The Nuremberg Puzzle

by Laurence O'Bryan

  She left the restaurant, walking fast. The streets were bustling with shoppers. She passed a corner with a bread shop with giant rounds of black bread in the window and there it was: the Frauenkirche. It loomed like a giant black wedding cake against the gray clouds that filled the sky. There was building work going on at one side. Men were erecting scaffolding. Had the policeman been wrong?

  She walked quickly towards the church, passing wooden stalls selling cheese and olives and wooden toys and organic drinks, all set up in the cobblestoned square.

  As she reached the metal barrier around the church her heart was pounding. Maybe she’d find out what had happened to Sean or at least find some trace of him that the police had missed.

  This was exactly the sort of place he would have been interested in. Perhaps something had happened to him when he came here. Perhaps he’d fallen, injured himself, knocked himself out. He could have been taken to hospital, concussed.

  She looked through the mesh of the metal barrier. There was no obvious hole for Sean to fall into. The scaffolding wasn’t surrounding a dig. They were doing something above ground. It felt as if a hand was squeezing her heart. She hugged her arms around herself.

  A building worker was having a cigarette beside a side door of the church. She waved at him. He was half facing her, so she wasn’t sure he could see her. He didn’t respond. He began talking to another man, who approached him. He also had a yellow hat on.

  Isabel raised her voice, rattled the wire mesh.

  “Bitte! Bitte!” Please, was one of the few words she knew in German.

  The first man looked at her. He said something to his colleague then he came over to her, smiling.

  “Yes? Can I help you?” he said in English. His accent was strong, as if he had gravel in his mouth.

  “Is it that obvious I’m not German?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m looking for my husband. He went missing somewhere around here yesterday. I was wondering if anyone was injured here yesterday or taken to hospital.”

  He shook his head. “I can’t help you,” he said. “We only started here this morning. We are fixing new lights to the church.” He pointed above his head.

  She looked up. There was a row of grime-covered lights at the edge of the roof.

  Then he pointed across the square. A fire engine with its blue light spinning was coming towards them. Its siren grew louder by the second. Isabel felt dizzy. Was this something to do with Sean?

  40

  Xena turned and looked back. Already she could hear the wail of emergency vehicles. She smiled. It would not be easy for any fire engine crew to stop what she’d started.

  Few would understand the irony of a church built on the burnt-out ruins of a synagogue being burnt in its turn, but it was enough that it should happen. The wheel had turned.

  Now it was time to do what she’d come here to do while the city was busy with its fate.

  41

  Isabel waited as the fire crew approached. She looked up at the tiered front of the church. She saw why they had come. Flames at the rear created a red glow behind the high frontage. A blue clock stood out half-way up the central spire. The blue stood out against the glow. A second fire tender had arrived, then a police van, it’s blue light flashing rapidly, it’s siren blaring, mingling with the others.

  Two policemen set up blue plastic barriers at the far end of the square in front of the church. Another one began moving people back behind them. The man Isabel had been talking to had disappeared when she turned back to say something to him. She stepped back,

  Was Sean in there? Anxiety pulled at her, then a sickening guilt. She should have told him this was not a good time to present his paper in Germany. Maybe if she had, he wouldn’t have come here.

  As the policeman approached her she looked around for somewhere else to watch what was happing. There was a pancake shop at the corner of the square.

  She’d have a good view of the church from there. The area in front of the Frauenkirche was completely blocked off now. She made her way around to the café. It was modern, welcoming looking.

  She ordered a coffee, sat at a table outside facing the church. An ambulance had arrived but its doors were still closed. That had to mean there were no injuries, yet. Didn’t it? Something tightened inside her as she waited. Around her people were gesturing towards the Frauenkirche, talking to each other.

  She thought about Alek back in England, how he’d hugged her when he was leaving, how sweet and vulnerable he’d seemed. How would she tell him, if something had happened to Sean? The tightness moved to her chest. She took out her phone, texted her sister. She kept her breathing slow and steady as she waited for a reply. It came in less than a minute.

  All good here. Did you find him?

  Not yet, she replied.

  She sighed. A man at the table next to her gave her a benevolent smile.

  Minutes passed. Another fire truck arrived. But no more ambulances. Firemen came out of the church, went to the ambulance, had a conversation with its driver, who stepped out to talk to them. Then they went back inside. The ambulance moved, parked further away. Two ambulance crew men got out, walked around, began smoking.

  Isabel opened the guide to Nuremberg on her phone again. Should she wait here some more? She stared out the window. The crowd looking towards the church was bigger now. Hoses snaked into the front of the building. Black smoke billowed behind where the other fire tender was now parked. The red glow could still be seen, flickering. There was a sulphurous, unpleasant smell in the air too. It made her nose twitch.

  She put her head in her hands, closed her eyes. Kurt had been right. There was no dig at the Frauenkirche. What the hell would Sean have done if he’d come here and discovered that? She looked at her phone, opened the app guide to Nuremberg.

  Maybe she could visit the other big churches in the city centre. That’s exactly what he would have done. The main ones looked to be in walking distance. After that she could head to the nearest hospital. She had to be sure she had done everything she could, just in case he had ended up in one of them.

  Please, she prayed, don’t let anything bad have happened to him. She stared at the church, watching a fireman coming out and heading to the tender. Maybe she should wait a bit more. The tightness in her chest was back.

  Should she go or wait? She wrapped her arms tight around herself, rocked back and forward. Her hands were fists. She had to think about something else, not about Sean being dead. Waiting for him here was just making her feel worse. Every muscle in her body ached, as if some slow-acting poison had been given to her. She looked at her phone again, held it up, stared at the images of the other churches in Nuremberg, not taking in half of the words beside each of them.

  She shook her head, trying to dispel the tightness inside. She had to be strong for Alek, for Sean. She made a decision. She would search all the obvious places in the city he might have gone to. She wouldn’t give up while there was anywhere else to look.

  She stood. Her next stop would be St. Lorenz’s. Then she would visit St Sebald’s. There was also another smaller church to visit.

  Ten minutes later, after a brisk walk, she was inside the giant dark Gothic wonder of St Lorenz’s. This was more of a tall, traditional style church than the Frauenkirche. She went inside with a gaggle of tourists through a high side door. There was conservation work going on in one of the aisles. She walked slowly around the inside of the building, taking in the high, dark, interior.

  A group of priests were talking animatedly to three men in hard hats and orange overalls. They were eyeing the tourists, as if wondering whether they should close the church. An area at the front, around the apse, was cordoned off with shiny red and white plastic barriers. This could be an archaeological dig. She stopped at the barrier, waiting to see if any of the workers or priests would come to the edge of the cordoned off area, so she could talk to them.

  But none of them did. She waited some more, then move
d one of the barriers and went towards a priest who was arranging prayer books at the edge of the altar.

  “Excuse me, Father, is there an archaeological dig going on here?”

  The priest turned to her. His English was halting but clear.

  “No, no, you must not come here. We are preparing for renovation work on our altar. Please, you must go. It is forbidden for you to be here.”

  She went outside, headed for St Sebald’s.

  She stopped at a pharmacy, an Apotheke, on the way, got something for her headache, swallowed it with some water they gave her. There was a bookshop beside it. Perhaps a better guide to the city might help. People were pointing at the skyline. She turned and saw an orange glow in the direction of the Frauenkirche.

  The bookshop was almost empty. There was an old man in a far corner and a tall young man at the cash point. She found some guidebooks in English, picked one that would fit in her jacket pocket. As she was paying, she looked at some notices on the front of the cash desk. There was a Wagner concert coming up in St Catherine’s.

  She paid, went outside, stopped at a café nearby, sat on a chair outside without ordering anything. She read through the section on St Catherine’s in the guide. It was a church that hadn’t been repaired after it had been damaged in the last days of the Second World War. It was used as an open air concert venue now. It had originally been a Dominican convent, founded in the thirteenth century. The church had been the inspiration for an opera by Wagner, The Meistersingers of Nuremberg.

  As a waiter came out she shook her head, then headed back to the bookshop to check when the concert was taking place. She went straight to the poster. The concert wasn’t on for another ten days, but there was a cancelled sticker at the top of the poster, which she hadn’t noticed before.

  “Why is this concert cancelled?” she asked the woman behind the counter, who was smiling at her.

  “Archaeological work,” she said. “They are doing it for the last week there.” Isabel was already gone. She wasn’t running, but she was moving fast enough to attract the attention of passers-by. Hearing someone running behind her, she turned. All she was saw a mass of people who seemed to be all heading towards the Frauenkirche.

  She looked up. The red glow was filling the darkening sky.

  42

  Sean banged the door again. His mouth was dry. He’d hit the door several times. The only response had been echoes. This time was no different.

  He sat back, rocked from side to side. He wasn’t going to scream. They wouldn’t get that pleasure.

  Whoever was keeping him here was taking their time about deciding what to do with him. That was good news, at least. It meant either they hadn’t finished with him, or they had to wait for someone else to decide what to do.

  Maybe they’d just leave, send a message to the authorities about where he could be found. That would be good.

  But he knew that was wishful thinking. They could also be waiting for an opportune moment to kill him. Perhaps they had someone for that job, who would be arriving soon.

  He stood, walked to the back wall, then to the door again, as he’d done hundreds of times since he’d been locked in.

  It takes a certain type of individual, he knew, to be able to kill someone. He’d taken a life once, but that had been in self-defence. He’d never murdered just to silence someone. What makes a person capable of doing that?

  Whatever these people were working on in that other room was probably just taking longer than they’d expected.

  But what the hell were they doing digging down here? And was any of this a connection to Eleni’s murder? There were too many questions to which he had no answers.

  He thought about Isabel. She might come to Nuremberg if she’d heard his plea for help. He wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad. It could easily be both. At least there was a sliver of hope. But every time he thought about it, a well of fear accompanied it.

  The last thing he wanted was for these bastards to do anything to Isabel.

  He stopped, sat down with his back to the cold, rough stone wall. If anything happened to her or to Alek, he could never forgive himself. He should have just gone back to London. He listened. Was that someone coming?

  There was definitely a grinding noise. He’d heard it a few hours before. Now it had started up again. It was louder, if anything, this time. And it was definitely coming from somewhere below him. He put a hand on the stone floor. Yes, it was vibrating just a little, but it was unmistakable.

  He stood, tried to get a sense of how deep below him the noise was coming from. It couldn’t be that far if he was feeling it, could it? Then the noise changed. It was louder, more high pitched than before. He counted seconds. One thousand. Two thousand. Three thousand. Then it stopped, but only after an echoing rumble spread through the floor of the little room like a wave.

  He put his ear to the ground, fancied for a moment that he could hear voices, but there was almost nothing to be heard now, just an echo in his mind of the rumble that had gone before. But something had definitely happened. The grinding noise didn’t restart. And now the silence was ominous.

  If they were waiting to make some breakthrough before dealing with him, what he’d heard could be that breakthrough. The silence grew by the second, like an oppressive force bearing down on him.

  Then he heard a different noise.

  The sound of footsteps echoing from the room outside. The door opened. Light flooded in, blinding him.

  “Come,” said a voice.

  43

  Isabel entered the grounds of the church through a gateway in the wall that connected the cobblestoned area in front of it to the street. She walked to the metal gate which filled what had been the main doorway of the church. It allowed visitors to see inside. The gate was locked.

  Along one side of the church there were metal barriers at head height, running about six feet away from the wall of the church all the way to the back, enclosing it. You couldn’t see through them. They had orange plastic sheeting on the far side, but after walking along them she found a small gap in the plastic to peer through. There were no signs of a dig on the other side. It looked as if the barrier was simply protecting the wall, which loomed above her, reaching about twenty feet into the air.

  This side wall of the church was made of the same black-streaked stone as the other churches she’d been to in Nuremberg. Towards the back of the church there was a series of high pointed-arch stone windows with thick opaque glass where the stained glass must once have been.

  It was quiet at the far end of the church. There was a building, it looked like the back of a school, to the right, and ahead there was what looked like an office building that had once been someone’s house. Both had windows with lights on at the first floor, but she could see no one near the windows and the fifty-foot-wide cobbled space between the church and the offices had a deserted feel, as if few people ever came here.

  She walked slowly. She could see the top, the arch of a doorway. Her foot hit something. She looked down. There was a black rubber encased flashlight on the ground. It was shiny, new looking. Someone had dropped it recently.

  She turned it with her shoe. There were no markings on it. It looked like something a security person would use. She pushed it towards the metal barrier with her foot. She walked on, noticed that one section of the barrier had a hole at ground level, where the wire mesh was pushed in. It looked as if someone had pushed a way through. Her heart pounded. Had Sean come this way?

  She looked around, turning 360 degrees to see if she was being observed. There was no one nearby. She had to move quickly. A few people had passed a minute before, heading through the church grounds to an exit at the back. But there was no one around now. She bent down, as if tying her laces. She couldn’t just walk away and wonder for the rest of her life if this was where he’d been. She took one last look around, then lowered herself to the ground and pushed her way under the mesh.

  Grit stuck to her hands
. The bottom edge of the wire barrier snagged at her. She moved her shoulders, came unstuck, pushed forward.

  The only sign that something was going on behind the barrier were tools lying on the ground near a doorway set lower than the smooth cobbles around the church.

  She heard a noise, a woman talking in German, perhaps on the phone to someone. She stepped to the side, waited, holding her breath, as the sound of the voice grew, then dimmed. When the woman was gone, she breathed deeply. Then she went to the pile of tools. There were two shiny steel shovels, a green wooden sweeping brush and a red plastic bag about three-foot-long, with words in German on it in small white letters.

  She looked at the door. It was down a few steps to her left. If there were shovels that had to mean someone was digging here. And from what she’d seen they weren’t doing it around the church. They had to be doing it inside, somewhere in the basement. There was still no sign of any guards. She went down the steps, put her hand against the ancient wood of the door. It was blackened with age and rough like bark under her fingers.

  She leaned close to it and listened. She could hear nothing except the low hum of a car passing in the street. She felt for the metal door handle, turned it. It was cold. The door opened smoothly without a squeak. She could feel her heart beating in her throat. She had a sudden sense of regret, that she had allowed things to come this far, trespassing. Should she go back?

  No, she couldn’t.

  She listened at the doorstep, ready to close the door and flee the way she had come if she heard someone. She heard nothing.

  She looked back over her shoulder. There were no sounds except the distant rumble of cars.

  She waited, listening, a lightness filling her stomach. The place was deserted, but possibly not for long with those tools outside. She had to move. She took a few steps onto the stone corridor that stretched away to the left and right. There was an opening just ahead to the left in the inside wall. To the right the stone-lined passage curved away around the back of the church. She walked to the left, toward the opening in the wall. It led into a circular stone stairs leading down.