The Waiting Time by Gerald Seymour

carefully to me, Tracy, and you’ll have noted that I emphasized “lost”. Fact, on that date, Hauptman Krause ran the counter-espionage unit at the Bezirksverwaltung des MfS in Rostock. All facts, Tracy. The facts say an agent was “lost”, the facts say that Hauptman Krause was responsible for counter-espionage in that area. The facts don’t say murder and they don’t say killing. Do you have more facts, Tracy? Not rumours running up the walls of room thirty- four. Got the facts or not got the facts? Got the evidence of murder and killing or not got the evidence?’
    From the corridor they strained to hear her voice, a whisper or a sobbed outpouring, and they heard nothing.
    ‘I’m tired, Tracy. Can we, please, do this the easy way?’
    Johnson thought it was what a hangman would have said:
    ‘Right then, sir. Let’s get this over with, no fuss, nice and simple, then you can go off, sir, and get nailed down in the box and I can go for my breakfast.’
    He thought she would be looking back at him, distant, small. He realized she was like family to him. Who spoke for her? Not him, not Ben Christie, no damn man, not anywhere.
    ‘Tell you what, Tracy. You try and get some sleep. Soon as you’re asleep I’ll be told. I’ll come and wake you, and we’ll start again. There’s an easy way, Tracy, and a hard way. What I want to hear about is facts and evidence.’
    The lorry driver spat. The target of his fury was Joshua Frederick Mantle. The spittle ran on the back window of the taxi and masked his face, which was contorted in rage.
    The prison officer tugged sharply on the handcuffs they shared, jerked the lorry driver from the window.
    The lorry driver was driven away, the taxi lost in the traffic.
    He watched it go. He wasn’t wearing a raincoat and the drizzle flecked his shoulders. It wasn’t necessary for him to have stood ten minutes at the side gates of the court. He had gained little from having waited, from having seen the last defiance of the lorry driver, except a small sense of satisfaction. A detective constable wandered over to him, might have been about to cross the road but had seen him and come to him. His eyes followed the taxi until a bus came past it.
    ‘You going over the pub?’
    ‘Wouldn’t have thought so. Got a deskful to be getting on with.’ He had a soft voice for a tall man.
    ‘Come on — don’t know whether I’ll be welcome, but she’ll want to see you.’
    He hesitated. ‘I suppose so.’
    The detective constable took his arm and led him into the road. They waited a moment at the bollard half-way across.
    ‘Mind if I say something, Mr Mantle? Whether you mind it or not, I’m going to say it. Times in this job I feel proud and times when I feel pig sick. I feel good when I’m responsible for a real scumbag going down, and I feel pig sick when it’s my lot or Crown Prosecution Service that’s chickened out. First time I’ve watched a private prosecution. . . Come on, through the gap.’
    They hurried across the road, and again the detective constable had a hand on his arm. ‘Why I’m pig sick, Mr Mantle, it was your witness statements that nailed him. I worked eight months on that case and what I came up with was judged by CPS as sufficient only for “without due care and attention”. What you got was “death by dangerous driving” . . . Fox and Hounds they were going, wasn’t it?’
    They walked on the pavement. The women with their shopping and their raised umbrellas flowed around them.
    ‘I was wondering, Mr Mantle, were you ever in the police?’
    ‘I wasn’t, no.’
    ‘Didn’t think so. If you had been, at your age all you’d be interested in was growing bloody tomatoes in a greenhouse — wouldn’t have put the work in.’
    He said quietly, ‘It wasn’t that complicated. If there was an industrial estate then it stood to reason that someone was coming or going, or looking through the window, or had gone outside for a smoke. Someone must have seen