by Paula Wynne
Cami picked up a wooden tray of cheese biscuits, a variety of cheeses and a chunk of pâté. ‘Come, I’ve prepared us a feast.’ She brushed past him, letting her elbow gently brush against his lower torso. After placing the tray on a coffee table, she slipped gracefully into a wicker chair softened by a large cushion. She started nibbling on a cheese biscuit. As she suspected, Allan did the same and placed his camera beside him.
‘What’s on the camera today?’
‘Not much. Just some boring interviews with two old ladies having a cream tea. They chat mostly about the old days, but they only go on nostalgically about the war and don’t have any of the details I’m looking for. I’ll start again tomorrow.’
‘Anything interesting come out of your investigations so far?’
‘Not as much as I would have liked. Mostly a lot of fighting about the Balmaine family: who likes them, who doesn’t. You know the sort of thing I mean…village gossip. I’ll have to dig deeper.’
After a while, she tore a slice of cheese in half and shared it between them, placing the pieces on their respective wafers. Mother wouldn’t be seen dead serving sliced cheese to a guest. She would bring out all the fancy cheeses and their specific knives, but Cami didn’t have time for that kind of spread.
She tore another piece and held it out to him, purposefully making sure their fingers touched. With glee, she saw the same reaction that Matt had had when she’d ensured their fingers touched. Next, she smeared a butter knife over the smooth liver pâté, a speciality she’d bought because she loved its smooth richness. She spread it across a biscuit and handed it to Allan. He lifted it and crunched it between his teeth. She stood and walked over to make him another cocktail.
‘Green this time,’ she smiled as she bent down and passed it to him, nicely aligned for her cleavage to show behind the glass. ‘I’m playing around with different flavours. I’m calling it “Cami’s Delight.” It may be too sweet.’
He took a sip and denied her claim.’ No, no, it’s lovely. Is that aniseed?’
‘Oh dear, you’ve discovered my secret ingredient!’
‘I’ll drink it all. I love the stuff,’ he took another mouthful and sucked on the maraschino cherry. ‘Listen, Camryn―’
‘Cami. Please, it’s less formal. I don’t want to feel that you’re interviewing me like all the others. I want to feel special,’ she added coyly.
‘Oh, you are. You’re very special, Cami. You’re the reason I’m here with this story. I feel like I’m really getting somewhere.’
‘It’s your big scoop, right?’
His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed hard, ‘No, I mean…okay, confession time!’ He threw his hands up in mock defeat. ‘You’re right, I have to get this story to ensure I get a good job in London. Without this, I’m down the tubes, back to flipping burgers.’
She snuggled further down into her seat, her dress riding up to show a generous slice of thigh, to give him another carnal sign. ‘Well, we couldn’t have that now, could we? So how can I help?’
44
Cami leaned back into the cushion, pushing out her breasts. They were round and ripe like soft peaches. She only ever revealed just enough to entice men to want to touch them, but she never, ever showed any more than that. It was part of the game, to egg them on, tease them, yet never give them what they desired.
Allan slurped at his green cocktail and then said, ‘I hear your dad, the Falcon, became one of the world’s most sought-after men for finding Nazi artefacts and treasures.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. My father was an engineering contractor for large companies, many of which were in Germany and other parts of Europe.’
She couldn’t confirm the truth to him. She scrutinised him for a reaction, but he was too busy watching her licking the pâté off her fingertips.
When she stopped, he cleared his throat and said, ‘I was led to believe that’s why your family left the village.’
‘Tongue-waggers! Just because he was a German with Jewish heritage and earned well at his job, they assumed he must have some deep, dark secret, and this treasure hunting story appeared from somewhere.’ She had to keep the bitter tone out of her voice. ‘No one bothered to try and understand what he had been through in the concentration camps.’
She almost added: Or why he was compelled to search for those treasures.
‘What happened to him?’ A slightly drunken disbelief spread across Allan’s face.
Sorrowful eyes would do the trick. ‘Do you mean in the camps, or later?’ She gave a small sniff. ‘Oh, it was horrible. He had an accident on one of his contracts.’
‘And is that why your family moved?’ He poked his fingers into the sparkling liquid, snatched the maraschino cherry and popped it into his mouth. It was a struggle not to let her revulsion show.
Cami nodded. ‘He was terribly injured, and Mother couldn’t look after him.’
Allan took another swig of his drink, then said, ‘Where do they live now?’
Cami passed her hand over her eyes as if overwhelmed. Apologising, she stood and poured him more cocktail, and again held out the plate with thickly layered biscuits. With each bite, he wolfed down the dark pâté. Eventually, she murmured, ‘Mother lives in New York, and my Papi is now in a care home in Würzburg.’
‘Why there?’
‘That’s where he lived before the Germans took his family. And he had always dreamed of going back, so my mother thought it was the best place for him.’ She didn’t say that her mother wanted the monster as far from her as possible, but she finished by adding, ‘I visit him every couple of weeks.’
She suddenly brightened and became the bubbly bottle of champagne she’d been earlier. ‘Okay, so now you know the whole sordid truth about why we left Little Hollow so suddenly.’
‘That’s sad,’ his voice, slightly slurred at the edges, although probably just by the alcohol, and beginning to be stripped of its professional reporter façade, was genuinely moved, ‘especially after what he went through in the concentration camp.’
‘It all happened so quickly.’ Cami’s body turned artfully, to become small and fragile.
Allan sucked down more of his deadly cocktail.
She eyed him. It wouldn’t be too much longer, and she needed to find out what he knew before he became incoherent. ‘Anyway, enough about my father,’ her hand wafted like a butterfly across her eyes as if removing a tear, her upper arm squeezing her breast as she did.
He gulped down the remainder of his green cocktail and then licked his lips. ‘So, you haven’t heard of a Nazi hiding in this area?’ He was behaving like a lout now, his coarse greed stripped of all disguises by the drink.
Cami stared into space. Her face hardened in the momentary silence. ‘What makes you wish to connect my father to a Nazi hiding in this area?’
He frowned and tightened his lips as if muddled. ‘Well, as I said, I heard that your dad was a treasure hunter. Of course, if you say it’s all gossip, I’ll believe you. What I don’t get is how come your family moved at about the same time the story about a hiding Nazi first appeared. That’s what made me connect the two.’
She shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’ She kept her face cold and her eyes shallow. No one could know that Papi had only come to that village in order to hunt the very same Nazi that Allan had been talking about when she spotted him doing a voice to camera interview.
‘So, have you heard the name Sommer?’
His directness almost made her choke, but she kept calm. ‘Do you mean the one rumoured to have worked on some secret weapon for Kammler?
‘Yes, him. But from my research, I think there were two of them.’
‘Twins?’
‘No. Cousins. Kammler recruited Wilhelm Sommer for his technology skills, but he had a cousin called Steffan Sommer.’
Cami forced her expression to remain rigid. ‘I haven’t heard of him. Are you suggesting the cousin is hiding here or the techno-geek?’
> ‘Hah!’ He bellowed with sudden laughter. ‘No, it’s almost certain that the geek is in the US. His skills were far too valuable to waste, or to leave him lurking about.’
‘Could he even have been nabbed by the military for Aldermaston’s weaponry place up the road?’ She tried to make herself sound innocent and shocked that such things might go on.
‘Maybe. Now that you mention it…with his supposed skills in building scientific devices, they, um, would want him just as much.’ He nodded in slow motion as if the idea stewed in his brain. ‘But, nah. Thing is that the Americans paid much, much better. They got the cream of the Nazi scientists, and Sommer was definitely…er, cream.’
Cami hoped it was the cocktails starting to take effect.
Now he leant forward, conspiratorial and swaying slightly in his seat. ‘But I dug deep enough to find out about someone by the same name being sighted in Bremen, north Germany, just after the war ended.’
She turned on her honey-voice, ‘You’ve certainly done your research. I’m impressed.’
His chest expanded. ‘I turned up reams of printed papers, you know from trials and war criminal testimonies, about what the geek Sommer did for the Reich, but there isn’t much about the other…one.’
Cami studied him. Was it working at last?
‘Sommer’s success in the Hitler Youth, capturing an English spy, actually his cousin was there, too, and then working with high ranking officers was splashed across the…newspapers.’
She nodded. Papi had cuttings of each one, but she didn’t tell him that.
‘Despite all the information about who the man was and what he did, nobody has ever been able to locate him. Even though a few tabloids…reported possible whereabouts.’
Allan had started quivering with a slight panting at the end of each sentence. Cami gestured to his glass to encourage him to lap up more of the lethal cocktail.
He did and continued, ‘Many believed he had gone to the States, like I just said, and that he possibly even lived in Mexico. While others were adamant he was hiding in…Canada.’
‘I think that place is riddled with Nazis,’ Cami sneered, ‘like America.’
‘But,’ Allan wagged his finger crookedly and smiling like he was bestowing a secret gift upon her, ‘a couple of little known reports said that he had changed his face and his name, and now lived…lives, quietly in a rural English Berkshire village called―’
Cami finished for him, ‘Little Hollow.’ The crooked finger and gaps in his speech meant only one thing! It must be working, even though it was testing her patience and taking far too long to twist his insides.
He stared at his hand as if intrigued as to why he had lost control of his pointing finger. ‘Yessss,’ he slurred. ‘Bizarrely, somewhere very close to where your…Papi lived. And whereeee you…grew up.’
She had to take her hat off to him. He had a sharp sniffer nose. Long ago, she had guessed that Papi had followed Sommer to the village and then met her mother, fallen in love, or at least fathered her and then stayed, and settled down.
‘Are you su-su-sureeee you…don’t…know any―’
His sentence broke off as his mouth twisted down in a gnarled grimace. A long thick string of drool slid out the corner of his mouth.
She peered at him and wrinkled her nose. ‘Oh, Allan. That is not a good look.’
She had found a story on the underside of one of Papi’s newspaper cuttings of hunted Nazis. Since the war there had been one type of coolant in general use: the traditional “green” formula antifreeze.
She’d become intrigued and researched the topic. She had read that dogs would normally only consume relatively small quantities of the sweet-tasting antifreeze and ingest the toxin, ethylene glycol, before being repulsed by its aftertaste. Not just dogs: it seemed a British woman had failed to murder her husband when the strange smell and taste had made him suspicious of the wine she’d given him. A New York lady had been more successful, disguising the poison in a fruity cocktail. Cami had gone with maraschino cherries, vanilla and aniseed mixed with the potent liquors to mask the poisonous taste, and it seemed to have worked very nicely. Especially with a topping of cleavage and a side order of exposed thigh.
The article had said antifreeze was deadly if consumed in even small quantities. One teaspoon could kill a seven-pound cat, whereas a small bowl of it would almost certainly do the trick for a medium size dog. Allan had now ingested a lot more than that.
She calculated that he must be well beyond the point of no return by now, because it would only take about a cup of antifreeze to cause fatal damage to his system, and he’d had roughly two. She snuggled down further into the plump cushion. She hadn’t left things to chance, though. The pâté was masking the taste, but more importantly, its salty tang was making him thirsty to drink more of her wicked cocktail.
And it contained rat poison.
She had craftily made two. One for her to pretend to eat and lick her fingers, while the other was deadly. If asked why she was having a different one, she had planned to say hers didn’t have the mushrooms the recipe dictated, as she detested them. Luckily, he hadn’t even noticed.
Slurring and frowning, Allan excused himself, asking for the gents. She pointed to the hallway. ‘Second on the right.’
‘We’ll get to the bot-bot-bottom…of…this. I am sssssure you are keeping-som-som-something…from me.’ As he rose, he wobbled and sat back down.
Cami was sorely tempted to reveal all her secrets. After all, he could never spill them from six feet under. Instead, she threw her arms in the air theatrically and murmured, ‘Okay, okay, I’ll spill the beans when you get back. Don’t take too long, now.’ She fluttered her eyelids at him. ‘You shouldn’t keep a girl waiting when she has secrets to reveal.’
‘I…thought…so. You…a…little…devil―’
‘Oh, if only you knew!’
He rose again, and this time stumbled. His legs had no co-ordination and they tangled, making him fall over. Allan struggled to get back to his feet, but didn’t have the strength. Each time he almost managed, but then flopped over.
While she watched, a few more minutes passed, and he started trembling. Some spasms were violent and others mere quakes. As he started vomiting, bile and blood spread over the rug. His head thumped up and down, splattering the vomit.
Fortunately, she had prepared for this, and had thrown a thick old rug on the floor. One that she didn’t mind tossing out with his body. She’d thought she might have to manoeuvre him onto it once he’d collapsed, but he’d considerately fallen straight onto it and it was catching his mess nicely.
Again, fortunately, she had Glynn to clear up and dump this carcass. His share in the treasure was worth this kind of dirty work.
Cami grimaced at the stench of rotten meat coming from the vomit. At that moment, Allan’s bowels erupted with diarrhoea and urine adding to the foul miasma.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Almost puking, she pinched her nose, her nails biting into the sides to keep her nostrils sealed. Its sour bitterness hung in the air and stung her eyes. So, when it came down to it, this was what was inside a man.
She leaned over to see how much life he had left. He opened one eye and stared at her, imploring her to help him, so she gave him one of her sweetest smiles.
At least the poor soul had a last vision of an angel welcoming him to heaven or hell, wherever it was he was going.
When he finally stopped trembling, Cami knew death would come if he wasn’t hospitalised.
But still she waited.
Biting her lip was the best way to watch the reporter shivering and shaking away his last moments.
While his muscles twitched, his eyes rolled around in their sockets in short, sharp, rapid movements. Another bright yellow stream of urine spurted out underneath him.
With one final convulsion and a putrid expulsion of air, Allan lay still.
He would need another day, at least, to just lie there and finish dying.
She shrugged. That didn’t matter. She had to visit Papi anyway, and then later in the week join everyone at the Air Fest. Oh, boy, were they in for a surprise!
Cami stared at the unconscious man and felt nothing. Papi had to be avenged at all costs.
45
Würzburg, Germany
After touching down in Frankfurt and hiring a taxi for the hour and half’s drive to Würzburg, Cami directed the driver to a care home.
Agreeing to see Matt at the Air Fest in a day’s time had kept him at bay. She’d nicknamed him Limp-it when she spoke to Glynn about the idiot boy, and it was an annoyingly accurate moniker.
Glynn had dumped Allan’s body deliberately to make people suspect the hidden Nazi. When it was discovered, it would bring in a swarm of people looking for the likely culprit and sniffing him out. People would do her job for her.
Besides, she wanted to be there to see their faces when the murder was revealed. A kind of job satisfaction.
Luckily, the dead man’s pockets had contained his keys, so Glynn had searched his house and then locked it up, making it look like no one had entered. Anyone looking for him would think he was still there, because all his stuff remained as he had left it, only to buy them the little time needed before the grisly discovery of his body happened. They had a great surprise coming, the stupid locals.
Cami had made Glynn call Matt’s mother, pretending to be Allan’s boss from the TV company. He’d told her that Allan needed to return to the office urgently, but he could leave all his stuff since it was just for a couple of days.
When she said he wasn’t there, Glynn pretended he thought Allan was staying with her. She quickly explained about the burglary and why he had gone to his father’s empty house. Before ending the call, Glynn had said he would call Allan directly and apologised for bothering her.
That little call would make everyone assume he’d got hold of Allan, who had then rushed off to London.
After disposing of the body, Glynn had driven the dead man’s car into a poverty-stricken area of the nearest big town, Reading, and parked it where it was bound to be robbed and most probably dismantled for parts within a day or two.
