‘You’re a murderer!’ she shouted. ‘A murdering lunatic—’
He clamped his hand over her mouth. They were five floors up but the window was half open and the last thing he needed was the police below being alerted by screams that their cover was blown.
‘Ahh!’ Now it was his turn to make a noise as he felt her teeth sink into his flesh. That same pinched little upper jaw with the ever so slightly over-sized front teeth wasn’t quite so cute when the teeth were drawing blood.
He reached his other hand over the top of her head and, laying his palm on her forehead, stuck his fingers in her nostrils and pulled backwards. Her hair was in his face. He could smell the same scent on those crimson blonde strands that he’d smelt earlier when they made love.
Her jaw released him as her head went back but she kicked backwards at his shin with the heel of her high-buttoned boots and was able to twist her way out of his grip. He’d only been applying it at half strength. He was a big man and she was a slim woman, ninety kilos against less than fifty. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her and now he was paying for his weakness with a bleeding hand and throbbing shin. She was facing him once more and he could see by the way she was drawing breath that she was just a half second away from screaming.
He did the only thing he could think to do. He punched her. An expert swing left to the temple that knocked her cold. It was the first time in his entire life he’d ever hit a woman. Let alone a woman he was in love with. He felt completely sick.
There were some scraps of paper on the table and a stub of pencil. Bernie had used them to make little shopping lists during their week-long idyll. There was one there now.
Coffee. Rolls. Cheese. Fruit. Wine. Chocolate!!
Stanton swallowed hard. He’d been so happy.
He turned the note over and wrote: I’m not the man you think I am. I’m the man I said I was. And as long as I live I will never forgive myself for striking you. I love you. Goodbye.
It was pointless, he knew, and stupid. The last time he’d said sorry had been just before he shot the flower girl and that had nearly done for him. Unnecessary details make a man more traceable. But they had his handwriting from the forms he’d signed at the hospital anyway.
Next he stuffed Bernadette’s loaf of warm bread into his bag. He’d been on the run before in hostile country and knew that it was best to grab food where you found it. Then he returned to the window.
The three stooges were still at their posts. A fourth had joined them. A senior figure for sure. Stanton watched as the new man, another bowler hat, went from the boater to the first bowler. He glanced up the road towards the U-Bahn station at the top. A uniformed policeman was standing with two workmen. He was pointing at one side of the street and then the other. He seemed to draw an imaginary line on the cobbles with his jackboot. They were discussing a road block. A small troop of soldiers appeared. By the way they moved, Stanton knew they’d been told to keep quiet. It was the first time he’d ever seen German soldiers out of step. Looking back down the street he could see a similar operation under way at the other end.
Now was his last chance. They were all occupied with preparing their trap. If he could just get clear of the apartment he had most of the morning to get a start on them. The police plan was for Bernadette to take him out for late breakfast. When would that be? Eleven? Perhaps ten but surely they wouldn’t begin to get nervous before eleven. Twelve probably. They’d quite deliberately given themselves plenty of time to prepare their trap. It occurred to Stanton that they might also want to make sure of taking him without the possibility of the press or public seeing him or hearing anything he might have to say. After all, the police and the army were currently revelling in the carte blanche they had been given to crush the Unions and the Leftists. The revelation that the assassin had in fact been a lone English fantasist or spy would change the game utterly and put the cops in a pretty exposed position. Stanton was an inconvenience they’d want to handle pretty carefully. They were clearly planning to make their arrest away from prying eyes.
So he had time.
But not if Bernadette recovered consciousness, which she most likely would do quite quickly. He looked at her prostrate body. Stretched out on the floor. Her blouse still unbuttoned, her silk slip on display, one breast half exposed, a dome of flesh falling backwards towards her chin. It rose and fell evenly: that was good, her breathing wasn’t disturbed. He didn’t think she’d suffered much harm from the blow.
She moaned a little, she was stirring.
Reaching into his bag of equipment he drew out his medical kit, the one that Bernadette had brought to the hospital and thus saved his life. He took out a needle – not one of his antibiotics, a sedative. He knelt down beside her and, using his left hand as a tourniquet, found a vein and injected the sedative.
‘Sorry,’ he said again. It seemed to be becoming a habit. But he truly was, both for her and for himself.
He buttoned up her blouse and put a pillow under her head.
Then he shouldered the one bag he’d allowed himself, went to the window and climbed out. This was the moment of maximum danger. One of the police or soldiers five storeys below had only to look up and the chase would be on. But they were all pretty occupied and also trying to be discreet, his room was on the top floor, and the climb should take him less than a minute; he reckoned his chances were good. He got out on to the window ledge and reached up for the guttering. He was still stiff and weakened from convalescence but his wound had pretty much healed and he’d been diligent in doing his stretches and physio since leaving hospital. He hoisted himself up over the gutter without too much pain and scrambled on to the tiled roof from where he was able to traverse the whole length of the street and descend beyond the barricade.
He’d escaped the trap. But he’d had to assault and drug Bernadette to do it. The thought filled him with despair.
Having returned to street level he walked briskly out of Mitte towards the Lehrter Bahnhof. He stopped at the first decent hotel he could find and took a room, readily accepting the stern warning that since the hour was early and the maids had not yet begun their work he must pay for the previous night. Stanton was, in fact, counting on the earliness of the hour as the principal factor in enabling him to assemble a disguise. He was aware that Bernadette would be able to describe his clothes and so he hoped to find replacements among the returned overnight laundry. He expected that by now it would have been left outside the rooms but that the occupants would not yet have opened their doors to collect it.
He was in luck, and as he made his way along the corridor towards his room he was able discreetly to collect a whole gentleman’s wardrobe. Once he was in his room he laid the clothes out on the bed and set about changing his personal appearance as best he could. He took his shaving kit and his multi-tool knife (which contained scissors) from his bag and, pouring water into the wash bowl, began shaving his head. It’s not an easy thing to do oneself, and Stanton was anxious not to draw attention with a skull covered in cuts and scabs so he forced himself not to rush. Fortunately the mirror, which stood on the dresser behind the wash bowl, had two hinged side flaps, and so by twisting a bit he was able to get sight of most of his head. He shaved all his hair save for a patch on top, which he fashioned into a very short crew cut, German military style. In Stanton’s view probably the ugliest male hairstyle ever devised.
Once he’d finished with his head, he shaved his face. During his time in hospital his beard had grown. He hadn’t shaved it off because Bernadette had liked it. ‘Every Suffragette secretly wants a caveman to drag her about,’ she’d said dryly, ‘or so the hilarious cartoons in the papers tell us.’ Now he shaved himself fully leaving only a small moustache, which he trimmed down into a neat military style. The German identity that Chronos had supplied him with was made out in the name of Ludwig Drechsler, a German Junker brought up in East Africa. When creating the character McCluskey and her team of forgers had decided that, just as with the Australian back story they had given him, a colonial past would mitigate any strangeness in his accent and his language.