My Name is Eva An absolutely gripping and emotional historical novel - Suzanne Goldring Page 0,36

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