1503954692

by Steve Robinson

  A moment later, Jean said, ‘No. It says here that the entire estate was seized by the authorities. Trudi Scheffler was left with next to nothing.’

  ‘Wasn’t Scheffler’s family also well-connected? Surely the marriage of the only Strobel son and heir would have been matched in terms of status and wealth.’

  ‘Look here,’ Jean said, pointing to a section that wrapped up the information about Volker’s Strobel’s marriage.

  ‘Her family cut her off,’ Tayte said.

  ‘She became an embarrassment to them,’ Jean read. ‘She refused to denounce her love for Volker Strobel, and because she kept his name after the war her family wanted nothing more to do with her.’

  Tayte and Jean slowly turned to face each other, and Tayte knew they were both thinking the same thing: that a love so obviously blind back then could be just as strong today. It made Tayte think that there was every chance Trudi Strobel née Scheffler knew where her husband was, and that she had perhaps been instrumental in keeping him hidden all these years. Trudi was high on Tayte’s list of people to see, but he and Jean had already tried several times to get an interview before coming to Munich, and every time she had refused to talk to them. He began to think about how they might be able to change her mind when his phone beeped and vibrated in his trouser pocket. He took it out and checked the display.

  ‘What is it?’ Jean asked.

  Tayte read the message. It was short, but it set his pulse racing. ‘There’s an address in an area of Munich called Laim. The message says to be there at nine thirty tonight if I want answers.’

  ‘It’s late for a meeting. Who’s it from? The Kaufmanns?’

  ‘I guess so. Or maybe it’s from the insider they told us about at The Friends of the Waffen-SS War Veterans. Maybe he’s got some information for us.’

  ‘Is there a caller ID?’

  ‘No, but perhaps that’s understandable if it’s from Kaufmann’s insider.’

  ‘I saw Laim on the map,’ Jean said. ‘It’s on the other side of Munich. I can’t say I like it, but we’d better hurry if we’re going. We don’t have long to get there.’

  Tayte checked his watch. ‘Not long at all,’ he said. ‘And there you are all ready for bed. If Laim’s on the other side of Munich, maybe I should go by myself while you keep digging into Scheffler. We can share information when I get back—if you’re still up.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll be up,’ Jean said. ‘I’ll be too worried about you to sleep. You will be careful, won’t you?’

  ‘Of course,’ Tayte said. He scribbled the address he’d been sent onto the hotel-room notepad and tore off the sheet. ‘Here’s where I’m going,’ he added, handing it to her.

  Just in case I don’t make it back.

  He knew Jean was right to be wary. He was putting a brave face on things so as not to add to her concerns, but the real reason he wanted to go alone was that he didn’t know what he was heading into and he didn’t want to put Jean at risk, too. A big part of him wanted to stay right there with her and continue the research, but he’d be the first to admit that he was too inquisitive for his own good at times. He knew he had to go along with this, if only to find out who had sent him the message and why.

  ‘You’ll have to get a taxi,’ Jean said as Tayte swung his legs off the bed. ‘That nightcap in the bar will have put you over the driving limit.’

  ‘I feel fine,’ Tayte said, ‘but sure, I’ll phone down to reception and have them call one for me while I get my things together.’

  With that, Tayte made the call, hoping that his text message really was from the Kaufmanns or their insider at the FWK. He recalled pushing his business card through the letterbox when he and Jean had visited the FWK the day before, so they also had his number. The last person he wanted to see when he arrived in Laim was Max Fleischer.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The taxi that had picked Tayte up from the Hilton Munich City hotel twenty-five minutes earlier came to a sudden halt. Looking out of his window Tayte couldn’t see how the driver had brought him to the address he’d given him. There were no buildings to be seen. Just trees and bushes, and a few street lamps lighting a railed walkway that disappeared into the distance over the bridge they had stopped before. Ten feet or so below the road ahead, he could see railway tracks, shining icy blue in the moonlight.

  ‘Why have we stopped?’ Tayte asked.

  The driver, Tayte had quickly learned, didn’t speak much English. Although Tayte had to concede that it was far better than his German.

  ‘Die Strasse ist gesperrt,’ the driver said.

  Tayte didn’t know what that meant. He thought it was something about the road. A second later the driver confirmed it.

  ‘Road closed,’ the driver said, slowly, as he pointed ahead through the windscreen.

  In the low light Tayte couldn’t fully make out what the driver wanted him to see. He opened his door, leaned out and saw the bridge that arched over the railway tracks more fully. There was a barrier with a temporary road sign in front of it. It appeared that the bridge had been closed for repairs. Tayte checked his watch. He had less than ten minutes to reach the address he’d been given and he hoped whoever had sent him the text message asking to meet him was prepared to wait. He took out his phone and brought up the ‘maps’ app. He punched in the address and the GPS soon found him. It showed that he wasn’t far away. He saw the bridge and the road layout, which turned to the left after the bridge, running alongside the railway tracks for a short distance. The address he’d been sent was no more than a few hundred metres away.

  Tayte got back into the taxi. ‘Can you wait here for me?’ he said, pointing his finger at the ground.

  The confused look on the taxi driver’s face was far from promising.

  ‘You,’ Tayte said, now pointing at the driver as he tried to think how to say ‘wait’ in German. ‘Stay,’ he added when nothing came to him.

  All he got back from the driver were several German words that this time he did recognise. The driver wanted his fare. Tayte sighed and shook his head as he handed the money over, thinking that he could call another cab to come and get him when the time came to go back. He grabbed his briefcase and got out of the car. Then he made for the walkway that led over the bridge, which was thankfully still open to pedestrians.

  For a moment he thought the driver must have understood him after all because the taxi was still there as Tayte began to cross the bridge. But then he heard the car’s engine rev up and he turned back to see the taxi speed away to collect his next fare, leaving Tayte alone on the bridge, wondering what the hell he was doing there.

  ‘Why couldn’t they have picked a busier place, or waited until morning?’ he said to himself, knowing that if he wasn’t so desperate for answers he wouldn’t have come out at such a late hour, especially if he’d known how isolated the area was.

  He took a deep breath and continued over the bridge until he reached the last of the street lamps. There were no other lights in the area as far as he could see. As he followed the road around to his left—as the map on his phone dictated—it became so dark that he had to use his phone as a torch to light his way between the trees, which now seemed to have thickened around him. He kept going and it grew so quiet that, being the great lover of Broadway shows that he was, he felt the urge to whistle a show tune to keep himself company. But he thought better of it. If he had been lured there for some nefarious reason, he didn’t want to draw attention to himself until he had to.

  When at last the trees cleared, Tayte walked beside the rail tracks for a short while, and he enjoyed the openness, thinking that he’d at least be able to see anyone or anything that came at him out of the darkness. Nothing did, and after a while he began to relax. There were buildings ahead. A few had lights at their windows and that calmed him further. He checked the map again and turned to his right at a small junction in the road he’d been following. The area appeared to be some kind of industrial estate, which accounted for how
quiet it was, given the hour. He saw a number on one of the buildings, which was essentially a long brick wall with an aluminium door and a few small windows higher up. At the end of the brick wall he came to a wire fence with a few spotlights at intervals along it, shining into a yard where large wooden cable drums sat here and there like rolls of hay in a farmer’s field. There was an office-like building partway along the fence and when Tayte reached it, he saw that it was the address he was looking for.

  ‘Why here?’ he said under his breath, supposing that the place might hold no significance beyond the fact that it was in a quiet location, where conversations wouldn’t be overheard.

  He imagined that if he had been called there by Kaufmann’s undercover insider at the FWK, then this was just the type of place he’d pick to meet someone he didn’t know. What did this man have to tell him? Something about Strobel coming to Munich? Tayte didn’t know, but he figured he was about to find out. The office was in darkness, which did nothing to settle his nerves. He tried to peer in through the windows, but he couldn’t see anything through the shutters, which were only half open. He stepped up to the door, thinking that the sender of his text message couldn’t have arrived yet—and there he was, just a few minutes after the allotted time and nothing bad had happened. It made him feel easier again, but then he saw something that changed all that in a heartbeat. The door to the building was ajar.

  Tayte’s heart rate instantly picked up a few beats. He took a deep breath and looked back along the street and out across the road to the other buildings. Apart from the security lighting here and there, they were also in darkness. He stepped closer to the door and gave it a gentle poke with the tip of his finger. It opened further and he stepped back.

  Why is the damn door open?

  Given that the place was so dark and that there didn’t appear to be anyone else around, Tayte could think of no good reason. He could feel his heart kicking in his chest now and all his instincts told him to get out of there—to run back across that bridge and call another taxi once he felt safe again. He turned to go, but as he did so a telephone began to ring inside the office and every nerve in his body seemed to ring with it. He turned back to the sound, which seemed so loud in the otherwise still night. His first thought was that the caller could be the same person who had sent him the text message, perhaps to let him know why he was late, or maybe they had further instructions for him.

  So why not call my cell phone or send me another text message?

  Tayte quickly checked. There were no calls and no messages.

  And who in their right mind would leave the door open just so I can go in and answer the phone?

  Inside the office, the phone kept ringing and Tayte gravitated towards it.

  What am I doing?

  He stepped up to the door. Having come this far, he had to find out what was going on.

  ‘Hello?’ he called through the gap.

  He nudged the door further open and peered in, but with just the moonlight and the light from the yard coming in through the shutters at the windows he could see very little.

  ‘Is anybody there?’ Tayte said as he stepped inside.

  He couldn’t see how anyone could be or they would have answered that phone by now. He supposed it was loud like that so it could be heard from across the yard when the office was empty. Whatever the reason, Tayte had had enough of the sound. He just wanted to make it stop. He turned to the desk beside him, and he could just make out the shape of the phone on the desk. He stepped closer, leaving the door wide open behind him for comfort. Tentatively, he picked up the handset and put it to his ear, saying nothing at first, waiting for the caller to speak. No one did. He began to say hello, but as he did so he heard a click and knew the caller had hung up.

  Tayte realised something was wrong as soon as he went to put the handset down again. It felt slippery in his hand. Then he was distracted by headlights at the window, which lit up the room, and in that moment he saw blood on the handset and a body lying on the floor at the end of the desk.

  There was a screeching of tyres outside and car doors slammed. Tayte was frozen to the spot in disbelief, looking down at the dark silhouette of a man on the floor as someone burst into the room, pointing a handgun at him. The man was shouting in German and Tayte didn’t understand most of it, but he did know what ‘Polizei!’ meant, and he recognised the police uniforms on the officers who rushed in after the first man and forced him over the desk before they cuffed his hands behind his back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘I was set up,’ Tayte said.

  Two plain-clothes detectives were standing on the other side of the table he was handcuffed to. One of them was a tall, lean man in white shirtsleeves, rolled up to his elbows. The other was an equally tall, slim woman with what appeared to be a fresh cut across her forehead that had been patched up with butterfly stitches. She kept her suit jacket on.

  The room Tayte had been brought to was all but empty—just the table with a few chairs around it and a water cooler by the door. Three of the walls were painted white. On the wall with the door, Tayte could see a reflection of the room in what was obviously a two-way mirror, from where his interrogation was being monitored. The woman sat down opposite Tayte and stared at him for a few uncomfortable seconds. Then she made the introductions.

  ‘I’m Detective Brandt. This is Detective Eckstein.’

  Thankfully both detectives spoke excellent English. After Tayte’s arrest, he’d imagined the difficulty he was going to have trying to explain himself to someone who didn’t understand him.

  ‘Who was the man lying on the floor in that office?’ Tayte asked. ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Yes,’ Eckstein said, still standing. ‘He’s very dead, and you’ve been arrested on suspicion of his murder. As for who he was, perhaps you can tell us. We found no ID on him.’

  Tayte shook his head. ‘I have no idea who he was. As I’ve already said, I just went to the address to meet someone. I don’t know who, and I didn’t get a chance to look at him before your officers wrestled me out of there.’

  Brandt slid a photograph across the table. ‘You can look at him now.’

  Tayte studied the image. It had clearly been taken at the scene of the crime after his arrest. It showed the man he’d briefly seen lying on the floor. The back of his head appeared to have been struck with something, Tayte thought, because that’s where the blood on the floor was most concentrated. He realised then that the fatal wound had most likely been inflicted by the telephone handset he’d still been holding when the police came in and handcuffed him—the handset that no doubt had the victim’s blood all over it.

  ‘I’ve never seen this man before,’ Tayte said, supposing he might well have been the Kaufmanns’ insider. He wondered whether the FWK had found out who he was, or perhaps they had known for some time and had now used this opportunity to get rid of him, and at the same time frame Tayte for his murder. He thought that perhaps this man had been lured there, too, but to his death. ‘Look, I already told you,’ Tayte added. ‘I’ve been set up for this.’ He heaved a frustrated sigh. ‘Check my cell phone. You can see the text message that was sent to me. It proves I’m not making this up.’

  Brandt leaned closer. ‘We have checked, Mr Tayte. I’m afraid all it proves is that someone gave you an address to go to. Perhaps they sent you there to get these answers the text promised you, and maybe you didn’t care too much about the methods you used to get them.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ Tayte said. He sat back, shaking his head. Then something occurred to him. ‘How did you know to turn up at that address? And right at that moment?’

  The two detectives exchanged glances.

  ‘We received a telephone call,’ Brandt said. ‘The caller told us he thought he saw someone breaking into the property.’

  ‘I’ll bet that call was anonymous, wasn’t it?’

  ‘People don’t always want to get involved,’ Eckstein said.

  ‘And
was the door broken in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, of course it wasn’t. Because there was no breakin.’

  Brandt slapped her hand down onto the table, regaining command of the conversation. The sound jarred Tayte’s already fragile nerves. ‘So the victim opened the door for you. Whoever made the call was wrong about the door being forced. It’s academic.’

  Tayte didn’t like where this conversation was going. ‘I took a taxi there, for Christ’s sake! You can verify that with the Hilton Munich City hotel. I mean, who does that if they’re heading out to murder someone?’

  ‘Perhaps you didn’t know you were going to murder the man you were going to meet,’ Eckstein said. ‘Not all murders are premeditated.’

  ‘Is that what happened?’ Brandt said. ‘You went there to meet this man and things got out of hand? You grabbed the nearest thing you could lay your hands on and beat him to death with it?’

  ‘No!’ Tayte said. He was so frustrated now that he was almost shouting. ‘I didn’t kill him!’ he reiterated. ‘Look, are you going to charge me? If you’re not, can I go?’

  ‘You’re not being charged at this time,’ Brandt said.

  ‘But the night is young,’ Eckstein said with a thin smile.

  ‘You’re keeping me in overnight?’

  Brandt drew a deep breath and sat back. ‘Mr Tayte. A man was murdered tonight and you were found standing over his body with what appears to have been the murder weapon in your hands. Of course we’re keeping you in.’

  Tayte had to admit that despite everything he’d told them, he appeared to have been caught literally red-handed. ‘Well, can I make a phone call? I’m entitled to do that, right?’

  ‘In good time, Mr Tayte,’ Brandt said. ‘Can you tell us exactly why you’re in Munich? You’re a long way from home.’

  ‘I’m here looking for answers,’ Tayte said. ‘I’m trying to find out who my biological parents are.’