The Dark Meadow
Page 8
When I got out of prison I hadn’t thought of it again for years. How was I to know whether the story was true, or whether Otto had just made it up? I only found out later it was true, and only by chance on the road because I was in the Finsterau area. A customer told me about it, and it was from him I got the old press cutting.
And when I wanted to report it again nobody would believe me. They all said the ‘real’ murderer had been condemned to prison. Wackes was in the Legion, I suppose, and Otto, he never could cope with anything. Later he got stabbed in a tavern brawl. At least, that’s what I heard.
But I never could forget the story of the young woman and her child.
Wackes
When Winfried Niedermayer drove the bus into the works yard at 4.30 after his last round, it had been a working day like any other. He’d come on duty in the morning, had a bite of lunch in the bus, took a little rest afterwards. Nothing else had happened that day.
He parked the bus according to the rules, took his jacket that was hanging behind the driver’s seat, and picked up his bag. Looked around once more to make sure it was all in order, then he got out, locked the vehicle, and was going over to the office as usual to hand in the key and cross himself off the list.
The men were coming towards him just as he was going over the yard to the office. They had seen him even as he was driving the bus into the works, but he hadn’t taken any notice of them. Now they asked what his name was, and whether he had been a journeyman roaming the countryside around Finsterau in the summer of 1947. Then he knew that they had come to take him away. All he said was that he’d been expecting them for a long time.
They arrested him. He took it all calmly and didn’t defend himself.
When they asked him, later, ‘Why the little boy as well?’ he replied, ‘When the cat dies you kill her litter too.’