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“To Hamburg, monsieur. And will you please stand aside and allow me off? I have no wish to be in Hamburg.”
“Of course. Pardon!” Walter stood aside for him. As soon as the man was on the platform, Walter climbed up the steep steps, holding tightly onto his case with one hand, and Elena with the other. At the top they turned and walked into the corridor, looking for an empty compartment. They found one near the end, and were inside, putting their cases on the rack above them, when the whistle blew. Elena nearly lost her balance as the train jerked sharply into movement again.
Walter caught her and eased her into the seat, his face filled with concern.
“I’m all right,” she said quickly, annoyed with herself. Have some guts, woman, she told herself.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Really. Thank you.” She would make it true.
He stared at her for a moment and then sat down beside her.
She was obliged to keep her coat on and fastened, to hide the blood still on her dress. At least it was only damp now, not really sodden. Her head ached and her eyes felt as if they were full of grit. Perhaps they were? Railway stations could make anyone dirty in a matter of minutes. She had been on one train or another for so long that Am
alfi, its warmth and sunshine, the wonderful time she’d had there, seemed like a distant world she had seen in her dreams.
If only this were a dream, and she would wake and find herself warm and dry, Ian opposite her, kindly laughing at her awkwardness, perhaps with a cup of tea in his hand. She had fallen asleep while he was fetching it, and they were still in the rich, sunlit Italian countryside.
But it was now very early morning, France, and she was heading north in the pallid, pre-sunrise light. It was Walter Mann, not Ian, sitting beside her in an otherwise empty carriage.
“Are you sure about this, Elena?” he asked gently.
She gave him her attention. “About what?”
“Going to Berlin? Everything’s changed since you made that decision.”
She drew in breath to tell him that actually the opposite was true. It was because of Ian’s death that she was going to Germany, instead of home. But Ian had said he was MI6, Military Intelligence. Secret. He had trusted her to fulfill the mission that he could not. Someone had killed him so that he could not.
“Thank you. That is considerate of you. But I shall be perfectly all right. And I definitely intend to go to Berlin.” She forced herself to smile very slightly.
He looked worried. “Are you sure? You could very easily send a message to whoever is expecting you…”
“Yes, I know. But no thank you. Perhaps I can sleep a bit on the next part of the journey. We’ve got a…a lot of time yet…”
“You need a hot bath and a bed, not falling asleep sideways on a railway seat.” His smile was rueful now. “And we left so many of your personal things on the other train. You haven’t even got a change of clothes…”
“I know. But I have enough money to buy such things. Please don’t try to argue me out of it. I must. That’s all there is to it.”
He must have heard the determination in her voice. He was silent for several minutes, but she felt him still looking at her.
“It’s a promise to Newton, isn’t it?” he said at last.
How did he know? Then it was obvious. She had left early with Ian. She had changed her earlier plans because of him. Now he was dead and she was changing them again. You didn’t have to be very clever to work that out. She’d had a ticket to Paris, not Berlin. She didn’t have any personal connection to Berlin. It had to be because of Ian.
“He’s dead,” she said, and even in those two words her voice shook a little.
“And you made a promise of some sort to him?” he asked, going on before she could answer, or lie to him. “And because he’s dead, you have to keep it?”
“A lot of people are dead, and a lot of promises have been broken,” she replied. “Especially by people who didn’t have to keep them.”
“Like the man in the hotel linen cupboard?” he asked.
She felt suddenly even colder, but before she could answer he went on: “Ian knew him, you know that, don’t you?”
Should she lie? Walter was asking questions she did not want to think of. “I don’t know…” She wasn’t going to deny it. It would be awkward and very obviously defensive. “Why?”
“He was murdered, you know?”
