Eternal jf-3

by Craig Russel

  ‘Fabel…’ Schreiber sighed and turned his head painfully in the direction of van Heiden. ‘Can we talk about this some other time?’

  ‘That’s what happened that day in nineteen eighty-five on the platform in Nordenham,’ Fabel continued as if Schreiber had not spoken. ‘The Dutchman, van Hoogstraat, did not share Muhlhaus’s revolutionary zeal. He was exhausted after nearly a decade of living on the run. He wanted a way out without having to spend the greater part of the remainder of his life behind bars. So a deal was done. A deal to get van Hoogstraat a reduced sentence. A deal conceived by the remaining gang members who wanted to close that chapter in their lives. A deal conceived by Muhlhaus’s deputy and brokered anonymously by the group’s head of planning, Paul Scheibe. They knew that Muhlhaus would not be taken alive, and that his death would finally close the door on the threat of exposure and arrest. They had already bought the Dutchman’s silence with the deal they had done with the authorities, but it was a bonus for them that van Hoogstraat also died on that platform. The silence was total. The Risen would rise no more.’

  Fabel paused and looked at the bagged notebook in his hand.

  ‘It’s funny,’ Fabel said, with a sad half-smile. ‘It was Frank Grueber who said to me once that “truth is the debt we owe to the dead.”’ Fabel moved closer to Schreiber’s bed. ‘The puzzle is, how did Grueber find out the identities of the former members of The Risen? The only people who knew were the members themselves. If Brandt had been the killer, then it would have made sense – his mother, a former member herself, might have confided in her son. But the secret was so great, so closely guarded, that she didn’t even tell Franz Brandt that Muhlhaus was his father. So, how did Frank Grueber discover their identities? After all, he had been adopted when he was eleven and brought up in a different universe with wealthy adoptive parents in Blankenese. His early childhood, constantly on the move, being deprived of any education apart from political brainwashing by his parents, must have seemed like a distant nightmare. But there was one thing he remembered. Like I said, Muhlhaus had not trusted any of his former associates, but there’d been one person he did trust. His son. Franz Muhlhaus was an archaeologist and he must have told the young Frank how the earth protects the truth about the past for future generations. Muhlhaus told his son how he had buried the truth in the earth, carefully wrapped and protected and hidden from the world. He must have made the young Frank memorise the location so that, if Muhlhaus was betrayed, then the others would not be free to live their lives with impunity.’

  Hans Schreiber lay still and said nothing, gazing up at the ceiling from beneath his distended brow and swollen eyelids.

  ‘Red Franz Muhlhaus buried this notebook, along with a number of other documents giving detailed accounts of everything that happened during the active life of The Risen. It also meticulously details each member of the group and their special responsibilities. There is a diary, too. I’ve got someone going through that as we speak. I’m sure we shall uncover a great deal.

  ‘The funny thing is… the one name I expected to see on the list isn’t there. Bertholdt Muller-Voigt. He wasn’t Muhlhaus’s deputy. He wasn’t even a member of the group. I don’t even think he was an active or secret supporter. You see, terrorist organisations like The Risen are like black holes in space. They are small but their mass, their influence on everything around them, is huge. The gravity they generate sucks in everything within reach. Take, for example, a young lawyer and radical journalist who starts out as a broad supporter, then becomes a member. Then the second-in-command. Not Muller-Voigt. His sole connection with The Risen was that, like Muhlhaus, he had a relationship with Beate Brandt. Something that you and Paul Scheibe could not forgive, because you had both been besotted with her. That was why you couldn’t resist, twenty years on, conspiring to place evidence in Ingrid Fischmann’s hands that would seem to incriminate him. But not enough fully to reignite interest in The Risen. It was a dangerous game to play, particularly when your own wife began to turn up the heat. But the fact is that Muller-Voigt never did cross the line. He cared passionately about the environment and about social justice, but his principles also extended to not taking human life. Ingrid Fischmann got the wrong politician, didn’t she, Herr First Mayor?’

  ‘My God, Fabel,’ said van Heiden. ‘Are you sure about this?’

  ‘There’s no doubt. It’s all in here.’ Fabel held up the notebook. ‘And Muhlhaus buried other corroborative evidence with it. We recovered it all from Grueber’s cellar. That was how I knew he was going after Schreiber. He had saved the best until the last.’

  Werner stepped forward.

  ‘Hans Schreiber, I am arresting you for the kidnap and murder of Thorsten Wiedler, on or sometime after the fourteenth of November nineteen seventy-seven. I’m sure that, as a qualified lawyer, you understand your rights under the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany.’

  Epilogue

  February 2006: Six Months After the First Murder.

  Barmbek, Hamburg

  Hamburg looked unreal, like some romantic painter’s fantasy of a city. The sheer volume of snow had taken the authorities by surprise and it took them some time to clear the main roads and pavements. Then the snow had stopped and the clouds had cleared, but now the temperature had plummeted and the blankets of snow that bedecked the roofs, the parks and the edges of the streets were frozen fast and sparkling under a brilliant blue sky.

  The care home in which Frau Pohle lived was in Barmbek, on the far side of the city. Fabel had phoned the home’s director, Frau Amberg, to arrange the meeting.

  ‘Frau Pohle is a little confused, Herr Fabel. She finds it difficult to remember things from yesterday, but she has excellent recall of things that happened decades ago. I’m afraid it’s typical for the type of incipient dementia that Frau Pohle suffers from. And she can become easily distressed. I am concerned that she may be disturbed by your visit.’

  Fabel had then explained that he had uncovered property belonging to Frau Pohle’s long-time-missing brother. Frau Amberg had then seemed less reluctant and had arranged a time for him to visit.

  Fabel took the bus to Barmbek; partly because of the weather but also because lately he seemed to find excuses for not using his car. He had had his BMW convertible for six years and it had served him well. But since the night when he had spent three hours sitting anchored to his seat while the bomb squad defused the device that Grueber had placed beneath it, he had yet to feel comfortable in it.

  As Fabel sat in the bus and watched picture-postcard Hamburg drift by, he considered his mission. He did not know why it had become so important to him to find Karl Heymann’s sister and to inform her that her brother’s body had been found. He always imagined that she had suffered from the lack of a funeral for her brother and that she could maybe take some solace or comfort from having a place to visit and mourn her sixty-year-old loss. Frank Grueber had got one thing right: truth is the debt we owe to the dead.

  Frau Amberg met Fabel on his arrival and led him into a bright day-room that had picture windows that looked out over a large garden with a fountain at its centre. The garden and the fountain were only hinted outlines under the thick, crisp snow.

  Frau Pohle sat in a high-backed chair near the window. It saddened Fabel to see how youthful she was for her eighty-eight years: it seemed to him that she had been cheated by the deterioration within, of her mind. She was very smartly dressed and again it pained Fabel to think that she might have deliberately worn her best outfit because she seldom had visitors. As Fabel approached, she smiled at him eagerly. Expectantly.

  ‘Good day, Frau Pohle. My name is Jan Fabel. I’ve come to talk to you about your brother, Karl.’ Fabel extended his hand to shake Frau Pohle’s. She grasped it with both of hers.

  ‘Oh, thank you for coming, Herr…’ Fabel’s name had already escaped her. ‘I am so glad you came. You must be tired, coming all that way. I have been waiting so long for news of Karl. How is he?’ She laughe
d. ‘I’ll bet he has an awful American accent by now. You tell him when you see him that I am so angry. I can’t remember the last time I heard from him. Please – you sit down and tell me all about Karl’s life over there.’

  A care assistant arrived with some tea and biscuits and Frau Pohle went on to explain how Karl had always talked about getting away from Germany and going to America before the Nazis could conscript him into the army. She had always known that he had used the confusion of the bombing raid to disappear, to escape. Was Fabel from America and was Karl well?

  Despite the profound sadness that filled him, Fabel smiled as he listened to an old woman’s fantasy about her brother’s survival and his prospering in a far-off land. A fantasy that had sustained Frau Pohle for sixty years; and now, in her fading mind, that fantasy had become a concrete truth.

  For fifteen minutes Fabel sat and lied to an old woman. He invented a life and a family that should have been but never was. As he got up to go, Fabel saw the tears in Frau Pohle’s eyes and knew that they came from a bitter joy.

  ‘ Goodbye, Mrs Pohle,’ he said in English as he left her sitting by the window that looked out over the snow-covered garden.

  Sometimes truth is not the debt we owe the dead.

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