The Devil's Breath by Graham Hurley

Author:Graham Hurley [Hurley, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1993-12-02T13:00:00+00:00

10

Billy McVeigh was still in his blazer, half an hour back from school, when his mother answered the phone. She stood in the hall, with a frown on her face, and he knew at once from her tone of voice that it was his father at the other end.

‘Dad?’ he called from the top of the stairs. ‘Is that Dad?’

Sarah nodded. The routine exchange of pleasantries over, she held out the phone, retreating to the kitchen and closing the door, wanting no part of this relationship of theirs, her son and his father.

Billy picked up the phone, sorting quickly through his list of news, what was important, what wasn’t. ‘Dad?’ he said. ‘Where are you?’

‘Israel.’

‘Whereabouts in Israel?’

‘On a farm. Picking apples.’

‘Is it hot?’

‘Very.’

‘You OK?’

‘Yeah.’ McVeigh, sitting on the desk in the secretary’s office by the kibbutz dining-hall, grinned, realized how much he’d missed the boy. Billy was talking about football now, the start of the new season, his first sessions with the Hornsey Schools Rep side. In the practice games he’d been picked for the ‘A’ team. The torrent of news stopped for a moment. ‘What about Yakov?’ he said. ‘What have you done?’

‘This and that.’

‘What do you mean?’ He paused. ‘Dad?’

McVeigh shook his head, unable to answer, watching Cela in the corridor outside. She was standing guard in case the secretary came back. Making foreign calls abroad was normally referred to a kibbutz committee for approval.

‘Dad?’

McVeigh bent to the phone again, changing the subject, asking about school, friends, life at home, but the boy refused to be deflected, dragging the conversation back to Yakov, like a terrier with the bone.

Finally, McVeigh gave up. ‘I’m with his wife,’ he said, ‘Mrs Yakov.’

‘You mean Sheila?’

‘Cela.’

‘Yeah. Her. Is she nice?’

‘Yes. Very.’

‘Does she like football?’

‘Hates it.’

‘What?’

McVeigh laughed out loud, hearing the astonishment in the boy’s voice, then he saw Cela’s signal, the secretary returning from lunch, and he whispered a goodbye and put the phone down. By the time he was back in the corridor, Cela was deep in conversation with the secretary, taking her to one side and easing her body round, shielding McVeigh. It was a neat piece of work and McVeigh mimed applause before walking past them, back out into the hot afternoon.

*

Telemann sat in the bedroom at the Hotel Dreisen, staring at the phone, wondering why it had been so easy.

He’d phoned Assali minutes after he’d booked in, sitting by the window with his shoes off, his feet on the bed. Outside the window, huge barges pushed up and down the Rhine, folds of grey water feathering behind them, lapping at the stones on the river-bank. Assali had answered the phone in person, unsurprised to hear him again, raising no objection to a meeting face to face. When Telemann explained he was staying at the Dreisen, the Arab had chuckled with genuine amusement. Telemann had asked why, wanting to share the joke, and Assali had said something about Adolf Hitler. Evidently the Dreisen had been one of his favourite hotels.

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