1503954692

by Steve Robinson

  Tayte already knew some of the things Jan was telling him as they made their way through the office area, but there was plenty he didn’t know and he was keen to learn as much as he could. He noticed that many of the desks were vacant, which he supposed was because it was lunchtime.

  ‘It becomes more difficult if you need to go back prior to Germany’s unification in 1871,’ Jan continued, ‘when the country was made up of several independent kingdoms, each with their own way of doing things. I think you’re only interested in the last century, though. Is that right?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ Tayte said, ‘For now at least,’ he added, considering that if Karl was his father, then in time he would be very interested in going back as far as he could. But not today.

  ‘Mind you,’ Jan said. ‘It can get a little tricky again from 1945, when the country was split into East and West Germany. And because of the war parts of what was once Germany now belong to other countries altogether, so records for German ancestors may no longer be in Germany as we know it today at all.’

  Jan showed Tayte into a room that could ordinarily have been a meeting room, but which for today’s purposes appeared more like a personal reading room. There was a single large table in the centre with several chairs arranged around it. There was a keyboard and screen, a couple of notepads and pencils, and what appeared to be a folder of documents.

  ‘Do make yourself comfortable. Would you like some tea or coffee before we get cracking? I don’t drink coffee myself, but I’m sure I can find you some.’

  ‘Coffee would be great,’ Tayte said, thinking that a sandwich would go well with it. With all that had happened that day, he’d had no time or inclination for breakfast and his stomach was beginning to protest.

  Jan paused at the door and turned back to him. ‘Have you eaten? If not, I can ask someone to bring something back from the deli. Someone’s always popping out at this time of day.’

  Tayte smiled. He liked Jan already. He thought back to something Johann Langner had said at the hospital, when describing Ingrid Keller as his lifesaver. ‘Meine Lebensretterin,’ he said with his hand on his stomach and a cheesy smile on his face.

  Jan laughed at him. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Anything’s fine. You can surprise me.’

  When Jan returned with their drinks a few minutes later, Tayte had already opened the file she’d prepared for him. He’d tried to wait, but he had no willpower when it came to seeing records, especially when they were right under his nose, even if he did feel like a child getting caught under the Christmas tree when Jan came back into the room. Not that any of the records meant much to him, other than a few names and places.

  ‘I couldn’t resist taking a look,’ he said as Jan sat beside him.

  ‘That’s quite all right. I’ll take you through what I found and we can go from there. Now, you’re interested in two people, the notorious war criminal, Volker Strobel, and someone called Johann Langner, who I’m told was Strobel’s friend during the Second World War.’

  Tayte sipped his coffee and nodded. ‘I’d like to identify any other family members from either of these men. In particular, any children they might have had.’ He was still firmly of the opinion that one of them might have fathered Karl and could therefore be his paternal grandfather. ‘Let’s start with Strobel.’

  Jan flicked through the copies of the records she’d prepared, and she set a few out. ‘These are all I could find for Volker Strobel,’ she said, sliding one in front of Tayte. It bore the title Geburtsurkunde. ‘I found this in the Geburtsregister—the birth registry. It’s a copy of Volker Strobel’s birth certificate. He was born here in Munich so it was easy enough to locate.’ She pointed at the other names on the certificate. ‘This is his father, Joseph Strobel, and his mother, Mathilde Strobel née Wolf.’

  She slid another record under Tayte’s nose as he began writing the names down on one of the larger notepads Jan had provided. ‘This is from the Heiratsregister—the marriage registry,’ she said. ‘It shows Volker’s marriage to Trudi Scheffler. The only thing that’s a little unusual about it is that it’s more common for marriages in Germany to take place in the bride’s home town, but on this occasion the marriage was registered in Munich.’

  ‘I read about it online,’ Tayte said. ‘They held a formal ceremony at Volker Strobel’s family home. I guess you could say it was somewhat self-centred of him to deny the bride marriage in her own parish, but he appears to have been the type.’

  Jan agreed. ‘I don’t know if any of the other names mentioned are of any interest to you. Trudi’s parents are there, and the witnesses of course.’

  Tayte was interested. He added Trudi’s parents to his list: Claus and Kamilla Scheffler, glad to see that both names were present, which wasn’t typical for marriage certificates in every country or time period, where often only the father’s name was recorded. He also added the witnesses to the marriage, Friedrich Berger and Konstanze Schmidt.

  ‘I’d be interested to know about any siblings,’ Tayte said, figuring that if Volker or Trudi had any brothers or sisters, then their birth records should be easy enough to locate via their parents’ details. ‘I’d also like to know whether Volker and Trudi had any children together. There’s plenty of information online about Volker Strobel, but I couldn’t find any mention of a child.’

  ‘No, I couldn’t either,’ Jan said. ‘I think if there had been a child, it would be public knowledge by now, what with all the attention Volker Strobel has had over the years.’

  ‘Have you looked for siblings?’

  ‘No, I didn’t get that far. Let’s have a look now, shall we?’

  ‘Sure,’ Tayte said, ‘but before we do that, are you able to pull up a birth certificate for Ingrid Strobel? She’s Trudi Strobel’s daughter.’ Tayte didn’t expect Ingrid’s father’s details to be there, but he wanted to be sure. ‘I believe she was born in Munich somewhere between 1955 and 1960.’

  ‘That shouldn’t be difficult,’ Jan said as she began tapping details into the computer.

  The door opened then and lunch arrived.

  ‘I’ll leave you to eat your sandwich while I go and fetch this birth certificate from the archive,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t be long.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Tayte said to both Jan and the young man who brought his sandwich in. He didn’t know how much it cost, so he gave him a ten Euro note and told him to keep the change, which he thought should amply cover the tip.

  Tayte was just finishing his sandwich when Jan returned with the record he’d asked to see. She placed it in front of him as he swallowed his last mouthful and hurriedly wiped his fingers on the hem of his jacket. He could see it was only a copy of the original record, but all the same, he didn’t want to risk getting mayonnaise on it. He didn’t need Jan’s help this time to find what he was looking for. The father’s details were tellingly blank, which confirmed why Trudi Strobel had agreed to see him. To Tayte’s mind, she clearly didn’t want anyone to know that Johann Langner was Ingrid’s father, or most likely it was Langner who didn’t want anyone to know.

  ‘That’s exactly what I was expecting to see,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘No problem at all. That’s what I’m here for. On to the siblings then?’

  They started with Volker Strobel as Strobel’s family were local to this particular civil registration office. Trudi Scheffler’s information, on the other hand, proved to be rather more time consuming as Jan had to call a contact at the Standesamt in Stuttgart, where Trudi’s family were from. Because of this it took a while to reach the conclusion between them that Volker Strobel had been an only child, and so had Trudi Scheffler.

  Tayte had thought it worth looking to see if Volker Strobel in particular had any siblings. He thought that if Volker had fathered a child out of wedlock, there was a chance the child might have been brought up by someone else in the family, although he knew it was more likely that the child’s mother or someone in her family would
have taken care of the baby. He’d come across such things before, and he knew from experience that children displaced in such a manner were never easy to find.

  He began to think about that. It was usually the mother’s family who wound up caring for such children, perhaps to hide an indiscretion, or in this case for any number of reasons. It made him think about Ava Bauer—the girl caught in the middle of the friends’ affections. He knew Ava had married Johann Langner, but even if she’d had a child, that didn’t mean it had to be Langner’s.

  ‘Let’s move on,’ he said to Jan. ‘These other records are presumably about Johann Langner?’

  ‘Yes, they show he was born in Dresden and that he was married to Ava Bauer here in Munich, also during the Second World War, as with Volker Strobel and Trudi Scheffler.’

  She slid the records she’d found on Langner across to Tayte, and looking at their record of marriage his eyes fell on Ava Bauer’s name. He tapped it. ‘I’d like to see what else we can find on Ava Bauer,’ he said, writing down her parents’ names, Gerhard Bauer and Adelina Bauer. He also noted down the witnesses as he had before: Heinz Schröder and Lorenz Richter.

  ‘Do you want to look for siblings again? Aunts and uncles?’

  ‘Let’s look at everything. I’d particularly like to know whether she had any children, and whether there’s any further record of marriage for her.’ He paused as he wondered again whether she’d survived the war, and what had become of her if she had, reminding himself that she was no longer with Johann Langner.

  ‘And do you think that’s going to help you find this war criminal, is that it?’ Jan said. ‘If Ava knew him, she might have had a child with him no one knows about. And if you can find the child, you think that might lead you to Volker Strobel?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Tayte said, thinking that if Volker Strobel was his paternal grandfather then his research might well lead to him.

  Jan pulled her glasses down over her eyes and started working the computer again, checking the indexes, Tayte supposed. He understood so little of what was appearing on the screen and he’d never felt so out of place in a record office before. He would have loved Jan to explain everything to him, but he thought it would take too long and he knew the best time for explanations was when he had the records he hoped she was locating in front of him. He was idly perusing the records Jan had already prepared for him when his phone rang, playing the overture to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which Jean had taken him to see in London’s West End recently. Her name flashed up on the screen.

  ‘Excuse me,’ he said to Jan as he stood up to take the call. He went to the corner of the room and pressed his phone to his ear. ‘Hi, how’re you feeling?’ he asked Jean, speaking softly. ‘I hope the tests went okay.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Jean said. ‘I’ve been given the all clear so I don’t have to stay here overnight after all, but I do need to pop back in the morning for another check over before we fly home. Actually, I’m a bit bored.’ Tayte heard her laugh. ‘Can you come and get me out of here?’

  ‘Sure,’ Tayte said, thinking about the research and knowing it would have to wait. ‘I’ll get a cab right over. Maybe we can go and get a bite to eat and I’ll tell you all about my day.’

  ‘Perfect. I’ll see you soon.’

  As the call ended, Tayte checked his watch, remembering that he had an appointment with Trudi Scheffler in what was now less than two hours. He hoped Jean wasn’t going to mind it being a quick something to eat because he didn’t want to jeopardise his interview with Trudi now that he had one. He went back to Jan.

  ‘I’m really sorry about this,’ he said. ‘Something’s come up and I have to go. Can I leave this with you and come back in the morning? It could be too late to carry on today, unless you can keep the offices open and don’t mind working late.’

  ‘Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind working late at all, but I’ve got band practice after work today. I play bassoon in a wind band, you see. I’ll keep at it for as long as I can, though.’

  Tayte smiled. ‘Tomorrow morning then,’ he said, collecting his briefcase, his flowers, and the notes he’d made. He shook Jan’s hand. ‘Thanks for all your help today. I’ll try to be here first thing.’

  Tayte left the offices of the Munich Standesamt hoping that Jean would understand that he had to come back to the record office and finish what he’d started. Although she’d already told him she needed to pay another visit to the hospital in the morning, so he figured he’d have some time on his hands again. As he arrived back in the reception area, heading for the desk to ask if someone could call him a taxi, he began to wonder what information on Ava Bauer Jan might find, and whether or not it would prove useful to his search.

  Since learning that Ava Bauer and Johann Langner had married, it had puzzled Tayte that Langner had never mentioned it while he and Jean were talking with him at the hospital. Or perhaps he would have got around to it if they had been with him long enough to hear the full story he had begun to tell them. He wondered how Langner’s story would have played out, and whether he would have talked about Ava and what became of her. Tayte could only guess for now. Whatever the answer, he thought the last years of the war must have been very difficult for Johann, both on and off the battlefield.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Near Vienna, Austria. 17 April 1945.

  As night fell, exhausted and in need of sleep, elements of the fragmented Leibstandarte set up defensive positions along the Vienna-Linz road. Johann Langner knew none of the soldiers he now found himself keeping company with, all acquaintances formed through war having also been destroyed by it. As the senior ranking officer amidst the small unit he now found himself a part of, he was in command of a handful of machine-gun squads and twenty or so riflemen, in part made up of boys whose uniforms barely fitted them, and whose heads had not yet grown sufficiently to fit the helmets they wore. How these young and inexperienced soldiers had made it out of Vienna at all, Johann could not imagine.

  The advance of Germany’s Seventh Army in Normandy during Operation Lüttich the previous year had quickly been brought to a juddering halt. Bombed into retreat by superior Allied air power, Johann and what was left of the Leibstandarte soon found themselves outflanked and encircled near Falaise, but managed to break through in a hard-fought retreat that forced them to leave their armament and artillery pieces behind. With the loss of around 5000 men of the elite Leibstandarte, Johann knew he was lucky to have made it out of France alive.

  By the end of 1944, in what the Allies would call ‘The Battle of the Bulge’, the Leibstandarte were back on the Western Front in the forested Ardennes mountains, spearheading Operation Wacht am Rhein under the command of Wilhelm Mohnke. But, low on fuel and with their ranks bolstered by many inexperienced replacements, by the end of January 1945 the Leibstandarte was once again forced into retreat, and Johann soon found himself in Hungary, returned to the Eastern Front as part of Operation Spring Awakening—Frühlingserwachen.

  Germany saw early gains as they tried to secure some of the last oil reserves still open to them, but the offensive proved too ambitious, and so the Leibstandarte, with the 6th SS Panzer Army under Josef ‘Sepp’ Dietrich, withdrew to Vienna to hold defensive positions against the fast approaching Soviet Army. By the beginning of April the Soviets had arrived. After a week of intense street fighting they had breached the city centre, and Johann and his Kameraden had fought to hold Vienna against overwhelming odds. The city he had once visited as a wounded soldier, and the Prater parkland area through which he had walked with Ava, had become a battleground. Even the Ferris wheel beneath which he had proposed to her was now, like much of this once beautiful city, all but destroyed.

  By the middle of the month Vienna had fallen and the battle-weary remnants of the Leibstandarte were in retreat again, hotly pursued by the Soviet 46th Army, stopping now and then in an attempt to slow the inevitable red tide that threatened to wash over them if they remained in one place too long.

  Havin
g been spared further Soviet attacks for some hours, once Johann had established his unit’s defensive positions, he began his inspection.

  ‘Obersturmführer?’ one of the young Schütze said.

  Johann didn’t know the boy’s name, but he thought him no more than fifteen years old. ‘Yes, what is it?’

  ‘We don’t have much ammunition, Obersturmführer.’

  ‘Then use what you have sparingly. If ‘Ivan’ comes for us, make every bullet count.’

  ‘Jawohl, Obersturmführer.’

  Those who could sleep would do so in shifts among the cover of the shrubs and trees by the roadside, while the rest of the troop kept watch. As an extra precaution, Johann had sent a small three-man reconnaissance squad half a mile back towards Vienna as an early warning measure. He would send three others to replace them at midnight. Johann shared the command watch with a Rottenführer called Protz. The squad leader had clearly seen little combat, but he had been all Johann could muster for his small troop in the chaos of their bloody retreat. The man instilled so little confidence in Johann that he sat awake through the first two hours of Protz’s watch, lying on a bank beside the shrubbery, listening to every sound the night had to offer while he counted the stars in the night sky to ward off his fatigue.

  With an hour of Protz’s watch remaining, Johann finally began to drift, and thoughts of Ava came to him, as they often did. He had still received no word from her—no clue as to her whereabouts, or even whether she was alive or dead. He had sent a letter to Volker the previous year, as the young Untersturmführer he had briefly shared a billet with in Normandy had suggested. Volker had later replied to say that he had visited Ava’s uncle in Gilching, but that her uncle had seen nothing of the Bauer family in recent months. Ava and her parents had not then gone to stay with her uncle to escape the Munich bombings.