Free Heil Harris! by John Garforth Page B

sleep. Will you tell me you love me?”
    He nodded.
    Then she turned off the light. “I’m not very experienced at this sort of thing.”
    Steed took her in his arms. He kissed her eyelids and held her shoulders to prove that he was looking after her. The buttons on her blouse undid at his touch and her skirt fell unzipped to the floor. She stood close, as if she was afraid he would look.
    “It’s all right. Look at me.”
    She shivered, but she looked up and her wide blue eyes still seemed to be smiling.
    She grinned, as if she had won a concession, took off his tie and undid his shirt buttons, and then went over to the bed. The moon was shining weakly through the window, and Steed watched her with mounting appreciation as she slipped out of her briefs and threw her brassiere across the chair.
    He paused, arrested for a moment by the silhouette of her full breasts and the rounded stomach, the curve of her thighs, and then as she ran back across the room to him he received her. The penny-brown nipples were already standing out with eagerness.
    “I want you,” he murmured.
    And then the shot rang out. The sound of shattered glass and Heidi screamed. Steed dropped to the floor with the girl beneath him. But he soon realised from the moans in the next room that it was Goldberg who had been shot and not them. There was a peculiar gurgle that meant death from a punctured lung, and Goldberg was gurgling.
    “Dammit,” he said bitterly.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Well, I mean, the fellow next door has been killed. You know, duty and all that. You’d better nip across to your room.”
    “I hate you!”
    “Nonsense.”
    But she threw one of his shoes at him as he went out of the door so perhaps she did. That was the trouble with women in this game. Like Steed said, a spy should never get involved. He would go back and apologise afterwards, but he knew it wouldn’t be the same.
     

Irgun takes a hand
     
    Goldberg was lying on the floor by the window when Steed reached him. He was fully dressed and extremely dead.
    “Telephone the police,” he called to the landlord. “Herr Goldberg has been murdered.”
    The landlord had been running frantically up the stairs in his nightshirt and without altering speed he ran frantically back downstairs.
    The shot had been fired from across the street while Goldberg had been admiring the stars. The building opposite was a watchmaker’s and there were no lights on. There was no-one down on the pavement, of course. The knot of people who had been lurking half an hour ago had dispersed.
    Steed helped himself to Goldberg’s wallet and leather address book. On reflection, he wouldn’t be needing the Scotch any more, so Steed went back to his own room with a small compensation for the man’s untimely death.
    The police came eventually and took statements from everyone at the inn. “I was undressing for bed when I heard a shot and so I ducked. I didn’t see a thing.” Kurtmann had been asleep.
    “I was in bed,” claimed Heidi.
    The police went away to file yet another unsolved crime. They hadn’t believed Steed’s claim to be writing a book on Germany, but at least they hadn’t arrested Viim. They had been too preoccupied with staring at Heidi.
    Steed retired again for the night feeling that an old friend had been lost. He had almost begun to enjoy the exchange of microphones and the battle of the whisky bottle. He sat on his bed and examined the poor chap’s effects.
    There was about DM200 in notes, a driving licence issued in Tel Aviv, a few club cards and a hotel bill which showed that he had stayed until last Wednesday morning at the Victoria Hotel in Swindon. Well, people put up at hotels in Swindon every day.
    The leather address book showed that Goldberg had many friends throughout the world. He even knew David Simmons of Rose Cottage, Berniston, Wilts. Steed sipped a large whisky and considered this surprisingly specific link with his own concerns. There was only one