IN THE COURSE OF HIS WORK a policeman encounters a disproportionate number of violent, stupid, malevolent and self-destructive individuals. This can lead to a jaundiced view of human nature. McGovern had always fought against the occupational hazard of disillusionment, had kept an even keel and rejected the cynicism that led some of his colleagues to an unremitting contempt for the whole human race.
His conversation with Frieda had nevertheless shaken him in more ways than one. He was glad to get away from Berlin. As the plane rose above the city, he looked down at the grey honeycomb of bombed buildings and new constructions and began to attempt a coherent understanding of what he now knew. But it was hard and the drone of the engines sent him into a doze in which he was back at the youth march on Marx Engels Platz, only now it was Kingdom who was his companion and kept telling him this is the future.
Events had moved quickly in London, as McGovern discovered when he reached the office. Mihaili Kozko had been brought in for questioning. At first it hadn’t gone well. Slater had fumed. But fingerprints were taken and turned out to match a set on Konrad Eberhardt’s wallet.
He was to be questioned again today. McGovern and Jarrell were to be present.
‘You’ve been very active while I’ve been away, Jarrell.’ McGovern suppressed an unworthy feeling of professional resentment that his sergeant had done so well. He knew it was ungenerous and did his best to suppress it. ‘Well done,’ he said, more heartily than necessary. ‘That was good work, tracking down the Ukrainian.’
‘It was just luck. A hundred to one chance he’d be the first person I saw at the sailors’ union, which is what the association is, really. It’s a sort of community centre for Ukrainians. I went through Biermann’s notes, the ones that were in his flat. He’d done a lot of investigation. He’d discovered Kozko’s known by more than one name and has quite a reputation up north. I spoke to detectives up in Leeds, sir. They were glad to see the last of him.’
‘You didn’t expect to link him to Eberhardt.’
‘That was the big surprise, sir. It hadn’t occurred to me he might have killed Eberhardt. I thought it was all to do with Biermann. We might get him to confess to Biermann’s murder as well, but we haven’t any evidence for that. I feel bad about Biermann. Looking through his notes, I felt I really got to know him. He was very thorough.’
‘Sounds as if he’d have made a good reporter. Shame he didna stick at that instead of getting a romantic idea of mucking in with the workers and solving crime into the bargain.’
‘He’d still have got in trouble if he was trying to nail Kozko.’
‘We’d better go down. Slater’s starting the interview at ten.’
‘Before we go, there is one other thing.’
‘Okay. Make it quick.’
They were standing, ready to go, but when McGovern heard what Jarrell had to say he sat down again, causing his chair to swivel round, unsettling him even more.
‘You saw this Ukrainian with Kingdom? How did you know it was him? You’ve never met him.’
Jarrell’s smile hovered between creepily sly and sickeningly modest. ‘I followed you once, sir. One time you were going to meet him. I thought it might be useful to know what he looked like. And it was.’
McGovern was winded. ‘You cheeky wee devil! You’ll go far, Jarrell. If you don’t get cashiered first.’
‘Inspector Slater doesn’t like being kept waiting, sir.’
‘Shut up, Jarrell. Just give me a moment. I need to think about this.’
When McGovern arrived home from Berlin, his first act on reaching his flat had been to try to ring Lily, but his second had been to try to arrange a meeting with Kingdom, only to be told that Kingdom had gone on holiday. What he would have said had they met, he wasn’t sure. He had only suspicions. Kingdom might not be the interrogator of whom Frieda had spoken, her father’s sinister contact in the ruins of postwar Berlin. Yet if he had been, if some infernal deal had been made, it would explain why Schröder had gone free. Yes, Schröder had gone free; that didn’t prove it had been Kingdom who’d interrogated him and let him go in order to fulfil his own desires. McGovern did not ultimately believe that Kingdom could have been that man, but he fitted Frieda’s description and McGovern was racked with suspicion and uncertainty. To be told that Kingdom was on holiday had come as a relief, but it only delayed the confrontation there must be.
Now there was this new and horribly unexpected link with the man who had almost certainly murdered Konrad Eberhardt. McGovern sat, winded, for a few minutes, but then he stood up and pulled himself together. ‘Yes, we’d better go.’
Mihaili Kozko lived up to the caricature of a thug, with his near-shaven head and truculent expression, his muscular arms and stocky build. At first he denied everything. He couldn’t remember what he was doing on the day of the funeral, but he knew he hadn’t even been in London. He’d never heard of Konrad Eberhardt. Presented with the evidence, his tone didn’t change at first, but gradually Slater’s interviewing style, of straightforward bullying that stopped just short of physical violence – McGovern wondered if he’d have been as restrained if he and Jarrell hadn’t been present – began to break Kozko down.
Eventually the Ukrainian said: ‘It was an accident. It was job for me. I not mean to kill him. I am supposed to get a parcel from him, give him fright so he not go back to Germany. He got angry. This I did not expect. He try to hit me. So then I hit him and he fell down. Unconscious. I took money from his wallet. Then he start to wake up and grab me by the foot, so I break free and kick him in the water.’
‘What do you mean, it was a job?’
But Kozko, while admitting he’d been employed to recover the ‘parcel’, refused to say by whom. ‘I not been paid, because I have no parcel. But I did what I am asked. Is not my fault if no parcel. I still owed money. I get him. He pay me in the end.’
‘You’ll have got your own back if you tell us who he is,’ said Slater craftily.
But Kozko was having none of that. ‘I don’t care about that. Getting revenge. Is only important the money.’
Slater roared with laughter at this. ‘Well, you’re not going to be seeing any money, are you, you stupid bastard, because I’m charging you with manslaughter, so you’re going on remand and I doubt your paymaster is going to visit you in Brixton prison.’