by Carla Banks
A garrotte was not a weapon of defence or threat, it was a device for killing. It worked by stealth and surprise. Someone had wanted Helen Kovacs dead, and had gone into that library knowing she was there, with that end in mind. The more Jake looked at the case, the more unlikely Nick Garrick looked as a killer. It just wasn’t logical.
Add to that the complication of the anonymous call to the emergency services, and he could understand why the investigating team had let Garrick go, pending further enquiries. He wondered what the alibi was that Burnley had mentioned…He skimmed the papers again, but all he could find was the phone call that Sophia Yevanova had made to Nick around seven thirty. Maybe that was what Burnley had meant.
He’d done as much as he could. He needed to get on. He checked his e-mail. There was one from Adam Zuygev, his contact in Minsk. I have located the records you requested. Jake thought for a moment, then sent back a reply with details of the Lange family, what details he had. He wanted to find out more about Lange’s wartime record and more about his background–heart-warming tales of peasant idylls in the forest didn’t ring true.
Since his meeting with Lange, his curiosity about the old man’s vague and sketchy past had increased. Lange had a secret, he was certain of that. A secret that related to the war. The daughter knew about it–why else was she so reluctant to let her father be interviewed? Faith…he was not so sure; she seemed to have swallowed the whole war-trauma thing. Lange had concealed himself behind misdirection, and Jake wanted to know why. There might be a Minsk connection. It could add a further dimension to what Jake planned to write.
His eyes ran over the books on his shelves: The Legacy of Nuremberg; Crimes of War: Guilt and Denial in the 20th Century; The Rape of Nanking; The 10th Circle of Hell. Plus ça change…
Minsk was going to be full of such secrets.
Which reminded him…
He picked up the two black-and-white photographs and set up his scanner. Once he had them both copied, he set to work to try and enhance them. The picture of the young soldier was on the screen. He was standing very straight, and the uniform looked new. Jake enlarged the picture and changed the contrast. Shadow washed down the screen and the picture became clearer. He could see more of the features now. It had been unmistakably Marek Lange before, but now he could see that the military seriousness of Lange’s expression barely masked the smile that the young man was trying to suppress. The old man he had interviewed in the comfortless house would not have smiled like that. Lange had shown interest, some pleasure in the details of his work, relief and affection when his granddaughter had walked through the door, but Jake had seen nothing like this expression of suppressed joy.
He increased the dpi. Now, the letters on the doorplate were clearer. He couldn’t make them all out, and part of the plate was concealed behind Lange’s arm, but some of the larger letters were discernible: ‘M’? No, it was…‘H’. Then ‘R’? Possibly. And then ‘B’. HRB. It didn’t mean anything. Maybe Adam Zuygev could help him.
He moved on to the next picture, the family group. The woman had what he always thought of as ‘peasant’ hair–parted in the middle and pulled severely back. Her head was covered with a scarf. The boy was Marek Lange–the square jaw, the Slavic eyes–they hadn’t changed from childhood to youth to old age. He was looking at the girl held in the woman’s arms. Here, the smile was given full rein. Jake realized that whatever had happened to him later, Marek Lange had been a happy child. The little girl–he adjusted the contrast again and sharpened the clarity, then again…He studied it closely.
He’d only met Faith Lange once, but her face had the same fine-boned delicacy that made Sophia Yevanova so beautiful. It was a memorable face.
And he would have sworn, had he not known it was impossible, that the child in the woman’s arms was a young Faith Lange.
Grandpapa wouldn’t discuss the roses. He barely seemed aware of them, and by the time they were inside he seemed to have forgotten about them altogether. He refused to let Faith help him prepare the food. ‘I make a treat,’ he said, which usually meant draniki, the potato pancakes from his childhood.
He looked critically at the bottle of wine she’d bought–he used to enjoy fine wines and had kept a small cellar, but these days, he was happy enough with wine from the supermarket. ‘I’ll do the table,’ she said.
He held up his hand. ‘You do nothing. Sit.’ And he bustled away. She watched him as he went, frowning slightly. He was behaving much as usual, but there was something forced about it. It was as if her visit was a distraction–he was making a lot of it, putting in extra effort because it was taking him away from something else.
Maybe he would talk after they’d eaten. He’d be more relaxed then, he’d have had a glass of wine. He might open up a bit. She looked round, trying to decide what to do. Grandpapa had banned her from the kitchen, but she could restore a bit of order in here. The room was generally untidy–books on the floor or just pushed back on to the shelves, Grandpapa’s spare spectacles lying on the table, a pair of slippers asking to be tripped over. Everything looked slightly grubby, as though it all needed a good clean. She made a mental note to call the agency and see if they could find someone more efficient than Doreen.
She straightened things up and put the books back in their proper slots on the shelves. One of them was Russian Fairy Tales, and she paused with it in her hand, remembering the morning she’d talked with Antoni Yevanov. She saw his thin, intelligent face light up with interest when she told him she knew them. They are very old, probably the oldest records we have…She flicked through the pages, recognizing the familiar titles: ‘The Snow Child’, ‘The Firebird’, ‘Havroshechka’…and the one that used to terrify her, the story of Baba Yaga. She pushed the book on to the shelf.
The room looked a bit better. She remembered the disorder in the study and resolved to put in a new bulb and clear those papers away. She went across the corridor. The sound of clattering pans came from the kitchen, and a muffled expostulation from Grandpapa–cooking was progressing as usual. She resisted the temptation to go in. He wouldn’t thank her. He’d made it clear he didn’t want any help.
There were new bulbs in the cupboard under the stairs. She took one to the study, and, using a chair to stand on, replaced the bulb. She had a troubling vision of Grandpapa balancing on the unsteady surface and reaching up. The bulbs should be replaced before they began to flicker and fade. She seriously needed to speak to the cleaning agency.
But the new bulb flickered as well. The fitting must be faulty. She looked round the room in the odd, disturbing light. It looked as though no one had been in here for a long time. A film of dust lay across everything. Her fingers were grimy from the old light bulb. There was only the desk to show that the room was still used. It was odd to see it open and papers scattered everywhere. He’d always been meticulous with his records. She noticed that the ‘secret’ drawer, a vertical compartment that masqueraded as a bit of ornamentation, was open. It had always fascinated her as a child, and she used to pester him to release the spring that held it, so she could watch it jump out. He kept his personal papers in there. She could see the long white envelope that contained his will, and the manila envelope where he kept the family certificates. On impulse, she lifted that out and opened it.
There was his marriage certificate. She unfolded it carefully, but the paper was so brittle along the folds, it split. Marek Lange had married Deirdre O’Halloran in 1955. The bride was from Dublin, and the groom had been born in Litva, in Poland. The bride’s father had been a shopkeeper. The groom’s father, a farmer. She looked at it. This was her past, encapsulated in these few words. And there was her birth certificate. She unfolded it, not sure why she was looking at it. The space for ‘father’ was blank, as it always would be. When she was in her teens, she had wanted to know his identity, and had been outraged at Katya’s refusal to divulge it. She had carried her grievance around with her for a while, and had created a fantasy father in her m
ind that she had almost convinced herself was real–he was rich, urbane, charming, indulgent and adored her.
She shook her head, remembering. When had that hunger to know disappeared? She tried to recapture it now, and found nothing more than curiosity and a faint embarrassment for her teenage self. Maybe it was when she had grown old enough to realize that her fantasy father was no more than an idealized representation of her grandfather, that she had a father, or all the father she needed. Whoever her real father was, he would be a stranger to her, and she to him.
She put the certificates away, and turned to the mess of papers. They were mostly old newspaper cuttings. Some were yellowed and faded, crumbling along the fold lines as if they hadn’t been disturbed for a long time. There were articles about the Nuremberg trials: GOERING, RIBBENTROP, TEN OTHERS TO HANG; NAZI WAR CRIMINALS DIE ON SCAFFOLD. There were more recent articles as well about failed attempts to bring war criminals to trial: ROW OVER ‘NAZI’ ARREST; AUSTRALIA’S SHAME; EXTRADITION CASE FAILS; THE LAST VICTIMS–VIGILANTE JUSTICE AND WAR CRIMES.
She sat down slowly and picked up one of the cuttings: WAR CRIME SUSPECT DIES AGED 85. It was dated 13 September 2001. She began to read. A Lithuanian who had lived in the UK since the end of the war had been accused of war crimes in Belarus. Belarus? Jake Denbigh had mentioned Belarus. He had been the commander of a platoon in a police unit responsible for massacres in…her eyes skimmed the list of unfamiliar places–Slutsk, Smilovichi, Borisov, Rudensk–but principally in Minsk. Something cold seemed to touch her skin. She put the cutting down and picked up the next one.
It told a similar story. Karlis Ozols, another refugee from the Baltic states who had surfaced in Australia and made a name for himself as a chess champion, was also accused of war crimes in Belarus. Ozols had successfully resisted all attempts at extradition.
The most recent one was a bit different, THE LAST VICTIMS–VIGILANTE JUSTICE AND WAR CRIMES. It was a feature article that warned against the dangers of misidentification, based around a recent, tragic case. It was sparely written but passionately argued, and she looked to see who the author was.
Jake Denbigh.
She tried to make sense of his name being here. He was interested in Belarus–he’d talked about it. He’d been curious about Grandpapa’s origins. Maybe he’d been here looking for…what? She read through the article again, but it bore no relation to anything Denbigh had discussed with Grandpapa.
She put the cuttings back in the folder and slipped it into the secret drawer next to the manila envelope. She sat at the desk staring into space. Most of the cuttings had been old, but the recent ones…Why had he sought them out, and why had he kept them?
But one thing was clear. Grandpapa was in no danger of being reminded about the war.
He had never forgotten it.
The Bridge
This is the story of the boy on the bridge.
A river ran through the village. Just at the edge of the forest, the river bank narrowed, and the water rushed and foamed over flat rocks and fell into deep pools and brown shallows. The iron bridge, the bridge that carried the trains, crossed the river here. Below the rapids, the water flowed into a calm pool, and in the summer, on the hot days when work was done, the boys from the village used to swim here, and jump from the banks into the cool water. And some of them, not many, used to climb the framework of the iron bridge and leap back into the water. It was dangerous because of the rocks and the currents.
The village girls would jostle Eva and whisper things to her. ‘Your brother won’t jump. He’s scared.’
Marek wasn’t scared of anything. He was tall and strong and his face was tanned from the hours he worked on Papa’s land. The girls used to watch him when he went past. He wasn’t scared of jumping, she knew that.
He was in the yard that evening when she went to get more water from the well. He was splitting logs for the woodpile, his sleeves rolled up, his fair hair damp across his face. ‘Hey, little one,’ he greeted Eva as she came out with the pail.
‘I’m twelve!’ she said.
Marek grinned and propped the axe against the block. ‘You’ve got a long way to go.’
Eva turned her back on him and wound the handle to draw up the water. Marek came over and scooped up a ladleful which he tipped over his head. ‘It’s hot,’ he said.
He would probably go to the river in the evening. On these hot and dusty days, most of the boys and the young men in the village swam in the river. ‘Marek?’ she said.
He looked down at her. ‘What is it, little…’ He grinned again, and stopped himself. ‘What is it?’ he said.
‘Why won’t you jump? The girls say you’re too scared.’
‘Into the river?’ he said. ‘I do. From the bank.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ she said. ‘I meant the bridge.’
When she walked by the river, and looked up at the stone, and the iron girders of the bridge, and the drop above the foaming water, she felt cold. But she knew that if she was a boy, she would do it. She would jump from the bridge, she knew she would.
He rubbed his face, smearing the dirt across it. ‘I don’t jump because it’s dangerous and it’s stupid,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing brave about stupid. What would Papa do if I broke my idiot neck proving something to a bunch of girls?’
He was right. Of course he was right. She nodded, and heaved the bucket with two hands. It was too full, and splashed water over her feet.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Come on.’ He took the bucket and carried it into the house. ‘Whatever we do, they are never going to like us, Eva.’
It was later that week. Eva finished her chores. The yard where the chickens scratched was dry and dusty, and the sky was a relentless, cloudless blue. She felt sticky and dirty and hot. She walked along the path towards the river. She used to go into the forest when it was hot, go under the shade of the trees where the air was always cool and damp, and the fronds of the birches would brush against her face. But there were dark shadows under the trees, and sometimes–even though she was now twelve and didn’t believe at all in such things–sometimes she heard the soft tread of Baba Yaga’s house as it searched for her along the paths of the deep glades.
As she got near the river, she could hear the boys shouting, and the sound of splashing as the swimmers leapt into the water. They were in the pool below the rocks, like salmon jumping the rapids, their bodies brown and gleaming where the sun caught them. They were diving into the current and letting the water take them downstream in a great rush into the calmer pool below, and then they were climbing out and scrambling up the rocks to do it again.
The village girls were standing by the bank. Eva saw them, and turned to go the other way. She heard them giggling and whispering to each other as they caught sight of her. She lifted her head, and walked faster.
And then she saw Marek on the bank, watching. He dived into the water, and surfaced blowing and shaking his head. Then he struck out towards the base of the bridge, where the iron towers rested on stone.
He pulled himself out of the water, caught on to the stanchion and hauled himself up. Then he was climbing the ironwork like a ladder, pulling himself towards the parapet. Most of the boys who jumped would jump from the top of the ironwork, where there was a pool close to the bank. The water was deep there, and it wasn’t as dangerous.
But as Eva stood watching, Marek climbed higher, climbed the parapet wall, edging his way along, holding on to the rough stonework with no more than his fingers and his bare feet, higher and higher above the place where the water foamed and churned.
Marek!
She wanted to call out to him, to tell him to stop, but if she called, if she distracted him, he would fall and be smashed to pieces on the rocks that lay just under the water.
The shouts and the cries died away as the others in the water and on the banks saw what he was doing. Everything went silent.
And Marek reached the middle of the bridge. He was high up and far away, a
nd below him she could see the edges of the rocks as the water sprayed up off them, and in the middle, so small, a pool of calm brown where the water was deep.
Her throat closed up. She could hear the roar of the water and the sound of the birds. He was poised on the edge. She could see his hair like a halo against the sun. And then he leapt high into the air and out over the river, beyond the place where it foamed and swirled. He dropped into the water like a stone.
She heard herself scream and she was running to the riverside. And there was Marek, swimming to the rocks and pulling himself out, wiping the water out of his eyes and laughing.
He was safe. He’d done it.
11
Jake went to see Sophia Yevanova the next morning. He pulled up outside the house and parked behind the BMW that had been there when he dropped Garrick off the day before. The house was silent. The door was opened by Mrs Barker, but before she could greet Jake, a tall, dark-haired man came out of a room across the hall. He saw Jake and came across, looking impatient. ‘I will deal with this, Mrs Barker.’ His voice was cold.
Antoni Yevanov. Jake hadn’t met him before, but he recognized him from the photograph Miss Yevanova kept in her room. He held out his hand. ‘I’m Jake Denbigh. I’m here to see Miss Yevanova.’
Antoni Yevanov didn’t respond to Jake’s proffered hand. He studied Jake in silence. ‘Mr Denbigh, I think we need to talk,’ he said.
‘Is something wrong? Is Miss Yevanova ill?’ The man’s sombre countenance alarmed him. He remembered what she’d said–only half joking–the last time they’d talked: I may be ashes next time we meet.
‘My mother’s health is no worse than usual,’ Yevanov said indifferently, pushing open a door and indicating to Jake that he should go through. He found himself in what was clearly a study, with book-lined walls and a window overlooking a long, well-tended lawn. The garden was deserted.
