Schreiber's Secret

by Roger Radford

  “What’s up, Jim? Anything from the Yard?”

  “Chasing blue-bloody-bottles, old man. They haven’t a clue on this taxi driver murder and the Chief Rabbi’s giving them hell. They’re sure it’s the work of a fascist and not an Arab, but the world’s fuller of fascists than it is of Arabs. Like looking for a needle in a hay-bloody-stack.”

  “What do they call that, Jim?”

  “What?”

  “The way you speak.”

  “Oh, you mean bloody this and bloody that. It’s a figure of speech, a tmesis – you try saying that when you’re pissed, my boy – a separation of the parts of a word by the insertion of another word.” Pottage laughed. “Bloody seems to fit every bloody time. Like I’m the Cinder-bloody-rella of this organization.”

  “Come on, Jim, you get all the fun and none of the responsibility.”

  “True, dear boy, true.”

  “Logan’s breathing down my neck for a new angle,” said Edwards, rubbing his square jaw roughly in thought.

  “Leave him to me, Mark. If I breathe on him, he’ll be in a stupor for a week.”

  “No, seriously, Jim. Have you got any ideas?”

  “Aar, I think the police be holding something back,” said the older man, slowly taking his seat at the screen opposite.

  “Funny. I’ve got the same feeling. Bob Webb intimated something at the scene. Damned if I can guess what, though.”

  The conversation was suddenly interrupted by the telephone on Pottage’s desk. Picking up the receiver, he greeted the caller and then quickly placed his hand over the mouthpiece. Mouthing the words “talk of the devil”, he handed the phone to Edwards.

  “Hello, Edwards here. Oh, hi, Bob, what’s news?”

  “When’s your next edition due out?” the policeman asked, his voice scratchy with urgency.

  Edwards glanced at his watch. “About an hour.”

  “Good,” said Webb. “Listen, we found a note by the body.”

  “Jesus, Bob, how long have you been holding out on this one?”

  “Don’t blame me. It was a board decision.”

  “Well?” asked Edwards eagerly. He could already see Pottage champing at the bit.

  “‘Just for you – HS’. That is, there’s a dash between ‘you’ and the initials. We don’t know what they stand for. It’s typewritten and we’re checking out the make.”

  “What do you think it means, Bob?” Edwards asked, scribbling the contents of the note on a piece of paper. He could smell the presence of Pottage behind him.

  “Look, I can’t talk for long, Mark. We think that whoever did this thing may be HS, although why he should leave his initials, I don’t know. It may be a decoy. The Hyams family don’t know any HS. We’ll be putting out an official statement soon.”

  “Thanks, Bob. I appreciate it. By the way, any news on the weapons used in the murder?”

  “Oh, yeah, forgot all about it,” came the sheepish reply. “Point thirty-eight Smith and Wesson with a silencer. We haven’t found the gun or the knife. Looks like he took them with him.”

  “Thanks, Bob. Keep in touch.”

  Edwards leaned over to replace the receiver and then swivelled to face Pottage.

  “So Logan’ll get his new angle,” smiled the older man. “A note on the body, I presume. Just love those notes. Adds so much spice.”

  “Right, Jim, but it doesn’t really amount to a lot, does it?”

  Pottage leaned over to look once more at the note on the desk. “Hmm. The way it’s written you would have to believe that HS is taking the mickey out of his victim. On the other hand ...”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, it could be the other way round. That is, the killer’s leaving a message for someone with the initials HS.”

  Edwards stared once more at the words. Pottage was right. It was ambiguous. Still, he had his new lead, however skimpy. With all the furore going on, it would probably be worthwhile bringing forward the second edition. Another Edwards exclusive. He looked up at Pottage. “Try to get me some more quotes from the Hyams family about this, will you, Jim, and anybody else you think would have an interesting comment. Also, go and let Logan know what’s happened.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” said the corpulent Pottage, wheeling away. There was nothing he enjoyed better than a juicy murder mystery.

  Edwards turned to face his VDU. He had the bare bones of a new lead. He’d flesh it out later with Pottage’s gleanings and background material. Just as he placed his fingers over the keyboard, he could not help but think once more of Danielle and their first night together. They had arranged to meet in the Czar Ricardo wine bar, the Mail’s watering hole, that evening. He knew he was getting in deep, and for the first time in his life he felt unafraid of commitment. Little did he realize that the story he was about to write would change both their lives irrevocably.

  An hour later and two floors up, Danielle Green sat at her desk reading the front page of the second edition of the Standard. Mark’s byline was larger than usual and a small and rather unflattering photograph sat above it. Picture bylines were rare accolades indeed. However, apart from details of the note and the gun, the story was mainly a rehash. Try as she might, she could not think of any connection between the initials HS and her uncle, her family. Joe Hyams would be buried tomorrow. His two sons would say Kaddish and only God would know the connection between the note and their father.

  Danielle read Mark’s story once more. She was finding it hard to concentrate on anything much since the murder. Two men dominated her thoughts, one who had loved her with tenderness and passion and another who had probably been too brutalized to be able ever to truly love anyone.

  She had begun to write the feature on Sonntag, although it had taken her more than an hour to get past the first sentence. Somehow the enormity of the man’s wartime experiences had dwarfed the fiscal achievements that had been the main purpose of the interview. She believed he would have exchanged all his millions just to have had a normal childhood, to have had at least some remnants of his family left alive. The old man was so totally alone, probably the loneliest person she had ever met.

  Danielle sighed deeply and steeled herself to complete the article. She was under little pressure, for most features were the product of forward planning. Most were sat on for a few weeks unless they were topical. Some never made it into print at all. The only connection between Sonntag and recent events was the fact that both he and her deceased uncle were Jews who had apparently suffered at the hands of fascists. She herself was convinced that Uncle Joe had been the victim of some rightwing nut. No explanation, however, could alleviate the plight of Auntie Becky, who had been so dependent on Joe that finding herself having suddenly to fend for herself in a cruel world was trauma enough. Having sons like Jason and Bradley only made matters worse. Danielle believed her cousins were the most selfish children she’d ever known. She flinched at the memory of the times she had been forced to babysit for them. There was only a four-year age gap but the boys had been especially immature in their pre-teens and had made her life hell. Forcing herself to forget the Hyams family for a while, Danielle’s mind drifted back to her night with Edwards. It had been so exquisite, spoiled only by the telephone call. She would have loved to have awoken in his arms, to have explored his body and her own feelings in that time of special tenderness. Still, she believed there would be opportunity enough for that. She would not agree to sleep with him again just yet, for she felt she needed a few days to herself. Recent events and the thought of the forthcoming shiva conspired to put a dampener on her ardour. She sighed and turned once again to face the VDU. The cursor blinked threateningly. It seemed to dare her to finish her article. She had barely concluded a sentence before her telephone rang.

  “Hello, this is Danielle Green.”

  “Danielle!” It was Henry Sonntag. She thought maybe he was phoning to remind her to send a copy of the interview tape.

  “Yes, hello, Henry. How are you? I’m just wo
rking on the article now.”

  “Danielle, please listen to me. Please do not publish the article.” For a moment she was stunned. His voice was pleading, desperate, so unlike the strong character she had interviewed. “I don’t know, Henry. Why? What’s happened?”

  “I cannot elaborate, Danielle. Please do as I say. You will never understand.”

  “But, Henry, it may not be so simple. How will I explain to my editor?”

  Danielle’s mind was racing with a hotchpotch of excuses.

  “Then hold fire for a while,” came the urgent reply. “There is so much you do not know. Maybe I can give you an even better story later.” Danielle felt she had been let off the hook, for Sonntag obviously did not know that the interview might be on hold for weeks. She was intrigued.

  “Okay, Henry,” she agreed. “But be in touch soon, okay.”

  “Bless you, my dear,” he said, clearly relieved. “I will, I will. Goodbye.”

  “Goodbye, Henry.”

  Danielle spent the next few seconds staring at the receiver. How extraordinary. She tried to analyse the resonance in Sonntag’s voice. It had been a mixture of excitement, entreaty, and stratagem. But most of all, Henry Sonntag’s voice had contained an element far more disturbing: fear.

  CHAPTER 5

  Theresienstadt, 1943

  Herschel Soferman felt cold. Very cold. Although only a dusting of snow lay on the ground, the external temperature was at least ten below. A biting wind increased the chill factor to an unbearable degree. It would have been bad enough for a well-fed and well-clothed citizen in normal times. For an inmate of the Small Fortress in a cruel and unceasing war, however, each gust carried with it the torture of a thousand needles.

  He was still alive, though how he had survived the past month was nothing short of a miracle. He was now a veteran of the place, for all the Jews who had entered this hell around the same time as he were no longer alive. And to what did he owe his survival? To the whim of one Hans Schreiber, benefactor and torturer. And how had Schreiber managed to keep his protégé alive? By giving him extra rations and selecting only the weakest opponents for him to fight in the gladiatorial contests.

  Hate had been Herschel Soferman’s best friend. His hatred for Schreiber had given him the strength to kill his first opponent, much heavier but so much less fleet of foot. Yet he had still been human enough to feel utter self-disgust at what he had done. He had still been human enough to feel revolted by the sticky warmth that splattered him as he destroyed another man’s life.

  That was then, however. Almost six months ago. And between then and now the humanity of Herschel Soferman had been whittled away until only a splinter remained. Hans Schreiber had stripped Herschel Soferman of his past and robbed him of his future. Maybe there could be no escape from death. On the contrary, maybe it would come as a welcome relief. Maybe he would shortly join Springer and all the others in eternal release, for it was obvious that Schreiber was becoming tired of his plaything. In the last contest, Soferman could have sworn that Schreiber was giving vocal support to his opponent. The Jew thought he had detected a flicker of disappointment in the Nazi’s evil eyes as victim number four had been dispatched. It may simply have been paranoia, but then paranoia was a constant companion in the Small Fortress.

  Herschel Soferman sat on his haunches and consumed the last morsel of bread and wurst that had constituted his noon meal. The room was full of shivering prisoners, yet he was alone. Their eyes avoided his, for he knew he was damned, both by his reputation as Schreiber’s favourite and by the purpose he had shown in competition. Each one of the prisoners was right to believe that he might be Herschel Soferman’s next victim. In an even contest, some of them might have believed that they would have a chance. Yet the main great divider was nothing more mundane than food. Compared to normal times it was all pigswill, yet pitting a man who ate three such meals a day regularly against a man who had survived for months on a single daily helping of gruel and mouldy bread was a no-contest. Will devoid of strength spawned an empty threat.

  Soferman, morose and old beyond his years, was little more than an automaton. When Hans Schreiber told him to eat, he ate. When Hans Schreiber told him to kill, he killed. Yet, paradoxically, while the Jew thought he would die, he also believed he would live. Hans Schreiber was the very reason he clung to his instinct for survival. Revenge was his motive and hate his strength.

  “Soferman!”

  The voice and all it represented still succeeded in striking a chill through the hearts of men already numbed by cold and hunger. The forty-three men in the room struggled to attention.

  “Soferman, choose twenty men and come with me.”

  “Jawohl, Herr Obersturmführer.”

  Herschel Soferman threaded through the ranks of the prisoners like the angel of death. All stood with heads bowed, as if knowing they were in the presence of their executioner. “Eins, zwei, drei ...” Under the watchful eye of Schreiber and two SS guards, he tapped twenty men on the shoulder. With Soferman at their head, the prisoners filed out into the courtyard. The wintry sun provided scant warmth as they stood and waited for further orders. The chattering of teeth provided macabre audible testimony to their plight.

  “This is a special detail,” Schreiber called out. “You will follow the guard in single file. Anyone stepping out of line will be shot.”

  The first guard stepped forward and stood with his back to Soferman. The men shuffled into line and the second guard took up the rear.

  “Links, rechts,” Hans Schreiber called out in a bored monotone as the group started to trudge forward.

  The first guard led them out of the compound of the Small Fortress and towards a copse about half a kilometre distant. Across the river Ohre they could see the large fortress, their previous home and a haven compared to where they were currently incarcerated.

  However, the smell of nature, sweet even in the dull depths of winter, was soon replaced by an odour as pervasive as it was pungent. The familiar smell of death hung heavily in the air.

  Some of the men began gagging as they neared the copse. Even the forward guard was forced to cover his face with his handkerchief.

  “Halt!” shouted Schreiber.

  As the prisoners turned to face him, a brave man might have been tempted to laugh. Hans Schreiber, the devil incarnate, indeed looked comical as he spoke from behind the sprig of lavender held in his right hand.

  “Ahead of you, you will see a collection of shovels protruding from the mound of a ditch,” he said. “Each one of you take a shovel and stand in line facing the ditch. Wait for me to give you the order to begin filling it.”

  Herschel Soferman and his companions shuffled towards the ditch. There was no doubt as to what it contained. Each stood by his shovel. No one dared look down. No one, that is, except Herschel Soferman. Oblivious to the stench, the Berliner gazed at the putrefying flesh below. Like abandoned marionettes, the bodies were twisted in affirmation of the obscenity of their demise. Called upon to do the work of the Devil, Soferman felt no sense of pity for those in the pit. They had gone to their deaths meekly, while his heart still throbbed with the vitals of life, for he was a man with a mission to live, a mission to bear testimony, a mission to avenge.

  “When I whistle, start to dig,” came the dreaded voice. In the short hiatus that followed, Herschel Soferman’s mind drifted back to his childhood and the magical city that was Berlin before Hitler. Incongruously, he thought of the adventures of Emil and the Detectives. What would Emil have made of all this? Had the book been written a few years later, the little boy who represented good against evil might have been a model member of the Hitler Jugend. The world was indeed doomed because even little children were no longer innocent. He closed his eyes and felt his body sway towards the pit. Maybe it was just a distant memory, but he thought he could hear a pigeon cooing.

  It was then that Herschel Soferman heard another sound, as familiar as it was threatening. The sound of machineguns being
cocked echoed through the trees.

  “No!” roared the raging tiger in his mind. “Not this way. Not like them.”

  Behind them all Hans Schreiber held his left arm aloft.

  “Goodbye, SOFERman,” he shouted. “FIRE!”

  London, 1995

  It was already late afternoon and Mark Edwards would have been justified in leaving the office for home, satisfied that a good day’s work had been accomplished. He sank deeper into his chair and stared at his shoeless feet resting on the desk. There was no one around to take umbrage. A somnolent Pottage had dozed off opposite him after imbibing one too many during a late lunch at the Elephant, an apt name for a pub frequented regularly by such a larger-than-life character.

  With sonorous accompaniment, Edwards’ daydreaming turned to thoughts of Danielle. They had agreed that he would not accompany her to tomorrow’s funeral, but that he would take her to the first night of the shiva that evening. In a curious way, he was looking forward to it. He had known little or nothing about Jews until he had first dated her two months ago. Northcliffe House was not short of Jewish journalists, but they tended to keep their own company. The pub, that greatest of all English institutions, was the best place for encouraging guards to be lowered sufficiently to inspire social intercourse. Jews, however, generally treated them as no-go areas. He believed it was more of a cultural than a religious thing. Danielle had said that the tradition of taking sacramental wine on Friday nights, their sabbath eve, was as close as her family ever got to alcohol. Ironically, it had been in one of the Mail’s watering holes, The Greyhound, that he had first got up the courage to ask her out. They had been there celebrating a mutual friend’s birthday, and he had made his move at a moment when conviviality had not yet been overcome by boorishness, a constant threat at newspaper drink-ups. He knew he was not entirely on unsafe ground because initial eye contact in the lift at Northcliffe House had suggested that she too might be interested. Edwards smiled to himself as he recalled how Danielle’s emerald eyes had caused him to quake inside. Had she spoken to him then, he knew he would have remained mute or stuttered some inanity. It would probably have spoiled his chances comprehensively, for although he did not lack experience with women, icebreaking was not exactly his speciality. He was thankful that she had taken the initiative that evening in the Greyhound, quizzing him about a fraud story he had written. A rum and coke had been enough to prevent him from getting tongue-tied and from there on in it had been plain sailing. By way of conversation, Danielle had told him that she always used the Underground to get to work and they bitched mutually about the difficulties of crossing London from east to west and back again, whether by public or private transport.