Jeff and Alison were tasked with greeting the guests, while I prepared myself 'backstage' in the kitchen. They were as nervous as I was. I had to warn them several times about overindulging in the wine. I abstained completely. I didn't want it reacting with the antidepressants, or the antiepileptics, or the antipsychotics, or the antihistamines. I had several Starbucks lattes lined up, which I sipped one after the other. It was my way of chilling, like transcendental meditation, with added milk. As each guest arrived, Alison or Jeff made sure they received a glass of wine and were subjected to a high-pressure sales pitch. I had to shift books before I gave my little talk, because there was no knowing what sort of chaos it might descend into later. When one of our major players walked through the door, Alison popped her head into the kitchen to update me and I duly marked off his or her name on my mental list.
DI Robinson was one of the first there. He stood at the back watching everyone like a hawk. Every time I peeked out at him he was pushing himself up on to the balls of his feet, and then dropping down again, and then going up again, as if trying to fool anyone watching him into thinking that he was a former dancer recalling his glory days en pointe, whereas what he really looked like was an undercover cop with scratchy piles. Daniel Trevor's children, Kyle and Michelle, arrived, and apparently made noises about taking over the meeting and greeting, but were quickly distracted by the wine and thereafter busied themselves with making sure their father's final publication was properly displayed. Brendan Coyle arrived in a very smart and expensive-looking suit, and appeared disappointed to discover that the shop wasn't packed with nubile young dancers. The American poet who had discovered Daniel's body came in, already quite drunk. Brian, Alison's ex, came in on a pair of crutches, and with his head all swollen up. I had my reasons for inviting him, and was quite prepared to forget that he had had sex with my wife-to-be and that he had tried to implicate me in an attempted murder by hurling himself repeatedly at a wheel brace. Garth Corrigan, the banker for whom I'd solved The Case of the Missing FA Cup, arrived, all smiles, with his rediscovered love May holding his hand. Garth was one of half a dozen former clients whose services I'd called upon to help me solve the case. Another was Jimmy Martin, the graffiti-artist son of a dead graffiti artist, who came in rather sheepishly, not ever having been in a bookshop before; I'd traded his community service redecoration of my shop for something infinitely more useful.
As seven p.m. approached, Alison entered the kitchen, closed the door all but a fraction, and pressed her pale face to the tiny gap.
'What is it?' I asked.
'Max Mayerova. I saw him crossing the road. I couldn't just stand there and give him a glass of wine like nothing had happened. He tried to kill me.'
'You're safe with me,' I said.
She looked at me. 'I know that. Although you are a shit-magnet.'
'Thank you,' I said. I nodded at the door. 'He's not alone, is he?'
'No, the brothers are either side of the old man, helping him in.'
'Good. Excellent.'
She came across to me. She put her arms around my neck. 'I'm proud of you,' she said, and kissed me.
'Why? I haven't done anything yet.'
'But you will, and you'll do it well.'
'Do you think presenting my evidence in the form of a narrative poem is a good idea?'
'No,' she said.
There was no spotlight, no drum roll, not even a microphone, just a low makeshift stage made out of the bases of two packing crates, a laptop, and a bare wall to act as a screen. As I emerged from the kitchen, the hubbub from almost fifty dancers, publishers, friends and murderers was considerable. They probably hadn't even noticed the soundtrack to the evening's proceedings, which was just high enough not to be subliminal: Talking Heads singing 'Psycho Killer', Elvis Costello's 'Watching the Detectives', Itzhak Perlman playing the theme from Schindler's List, plus Captain Sensible's version of 'Happy Talk', just to confuse anyone who was listening and looking for patterns.
I stood by the laptop and waited for silence to fall. And waited. I wasn't even noticed enough to be ignored. Eventually Jeff hammered a spoon against a wine bottle and shouted, 'Ladies and gentlemen, silence please, for a few words from our host, a man who needs no introduction.'
He left it at that, when an introduction was precisely what I needed. A build-up. Perhaps even a support act. There were no lights blinding me, but I blinked nevertheless. Sweat dribbled down my forehead. My pacemaker ratcheted and clanked. I have never been one for standing up in front of a crowd or even for myself. I was an internalist standing in the brogues of an externalist. I had my speech memorised, but forgotten. I had my pages before me nevertheless, but my eyesight was suddenly blurred. If I hadn't so recently met a stroke victim I would have thought I was having a stroke. My eyes settled on Mark Mayerova, sitting with the privilege of age in the front row. Max sat on his left, then there was an empty chair, and then there was Karl. With every other borrowed chair in the room taken, it seemed odd, until I suddenly realised that the empty chair was meant for the only major player who wasn't there, whom we had never expected to attend, Anne, Mark's ex-wife, the dancer and author herself. He had deliberately left it empty in tribute to her. Touching, if I hadn't known what I knew, and had the knowledge of knowing what I knew; and knowing that he didn't know that I knew the knowledge that I knew gave me a renewed resolve to do this, to face my demons, and present my case.
That and seeing Alison smiling encouragement from the sidelines.
'Ladies and gentlemen,' I said, my voice now firm, and grave, my eyes focused, 'I want to welcome you to No Alibis and this reception to mark the launch of the first and probably last book by Anne Smith, the doyenne of modern dance in Northern Ireland.' There was an appreciative buzz amongst those in the audience who had a clue who she was. 'Hers is indeed a remarkable story.' I held up a copy of I Came to Dance. 'Unfortunately very little of it is contained within these covers.' The buzz grew deeper, and more urgent. 'Bear with me now, please, as I explain to you The Case of the Dancing Jews.'
44
'Bookselling is hard, ladies and gentlemen. It's relentless. The books just keep coming. Beans don't change, peas are peas are peas, but books are always evolving. There's bugger-all profit, the hours are extraordinary and the shoplifters are stupid, because you can just borrow the bloody things from the library. You can't borrow beans.'
I studied them. They studied me.
I nodded. 'No, sir,' I said, 'you can't borrow beans.'
Several guests, unfamiliar with my ways, glanced to the door, as if realising that they'd been hooked by a free sausage roll into attending a three-hour time-share sales pitch. Others, on more familiar territory, waited for me to get to the point. The Mayerovas never took their eyes off me.
'We do it because it's a labour of love,' I continued, 'we do it because we think it's important. And here, we do it because we like to champion the underdog, the bastard outcast of literature we like to call mystery fiction. I often say, give me a young man uncorrupted by the critics, and I will make him a crime aficionado for life.'
Alison cleared her throat. Feet shuffled. DI Robinson rose and fell.
I was not to be deterred. This was my time.
'I have made a lifelong study of crime fiction. I have read all of the great works, and most of the middling ones, and many of the minor ones, and a lot of trash besides. There is virtually nothing about the solving of fictional crimes that I do not know, and what are fictional crimes but factual crimes with hats on? It seemed only natural to me when, a few short months ago, I was asked to help solve a real-life mystery that I should combine what I have learned about crime as a reader, and human nature as a bookseller, in pursuit of a solution to a fiendishly difficult case. Since that first triumph I have investigated many mysteries that previously had confounded the forces of law and order, and there is not one that I have not solved. But my most testing case, my most harrowing, and without doubt my most dangerous, walked through th
ese very doors just a matter of days ago and it concerned the man whom, together of course with our esteemed senile author, we have come here tonight to pay tribute to: Daniel Trevor.'
I pressed the miniature PowerPoint button in my hand, and a picture of Daniel Trevor appeared on the wall behind me. There were a few hushed oooohs from my captive audience. And they were captive. One of DI Robinson's undercover comrades had locked the front doors.
'Daniel Trevor . . . murdered last week.'
This got a bigger reaction. As did the next picture, which I immediately clicked up beside Daniel's.
'Manfredd Freetz of the Bockenheimer publishing company and a business colleague of Daniel Trevor's – murdered in Frankfurt.'
The hubbub increased. And again with the third photograph.
'Malcolm Carlyle, private eye, employed by Daniel and murdered shortly thereafter, right next door.'
Although I did not look at them directly, it seemed to me that only the Mayerovas were failing to react to my revelations.
I clicked again. 'This is Terry McIvor – an innocent young car thief, hideously burned to death because he was mistaken for me.'
There were groans of horror, because the photo I put up was horrific. I had been unable to get a photo of Terry McIvor as he was, but some bright spark from his immediate neighbourhood had taken a photo of the burned corpse on his mobile and posted it on the internet even before poor Terry's family were informed of his death.
'Four murders, ladies and gentlemen, and that's without even mentioning the fate of Rosemary Trevor . . .' She appeared on screen, beautiful, right next to her husband. 'Daniel's wife, who remains missing presumed dead almost a year after she went to Germany on business connected to the very book we have come together to launch here this evening.' I looked up at the photographs for several long moments of silent contemplation before turning back to my audience. 'These deaths have all been made to look as if they might have been accidents or from natural causes or suicide. But none of them are; they are murders, murders carried out to protect a secret that has lain dormant for more than sixty years but which I can reveal here tonight.'
My audience gasped. I nodded around them, allowing my eyes to flit to Mark Mayerova for just long enough to establish that he was looking right back at me, and that he was neither shaken nor stirred, but cool, even relaxed, or at least he was striving to give that impression. His hand was clasped tight around his walking stick, the knuckles showing white.
'But I'm getting ahead of myself.' I clicked the PowerPoint button and a photograph of Anne Mayerova as a teenage dancer appeared on the wall just as the other murder victims disappeared. 'The author, one of the photographs from I Came to Dance. Shortly after this was taken she married Mark . . .' I nodded down at him. '. . . in Prague. Unfortunately no photographs of the big day have survived.' I clicked again. 'This is an artist's impression of how they must have looked . . . love's young dream. The drawing is by one of our finest young artists, who is here tonight . . . Alison, take a bow.' Alison smiled bashfully as most of the audience turned to look at her. 'Alison is also the author of a series of graphic novels and comics that are available here in the store.' I indicated the relevant area. It is always important to take advantage of such gatherings to try to shift stock. 'Back in Prague, meanwhile, conditions were deteriorating, with the Nazis in control and all Jews being forced to register for deportation. These two young lovers were about to be sent away, first to the ghetto at Terezin and from there, in the spring of 1944, to Auschwitz. Here they were eventually separated into the male and female camps. Anne herself was possessed of an incredible survival instinct and a spirit that would not be quashed. Even in the midst of the horror of that death camp, she found a way to dance.' I clicked on to the next picture. 'Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is a little-known fact that even in Auschwitz . . . and in this artist's impression, again by our esteemed friend Alison, we can really appreciate how uplifting it must have been for those poor dying souls to see a truly great dancer perform.' I allowed them to think about that for a little bit before continuing. 'Remarkably, where millions died, both Anne and Mark survived the war and actually made it home to Prague under their own steam, arriving within hours of each other for a joyous reunion – which we see here . . . another masterful depiction by Alison.'
I beamed at her again, but she didn't seem quite so happy. She made an odd kind of face at me, jutting her head forward and screwing up her eyes, which I took to mean get on with it. But there would be no hurrying. It was important to explain the background.
'However, they found it difficult to settle in Prague, and with the Communists coming to power, they very quickly decided to move on. They had some obscure family connection here, so this is where they came, to our Belfast, which at the time must have seemed like a smart idea. They were determined to blend in and so changed their name to Smith. Mark set up the company we all know today, Smith Motors, while Anne turned to education, teaching dance both at a girls' secondary school and also in her spare time. Her success with this led to her forming her own dance school – and the rest, as they say, is history, all of it exhaustively chronicled in I Came to Dance.' The front cover appeared on the wall behind me, and was followed by a succession of photographs at regular intervals showing Anne with her students. These provided a changing background, calm and understated, while I delved further into dark matters. 'But you are no doubt wondering, how do we get from this lovely, copiously illustrated, value-for-money book to murder most foul? Well, ladies and gentlemen, it has all to do with Rosemary Trevor's accidental discovery that Anne had been in Auschwitz. Although it was not a secret, she had never publicised the fact, and in fact, somewhat bizarrely, made no reference to it at all in her memoir. Rosemary immediately realised that this was the real story, and attempted to get Anne to write it all down. From this moment on, her fate was sealed.' I nodded around the gathering. 'You see, certain persons knew that if Anne wrote in detail about what she knew, and particularly because her mental health was beginning to fail, she might forget herself and reveal the secret she had been keeping all of these years. What the killer or killers couldn't know was whether Anne had already revealed it, or exactly how much Rosemary knew. They decided that even if Rosemary or the people she spoke to didn't yet understand the significance of what they had heard, nevertheless they had to be eliminated. That's how important it was to them. At first this was just Rosemary herself, and then to play safe Manfredd as well – but once Daniel Trevor assigned a private investigator to the case, Malcolm Carlyle, and he began to uncover some of the background, he too became a target. After Malcolm was dealt with it all went quiet until Trevor, frustrated by lack of police progress, decided to employ, well, me. And that was really when things started to escalate.' I again nodded gravely. 'So what was this secret; what was so important sixty years after the fact, when most of those involved must surely already be dead, that so many murders had to be committed to keep it hidden?'
It was what we know in the trade as a rhetorical question. No hands were raised.
'Well,' I said, 'I visited Anne Mayerova and heard her story in her own words. I went over and over it in my head, but still couldn't decide what there was in it that was worth going on a killing spree for. And then one of our esteemed guests here tonight unwittingly gave me the clue that enabled me to solve The Case of the Dancing Jews. In fact, when he first walked into this store I thought he might actually be the killer – the clipped, efficient manner, the German accent – but then I relaxed totally when he reached up to lift a book down from one of my shelves and I saw the Auschwitz number tattooed right there on his arm.' I nodded down at Mark Mayerova. 'Perhaps you would care to . . . ?' I indicated my own arm. Mark Mayerova shook his head. 'Of course. This gentleman, in fact, introduced himself as Anne's husband Mark, and told me he'd come to thank me for taking the trouble to go and visit his wife in Purdysburn. It was only much later when I sat down to examine the facts of the case that the penny finally droppe
d. You see, I had jotted down the number tattooed on Anne's arm when I saw her, and I did the same for Mark. I'm like that with numbers. It's a little hobby of mine. I like looking for patterns. There are all kinds of patterns. You can find them anywhere. Not just numbers, but in tiles, and trees, and stars, and . . .'
My eyes fell on Jeff. He was shaking his head. I took a deep breath.
Concentrate.
'You see, as soon as I had those numbers, they just fascinated me, I had to know everything there was to know about them. I became obsessed by them. I learned that during the Holocaust, concentration camp prisoners received tattoos at only one location – Auschwitz. At first these were sewn into their prison uniforms, and then only for those who were selected for work details, not those going directly to the gas chambers. But so many were dying that there was no way of identifying the bodies after their clothing was removed, so the SS began to tattoo the bodies of registered prisoners in order to identify who had died. In the spring of 1943, the SS authorities throughout the entire Auschwitz complex adopted the practice of tattooing almost all previously registered and newly arrived prisoners, including female prisoners. In order to avoid the assignment of excessively high numbers, they introduced new sequences of numbers in mid-May 1944. This series, prefaced by the letter A, began with 1 and ended at 20,000. Once the number 20,000 was reached, a new series beginning with B was introduced. Some fifteen thousand men received B-series tattoos. Are you with me?'
Most of my guests had come to hear about Irish dance, and here they were stuck in the middle of the Holocaust. Some looked horrified, some looked blank; others were bored and playing with their mobile phones. But those directly involved were clearly fascinated.
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