Unholy Ghost (5 page)

Chapter Eleven

It wasn't a particularly large living room but it was definitely too small for the way it was furnished. In the centre was a heavy, dark wood table on a bulbous pedestal with ornate feet. Against a wall was a large Welsh dresser affair in the same dark wood which was littered with china ornaments except for one shelf which was filled with photographs in silver frames. On the walls there were more framed photographs and three pictures. One was a landscape in oils mounted in an elaborate, gilded frame, the other two were prints in simpler frames. Both were religious monstrosities, a vacuous Madonna in blue robes staring upwards presumably to heaven, and a garish Sacred Heart almost identical to the one he remembered form his childhood which had hung in his own and almost every other Catholic living room. Under the Madonna and the Sacred Heart was a chest of drawers in the same wood and style as the dresser. Almost every available surface was home to something: bowls, statues, and assorted knick-knacks.

The furniture was old, ornate, and solid, but most of the china ornaments and statues looked new. Dominating the wall opposite the fireplace was a large, dark cross with a twisted, mutilated Christ-figure hanging on it. An uncomfortable thing that spoke of violence and pain yet strangely, Jimmy felt, not altogether out of place. Definitely out of place, however, were the state of the art television which filled the recess on one side of the fireplace and the modern recliner which faced it.

To Jimmy it was the room of a devout old woman who had collected her memories about her but still enjoyed her comforts. Jimmy's eyes went back to the crucifix, it was a symbol of a fallen world, a place full of sin and pain and it gave not even the slightest hint of any resurrection or salvation. He was sitting on one of the four upright chairs which were around the table in the centre of the room on auto-pilot, the woman, who was sitting in the recliner continued to talk.

‘… when I was younger but everything changed after the war …' Jimmy let her ramble, she probably didn't have many visitors so she was taking the chance to talk about the old days while she could. ‘… and they murdered my father, but of course nothing was done.'

Jimmy was suddenly listening again.

‘They?'

She seemed surprised that he needed to ask the question.

‘The Jews.'

‘The Jews!'

‘Of course. Who else would want to kill him?'

Of course, who else indeed, thought Jimmy.

The old lady had sparse, blue-rinsed hair and wore too much makeup, inexpertly applied. Her pencilled eyebrows had been put on slightly too high and gave her a surprised look which contrasted dramatically with the grim red slash of her mouth in a powder-pale face. Her dress was a shiny material with lots of flounces. To Jimmy it looked cheap and gaudy but he guessed it had probably cost a packet.

‘Tell me about it.'

‘They are still everywhere, in politics, finance, the police. I sometimes think that not even the Church is free of their …'

‘Why did they kill him?'

She stiffened.

‘Because he was loyal to the Füh …' she changed the word that she had so very nearly spoken, ‘… to the Fatherland. Because he was a brave soldier who knew how to do his duty.'

‘He was in the Waffen SS?'

‘Yes.' She was unapologetic, proud. ‘An Obersturmbannführer.'

‘I'm sorry, I don't understand SS ranks.'

‘A major.'

‘Had they tried to kill him before? Did he ever get threats?'

‘Oh yes, there were threats. Soon after the war men came, officials, foreigners. We lived in what was left of Berlin, in the American Sector. The whole city was split up and run by foreigners, all gangsters and cheats.' She sneered. ‘The victors.'

‘And they threatened your father?'

‘They asked questions, made insinuations.'

‘Do you know what they wanted?'

‘I was only a little girl, five years old. I didn't understand what they said but I knew they were threatening my father. I could tell.'

‘But you don't know what it was they actually wanted?'

She shook her head.

‘They came again after we had left Berlin and moved here to Munich. My father was a clever man, he saw that the Russians would steal the whole of the East and still not be satisfied. He moved here to where he would be …' What she wanted to say was that he would be in the old Nazi heartland, among his own, but this crumpled Englishman was also a stranger, another foreigner.  ‘… where it was safer. Where I could grow up in peace.'

‘When they came here in Munich, were the officials German?'

‘There was a German who asked the questions but the other two were foreigners, American.'

‘And the questions?'

‘They tried to get my father to say he had stolen money from the Jews. They said they knew of his bank accounts in Switzerland, they said that he had put stolen money in them. But he showed them it was a lie. He was a clever man, he was a soldier but he had invested well during the war. He had shares in companies. There was no stolen money.'

‘And after they came and questioned him here in Munich they left him alone? There were no more officials, no more men who came to ask questions?'

She shook her head.

‘No, no one came. We were left in peace, if you can call what Germany was like after the war peace. The Jews came back and the government was weak. They let the Soviets take the whole of the East and communist agents and sympathisers got everywhere …'

Jimmy went back onto auto-pilot and let her ramble. It was all going too easily. She was an old woman with nothing but her bits and pieces and her memories. She liked talking about her father, about the old days. She didn't much care that Jimmy had arrived about half an hour ago with a badly told story about being a journalist gathering information, a story that wouldn't have taken in a child even if that child had anything it wanted to hide. But she was hiding nothing, that much was clear.

He stood up.

‘May I look at the photos?'

She inclined her head so Jimmy went to the dresser and looked at the array of photos.

He picked them up one by one and studied them. Then he picked one up again. It showed two young, smiling, uniformed officers standing by the steps of a big house. On the steps was a woman, a little older than the officers but striking and with a good figure. She looked straight ahead at the camera and there was no smile. He could just make out the twin lightning flashes on the collars of the officers' uniforms He showed the photo to the old lady.

‘Your father?'

‘Yes, on the right, it was taken in Paris in 1941 while he was stationed there. He sent it to my mother after I was born. I still have the letter he sent with it, a long letter. I read it sometimes, it is so …'

‘The other officer? The woman?'

‘I don't know. My father told me who they were but I don't remember, just people from Paris. She was somebody he worked with I think, the other officer's name might have been Carl.'

‘I thought the woman might be your mother, visiting him perhaps.'

‘No, of course not. My mother never went to Paris. The woman was somebody he worked with. My mother had the picture in our house in Berlin. She kept all the pictures my father sent her.'

‘What happened to your mother?'

‘She died, killed in an air-raid in 1944.'

‘But you survived?'

‘I was in hospital, a fever, something, I don't remember. I was a little child. They came and told me. There had been a raid, my mother was dead, a direct hit on the shelter she was in. Many died. Even as a very young child I understood death, there was so much of it.'

‘I'm sorry. It must have been awful for you, as it must have been for your father, to lose his wife while he was away fighting. He was on the Eastern Front then, wasn't he?'

‘I don't know. I was three. Death and destruction I understood, hunger I understood, but the war … that was a thing grown-ups talked about. But when he returned he often told me how much he and my mother loved each other. How terrible it had been that he had not been able to return for the funeral. For some years after the war he would still cry when he spoke of her.'

Jimmy turned back to the photos, leaving her for a moment with memories of a father's tears for a lost wife. He looked at one or two more photos again, put them carefully back then sat down.

‘What did your father do after the war? Did he work?'

‘Yes.'

‘What work did he do?'

‘He was a writer.'

‘What sort of books did he write?'

She paused, her manner changed.

‘One book. He was working on one book.'

Once again Jimmy was listening with real interest.

‘Just the one, I see, a sort of life's work. What sort of book?' Suddenly she was reluctant to talk. Her look was filled with a suspicion and distrust she made no effort to hide. Jimmy pressed on. He needed to know about this book. ‘It may help me. I think I have a story here about your father, how his side of things never got told and how he and others like him were persecuted for doing no more than their duty, how it went on long after the war ended and, if you're right about the Jews killing your father, how it still goes on. It could be a big story, important, the sort of book he was writing might help.' He could see she still wasn't keen but he was saying the right kind of things. She was coming round. Maybe she did have a secret after all, but just didn't know how big a secret it was. ‘Was it a novel, history, war memories?'

‘It was about the nature of Jesus.'

Jimmy nearly swore out loud but once again, as with his old nun, it got no further than his teeth.

Oh shit, he thought, not only a bloody Nazi but a religious loony. That puts the lid on it. But he pressed on anyway, he might as well have everything there was.

‘The nature of Jesus? What about it?'

‘Christ's nature before the Incarnation. He believed that Christ had a human nature as well as a divine one before he was born into this world.'

‘I see.' Like hell he did. ‘That sounds very interesting, go on.'

‘My father tried to explain it to me. He said that if Christ had a human nature before the Incarnation then that proved that there was a perfect humanity, a humanity free from any corruption or perversion. It meant that Adam and Eve shared that perfect humanity, they were the mother and father of what should have been a perfect race. He said that …'

Jimmy had heard enough about the book. He wasn't interested any more, not in the crazy obsession of an unrepentant Nazi SS major who was busy trying to re-invent the dream of an Aryan super-race.

‘Did his writing take him abroad, did he visit people or places?'

‘No. He spent a great deal of money but not on travel.'

‘No?'

‘No. He didn't trust the sources he said. He said they had been corrupted.'

‘By the Jews.'

If she noticed the mockery in his words she didn't show it.

‘By the Jews and others, communists, deviants. He taught himself Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and even some Aramaic. He bought manuscripts and old books that he said were more true to the originals. I found some of them were quite valuable when I sold them.'

So much for a daughter's loyalty to her father's memory and his life's work.

‘There was plenty of money? Your father was well off?'

‘For books and study, yes, plenty of money, plenty for his work. Not for clothes or parties or holidays. He was too busy.' He could see she was pretty bitter about the way the old boy had spent his money. Whoever had popped Young Hitler had done her a big favour, she had finally got her hands on what was left of daddy's money. That accounted for the hair, the make-up, the dress, and her collection of modern, gaudy tat. From 2006 she'd had a life-time of pent-up spending to catch up on.

Jimmy stood up. It was over, he'd had enough.

‘Well, thank you. When the story is printed I will send you a copy.'

She didn't get up, just looked at him.

‘Three copies.'

‘Of course, as many as you like. You have been most helpful.'

She finally smiled. It didn't do anything for her.

Jimmy walked away from the house. It was a leafy old suburb filled with other, similar houses, comfortable and detached standing in their own gardens with plenty of trees and shrubs. Not big houses but solid and probably very expensive. Young Hitler had had money all right, however he'd spent it. But a rich, ex-Waffen SS major who'd done well out of the war and didn't need to work would have been looked at pretty closely by the authorities which, by his daughter's account, was what had happened. If nothing had shown up then there was probably nothing to see. Unless. Unless he'd had friends who could look after him, powerful friends. Perhaps even friends who were on the winning side.

Hmmm.

He set off to the nearest Bahnhof to catch a train back into the city centre and his hotel. As he walked he pulled out the silver-framed photo from inside his jacket and looked at it. It was the two young officers and the woman on the steps. He was pretty sure, but not certain. The house looked like the convent in Paris and the woman on the steps could be Mme Colmar. It looked like the same face he'd seen staring straight out at the camera in the photo McBride had sent him in the dossier. He wasn't certain, he'd need to study both photos more closely, but he was pretty sure.

He slipped the photo out of its frame and put it into his pocket, wiped the frame thoroughly with his handkerchief, and dropped it into the next litter bin he passed.

Not a total waste of time then. He'd got something out of it and it wasn't Jews murdering a nutty old ex-Nazi who was still trying to prove he was part of a master race.

He walked on through the tree-lined street towards the station pleased with himself. It had been easy and straightforward and not in the least bit life-threatening.