‘The wood carver was Wilhelm Frank... him and his daughter. One day, he goes.’
‘He goes? You mean he left Oberammergau?’
‘Goes, disappears. His daughter is upset, wanting us to search for him.’
‘And did you?’
‘Of course. We look in the mountains and the rivers... in all places but nothing. His daughter gets a husband and closes the shop and she goes away also.’
‘Is that the end of it, then?’
‘No. Many years pass and some children, some bad children, got into our tunnels.’
‘What tunnels are those?’
‘In the war, we have much secret work in Oberammergau to make a jet plane in a factory under the mountains here, in tunnels so your English bombers cannot see it.’
‘So did the children find something in the tunnels?’
‘You are a lawyer, you say?’
‘I do para legal work in London, yes.’
Wetzel went to a cupboard and brought out a file of papers with two black and white photographs attached. These he unclipped and pushed across the table to McCall.
‘Wilhelm Frank... the wood carver.’
All McCall could see were the bleached white bones of a crucified skeleton assembled unnaturally on the stone floor – both arms outstretched, right foot over the left and the jaw of the skull open in a scream which could never end.
And in the claw of his right hand was a copy of one of the same photographs Bea dropped on the orchard lawn when she collapsed. It showed nine uniformed soldiers, newly arrived in a town square, boots polished, handguns in holsters, standing by their rifles and stout leather suitcases. All keen to get on with their work.
But there was a difference. A cross had been pencilled on the face of one of the soldiers... Wilhelm Frank. The man who had once carved the face of Christ with such delicate perfection would have known the agony of his saviour as he died alone in the dark.
McCall broke the silence.
‘So you had a gruesome murder to investigate, Herr Wetzel?’
‘Not a murder, no – an accident.’
‘An accident? How could this man’s death have been an accident?’
‘A fall of rocks, probably. That is what we felt.’
‘But the way the skeleton was left... crucified like that. How could that be from a fall of rocks?’
‘Those children could have done it... or others before. A joke in poor taste.’
‘But the photograph in his hand – how do you explain that?’
‘Anyone could have put that there.’
Wetzel stared through the foul smoke of his pipe with peasant defiance.
‘Herr Wetzel, you couldn’t possibly believe this was an accident, could you?’
‘Officially, that is what was decided.’
‘But unofficially, it must have been murder... surely?’
‘That is your opinion – ’
‘– but based upon these pictures.’
‘The police in any country need evidence, proof. We find no proof of murder.’
‘But did Wilhelm Frank have enemies, someone who hated him enough to do this?’
‘Who is to say? We found no obvious cause of death so we found no murderer.’
The camera flash in the confined tunnel caused the skeleton to appear luminously pale against the black rock. The image seemed almost painted, like a crude medieval depiction of man’s descent into hell.
‘Was this man an old Nazi, Herr Wetzel? Is that why you didn’t start a proper murder investigation?’
Wetzel removed the pipe from between his yellow teeth and knocked its bowl of burnt ash into the hearth.
‘There were meetings here afterwards, many meetings. Important people came.’
‘You said this was only an accident. Why would important people come for that ?’
‘Oberammergau is a holy place, religious people visit us from all places in the world and we want it to stay like this.’
‘You mean you didn’t want any fuss?’
‘Only good Germans are here, only good things.’
‘So you covered up this man’s murder?’
Wetzel rose out of his chair and opened the door to signal his hospitality had run out.
‘I do not know who you are or why you are really here but you should know the past is best buried... like Wilhelm Frank himself.’
Chapter Thirty
Evie’s bloodless response to the mysterious – and possibly tortured – death of Wilhelm Frank annoyed McCall.
‘In my trade, we call this red meat.’
‘It’s gone off, McCall. It’ll poison you – and worry the life out of Bea, too.’
He had arrived back from Germany that morning. Bea was doing the Telegraph crossword in her chair by the drawing room fire. They exchanged smiles and touched cheeks, nothing more. Evie was around so he had no chance of asking questions Bea would not want to answer, even if she still had the full power of speech. What he observed, though, was an almost mutually protective closeness developing between the two women. Everyone fell in love with Bea, eventually.
‘Don’t you see, Francis did know the significance of what he was leaving me.’
‘How’s a bit of film of a man who died in a car crash significant?’
‘So you don’t think there’s anything strange about Wilhelm Frank’s death, either?’
‘You’ve no proof he was murdered.’
‘He just broke his own arms and legs did he? Lay down to die like he’d been crucified and lo and behold, he’d once been secretly filmed by Francis, too.’
‘That’s just how the skeleton was found.’
‘And I suppose it’s just another coincidence that there was a copy of Bea’s photograph wedged in its mitt – ’
‘Pictures like that were ten a penny after the war.’
‘– and that Minsky happens to appear in the footage of both these dead men?’
‘That’s your belief, McCall. Those blurry images aren’t evidence he was there.’
He shook his head in disbelief. Evie tried softening her tone.
‘Look, even if this conspiracy happened the way you say, it was years and years ago and all those who might’ve been involved are either dead or not the type to talk anyway. What’s the point?’
‘You might as well ask what’s the point of journalism.’
‘I’m not convinced it is just journalism, Mac. I think you’re off on some very personal displacement activity.’
‘Spare me the analyst’s couch, for Christ’s sake.’
‘Look, Francis has just died. You’ve been ill, you’re upset and confused – about Francis, Bea, your birth parents and whatever the future holds. Your life’s turned upside down, Mac. You’re desperately trying to make sense of it all but the last thing you need right now is a mission impossible like this.’
McCall was out of patience. Evie was full of psycho-crap because she could not get her civil servant’s head around what he was uncovering. He left her in the kitchen and took refuge in the dacha on his own.
*
Gerry Gavronski’s background research on Arie Minsky arrived. The Nazis murdered every member of his family. He had fought behind enemy lines with British commandos in the Special Operations Executive and was at the liberation of Belsen. Details of his rumoured covert role in the Jewish underground were harder to find. But he was known as an objective, independently minded reporter for various news organisations like the BBC.
Gavronski attached a cutting from the Baltimore Sun which ran one of Minsky’s pieces when the Soviets invaded Hungary in 1956.
So this is “Socialism”, is it? I have seen for myself what Moscow’s forces have done in the name of this great cause, not against fascists or counter-revolutionaries but against the weak, the poor and the defenceless who dared to question the puppet politicians in Budapest. And now they lie, dusted with lime in the streets where they fell to the invaders.
The gallows and torture ch
ambers of the Hungarian secret police, once the stock in trade of the hated Nazis, are busy again under the protection of “friendly” Socialist tanks. No doubt revenge will be taken for those of their communist comrades whose bodies I saw hanging from street lamps. Lynchings are ugly in any language but understand why some occur before rushing to condemn.
Then Gavronski related an interesting rumour he had picked.
It’s hinted that Minsky was a bit part player in the Mossad team which ambushed Adolf Eichmann in Argentina and brought him to Jerusalem for the big Holocaust trial in 1961. What’s for sure is that he’s divorced, no children, not involved in journalism anymore. Sits on the board of a publishing house in Akko where he lives. Hope this helps.
It did, rather. Arie Minsky grew more fascinating by the day. Two Nazi nobodies had come to violent and officially unexplained ends. If Francis’s last reel could be linked to a third death – and if Minsky made another guest appearance in it – McCall was in business.
But until then, it was proving to be a tantalising Russian doll of a story, each clue having yet another hidden inside itself till he might go mad at not knowing.
Why had such insignificant Nazis been selected and not their more obviously culpable leaders? Why had a BBC stringer risked his life and freedom to target them? And why had a British diplomat like Francis, and his wife, become his accomplices?
*
McCall knew he should be grateful to Evie for spending time with Bea, especially till the builders finished. But his mind was elsewhere, not least on all the administrative papers Edgar Fewtrell needed signing for the property and wealth Francis had willed him. Fewtrell asked if his trip to Germany had been fruitful.
‘How do you know I’ve been to Germany?’
‘I’m not sure. Beatrice probably told me.’
‘But she wasn’t supposed to know.’
‘Well, maybe it was your delightful Evie.’
McCall let this pass. He drove back to Garth to re-examine the third reel in the seclusion of the dacha. Francis must have been about nine or ten floors up to get the aerial pan across a grid of streets in what looked like a Mid West prairie city.
It showed a commercial district of early brick-built skyscrapers with heavy traffic driving on the right hand side. He’d had enlargements made of every frame which might possibly identify the location. An entire wall of one building was an advert for the Garry Finance Corporation. But it revealed neither telephone number nor address. US directory enquiries had no listing and three hotel signs and street names were all too blurred to read.
The only positive result came from a blow-up of the Odeon Cinema’s frontage. It had been showing The Bridal Path which his film guide said was a British-made comedy released in 1959. At least that gave McCall a base-line date. He retrieved Bea and Francis’s old passports from the box file Fewtrell had given him. They had criss-crossed Europe in the 1950s yet neither was in the United States during that decade.
But on May 27 1960, Francis entered Canada. Eight weeks later, so had Bea. McCall had been looking in the wrong country.
From his shoebox where memories were kept, McCall retrieved all the birthday cards and letters they had ever sent him. In September that year, Francis wrote him a short letter with a postcard of a Cree Indian, daubed in war paint.
Dear Mac
Won’t be long now. We’ll be home for Christmas, loaded with presents and shan’t we have a lovely time? Canada’s such a big place, mostly wilderness. I’m still desk-bound, so haven’t seen any cowboys or Indians worth speaking of. How are you getting on with your lessons at Mr Whackmore’s Academy? Can’t wait for term to be over, I’m sure. Still, keep at it, little friend. Bea sends all love.
As always,
Francis.
It was written on notepaper from Canada’s Air Command Headquarters in Winnipeg, Manitoba. McCall rang the international operator and called Winnipeg’s main library that evening. He asked if a company called the Garry Finance Corporation ever operated there. It had – in the downtown Lindsay Building at the junction of Ellice and Notre Dame avenues. Then he called the Winnipeg Free Press cuttings library to check which reporter worked the crime desk in 1960.
‘That’ll be our Mr Ted Cleeve. He was the crime desk.’
‘Does he still work on the paper?’
‘No, he retired a while back but he’s still knocking about the city.’
Within an hour, he had spoken to Ted Cleeve at home. He promised to dig out his old shorthand notebooks and ring back collect. Cleeve was as good as his word. Not only that, he remembered something which had not made sense all those years before. McCall knew then he would be going to Canada – however much Evie objected.
*
McCall walked into the drawing room and for a painful instant, thought he was seeing Helen again... that tossed-back laugh of hers, the marmalade hair and Bea all smiles, eyes full of the grandchildren she craved. Evie brought it all back, made it real, made it seem possible once more – to Bea, at least. McCall felt a splinter of resentment that they appeared such friends.
They looked up at him and went quiet, as if he had interrupted something private from which he was excluded.
‘Hello, Bea. You’re seeming much better.’
Bea could not help her smile being twisted but McCall saw the suspicion in her face. She began writing on her pad.
Where been?
‘I’ve been away on a story for a few days.’
Where?
‘London... Germany.’
Why there?
‘I have to see people, got to go where they live. It’s what I do, remember?’
Bea’s frustration at being unable to write words as fast as they came into her head was obvious. She retired early to bed. Over supper later, McCall told Evie he had now established Francis’s third reel was filmed in Canada. She was not impressed.
‘So was there a mysterious death there, too?’
‘You’ll find out if you come with me.’
‘You’re not seriously going, are you?’
‘Why not? I’ve found this old reporter who knows part of the story.’
‘And what about all the stress and grief this could cause Bea?’
‘If she’s not told, she won’t know.’
‘Come off it, Mac. She knows you’re digging away on Minsky.’
‘What’s she said about him?’
‘Nothing – but she’s not stupid. She knows you’re up to something – ’
‘– because there’s a great TV show in all this stuff from Francis.’
‘And that’s more important, is it – another Golden Turd of Cracow for McCall’s mantelpiece and to hell with the consequences for anyone else?’
Evie began to clear the table noisily.
‘Well, I’m going nowhere with you. In fact, Bea’s asked me to go on a cruise around the Med and I’ve said I will.’
‘A cruise... you and Bea? What’s that all about?’
‘You just don’t get it, do you? You just don’t see you’re setting about destroying something neither of us ever had.’
*
McCall did not need a shrink to tell him he was always haunted by a fear of rejection or that all his relationships ultimately foundered on questions of trust and betrayal. Evie was supposed to be his ally in the search for his real parents and why he had been lied to about how they were killed. Yet she, too, had switched allegiances and gone over to the other side. It was not by chance his stepmother always got her own way. Bea could get the devil pissed on holy water.
The evening was still light so McCall went back to the dacha where the newly leafing trees were shifting in the spring wind. He pinned up the photographs of Bea and Minsky, the concentration camp victims and the nine Nazi soldiers with guns. He checked again with a magnifying glass and Rösler definitely was not one of them... unless it was him who had taken the picture.
But Wilhelm Frank, the wood carver, stood second from the right – solidly buil
t, broad at the shoulder. It would not have been easy to persuade such an individual to do anything against his will, let alone walk to an agonising death in a maze of disused tunnels under a black mountain.
How the hell was it done? And why kill him and apparently let his comrades live?
McCall decided to stay in the dacha. He would not sleep but maybe Francis’s spirit might take pity and guide him through the night.
Chapter Thirty One
No one escapes their history. We are all pinned like butterflies to a board by what has gone before.
*
The cruise liner Aletha Delyse slipped its berth and cut into the Adriatic and Venice quickly sank in its wake. Ahead lay Mikonos, Athens and Palma. Evie sat on the upper passenger deck with Bea – movie star glamorous in one of the ship’s wheelchairs. She wore dark glasses, floral headscarf and a pale yellow orchid cotton trouser suit with Persian slippers stitched in golden thread. Evie, in jeans, smocked peasant top and wide-brimmed straw hat to keep the sun off her freckled face, was happy to be in Bea’s shadow.
A warm breeze blew from the Dalmatian coast. Bea seemed to have blood in her veins once more, believing she might now cheat death and be born again at the end of this ocean.
As with her and Arie, so Evie carried burdens it was time to set down – if only to someone without the full power of speech. So Evie admitted how torn apart she still felt at her mother’s disappearance and for unwittingly hurting the hapless Phillip by agreeing to marry him.
Bea responded with her eyes alone, wrote nothing on her pad and only smiled when at last the long confession was over. Of Bea’s stepson and Evie’s possible role in his life, no mention was made.
*
McCall’s plane made landfall over the polar desolation of Labrador. He could see countless little lakes sequinned on a vast shield of iron bedrock below. It looked a place of perpetual wind, inhabited by creatures howling from the wastes of tundra and ice which they say was God’s gift to Cain. For McCall, four miles high and jammed into a metal tube with two hundred strangers, the future had never felt so uncharted. He still was not well enough to return to work yet had assigned himself a story... a story of which he and his were somehow a part. The usual safety barrier between the professional and personal wasn’t there. Nor was Evie around to keep him grounded in reality. Yet Francis had willed it all.
A Place Of Strangers Page 20
