by Leta Serafim
“You said something else in German? What was it?”
“I asked, ‘Who did this to you’? It was a rhetorical question.”
“He came with you to Patmos?”
“Yes, I didn’t want to leave him alone in Germany. We only had each other, he and I. He served as a grandfather for my children. As I told you, he was part of the family.”
“You say he was not your father.”
“That’s right. He was my uncle, my father’s brother.”
“Tell me about him. What kind of person he was.”
“What do you want me to say, Chief Officer? He was a dutiful family man. He worked hard to support us after the car accident. He was an engineer and a Lutheran. He studied in Heidelberg.”
Patronas continued entering information. He was very tired and didn’t want to stay up all night transcribing the tape. His notes would give him what he needed.
“And you, what do you do?” he asked.
“I am an aid worker in Africa,” Bechtel responded.
“Where?”
The man made no effort to hide his annoyance. “Darfur, Sudan, Congo, Burundi, wherever I’m sent. I don’t see what relevance this has to my uncle’s death.”
Patronas interrupted. “In Africa, what do you do?”
“Nutrition. I work for the UN.”
Back and forth it went, Patronas asking questions, the German making disparaging remarks and humiliating him, volunteering as little information as possible.
Patronas paused to regroup. Talking to Gunther Bechtel was like playing tennis with a broken racquet.
“Is this your house?”
“No, no, how could it be? I just told you. I am an aid worker. I cannot afford a place like this.”
“Whose house is it?”
“A friend of mine, Joseph Bauer. I will spell it for you, B-A-U-E-R. Did you get that, Chief Officer? Or do you want me to spell it again? B-A-U-E-R. He bought the land and drew up the design. Greece being the way it is, it took him more than a year and a half just to get the permits; then there was a strike in Piraeus and a delay in customs. That’s why it seems unfinished.”
There was implied criticism in everything he said.
“Where is your friend now?” Patronas asked.
“He and his wife are in Turkey.”
“When did they leave? Were they here when your father was killed?”
“No, they’d left some time before. Ten days, I think.”
“I will need to talk to them. How long have you been in Patmos?”
“My wife came the beginning of July—the third, I think it was.” Bechtel looked at his wife for confirmation.
“Yes, it was the third,” she said, nodding.
“So you’ve been here about five weeks?” Patronas asked her.
“That is correct, yes,” she said. “I go to the beach in Campos, sunbathe and read books there. See to the children. The days pass. Until yesterday, it was pleasant.”
“And you, when did you come?” Patronas asked, returning to her husband.
“The day before yesterday. I had work to finish in Darfur.”
Patronas wrote the date down and circled it. “I noticed there’s no security system here. Who has keys to the house?”
“The housekeeper. As far as I know, she’s the only one.”
The wife jumped in. “The gardener has a key, too, Gunther. There are many keys to the house. Both the children have one. I have one, the Bauers.”
Her husband didn’t like being corrected. “So, how many keys?” he asked his wife sharply.
“Eight, I think. We have four, the Bauers have two and the gardener and the woman who cleans each have one.”
Patronas cut off the discussion, thinking there were so many keys, they would be of no use in the investigation. “Does the housekeeper live here with you?”
“No,” Gunther Bechtel said. “I believe she has an apartment in town.”
The German hadn’t referred to the woman by name, probably didn’t know it. As with the keys, he did not appear to be aware of what went on in the house or care much.
“She works for our friends,” Bechtel hastened to add. “They are the ones who deal with her.”
“Does she speak German?”
“Only a few words.”
Patronas frowned. “But this is a German household. How does she manage?”
The wife spoke up again. “Our friend’s wife tells her sauber, clean, and hands her a mop and she mops. Tells her schmutzige Wäsche, dirty clothes, gives her the hamper and she does the laundry.”
Patronas was liking them less and less. “Where is she now?”
“The housekeeper? I sent her home.”
“Was she here on the day of the murder?”
“Yes,” said Gerta Bechtel. “She came in the afternoon and stayed on to prepare our dinner.”
“Let’s go back to the deceased,” Patronas said. “Did he have friends on Patmos? People he visited?”
“No, he rarely left the house.” Gunther Bechtel was very emphatic on this point. “Once he got here, he remained, except for a few times when he joined us for the day at Campos. He loved the garden and liked to sit outside under the trees.”
“So he came with you from Germany, and except for two or three trips to the beach, stayed within these walls?”
“That is correct.”
Patronas felt a touch of pity for the old man. Confined to this hillside, he must have been very lonely. Maybe he’d been afraid to venture off the estate, afraid he’d fall and break his hip. After all, he’d been over ninety. Still, it seemed wrong. Everyone in the family had been occupied elsewhere: his nephew in Africa and his grandchildren and their mother at the beach, their hosts in Turkey. Aside from the housekeeper, he would have spent most of his time alone, and she didn’t speak or understand German. If he’d wanted to communicate with her, he would have had to use sign language.
“He had everything he needed,” Gunter Bechtel insisted stubbornly. “My friends arranged to import food, German beer, newspapers, books, and videos for him. It was just like at home, only warm and sunny. He thanked us many times for bringing him here. He was happy.”
“How did he pass the time?” Patronas asked.
“He gardened a little. He was an old man, Chief Officer. Mostly, he napped.”
“What was his relationship with the neighbors?”
“We are summer people living in a borrowed house. We have no relationship with the neighbors.”
“What about the Germans who live on Patmos?”
“We do not know people on Patmos, German or otherwise.” Again, Bechtel was emphatic.
“Did your father know the people who gave you the house?”
“Of course he knew the Bauers.” His tone was hostile. “They are our friends. Surely you don’t think they had a hand in this?”
“It appears unlikely, but we will still have to check.” Patronas continued to write. “What was your father’s relationship with his grandchildren?”
“His relationship with the children was good. They played cards. Especially my son, Walter. My daughter, as you saw, is a teenager, not so interested in adults.”
“Was your father a veteran? Did he serve in the war?”
“What possible relevance does that have?”
“There was a swastika carved on his forehead. Why would someone do something like that?”
“I have no idea.” Bechtel bit off the words.
“I’m sorry if I upset you. I’m just trying to get a sense of who he was.”
“I’ll tell you who he was. He was an old man with arthritis who liked to sleep in the sun, who liked to drink Lowenbrau in the afternoon and listen to the music of Mahler on an old-fashioned phonograph. He loved the smell of lilies because they reminded him of his mother. He especially loved pickles.” For the first time, there was a hint of emotion in the man’s voice. Sadness. “He never bothered anybody.”
“Do you have any idea who mi
ght have killed him?” Evangelos asked.
He shook his head. “Perhaps it was a random event, someone attacking him because he was German. Germans are not so popular now in Greece.”
Patronas drummed his pencil on his notebook. “What about the scars on his face? The old ones. Where did they come from?”
“Oh, you mean his Mensur scars,” Bechtel said, visibly relaxing. “They are from dueling. The sport was very popular in the universities of my country when my papa was young. They called the participants Paukanten and a scar was a smite. To have one on your face was a badge of honor then, a mark of your class. It meant you were brave and had stood your ground and not flinched.”
He smiled for the first time. “Otto Bismarck once remarked that a man’s courage could be judged by the number of scars on his cheeks.”
Again, everything was generic, nothing specific to the dead man.
“Your papa had three scars, so he must have been a very brave man.”
“He was.”
“Where in Germany was he from?”
“He lived with us in Stuttgart. It worked very well for everyone. My wife had company when I was away in Africa and he had someone to look after him.”
Another evasion.
He’d have to enter the decedent’s name and search the Internet. Maybe send his photograph to Interpol, see what came back.
He returned to the war. “Was he in the army?”
“Everyone in Germany served in the military during the war, the Wehrmacht predominantly. You know the word, Chief Officer. No need for me to translate.”
“Where did he fight?”
“I don’t know. We never spoke of that time.”
“Surely you must have some idea.”
“What are you asking? If he was a war criminal, my papa? If he killed Jews?” His voice grew shrill. “You think the agents of Mossad left their headquarters in Tel Aviv and came to Patmos, broke into this place and killed a ninety-year-old man in a garden?”
Said like that, it sounded preposterous.
Bechtel began pacing back and forth.“You people are all the same,” he said angrily. “You assume if a man is a certain age and has a German accent, he was in Auschwitz running a crematorium. There were nearly seventy million of us at the beginning of the war. Not all of us were in the Gestapo, Chief Officer! Not all of us were SS men, no matter what you think, loading people onto trains and sending them off to be gassed. Most of us were ordinary people caught up in events beyond our control. Certainly my papa was that, just an ordinary man.” There were tears in his eyes. Tears of anger, tears of grief, perhaps both.
“I meant no disrespect,” Patronas said softly.
“Chief Inspector, you’ve been asking that question in one form or another for the last five minutes. As I told you, you are not alone in your prejudice. Everywhere, people see Germans—my papa in this instance, my murdered adopted father—and they wonder. You can see it on their faces. The more impolite among them, they ask.”
Patronas nodded, recognizing the truth in what he said. He wondered how it worked in families, when a son asked a father, ‘Where were you in the war?’ If you were German and the answer was Poland, how did the conversation go?
Chapter Five
He sows on barren soil.
—Greek Proverb
Gerta Bechtel wept silently, twirling a strand of blonde hair around her finger. At least fifteen years younger than her husband, she carried herself like a dancer. Her face was lovely, reminiscent of Heidi Klum’s, and her blue eyes were carefully made up, her hair tousled in an artful way. She was wearing jeans and an embroidered tunic, sandals with little tassels that jangled when she crossed her legs. Like the rest of her family, she was very tan, her hair streaked in places by the sun. Even now, with tears running down her cheeks, she was one of the most beautiful women Patronas had ever seen—gazelle-like in her movements, soft in the way women should be.
She was wearing a musky scent that seemed to envelop him as he sat there, make him forget why he’d come.
He and Gerta Bechtel were alone in a room at the back of the house. It was his friend Bauer’s study, her husband had informed him, and Patronas and his colleagues on the police force were welcome to use it, the computer and Internet, whatever they needed.
Patronas had demurred. Thanking Bechtel, he said he’d prefer to work at the police station downtown, leave him and his family in peace when he was done speaking with them.
The windows in the room were large and faced the garden, and the room was full of sunlight. Although Gunther Bechtel had objected, Patronas had insisted on interviewing his wife separately.
“Let’s start at the beginning,” he said, seeking to put her at ease. “Where are you from?”
“Tübingen. There I meet my husband. I was in university and he was, how do you say, an instructor.” She hesitated. “Have you a cigarette? Is hard, this.”
He handed her a cigarette and took one for himself. They smoked in companionable silence for a few minutes.
“Gunther, he hates the smoking, but sometimes I must. Is hard, like I say. We were always together, Gunther’s uncle and me, many years, always together.”
Tears filled her eyes. “At first, I go with my husband, but later Gunther said it was too dangerous. Too much war in Africa, he said. Look at Rwanda. No good for me.”
“Did the children go with you?”
“No, they stayed in Stuttgart. We had a woman and Gunther’s uncle was there. I was never away for long, two weeks, three. No more. They were happy in Germany, our children, happy and safe.”
Pushing her chair back, she got up and walked over to the window, cigarette in hand. Her tunic was heavily beaded and it shimmered when she moved.
“I always wanted to see Greece,” she said with her back toward him. “When our friends invited us, I told Gunther we must go.” She spoke in a very precise way, taking care to enunciate her words so that he could understand, nodding a little as she did so. “I am good. You understand my English, no?”
Patronas nodded. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.
“I said, ‘Gunther, is only two months. Let me have this.’ ”
Silhouetted against the window, she seemed to glow, her hair, her clothes, everything about her bathed in golden light. “Patmos, it is good. Every day I go to the beach with the children and we swim together. Eat lunch sometimes. Have fun. My son learns to wind-surf. It is good for him and Hannelore to be here and go to the beach. Fun in the sun.”
He studied her, puzzled by what he was hearing. Her words didn’t match the anguish he’d seen in her eyes; they sounded counterfeit somehow. She was holding something back, he was sure of it. Maybe out of fear of making a mistake, like the smoking, revealing something that satrap of a husband didn’t want him to know. Or maybe that stolid cheerfulness was just another manifestation of grief, an effort to convince herself that the trip to Patmos hadn’t been a tragic mistake.
“What was your relationship with the deceased?”
“I took care of him always.” She struggled to find the right words. “I made sure he had the food he liked, the Schnitzel and Mohnkuchen mit Streusel. Clean clothes to wear. Supervised the woman, Maria, to make sure she did what he wanted, cooked the way he liked. I taught her how to make the Mohnkuchen for him.”
“Excuse me,” Patronas said, “but what is Mohnkuchen?”
“A cake of poppy seeds. It is very good, a favorite of us all.”
After a pause, she continued. “Sometimes we two, we watch television together. He was my family, too.”
There was little warmth in her voice as she said this. Duty had called and she’d answered.
“Did he ever express fear, the victim, or seem worried about anything?”
“No, no. He got up every morning, ate his breakfast and went outside. He loved the garden. He’d cut flowers and put them in a vase for me. He liked to surprise me with roses.” Her voice caught.
“Your husband said he
was often alone.”
“Yes, we didn’t take him to the beach with us. It was too difficult. His knees, they pained him, the stairs up and down.”
Not quite the same version, but close enough.
“Gunther said you took him to Campos a few times?”
“Yes, but it didn’t please him. Too hot, he said.”
“What was his relationship with the children?”
Was it his imagination or had she flinched? “Like my husband said, it was good. The children, they loved him. Gunther’s mother is dead, my parents also, so he was the only grandparent they had. Hannelore, she learned a violin solo for him, Mahler, and he used to ask her to play it. Many times he asked her.”
“What about your son?”
“Walter, he is a little boy. All day long, computer games. Not so much time for Opa. Sometimes they make Legos together, little houses. In Germany, my son has a train and they play with it.”
“I noticed your son has a bruise over his eye.”
“Yes. He said someone pushed him, but maybe he said this because he broke his glasses and did not want us to know. Walter does this sometimes. He does not lie, but he does not tell the truth either.”
She fell silent, lost in thought.
“Was the deceased there when it happened?” Patronas asked. Perhaps the killer was lurking in the garden and the boy encountered him.
“No. He was with me in the house. Walter was getting his bicycle. He wanted to go for a ride. Maybe Maria was there. She spends much time outside sweeping. Always sweeping is Maria, back and forth with the broom. All the day, she does this.”
“Tell me about yesterday.”
“We went to Campos and came back. I didn’t have my watch, so I don’t know what time. Seven-thirty, eight. A little dark, but not yet night. Grobpapa was sitting out in the garden and I called to him, ‘Do you want anything?’ ‘Nein,’ he said. ‘Nein.’ After this, I go inside.”
“And that was the last time you spoke to him?”
“Yes. The gardener found him later that night. He was yelling and hitting the door and I opened it to see what he wanted. I screamed when I saw Grobpapa and I couldn’t stop—screaming, screaming, screaming. Gunther woke up the children. Grobpapa was still alive then and Gunther thought we could save him. I gave the gardener my phone and he called the police. But there was a mix-up and by the time they got here, he was dead.”
