Schreiber's Secret (18 page)

Edwards whistled, conjuring up a vision of one of Britain’s foremost Queen’s Counsels. “I’ve seen him in action a few times. He defended Tibbs, the alleged Warwickshire serial killer, didn’t he?”

“Alleged is right, my friend. Got the bastard off.”

“But, if I remember right, there was a shadow of a doubt, Bob.”

“Doubt, my arse. Tibbs was as guilty as hell. Did a Hannibal Lecter and pissed off abroad. He’s probably knocked off more than a few natives by now. Only difference between him and Lecter is that he didn’t eat ’em.”

“What about the Hyams murder?” asked Edwards, aware that this was of paramount interest to Danielle. “Are you going to charge Sonntag with that?”

“We don’t really need to, mate. It was in the early hours of the morning. Although Sonntag has no alibi apart from being tucked up in bed, we don’t have any witnesses. But the modus operandi was the same as the Plant murder and that should be enough for the Crown Prosecution Service to get him on both counts.”

“You have no doubts as to Sonntag’s guilt, Bob?”

The steel shavings that were Webb’s eyes narrowed to slits as he spoke through gritted teeth. “No doubts at all, mate. Open and shut. Open and shut.”

CHAPTER 8

Edwards drew up behind Danielle’s red Vauxhall outside her Docklands flat. It was already eight o’clock on a dark and wet night, and he had just spent an exhaustive two-hour session with Webb going over old ground and being briefed on how to help trap the caller. He had decided not to ring her from the cop-shop. They both needed to talk face to face. So much had happened that he was at a loss as to how to begin. He took a deep breath and pressed the buzzer, his stomach tightening with apprehension.

“Hello,” came the familiar voice through the intercom.

“Hello, Dani. It’s me.”

There was a short pause before the door lock clicked open, as if she were weighing up the pros and cons of granting him entrance. By the time he reached her front door it was ajar. He did not know why he knocked. Considering they were lovers it seemed faintly ridiculous.

“Come in, Mark,” came a voice that was on the warmer side of formal.

She was seated on the red leather settee, wearing black slacks and a pink Roll-neck sweater. Her satin hair was still dank from showering. Somehow it made her look even more stunning. Prolonged abstinence prompted an urge in him to sweep her into his arms, but her half-smile signalled caution rather than invitation.

Edwards sank into the armchair opposite. “I’m sorry for what I said on the phone. It was a stupid thing to say.”

Danielle gave a cursory nod. Her emerald eyes seemed to bore through him, destroying his concentration. He had rehearsed over and over what he must divulge and yet his mind was now confused.

“I,
er ...” He scratched his head and took a deep breath. “I have to tell you something.”

Danielle, sensing the tension in his voice, frowned slightly. “I’m listening,” she said simply.

Edwards took another deep breath. “The man the police have arrested is going to be charged with the murder of Howard Plant very soon. They say it’s an open and shut case. They say he probably killed your uncle as well, but the evidence around the second murder makes it cast iron that he killed Plant.”

Danielle wiped away a water droplet that had trickled from her hair into her right eye. “Who is he?” she enquired quietly.

“I don’t know how to say this, Dani,” he said, scratching his head defensively once again. “I, er ...”

“Who is he, Mark?” Danielle asked again, her voice now laced with apprehension.

Edwards pursed his lips. “It’s unbelievable,” he shrugged, “but I’m afraid it’s Henry Sonntag.”

For a few moments Danielle stared at him in silence, her brow furrowed.

Then, quietly, she said, “I can’t believe it.”

“I couldn’t either. I told Webb that Jews didn’t do this type of thing.”

“What kind of things do Jews do?” she enquired with wide eyes, her composure regained.

Edwards could sense that she was on the defensive. He also knew that the only fact at her disposal was bald: Henry Sonntag had been charged with the murder of Howard Plant. He pushed to the back of his mind the caller’s words about Jews being forced to kill fellow Jews. The time was inappropriate, and maybe the man was lying anyway. “What they don’t do is murder anyone, let alone one of their own,” he said, fingering the cleft in his chin nervously.

“Precisely. And that is why Henry Sonntag is innocent.”

Edwards sighed deeply. He hated to disavow her, to irritate the hypersensitivity that seemed to be part and parcel of the Jewish character whenever it felt threatened by outsiders. He knew he was still an outsider and that therefore it was incumbent upon him to choose his words carefully. She had already told him that
Jewish jokes could only be told by Jews; that however innocently a gentile told one, he stood the risk of being regarded as anti-Semitic. She had said that thousands of years of persecution had given her people a thin skin; that it was words, rather than knives, which hurt them most.

“Dani,” he said quietly, “there is something I have to tell you. Something that because of the law o
f
sub judic
e
will now only come out in the trial.” The reporter swallowed hard before relating to her all that Webb had told him. Danielle Green did not bat an eyelid as her lover described the deeds of a man who was beyond evil. A man who inhabited the nether world of the damned. A man who at such an advanced age still enjoyed bloodlust. She listened carefully to each and every word, weighing up the incredible implications of a story that defied belief. And this was precisely the conclusion to which she came.

“I still don’t believe it,” she said flatly.

“But, Dani,” he said incredulously, “Webb’s as straight as a die. He’d never concoct evidence.”

“I’m not calling Webb a liar, Mark. What I’m saying is that Henry Sonntag is a Jew. Therefore, per se, Henry Sonntag cannot be a Nazi. He cannot be Schreiber. And if he is not Schreiber, then he did not kill Howard Plant, or my uncle for that matter. Are they going to charge him with that, too?”

“Probably.”

“Henry Sonntag is innocent.”

“But how can you be so sure?” stammered Edwards, scratching his temple. The evidence in the Plant murder was so incriminating that her obduracy puzzled him.

“Wait here a moment,” she said, rising and making towards the dining table. On it was a black leather briefcase. She opened it and withdrew a sheaf of papers. “Read this. It’s my article which will now probably never see the light of day.”

Edwards took the papers from her outstretched hand. He spent the next ten minutes in rapt silence. The article was beautifully written and told an enthralling story. “It’s an amazing tale,” he said at last. “But maybe that’s all it is. He could be making it all up, you know.”

Danielle frowned, although deep down she knew he had every right to play the devil’s advocate. “Remember I once told you that only a Jew could truly recognize another Jew?”

“Yes.”

“Remember I told you about that Israeli friend of mine who said he could stroll down Oxford Street and identify Israeli tourists just by their gait?”

“Yes, but ...”

“That is why I know Henry Sonntag is innocent. He’s a Jew, Mark. Jews are sharp in business. They can conspire and intrigue with the best of them. But Jews are not murderers.”

“But what about all that Nazi stuff found in his home?”

“You know, I once wrote a feature about a survivor of the Holocaust. Bernstein was his name. His whole raison d’être was collecting memorabilia of his persecutors. He even slept with a bottle of Zyklon B in his bed.”

“He was mad.”

“Possibly. But he wasn’t a killer.”

Edwards was mesmerized by the defiance in her eyes and the beauty spot that bobbed as her lips pursed and pouted. God, he was crazy about her.

“Dani,” he said, running his fingers nervously through his thick, wavy hair, “you know I don’t really understand about these things. Webb believes Sonntag is pretending to be a Jew. Maybe these traits can be learned. Can one learn to be a Jew?”

Danielle hesitated. He had expressed his love for her and she, too, felt a yearning to reciprocate, to lose herself in these new emotions. He had been so gentle, leading her tenderly through the maze of sexual awareness until both had felt the time was right to consummate their relationship. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt him. But there were some truths that had to be told.

“Sure,” she said at last, “there are gentiles who convert to Judaism. If they do it the orthodox way, then they often end up having a far greater knowledge of the religion than someone born a Jew.” She hesitated again. She always felt strange discussing her faith with outsiders. Maybe it was a ghetto thing. “But,” she
sighed, “however he or she acts the Jew, another Jew will be able to tell. You see, we have an umbilical cord linking us through thousands of years of history. You know, in Israel, there are more than a million Jews from Arab lands. They are dark, Mediterranean types. Yet that Israeli friend I was talking about said he could tell Jew and Arab apart just from their features and their mannerisms. But to outsiders they would all look like one people.”

“Could you tell the difference?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t visited Israel yet. But I can tell whether a person is an Ashkenazi Jew or not.”

Edwards was puzzled. In the few months they had known one another they had not delved deeply into the mysteries of her faith. Th
e
shiv
a
had been his first brush with orthodox tradition and a culture about which he was almost totally ignorant.

“An Ashkenazi”, she smiled, “is a Jew of European stock. Other Jews are called Sephardim. It literally means ‘Spanish’ but nowadays also encompasses all Jews from Arab lands. I’m mainly Ashkenazi with a little Sephardi thrown in for good measure. Maybe one of my ancestors fled eastwards from the Inquisition.”

Edwards scratched his head. “I’m afraid I don’t have that much pride in my ancestry,” he said. “I know my great-grandfather was Welsh, but I regard myself as English, a Londoner through and through. I only remember going to church once, so I suppose I’m as ignorant about religion as anyone can get.”

“It doesn’t matter, Mark. You were brought up in a nominally Christian society. You are Christian by osmosis. Because we’re born and raised here, we Jews probably know more about Christianity than Christians know about Judaism.”

“What about you, would you call yourself orthodox?”

She ran her fingers through her wet hair and smiled. “No, I’m probably what you would call secular,
but ...” She hesitated.

“Yes?”

“I feel just as proud of my heritage and as much a Jew as any of those in Stamford Hill.”

“Stamford Hill?”

Danielle laughed out loud, two rows of perfect white teeth breaking free of their luscious frame. “You know, the Hassidim. The guys with the funny hats and the side-curls. In their minds they inhabit nineteenth-century Poland and consider themselves the real Jews. It is preposterous. They are faintly amusing.” Her eyes suddenly narrowed. “Frankly, I just don’t relate to them.”

Edwards was surprised by her attitude. “I don’t understand. They’re fellow Jews, aren’t they?”

“They are and yet they’re not. Their lifestyle is so dictated by religious dogma that we are worlds apart. I know they don’t even consider me a true Jew, and I resent that.”

Edwards, trying hard to keep pace with what was turning into a complex cultural lesson, stroked his chin. “I suppose that doesn’t make them much different from the ayatollahs and other crazy fundamentalists, does it?” he said.

“Maybe,” she smiled, “but there’s one thing our ultraorthodox Mob definitely don’t do. They don’t proselytize. They don’t go out trying to convert the world. In fact, the opposite. You know something, Mark ...”

His raised eyebrows urged her to continue.

“... if I was a Martian who arrived suddenly on Earth and was given the choice of adopting one of the three great monotheistic religions, I’d choose Judaism. And do you know why? Because it’s the only one that would allow me to choose.”

“I think I see what you mean,” he said pensively. “Perhaps that’s why Jews have died by the sword rather than lived by it.”

For a few moments there was complete silence, and Edwards thought he might have said something wrong.