The Boy from Berlin

by Michael Parker

  ‘Give me a week,’ he said, ‘and I’ll have something for you. It’ll cost.’

  Amos agreed. ‘Whatever, but this is just between you and me. OK?’

  Clooney nodded his understanding and the two men left the pound.

  Isaac Demski shook the newspaper to straighten it out and continued reading the article that had caught his eye. He was sitting at the kitchen table where he had eaten breakfast. His son Jack had returned from Europe and had spoken to his father about the strange events that had taken place. Neither of them could come up with a plausible reason why the Neo Nazis would resort to murder to keep Eva Braun’s demise a secret. As far as the world was concerned, she had died with Hitler in the Reich Chancellery in 1945.

  Isaac chuckled. ‘Boy, that Gus Mason is going to walk into the White House.’

  Jack looked up. ‘Why’s that?’

  Isaac tapped the newspaper with his finger. ‘His old pa was buried yesterday. Big funeral. All the big hitters were there.’

  ‘His old man was important then?’

  Isaac shrugged. ‘Maybe he was, I dunno. But Gus Mason was the feature, right? Won’t do his election chances any harm at all.’

  ‘So what did his father do? I’ve never heard of him.’

  Isaac scanned down the article. ‘Not a lot really. Seems he was something in SOE during the war.’

  ‘What, did he fight in Europe?’

  Isaac shook his head. ‘No. He worked for the SOE in Switzerland. It’s where he met his wife. She’s dead now; been dead a few years.’ He read on. ‘It says here that that was where Gus Mason was born; some clinic near Bern.’ He looked over the top of his newspaper at Jack. ‘What was the name of that clinic you went to?’

  Jack had only been taking an idle interest in what his father had been telling him. Now he sat forward, paying full attention.

  ‘Sisters of Peace.’

  Isaac shook his head. There was no mention of the clinic’s name in the newspaper article. ‘What was the name of the village?’

  ‘Piva.’

  His father scanned the article, and then suddenly lifted his head in triumph. ‘Same damn clinic, Jack.’

  ‘What year was it?’

  Isaac looked back at the newspaper. ‘Forty-five.’

  Jack slumped back in his chair. His mind went racing back to the moment Sister Maria had opened the filing cabinet and pulled out the ledger. He thought she had reacted to the entry in the book quite unnaturally. But then she had regained her composure, or at least; she seemed to. After all, she was bound to be saddened at the thought of a young woman dying as she gave birth to a stillborn child.

  Isaac looked at his son. ‘What’s the problem, Jack?’

  ‘I think I should go back.’

  Isaac regarded his son quite sternly. ‘Why?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘I can’t explain, but I’ve got to go back.’

  Amos was back at Old Tom’s Panel Shop after phoning Jeff Clooney. It was one week since his previous visit. Clooney greeted him as soon as he pulled up outside the garage and took him through to his office. It was typical of many small town repair shops; filled with all manner of clutter, pin-up pictures of scantily clad girls, a couple of calendars, time sheets, receipts bunched beneath a bulldog clip, and the inevitable, grease-stained swivel chair.

  ‘Know much about paint?’ Clooney asked him as he threw himself into the chair.

  Amos shook his head. ‘No.’

  Clooney opened a drawer and pulled out a thin folder. He laid it on the desk and flicked it open. There were a couple of single sheets there, the top one of which he lifted and studied for a while.

  ‘You know, before 1985, most domestic cars only had a single stage paint job. It meant that the paint had to contain the pigment, the resin and the solvent. In the case of metallic paints, it had to contain the metallic element too. Every time Bill Mason brought his Buick in for a touch up, I had to remove the old, damaged paint and try to match it with new.’ He shifted in the chair and laid the report on the desk. ‘Trouble is, Amos, old paint fades over time. When you try to match it, you have all kind of problems. There’s a difference in paint shades, depending on where the car was manufactured. West coast cars with the same colour as East coast cars would look a different shade standing side by side. The difference in shade could be as much as five per cent. So when I did a paint job on Mason’s Buick, I had a head start because I knew exactly how I wanted the paint mixed.’

  ‘What about the other colour we found?’

  ‘Well, the lab I use told me that was a bit tricky, but eventually they came up with Chrysler. They did a pigment analysis using UV spectrophotometry and narrowed it down to a Dodge, a Plymouth or a Jeep.’

  Amos wanted to shout and punch the air, but he kept his lips pressed tight together. This was not the time for jubilation or histrionics; he needed a clear, level head. Clooney’s detailed explanation was pointing the finger at a high profile suspect. He had to be careful.

  ‘How much did the report cost you?’

  ‘Hundred bucks.’

  Amos took his wallet out and peeled off a hundred dollars. He handed it over to Clooney.

  ‘Whatever you do, Jeff, don’t let anyone know about this.’

  Clooney closed his fist around the money. ‘Is this a murder investigation?’ he asked.

  Amos shook his head. ‘Best you don’t know. But for now, this is private.’ He stood up and pointed at the report. ‘May I?’

  Clooney laughed. ‘Sure thing, Amos. You paid for it.’

  Amos took the report and shook Clooney’s hand. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  He left the panel shop and thought about how he was going to push this investigation along. But first of all, Amos knew he needed to get a look at Babs Mason’s Rubicon Jeep.

  Gunter Haman picked up the phone on the third ring. His mind was elsewhere, still dwelling on what he had learned by surfing the Internet, which he had been doing a lot lately, particularly since he had returned from Austria after parting from Jack Demski. He had been looking for newspaper reports about the slaying of Franz Weber and his nurse, but all that he could dig up was that the police were not looking for anybody; they believed Weber’s nurse murdered Weber and then took her own life. It was a totally absurd notion, but it reinforced the fear he had that the Neo Nazis had infiltrated the police in Germany to such an extent that they were able to manipulate the evidence and the facts. It was a truly frightening prospect.

  ‘Gunter Haman.’

  ‘Hallo Gunter, this is Jack Demski.’

  Haman’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘Hallo Jack. I didn’t expect to hear from you again.’

  ‘I didn’t expect to contact you again either.’

  ‘So why the call?’

  ‘I need to see you. It’s important.’

  ‘Where are you now?’

  ‘In Germany. I can be at your place in a couple of hours. Will that be OK?’

  Haman found himself nodding. ‘Sure, Jack. Couple of hours.’

  The phone went dead. Haman looked at the receiver and hung up.

  It was a little more than two hours, but it mattered not to Haman, except that his burning curiosity had been trying his patience. He hurried to the door when Demski arrived and showed him through to a well-appointed lounge. Haman’s wife had prepared a snack for their guest and after being introduced by Haman, she told the two men she would be in the other room if they needed anything.

  Haman urged Demski to eat the food his wife had prepared before talking about the reason for his unexpected visit. Demski enjoyed the sandwiches and coffee, but turned down the offer of a beer.

  ‘I’m all ears, Jack,’ Haman told him. ‘So what’s happened?’

  Demski reached into his pocket and took out the postcards and photographs he had taken from Weber’s house. He laid them out on the table and explained the timeline he had worked out. He also told Haman that Eva Braun had died giving birth to a baby boy.

  ‘Do
you recognize the guy in this photo?’ he asked, showing him the one of Weber as a young man in front of the inn at Piva.

  Haman, still shaken by the revelation of Eva Braun’s demise, studied the black and white picture carefully. He nodded slowly and eventually handed the picture back to Demski.

  ‘It certainly looks like the man who came into the Chancellery,’ he admitted. ‘The one who took Eva Braun away.’

  ‘The driver, Franz Weber?’

  Haman nodded. ‘I’d seen him a few times before that day. He was Hauptmann Lörenz’s driver.’

  ‘What about this one. It’s with his wife.’

  Haman nodded more positively. ‘Yes, I think this is he.’

  Demski then showed him the photograph with the second man in it. ‘Who is this?’

  Haman seemed to reel back in shock. ‘Hauptmann Lörenz. So he escaped.’

  Demski took the photograph back. ‘What was his first name?’

  Haman stared at the table top for a while. Then he lifted his head. ‘Heinrich.’

  ‘That’s it,’ exclaimed Demski. ‘That’s the guy who visited the cemetery at the sanatorium; the one who had the headstone put in.’

  ‘So Eva Braun died in childbirth and he wanted her to have a proper headstone?’

  Demski’s head bobbed up and down. ‘Looks that way.’

  ‘But why turn up after five years and do that?’

  Demski had wrestled with the conundrum for a good many hours. ‘I can only think that he was in love with her. He wanted to keep her memory alive.’

  ‘But where did he go after that?’ Haman asked. ‘It was unlikely he would remain in Europe. After all, the Nuremberg trials were under way. He would have been scooped up into the net.’

  ‘South America, I would imagine,’ Demski said quietly. ‘Most of the Nazi bastards ended up there.’

  ‘If you could get a look at the Odessa files, you might learn where he went,’ Haman suggested.

  Demski shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t do any good; he’s probably dead now anyway.’

  ‘Which means his secret died with him.’ Haman picked up his cup and drained it. He put the empty cup back on the coffee table. ‘Which also means there is little point in you carrying on with this.’

  Demski had been sitting forward rather rigidly. He relaxed a little and leaned back in his chair.

  Suddenly the front window shattered as a hail of bullets came crashing through it, followed by a Molotov cocktail. As the bottle smashed on the wall of the lounge, the burning petrol cascaded over the walls like the tail of a strutting peacock. The two men dived for cover as the sound of machine-gun fire continued over the roar of the flames and everything in the room seemed to explode into a thousand fragments. Then the shooting stopped and the sound of an escaping motorbike could be heard mingling with the screams of Haman’s wife as she burst into the room.

  Amos couldn’t think of a reason, a good reason to get a look at Babs Mason’s Jeep. He had driven past the house a few times over a couple of days but the Jeep was never there. He had even tried the ruse of phoning from a public call box and pretending he was cold calling, selling life insurance. This was just to ensure Babs was at home. He had disguised his voice as best he could, which was pretty difficult for a man of his ancestry. When Babs had replied and cut him short, he was quite happy because it meant she was at home, and it meant he could drive past her house and check on that Jeep. But it wasn’t there.

  In desperation he phoned Jeff Clooney and asked him if he knew of any garages where Babs was likely to take the car for a repair. Clooney said he didn’t, but he came up with something that gave Amos some encouragement.

  ‘If the bull bars were wrecked, they would need replacing,’ Clooney told him. ‘The only place I reckon the garage would get the replacement from would be Mitchell and Hayes. They supply most of the garages in and around these parts. Why not ask them. Make it official, like?’

  Amos liked the man’s guile and thanked him. His next move was to drive into Newark and find the company trading as Mitchell and Hayes.

  The place was quite large, covering a full block on an industrial estate out near Harvey Field, east of the city. Amos walked into the front office and showed the receptionist his police badge.

  ‘Good morning. I’m Lieutenant Amos, Newark Police Department.’

  The young woman glanced at the badge.

  ‘Morning. Lieutenant. What can I do for you?’

  Amos put his ID away. ‘I’d like to speak to the dispatcher, guy who handles the orders.’

  ‘That will be Charlie Price. If you wait a moment, I’ll give him a call.’

  Two minutes later Charlie Price came into the office. He was in his late fifties and looked busy.

  ‘Morning Lieutenant, what can I do for you?’

  ‘I’d like to know if you’ve had an order in lately for a set of bull bars for a Rubicon Jeep.’

  Price stood there and looked like he was thinking. It wasn’t unusual for men like him to have an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of everything that went in and out of Mitchell and Hayes.

  ‘Reckon I did,’ he nodded with some degree of satisfaction. ‘Come through to the office.’

  Amos followed him through to his office. Price took a folder from one of the shelves that seemed to lean over with an overload of arch lever files. He opened the file and sprung the clip. He flicked through the invoices and came to the one he was looking for.

  ‘Yep, delivered a set of bull bars to Cutlers out at Coopersville.’

  ‘When was that?’

  ‘Couple of days ago.’

  ‘Got a map?’

  Price closed the folder and put it back on the shelf. Then he opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a local atlas. He flipped open the page and pointed to Coopersville. Amos looked over his shoulder. It was about ten miles away from Hutton. Ten miles from where Bill Mason died.

  Jack Demski cursed as he pulled Haman from the edge of the flames and dragged him out of the room by the scruff of his neck. Haman’s wife was standing in the open doorway, her hands squeezing the sides of her face as she continued to scream. Demski threw an arm round her waist and lifted her bodily into the short hallway. It seemed to startle her and bring her to her senses. She could see that Jack was struggling with her husband and mouthing words at her, but she could make no sense of what he was saying.

  The roar of the flames was terrifying and the heat seemed to roll out of the burning room like liquid, searing her flesh. She looked down at her husband and was appalled to see the black scorch marks over his clothes. His hair had burned away and she could feel her own hair melting under the intense heat.

  Demski’s jacket was on fire and he let Haman drop to the floor as he struggled to slap at the flames. He managed to get the jacket off and rolled it into a ball, which he jammed beneath his arm. Then he hooked his fingers beneath Haman’s collar again and shouted at his wife.

  ‘Get the front door open. Now!’

  His angry, commanding voice shocked her and brought her out of herself. She shook her head suddenly as though something had startled her and ran to the front door, pulling it open. Demski carried Haman through into the cool, evening air and out on to the street where he laid the injured man on the pavement. His wife came running up behind him and almost fell on her husband, sobbing and uttering soothing words.

  Already a small crowd of neighbours had appeared from their houses and were gathering in the street by the burning house. Little more than two minutes had passed since the house was fire-bombed, but already the flames had taken hold and it was obvious that there would be nothing left.

  Demski took hold of Haman’s wife by the elbow and pulled at it quickly. He managed to get her attention, distracting her from her natural concern for her husband. When he was sure she was listening, he whispered coarsely in her ear.

  ‘Make sure you get your husband police protection if he has to stay in hospital.’

  She snapped her head away and
gave him a puzzled look. ‘Why? What on earth for?’

  He shook his head. ‘Listen, it’s important you and your husband are under guard. If you can, get Gunter away from here. Miles away. Don’t contact anybody.’

  Demski didn’t want to frighten her any more than she had already been, but he knew they wouldn’t survive if another attack was planned. Whoever had thrown the petrol bomb and raked the house with gunfire were probably poor amateurs. If the Nazis had another go, Haman and his wife would be dead.

  ‘What about you, what are you going to do?’

  ‘I’m going. If anybody asks what happened in there, tell them your husband had a journalist in who was doing a write-up about the war.’ He squeezed her arm. ‘It’s close to the truth. But whatever you do, don’t tell them my name or anything about me. Understand?’

  She nodded and then turned back to her husband.

  ‘One day,’ Demski told her, ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  He left her there, bent over Haman, and slipped away under the cover of darkness. The next stop for Demski was the sanatorium in Switzerland.

  ELEVEN

  LIEUTENANT AMOS ENJOYED this time of the day more often than not. It was a chance to sit and talk to Judith before going into work. Breakfast was eaten leisurely and with pleasure. He always wanted more but his wife would remind him of his need to lose weight and refuse his pleas. He would look at Holly, his daughter, now almost thirteen years of age. Every time she heard her mother refuse Amos that extra slice of bacon or an extra waffle, she would arch her eyebrows and smile wickedly and knowingly at him. Amos always returned her impish reaction with a wink.

  Once he had left the house, there was no telling what time he would get back. Often Holly would be in bed and Judith would be watching the TV or curled up on the sofa with a book. Sometimes she would be asleep and the book would be lying on the carpet where it fell. She would never go to bed until she knew Amos was home safe and sound.