Blood Relative

by David Thomas

  Tretow’s body slumped forward onto mine, forcing me back to the ground in a gruesome embrace. As I lay there, pinned to the cold, wet, iron-hard path, I screamed, ‘Get off me!’ and swiped my hands across my face, frantically trying to get the contents of Tretow’s skull off my skin and hair. Then I saw a pair of women’s leather boots below tight-cut blue jeans and heard the sound of Gerber’s voice, like an irritable wife upbraiding a wandering husband as she said, ‘You should have told me where you were going.’

  But I wasn’t paying any attention to her. A sense of calm was slowly cutting through the disgust, the nausea and the panic of my death embrace with Hans-Peter Tretow as I realized that my quest had finally reached its holy grail. Now I knew why Mariana had killed my brother. And I knew what had made her do it, too.

  48

  THURSDAY

  They took me to the nearest casualty department and I was shoved full of painkillers while my hand was x-rayed and plastered and my lower leg stitched up. With my one working hand I washed Tretow’s bloody remains from my face and then stuck my head under the tap, tunelessly humming, ‘I’m going to wash that man right out of my hair.’ It was gallows humour, the song of a man who has walked through the valley of the shadow of death and somehow come out the other side.

  While I was still in the hospital Gerber and Weiss interviewed me about the sequence of events that had led me to the showdown with Tretow at the Holocaust Memorial. I had a question for Gerber, too: ‘How did you find me in there?’

  ‘With difficulty. I had put a tracker into the lining of your coat while you were talking to Wahrmann. It was my opinion, and that of my colleagues, that you might try to do something reckless. But Tretow chose the worst possible place for me to find you. There are almost three thousand of those concrete slabs and each one of them provides excellent cover, as well as interfering with any kind of signal. It was only when you shouted out in pain that I was able to get a bearing on where you were.’

  I looked at the massive plaster mitten through which only the tips of my fingers were visible: ‘So breaking my knuckles saved my life … doesn’t seem too much of a price to pay.’

  ‘It saved your life twice over since you also disabled Meyer.’

  ‘Will he live?’

  ‘Oh yes. He has a little concussion, some whiplash on his neck. That is all.’

  ‘And Tretow … He said something to me, just before he died. “The answer was in the allotment.”’

  Weiss frowned. ‘Do you know what he meant by that?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. There were allotments near the orphanage. They’re still there, even though the orphanage itself has gone. Anyway, Tretow had one of them. He used to take the kids there, his favourites. I think you’ll find something there. Something that explains exactly what he did.’

  ‘We’ll start a search in the morning, at first light.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ I said. ‘When I was talking to Tretow he said he still had films of the kids with men. Important men. You should try to get hold of them before someone else does.’

  Weiss glanced at Gerber and she rose to her feet, pulling her mobile out of her bag. As she left the room she was already giving instructions to organize a search of Tretow’s home. I turned back to Weiss: ‘He also said he had pictures … of my wife Mariana, when she was little. He said they were—’

  ‘We found them in his coat,’ Weiss said, gently interrupting me. ‘They are – how should I say this – very explicit, very disturbing. I would not advise you to look at them now. But maybe we could make copies of them for the benefit of your wife’s lawyers. They would, perhaps, help in her defence.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I closed my eyes for a moment, thinking of the photographs of herself that Mariana had sent me years before. Had she been aware of the echoes from her childhood, or was she unconsciously playing out the same scenarios as she exposed herself to the camera lens: compelled to do it, but not knowing why?

  ‘So what will you do now?’ Weiss asked. ‘I can have someone take you back to your hotel. Perhaps you can get an hour or two of sleep before you fly home.’

  ‘Not yet. There’s somewhere else I have to go first, someone I need to see.’

  49

  It was half past five in the morning, still pitch-dark outside and hardly a sociable time to pay a visit. Still I pressed my finger to the doorbell and kept it there, even when there was no answer for ten seconds, thirty … almost a minute before the intercom crackled and a tired, cross voice asked, ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Crookham, we need to talk.’

  ‘Go away. I have nothing more to say to you.’

  ‘Please, wait … Tretow is dead. You’re safe now.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s dead, I promise. Let me in and I’ll explain it all …’

  Heike Schmidt pressed the buzzer, the lock clicked open and I went up to her apartment. She brewed some coffee, we sat down at her kitchen table and I gave her a version of the account I’d provided for Gerber and Weiss, minus Tretow’s remarks about Schmidt herself.

  Schmidt was sceptical, almost indifferent at first. But as my story went on and she came to believe that it might be true I could see her interest, attention and even excitement rising. From time to time she interrupted, asking me for extra details, or making me repeat a section she particularly liked, so that I felt almost like a father reading his child a bedtime story. And there was something childlike about her relish of the more gruesome aspects of the story.

  ‘Did his head just splatter, like a watermelon?’ she asked me after I’d described Tretow’s final moment.

  ‘I suppose so. Something like that.’

  ‘And you were covered with his actual brains?’

  ‘Yes,’ I almost retched. ‘It wasn’t very pleasant.’

  ‘Yuck! … So he’s absolutely certainly dead? He can’t ever get better?’

  ‘No. He’s gone forever and he’s not coming back.’

  I felt as though I’d been talking to Schmidt’s eight-or nine-year-old self. The abused and exploited girl that had been hidden away inside her for so long was crawling back out into the light.

  ‘Now can I ask you some questions?’ I said.

  ‘Sure,’ she replied.

  ‘There are really just two things I want to know. The first sounds absurd, I know, but did Tretow ever wear aftershave when you knew him?’

  Schmidt did not say a word. Instead, she burst out laughing, and not just for a second or two, but a full-blown attack of the giggles. A couple of times she tried to compose herself enough to talk, but then she collapsed again, leaving me unnerved, even alarmed by her manic emotion. I felt embarrassed. Finally, Schmidt took a deep breath, wiped the tears from her eyes and said, ‘Yes, he certainly did wear aftershave. In fact …’ she started to giggle again. ‘In fact … Control yourself, Heike! … In fact, we used to call him Mister Stinky because he always smelled so strongly. And the stuff he used was really horrible, too!’

  ‘Privileg?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes! That’s so funny! How did you know?’ she squealed delightedly. ‘When he first arrived at the orphanage he used to talk about the good old days when he had the finest French and American cologne. But now he had to make do with … what did he call it? Yes, “cheap communist muck”. Later, when … when we were all working for him, he sometimes got good stuff again. But we still called him Mister Stinky anyway.’

  Suddenly the demon that had haunted my imagination from the night of Andy’s murder was brought right down to size. He was nothing more than Mr Stinky, a grubby pervert who soaked himself in cheap, malodorous perfume to cover the stench of his corruption.

  ‘Why did you want to know about Privileg?’ Schmidt asked.

  ‘My brother had found some while he was here. I think he was wearing it on the night he died. I think the smell of it and the memories it brought back was what made Mariana … you know, go crazy.’

  ‘My God, that’s
terrible. Do you think he knew about Tretow, that he used to wear it?’

  ‘No, I’m certain he didn’t. Knowing Andy, he’d have done it as a joke.’

  ‘But not a funny joke, I am afraid …’

  ‘No, and my next question isn’t much fun, either … I have to know: what happened at Tretow’s allotment?’

  Heike Schmidt said nothing. She sat quite still for several seconds then got up and went to her kettle, the old-fashioned metal kind, sitting on a gas hob. She fussed with it distractedly as she made herself another cup of coffee.

  ‘Want one?’ she said, not even bothering to turn in my direction.

  ‘No thanks, I’m fine.’

  She opened a drawer in the unit next to the oven and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Supposed to have given up,’ she said. Any hint of childish innocence had disappeared now. This was an adult woman: one who had seen and suffered too much.

  She held her hair back with one hand as she bent down to get a light from the hob. Finally, she brought her coffee cup and a saucer over to the table with her as she sat back down. She flicked some ash into the saucer: ‘Do you mind?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course not. Go ahead.’

  Schmidt smoked her cigarette right down to the filter, not saying a word before she finally stubbed it out in the saucer. Then she grimaced. ‘Stale … tasted horrible.’ She swallowed some coffee to take away the taste of the tobacco. Only when all that was done did she start to answer my question.

  ‘Tretow always made it very clear to the children that, you know, worked for him, that we must never tell anyone what went on between us and the men: not even our closest friends, not even the children who came with us on his “little trips to the country”. This was our special secret. I mean we all knew, of course, because we were all doing …’

  For a moment she was unable to go on. I didn’t even try to prompt her. Nothing I could say could possibly be of any use.

  ‘We were all doing the same things,’ Schmidt finally said. ‘Well, I say that, but I don’t know for sure because … I suppose that was why Tretow didn’t want us talking: so that we would never know …’

  ‘What about Mariana? Did she know?’

  ‘Not at first, no. All she knew was that we were getting presents from the men. She was a little jealous. She used to beg Tretow to let her have a nice uncle too, but he said no. She was the precious one, the princess, so he was saving her for a true prince.’

  Yes, I thought, a fat, slobbering British politician. Some prince.

  ‘You said, “not at first”. So she did find out in the end?’

  ‘We all did. Two of us talked, two boys. They were called Timmi and Marko. You know how some little boys are almost prettier than a girl? Well, that was how Timmi was. He was like a boy version of Mariana. In fact, they were very good friends. Timmi was always playing with us girls. He was very sweet, very gentle, not like the other boys. Marko was the total opposite. He was a little tough guy, not afraid of anybody, always getting into fights, even with the bigger boys. When anyone ever picked on Timmi, Marko always came to his rescue. For some reason, even though they were so different, they were very good friends. They talked about everything. So Timmi was upset by things he had to do, or the way someone had treated him. Then he talked to Marko. Anyway, Marko started telling everyone else, saying he was going to go to Mister Stinky and tell him they wouldn’t go with the uncles any more. Tretow found out and he was furious.’

  Schmidt’s face crumpled. She began to cry, still trying to force the words out: ‘He … He … Oh God, I am sorry …’

  ‘That’s OK, take your time.’

  ‘He killed them … hit them again and again …’ Schmidt scrabbled on the table for another cigarette. ‘He made us look at their bodies, all covered in blood, and told us that was how we would end up if we told anyone anything at all. And he told us that he could kill us, any of us, and no one would ever care … and we believed him because he had killed Marko and Timmi and there were no police or anything. Then he cut the bodies into pieces – he did not force us to watch that, thank God – and he put them in garbage sacks and took them to the vegetable garden. He made us dig a deep hole. We had to take it in turns. Then he put the bags into the holes and we had to cover them up again. We even had to take plants from a little greenhouse that he had and plant them in the earth that we had disturbed, so that no one could see what we had done. And then, once again he told us. Do not tell anyone, ever. And to this day, I never have …’

  ‘Those boys … had Mariana …?’

  Schmidt looked me in the eyes and gave a sad little nod of the head. ‘She had recruited them, yes. She had such charm, even then, as a little girl. I mean, I knew I was so ugly compared to her, but I didn’t mind. She had chosen me to be her friend and that was enough to make me feel a little bit special. I know that must sound stupid …’

  ‘No, it doesn’t, not at all. Believe me, I know exactly how you felt.’

  ‘Then you know she could persuade anyone to do anything for her. But she did not know what would happen, or what Tretow would do to Marko and Timmi. How could she?’

  ‘But once it had happened, and she saw them dead, she must have blamed herself.’

  ‘Yes, I would think so, although she never spoke of it.’

  ‘No …’

  But the secret shame had been planted deep inside her, covered by layer upon layer of self-protection until, one evening in Yorkshire, a man had come to her house, smelling like Tretow, like Mister Stinky, and then the whole cycle of death and blood had been played out once again. Now I realized why Mariana had said she was guilty, why it was all her fault, why she was a böses Mädchen. She hadn’t been referring to Andy’s death at all. She had no consciousness of that. It was the little girl in her talking and the two boys’ deaths for which she blamed herself.

  I was lost in my thoughts, so at first I did not feel Heike Schmidt’s fingers tapping on my arm …

  ‘Herr Crookham … Herr Crookham,’ she was saying.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are the police going to the garden?’

  ‘Yes, the search is beginning at first light.’

  Schmidt glanced out of the kitchen window at the sky just turning from black to a paler grey.

  ‘Then we must get going,’ she said. ‘I will save them some time. I will show them where to dig.’

  50

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  North Yorkshire

  Mariana had planted two large pots of lavender by the entrance to her vegetable garden and there were bumblebees and cabbage-white butterflies buzzing and fluttering among the scented purple flowers in the warmth of the afternoon sun. She was kneeling down, a small weeding fork in her hand, beside a bed she had planted with courgettes. Their large, bristly leaves were interspersed with the vivid orange and yellow of nasturtiums and the scarlet splashes of cherry tomatoes, clambering up a metal frame at the far end of the bed.

  I watched as she put the fork down on the grass beside her and knelt there, silently, facing the life that she created. Then I closed the gate behind me. Mariana turned her head at the noise and smiled as she saw me.

  ‘Are you off, then?’ she said.

  ‘Soon,’ I replied. ‘I just came to see how you were.’ I held out the china mug in my hand: ‘I brought you a cup of tea.’

  Mariana got up, dusted down her bare knees and came towards me. ‘Thank you, kind sir,’ she said, giving a little mock curtsey as she took the mug.

  I looked at her lovely face. It was a little thinner than it had been, frailer, with darker hollows beneath her cheekbones and faint new lines round her eyes and the side of her mouth. The life was back in her tiger-eyes, but there was a new, reflective quality, a gentle melancholy to the way she looked at the world. I leaned forward and gave her a soft, quick kiss.

  ‘You’re very welcome.’

  ‘Mmm …’ she murmured as she took the first sip from her mug. ‘Perfect.’

  ‘Th
e tea or the kiss?’

  Mariana laughed contentedly: ‘Both.’

  ‘You looked like you were a million miles away.’

  A shadow of sadness crossed her face: ‘I was thinking about my father, how wrong I’d been about him all these years, how cruel I’d been to hate him.’

  ‘You got to see him, though. That was something.’

  ‘Well, to be reconciled at last, that was wonderful … but painful too. We had so little time together …’

  ‘I know … so are you sure you’re going to be all right?’

  Mariana was five weeks into her phased release from in-patient psychiatric care back into everyday life. Week by week she would be allowed to spend more time at home until she was finally reclassified as an out-patient. Tonight would be her first night alone in the house.

  On the basis of the psychiatric evidence, a detailed account of Hans-Peter Tretow’s activities provided by the Berlin police and the personal testimony of both Weiss and Heike Schmidt, the judge at Mariana’s trial had been as generous in his sentencing as we could have hoped. He had found that she had not been responsible for her actions at the time of Andy’s death and posed no further threat to society. He therefore placed her in Dr Wray’s care, leaving him to decide the appropriate form and duration of treatment, first at a low-security psychiatric unit and more recently at the private clinic where he also practised. On compassionate grounds she had also been permitted to fly to Berlin to see her father again before he died. His daughter’s presence after so many years seemed to give Rainer Wahrmann the closure he needed to depart the world in peace. Mariana and her mother had been at his bedside when he died.

  ‘Yes, I’ll be all right,’ Mariana answered. ‘Thanks to you.’

  ‘You mean, the further away I am, the happier you are?’ I teased.

  ‘No,’ she draped her arms around my neck and looked up at me with a gaze that seemed to reach right into my heart and soul. ‘Because you saved me.’