The War Widow

by Tara Moss

  Instead, the inspector reached into his overcoat and removed a piece of paper bearing an image. ‘This man looks familiar?’ he asked.

  Billie considered Cooper’s guarded expression and his veneer of formality, sighed with frustration at this part of his character, and looked at what was on offer. It was a photograph, or a copy of some sort, and it showed a man in perhaps his forties, or even his thirties, with extremely pale hair. He was wearing a crisp Nazi uniform, his cap at a slight angle, and on it Billie could see the crest of the eagle atop a swastika, and below that, the Totenkopf, the distinctive skull and crossbones worn by Nazi officers. The uniform suited him the way a black hood suited an executioner. The man’s lips were thin and his eyes bright. Across one side of his face were lines of scars, the skin pulled.

  Billie contained a shudder. ‘Yes, that’s him all right. The girls knew him as Franz or Frank.’

  ‘His name is Franz Hessmann,’ Cooper said in a low voice, pocketing the image. ‘He was charged in absentia in Hamburg, in the British Zone, and sentenced to death. They say he was quite high up at the Ravensbrück camp.’

  Billie felt a chill rise slowly up her spine. The Ravensbrück trials. Ravensbrück was the dedicated women’s camp set up by the Nazis north of Berlin where Jewish and Romani women, and women and girls accused of ‘prostitution’ or poor moral standing, were sent during the war. She’d heard that thousands of women from occupied nations were also inmates there – Soviets, Dutch and French women, Poles and many more. Few survived. Often the women arrived with children, most of whom died of starvation along with their mothers, thanks to the gradually decreasing rations. Conditions were said to have been extraordinarily brutal. The female auxiliary SS guards at Ravensbrück, including Irma ‘the Hyena’ Grese, later transferred to Auschwitz and since sentenced to death, and another guard known as the ‘Beast of Ravensbrück’ were infamous. The guards literally worked the women inmates to death with slave labour, and from what Billie had heard, had devised strange tortures and power games, perhaps hoping to impress the Third Reich establishment with their commitment to destroying the will of the prisoners in their care. Eventually, as the Final Solution was put in place, gas chambers had been installed to speed up the killing, and when the end of the war neared the killing had accelerated yet further, the guards not willing to let their prisoners survive to tell what they had witnessed and endured.

  Yes, Billie knew of it.

  ‘He wasn’t one of the doctors?’ she asked, feeling suddenly as sober as a judge. In addition to the female guards, the place was notorious for the experiments performed on the prisoners – amputations, removing bones and attempting transplants. Cutting the women and infecting the wounds with germs to see what would happen. Introducing dirt and glass into their bodies and refusing pain medication. And when the women succumbed, the Nazis took what was left, of course. Their shoes. Their wedding rings. Their gold fillings. Hessmann had a barrel full to melt down and live off.

  Cooper shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. He was a camp administrator. A major in the Waffen SS and later, camp commandant.’

  The camp commandant. Billie swore under her breath. A Nazi camp commandant, here in Australia? It was almost unbelievable.

  ‘And the airman’s burn? Did he do time with the Luftwaffe? Or was it something else?’ she speculated, remembering his reaction to the fire, the extreme fear in a man who had otherwise seemed devoid of emotion. It was as if the fire had triggered something, shocked him psychologically.

  Again, Cooper shook his head. ‘The scarring, you mean? Apparently he earned that in the camp from some prisoners in one of the factories. Saboteurs.’

  The Ravensbrück women had been pressed into different types of slave labour, depending on their physical strength and abilities, forced to aid the German war machine against their will. Some worked in textiles, some made parts for Daimler-Benz or electrical components for the Siemens Electric Company, and some were involved in making Hitler’s V-2 rocket, among other tasks. Some were made to pull a huge roller to pave the streets. Billie had seen a photograph of the roller after liberation. It was a terrifying image – the roller huge and looking like it needed twelve horses to pull it, not human women. There were incredible stories of defiance. Even the women who had been forced to sew, many of them elderly and increasingly frail, used to rig the German soldiers’ socks so they’d get blisters, Billie had heard. A thousand small rebellions in the face of torture and death.

  ‘A group of the women sabotaged some rocket components for the Siemens company and there was an explosion and fire at the factory. Hessmann was there at the time and got out with just the facial burns, I guess.’

  Billie thought on that. The bravery of it.

  ‘You do agree it’s him?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think I can be mistaken. He’s quite distinctive looking with that hair. I mean, you’ve seen him with your own eyes?’ Cooper looked down at his shoes, and Billie’s heart leapt into her throat. Her chest felt constricted, as if someone was sitting on it. ‘Tell me everything is okay, Inspector,’ she demanded. ‘Constable Primrose didn’t tell me anything particular, but I got the feeling . . . Well, I got the feeling it wasn’t all good news. What is it I’m not being told?’

  At this, Cooper took a deep breath and appeared to steel himself, which did nothing for Billie’s gut. ‘There was something of a . . . mix-up,’ he finally answered. ‘There was a constable on duty at Richmond and he let Hessmann go.’

  Billie’s lips moved to form words, but none came. Stunned, she regarded Cooper silently. She felt the urge to strike him, strike anything, but he was not the one she was angry with.

  ‘Constable Howard says he was faced with a solicitor who was persuasive, and he appears to have panicked and agreed to release Hessmann. He didn’t know all the details, of course, only knew about the claims made by the Aboriginal girls. He said there wasn’t enough to keep him. The sergeant was not there. It never would have happened on his watch. He . . .’ The inspector trailed off, seeing her expression.

  The claims of the girls. Claims.

  Billie brought a hand to her face, and she pulled it down slowly over her eyes, her nose and stopped it over her mouth. The floor seemed to be moving beneath her feet. ‘This isn’t some kind of . . . joke?’ she managed.

  Cooper shook his head.

  ‘So, we had a commandant from goddamn Ravensbrück, wanted for war crimes and now imprisoning and abusing girls here in Australia, on our watch, and he’s gone? And we have witnesses as to what he was doing here, and he was let go? We have Adin and the girls and their testimony . . .’ She shuddered, thinking of how Shyla and the girls would feel when they found out a police officer had willingly let the man go, knowing they were prepared to testify. What a betrayal. What an utter betrayal by a system Shyla herself had said they didn’t trust because they’d been let down before. And Adin would have been able to identify him. Adin had agreed to testify.

  ‘We have witnesses, Inspector. We have that horrific book of dates and names. We have the surviving oil drums in that shed.’ A couple of people at the billiards tables looked in her direction, and a game on the other side of the room stopped. She seemed to be speaking more loudly than she’d realised.

  ‘Yes, I believe we have identified him,’ the inspector said carefully, ‘and we are still sorting through what survived the fire. I’m trying to convince my superiors—’

  ‘Your superiors aren’t convinced?’ She slammed her fist down on the billiards table and it stung where the skin had been grazed and torn.

  Cooper didn’t answer. Billie wondered where Hessmann was now. Where would he go? Did he have enough connections to stay on the run? For how long? Could he leave the country unnoticed?

  ‘Inspector, what am I supposed to tell Shyla, Ruthie, Eleanor and Ida? And Adin? Adin’s family?’ she demanded, keeping her voice lower this time.

  Cooper reached out and placed his hand gently on hers. Billie looked down at it and, surp
rising herself, decided not to pull hers away. The large male hand dwarfed the scratched and more delicate one she’d been leaning on the table, his fingers so much larger than hers. She raised her eyes from his hand to his face, and waited, eyes unflinchingly on his.

  ‘Please call me Hank,’ he said to her again in the face of her terrific glare, and though he moved his hand away, that unreadable formality he so often seemed to slip into was dissolving, she could see. His hands slipped into his pockets. ‘I cannot . . .’ he began. ‘Billie, I cannot begin to convey the disappointment I feel. I believe there is more to this than meets the eye. Hessmann had help, that much is certain. Suffice it to say it is my top priority to locate him and his associates and investigate each of the men listed in that book. You have to believe me. I give you my word.’

  Billie waited for more.

  ‘He can’t get far,’ Cooper went on. ‘He’ll try to flee to another state, probably another country. South America perhaps. He may have connections, but we won’t let him get far. We’re looking for him at every port.’

  How hard would it be to hide a face like his? It seemed he hadn’t even tried. He must have thought Australia was safe for the likes of him. And it certainly had been, until Ruthie and Shyla and Adin.

  Billie contemplated the sad certainty that Adin’s great-aunt had perished at Ravensbrück under unspeakably inhumane conditions, one of the majority of the women who did not survive the camp. And her necklace had ended up coming to Australia with the camp commandant to be auctioned off to help pay for his life on the run from the war crimes tribunal. Margarethe was the connection, the reason her great-nephew had searched for those associated with the auction house selling the necklace he recognised and remembered. She may have perished, but she and her great-nephew had helped to lift the lid on a fleeing war criminal. They’d come close, so close, to being the cause of his capture.

  ‘The constable at Richmond has voluntarily resigned from his position,’ Cooper said. ‘The sergeant wants to apologise to you personally.’

  ‘What good will that do?’ Billie replied, folding her arms. ‘And it’s not me he ought to apologise to,’ she added. ‘Does the constable have any connection to this Hessmann? Is that possible? What about the man who helped set him free? The solicitor?’

  The inspector shook his head, his mouth turned down. ‘We can’t be confident he even was a solicitor. The details he gave were false. I have an alert out at every port,’ he repeated. He lowered his voice and locked his eyes with hers. ‘We don’t think Hessmann was acting alone – I mean in addition to the auction house, and the solicitor. There has been some investigation into the possibility of Nazi activity in Australia since the war, but it wasn’t . . .’

  ‘Taken very seriously?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And now you have a singed house full of evidence.’

  ‘Exactly. What’s left of it, anyway.’

  ‘Have you checked the names in the book for whoever might have helped him at Richmond?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re working on it. Hessmann appears to have used that book for blackmail, writing the details of those who . . .’ He stopped.

  ‘I know what they did,’ she said, sparing him. Hessmann had shipped his stolen goods to Australia, where he thought he could get away with it, and was selling them off one by one. He was living on the final pieces of the broken lives of the women and children he’d helped to murder. And he’d used the girls at his homestead to cement Boucher’s loyalty, and the loyalty of whoever else was in that book. His dirty little black book was a record of blackmail and assault and it would not reflect well on the wealthy clients who’d purchased the goods Hessmann had to sell. It ensured their silence.

  ‘Hessmann was apparently known for that sort of thing. That kind of blackmail and depravity. It had worked for him in Berlin. One of the ways he kept loyalty was to promise . . . access to certain prisoners, and then he would keep evidence. The men involved wouldn’t want their wives knowing. He also kept other paperwork and a diary. Fragments survived the flames. It’s being translated now, which will take some time, but it already seems that his diary will provide some leads and . . .’ Again the inspector hesitated. ‘. . . detail,’ he finally said.

  ‘That must make some pretty bedside reading,’ Billie said darkly. ‘Surely your superiors can’t doubt his identity.’

  ‘The official line is that his identity is yet to be established.’

  Billie licked her lips. Her mouth had become dry, and inside her was an unhealthy anger, a simmering rage she thought she’d left in Europe. ‘Have you a cigarette?’ she asked, shaking a little.

  Cooper took her request in his stride, pulling a pack of tobacco and some paper from his coat pocket. He assembled a cigarette with the quick precision of a soldier who’d performed the same ritual in countless trenches and in the windows of abandoned, bombed-out buildings on late-night watches. ‘I didn’t think you smoked,’ he said finally, and handed it to her. Billie placed it between her red lips, and he leaned close and lit the tip with a battered Ronson lighter. She caught sight of something scratched into the side, but wasn’t able to make it out before he pocketed it again.

  ‘It’s a smoking day,’ Billie replied simply, and took a deep drag. She stifled a cough, her lungs still sore from the smoke of the fire. ‘Let me get this straight, just so we are absolutely clear. Your superiors don’t want it to look like they let a Nazi go. One who was high up in command. Is that it?’

  ‘Without his blackmail book and without those treasures he won’t have so much power now,’ Cooper said, sidestepping the question.

  But that didn’t necessarily mean Hessmann was on his own, if there was a network of some kind he could draw support from. And that seemed to be the suggestion. Did he have access to funds to get him out of the country? On one of the ships leaving soon, perhaps? That must have been how he’d got his Nazi loot to Australia to begin with – some amenable connections at the docks. Someone, or a few someones, happy to look the other way. He could stow away if he didn’t want to risk more official passage. He would disappear back into the woodwork, to emerge again – where? South America? Hong Kong? Canada? He’d lost a great deal of his war loot in the Australian bush, but it was impossible to know how much more he might have access to.

  ‘I want you to know that we have Vincenzo Moretti in for questioning, right now,’ Cooper went on. ‘Though we haven’t any evidence against him at this stage, and he claims to know nothing about any of this.’

  ‘Of course he’d say that,’ Billie retorted. A bitter laugh escaped her throat. ‘I could have told you that for free.’ She took another drag of the cigarette, felt the burn, the smoke in her lungs. ‘Moretti is involved. I haven’t a shred of doubt.’ But there would be time enough for Moretti. He was deep in this, and there was no way she was going to let him walk away from it after all that had happened. His men had tried to mess her up, they’d assaulted her assistant as well as her client’s boy, and they’d made a fair effort of shooting her off the road. ‘If you want any help interrogating him, I’ll have a word or two to say,’ she added darkly.

  ‘Just one more thing,’ Cooper said.

  ‘Do go on.’

  ‘There were remains found at the Colo homestead. From a motor car found at the scene, it seems the body may be that of Georges Boucher, originally hailing from Vichy, France.’

  Vichy. How fitting, Billie thought. Vichy France, or the Régime de Vichy had been an authoritarian administration of infamous Nazi collaborators and enablers.

  ‘I think his is the auction house where Hessmann was selling some of his more valuable wares. Seems a nice business.’ Billie’s voice was cutting.

  ‘You wouldn’t know anything about what happened to Boucher, would you? He is . . . implicated in the activities recorded in Hessmann’s notebook.’

  ‘What an unpleasant person,’ Billie said, as if this was news to her. ‘I can’t enlighten you about his passing, though I will say
that the fire was sudden and quite fierce. It’s a miracle any of us managed to get out.’

  ‘Death by misadventure, then?’ the inspector suggested. ‘Another unfortunate accident?’

  ‘Fires can be terribly lethal.’

  ‘And roads.’

  ‘Indeed,’ she said, and caught his eye, daring him to accuse her.

  Cooper watched her carefully. Her expression was steady. He said nothing.

  ‘Thanks for keeping me informed about Hessmann,’ Billie finally said, knowing full well that he didn’t have to, and neatly changing the subject. She’d be damned if Shyla or those exploited girls would see any negative repercussions after what had happened. Death was far too good for the likes of Boucher. ‘And thanks for the cigarette.’

  ‘You’ll do the same, if you uncover anything?’ Cooper asked. ‘I mean, you’ll keep me informed?’

  ‘You know I will, Hank,’ Billie said, though she was still seething inside. ‘I told you in your office that we can be of better use to each other if we share information. I meant it.’

  They shook hands, much as they had up in the mountains. A formal gesture, perhaps overly formal considering the events of the past week. He’d held her, as wet, trembling and exhausted, she’d surveyed the ruins of the Upper Colo homestead. She’d felt a touch vulnerable then. She didn’t now. Rage strengthened her anew. When they withdrew their palms they exchanged a look of unspoken understanding. It lasted just a few seconds, but felt like longer, the air around them electric with something ineffable but powerful. She hadn’t felt that since Europe. Yes, Jack Rake, wherever he was, would approve of what had transpired – her part in it at least. He would approve of her determination not to let it go now, either, not that she needed approval from him, or any man, dead or alive as the case might be. This wasn’t the end of it. Every man in that book deserved the attention of the law. And Hessmann had better not get far. She’d go to the papers if she had to. Everyone would know that face.