‘Are you OK?’ Mumtaz asked.
‘Yes, thank you,’ he said.
‘They should call the flight soon,’ she said and smiled. She was a nice woman.
‘Yes.’
He’d been up all night. Nerves. The taxi had picked him up at eleven-thirty for the one-fifteen flight. He’d met Lee and Mumtaz ten minutes later, which had been a mercy as it had stopped his stomach churning. Just the thought that they might stand him up for some unknown reason had meant he’d had to run to the toilet as soon as he’d arrived. But of course they’d come and of course he’d felt ridiculous.
Now all he wanted to do was sleep.
The Austerlitz family hadn’t been rich. But they must have made a decent living. Apothecaries were educated people, part of the solid base of Jewish business people who had made up a large proportion of the Berliner middle classes in the city, pre-World War II. Their gravestones reflected this. Unostentatious, but well-made granite memorials, only distinguished from their Gentile counterparts of the same vintage by the addition of a Star of David carved at the bottom of each stone. Of course, neither Dieter Austerlitz, his wife, Miriam, or any of that generation were represented. But Sara had tracked down Dieter’s parents, Avram and Izabella, both of whom had died in the 1920s. Avram’s two brothers and their wives were also buried in the same vicinity. Interred with others of similar social standing, Sara also recognised the names of prominent pre-war jewellers, furriers and owners of once famous cafes.
The English woman, Mumtaz Hakim, was flying in with the man who claimed to be a relative of the Austerlitz family later on that day. Called Irving Levy, he was dying, apparently. How apt that Sara was now pushing branches of un-pollarded trees aside to look at the memorials to his ancestors. To be able to find such graves so easily was a privilege not given to so many of Europe’s Jews. Sara was glad she would be able to show this place to the Englishman, even if the thought of also showing him the Austerlitz house gave her the shudders. Was it just the fact that an ex-member of the Stasi lived there that made her skin crawl? It was cold and she was alone in a deserted cemetery and so of course her skin creeped a little. Every so often she looked over her shoulder. That was to be expected.
Of itself, the house was a reasonably attractive nineteenth-century building. A little ornate for Sara’s tastes, but typical of that time. It was somewhat grey in colour, but now that it was autumn the whole city had a slightly grey tinge. She’d lived in Berlin all her life and so Sara had got used to that. She cleared a space in front of Izabella’s gravestone and found a small collection of pebbles.
Had they been put there or had they simply ended up in front of Izabella’s stone? It was a Jewish tradition to put stones on gravestones; Sara still put them on her mother’s grave whenever she visited. It showed the dead they were not forgotten and it told the living that someone cared.
It was as she was looking at the pebbles that Sara noticed another gravestone, just behind Izabella’s. It was small and looked as if it had been carved by an amateur.
During his lifetime, Lee Arnold’s father had talked about World War II incessantly. Referred to simply as ‘the War’ the old man had bored the pants off both his sons about his exploits in post-war Germany fighting the remnants of the once powerful German war machine. He both hated them as ‘bloody foreigners’, but also admired them as people who ‘stood up for themselves’. One of the things he’d really admired was the regime’s monumental airport at Tempelhof, to which he’d given his highest accolade of ‘handsome’.
Compared with Tempelhof, Tegel Airport was a bit of a let-down. Small when compared to Heathrow and boring, Lee felt that it wasn’t unlike a more efficient version of Manchester Airport. Even the people looked much the same as they did back home.
Lee carried both his own and Irving’s cabin bags. The diamond cutter had slept for the entire flight and, when he’d woken, he’d been groggy. All in all the one-hour-fifty-minute flight had been a pain in the arse. Food and drink had been basic, the overhead lockers had been rammed and the same set of kids seemed to have been in the bogs for the whole duration. With Irving between him and Mumtaz, Lee knew that he should have slept or read. But he’d tried to talk to her, which had gone down badly and now she was looking at him like he’d just farted in church.
Once they’d cleared immigration and customs, Irving said, ‘To hell with public transport, let’s get a taxi.’
It was a Mercedes – of course it was – driven by an English-speaking Turk who continually pointed out one grey, rain-dappled building after another. Lee didn’t listen. Here he was in the city his father had been sent to in the 1940s and which he had banged on about until his death. His dad had only been sixty when his liver had finally given up the unequal struggle with booze. Lee was only just over ten years younger and, although he’d given up drink, he felt old age creeping into his bones, especially when the weather was wet and cold. Christ, Berlin was going to be a joy if it was going to be nothing but rain and massive 1960s Soviet-style architecture.
When they finally reached their hotel, yet another grey 1960s lump on a road called Neue Rossstrasse, it wasn’t only Irving who needed a lie-down. Lee, too, found himself unable to move from his minimalist little hotel room, which, though spare, had a very luxurious bed and a great view over a huge internal atrium. It was only Mumtaz who went out. She was going, she said, to meet her contact Frau Metzler at a Starbucks in the central Alexanderplatz plaza.
Mumtaz had her teeth into the Levy case in a way Lee knew that he didn’t. And he didn’t because his mind was absorbed in his love for her. And he knew that was wrong. And it wore him out.
‘I don’t know why you want to do it,’ Misty said. ‘People do that when they’re, like, kids. Just because your grandpa flew …’
‘Nagyapa,’ Amber corrected.
‘Whatever.’ She waved a limp hand in the air. ‘I don’t do the Hungarian thing, I mean who does?’
Misty’s parents, Milos and Amalia, did and, in fact, neither of them could really speak English. But Misty liked to gloss over that. It was no secret, at least from her friends, that as soon as she could, Misty wanted to leave the fair.
The third girl sitting on Amber’s bed was Lulu, a tiny dark-haired Gypsy girl. She said, ‘But we’re a fair not a circus. You should join a circus.’
Amber shook her head. ‘I have to have something to offer them, don’t I?’
‘You can work on the sideshow, like you do here until …’
‘Ah, but I don’t want to!’ Amber said. ‘I want to go in as a flier!’
‘But you’re shit.’
Misty sniggered. Amber, furious, tried to cuff Lulu round the head, but she missed. Then they all laughed.
‘I’m sorry, Amber, but I’ve seen you and you need to practise more,’ Lulu said.
Suddenly subdued, Amber sighed. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m so bored here.’
‘Aren’t we all.’
‘So get out,’ Misty said to her friends. ‘As soon as we get to Barking, I’m going up Camden …’
‘Buying loads of clothes won’t help!’
‘No, it won’t,’ she said. ‘And in fact, I will wear my best, most revealing clothes when I go there because the best way of getting out of here is to marry your way out.’
Lulu’s eyes almost popped out of her head. ‘Are you serious?’ she said. ‘Marry?’
‘Or live with,’ Misty said. ‘I’m not bothered.’
‘“Not bothered”?’ Lulu said. ‘Christ, I don’t believe you! My old man’s already got me lined up to marry some cousin who lives in Liverpool. But I ain’t doing it. Fuck that!’
This was the first Amber had heard of this and she said, ‘What are you going to do?’
Lulu shrugged. ‘I dunno. But I’m not marrying no knuckle-fighter from Birkenhead. I’ll run away.’
‘To what?’
‘I dunno.’
All three girls stopped talking and then Amber said, ‘I don’t
want to leave …’
‘I thought you was bored …’
‘I am, but if I could fly, get my own act, maybe have it as a show on its own …’
‘We ain’t a circus,’ Lulu said.
‘No, but Nagyapa said that in the old days fairs and circuses were all the same, really. There were sideshows around the rides, freaks and …’
‘Ah, we’ve enough freaks as it is, what with your grandpa’s mates,’ Lulu said. ‘Me mum, you know, she reckons they’re demons.’
‘Demons!’
‘They’re Hungarian, so they’re mad,’ Misty said.
‘You’re Hungarian,’ Amber said.
‘Not for long.’ She took a small mirror out of her handbag and examined her make-up. ‘Once I’m with the man of my dreams, I’ll be someone else. I’ll be one of those women who get their hair done and go to spas and drink champagne.’
Lulu pulled a face. ‘Oh, and so some bloke’ll just do this for you because you’re pretty?’
‘Yup.’
‘What’ll you do if he’s an old bloke?’
‘He won’t be,’ Misty said. ‘He’ll be young and handsome and rich.’
‘Are you mad?’ Lulu looked to Amber for some sort of support for her view that Misty was living in a fantasy world. But she found none.
‘When I’ve learnt to fly and got my own show, I’ll get married too,’ Amber said.
‘So who’s the lucky man?’ Misty said.
‘Oh, no one here!’ Amber shook her head. ‘There’s no one here!’
‘But there’ll have to be if you want to stay,’ Lulu said. ‘God Almighty, all this talk about marriage is making me need some fresh air!’
She got off the bed and left Amber’s caravan. A travelling fair kid all her life, Lulu nonetheless couldn’t believe quite how unrealistic other travelling children could be. Especially about things like marriage. All hearts and flowers and love – and yet they had to know, as she did, that marriage on the road was tough. Her parents rowed all the time. Most people’s did.
Although she loved them both, Lulu thought that Amber and Misty were as daft as brushes. Especially Amber. It was all romance with her. The flying, the listening to her grandfather’s mad old stories about circuses in the old days, the weird stuff her mum and her grandma sometimes said. Lulu’s father had seen Gala Sanders and her mother, Eva, fight once, years ago. He’d said it was the most vicious conflict he’d ever witnessed. It was, he’d said, as if that family was at war with itself.
It was called a Pumpkin Spice Latte and it was tooth-rottingly sweet. It was also massive. Whenever Mumtaz looked down at the drink, she wondered whether she would survive it. Just the whipped cream on top was enough to harden the most pliable arteries.
Sara Metzler, who had paid for their drinks, had gone for something rather more modest: a regular cappuccino. But then she didn’t look like the sort of woman who was a slave to calories. Probably just under six feet tall, she was an angular woman in her sixties. She was retired, so she said, her work at the synagogue being of a voluntary nature.
‘My mother survived the Holocaust here in Berlin,’ she said once introductions had been made. ‘My father I never knew. All I know about him is he was Russian.’
Starbucks in Alexanderplatz was just like Starbucks in London with the exception of the location, which was close to the futuristic Berlin Television Tower. Mumtaz thought it looked like something out of a 1970s kids’ TV series. But at least it had been easy to find.
‘My mother hid for the entire war,’ Sara continued. ‘Many people never owned up to being Jewish ever again. There are people walking around this city who don’t know they’re Jewish. Maybe they even hate Jews.’ She smiled. ‘The year your Mr Levy’s parents met was a time when a lot of lies were told. No one was innocent. When the Red Army invaded Berlin my mother was pulled out of the rubble and raped. The Soviets passed her round like a bag of cookies. Then, in later years, she found a protector and saviour in my father who was a Soviet commander. Or so she said. Some women simply gave themselves to the invaders. I do not judge. People do what they must to survive.’
She drank her coffee.
Mumtaz stared. It wasn’t every day, even in a job like hers, that someone told you such intimate details about themselves and their family with no preamble.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she blurted.
Sara smiled. ‘I suggested we meet here at Starbucks because I knew it would be familiar to you,’ she said. ‘That was one reason. Easy to find. Also, Alexanderplatz was very central to what was East Berlin. And East Berlin is, I think, crucial to the story of your client and his house here.’
‘If it is his house …’
‘As you say. But one thing you must understand and not forget is that, divided, now together, we are a city here in Berlin that nevertheless does not heal,’ she said. ‘I am and remain an East Berliner. I can speak Russian, like most of my fellows, although unlike most of them I can speak English too.’
‘Very well,’ Mumtaz said.
‘I learnt from the BBC Radio,’ she said. ‘Which was forbidden in the DDR, but one does what one must to survive. I think all East Germans, if they are honest, would say that even in the darkest days of the DDR, none of us expected the regime to survive for ever. Well, maybe some did. Your Mr Levy’s story of a family that does not really know itself is not unusual here. But I am anxious to meet him. All this must be hard for him if he is ill.’
‘He’s resting at the moment,’ Mumtaz said. ‘My business partner, well he’s really my boss, is resting too.’
‘Men.’ She shrugged, then leant across the table. ‘However, I must say that I wonder why exactly your Mr Levy is here. It is easy, I think, to find out about this family Austerlitz.’
‘For you, yes,’ Mumtaz said. ‘But he’s ill.’
‘But for you …’
Sara Metzler knew Irving Levy was in town to try and solve a mystery. Now Mumtaz told her about the abduction of his sister, Miriam.
The German woman didn’t talk for a long time. Then she said, ‘I think we must now wake your Mr Levy. There is something he needs to see before he goes any further with this matter. It will, I think, determine whether he wishes to continue with this.’
‘You going to Barking Park Fair this year, guv?’ Tony Bracci said.
Vi Collins looked up from her computer and said, ‘Wasn’t going to. Why? You offering to take me?’
He shrugged.
‘Lee Arnold got you thinking about it,’ Vi said.
Tony drank from his coffee cup. ‘Them missing kids cases get inside your head,’ he said. ‘I never heard of it until now.’
‘You’re too young.’
‘The one I do remember is that young girl who went missing in Devon in the seventies.’
‘Genette Tate,’ Vi said. ‘Yeah, I was working down at the old nick at Plaistow back then. Still open, that one.’
‘I thought she was found?’ Tony said.
‘No. The late Robert Black was in the frame, but nothing was proved, then he died.’
‘Christ.’
Vi turned her chair round to face him. ‘Body’d be heavily degraded now, even if it did come to light. Although I think I read a few years back that some of Genette’s DNA had been gathered from an item of her clothing. No chance of that with the Levy baby and it was a fuck of a long time ago.’
‘Could be she was abducted and doesn’t know even now.’
‘Anything’s possible,’ Vi said, ‘although how you bring a small kid into a community and say it’s yours without arousing suspicion, I don’t know. Everyone’d have to collude and we know that even the tightest families and friends have their weakest links.’
‘True.’
‘If she was alive then there would’ve been a whisper.’
‘Provided someone heard it.’
She nodded. Then she said, ‘I think someone would.’
‘So you think Lee Arnold’s on a bit of a
wild goose chase with this thing then, guv?’
‘Yes, I do, Tone,’ Vi said. Then she added, a little bitterly, Tony felt, ‘He’s always been one for chasing unicorns and rainbows.’
Lee held Irving’s left arm, Mumtaz his right.
The leaf litter underfoot was slimy and smelt of rot, which, given they were in a cemetery, wasn’t something to be dwelt upon.
‘You see?’ the German woman said. She pointed to a name on a small gravestone. Pointless really; Irving had cancer, he wasn’t blind. She read, ‘Rachel Austerlitz, died 1944. In an air raid, possibly.’
Did Irving sag a little? Maybe for a moment. Then he said, ‘I have to say that to see my mother’s name on a grave that isn’t hers is an unsettling experience. But then how do we know that this grave is that of Rachel Austerlitz from Niederschönhausen?’
‘Her grandparents, the parents of Dieter Austerlitz, are buried here too,’ Sara said. She showed him.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘my mother’s grave is in East Ham Jewish Cemetery. It gives her name as Rachel Levy. This Rachel and my mother …’ He shook his head. ‘And yet my mother was a Gentile. What can I say? If this is the real Rachel Austerlitz, then who was my mother?’
Sara put a hand on his arm. ‘And who is this Rachel Austerlitz?’ she said. ‘There is no record of this grave in the inventory of Weissensee. We know that in the war people were buried here in secret, but generally they had no stone. To me, this makes little sense. It makes me wonder even whether there is anyone at all in this grave.’
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