by Ken Follett
All the same, Maud must be doing her best to keep his back to the doorway. If Carla could just slip in for a second and replace the bag on the chair without being seen by Joachim, they could still get away with it.
Heart pounding, Carla crossed the drawing room and paused at the open door.
Maud said reassuringly: ‘It happens often – the body becomes impatient. It’s nothing.’
Carla put her head around the door.
The two of them were still standing in the same place, still close together. Maud looked past Joachim and saw Carla. She put her hand on Joachim’s cheek, keeping his gaze away from Carla, and said: ‘Kiss me again, and tell me you don’t hate me for this little accident.’
Carla stepped inside.
Joachim said: ‘I need a cigarette.’
As he turned around, Carla stepped back outside.
She waited by the door. Did he have cigarettes in his pocket, or would he look for the new pack in his bag?
The answer came a second later. ‘Where’s my bag?’ he said.
Carla’s heart stopped.
Maud’s voice came clearly. ‘You left it in the drawing room.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
Carla crossed the room, dropped the bag on a chair, and stepped outside. Then she paused on the landing, listening.
She heard them move from the study to the drawing room.
Maud said: ‘There it is, I told you so.’
‘I did not leave it there,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I vowed I would not let it out of my sight. But I did – when I was kissing you.’
‘My darling, you’re upset about what happened between us. Try to relax.’
‘Someone must have come into the room, while I was distracted . . .’
‘How absurd.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Let’s sit at the piano, side by side, the way you like to,’ she said, but she was beginning to sound desperate.
‘Who else is in this house?’
Guessing what would happen next, Carla ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. Ada stared at her in alarm, but there was no time to explain.
She heard Joachim’s boots on the stairs.
A moment later he was in the kitchen. He had the canvas bag in his hand. His face was angry. He looked at Carla and Ada. ‘One of you has been looking inside this bag!’ he said.
Carla spoke as calmly as she could. ‘I don’t know why you should think that, Joachim,’ she said.
Maud appeared behind Joachim and came past him into the kitchen. ‘Let’s have coffee, please, Ada,’ she said brightly. ‘Joachim, do sit down, please.’
He ignored her and scrutinized the kitchen. His eye lit upon the top of the low cupboard by the window. Carla saw, to her horror, that although she had put the camera away, she had left the two spare film cassettes out.
‘Those are eight-millimetre film cassettes, aren’t they?’ Joachim said. ‘Have you got a miniature camera?’
Suddenly he did not seem such a little boy.
‘Is that what those things are?’ said Maud. ‘I’ve been wondering. They were left behind by another pupil, a Gestapo officer, in fact.’
It was a clever improvisation, but Joachim was not buying it. ‘And did he also leave behind his camera, I wonder?’ he said. He pulled open the drawer.
The neat little stainless-steel camera lay there on a white towel, guilty as a bloodstain.
Joachim looked shocked. Perhaps he had not really believed he was the victim of treachery, but had been blustering to compensate for his sexual failure; and now he was facing the truth for the first time. Whatever the reason, he was momentarily stunned. Still holding the knob of the drawer, he stared at the camera as if hypnotized. In that short moment Carla saw that a young man’s dream of love had been defiled, and his rage was going to be terrible.
At last he raised his eyes. He looked at the three women around him, and his gaze rested on Maud. ‘You have done this,’ he said. ‘You tricked me. But you will be punished.’ He picked up the camera and films and put them in his pocket. ‘You are under arrest, Frau von Ulrich.’ He took a step forward and grabbed her arm. ‘I am taking you to Gestapo headquarters.’
Maud jerked her arm free of his grasp and took a step back.
Joachim drew back his arm and punched her with all his might. He was tall, strong and young. The blow landed on her face and knocked her down.
Joachim stood over her. ‘You made a fool of me!’ he screeched. ‘You lied, and I believed you!’ He was hysterical now. ‘We will both be tortured by the Gestapo, and we both deserve it!’ He began to kick her where she lay. She tried to roll away, but came up against the cooker. His right boot thudded into her ribs, her thigh, her belly.
Ada rushed at him and scratched his face with her nails. He batted her away with a swipe. Then he kicked Maud in the head.
Carla moved.
She knew that people recovered from all kinds of trauma to the body, but a head injury often did irreparable damage. However, the reasoning was barely conscious. She acted without forethought. She picked up from the kitchen table the iron soup pot that Ada had so energetically scrubbed clean. Holding it by its long handle, she raised it high then brought it down with all her might on top of Joachim’s head.
He staggered, stunned.
She hit him again, even harder.
He slumped to the floor, unconscious. Maud moved out of the way of his falling body, and sat upright against the wall, holding her chest.
Carla raised the pot again.
Maud screamed: ‘No! Stop!’
Carla put the pot down on the kitchen table.
Joachim moved, trying to rise.
Ada seized the pot and hit him again, furiously. Carla tried to grab her arm but she was in a mad rage. She battered the unconscious man’s head again and again until she was exhausted, and then she dropped the pot to the floor with a clang.
Maud struggled to her knees and stared at Joachim. His eyes were wide and staring. His nose was twisted sideways. His skull seemed to be out of shape. Blood came from his ear. He did not appear to be breathing.
Carla knelt beside him, put her fingertips to his neck and felt for a pulse. There was none. ‘He’s dead,’ she said. ‘We’ve killed him. Oh, my God.’
Maud said: ‘You poor, stupid boy.’ She was crying.
Ada, panting with effort, said: ‘What do we do now?’
Carla realized they had to get rid of the body.
Maud struggled to her feet with difficulty. The left side of her face was swelling. ‘Dear God, it hurts,’ she said, holding her side. Carla guessed she had a cracked rib.
Looking down at Joachim, Ada said: ‘We could hide him in the attic.’
Carla said: ‘Yes, until the neighbours start to complain about the smell.’
‘Then we’ll bury him in the back garden.’
‘And what will people think when they see three women digging a hole six feet long in the yard of a Berlin town house? That we are prospecting for gold?’
‘We could dig at night.’
‘Would that seem less suspicious?’
Ada scratched her head.
Carla said: ‘We have to take the body somewhere and dump it. A park, or a canal.’
‘But how will we carry it?’ said Ada.
‘He doesn’t weigh much,’ said Maud sadly. ‘So slim and strong.’
Carla said: ‘It’s not the weight that’s the problem. Ada and I can carry him. But somehow we have to do it without arousing suspicion.’
Maud said: ‘I wish we had a car.’
Carla shook her head. ‘No one can get petrol anyway.’
They were silent. Outside, dusk was falling. Ada got a towel and wrapped it around Joachim’s head, to prevent his blood staining the floor. Maud cried silently, the tears rolling down a face twisted in anguish. Carla wanted to sympathize but first she had to solve this problem.
‘We could put him in a box,’ she said.
&n
bsp; Ada said: ‘The only box that size is a coffin.’
‘How about a piece of furniture? A sideboard?’
‘Too heavy.’ Ada looked thoughtful. ‘But the wardrobe in my room is not so weighty.’
Carla nodded. A maid was assumed not to have many clothes, nor to need mahogany furniture, she realized with a touch of embarrassment; so Ada’s room had a narrow hanging cupboard made of flimsy deal wood. ‘Let’s get it,’ she said.
Ada had originally lived in the basement, but that was now an air raid shelter, and her room was upstairs. Carla and Ada went up. Ada opened her cupboard and pulled all the clothes off the rail. There were not many: two sets of uniform, a few dresses, one winter coat, all old. She laid them neatly on the single bed.
Carla tilted the wardrobe and took its weight, then Ada picked up the other end. It was not heavy, but it was awkward, and it took them some time to manhandle it out of the door and down the stairs.
At last they laid it on its back in the hall. Carla opened the door. Now it looked like a coffin with a hinged lid.
Carla went back into the kitchen and bent over the body. She took the camera and films from Joachim’s pocket, and replaced them in the kitchen drawer.
Carla took his arms, Ada took his legs, and they lifted the body. They carried it out of the kitchen into the hall and lowered it into the wardrobe. Ada rearranged the towel about the head, though the bleeding had stopped.
Should they take off his uniform, Carla wondered? It would make the body harder to identify – but it would give her two problems of disposal instead of one. She decided against.
She picked up the canvas bag and dropped it into the wardrobe with the corpse.
She closed the wardrobe door and turned the key, to make sure it did not fall open by accident. She put the key in the pocket of her dress.
She went into the dining room and looked out through the window. ‘It’s getting dark,’ she said. ‘That’s good.’
Maud said: ‘What will people think?’
‘That we’re moving a piece of furniture – selling it, perhaps, to get money for food.’
‘Two women, moving a wardrobe?’
‘Women do this sort of thing all the time, now that so many men are in the army or dead. It’s not as if we could get a removal van – they can’t buy petrol.’
‘Why would you be doing it in the half-dark?’
Carla let her frustration show. ‘I don’t know, Mother. If we’re asked, I’ll have to make something up. But the body can’t stay here.’
‘They’ll know he’s been murdered, when they find the body. They’ll examine the injuries.’
Carla, too, was worried about that. ‘Nothing we can do.’
‘They may try to investigate where he went today.’
‘He said he had not told anyone about his piano lessons. He wanted to astonish his friends with his skill. With luck, no one knows he came here.’
And without luck, Carla thought, we’re all dead. ‘What will they guess to be the motive for the murder?’
‘Will they find traces of semen in his underwear?’
Maud looked away, embarrassed. ‘Yes.’
‘Then they will imagine a sexual encounter, perhaps with another man, that ended in a quarrel.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
Carla was not at all sure, but she could not think of anything they could do about it. ‘The canal,’ she said. The body would float, and be found sooner or later; and there would be a murder investigation. They would just have to hope it did not lead to them.
Carla opened the front door.
She stood at the front of the wardrobe on its left, and Ada positioned herself at the back on the right. They bent down.
Ada, who undoubtedly had more experience of heavy lifting than her employers, said: ‘Tilt it sideways and get your hands under it.’
Carla did as she said.
‘Now lift your end a little.’
Carla did so.
Ada got her hands underneath her end and said: ‘Bend your knees. Take the weight. Straighten up.’
They raised the wardrobe to hip height. Ada bent down and got her shoulder underneath. Carla did the same.
The two women straightened up.
The weight tilted to Carla as they went down the steps from the front door, but she could bear it. When they reached the street, she turned towards the canal, a few blocks away.
It was now full dark, with no moon but a few stars shedding a faint light. With the blackout, there was a good chance no one would see them tip the wardrobe into the water. The disadvantage was that Carla could hardly see where she was going. She was terrified she would stumble and fall, and the wardrobe would smash to splinters, revealing the murdered man inside.
An ambulance drove by, its headlights covered by slit masks. It was probably hurrying to a road accident. There were many during the blackout. That meant there would be police cars in the vicinity.
Carla recalled a sensational murder case from the beginning of the blackout. A man had killed his wife, forced her body into a packing-case, and carried it across town on the seat of his bicycle in the dark before dropping it in the Havel river. Would the police remember the case and suspect anyone transporting a large object?
As she thought that, a police car drove by. A cop stared out at the two women with their wardrobe, but the car did not stop.
The burden seemed to get heavier. It was a warm night, and soon Carla was running with perspiration. The wood hurt her shoulder, and she wished she had thought of putting a folded handkerchief inside her blouse as a cushion.
They turned a corner and came upon the accident.
An eight-wheeler articulated truck carrying timber had collided head-on with a Mercedes saloon car which had been badly crushed. The police car and the ambulance were shining their headlights on to the wreckage. In a little pool of faint light, a group of men gathered around the car. The crash must have happened in the last few minutes, for there were still people inside the car. An ambulance man was leaning in at the back door, probably examining the injuries to see whether the passengers could be moved.
Carla was momentarily terrified. Guilt froze her and she stopped in her tracks. But no one had noticed her and Ada and the wardrobe, and after a moment she realized she just needed to steal away, double back, and take a different route to the canal.
She began to turn; but just then an alert policeman shone a flashlight her way.
She was tempted to drop the wardrobe and run, but she held her nerve.
The cop said: ‘What are you up to?’
‘Moving a wardrobe, officer,’ she said. Recovering her presence of mind, she faked a grisly curiosity to cover her guilty nervousness. ‘What happened here?’ she said. For good measure she added: ‘Is anyone dead?’
Professionals disliked this kind of vampire inquisitiveness, she knew – she was a professional herself. As she expected, the policeman reacted dismissively. ‘None of your business,’ he said. ‘Just keep out of the way.’ He turned back and shone his light into the crashed car.
The pavement on this side of the street was clear. Carla made a snap decision and walked straight on. She and Ada carried the wardrobe containing the dead man towards the wreckage.
She kept her eyes on the little knot of emergency workers in the small circle of light. They were intensely focused on their task and no one looked up as Carla passed the car.
It seemed to take for ever to pass along the length of the eight-wheel trailer. Then, when at last she drew level with the back end, she had a flash of inspiration.
She stopped.
Ada hissed: ‘What is it?’
‘This way.’ Carla stepped into the road at the back of the truck. ‘Put the wardrobe down,’ she hissed. ‘No noise.’
They placed the wardrobe gently on the pavement.
Ada whispered: ‘Are we leaving it here?’
Carla drew the key from her pocket and unlocked the wardrobe door. She l
ooked up: as far as she could tell, the men were still gathered around the car, twenty feet away on the other side of the truck.
She opened the wardrobe door.
Joachim Koch stared up sightlessly, his head wrapped in a bloody towel.
‘Tip him out,’ Carla said. ‘By the wheels.’
They tilted the wardrobe, and the body rolled out, coming to rest up against the tyres.
Carla retrieved the bloody towel and threw it into the wardrobe. She left the canvas bag lying beside the corpse: she was glad to get rid of it. She closed and locked the wardrobe door, then they picked it up and walked away.
It was easy to carry now.
When they were fifty yards away in the dark, Carla heard a distant voice say: ‘My God, there’s another casualty – looks like a pedestrian was run over!’
Carla and Ada turned a corner, and relief washed over Carla like a tidal wave. She had got rid of the corpse. If only she could get home without attracting further attention – and without anyone looking inside the wardrobe and seeing the bloody towel – she would be safe. There would be no murder investigation. Joachim had become a pedestrian killed in a blackout accident. If he had really been dragged along the cobbled street by the wheels of the truck, he might have received injuries similar to those caused by the heavy base of Ada’s soup pot. Perhaps a skilled autopsy doctor could tell the difference – but no one would consider an autopsy necessary.
Carla thought about dumping the wardrobe, and decided against it. Even without the towel it had bloodstains inside, and might spark a police investigation on its own. They had to take it home and scrub it clean.
They got home without meeting anyone else.
They put the wardrobe down in the hall. Ada took out the towel, put it in the kitchen sink, and ran the cold tap. Carla felt a mixture of elation and sadness. She had stolen the Nazis’ battle plan, but she had killed a young man who was more foolish than wicked. She would think about that for many days, perhaps years, before she could be sure how she felt about it. For now she was just too tired.
She told her mother what they had done. Maud’s left cheek was so puffed up that her eye was almost closed. She was pressing her left side as if to ease a pain. She looked terrible.
