‘Suspected manslaughter,’ Schmidt said.
‘On what grounds?’
Schmidt nodded to the house. ‘And he won’t talk.’
Frederik laughed. ‘Are you surprised? He’s not going anywhere.’ He turned to me, putting a hand on my shoulder. ‘I’ll deal with this.’
I didn’t need to go to hospital, but the doctor who visited me later at Vivienne’s administered a sedative. I slept for a dreamless twenty-four hours.
The day after, I stayed in bed with the curtains drawn. Although I’d only torn a calf muscle and pulled my shoulder, every part of my body throbbed. I had no appetite and barely touched the tray Vivienne brought me. My mother’s notebook, the photograph, the letters and photo album lay undisturbed on the bedside table. I heard intermittent rings from my mobile and from Vivienne’s house phone, calls which she quietly fielded. When she came to my room, she just sat by my side. Preoccupied with her own thoughts, she merely touched my forehead, held my hand or adjusted my pillow. Her actions reassured me, but I didn’t want the pain to stop. I wanted to suffer. It was all my doing – chasing memories and ghosts – and in the end I was the one who lost. While I registered the destruction of the house and the Schiele, it was the loss of my mother’s childhood, the degradation of the family name and my inability to save Oskar that left me feeling hollowed out. I could have uttered a word or two to tell Vivienne how I felt, but no words could convey the depth of the emptiness inside me, so I said nothing. That night I took another sedative.
I was woken late the next morning by the sound of the doorbell. A few moments later, I heard Vivienne’s footsteps along the landing, followed by a knock on my door.
‘It’s Thomas Schmidt,’ she said. ‘He wants to talk to you again. He said he’s prepared to wait. Shall I call Frederik?’
I rubbed my eyes. My temples ached. ‘No. It’s all right. Tell him I’ll be down.’ Vivienne nodded before shutting the door behind her.
A hot shower failed to wash away my numbness and my stomach knotted at every memory of Oskar. I did, however, scoop up the things on the bedside table, intending to give them to Schmidt. I didn’t want them anywhere near me.
I walked into the living room to find Vivienne pouring tea for us all. Then she went to sit on the armchair by the fireplace, reluctant to leave, eyeing Schmidt from across the room. The detective sat on the sofa, rubbing an oval grey stone between his fingers.
‘It’s my lucky charm,’ he said. ‘I’ve had it for almost twenty years.’ He asked me how I was feeling. ‘The shock must be huge.’ His small talk grated, and I let it show as I sat down opposite him.
‘Have you come to arrest me?’ I asked abruptly.
‘Here’s the thing,’ he said, pocketing his stone. ‘A few weeks back, you ring me up, asking for my help.’
I caught the surprise in Vivienne’s eyes.
‘You talk to me about cold cases, mentioning a Josef Frank, Elena Markovic and Christine Hintze. You want me to get the facts. I say, okay, I will. You tell me you think you know who did it, and then you mention this so-called witness, Oskar Edelstein.’ Schmidt leaned over for his cup of tea and took a couple of sips. ‘I’m a little annoyed, to put it mildly, when you say you’re going to take matters into your own hands. All I have is a promise of some letters and the date you’re meeting him.’ He placed his cup back on the coffee table and looked straight at me. ‘The next thing I know, there’s a fire at your house and Oskar Edelstein is dead. Two things have been bothering me. Firstly, I figured out the anagram was his name.’ I couldn’t stop a smile from edging across my face. Schmidt noticed, but continued, his expression unchanged. ‘So I have to ask myself, was it you who wrote that message to get him to the house?’ He glanced at me. ‘Your prints were all over that book. You know that, don’t you?’
I said nothing.
‘Secondly,’ he went on, ‘it’s not entirely clear how the fire started. So understandably, there are questions. With you refusing to answer, it raises suspicions.’
I now wondered whether I should have called Frederik and I checked my back pocket for my mobile phone.
Schmidt jumped in. ‘Before you go calling your lawyer, let me finish. My job’s to get the facts,’ he said. ‘Firstly, Frau Fuchs here has very kindly helped with some of them – about your mother, this Oskar Edelstein, the photograph, the letters and your reason for taking him to your house. So I sort of get that. I also checked the years of the cases you mentioned. Frau Fuchs has confirmed that those are the dates given in the articles you found.’ He concertinaed his brow. ‘But what I don’t get is Oskar Edelstein’s connection with the murders.’
‘He saw my grandfather with a child he’d abducted,’ I said quietly. Vivienne paled.
‘Which child?’ Schmidt asked.
I told him, in a little more detail, what Oskar had seen that day all those years ago, and that my mother must have realised he’d been holding something back.
‘So why didn’t he come forward before?’
I stared at him, wondering whether his ignorance was just an act.
Vivienne intervened, her brusque tone barely masking her irritation with him. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Oskar was only a small boy. He must have been terrified. Then he left for England and the war started. Besides, he was probably unaware that there were others.’
‘The child Oskar saw with my grandfather – it wasn’t Elena or Josef or Christine. It was Eva. Eva Schwartz,’ I said. ‘My mother probably worked the connection out, but it was too late.’ A multitude of regrets swam around me. I should have picked up the phone earlier and tended to her request. If I had done that, then the house would have been saved and Oskar would be alive and well. I wanted to shout it out loud, to scream.
‘Strange that this Eva wasn’t reported missing,’ said Schmidt.
‘No doubt the others weren’t reported missing either until their bodies were found,’ said Vivienne.
Schmidt popped a piece of gum in his mouth. ‘So tell me, Max, how did the fire start?’ His casual tone didn’t fool me.
‘We were downstairs, checking out the room and tunnel that the builders discovered. Oskar collapsed. Then the lights went out – a problem with the electrics, I assumed. I went to help him but slipped in the dark and knocked my head on the floor. When I came round, I saw the fire and knew we had to get out.’ I looked Schmidt square in the face. ‘He was my friend.’ I took hold of the bundle of things that I’d brought downstairs with me and threw them to him. ‘Here. Perhaps if you took the time to read these you’d understand.’
I got up to leave the room.
‘I have to ask, Max,’ he said, flicking through the things I gave him. ‘You see, we found a blue cigarette lighter in your coat pocket. Obviously your prints were on it.’
I stopped. I had my back to Schmidt, my hand hovering over the doorknob. I turned to look at him over my shoulder.
‘So I picked it up. There was also a packet of cigarettes lying next to it. I picked that up too, but it must have fallen out of my pocket. I wasn’t happy about the mess, particularly given there were two old cans of fuel down there. You think I started the fire to claim insurance? The next thing you’ll be saying is that I colluded with the Serbs about the break-in too.’
I walked out and went to the bathroom.
Splashing cold water on my face did nothing for me. I leaned over the basin. My hands shook. I gripped the edge of the sink to steady them. I didn’t want to relive the events of a couple of days ago. I didn’t want to recall Eva’s control over me. I wanted to forget about her, just as Oskar, and possibly my mother, had tried to do. And I wanted Schmidt out of Vivienne’s house.
I dried my face with a towel and returned to the living room to find Schmidt finishing a phone call.
‘Look, I know it’s difficult for you,’ he said, stuffing his phone into his jacket pocket. ‘And I’m sure at some stage we’ll get to the bottom of the fire, but there’s …’
‘I couldn’t care le
ss about your theories,’ I said. ‘Oskar died of a heart attack. Haven’t they confirmed that?’
‘Yes. The initial post-mortem results seem to indicate that.’
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘And have you talked to his housekeeper, to his friends and doctors to confirm his ill health?’
‘Yes, we have,’ said Schmidt. ‘And that corroborates your story. But let me ask you this – if you knew of his ill health, why put him under more stress by insisting on this visit?’
‘I didn’t insist on it. He wanted it. You should confirm that too.’
I went to the window, pushing my trembling hands into my jeans pockets. The outdoors didn’t bring much solace. Mild weather had ushered in sleet and rain, turning the ground into a muddy slush.
‘You know,’ I said, ‘it should be those closest to him who ask me that, not you.’
‘Max.’ Vivienne’s voice brought me back to the room. She wanted me to take a seat, but I couldn’t sit and listen to Schmidt’s constant questioning.
‘The main reason for my visit,’ he said, ‘is that we found some human remains.’
I wheeled round.
‘We found a skeleton behind one of the walls of the bunker.’
‘What?’
Suddenly everything slowed down; sounds were muted. Schmidt mouthed the words, repeating what he had just said. I turned to Vivienne and saw the shock painted on her face, her fingers pressed against her lips. I hadn’t misheard, then. My feet felt unsteady and I reached for the windowsill, my fingers desperate for the touch of its solid edge. Everything went black.
‘Are you all right?’
Schmidt’s voice seemed to echo from some faraway room. I came to on the sofa. Vivienne was sitting next to me, holding a glass of water. I took it, but I struggled to hold the glass steady.
Schmidt chewed his gum, furrowing his brow into a vee. ‘Looks like they’re the remains of a girl, possibly twelve to fourteen years old. Hard to tell.’
I curbed the rush of nausea with a sip of water. ‘Eva,’ I whispered.
‘It’s impossible to know without any records. But if that’s your assumption …’ He tapped his finger on the bundle of memorabilia I’d given him. ‘These will help, no doubt.’
‘So what happens now?’ Vivienne asked.
Schmidt shrugged. ‘We record everything, including the things you’ve given me.’ He waggled the bundle in the air. ‘Then we close the old cases. The suspect’s dead – we can’t question him or press charges.’
‘But I could have all honours, titles and so on retrospectively removed, correct?’
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Schmidt.
‘And if I wanted to disinter a body?’
Vivienne stared at me, her eyes wide with alarm. ‘You’re not thinking of removing your grandfather’s remains?’
I gave Vivienne’s hand a squeeze.
‘Not my department,’ said Schmidt. He lifted his shirt cuff to look at his watch. ‘I’ll be in touch again. You’ll be here?’
I nodded. Despite his and Vivienne’s protests to stay put, I got up to see him out.
At the door, Schmidt hesitated. ‘Can I say something?’
I nodded.
‘The photograph. I had a good look at it, front and back, and then at that anagram in the novel. The handwriting’s the same.’ He leaned against the doorframe. ‘Like I said, there was no way those Serbs could’ve done that. It wasn’t your mother’s handwriting was it?’
My hand began to shake again but I kept my face blank. ‘Impossible to know, but if that’s your assumption …’
He gave me a wry smile, then took his leave, pausing at the gate as if he wanted to say something else. But then he shook his head and departed with a mock salute.
That night I joined Vivienne for dinner in the kitchen. She had made a simple spätzle supper, which I ate for her sake rather than my own. Following Schmidt’s visit, I expected her to ask questions about what had happened at the house with Oskar, and I wrestled with whether or not to tell her the truth. With the death of my mother and recent events at the house, she had been through enough. Thankfully for both of us, she didn’t ask.
‘I still can’t believe it,’ was all she said, pushing her plate to one side. Then she added, ‘You were lucky, Max. I could have lost you too.’ She placed my hand in hers.
I stared at my plate, my knife and fork slipping out of focus. I squeezed my eyes shut, plugging the sting of tears.
After a while, Vivienne cleared our plates away. She hummed to herself while she washed the dishes, her voice conjuring up pictures of my mother. There were two contrasting images I had of her, flipping through my mind like a zoetrope: the Annabel Vivienne knew, and the Annabel I knew as my mother, all angles and frowns. For me, there was nothing in between.
‘Vivienne?’
She turned from the sink and dried her hands on a towel.
‘What made you take me under your wing?’
She sat back down at the table. ‘Your mother was in a bad place.’
‘I know that, but when did you step in? When did I start spending more time with you? Was it straight after the accident, or sometime after?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Yes it does.’
‘Very well. It happened a few months after your brother and father passed away. Your mother was quite depressed. You were playing in the garden. Something made her run out to you, she … Well, you remember.’
I had been talking to my friend, Chanoo, who, by virtue of his death in the same car crash as my father and brother, had become my imaginary friend.
‘And that’s when you stepped in?’
‘Annabel asked me to. She told me that you’d had a run of bad dreams and she couldn’t cope with your screams in the night. She suggested that it might be better if you stayed with me from time to time.’ Vivienne wiped away some stray crumbs on the tablecloth. ‘But she was always your mother – I made sure of that.’ As an apparent afterthought she added, ‘She chose to keep you at a distance. She was afraid she couldn’t be a good enough mother … But that’s all in the past now.’ She pushed back her chair, went to one of the cupboards and took out the Stollen she had intended to keep for Christmas Eve. ‘Now, what about some of this cake? A slice might cheer us both up.’
On our way through to the living room I thought about what she had said, mulling over my own conclusion: that perhaps I would have done the same. Maybe my mother and I weren’t so different after all.
I went through Vivienne’s music collection to find something light-hearted. I really didn’t know what to choose, and in the end I decided on The Mikado on account of its cartoonish CD cover. When I put it on, Vivienne let out a laugh.
‘An admirer of your mother’s gave that CD to her. She was going to throw it away, but I thought it a waste, so she gave it to me – even though I hate Gilbert and Sullivan. Your mother did too.’
Vivienne bent down to light the fire.
‘Here, let me,’ I said, taking the box of matches from her hand. I struck a match against the side of the box and instantly became transfixed by the flame, its voluminous shape feeding on the matchstick. The smell of singeing skin brought me back to myself. I threw the spent match into the fireplace and blew on my burnt fingertips. I tried again, but the same thing happened. Vivienne, her back to me while she cut the cake, was oblivious to it all.
‘Vivienne, actually …’
She came straight over, starting the fire without a fuss while I stood at the hearth, watching the flames, replaying Eva’s last act in my mind.
‘It’ll take a while,’ Vivienne said, drawing me away to the sofa and handing me a plate and a small pastry fork. ‘I know it’s the last thing on your mind,’ she went on, ‘but thank goodness the art was saved.’
I looked at her. ‘What do you mean? The Schiele and two others went up in smoke.’
She returned the quizzical look on my face with an expression of mild surprise on hers. ‘But Max,’ she
said, ‘they were copies.’
I sat forward, almost sending the plate and cake resting on my lap tumbling to the floor. ‘They were what?’
Vivienne stifled a laugh. ‘I was sure you knew. But then I couldn’t understand why you wanted them in storage.’
‘My mother knowingly bought forgeries?’
The trill of ‘Three Little Maids’ in the background made the moment all the more surreal.
Vivienne put her plate on the coffee table and turned to me. ‘Of course not! I told you Annabel bought the Schiele and some others from galleries back in the Sixties. Several years ago, when she saw how their value rose – notably the Schiele – she decided she needed to do something to safeguard them. She still wanted to see them each day, but she didn’t want to bother with an alarm system – she was worried about setting it off by accident and all that. So she put the real paintings into secure storage and had copies done. It was Frederik’s idea. When you saw him that day for the will, I assumed he’d told you.’
I didn’t recall any mention of it. There was just the pack of documentation he’d handed over.
‘I’m sorry, Max.’ Vivienne laughed – a proper tinkle of laughter – and shook her head. ‘You must have thought me quite careless.’
I tried to think of it as a very thin silver lining. It was something to hold on to – the Schiele was safe.
‘There’s a chance the Schiele originally belonged to Oskar’s family,’ I said, spoiling Vivienne’s fun. ‘It makes sense. If Mama bought it from a gallery then I’m sure I could find out where they got it from. Did she ever say why she bought it?’
Vivienne frowned, her mirth quite gone. ‘Not that I remember. I never really liked it, so we rarely spoke about it. But then, her entire collection was quite personal. She bought for herself, not for show. So what will you do?’
‘What’s right,’ I said.
OBER ST. VEIT, VIENNA, 1974
Annabel drifts into the drawing room, still wearing her nightdress and dressing gown, even though it’s early in the afternoon. Vivienne’s in the kitchen with Ludmilla preparing their lunch, but like most days, Annabel will just pick at her food. Her mouth is permanently dry. Her body has rejected most things since it rejected the little one inside her.
The Silent Children Page 22
