The Dark Lady (20 page)

“You want me to 'elp you with that, darlin'?” the taxi driver asked, as Maria ran her fingers over the coins in her purse.

“No, thank you,” she answered. “I can manage quite well on my own.”

“I wouldn't steal from yer, or anyfink like that!” the cabbie said, sounding slightly offended.

“I'm sure you wouldn't,” Maria told him. “It's just that the more things I learn to do on my own, the easier it is.”

She handed over the fare, opened the gate, and, using her white stick, tapped her way carefully up the path. She still found it incredible that Bob – her big, strong husband – had been so afraid of a simple thing like flying. But then, she supposed, fear was rarely very rational. There were people who were afraid of being in enclosed spaces, and people who were afraid of wide-open spaces. Some were frightened of heights, others of dogs.

And some people were afraid to ask for things because it might draw attention to the fact that they were blind.

She slotted her key into the front door – it was getting easier every time she did it – and stepped into the hallway. She could hear the sound of vigorous vacuuming from the living room. That German girl would wear the Hoover out, she thought with a smile.

“Ah, you are home, Mrs Rutter,” the au pair shouted over the noise of the machine.

“Switch that off, please, Ute,” Maria said. “There's something I want to ask you.”

The vacuum cleaner fell silent.

“Yes, madam?”

“Ever since you got here, I've been wondering what you look like. How would you describe yourself?”

There was a pause, then Ute said in an embarrassed voice, “I am quite ordinary. Quite normal.”

“Could I touch your face?” Maria asked. “Just so I get an impression of your features?”

“Of course.”

Of course! Was that what she'd actually said?

“You really don't mind?” Maria asked, hardly able to believe it.

“I haf a grandmother who is blind,” Ute said. “Always she touches my face ven I go to see her.”

“Stand closer to me,” Maria said, and when Ute had done so, she lifted her hands.

The German girl was taller than she'd thought. As her fingers explored, she was building up a picture in her mind. Slightly upturned nose, wide mouth, and rounded chin. It was a pleasant face, and knowing about it made her feel as if she'd got to know the au pair a little better, too.

“Thank you, Ute,” she said.

“It vas nothing,” the German girl said.

But it was! It really was! And it was a wonderful thing to be pregnant! There were going to be difficult times ahead, but she was sure now that she could get through them.

The man standing just beyond the barrier at Rhiem Airport was not very tall for a policeman, but had enormous square shoulders. His hair was blond and clipped very short. Despite the heat, he was wearing a black leather jacket, and he was smoking an HB cigarette with all the intensity of someone who took everything he did seriously. When he saw Rutter, he stepped forward and held out his hand.

“Inspector Hans Kohl,” he announced, pumping the English detective's hand vigorously. “Welcome to Germany, Sergeant Rutter. I am to be your guide for as long as you are here, and – when necessary – your interpreter.”

Rutter, who had decided after getting off the flight unscathed that he finally knew what the survivors of the
Titanic
must have felt like, pumped the German's hand back.

“I don't know how well you've been briefed, but he reason I'm here is to find out all I can about a man called Gerhard Schultz . . .” he began

“Ja, ja, that has all been arranged,” Inspector Kohl said brusquely. “I have a car waiting outside. It should not take much more than an hour to reach the town where his parents live. They have already been told to expect you.”

He was standing on foreign soil, Rutter realised now he had put his fear of the flight behind him and had time to think. He was actually in another country. And he knew absolutely nothing about it. He didn't even know where he'd be spending the night.

“Have you fixed up any accommodation for me, sir?” Rutter asked, doing his best to sound like Woodend.

“But of course. I have booked both of us into a small hotel in Herr Schultz's home town. That means that if you wish to question the parents again tomorrow morning, we will be in walking distance of the house. And if you do not wish to see them, well, I'm told the hotel is a good place to stay, with excellent food and plentiful beer. I hope that is satisfactory.”

“Very satisfactory,” said Rutter, who was rapidly coming to the conclusion that whatever else happened while he was in the country, he was certainly going to enjoy working with the German police.

Fred Foley stood in Mike Partridge's bedroom doorway, his mangy dog by his side. The man had looked a real mess the last time Woodend had met him – during the Salton case – but he was even worse now. His eyes were so bloodshot it was almost impossible to detect any white. His nose was a mass of blackheads. His hands shook, and his jaw wobbled. And there was a distinct whiff about him.

“I try to get 'im to wash every day, but it's not always easy,” Partridge said apologetically.

“What about booze?” Woodend asked.

“I'm slowly tryin' to wean him off it. 'E 'asn't had much today, but there must still be a hell of a lot floatin' around in 'is system.”

Woodend turned his attention on Foley, who was still standing uncertainly in the doorway.

“Can you hear me, Mr Foley?” he asked. “Do you understand what I'm sayin'?”

The other man merely nodded.

“The reason you've been hangin' around Westbury Park so much for the past year or so was because of the Poles, wasn't it?” the chief inspector asked. “If you went down to the old pumpin' station by the lake when they were there, they'd sometimes give you some of that vodka they made. Am I right?”

Foley licked his dry lips. “Yes,” he croaked.

“You were down there the night the German was killed. They gave you enough booze to get you well an' truly plastered, an' then you went wanderin' off into the woods.”

“I don't remember much,” Foley admitted.

“But you do remember findin' Schultz, don't you?”

“He was lyin' on the ground. I didn't see him. I tripped over his feet an' landed right on top of him.”

“An' that's how you came to get his blood on your overcoat. What happened next?”

“I panicked,” Foley said. “I'd already been involved in one murder case. I didn't want to get caught up in another. I got out of the woods as quick as I could, an' started headin' for Maltham. I didn't know what I was goin' to do when I got there. It . . . it was just somewhere to go. Then I felt these pains in my belly, an' I had to stop to be sick.”

“Which is when you met Mr Partridge?”

“He was cyclin' past. He stopped to see if I was all right. I told him what had happened.”

“'E swore to me that 'e 'adn't done the killin', an' I believed him,” Partridge said.

“So the first thing you did was to throw his coat behind the nearest hedge, an' the second was to bring him here – which is where he an' his dog have been ever since.”

“I didn't think 'e could face bein' questioned by the police, the state 'e was in.”

“But you did know he'd have to face them eventually, didn't you, Mr Partridge?”

Partridge shrugged. “I suppose I did, but I 'adn't really thought that far ahead.”

“I can't go the police,” Fred Foley whimpered. “They'll lock me up an' never let me out again.”

“They'll lock you up,” Woodend conceded, “but not for long. Without a signed confession, there's nowhere near enough evidence to hold you for more than a couple of days. So you're goin' to have to be strong, Mr Foley. You're goin' to have to pull yourself together – at least for the time you're in custody. Do you think you can do that?”

“I'll try,” Foley promised.

“Right, you an' me had better get ourselves down to the local nick,” Woodend said.

“What about me?” Mike Partridge asked.

“What about you?” Woodend replied.

“I've been 'idin' a wanted man for days. Won't the bobbies want to arrest me, an' all?”

“You've only been doin' what you thought was right, an' placed in your situation, I'm not sure I'd have behaved any differently myself,” Woodend said. He turned back to Foley. “What are you goin' to tell the police when they ask you where I found you?”

Foley looked down at the floor. “I don't know.”

“Then why not simply tell them the truth,” Woodend suggested, “which is that I found you wanderin' around in the woods behind Westbury Park.”

“Yes,” Foley agreed, nodding gravely. “That's exactly what I'll tell them.”

I
nspector Kohl kept the black Mercedes Benz at just under the speed limit as he drove through a series of villages so unbelievably neat and tidy that they might have been expecting a visit from royalty at any moment. Rutter, sitting next to him, had now got over the shock of still being alive, and was starting to enjoy ‘abroad'.

“Do you know anything about the Schultz family's background?” the Englishman asked the German.

“But of course,” Inspector Kohl replied, as if he were surprised that Rutter even needed to ask such a question. “The dead man's mother and father are both in their early seventies. Before they retired, they both taught English in . . . how would you say it? – in gymnasiums.”

“In secondary schools,” Rutter corrected.

“Yes, you are right,” Kohl agreed, and Rutter was sure the German would never make that same mistake over the word again.

“They have three children, two boys and girl, “Kohl continued. “Gerhard was the youngest. Herr Schultz, the father, was a captain in the First World War, and was awarded the Iron Cross, as his son also was in the Second World War. Since early middle age, Herr Schultz has suffered from gout. Both the parents regularly attend their local church – they are Catholics, as are most Bavarians – and Frau Schultz is an active member of its Ladies Committee. I am sorry that I do not have any more information for you, but you must understand that I was only given this assignment three hours ago.”

Rutter whistled softly to himself – and wondered how the Germans had ever managed to lose the war.

They were entering a small town. The houses were all solid and detached. They had large windows, and almost impossibly steep slate roofs which were glistening in the warm afternoon sun. If the town had been damaged during the war, there was absolutely no indication of it now.

Kohl brought the Mercedes to a halt in front of one of the houses. “This is the place,” he said.

They walked up the path. The front door opened, and a man who had obviously been listening for their arrival stepped out to greet them.

If this was Herr Schultz, he looked considerably older than his seventy-odd years, Rutter thought. It wasn't just that his hair was white and his skin incredibly wrinkled. It wasn't even that he was leaning heavily on his carved walking stick. He carried with him the air of man who had experienced nothing but incredible suffering for at least a century.

The old man held out his hand to the English policeman. “I am Wolfgang Schultz,” he said formally.

“Bob Rutter.”

Herr Schultz twisted his aged body to shake hands with Inspector Kohl, then said, “Welcome to my home. Please follow me. My wife is waiting for us inside the house.”

Like her husband, Mrs Schultz was small and white-haired – and also like him seemed shrouded in a mantle of grief. Shaking her thin, dry hand, Rutter found it hard to believe that these two fragile people had produced a baby which had turned into a strapping man called Gerhard Schultz.

“Please be seated, gentlemen,” Herr Schultz said, indicating the sofa. “You will take some refreshment? A coffee? A little wine?”

Rutter shook his head. “No, thank you, sir. I know this meeting will be painful for both of you, and I really don't want to make it last any longer than it absolutely has to.”

The old man nodded gratefully. Slowly – and obviously painfully – he lowered himself into one of the two matching armchairs. His wife, with less difficulty, sat down in the other.

“How can we help you?” the old man asked.

How
could
they help him? Rutter wondered. The instinct he had gradually developed while working under Cloggin'-it Charlie's guidance told him that at least part of the solution to Gerhard Schultz's murder lay in Germany, but he had no idea what that part might be.

He asked himself how Woodend would have handled this situation. “Why don't you tell me a little about your son,” he suggested softly.

The old man bowed his head. “What can I say about him? He was a quiet, serious boy. He studied hard. He went to church regularly. He was never in any trouble.”

“Did he have any girlfriends I might talk to?” Rutter asked, still groping in the dark.

Herr Schultz hesitated for several seconds, as if he could not decide how to answer the question.

“No, no girlfriends,” he said finally. “As I've already told you, he was a quiet boy.”

“What about his male friends, then? Are there any of them still living in the town?”

“He had one very good friend. His name was Max Ebert. He came from Karlsbruch.

” Inspector Kohl did a rapid calculation. “Karlsbruch is about thirty kilometres from here, isn't it?” he said.

“Yes, it is,” Herr Schultz agreed.

The inspector frowned, indicating that something in the old man's answer had puzzled him. “Thirty kilometres was a long way to travel before the war,” he said. “I lived in a village myself, and I never knew anyone from so far away. How did your son come to meet this Max?”