The Dark Lady (23 page)

Strange to be able to do that, he thought. But then, time was a funny thing. It had only been a few months since he'd last been in Liverpool. On that occasion it had been to investigate the death of a young guitarist. And now here he was again, dealing with a case which could well have had its origins in a period before that young lad was even born.

Once inside the station, Woodend was taken straight to the office of Chief Inspector Albert Armstrong. The Liverpool policeman was in his early fifties, Woodend guessed. He had silvery hair and the tired, worldly eyes of a man who'd sometimes seen more than he'd have cared to.

“This particular case you're asking about happened in late November 1946,” Armstrong said, when they shaken hands and sat down. “It had been a real bugger of a month. At nights, the cold cut through to the bone, but coal was still rationed, so we didn't even have the consolation of a big blazing fire to sit in front of. Most of the days were foggy – that sort of fog which seems to get under your clothes and cling to your skin. Trams were running late, deliveries weren't being made, the docks were working at half speed – you get the picture.”

“I get the picture,” Woodend agreed.

“The body turned up on the morning of the twentieth of November. It was lying in a shelter near the docks. Male, round about six feet tall, late twenties, stabbed with a clean thrust to the heart.”

“You haven't needed to look at your notes once,” Woodend said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“You've got your notes on your desk in front of you, an' you haven't so much as glanced at them.”

Armstrong grinned ruefully. “Have you ever had a case which has become an obsession with you?” he asked.

Woodend nodded. “Oh aye. More than once.”

“Well, this case became my particular obsession. Not because I'd become involved with the family, as you can get during an investigation. Nor because I felt particularly sorry for the victim. I knew nothing about him, so I had no feelings one way or the other. No, what really got on my goat was that it was a case I'm sure we could have solved if we'd just made the effort.”

“So why didn't you?”

“Because my boss didn't want us to make an effort. He'd just lost his son in the war, you see, and as far as he was concerned, the only good German was a dead German.”

“But you weren't content to let the matter drop?” Woodend guessed. “You did some investigatin' on your own.”

Armstrong nodded. “Given where he was found, there was a good chance he'd come off a ship. I checked with the port authority, and found that a cargo boat from Bremerhaven had docked the night before. There'd been no passengers, and all the crew were accounted for. If the murdered man had travelled on that boat, he'd done it as a stowaway.”

“An' how easy would that have been?”

“From my own experience with stowaways, I'd have to say it wouldn't have been easy at all. But it would have been far from impossible, especially if he had the help of one of the crew.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, the next step should have been to contact Germany, but DCI Phillips wasn't having any of that, and as a young bobbie who'd just been made up to sergeant, I knew it would have been professional suicide to go against his wishes. So that's where the trail ended.”

“What happened to what little evidence you managed to collect?” Woodend asked.

“Should have been thrown out years ago, shouldn't it? Well, I wasn't having that, because I always hoped that one day I'd get a second chance to crack the case. Is that what you've brought me, Mr Woodend? A second chance to crack the case?”

“Maybe,” Woodend said cautiously. “This evidence you've got – where do you keep it?”

“I've got it in a locker down in the basement.”

“Then we'd better down there an' take a look at it, hadn't we?” Woodend suggested.

“To save time, I have already rung the Karlsbruch police,” Inspector Kohl said, as he drove the Mercedes out of the small town where Gerhard Schultz had grown up.

“And what were they able to tell you?” Rutter asked.

“That they are sorry, but they know nothing of the present location of Max Ebert.”

Despite a slight feeling of disappointment, Rutter grinned. “So you're not so infallible, after all,” he said.

Kohl hesitated between a frown and a grin, and finally settled on the grin. “Sometimes even German records are not always as comprehensive as they should be,” he admitted. “However, they were able to give me one useful lead. It seems that the parish priest was there in the church the day Ebert was arrested, so perhaps he will be able to help us. And fortunately, again according to the local police, he speaks very good English, so you can interview him yourself.”

It took less than half an hour to reach Karlsbruch. The village was as neat and orderly as the small town they'd just left behind, and Rutter found himself wondering how it was that the Germans seemed to have managed to eradicate any evidence of the war, while back home traces of it were all around.

The inspector pulled up in front of the church. “We could go to the priest's house,” he explained, “but Mass has only just finished, so it is very likely we will find him here.”

They entered the church, and the priest, who had been standing by the altar, came down the aisle to greet them. But this was not the man they were looking for, Rutter thought. He was perhaps in his middle thirties – far too young to have been in holy orders in 1939.

The priest smiled. It was a kindly benevolent smile, a smile which clearly said that he was at peace with both the world and his God. Then he spoke a few words in German.

“The Father is welcoming us to his little church,” Inspector Kohl explained to Rutter. He turned back to the priest. “I am a police inspector, “he said, still speaking in English, “and this is my colleague Sergeant Bob Rutter, who is visiting us from England.”

“Oh yes?” the priest said politely, the benevolent smile still in place, but now looking slightly mystified.

“We are looking for another priest,” Kohl said. “The one who was here in 1939.”

“That would be my predecessor, Father Joseph. But I am afraid that you have come a little late to talk to him. He has been dead for over four years now.”

Inspector Kohl frowned. First the Karlsbruch police had been unable to locate the man he and Rutter were looking for, now they had given him incorrect information about the priest. This did not look at all good in front of his English visitor.

“The priest I am seeking is the one who was here the day the SS took away a man called Max Ebert,” he said.

The effect on the young priest was instantaneous. The benevolent smile melted away, and was replaced by the most haunted look that Rutter thought he had ever seen in his life.

“Oh, Max,” the priest groaned. “Poor, poor Max.”

“You knew him?”

The priest nodded. “You have been misinformed,” he said. “It was not the then parish priest, Father Joseph, who was here when they took Max Ebert away. It was me.”

“You? But . . .”

“I was only a boy, but I was here.”

“Could you tell us about it?” Rutter asked softly.

“We were hiding the Jews in the crypt,” the priest said. “There were a dozen of them – women and children mostly, but also a couple of men. That day, when the SS came, there were only the two of us in the church, Max and myself. When we heard their vehicles pull up outside, we knew that we had been betrayed, though we didn't know by whom. I still don't know, even after all these years, who would do such a terrible thing.” He stopped to wipe the sweat from his brow. “I'm sorry. This is very difficult for me.”

“Take your time,” Rutter said soothingly.

“They stormed into the church. There were about twenty of them. Max tried to stop them, to reason with them – but they knocked him to the ground, and began kicking him. I was a mere child. I wanted to help Max but there . . . there was nothing I could do.”

“Of course there wasn't,” Rutter said soothingly. “Tell me what happened next.”

“Half of them went down to the crypt to round up the Jews, the rest stayed behind to guard us. As if it needed ten armed men to guard a boy like me and a man who was lying on the stone floor, fighting for air! They herded the Jews up the stairs as if they were nothing more than cattle.” The priest swallowed hard. “And all the time, the SS men were tormenting the prisoners. Their leader, a lieutenant called Johann Schultz, was the worst one of the lot. You would not believe the language that he used. You could never imagine the filthy, dirty way he was describing what was going to happen to them. He had an expression of sadistic ecstasy on his face. To look at him was to gaze into the very jaws of hell. And those poor people, those helpless women and little children. They looked like exactly what they were – the walking dead. I . . . I . . .”

The priest was on the verge of either fainting or being sick, Rutter thought. “As we were driving up, did you happen to notice if there's a bar near here?” he asked Inspector Kohl.

“No I didn't,” Kohl confessed. “But this is Germany – there is always a bar somewhere fairly close.”

“Let me buy you a coffee, Father,” Rutter said to the priest. “Or something stronger, if you feel you need it.”

“Yes,” the other man said. “Yes, I think that something stronger would be a good idea.”

The basement of the Liverpool police station was both dank and dusty. The only illumination in the place was provided by a single naked bulb suspended from the ceiling.

“We don't use this area much any more,” Chief Inspector Armstrong said apologetically.

He went to a long metal table which dominated the centre of the room, and cleaned it off with a rag he'd brought with him. “No point in contaminating the evidence at this stage of the proceedings, is there?” Once the table was cleaned to his satisfaction, he walked over to a battered grey metal locker in the far corner of the room. “Here it is. Everything I have on our mystery man.”

He opened the locker and took out a suit, smelling strongly of mothballs, which he placed on the table. This was followed by shoes, a shirt, socks, underwear, an overcoat, and a short, evil-looking knife.

“No other belongings?” Woodend asked.

Armstrong shook his head. “No. As I see it, there are three possible explanations for that. The first is that he didn't have any. The second is that he hid them somewhere, shortly before the attack, and we never found them. Well, we weren't really looking, if I'm honest – not with Harry Phillips in charge of the case. And the third possibility is that the killer took them with him – perhaps they were even the motive for the attack.”

There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs, then a young constable appeared.

“Got the Chief Super on the phone, sir,” he said to Armstrong. “He wants to speak to you right away.”

“Bugger it!” Armstrong said. He turned back to Woodend. “Will you excuse me for a few minutes?”

“Aye, I'll be as happy as a sandboy playin' around with this lot,” Woodend told him.

Armstrong disappeared up the stairs, and Woodend picked up the knife. It had been made in Sheffield, a place noted for its skill in producing precision cutting instruments. He gingerly ran his index finger over the edge of the blade. It was finely honed and razor sharp. In a competent pair of hands it could do a lot of damage, he thought.

He laid the knife back where he had found it, and picked up the overcoat. It was long and heavy – almost a trench coat. There was a narrow slash in it at just about heart level. He picked up the knife again, and slid it carefully into the gash. A perfect fit.

He turned his attention to the jacket. It was not new, but it was good quality, he decided. Probably pre-war. The label inside said it had been made by a tailor in Munich. Just below the breast pocket was the cut the knife had made as it entered the wearer's body.

He examined the shoes next. They were very shoddy articles, the product of a country short on resources but big on demand, just as West Germany had been immediately after the war. The socks and underpants were of similar quality. The vest and shirt were a little better made. They too had a knife slash at heart level; but unlike the jacket and the overcoat, a rough circle of dirty brown stain surrounded these lacerations.

Replacing the evidence on the table, Woodend stepped back and lit up a Capstan Full Strength. The clothes had told him absolutely nothing, but there was nagging feeling at the back of his mind that they should have done.

He let the smoke snake its way soothingly around his lungs. There was something which wasn't quite right, he told himself. One piece of clothing, or possibly two, which didn't exactly fit in with the rest.

The jacket? That was certainly of better quality than all the other stuff, but he'd already satisfactorily explained that to himself.

The shoes? No.

And suddenly, he had it! The jokers in the pack were the shirt and the vest. And what made them different was that they had no labels in them.

He picked up the shirt again. There had been a label inside the collar – he could still find the jagged traces of the two edges – but it had been cut out. The same was true of the vest.

He reached for the knife, and slid it into the slash in the shirt. The cut was wider than the knife. Much, much wider. He repeated the experiment with the vest, and got the same result.

There was the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Woodend replaced the knife on table, and lit up a fresh Capstan Full Strength from the stub of the one he'd just been smoking.

“Bloody chief supers!” Chief Inspector Armstrong complained, as he reached the foot of the stairs. “They are the bloody limit, aren't they? Every time they've got some piffling little query they want answering, they expect you to jump like a bloody trained flea.” He looked down at the evidence on the table. “Did you find anything useful?”