The Boy from Berlin

by Michael Parker

  He finished his breakfast and drained his coffee cup. Then he got up from the table, lifted Holly from her chair and gave her a massive hug.

  ‘Who’s my favourite girl?’

  Holly squealed. ‘Mummy is.’

  Amos shook his head and looked into her huge, brown eyes. ‘No, Mummy is Mummy. You’re my favourite; especially when you write those lovely stories.’ He gave her a kiss on the side of her face and put her down gently. Then he walked across to his wife and put his arms around her waist. She was standing with her back to him and he whispered softly in her ear.

  ‘You’re my favourite, really.’

  She turned in his arms and planted a kiss on his lips. ‘Liar. Don’t tell Holly that; she might get jealous.’

  He laughed and let her go. Then he lifted his jacket off the back of the chair and headed for the back door.

  ‘I’ll try and get home early so’s we can go bowling,’ he called as he stepped through the open door. ‘Love you!’

  The door closed and Judith looked at it with a kind of resignation in her face.

  ‘One day,’ she said quietly.

  Amos pulled out of the drive and headed out of town for Cutlers, the garage that had taken delivery of the bull bars. It was a fine day and traffic was normal, so the journey out to Coopersville was uneventful. He thought a great deal about Babs Mason and her husband while he was driving. It seemed such a long time ago that he had questioned Babs about the death of Senator Ann Robbins and wondered about the death of Doctor Robertson. The trail, what there was of it, had gone cold and it looked as though someone would get away with the perfect murder. Gus Mason’s rise through the ranks was meteoric, almost unknown in career politics. He had an uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time. Obstacles that might have thwarted any other ambitious politician had melted away, and he looked destined for the top.

  But now Amos was looking into the death of Bill Mason, and he couldn’t shake himself from the conviction that Babs Mason was involved. But there was something else nagging away at his brain that he couldn’t pin down; something that was even more sinister. The devil of it was that he had no idea what had put this conviction in his heart, but once again that old gut instinct of his was telling him that the case had not gone cold; the death of Bill Mason had opened the door.

  He pulled up outside Cutler’s garage. It had the appearance of a business that was doing well. The front showrooms were displaying the latest, gleaming models; while on the forecourt were a row of used cars that looked as though they had just come from the factory. Very impressive.

  He walked through the doorway leading to the workshop and stood beside the reception desk waiting for someone to notice him. Pretty soon a young woman asked if she could help him.

  Amos smiled at her. ‘Sure. I’d like to speak to the chief mechanic.’

  She got up from behind the desk. ‘That will be Wayne Ryland. I’ll get him for you.’

  Two minutes later she was back with a man in his forties. Tall, well-built and probably a bit of a ladies’ man.

  ‘Can I help you, sir?’

  Amos pulled his badge from his pocket. ‘Lieutenant Amos, Newark Police Department. I’d like to ask you a couple of questions.’

  The young woman looked up at Ryland with an inquiring expression on her face. Ryland pointed towards an office. ‘We’ll go in there.’

  Amos followed him through to the office and sat down in the chair offered to him. Then Ryland settled himself behind his desk.

  ‘So how can I help you, Lieutenant?’

  ‘You had a set of bull bars delivered here a week or so back. I’d like to know what car you fitted them to and who the owner was.’

  Ryland fidgeted for a moment. ‘Not sure I can tell you that.’

  ‘Can’t or won’t?’ Amos asked him.

  Ryland said nothing for a while. ‘Is this an official investigation?’ he asked eventually.

  Amos couldn’t tell him that he was doing this on his own, without the knowledge of his captain.

  ‘That depends,’ he answered cryptically, ‘on how much you’re prepared to tell me.’

  ‘We fit a lot of add-ons here,’ Ryland said by way of an answer. ‘Sometimes the guys do a little after hours work, off the record of course.’ He shrugged. ‘We turn a blind eye to it, so long as they don’t overdo it.’

  Amos could see that Ryland was hedging, playing for time, or maybe looking for a good reason not to say too much.

  ‘You saying one of your mechanics could have done a job fitting bull bars without your knowledge?’

  Ryland sat forward a little too quickly. ‘No, not saying that. They pay for the spare parts; we just let them use the workshop. So we would know who’s doing what.’

  ‘So who took delivery of the bull bars and who fitted them?’

  Ryland spun round in his chair and positioned himself in front of a computer screen. He tapped a few keys and eventually came up with the information Amos wanted.

  ‘We fitted a set of bull bars to a Jeep last week.’

  ‘Owner?’

  Ryland looked back at the screen again. ‘A Mr Mason.’

  Amos wanted to clap his hands. He was a lot closer now. ‘You want to print that invoice out for me?’

  Ryland hit the print button and immediately a printer sprang into life across the room. He got up from the desk and picked up the printout which he handed to Amos.

  Amos took it and folded it into his pocket. ‘Thanks. I’ll be in touch.’ He walked out of the office feeling a lot taller than when he walked in.

  Ryland watched until he saw him climb into his car and pull out of the parking lot. Then he picked up the phone and tapped in a number.

  Babs Mason was driving along the interstate highway when her cell phone rang. She picked it up from its holder on the dash.

  ‘Babs Mason.’ She listened carefully and thanked Ryland for the information. She switched the phone off and hurled it on to the front passenger seat beside her.

  ‘Damn you, Amos! Damn you!’

  She put her foot down hard on the throttle in anger and wondered how on earth they were going to get the detective off their backs.

  Demski had to buy a new jacket and a pair of trousers after discovering that his had suffered scorching in the fire. He didn’t feel too bad in himself, happy that he had escaped the inferno intact. But after a long soak in a bath and fresh clothes, he felt much better outwardly. Inside he was still raging over the brutal attack on Gunter Haman and himself. It didn’t take much to figure out that he had been a bit naïve in thinking he was safe from the Nazi thugs who had murdered Franz Weber and his nurse. They had obviously infiltrated much of the German security services and border police; otherwise they would never have known he had returned to Germany. He knew that he had to be on his guard and finish his business as quickly as he could and get back to the States.

  He decided to keep the hire car he had and dump it later if necessary. His immediate thought now was to get out of the hotel and head for Switzerland, remembering to keep one step ahead of anyone who might be tailing him.

  The drive to the sanatorium took about eight hours. He had set off very early in the morning and arrived late afternoon. After parking the car, he went through to the main entrance and asked to see Sister Maria. It was the same nun who had been at the desk on his one and only visit. She phoned through and within a few minutes, Sister Maria appeared.

  Although it had only been a week or so since he had last seen her, Demski thought she looked a lot older. The moment she laid eyes on him, her demeanour seemed to change. It was as though she was about to face the inevitable and the only way to deal with it was to adopt a fatalistic approach.

  ‘Mr Demski,’ she began as he shook her hand, ‘I wondered if I should see you again.’

  ‘Is there somewhere we can talk?’ he asked.

  She lifted her hand and gestured towards a door on the other side of the hall. ‘There is a private room in th
ere.’

  Demski followed her into a small, adequately furnished room. A plain window allowed natural light in and helped to brighten the dullness of the plain furniture. She indicated an upholstered dining chair. It matched one other that was positioned on the opposite side of a small table. There was a settee in the room, but Sister Maria chose to ignore it.

  ‘How can I help you?’ she asked once she was settled. Her voice showed signs of tension.

  Demski wondered how he should begin. What he was about to tell her was something he knew to be true, but not whether this elderly nun had any knowledge of it. But he knew that two people had died because of his and Gunter Haman’s investigation, and an attempt had been made on their lives back in Germany. He could think of only one way.

  ‘The woman who is buried in my grandmother’s grave is not my grandmother.’

  If Demski expected to see Sister Maria reel back in shock, he had another think coming. She merely acknowledged his statement with a philosophical movement of her shoulders and a small change in her expression.

  ‘Since your visit,’ she began, ‘I have had sleepless nights.’ Her eyes were cast down, and now she lifted them and looked straight into his. ‘I wanted to take my burden to the Holy Mother, to ask God for forgiveness.’ She shook her head, her eyes beginning to glisten with tears. ‘But I had committed no sin other than a childish error of judgement.’

  ‘Why, what happened?’

  She took in a deep breath to steady herself. It finished almost in a sob. ‘The woman who is buried in that grave came to us in 1945. She had papers identifying herself as Rosmaleen Demski. She lived quietly in one of the private rooms, on her own. From time to time she would have a visitor, but most of the time she carried her baby without any support other than what we could give her.’

  ‘She was pregnant?’

  Sister Maria nodded. ‘It wasn’t obvious at first, but her condition soon became very clear. We wondered why her husband rarely visited, but we decided it was none of our business; she was in good hands here.’ She stopped suddenly, her face brightening. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. How very rude of me; I should have offered you a coffee or a cold drink.’

  Demski put his hand up and shook his head. ‘No, nothing thank you. Please go on.’

  He could see that simply by beginning to unburden herself, Sister Maria’s tension was ebbing away.

  ‘By the time the young woman had reached the end of her pregnancy, it was obvious there would be a problem. We wanted to transfer her to the hospital in Bern, but …’ she shrugged. ‘The war had brought so many casualties fleeing from Germany. People were sick with disease, starvation and all manner of illnesses. Our hospitals were overwhelmed. We couldn’t contact her husband because we had no idea of his whereabouts or even who he was. She would only ever refer to him as Heinrich. So there was no way we could ask him to bring some pressure on the hospital to admit her.’ Sister Maria’s eyes clouded over for a moment and she looked forlornly at Demski. ‘She died giving birth to a beautiful baby boy.’

  Demski immediately thought of the inscription on the headstone: E.B. and Child. He knew there was more to come.

  ‘It left us with a major problem,’ Sister Maria was saying. ‘The young infant would need to be taken care of while we disposed of his poor, dead mother. There were no relatives to hand him over to, so it meant that we would have to care for the child until the authorities could take him off our hands.’

  She paused again and studied the backs of her hands. They were thin and bony. ‘I delivered that baby with these hands,’ she told him. ‘I was a novice at the time. I thought it was my fault that the mother had died.’ She looked up at the window, recalling the events in her mind’s eye. Outside the wind rustled through the trees in gentle gusts. She looked back at Demski.

  ‘Then something remarkable happened; something quite extraordinary. A young American woman gave birth to a stillborn infant at the same time. The birth had been quite traumatic and the poor woman went into a coma. She had no idea that her child was dead. Even though I was a novice, I could see that there was a way to solve the problem that had been thrust upon us by the death of a young mother and the stillborn infant.’ Her expression changed and became quite stern. ‘You must understand that my actions were those of an inadequate novice who was innocent enough to speak her mind.’ She allowed herself a small chuckle. ‘I hadn’t had discipline hammered into me; too young.’

  Demski smiled too. He said nothing and waited for Sister Maria to carry on.

  ‘We switched babies,’ she said.

  Amos arrived home late in the afternoon. It was getting dark. As he pulled into his drive he could see his daughter’s pink bicycle lying on the front lawn. It was her new bike; one he had bought her for her birthday. He made up his mind to warn her about leaving her possessions lying around for others to steal.

  He climbed out of the car, weary from his mental exertions during the day and from the daunting task of building a case against Babs Mason, who he was convinced was up to her neck in the death of Bill Mason. Trouble was he had no hard evidence and precious little support he could rely on from the precinct officers. This was because of his conviction that Mason’s backers had infiltrated the police department.

  There were no lights on in the house. He locked the car and wondered why the house appeared empty. Little alarm bells began ringing in his head. He tried to ignore them but found his footsteps quickening as he walked round to the back of the house. His heart starting beating faster; trip hammers sounding in his chest.

  He pushed the back door open and stepped inside the kitchen. It was in darkness, and the only sound he could hear was from his daughter’s television which was permanently on in her bedroom. He dropped his briefcase on to the table and went through into the lounge and called out.

  ‘Judith!’

  There was no answer.

  ‘Judith!’

  He went upstairs two at a time and flew into his daughter’s bedroom. ‘Holly?’

  The TV set flickered away at him in the corner. On her small writing table were the open pages of the little story she was working on for her school project. But there was no sign of his daughter. He turned quickly and went downstairs again, his heart now racing and his breathing beginning to rasp in his throat.

  ‘Judith! Holly!’

  Still no answer. He rushed outside and ran to the bottom of the garden where he had a shed. He knew it was pointless looking, but he had to. There was no one there. He went back to the house and reached for the phone, dreading the thought of what he was about to report in to the Precinct HQ. He could feel his hand shaking.

  ‘Amos, you’re home early.’

  He spun round as his wife came through the back door followed by his daughter.

  ‘Where’ve you been?’ he asked, the fear still hanging in his voice.

  ‘We were next door.’

  Holly ran round her mother and threw herself at Amos. ‘Hallo Daddy!’

  He looked down at his daughter as though he wondered where she had come from. Then it all fell into place and he scooped his daughter up into his arms. The fear that had crawled its way into his body was now being pushed out as relief flooded into his bones.

  ‘Hallo sweetheart,’ he said as his little girl tried to squeeze the life out of him; something she always did. His wife turned the kitchen light on and came over to him.

  ‘Amos, you look shattered. Want a beer?’

  She kissed him and he felt as though he was going to burst into tears. He was thankful that he had his daughter’s little frame to hide behind. He let her down and kissed his wife.

  ‘Yeah, thanks Judith. I’d love a beer.’

  And suddenly his family was complete again and he was able to put his fears away. But it had frightened him and made him realize how paranoid he was getting. Amos had never forgotten the time he had sat in his car and listened to Doctor Robertson telling him how his daughter had been threatened.

  He took the beer
from his wife and promised himself he would say nothing. Having one paranoid family member in the house was quite enough, he decided, without frightening his wife.

  It was a simple statement, spoken with an open simplicity; or at least, the simplicity that had put the thought into a novice’s mind. But the repercussions of that act were probably going to have enormous consequences because of who the surviving child’s father was.

  ‘Just like that?’ Demski asked with utter disbelief in his voice.

  She shook her head. ‘At first the Sisters were horrified, but soon they began to see how they could prevent a mother from the anguish of knowing her child had been stillborn, and also give the other child a mother.’

  ‘But it couldn’t have been that easy, surely?’

  Again she shook her head. ‘Sister Francesca, she’s dead now; been dead years. She took the woman’s husband into a side room and explained that his wife had given birth to a stillborn child. She went on to explain that because of her condition, that she was in a coma, there was every chance that once she woke, she would not be able to withstand the shock of knowing she had lost her son. She could suffer a trauma from which she may never recover.’

  Demski frowned at her. ‘Is that true?’

  She smiled. ‘Probably not, but it was up to the husband to make the decision. He was only young, about twenty; just a boy really. His wife was about the same age. You must understand that a man would not grieve for a stillborn son in the same way as the mother. Men are very stoic about these things. Or at least, they were,’ she added tightly. ‘He could see that there was no need for his wife to suffer. He could bear the loss much easier than she would have done. So for the sake of his wife, and for the sake of the motherless infant, he agreed.’

  ‘He was an American, right?’ Sister Maria nodded. ‘So what was he doing in Switzerland?’

  ‘Oh, something to do with the SOE; the Special Operations Executive,’ she told him. ‘They were based in Switzerland so they could manage their spies from a neutral country. Very convenient.’