The end of the corridor opened onto a flight of stairs that went down and doubled back on itself. Soon enough they were stood in a hallway with ceramic tiles on the floor and a large wooden door with frosted glass panels on both sides. It was the same hallway Monika had come through yesterday. On the other side of the door came the muffled sounds of a suburban street.
Frau Lange pointed to the door and said, ‘The only way out is through there. You’ll have to wait for someone to open it from the other side.’
Monika went to the door and levered the handle. It was shut as firmly as a door could be.
‘How do you get out?’ she asked.
‘I don’t. I live inside this building.’
‘You never go out?’
‘I go to the market every other day at ten in the morning. If I’m not waiting at this door by that time, then I don’t go out.’
‘That’s it? You don’t see anyone?’
‘And I have a friend who comes once a week. Apart from that, my life is here, looking after the likes of you.’
‘What’s happening to me?’ Monika finally said. She’d done her best to resist saying it, to not succumb to its darkness, but now the words left her mouth almost magnetically. ‘I just want to go home.’
13
The following day, Frau Lange came into Monika’s room and said, ‘I’ve decided, it’s dinner outside this afternoon.’
‘Outside?’
‘It’s a warm evening. We can go up to the roof.’
They went out into the corridor where Frau Lange unlocked a small door, behind which a staircase ran upwards. It was dirty in the narrow staircase, with flies skipping over the surface of the walls and a terrible damp smell. The steps led to the flat-top roof of the building. There was nothing up there apart from a row of air vents and an empty gull’s nest piled up in one corner. But it was good to be outside. Monika could see the street down below. It was quiet, nearly empty, a little bit desolate. She had no idea where in the city she was.
Frau Lange lifted a foldaway table from behind one of the air vents and deftly flipped it into a standing position. Then she disappeared down the staircase again.
Monika went to the roof’s edge and looked down. She was suddenly alert to the idea of escaping. Jumping was impossible as they were three floors up, but climbing down could be feasible. She’d been a strong gymnast at school and instinctively trusted the strength in her legs, arms and fingers.
It was possible but she would have to act quickly. She scouted the edge, left and right. Below, there was the ledge of a window frame she could balance her toes on. It was possible. Perhaps. Difficult to say without trying.
A moment later, even before Monika had finished the thought, Frau Lange returned. Monika pulled away from the roof’s edge and pretended to smile.
As usual, Frau Lange carried the white tablecloth and insisted that Monika should be the one to spread it over the table. She unfolded it, all the time wondering if she could climb from the roof down to the street. All she needed was for the old woman to disappear again. It would only take a few seconds.
The tablecloth fell smartly around the edges of the table and took on the same rectangular shape. To assist, Frau Lange took the corner of the cloth between her thumb and first finger and pulled it towards her with a slow jerk, then flattened it out again with her palm. ‘You look unwell,’ she said, looking up at Monika. ‘Make sure you sleep tonight.’ Then, coming up close, she put the back of her arthritic knuckles to Monika’s cheek. ‘We only live once in this world,’ she said, with what Monika recognised as a touch of theatre.
They ate their meal together in the open air with the trickle of street noise below. After a while, Monika said, ‘I must get out of here.’ She looked directly at Frau Lange. ‘I don’t understand why I’m still here, but I must leave soon.’
‘It is your boyfriend, is it not? The one they have taken you from?’
‘Yes. Do you know about him?’
‘We’re not told very much.’
‘I don’t believe what they’re saying about him.’
‘What are they saying?’
‘That he’s a trouble-maker and that he hates Jews.’
‘Is it not possible?’
‘No, I don’t believe so. Besides, I don’t need protection from him. I can look after myself. I just don’t understand why I am still here.’
Frau Lange placed her hand on top of Monika’s and said, ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t know any more than you do.’
‘What about Hannah Baumer? I want to speak to her.’
Frau Lange shook her head blankly. ‘I don’t know anyone called Hannah Baumer.’
‘You must do,’ Monika replied.
‘No.’
‘She works for the police. She will help me.’
‘I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of her.’
‘Then what about you? I want you to help me leave.’
‘Me?’
‘I have to get out. Help me. Please. Let me go.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘You must. I can climb over the edge right now. Just let me go.’
‘They will get rid of me if I do that. I will not be safe.’
‘The police will get rid of you?’
‘The police? I don’t work for the police.’
‘You don’t?’
‘This place, these rooms, they belong to the Braunhemden.’
‘The Brownshirts?
‘Yes, the Sturmabteilung. That’s their official name.’
‘The Sturmabteilung? But that’s the Nazi army, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘My late husband, he was a member of the party. When he died, I came to work here. They give me a pension and I don’t pay any rent. This is a good life for me. Running these rooms, it’s what keeps me in food and shelter. They are kind to me.’
‘But I thought I came here with the Prussian Police.’
‘I don’t know how you got here. This is a storage facility. They keep cigarettes here, mainly. Sometimes they hold parties and I make them their food. They have a few offices on the first floor. And the bedrooms of course.’
Monika listened. ‘Then what am I doing here?’ she eventually said. She felt her mental faculties tiring.
Frau Lange sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’ Then she stood up and walked to the edge of the rooftop. It was seven o’clock in the evening and the air was beginning to cool. She coughed a couple of times, then took a breath deep into her lungs. ‘I was not brought up to break the rules,’ she said, making her voice carry as if she was announcing something she’d been reflecting on for a long time. Then, looking back at Monika, she said, ‘I respect the few privileges I’ve been given. They give me stability. And I value that.’ She smiled. ‘But my dear girl, if I thought you were in danger, I would tell you.’
Upon hearing this, Monika made the decision that nobody else was going to help her but herself. And as she thought this, her mind drifted to the two police officers from the hotel who had put her into the car back to Berlin. The woman, Hannah Baumer, seemed genuinely concerned. The man, on the other hand, that sorry ogre in the bad suit, she knew he was the one to blame. He’d been the one who was most insistent about Arno. He’d been the one who made her believe the propaganda leaflet. And he’d been the one who put her in the car to take her here.
Then Frau Lange said, somewhat unexpectedly, ‘Perhaps you’d like to see where I live? You might find it more useful than you expect.’
14
Frau Lange led Monika back down inside the building and then into a small annexe room two floors below. They passed through a curtain of beads into a room filled from top to bottom with the strangest articles Monika had ever seen. It was nothing short of a treasure trove, a whole gamut of strange trinkets and worldly ornaments hanging on the walls and covering every square inch of flat surface.
‘This is where I live,’ Frau Lange said
as she went ahead and lit several oil lamps. Layers of semi-transparent drapes allowed rays of light to run in through cracks, cutting the room into distinct parts depending on where the flickering light fell. In every corner, there were so many ornaments and odd treasures that Monika didn’t altogether know where to step. It was as if the room was already too full to permit anything else to enter.
Frau Lange had no such problem as she strode over the clutter and planted herself in the centre of the room, pulling a sort of pirouette as she turned. It was the first time Monika had seen her express herself in any truly personal way, and she knew then that this room was Frau Lange’s entire life.
In fact, it was not to Monika’s taste. It was too dark and gothic, whereas her preference was for modern things, beauty in utility, the Bauhaus philosophy of form arising out of function.
Still, it was a fascinating place. On the walls were drawings, some of ancient figures – Plato, Ptolemy and Leonardo da Vinci. Next to them was a framed engraving of the Four Winds, four cherub-babies straining to expel breath from their cheeks. Other wall-hangings included zodiac charts and astronomical diagrams.
The objects on permanent display were not the end of it. Inside drawers were collections of amulets and talismans, some carved in wood, others made out of semi-precious stones, sapphire, sardonyx, amethyst. Frau Lange took one of these amulets, a small lump of yellow-reddish amber, and hung it around Monika’s neck by an old boot-lace, telling her it would protect her heart and lungs against disease.
‘What’s this,’ Monika asked, pointing to a metal rod that tapered to a narrow flat-edged point.
Frau Lange seemed especially pleased that Monika had picked out this object.
‘That? It’s one-half of a pair of dowsing rods. We use them to locate the energy lines of water. Now, where’s the other one?’
Monika picked up the object. She knew instinctively it could be useful to her – not for finding underground rivers but for more immediate advantages. She noticed the flat-edged point of the rod had the chiselled look of a screwdriver. With Frau Lange bent over looking for the other dousing rod, she slipped the one she was holding into the sleeve of her blouse.
‘Somewhere it will turn up,’ Frau Lange said, straightening herself up. ‘Did you take it?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘The rod? Did you take it?’ Frau Lange pointed to the indiscreet bulge in Monika’s sleeve.
‘I’m sorry,’ Monika said. She felt foolish. She began to pull the rod from out of her blouse.
‘No, don’t be sorry,’ Frau Lange said, patting the air with her hand, indicating that Monika should leave the metal rod where it was.
Monika paused.
‘Do what you need to do,’ Frau Lange said, nodding.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘What if you get into trouble?’
‘What I don’t know about, I can’t be blamed for,’ Frau Lange replied.
A short time later, Monika was back in her own room. Out of a growing sense of affection for Frau Lange, she waited for the old lady’s footsteps to retreat from behind the locked door before she attempted anything. When it all was completely quiet, she withdrew the dowsing rod from her sleeve and immediately began putting it to use on the locked door.
She pushed the rod under the lock. Using the flat-edge, the ceramic outer casing was easily prised away and unthreaded from the handle. She was pleased with herself. The tool was working.
Now to the intricacies of the actual mechanism. It was not easy. The metal rod was hardly made for twisting a rusted screw, and without anything to grip onto, simply turning it was near to impossible. But not completely so. Fortunately, the flat-edge of the rod was narrow enough to slot into the screw heads. And that being so, as long as she took a break every few minutes to rest her hands, things were beginning to happen.
Sooner or later the mechanism was in pieces on the floor. But the task was far from complete. The door was still locked, the bolt still in place. She peered inside the shadowy crevice she’d managed to cleave open and tried to picture how the mechanism actually operated. Now she took the dowsing rod and began probing the inside of the lock. The bolt was old and loose in its casing, so when she inserted the rod, she was able to prise the end into a narrow gap and almost scrape the bolt from left to right. It moved by tiny degrees, but at least it was moving. She paused every so often to be sure nobody was passing by outside. Shifting on her knees, she folded her legs beneath her to regain some comfort. The floor was cold but it hardly mattered. She pushed on.
After ten minutes more, the locked door was open.
15
Monika walked the length of the corridor, keeping close to the wall and checking over her shoulder. She stopped outside one of the many doors. There was a reason she chose this particular door: on it was pinned a hand-written notice that read Sturm. The key was still in the lock, so she turned it and opened the door. Inside was a narrow but long room filled from floor to ceiling with boxes of cigarettes. The packaging on the cigarette boxes said Sturm, Trommler Gold.
She took one of the boxes, which was about a foot long and must have contained twenty or thirty smaller packets inside, and turned it over in her hands. She’d never smoked a cigarette before in her life and had no desire to begin now. But to come upon this store cupboard felt like a small breakthrough.
She hunted around the room, looking for something that might give her a clue as to what to do next. Making a quick calculation, she estimated there were at least four-hundred boxes inside the room. If this was a storeroom, then sooner or later the cigarettes would be moved from here and transported somewhere else.
To give herself more privacy, she closed the door behind her and pulled on a chord to switch on the electric light. Now she had time to explore more thoroughly. She moved between the boxes of cigarettes and eventually came upon a sheet of paper. This was what she was looking for. It was a distribution schedule, detailing collection and delivery points all over Berlin.
To anybody else this might have been an anonymous bureaucratic document, but to Monika it was a piece of a puzzle she had every intention of solving. Her eyes scanned the paper, and once again she felt the power of her intellect rising to the surface. The paper showed a list of locations around the city, which Monika interpreted as a series of outlets that stocked the cigarettes. Judging from the time and dates listed, the collection and delivery of cigarettes occurred twice a week, once on a Monday and once again on a Thursday. Today was Tuesday. Her eyes moved over the list of establishments trying to recognise any familiar names. The chart was written in abbreviations, which made it harder to be certain. As far as she could tell, her own district of Wilmersdorf, where her parents’ house was located, was not listed.
Then she spotted an abbreviation she could finally make sense of: F.B.Tmpl. It was Berlin-Tempelhof Airport. Her gaze fixed on it like a kestrel hovering over a hunting ground. It was the only name she could be truly certain of. She’d been to the airport once with her father on a day-trip. They went to watch the great silver birds come and go, one after another, at the world’s busiest airport. That memory was a happy one and made her next decision an easy one. She had made her choice. From this point on, the airport was her goal.
She spent the next few minutes memorising the delivery schedule as best as she could, re-visiting the list to make sure she hadn’t missed anything of significance. Next, she toured the shelving, standing on her tiptoes and bending down with folded knees, searching for anything else that might be forged into another opportunity. It was without a doubt the best chance she had of making an escape, and as she realised this, a new sense of determination begin to unfold inside her.
Her thoughts went like this: the cigarette storeroom would be accessed in two days time, probably first thing on Thursday morning, sometime between seven and eight o’clock, since the first drop-off was listed as 8.30 in the morning. The movement of cigarettes meant the building would be ope
n, it’s doors traversed by outside visitors and it’s quiet corridors momentarily disturbed. Somewhere in this activity, she ought to be able to make her move.
The next day passed as the previous one had, an uncharted slide into morning, noon and night, with the quiet suburban street outside gradually falling into complete silence. Monika slept only in fits and starts. When dawn came on Thursday morning, she took the rising sun as her cue. She dressed and began her preparations. After having restored the lock on the door two nights before, she returned to the arduous task of dismantling it again. At an hour after sunrise, she was stood in the corridor. She decided to bring the metal rod with her. It had become an object she trusted.
She closed the door to her room, turned the key to best disguise her absence, then made her way down the staircase to the front door that led to the hallway. As she had noted from seeing the entrance hall two days before, a small rectangular nook in the corner – a sort of miniature cloakroom – could be a perfect place for her to conceal herself. She squeezed into the space and wedged herself as deep inside as she could.
Then she waited. Without access to a clock, it was impossible to say how long she would have to stand there pressed into the shadows of the nook, but she felt able to wait there all day if necessary. She had come this far. A fierce pride, as resolute as stone, rose within her. At that moment, she felt frightened of absolutely nothing.
After around forty-five minutes, barely daring to breathe, she heard the sound of voices outside. The main door to the building opened and two men came in. They passed by Monika’s hiding place and went straight for the staircase leading to the first floor. Monika emerged cautiously yet without hesitation. The front door was left open. She went through it quickly, out into the street where a black truck was parked on the roadside.
It was at this moment that the first hint of uncertainty made her think twice. Her resolute intention was to smuggle herself to Tempelhof airport inside the van. From there she could make a telephone call, contact the police and finally go home to her parents. But now stood out in the open street, she wondered if it made more sense simply to run.
Vanished in Berlin: Kidnap suspense mystery set in 1930s Berlin (Berlin Tales Book 2) Page 8