Bloodline Of Evil

by Tanja Pleva

  'That is what I was looking for. Look, here on the back it says so.'

  About ten people were shown in the photo. Some of them wore white smocks, the others had on street-clothes. They were arranged in two rows like in a school-class photo. A white building was in the background surrounded by palm trees. A nurse wearing a white bonnet had apparently by mistake entered the field of view as well. She pushed somebody in a wheel chair. The face of the seated man was half hidden by one of the other men, but it looked peculiar. And something else was in the photo: a sign, and again, only half of it was visible and something was written on it. Sam narrowed his eyes and held the photo further away.

  'Better take these.' Ms. Rewe took her gold-framed reading glasses off and passed them to Sam across the table.

  He held them over the photo like a magnifying glass. Now the letters were more clearly recognizable. Casa de…, nothing else could be read after that, regrettably.

  Sam turned the picture around. Written in ink and somewhat smeared, were six names, both Steiner and Rewe among them. Bull's eye, he thought. 'I can't tell you how much you've helped us, Ms. Rewe!'

  Juri was looking at the other sorted out photos.

  They were family images of a more recent time. This one photograph must have belonged to someone else, thought Sam. 'That isn't your husband's handwriting, is it?'

  'I do not think so. Why?'

  'I was just musing that no one would write his own name on the back, wouldn't you agree?'

  'That is right. But one name, which I heard more often, does not appear here. I am sure the photo belonged to that one. I forgot … oh goodness gracious, my years are catching up with me.' She groaned and gave Sam another photo.

  'Well, I am not familiar with these two men, for example. They showed up unexpectedly at one of my husband's birthdays, not introducing themselves. I never saw them again.'

  'Do you know when these images were made?'

  'I believe it was his fiftieth birthday, but then it may have been his sixtieth. And the others were all made before I met Richard, let's say, about 1950 … and this one here…' She pointed at the picture with the white house in the background '… was taken about 1960, because there is another copy with the exact date written on it.'

  'Do you happen to know as well where it was taken? Casa de…, might it have been taken in Spain?'

  'Alas, I cannot tell you.' She rummaged through the small box again and conjured one more photo up from it.

  Again it was a group photo, this time though, only five of the men and one woman were present.

  'Richard often left for awhile and each time he was mysterious about it. He always said that it was about business. He was an excellent orthopedist, but basically a misanthrope. From the social point of view, he was a bum... I beg your pardon!' She pressed her hand on her mouth as if the expletive had involuntarily escaped her, and she smiled in embarrassment like a little girl. 'You may keep the photos. They have served well.'

  'Does this mean anything to you?' Juri retrieved the small book from his pocket and passed it to her across the table. She paged through the empty pages and pondered the picture long and thoroughly.

  'This looks somewhat familiar. But I cannot remember where I may have seen it before. I studied history once, there you come upon such things quite often. In 1953? No, no idea. I'm sorry.'

  She rose, quickly tidied up and put three wineglasses on the table, and then she produced a bottle of red wine as well.

  Both men declined simultaneously, but Ms. Rewe looked at them as if she would accept no opposition.

  'I am rarely visited here, so do me a favor and be my guests for tonight. I have two guest-rooms, and you will sleep here, in the forest, as you never did before, I promise you.'

  Again she put on her winning smile and Sam gave in.

  The weekend was drawing near and if they headed back the following day to Paris, that would be just fine.

  Juri fully agreed and already sipped with relish at the wine.

  In the evening, Sam tried to call l'Inspecteur Germain. There was indeed no uplink connection in the forest, so he drove a little distance to the next town, a cozy French hamlet with a cobblestone center and 19 century houses. But Germain had switched on his voicemail.

  Sam was satisfied that the trip had been worth the effort. At last he saw some progress in the case. The names on the photo might help to prevent another murder, if they acted quickly to catch up with the culprit.

  25.

  Colombia Dawn was breaking and fog was lying sleepily on the hills when Lea drove to the home at half past five. She planned to have a look in her brother's office and this was easier when the staff was not yet busy. Maybe she would find something here that was related to the Secret.

  The high gate automatically obeyed her remote control.

  Slowly she drove the road through the wide park, up to the white building that was not visible from the road.

  A head beneath a hat peeped out between the bushes: the gardener, occupied by his work.

  She parked her car and entered the building as silently as an intruder. She used to drop in only twice a week to examine the disabled and to exchange a few words with them, otherwise she had her own practice in the Clínica Medellin.

  Becoming a doctor had been her childhood dream, and during final school exams she had decided to specialize on genetic diseases and special impediments after natal traumas.

  A second key, which she had acquired the day before during the everyday lunch at her parents', helped to open Rafael's office. A glance to the right and to the left. No one was in the corridor. Unseen, she quietly slipped into the office.

  Her eyes adjusted quickly to the twilight inside. As usual she thought, Rafael had always been disorderly. His desk nearly broke under a hill of folders and papers. She sat down in the brown leather armchair and slowly turned to and fro. No one but Rafael had admission to his office otherwise. It was a safe hiding place for Secrets.

  It was getting brighter. The objects in the room gained clear outlines.

  In front of her lay Rafael's day planner. She leafed through it. A few notes on his appointments in Europe during two weeks. Barcelona, Paris, Florence, Vienna and Berlin. Nothing unusual.

  Where was the day planner from the year before? She went through all the drawers and found it in the lowest one: deep blue with golden letters, an annual Christmas present by the health insurance company. It was full of notes, some of them hard to decipher. Name, cross, name, cross, name, cross … almost every month they had to lament one or two deaths at the home. Slightly unusual for a nursing home for disabled people she thought, leafing through the pile of medical files.

  Only the most recent casualty was among them. One Alfonso Villegas.

  She remembered the small boy very well. A child of an incestuous marriage. Eight years old. Diagnosis: ß-thalassaemia. His skeleton had been crooked because of the anaemias. His parents no longer received any more money for care, and they had not visited their child. Two months later he had died. The cause had not been recorded. The child had been dependent on monthly blood transfusions, so that enough oxygen could be transported; moreover, he had needed medical treatments to remove the vast amounts of iron that piled up in his body. The home had paid for that in advance. Had the treatment been stalled? Had they permitted the child to die? She would not credit that to her brother.

  Lea copied the other names from the book. Their medical files had to be somewhere. She intended to go on carefully not to arouse any suspicion.

  The house had become active meanwhile; the normal working day had begun. Doors opened and closed and outside in the garden, the first patients went for a walk while their rooms were cleaned.

  Lea peered out. Nobody was there. She closed the door behind herself and went down the long corridor to the patient's wing. The strange feeling in the stomach area had gained force. Something was not right about this place, she felt it.

  26.

  Chanteau/Paris
Sam was awakened in the early morning by the tireless pecking of a woodpecker on a tree trunk. As predicted by Ms. Rewe, he had not slept that well in a long time: deep and undisturbed, without any annoying and fatiguing dreams of the kind that had haunted him so often recently. He smelled coffee. It was the first time in a long time that he did not have to make it himself in the morning. Lina had always brought one to his bed when she had been around. He stretched out and looked around.

  An old cupboard whose doors would certainly squeak when opened, the bed and an old armchair occupied by two porcelain dolls which stared at him with sad eyes of glass, this was all that furnished the room. A dry bouquet of flowers was standing on the bedside table and on a wall hung a child's many colored drawings.

  Sam folded the cover back. This was not a really warm and cozy place. He quickly dressed up in jeans and sweatshirt and went to the bathroom.

  The water was icy cold so he decided for a spit bath. When he entered the sitting room, Juri was already sitting at the breakfast table, rubbing tired eyes.

  'Well, how did you sleep?' Ms. Rewe placed fresh rolls between various kinds of cheese, jam and a plate of ham on the table, filled the glasses with orange juice and unwrapped the boiled eggs that she had protected with a towel.

  'Perfectly.' Sam sat down next to Juri.

  When his partner had drunk a little bit too much the night before, he was never very talkative in the next morning, therefore Sam only kindly padded his shoulder.

  'I remembered that name last night that my husband had so frequently mentioned. I believe it was Thiel, Heinrich. Yes, indeed: Heinrich Thiel.'

  'In what context did that happen?'

  'Oh, that I cannot remember anymore. He seemed to admire Mr. Thiel very much. Probably he was another doctor. Anyway, I have never met him.'

  Just after breakfast they set out towards Paris and Sam tried to call Germain again. This time l'Inspecteur answered after the second ring. The background was humming with other voices and he sounded stressed. He explained concisely that he had just been at a scene of a crime, but they might briefly meet at the police station in the afternoon.

  This did not fit at all into Sam's schedule. He had planned to be in Munich this afternoon.

  Juri rubbed his brow: a sign that he was still suffering from a hangover. Ms. Rewe and he had emptied three bottles of wine last night.

  'Do you know Paris?' Sam asked.

  'Not at all. Why do you ask?'

  'Because we will have four to five hours to kill until we meet Germain. What do you think about taking another aspirin and going to the Louvre?'

  'Nice!' said Juri. His face made clear that he was less than enthusiastic about that suggestion.

  One hour later they reached Paris. Juri's mood had improved by then and he was indeed ready for a visit to the Louvre without grumbling.

  'How could they set up such terrible stuff in front of this old building?' That was his first comment on the seventy-two foot high, glass pyramid at the main entrance.

  'It is supposed to link the modern age with history. The glass represents modernity.'

  'Nice!'

  'That's art. What does art mean to you?'

  'Never thought about that. But I would rather connect art with aesthetics, beauty and uniqueness. Art is not created by somebody sitting in a diaper in a corner waiting for the right year to come along, in my opinion.'

  Sam was forced to laugh. Juri liked to take extreme positions.

  They spent two hours in the museum, enjoying the world-famous smile of Mona Lisa and arguing whether one or another picture might be considered art or rather not.

  In the afternoon they went to the police station, where they met a tired Germain, who had plenty to do with another murder case.

  Sam gave him name and approximate age of the only Frenchman in the photo: François Bellier. Then he told of the meeting with Ms. Rewe. And again, Sam could perceive that something was haunting Germain's mind. He wiped his face with a flat hand and looked for a while out of the window, seeming to struggle with himself.

  'I told you about my discovery already. I may be very wrong, of course, but …' Now he turned to the two German policemen. 'Do you know how Jewish children died in the concentration camps, other than being sent to the gas chamber or shot into the back of the neck?'

  Sam and Juri shook their heads synchronously.

  Juri, on the other seat, leafed through a Lufthansa' newspaper while Sam had already killed off a whole package of Mentos. They had just taken off and the captain specified on the loudspeaker that the flight to Munich would take one and a half-hours.

  In the meantime, the French lab had found traces of an orchid on the other slip of paper too, and there was no doubt that they had been intentionally placed there.

  Sam dwelt on his thoughts, observing the shifting clouds and trying to perceive faces and outlined animals in them. He had never occupied himself with the details of that creepy period of WWII and the role that the Germans had assumed. He had seen films about it, such as Holocaust and Schindler's list, and each time he had switched off the TV because the cruel acts of inhumanity had brought tears to his eyes.

  'I am beginning to believe, as well, that our murderer is a kind of avenger', said Juri, without lifting his eyes from the newspaper.

  'If he's perhaps a survivor from the time of the Holocaust, then he would be at least seventy by now. And we're guessing at a younger man. He keeps throwing crumbs at us and we just keep gobbling them up.

  Sam gave a groan of despair about the case. But it was not the first time that he had had the feeling of being overwhelmed and stuck. And each time something had then happened. Some coincidence. Chance, his unpredictable ally who suddenly would open new doors and provide power to go on.

  'You think the orchid is another clue?'

  'With traces on both slips of paper, I assume that he wants to tell us something.'

  Now the airplane passed dark grey clouds and Sam closed his eyes. In the concentration camps, the arms of the children were held tight and then a toxic injection was introduced into their hearts that brought instant death.

  27.

  Vienna Viennese Ice Dream was the name of the seven thousand one hundred and seventy-five square yards of ice in front of the lighted city hall. Young and old people alike were turning pirouettes on skates.

  Leila was used to inline-skating on the closed Autopista in Medellin every Sunday, so staying on her skates was no problem for her.

  Rafael on the other hand, sat more often on his bottom than he did standing. After a while he sought refuge at the edge, exhausted, and waved at her as she made another round.

  When she skated past again, Rafael was no longer there. So where had he gone again? She looked around, trying to find him in the crowd. But he wore a dark jacket as did ninety percent of the people. And suddenly she was firmly embraced from behind.

  Rafael laughed and pulled her off the ice. 'Come, let's go to the hotel. I booked tickets for the opera.'

  Leila felt like she was in a dream. She hoped not to wake up from it and be found somewhere cut open. Could happiness really last? Her mother always said that it depended on oneself to what extent luck might last, because everyone had a different definition of luck.

  Rafael was sensitive, attentive and even handsome: tall, well built, fair-skinned and blond. In Colombia it was a rarity, which all women craved for because they thought he was a foreigner. Foreigners were a ticket to the whole wide world, even if it meant a small village in Germany or America. At least it also meant prestige and respect among the family members, relatives and friends.

  Whenever Rafael started to talk, everybody praised him for his fine Spanish that he spoke without accent. Now he made fun of that and spared himself the explanations to others about his true origin. Yes, she had a perfect husband at her side and this meant luck. She stroked her belly, a gesture that she had got used to during the last month.

  The Hotel Sacher, built in the center of Vie
nna in 1876, was just opposite the state opera house and located on one of the most important shopping streets in the city. To Leila's eyes it looked like a palace, and in the room with the canopy bed she felt like a European princess.

  Rafael already sat completely dressed on the bed five minutes later and discreetly glanced at his watch. He looked nervous and distracted. 'Honey, I am going to go downstairs already. I'll see you at the bar', he said and was already out of the door before she could reply.

  The opera began at eight o'clock, now it was only half past six. She quickly slipped into a black dress and equally black high-heeled shoes, grabbed her bag and just wanted to go out of the room when she heard a familiar sound. Rafael had forgotten his Blackberry. She took it and looked at it as if she had a dangerous weapon in her hand. Looking at the message would seem like a breach of trust.

  She put it into her pocket, left the room and hastened down the hallway to the elevator, for maybe she could still catch up with Rafael.

  Suddenly she slowed her pace and finally stopped. She looked around to make sure that she was alone, then she fumbled the Blackberry from her pocket and selected Inbox.

  Names that she had never heard and which were obviously not from home. She opened an already read mail.

  When she read the lines, she became dizzy. That was not possible! She read every word again. Reciting a silent prayer and hoping that she was wrong, she opened another file. The content was not the same, but similar.

  Suddenly some things made sense that had bothered the Colombian public prosecutor's office for years, without ever producing any proof.

  Then she pressed by mistake the latest received message and did not know how to undo it. Leila fell sick. She vomited straight onto the floor, wiped her mouth and ran back into the room.

  She positioned herself before the bathroom mirror and looked into her own eyes. 'You are with a murderer', she told herself. Then she heard the room door opening.