Jane had never felt so desolate as at that moment when she stood at the top of the iron stairs of Cal’s flat after Red had run off into the night. She had a horrid conviction that she would never see him again, whatever the outcome of his foolhardy scheme to get into Spandau Prison. She was angry with herself for having tamely acquiesced in the plan – if it deserved to be described as such. She had known from the day she met him that Red was his own worst enemy, a creature of impulse, destined for trouble. It wasn’t hard to see how vulnerable he was. Yet this evening she had let herself be dominated by the force of his character, when she knew it was insane to try what he proposed.
It was no good pleading that the pressures of the past twenty-four hours had got to her, that she was mentally and physically exhausted. The man she felt herself to be in love with was putting his freedom, maybe his life, at risk. She should have done anything to stop him. She could only despise herself now. If her instincts were right and she had lost Red, it was because she didn’t deserve him.
She turned and went back into the flat, mindful of those things that Red had asked her to do. Maybe it was inconsistent to collaborate in what he was attempting, but she couldn’t stop him now, so the best she could do was try and help. She was grateful for the chance to occupy herself. Thinking was too painful.
Heidrun was shouting from the bedroom. They ought to have gagged her. Jane wished she could block her out of her mind, but she had to go in there to collect Red’s clothes off the floor where he had left them.
Heidrun was making a strange sound, a shrill moan, so high-pitched that it was barely audible. To Jane’s ear, it was more blood-curdling than a full-throated scream. She approached the bed. She couldn’t ignore the impulse to find out what was wrong; there was no harm in looking, because Heidrun was still securely pinioned.
Her face was flushed and contorted, her eyes shut tight.
Jane bent closer. ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
Heidrun kept her eyes closed. ‘The cramp. My right leg. I can’t bear it.’ She made that eerie sound of distress again.
Once or twice in her life, Jane had suffered the excruciating pain of cramp. She knew that it could be brought on by restriction of the blood supply. Red had tied Heidrun’s legs at the ankles and just below the knees with strips of sheet. To Jane’s eye, the bonds certainly looked excessively tight against the thin fabric of the tracksuit.
With Heidrun’s cry blocking out every other consideration, imploring relief from the agony, Jane took the humane decision. She loosened the knots at the knees. She would tie them again, securely, but less tightly. Even if the knots no longer held, Heidrun’s arms and ankles would remain firmly tied, and she would still be pinned to the bedstead by the broad strips around her body.
She gently massaged the flesh above and below Heidrun’s knee. Heidrun groaned, but with less urgency, and gave a nod of thanks. Jane refastened the knots as well as she could without reactivating the constriction. Then she switched her attention to picking up Red’s clothes and putting them into a sportsbag she had found on a chair beside the bed.
In a plaintive, little-girl voice that sounded grotesquely out of character, Heidrun asked. ‘Are you going to leave me here?’
‘Of course,’ said Jane matter-of-factly. Her sympathy had been used up. She transferred Red’s keys and money to her shoulder-bag. First she would make that phone call to Spandau.
‘I could be dead before I am found here,’ Heidrun said with more of her old aggression.
‘Yes,’ Jane agreed in a bored voice that conveyed what she thought of such melodramatics. She took a last look around the room. Then she picked up the bag, switched off the light in the hall and left the flat without another word, closing the door but leaving it unlocked. Someone would go in there and find Heidrun the next day.
A strange city by night might have been intimidating to a solitary girl in other circumstances, but not for Jane tonight. She stepped out purposefully through the shadowy streets, oblivious of herself, her mind entirely taken up by the danger Red was in. At Altstadt Spandau U-Bahn Station, she located the phone booth and dialled the number Red had given her.
It bleeped for a long time before a voice answered in German.
She asked, ‘Please, do you understand English?’
‘But of course.’ He sounded French, and in those three words he managed to convey that he was intrigued to find himself speaking to a woman.
To be certain she had got the right number, Jane asked, ‘Is that the chief warder?’
‘The duty warder. What can I do for you at this time of night, my darling?’
The last thing she felt like was a risque conversation, but at least he was friendly. She spoke the message Red had asked her to deliver. The Frenchman thanked her for the information and asked if she was a friend of Cal’s. Just as Red had instructed, she said goodnight and put down the receiver. She leaned against the side of the booth and tried to breathe more evenly. She could have used a cigarette.
Red had promised there would be a taxi. There were none waiting at the rank,so she crossed the street to look for one on the busier highway of Am Juliusturm. Her mind was still running over the things Red had asked her to do. She had collected his clothes, made the call to the prison and now she had only to find her way back to the flat in Haselhorst.
Then she stopped in her tracks. There was something they had both overlooked: the inspection-lamp that Red had borrowed from the garage. It was still in Cal’s flat. The man in the garage would be wondering what had happened to it. He might easily go up there. He would find Cal lying dead there; and Heidrun. The police would be called. Spandau would be alerted.
Jane stopped looking for a taxi. She knew what she had to do: retrace her journey through the streets to that place she had been so thankful to leave, into the room where Cal was lying dead. It was her duty to retrieve the lamp and return it to the garage. She crossed back to Breite Strasse.
To her relief,when she got back to the garage the man was still working under the car. She hurried around the rear of the building and up the stairs, opened the door and switched on the light.
Heidrun stood facing her, holding a carving-knife. The strips of sheet lay about the floor of the hall and in the kitchen doorway where she had cut them away. There was blood on one of her wrists. She must have squirmed free and dragged herself to the kitchen.
Jane took a step backwards towards the door. She didn’t dare turn away. Her hand groped for the handle and found nothing. Light flashed on the knife-blade as Heidrun twisted it threateningly in front of her. She began to move forward.
‘No!’ said Jane, still feeling for the door handle. ‘We didn’t harm you.’
Heidrun sneered. ‘We didn’t harm you,’ she echoed, mocking Jane’s voice. ‘The famous English sense of fair play. I don’t give a fart for fair play. I’m going to cut you up.’ She advanced on Jane with the knife extended. Then she thrust it towards her.
Jane still had the sportsbag in her left hand. She swung it at the knife as Heidrun lunged and felt it take the force of the blade. She tried to move aside, but there was no room in the narrow passage. She staggered, tripped and fell, striking her head on the door-handle she had failed to locate. Heidrun stepped over her, opened the door and was away down the staircase.
Jane watched the ceiling blur and spin. She was losing consciousness. She wanted to fight it, but she couldn’t move a muscle.
How long she lay there, she had no idea at the time, although in retrospect it was probably not much over five minutes. She was aware only of a searing headache and limbs that felt encased in plaster. She dragged herself into a sitting position. In a moment, she was able to crawl through the door and get some air at the top of the staircase.
By degrees, the urge to get away from the place overcame the lethargy in her body. She hauled herself upright, went in and collected the bag. The carving-knife clattered on the hall floor, revealing a six-inch split in the sportsbag.
The rest of that night was confused. Later she decided that she must have suffered some concussion. She had a faint recollection of finding her way back to Breite Strasse. Whether it actually happened, she never discovered, but she retained a persistent image of Heidrun ahead of her in the street, leaving the telephone booth and hailing a taxi; of herself getting into the taxi behind and asking the driver to follow; of being driven at speed through lighted streets towards the city centre and beyond, to the wall, with its graffiti scrawls; of stopping somewhere because Heidrun had got out of her taxi; and of being told by the taxi-driver that it was no use trying to follow Heidrun because that was the checkpoint for German nationals, and she, as a foreigner, could not use it; and of the sense of helplessness and bitter, bitter failure.