The Dark Lady (24 page)

“No,” Woodend lied. “At least, nothin' that I didn't know already. The dead man was almost certainly a feller from Bavaria, by the name of Johann Schultz. He was an officer in the SS, an' by all accounts a pretty nasty piece of work, judgin' even by their low standards.”

“So who killed him?” Armstrong asked.

“That we'll never know,” Woodend told him. “But does it really matter? Couldn't it be that your old boss was correct, an' that in Schultz's case at least, the only good German was a dead one?”

“You're probably right,” Armstrong agreed. He looked down at the pile of clothes again. “After what you've told me, I suppose I might as well throw this lot out.”

“Aye, you might as well at that,” Woodend said.

Armstrong shook his head slowly from one side to the other. “It's a funny thing,” he said, “but I've had them with me for so long that they've almost become like old friends.”

The café was just opposite the Catholic church. When the waitress came over to the table, Kohl ordered steins of beer for himself and his English colleague, and a coffee and Ansbach brandy for the priest.

“I am sorry for my moment of weakness back there in the church,” the priest said shakily, when he'd had a generous sip of the brandy. “How far had I got with my story?”

“You were telling us that the SS took the Jews out of the church,” Rutter prompted.

“That's right. They loaded them on to an open truck and drove them away. Most of the SS men left as well, but there were still five or six of them in the church. One of them was Lieutenant Schultz. He was striding up and down with a pistol in his hand, and it was obvious, even to a child like I was at the time, that he was very drunk. As he walked, he kept shouting abuse at Max, who was being held by two of the other soldiers.”

“What sorts of things was he saying?”

“At one point, he said, ‘We used to be good friends, but you turned your back on me when I joined the SS, didn't you? I was hurt for a while. But not any more. Not now you've turned out to be nothing more a Jew-lover. Who'd
want
to be friends with you now, Fat Boy?'” The priest paused for a second, as he relived the moment in his mind. “Lieutenant Schultz was lying when he said he didn't want Max to be his friend, you know,” he continued. “Max had this quality about him which made everybody want him to like them.”

“What else did Lieutenant Schultz say?”

“He said, ‘You despise me, don't you, Fat Boy?'” The priest took another sip of his brandy. “Max wouldn't answer him, which seemed to infuriate Schultz even more. He staggered over to Max, and thrust his gun barrel right under his chin. ‘What right do you have to feel superior to me?' he screamed. ‘Is it your religion? Is that what it is?' And still Max was silent.”

“That must have taken a lot of courage with a gun jammed against his jaw,” Rutter said.

“Max had enough courage to fill the whole church, and Schultz was starting to realise it. I think he was beginning to feel very small and humiliated indeed. ‘Don't you know your religion is nothing but a lot of shit?' he asked. ‘Haven't you learned yet that there isn't any such thing as a god? If God existed, do you think he'd allow me to do this?” And then he turned round and pointed his gun at the statue of the Virgin in the alcove.”

“How did Max react?”

“When he realised what the Lieutenant was about to do, he started to struggle, but the two SS men had a tight grip on him. Schultz took careful aim, and fired three times. Even though he was drunk, he still managed to put all three bullets into Our Lady's face. ‘There you are,' he said. ‘You've seen what I've done, and I'm still alive, aren't I? No thunderbolt has struck me down. There's no booming voice from heaven, telling me I've done wrong. And that's because this god of yours – which makes you think you're so much better than me – doesn't exist!'”

“What did Max say to that?”

“He spoke very quietly, but very steadily. He said, ‘You must believe what you want to believe. Only time will tell which of us is right.'” The priest shook his head sadly. “I have always believed that if Max had agreed with him – had said, yes, what he'd done to the Virgin did prove that there was no God – Lieutenant Schultz would have let him go.”

“Because they used to be friends?”

“No, because he would have proved that he was the superior of the two. But Max would never say anything like that, even though his life depended on it.” The priest sighed. “I pray that if ever I found myself in Max's situation, I would find the strength that he did, but I can never be sure that I would.”

“What happened to Max?” Rutter asked.

“Schultz gave up trying to humiliate him – he was only making himself look smaller with every attempt – and he ordered the SS to take Max away. I was spared because I was only a child, and therefore thought not to understand enough of what was going on to be really involved.” The priest laughed bitterly. “If I'd been a Jewish boy they would have had no hesititation in deciding I was as guilty as Max was, but because I was pure Aryan they were prepared to believe that I'd merely been led astray by older people.”

“Do you know where they took Max?”

“No one knew for sure what happened to the people who disappeared, but I heard that they took him to one of the camps. When the war was finally over, I kept hoping that he would return home, but I knew in my heart that he never would. He was arrested in 1939, you have to remember. No one could have survived the camps for six long years.”

There seemed no more to say. Inspector Kohl paid the bill, and the three of them left the bar.

“Thank for all your help,” Rutter said, once they were out on the street. “I can appreciate how painful it must have been for you to talk about it.”

“It had to be said,” the priest told him. “Would you like to come and see our Virgin before you leave?”

“Your Virgin?”

“The one Lieutenant Schultz shot at.”

“You still have her?” Rutter asked, surprised.

For the first time since they had mentioned Max Ebert to him, the priest smiled.

“Yes, we still have her. She bears the scars of Nazism, but then so do the rest of us. It has always been her role to share in the suffering of all mankind. And even apart from that, she has always been a rather special Virgin. I could show you. It wouldn't take a minute.”

Rutter, who had no time for religion, was on the point of declining when the feeling of shame swept through him. The Virgin was obviously important to the priest in a way he himself could probably never even begin to comprehend. It would be churlish and ungrateful, after what the man had put himself through for their benefit, not to do this one small thing for him.

“I'd consider it a great honour to see your Virgin, Father,” he said.

The priest led them back into the church, and to the alcove where the Virgin stood. Rutter could see the three holes where the bullets from Johann Schultz's Luger had burrowed their way into her wooden face. He had been quite prepared for that. But what he had not been prepared for, he thought as he gasped with surprise, was the fact that what remained of the face, and the hands which were clasped together in prayer, were painted black.

“There are only a few like her in the whole of Europe,” the priest said. “The most famous ones are in Krakow, Poland, and Guadeloupe in Spain, though naturally, we in this village daily commit the sin of pride by preferring our own. In English, I think you call them ‘Black Madonnas'. In German, they are known as
Schwarze Jungfrau.
But we have a special name for ours, because she has seen so much suffering in her time. We call her the
Schwarze Dame
.”

“And what does that mean?” Rutter asked.

“It means, ‘The Black Lady'.” The priest shook his head. “No, it is not quite that. The translation is too literal.” He turned to Inspector Kohl for help. “Could you think of any other word I could use instead of black?”

The German policeman shrugged. “Perhaps ‘dark',” he suggested. “The
Dark
Lady.”

W
oodend had left the rain behind him on the edge of Liverpool, and in Westbury Park it had turned into a truly glorious day. The chief inspector strolled leisurely through the park, past the neat houses which were really no more than disguised army barracks, and towards the woods in which he had been attacked, a German called Schultz had met a violent death and a group of Polish refugees had brewed the vodka of their homeland.

He savoured the walk, knowing that it would be the last one he ever took in this place. He felt the same uneasy mixture of emotions which always assailed him when a case was nearly over – satisfaction at having done his job well; sadness for the people whose lives had accidentally become entangled in the most primitive of human barbarities; a reluctance to leave a world which, for a few days at least, had become his world.

He reached the edge of the woods and stopped to light up a Capstan Full Strength. Had the German been taken completely by surprise by the man he met on the path to the lake that fatal night? Somehow Woodend didn't think he had. Schultz, he was beginning to suspect, hadn't been half as drunk as he'd pretended to be in the club.

He thought of Charles Dickens'
A Tale of Two Cities
– of Sidney Carton, who so resembles Charles Darney that he was able to take the other man's place on the guillotine. There were similarities to the great man's book in this investigation, though here it was more a case of “A Tale of Two Villages” – one of them in rural Cheshire, the other in distant Bavaria.

He had smoked the Capstan Full Strength so far down that he could feel the heat of the burning ash on his fingers. He dropped the cigarette, and ground it with the heel of his shoe. This was it, then, he thought. He had his solution, and there was no point in putting off what he had to do any longer. Which meant that it was time to go and see Karl Müller.

Woodend looked from the pale intense face of Karl Müller to the large iron crucifix on the wall, and back again.

“I had a phone call from my lad Sergeant Rutter an hour ago,” he told the German.

Müllershrugged. “Why should that be of any possible interest to me?” he asked

“Because he was callin' from Germany. From a small town in Bavaria. A town that goes by the name of Karlsbruch.”

The German nodded, almost fatalistically. “I see.”

“Yes, I think you do,” Woodend agreed. “Why did you change your name when you left Germany?”

“I brought my wife and my God with me to England,” Müller said. “I wanted to leave the rest of my old life behind. Does that make any sense to you, Chief Inspector?”

“Yes. After everythin' you must have been through durin' the war, I suppose it does,” Woodend admitted.

He took his Capstan Full Strength out of his pocket and offered one to Müller. He noticed that, even now, at the moment of truth, the German's hand was as steady as a rock when he took the cigarette.

“When I asked you and your wife if you'd killed Gerhard Schultz, you both swore that you hadn't,” the chief inspector continued.

“And I am still willing to swear to that.”

“Oh, I'm sure you are,” Woodend said. “After what I've learned this mornin' I'd be prepared to swear to it myself. But you do know Gerhard really is dead, don't you?”

“As much as I am unwilling to believe it, I have to admit that it seems likely,” Müller said.

“Let me tell you as much of the story of how he died as I've managed to piece together,” Woodend said. “At the time Gerhard Schultz was released from the prisoner-of-war camp on the south coast of England, his cousin, Johann Schultz, the SS colonel, was already on the run from the War Crimes Commission. An' he stayed on the run for well over a year. But in the end, he must have decided that his luck couldn't last for ever, and that the safest thing for him to do would be to get out of Germany altogether.”

“I know none of this,” Müller said.

“I know you don't. That's why I'm tellin' you. Johann stowed away on a boat to Liverpool. Gerhard found out about it. I'm not sure how – presumably he got a letter from a friend tellin' him what was happenin'. But that really doesn't matter. The thing is that when Johann arrived, Gerhard was waitin' at the docks for him. Gerhard's plan, I'm almost certain, was to kill Johann for what he'd done to his best friend Max, back in 1939. Anyway, as things turned out, it was the other way around. Johann killed Gerhard. Now we come to the important bit. Johann's standin' there over Gerhard's body, an' he has a brilliant idea. Instead of takin' on a false identity, he'll take on a real one – Gerhard's. An' in order to leave a confused trail behind him, he'll make sure the dead body the police find looks as if it belongs to a German who's just got off one of the boats. So he dresses Gerhard's body in his German jacket, trousers, shoes an' socks, an' takes his cousin's clothes for himself. Only he can't exchange shirts an' vest, because Gerhard's are already cut an' stained with his blood. Are you followin' all this?”

“Yes, I'm following it,” Müller said.

“He takes the labels out of Gerhard's shirt an' vest, because he doesn't want the police askin' why somebody who's just arrived from abroad is wearin' clothes made by an English company. I was puzzled by the lack of labels even before I noticed they'd been ripped out – after all, the rest of the clothes were labelled – but I'd probably never have got to the truth if it hadn't been for the knife.”

“The knife?” Müller repeated.

“Aye. There were two knives involved in the fight. One was Gerhard's, which had been made in Sheffield, an' the other was Johann's, which probably came from the Ruhr. Now the one Johann had to leave behind was Gerhard's. Can you see why, Mr Müller?”