What a day. Christ.’

‘Night clubs are best in Cologne, are they?’

‘You can’t do it here, old boy,’ Crabbe said with a nervous start. ‘Not unless you want to screw half the Government. You’ve got to be bloody careful in Bonn.’ He added needlessly, ‘Bloody careful.’ He jerked his head in wild confirmation. ‘Cologne’s the better bet.’

‘Better girls?’

‘Can’t make it, old boy. Not for years.’

‘But Leo went for them, did he?’

‘He liked the girls,’ said Crabbe.

‘So you went to Cologne that night. Your wife was in Eng­land, and you went on the razzle with Leo.’

‘We were just sitting at a table. Drinking, you see.’ He suited the gesture to the word. ‘Leo was talking about the Army: remember old so-and-so. That game. Loved the Army, Leo did, loved it. Should have stayed in, that’s my feeling. Not that they’d have had him, not as a regular. He needed the disci­pline, in my opinion. Urchin really. Like me. It’s all right when you’re young, you don’t mind. It’s later. They knocked hell out of me at Sherborne. Hell. Used to hold the taps, head in the basin, while the bloody prefects hit me. I didn’t care then. Thought it was life.’ He put a hand on Turner’s arm. ‘Old boy,’ he whispered. ‘I hate them now. Didn’t know I had it in me. It’s all come to the surface. For two pins I’d go back there and shoot the buggers. Truth.’

‘Did you know him in the Army?’

‘No.’

‘Then who were you remembering?’

‘I ran across him in the CCG a bit. Moenchengladbach. Four Group.’

‘When he was on Claims?’

Crabbe’s reaction to harassment was unnerving. Like his namesake he seemed in some mysterious way to draw the extremities of his presence under a protective shell, and to lie passive until the danger had passed. Ducking his head into his glass he kept it there, shoulders hunched, while he peered at Turner with pink, hooded eyes.

‘So you were drinking and talking.’

‘Just quietly. Waiting for the cabaret. I like a good cabaret.’ He drifted away into a wholly incredible account of an attempt he had made upon a girl in Frankfurt on the occasion of the last Free Democrats’ Conference: ‘Fiasco,’ he declared proudly. ‘Climbing over me like a bloody monkey and I couldn’t do a thing.’

‘So the fight came after the cabaret?’

‘Before. There was a bunch of Huns at the bar kicking up a din; singing. Leo took offence. Started glaring at them. Pawing the earth a bit. Suddenly he’d called for the bill. “Zahlen!” Just like that. Bloody loud too. I said “Hoi! old boy, ignored me. “I don’t want to go,” I said. “Want to see the tit show.” Blind bit of notice. The waiter brings the bill, Leo tots it up, shoves his hand in his pocket and puts a button on the plate.’

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