My Name is Eva(28)

27





Kingsley



22 July 1970



My dearest,

Sometimes I wonder if we will ever be able to make this cruel world a better place. All the sacrifices we have made seem to me to have been for nothing when there is still so much injustice. Why you had to die, when the worst of mankind is getting off scot-free, I simply can’t understand. Surely, once convicted, they should serve the full custodial sentence and be reminded every day for the rest of their lives of their monstrous crimes? Early release only implies that their deeds weren’t so terrible after all. They leave prison and return to normal society, some of them to the positions they even held previously. It makes me so angry, darling, I just want to strangle them myself.

Oh, listen to me, ranting as if there’s the slightest chance I could nip over to Germany and track some of these bastards down! I may have been athletic in my youth and I may have earnt the praise of my sergeant when I was creeping up on him with my garrotte in our training, but I’m not so nimble now and am thinking that if and when I do find an opportunity to get even on your behalf, I shall have to be very careful how I proceed. I think subtlety and deviousness will be the best tactics. You always said I was a cunning little vixen, didn’t you, darling? How we loved that music! I shall be cunning, darling. And I shall make him pay one of these days.



All my love as ever, Your Evie xxx Ps love you





28





Evelyn, 21 February 1985





At Last





Evelyn finally knew for certain that it was him, the second time she saw him there. She could see the same sneer on his lips and the way he kept stretching his neck, as if his tie was too tight. She had seen him make that gesture many times as he asked question after question of his trembling prisoner, while she sat in the background, trying not to look at their bruised faces and ulcerated legs, making notes of the entire interrogation with a trembling hand.

Colonel Stephen Robinson, a name and a man she could never forget, sat two rows in front of her in the concert hall of St John’s Smith Square in London. She had seen him attend a previous Thursday lunchtime concert and at first had wondered if she was mistaken, but this time she had arrived early and had been able to observe him removing his dark blue overcoat before slipping into his seat.

Sleety rain had been falling that morning and the department stores and the concert hall were full of stifling heat and the smell of damp winter wool. Evelyn’s coat lay across her lap and over it she clutched her handbag and that morning’s bargains of furnishing fabric remnants from Peter Jones. She had planned, if she didn’t spot the Colonel again, to walk to the Tate before catching the train home, but now she thought she might make other plans.

Thursday was a good day to come into town. Sometimes she stayed on into the evening for the late-night shopping, but recently, she was more inclined to leave before the rush hour, before the trains were crammed with large men in suits spreading their legs and their papers wide. But perhaps she would risk the crush tonight, if it meant she could find out more about her old colleague.

At last, forty years since his arrogant dismissal of her concerns at the Bad Nenndorf interrogation centre in Germany, four decades since he ordered her to leave immediately, he was here, almost within touching distance. She had known he was still alive, unlike a number of his prisoners, whose end had come all too soon, but she had not come close to him once since that time. He had spent the rest of his career travelling to wherever his interrogative powers were required: London, Cairo, Berlin and other cities had all experienced his talent for extracting the so-called truth. His name had cropped up from time to time on overseas reports, which she quickly read, noted and filed. Most of the intelligence work was humdrum, but the station summaries were always worth a glance for snippets like that.

He was retired now, of course, like her. Robinson had received an honour shortly after his retirement, not the greatest of honours but an OBE, in recognition of his ‘services to his country’. A second honour had followed. Evelyn had choked on her breakfast porridge when she had read that first announcement in the list of birthday honours in the Telegraph; she always read them and the entries in Who’s Who, checking his progress, checking there was no one close to him who would miss him, hoping that she would be the one who could swat the man she despised now more than ever. His write-up had mentioned his love of classical music, particularly Mozart and Bach, which he said he enjoyed hearing at ‘lunchtime concerts in London’ and that had set Evelyn on his trail.

And now, at last, there he was, here right in front of her, looking fit and spry, and she might finally have a chance to fulfil her promise. He wouldn’t be much of a challenge, even though she could tell from the way he moved that he was still in good physical condition. He had never been a large man; more of a Monty, she thought, especially with his neat moustache, just as she remembered it. How often she had imagined meeting him again, stabbing his heartless soul, shooting his cold brain, with the hatred that had fermented in her core all these years.

After Mozart’s Rondo in A Minor, a melancholy piece that always made Evelyn reflective, the pianist played the sonata Schumann had dedicated to his beloved Clara. Such a favourite for Evelyn, with its hidden messages and references to his love’s own compositions, like a romantic musical code. Then, in the brief interval, Evelyn was surprised to see Robinson stand up in his seat. She realised he must be leaving, not just stretching his legs or heading for the cloakroom, because he was wearing his coat and doing up the buttons.