The Nuremberg Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

“You think this is for real?”

  “I don’t know,” said Fred. There was a pleading look on his face. The weight of what he’d told her was clearly bearing down him.

  Isabel thought for a moment. “Did he say what was in those other letters?”

  Fred shook his head. “No, all he said was that they’re in Nuremberg, hidden in a place that is still the same since when I was there.”

  “Do you know where he meant?”

  “No. I tried to figure it out, but I can’t. Maybe I’m too old. There are a lot of places in Nuremberg untouched since the war.”

  “We thought you might help, because of your grandfather,” said Daisy.

  “How does this relate to my grandfather?”

  Daisy stared at her husband. “Tell her, Fred.”

  “Your grandfather saw evidence of evil, which was never prosecuted,” said Fred. “That’s why he died.”

  “You know this for sure?” Isabel felt cold. This was the reason she had come here with them, why she hadn’t left quickly, when they’d started spouting conspiracy theories about the Vatican. They were the first human connection she’d ever come across with the events that had shaped her family and who she was.

  Her father had turned into an alcoholic. She always thought, at the back of her mind, that he’d been weakened, because his father had committed suicide. But she’d never understood why that dark event had happened. The thought that such things ran in families made her nervous sometimes too. Not often, just when her moods were bleakest.

  She spoke slowly. Each word had weights attached to it. “You said the Nuremberg trials were fixed earlier, but you didn’t say how. Tell me what you meant.”

  She had to understand.

  Fred bit his lip. His eye lids were drooping. He looked fully his age, and sad. It took him another thirty seconds before he answered. “The trials were fixed, because some of the guilty men were never prosecuted,” he spluttered, holding his chest.

  “Why would this concern my grandfather so much?” Isabel said the words quickly. The truth was near and she had to grab at it before it disappeared.

  “Because the person he was guarding, and questioning, was released without charge. It upset him greatly. He told me so. He even threatened to go public with what he knew.” Fred and Daisy stared at her.

  Why were they looking at her like that? She looked from one face to the other.

  “You think my grandfather was murdered?”

  Fred shrugged. Daisy just stared at her. Her hands were trembling in her lap.

  “Who was he guarding?”

  “I’ll tell you, because you deserve to know, but you must understand, we have no evidence that your grandfather was murdered.”

  “Who was he guarding?”

  “Cardinal Innitzer,” said Fred. He spat the words out.

  “He was Hitler’s Cardinal,” said Daisy, helpfully. “He signed a declaration endorsing Hitler’s takeover of Austria in thirty-eight, five years after the first concentration camps were opened in Germany. Innitzer knew that Hitler was a mass murderer, but he still recommended him to the Austrian people. His letter was publicised all over Germany by Hitler too. It was proof that he had the support of the Catholic church.”

  Isabel’s body tensed. “You think this Cardinal had something to do with my grandfather’s death?”

  They looked at each other. Fred answered. “We’ve long thought it.”

  She thought about everything they’d said. “Have you any idea what that priest meant by a new holocaust?”

  Fred shook his head.

  “This is a lot to take in,” said Isabel. Memories of her father, drunk, when she was younger filled her mind.

  “You tell me someone murdered my grandfather. Then you tell me there’s another holocaust coming. And all you have to prove this, is a few pictures.” She let out a soft, exasperated noise. Could all this be true? She could certainly feel their sincerity. What they’d said about her grandfather sounded right, but that didn’t mean they were right about everything. What she needed was proof.

  “Can you guess what’s in the other letters,” she said.

  A gust of wind buffeted the window on Isabel’s left. Daisy leaned forward. Isabel could smell moth balls. It was a faint smell, but it took her back to the house her grandmother had lived in, near Hampstead Heath. The place had a desolate feel to it every time she went there. It had been stuck in time, fading slowly.

  “There’s a lot of things people want hidden from the world. Millions of families were destroyed in the war. This letter shows us a glimpse of what really went on.”

  “Please, you have to do something,” said Daisy. She looked tired, worn out by care.

  “God only knows what the other letters might contain,” added Fred. “And I hate to imagine what he meant by a new holocaust.”

  Isabel looked away from them, towards the view outside the window. It was dark now. The street lights were on and their glow smeared the glass, even from high up. It was time to go.

  She released her hand from the arm of the chair, took her phone out of her bag.

  “Do you mind if I take a snap of these?” She pointed at the yellowing pictures.

  Fred nodded.

  As she took close up pictures with her phone Daisy was coughing. Isabel offered to get some water. Daisy declined.

  Isabel stood. One thought kept circling. Were they right about her grandfather?

  It made her queasy to think that what had shaped her and her father, might have been a murder. She looked at her watch.

  “You don’t have anything else to show me?”

  “No.” Fred looked at his feet. Daisy started coughing again. This time she didn’t stop.

  Isabel knew she was outstaying her welcome, tiring them out.

  “If you discover anything else, please email me or call me. This email address is secure. Only I can see what you send.”

  She passed her business card to Fred. He was standing near his wife now, leaning down towards her, his arm around her shoulder.

  Daisy had a handkerchief to her mouth. The last thing Isabel saw, as she walked past her, was a red stain on the white cloth. A sickening sensation came over her. She’d seen this before. Her aunt had coughed blood the last time she’d visited her, before she’d died.

  “Thank you for coming up. We’ll be in touch again,” were Fred’s last words, before Isabel closed the door of the room.

  She headed down to the reception. She’d texted David Wilkinson, a colleague from InfoFreed, when she’d been in the taxi coming to the hotel. She’d asked him to meet her in the main bar, near the reception, at eight.

  She looked at her watch. It was ten past. Hopefully David had arrived. She would have to go home soon. But she had a duty to inform InfoFreed about what she’d learned in the meeting. Her job, initially for InfoFreed, had simply been to recover data on some hard drives that had been sent to them. A month later they’d asked her to be their IT manager.

  Now she was involved in everything they did. Because there was only a few of them, that included meeting whistle blowers with secrets to share. InfoFreed had a protocol for every time such a contact was made. Simply put, a colleague had to be briefed, before and after, and a written online report logged.

  She also had to work out if she should tell Sean what had happened. His decision to go to Nuremberg hadn’t bothered her. She’d wanted to go with him, at first, because of the links the city had with her grandfather, but they’d decided it would be too much to bring Alek with them, and unfair to leave him alone unless there was a very good reason.

  But something had begun to bother her about the trip as it approached, like a premonition. She ignored it, assuming it was just the fact that he was meeting an old girlfriend. But now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe her premonition was something to do with the dark shadows from her family history, which were still unresolved.

  She reached the hotel reception area a few minutes later. There were tourists and b
usinessmen, and people dressed up, who looked like they were heading out for the night, and others, more dishevelled, arriving at the hotel to check in. The bar was busy too. Then she spotted David. He was waving frantically at her.

  14

  Sean put his hands up. The older officer clamped on steel handcuffs. They clicked tight.

  “I haven’t done anything,” he said, his voice raised. “Who the hell has been murdered?”

  “You know a lady called Eleni Kibre?” said the white haired policeman.

  “Dear God, Eleni.” He felt a dizzy sensation. He shook his head, took a step back. It felt as if the ground was falling, a part of the world disappearing under his feet.

  The policeman was standing beside him. He pushed his chest out. It looked as if he was about to make a formal announcement.

  “We need you to come to the police station to answer questions on this matter, Herr Ryan. I work for the USK, what you call a special police unit. We are investigating the murder of Professor Eleni Kibre, whose body was found in a car park behind her home two hours ago. From our information, Herr Ryan, you were the last person to see her alive.”

  There was a tightness in his throat, a dizziness spreading, but he stayed upright. The words he’d just heard seemed unreal, from a dream. It was impossible that Eleni was dead. Could they be mistaken?

  “We will require your permission to take a DNA sample. Do you agree voluntarily to give us this permission?”

  He looked at the police officer. The man’s expression was hard, determined. Did he have to go along with everything these officers wanted? It felt as if they were rushing him. “And if I don’t?”

  “We have questions for you.” The officer leaned close to him, until Sean could smell tobacco from the man’s breath. “Why would you not agree, Herr Ryan? Do you have something to hide? It will better for you if you tell us everything.”

  Sean shook his head. “I’ve nothing to hide.” A prolonged interview in a German police station was not what he needed right now.

  “I’ll give you the DNA sample,” he said. The officer was right. It would look as if he was hiding something if he refused.

  The Bundespolizei building Sean was driven to, with a siren blaring, was only five minutes away, still inside Nuremberg’s walled old town. The building, a modern concrete office block, had a curved outer wall. A small Bundespolizei logo, a black eagle on a yellow background on the wall near a glass door, identified the building for what it was. They slowed as they approached.

  Sean had enough experience of dealing with the police in various countries to know that being questioned was not the end of the world. But this felt different. The shock of hearing that Eleni had been murdered had not worn off. Memories of her were flooding through him, followed quickly by intense anger, and then a sense that this was all too unbelievable, filled him.

  They couldn’t be wrong about the identification, could they? A weight, a stone of guilt, formed inside him.

  He should have advised her to take immediate action after she’d told him she was being targeted by extremists. He could have stayed with her longer, talked about what they could do. He should have taken it all more seriously. He should have gone to the police with them.

  Could there be any other reason why she’d died?

  The green-and-white police car went through a set of manned gates and into a small courtyard at the side of the building. Two of the officers walked Sean through a door with a security camera above it.

  The black German imperial eagle on a yellow shield was repeated inside the building, on doors, walls, and in the elevator. The floors were highly polished, sparkling in places. As he followed the older officer he heard a muffled shout, from somewhere, then a door bang. The older officer, who’d identified himself as Inspekteur Bauer, stayed just ahead of him the whole time, turning and watching him occasionally.

  Inspekteur Bauer informed him that he would be allowed to wait for consular support or a legal representative, if he wished, to have them present while he was being questioned. He declined.

  “But I will ask for legal advice if this takes more than a few hours,” he said. “I’m here to cooperate. I know nothing about her murder.”

  The room Sean was taken to, on the third floor, had no windows, four metal chairs screwed to the floor and a table fixed to the wall. It was unpleasantly stuffy. The smell of antiseptic hit his nostrils as soon as he entered it. He was left alone. To stew, he assumed. The black plastic dome of an observation camera made it clear he was being watched the whole time.

  When Inspekteur Bauer returned, about twenty minutes later, he had a female police officer with him. She took notes during the interview and also started and later stopped, an audio recording device she placed on the table. She was broad shouldered, and had a purple birthmark the size of an orange on her neck.

  The Inspekteur started the interview by asking Sean about the type of relationship he had with Eleni. There was something almost voyeuristic about his demands for information on exactly what had taken place between them fifteen years before, when they had both been in university in London.

  “What’s the purpose of all this questioning about my past?” said Sean. He looked at his watch. It was seven thirty. The awards ceremony and speeches were under way. He had managed to get permission from the Inspekteur, during the drive to the station, to text his contact at the conference, and he’d sent her a message that he wouldn’t be able to make it due to circumstances.

  It wasn’t a good excuse, but he wasn’t going to tell her he’d been brought in for questioning about a murder.

  But Eleni had not only been murdered, she’d been violated. So he’d been told in the police car. That thought had made his stomach go cold.

  When Sean kept asking about the purpose of the questions, where they were leading, Inspekteur Bauer left the room.

  “I have to check something,” he said. The female police officer followed him out without a word. Presumably to ensure nothing went on in the room while he was alone with just one officer.

  It took fifteen minutes for them to come back. Sean had his elbows on the pale wooden table, and his head in his hands when they returned. He’d been wondering if Eleni’s death had anything to do with him arriving in Nuremberg. He knew, rationally, that it couldn’t be, but even contemplating it sent another wave of unease through him.

  The Inspekteur hadn’t answered his question about where Jerome was either. Sean assumed that they were still interviewing him.

  He thought about Isabel, how she would react to the news. He’d asked for permission to text Isabel when he’d reached the station, but the request had been denied. He hadn’t pressed for them to change their minds. He wasn’t looking forward to telling her.

  Now he couldn’t contact her. His phone and wallet and some coins, all he had in pockets, had then been put in a see-through plastic bag, and he’d been given a receipt for them.

  When the Inspekteur returned, he had pictures in his hand. Sean couldn’t make out what was on them, but from the grim face of the Inspekteur he knew they wouldn’t be pleasant.

  “We have done some research on you, Herr Ryan. Your name is known to the authorities in England.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “We receive cooperation on an Interpol level that might surprise you. When a murder is under investigation the cooperation is total.” He sounded proud.

  “What’s my background got to do with Eleni?”

  When Inspekteur Bauer handed the first photo to him, Sean thought he was going to throw up across the table. Acid rose in his throat, fast. Both the Inspekteur and the other officer watched him intently as he looked at the picture. He could sense them noting every twitch in his facial muscles.

  The photos showed Eleni in her car. The driver’s seat had been wound back. There was a dark patch of red on her jumper, where her heart was. What shocked him, though, was the mutilation to her forehead. Someone had sliced into her skin, all the way to the
bone of her skull, exposing white patches mixed with congealing red blood.

  The slices had been done in the shape of an arrow. His head pounded at the temples. His hands shook as he held the picture.

  “Shocking, yes?” said the Inspekteur.

  Sean nodded. He didn’t want to talk. His mouth was paper dry. Memories of Eleni smiling only hours before were flashing through his mind. He saw her running her hand through her hair, smiling.

  “Do you know why anyone would do this?” said the Inspekteur. “I think maybe this is something you know about. Yes?” He leaned towards Sean.

  A flash of anger rose inside him. He had to force himself not to react. He’d have loved not to help this insulting Inspekteur.

  When he spoke the words came out slowly. “I saw an arrow symbol, like this, here in Nuremberg earlier today.” He put the picture down.

  “Where was that?”

  “At the Nazi Congress hall. In the basement. Eleni took me there.”

  “The basement area under the Congress hall is forbidden to the public. How did you get access?” The Inspekteur looked shocked.

  Sean spent the next ten minutes explaining exactly what had happened, how Eleni had taken him to the Congress Hall, and every detail about what they’d done there, including that she’d suggested that the Nazis had been helped into power by the Catholic church.

  At that point the Inspekteur shook his head.

  “This is nonsense. These matters were dealt with long ago here in Germany.” His expression was impassive, as if he’d seen far too many disturbing sights to be affected by what had happened to Eleni, or by what Sean had told him.

  “It’s nonsense?”

  “This symbol is more properly related to some African superstition, I expect.” the Inspekteur pointed at the picture.

  The female police officer was staring at him, as if he was a laboratory specimen. His skin crawled under her gaze.

  “It’s a universal symbol, Inspekteur. It’s used by lots of cultures.”

  “Are you aware of its use in Africa rituals, Herr Ryan?”

  15

  The two-inch thick wooden door made a scratching noise against the floor as it opened. Xena hadn’t heard the black suited priest approaching in the corridor. But she kept her head down, stared at his patent black shoes and black trousers. His shoes had thick rubber soles.