Chapter 13

WHILE MARTINS TOLD me how he went back to Anna’s and found her gone, I did some hard thinking. I wasn’t satisfied with the ghost story or the idea that the man with Harry Lime’s features had been a drunken illusion. I took out two maps of Vienna and compared them. I rang up my assistant and, keeping Martins silent with a glass of whisky, asked him if he had located Harbin yet. He said no; he understood he’d left Klagenfurt a week ago to visit his family in the adjoining zone. One always wants to do everything oneself; one has to guard against blaming one’s juniors. I am convinced that I would never have let Harbin out of our clutches, but then I would probably have made all kinds of mistakes that my junior would have avoided. ‘All right,’ I said. ‘Go on trying to get hold of him.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

‘Forget it. It’s just one of those things.’

His young enthusiastic voice – if only one could still feel that enthusiasm for a routine job; how many opportunities, flashes of insight one misses simply because a job has become just a job – tingled up the wire. ‘You know, sir, I can’t help feeling that we ruled out the possibility of murder too easily. There are one or two points –’

‘Put them on paper, Carter.’

‘Yes, sir. I think, sir, if you don’t mind my saying so,’ (Carter is a very young man) ‘we ought to have him dug up. There’s no real evidence that he died just when the others said.’

‘I agree, Carter. Get on to the authorities.’

Martins was right. I had made a complete fool of myself, but remember that police work in an occupied city is not like police work at home. Everything is unfamiliar: the methods of one’s foreign colleagues, the rules of evidence, even the procedure at inquests. I suppose I had got into the state of mind when one trusts too much to one’s personal judgement. I had been immensely relieved by Lime’s death. I was satisfied with the accident.

I said to Martins, ‘Did you look inside the kiosk or was it locked?’

‘Oh, it wasn’t a newspaper kiosk,’ he said. ‘It was one of those solid iron kiosks you see everywhere plastered with posters.’

‘You’d better show me the place.’

‘But is Anna all right?’

‘The police are watching the flat. They won’t try anything else yet.’

I didn’t want to make a fuss in the neighbourhood with a police car, so we took trams – several trams – changing here and there, and came into the district on foot. I didn’t wear my uniform, and I doubted anyway, after the failure of the attempt on Anna, whether they would risk a watcher. ‘This is the turning,’ Martins said and led me down a side street. We stopped at the kiosk. ‘You see, he passed behind here and simply vanished – into the ground.’

‘That was exactly where he did vanish to,’ I said.

‘How do you mean?’

An ordinary passer-by would never have noticed that the kiosk had a door, and of course it had been dark when the man disappeared. I pulled the door open and showed Martins the little curling iron staircase that disappeared into the ground. He said, ‘Good God, then I didn’t imagine him!’

‘It’s one of the entrances to the main sewer.’

‘And anyone can go down?’

‘Anyone. For some reason the Russians object to these being locked.’

‘How far can one go?’

‘Right across Vienna. People used them in air raids; some of our prisoners hid for two years down there. Deserters have used them – and burglars. If you know your way about you can emerge again almost anywhere in the city through a manhole or a kiosk like this one. The Austrians have to have special police for patrolling these sewers.’ I closed the door of the kiosk again. I said, ‘So that’s how your friend Harry disappeared.’

‘You really believe it was Harry?’

‘The evidence points that way.’

‘Then whom did they bury?’

‘I don’t know yet, but we soon shall, because we are digging him up again. I’ve got a shrewd idea, though, that Koch wasn’t the only inconvenient man they murdered.’

Martins said, ‘It’s a bit of a shock.’

‘Yes.’

‘What are you going to do about it?’

‘I don’t know. It’s no good applying to the Russians, and you can bet he’s hiding out now in the Russian zone. We have no line now on Kurtz, for Harbin’s blown – he must have been blown or they wouldn’t have staged that mock death and funeral.’

‘But it’s odd, isn’t it, that Koch didn’t recognize the dead man’s face from the window?’

‘The window was a long way up and I expect the face had been damaged before they took the body out of the car.’

He said thoughtfully, ‘I wish I could speak to him. You see, there’s so much I simply can’t believe.’

‘Perhaps you are the only one who could speak to him. It’s risky though, because you know too much.’

‘I still can’t believe – I only saw the face for a moment.’ He said, ‘What shall I do?’

‘He won’t leave the Russian zone now. Perhaps that’s why he tried to have the girl taken over – because he loves her? Because he doesn’t feel secure? I don’t know. I do know that the only person who could persuade him to come over would be you – or her, if he still believes you are his friend. But first you’ve got to speak to him. I can’t see the line.’

‘I could go and see Kurtz. I have the address.’

I said, ‘Remember. Lime may not want you to leave the Russian zone when once you are there, and I can’t protect you there.’

‘I want to clear the whole damned thing up,’ Martins said, ‘but I’m not going to act as a decoy. I’ll talk to him. That’s all.’