Schreiber's Secret (39 page)

Webb shrugged. “Oh well, who needs to go through all the red tape. Peter Baker at the Met’s lab in Lambeth is an old mate of mine. Leave it to Uncle Bob.”

Sam Cohen welcomed Edwards and Danielle into his palatial home in the heart of Chigwell. Sam, a middle aged Essex Boy, was proud of the fact that he had made it from a tenement in Hackney to live among the new money. True, some of his neighbours were a little suspect. They included more than a few shady businessmen and the odd East End wide boy who was clever enough not to need to escape to Spain’s Costa del Crime.

“My daughter, Stephanie.” He pointed proudly at a photograph of an attractive young woman wearing the black robes and mortarboard of a new graduate. “Got a first in law. She’s a barrister now.”

“Obviously Daddy’s favourite,” said Danielle.

“A rea
l
bubbele
h
,” beamed Cohen.

The businessman then introduced them to his wife, a smart-eyed blonde who scurried to and fro keeping them well stocked with coffee and cheesecake.

The three then discussed the machinations of the incident that had captured the imagination of the world, especially the Jewish world.

“Extraordinary business.” Cohen scratched his balding head. “That Müller chap was a complet
e
meshiggena
h
. I read your piece in th
e
Standar
d
today. I couldn’t believe he’d taken you in like that.”

“That’s usually the way with psychopaths, Sam. The clever ones are so hard to spot.”

“And you almost copped it too, Mark, like poor old Bill Brown. I feel a bit responsible.”

“Don’t worry, Sam,” said Edwards. “As far as Bill’s concerned, it went with the territory. And I’m a crime reporter, remember.”

The older man’s smile of relief quickly turned to a frown of concern. “Look, maybe I shouldn’t ask you for help again, but I wonder if any of your police friends can help speed up the release of the bodies? I mean, by Jewish law, they should have beenburied already. Th
e
hevreh kedisha
h
are going mad.”

“Burial authorities,” translated Danielle.

The little man carried on. “They don’t care which one may or may not be Schreiber. They say that in order to safeguard the integrity of whoever was the real Jew, both must be buried with all haste.”

“Hang on a little longer, Sam,” said Edwards. “I think the police’ll be finished with their autopsies soon.”

At that precise moment, in a building on the south bank of the River Thames, two forensic scientists from the Metropolitan Police Service were about to draw the final conclusions from their DNA testing on the blood of Henry Sonntag, Herschel Soferman and Dieter Müller.

Peter Baker, the deputy director of the laboratory, had spent the last week extracting and then analysing the genetic profiles of all three men. Firstly he had extracted the double-stranded DNA from the nuclei of the different blood cells and then, with the help of an enzyme, had chopped them into pieces of varying lengths. The DNA mixture was then placed at one end of a slab of jelly-like material with a positive electrode at the other. Baker had watched with his usual fascination as the negatively charged DNA was pulled towards the electrode, with the smaller pieces moving faster than the larger ones.

The beetle-browed scientist had then used chemicals to divide the famous double helix into single strands before mixing in a radioactive probe of small, identical pieces of synthetic DNA. The probe matched up with the opposite sequences on certain of the human DNA pieces and binded to them. Thanks to the latest development in the field, the whole process now took only a week.

He scrutinized the photographic film
, which recorded the position of the pieces to which the radioactive probes had attached. The pattern of bands was unique to each individual.

“Hey, Robin,” he called to his colleague, “we’ve got a match.”

The man named Robin then did a second test. “Here, look. There’s another one here.”

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed Baker. “That’s confirmed it, then.”

The forensic scientist grabbed his phone. His fingers trembled as he dialled Bob Webb’s number.

“Hello, Bob. Listen, mate, are you sitting comfortably?”

“Don’t fuck me about, Peter,” growled Webb. “Get on with it.”

“Our results show that Müller was in no way related to either of the other two.”

“You’re joking.”

“There’s something else, Bob. I couldn’t believe it myself when I saw it.”

“Well, go on then, you bugger,” snapped Webb.

“There can be no doubt about it, Bob. Henry Sonntag and Herschel Soferman were brothers.”

CHAPTER 19

Mark Edwards was already familiar with the territory. He plied the hired car, another of his favourite black BMWs, through the quiet streets of Straelen, turning finally into Annastrasse.

There was only one course of action that he could take after Webb had given him the results of the DNA test. The only possible explanation for the fact that Dieter Müller was not the son of either Sonntag or Soferman was that his mother had been made pregnant by someone else but believed the baby was Schreiber’s. “She probably got pissed one night and never even realized it,” was the policeman’s opinion.

This explanation may have cleared up one question. But the undeniable truth that the adversaries in court were indeed brothers had posed many more. Only one man might reasonably be expected to supply some, if not all, of the answers.

“Now are you sure you want to come in, Dani?” the reporter asked, pulling up outside the home of Dr Wolfgang Schreiber. “I may have to use a little rough stuff with his nurse.”

Danielle Green nodded. She was fully prepared for any eventuality. She had decided to forgo the funerals of Henry Sonntag and Herschel Soferman in order to be with her future husband. The old docto
r
mus
t
talk.

Edwards rang the doorbell with steely determination. This time Schreiber’s nurse opened the door wide. Her face bore a scowl, but before Edwards could say anything she bade them enter and led them into the room with the french doors. The old man was once again peering at his garden with unseeing eyes.

“Your guest has arrived, Herr Doktor,” the Amazon said with undisguised displeasure.

“Come in, Herr Edwards,” said the old man, gesturing in welcome. “I have been expecting you. Please be seated.” Wolfgang Schreiber then made staccato sniffing noises. “I smell a woman’s perfume.”

Edwards, astounded by the reception, could only stammer his reply.

“Y-Yes, my colleague, Fräulein Danielle Green, is accompanying me.”

“Hilde, I heard the kettle whistling. Please bring us some coffee.”

“
Jawoh
l
, Herr Doktor.”

“You mustn’t mind her,” said Schreiber apologetically. “It can’t be easy looking after an old codger like me.”

Edwards looked at Danielle, shaking his head in disbelief.

“I knew you would be back, Herr Edwards.” The old man sighed deeply.
“You see, I heard the news. Of course, I followed the case all along. But now that he is dead, I can at last open my heart. I have carried the pain for too many years.”

“I don’t understand, sir,” said the Englishman.

“I will try to explain, but it may take a long time.”

“Go at your own pace, sir. I will try not to interrupt you.”

“Thank you, Herr Edwards. You see, I know that there is still some doubt about who the real Hans Schreiber was. Frankly, to me it doesn’t matter any more. He is dead. That is all that matters.”

The old man cleared his throat. His voice was rasping but the words were fully coherent. “You see, it all began in Berlin in 1922. That was the year Hans was born. He was my brother’s boy.
My older brother, Josef. It all started when my brother brought home a girlfriend. He was besotted with her. He started to fall more and more in love with her. It was inevitable that they would get married, but there was one problem.” The old man hesitated as the nurse brought in their coffee. Edwards watched the old battleaxe pour. She added sugar and milk to the old man’s drink but left the guests to fend for themselves.

“As I was
saying ...” Schreiber brought the spout of his safety mug gingerly to his lips and took a few sips. “There was this problem, although it did not carry the same stigma as later. You see, Rachel Jakobs was a Jewess.”

There was a stony silence, punctuated only by the ticking of the clocks.  My God, thought Edwards, that made Hans Schreiber a Jew.
Both under Jewish law and the Nuremberg Laws.

Although Danielle could pick up only a few words, she could see that Edwards was transfixed by the man’s story. She felt his body tense suddenly.

“Carry on, Herr Doktor,” Edwards said quietly. He could feel his heart pounding.

“My parents were against it. Even if you discount the religious aspect, Rachel was an orphan and did not have any money. Josef was headstrong, but he did make one concession. They lived together as man and wife, but did not actually get married.” The old man hesitated. Lifting his glasses, he wiped a tear from his misty, unseeing eyes. “The accident happened almost four years later. I had just got married to a local girl here – we met at university – and
was just starting out in practice. Anyway, poor Josef was killed in a car crash. By that time they had had two children, Hans and Helmut, one after the other. Hans was the elder. Poor Rachel was devastated. She could not cope.

She asked me to take one of the children. I took Hans. She was in Berlin and
I was here in Straelen. So far away. Suddenly, I heard from my parents that she had run away with a man, a Jew, and had taken Helmut with her. My parents did not try very hard to find her. As I told you, they were against the marriage in the first place.”

“So you brought up Hans,” said Edwards flatly.

“Yes. It was only at the end of the war that I realized I had taken the more capricious of the two children ... but I am jumping. Let me go back to those early years. My wife and I could not have any children and we loved him as dearly as any real parents. But he was never a happy boy.”

For the next half-hour Mark Edwards sat enthralled by the story of the young Hans Schreiber: how the boy had been taunted at school because he was circumcised; how he had joined the SA and had participated in the terrible events of Kristallnacht; how he had pleaded to join the SS.

“What could I do, Herr Edwards? He was all we had. You see, I hated the Nazis and all that they stood for. I was a doctor. I was a man dedicated to the well-being of others. But I was weak with my adopted son. I gave him everything he wanted. Now he wanted to join the SS. But I knew that he would never be able to serve because I knew the truth. He never knew what he was then, Herr Edwards.”

The reporter’s ears pricked at the word “then” but he remained silent.

The doctor continued. “I told him that he would have a hard time because of his circumcision. He always believed that he’d had to have the operation because of an illness. ‘You’re a doctor,’ he used to say, ‘can’t you do something about it?’” Well,” the old man sighed again, “I did what I could. I used every trick in the book to become the SS medical officer in charge of recruitment at Münster.”

“You altered the files, didn’t you, Herr Doktor?” said the Englishman, and then added quickly, “I’m sorry. Please continue.”

“Yes. You are right. I had all the relevant papers and I altered them to suit my purpose. I knew an expert forger and he helped me. I paid him quite a lot of money. When the records went back to the SS central register, all details about his mother had been expunged. I only agreed to help Hans if he would join a non-combat unit. He was A1, but I put down in his records that he suffered from asthma so that he could never be transferred to a combat force. Finally, I swapped Hans’s photographs for those of some other soldier. I still don’t understand why I did that. Something told me we would all pay dearly for Hitler’s madness. I didn’t see Hans again until the end of the war.”

Something told Edwards that the conclusion of this fantastic story was about to be revealed. He could see that the old man was shaking. The reporter suddenly felt guilty for putting him through all this.

“Please, Herr Doktor,” he said kindly. “If you would rather rest a little ...”

“No,” rasped the old man. “No. I must tell it all. I must.”

Edwards gripped Danielle’s hand. She squeezed back. She did not know what the old man was saying but she could see that he was suffering.

“As I said,” Schreiber continued, “
the next time I saw Hans was soon after the end of the war. I was so pleased to see him. So happy that he had survived. And then ...”

Tears welled in the Englishman’s eyes as he watched the old man struggle with his emotions.

“... and then he boasted to me about Theresienstadt, about how he had killed Jews and how he now planned to pretend to be a Jew in order to escape the Allies.”