Schreiber's Secret

by Roger Radford

  “Yes?”

  “This stranger might conceivably even be the killer.”

  Mark Edwards nodded in agreement. The thought had crossed his mind more than once.

  Seven hours later, Edwards sat alone in his flat waiting nervously for the doorbell to ring. Danielle would be arriving any moment to pick him up and take him through a new religious experience. He saw himself as an agnostic rather than a godless atheist. Yet the trappings of religion, the ceremony and the cant, bothered him. It did not matter whether it was a church, a mosque or a synagogue, he knew he would not feel comfortable in any of them. His parents had been nominal Anglicans and he and his brother had enjoyed all the trappings of Christmas as did most other families in Britain. Yet he only remembered going to church once, around the age of five, and that it was a frightening experience. He recalled being surrounded by straight-faced strangers and being scared by the booming echo of the vicar’s voice. No, organized religion was definitely not his cup of tea.

  The front door chimes stirred Edwards from his musings. He knew it could only be Danielle. She smiled warmly as he opened the door, standing before him in an exquisitely cut charcoal two-piece.

  Danielle displayed two rows of the most perfect teeth he had ever seen. Everything about her seemed to be in perfect proportion. He was as excited as a schoolboy to see her. He knew these feelings were transparent and he did not care. For a moment the two stood staring at each other, their eyes bright not only with obvious approval, but with the memory of their first night of lovemaking.

  “Well,” she said at last, “are you ready to go?”

  “If I can kiss you first.”

  “You may,” said Danielle, leaning forward.

  Edwards pulled her towards him and, holding her tight, gave her a kiss that lingered long enough for him to feel the familiar stirring.

  “Whoa,” she laughed, “down, boy.”

  “Sorry. I just get carried away when I’m with you.”

  “Mark,” she sighed, “believe me, I feel the same. But let’s cool it over the next few days. It’s a pretty rough time.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I understand. Where’s the synagogue?”

  “Oh, Mark,” she laughed, “I see I’m going to have to give you a crash course in Judaism. The shiva is held in the home and not in the synagogue.”

  “Sorry,” he said, hoping his relief was not too obvious. “It just shows how ignorant I am.”

  “Come on, let’s go,” she said, grabbing his hand. “We’ll take my car.”

  Neither talked much during the short journey, both reflecting on the solemnity of the occasion.

  Danielle brought her red Vauxhall Cavalier to a halt about fifty yards from her aunt’s home. She could see by the number of mourners’ cars that it would be pointless trying to park nearer. She took her handbag, which Edwards had been holding, and opened it. Withdrawing a dark blue yarmulka, she placed it gingerly on his head.

  “Okay, Mark,” she said firmly, “this is where you get your first lesson in Judaism. You have to wear this whenever we’re in a house of worship, at a wedding, a barmitzvah or, God forbid, a funeral or shiva like tonight. As I told you before, shiva simply means ‘seven’ and we traditionally have seven days of mourning after someone dies. Got it so far?”

  “Yes, teacher.”

  “Good. Now, so as you shouldn’t be too surprised, you’ll see Auntie Becky, her two sons and Joe’s two brothers sitting on low chairs. They’ll all be wearing an item of clothing torn over the heart. There’ll be about half an hour of prayers in Hebrew, but don’t worry ...”

  “What?”

  “Neither you nor I nor most of the people in the room will understand it.”

  “What do you mean?” Edwards asked, genuinely intrigued.

  Danielle smiled. “It’s quite simple, really. As far as the Jews in this country are concerned, Hebrew is purely liturgical. Like High Church Latin. It’s as if you pray in it not for its meaning to you, but maybe for its meaning to God. After all, when we envisage our God it’s as a Hebrew speaker, not someone versed in Swahili or Outer Mongolian.”

  Edwards could not contain himself. He burst out laughing. Shiva or not, he found all the paraphernalia surrounding religious ritual highly amusing.

  “Don’t be so blasphemous,” Danielle scolded, and then burst into a fit of giggling.

  “Okay, let’s go, mademoiselle. We can’t go in there with smiles on our faces.”

  “That’s true,” said Danielle. “And we can’t leave with smiles either. But after you arrive and before you leave you might be permitted the occasional smile.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that at Jewish functions, even funerals, you meet old friends and acquaintances and it’s impolite not to smile. Amongst our own we’re as gregarious as a bunch of rabbits. C’mon.”

  Danielle led him up the path of a typical bay-windowed three-bedroom semi. People wearing skullcaps were standing around outside.

  “It’s far too crowded in there, Danielle,” said a small baldheaded man.

  “It’s bloody murder.”

  Danielle smiled and then said out of the corner of her mouth, “What a wonderful way Uncle Monty has with words.”

  Edwards, trying hard to look grim, gripped her hand even harder. He felt so much the outsider. As Danielle led him through the throng and into a packed through-lounge, he felt a sense of rising panic. A heady brew of perfume and sweat engulfed him. A tall, bearded man thrust a prayer book into his hand.

  “But ...” Edwards stammered.

  “Sshh, Mark,” said Danielle soothingly. “Don’t worry. It’s in Hebrew and English. The rabbi will tell you in English which page to turn to.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The one over there with the hat,” she whispered.

  Edwards craned his neck. “Doesn’t look like a rabbi.”

  “Just because he doesn’t have a beard?” she said with raised eyebrows. “Not many of them do nowadays.”

  Edwards suddenly felt ashamed. His reaction had been typical of someone who had been brought up on stereotypes, encouraged not so much by his parents as by his peers.

  Danielle, sensing his discomfort, gave his hand a gentle squeeze. She knew how strange and difficult it must be for him. “I’ve got to go out of the room while the men pray, Mark. Just stand looking down at the book. Nobody will take any notice. See you in a few minutes.”

  For the next half an hour Edwards remained a mute sentinel amid a sea of swaying incantation. He spent the time reading the English translation of the prayers, but was more fascinated by the Hebrew characters. They were unfathomable, yet their very shapes seemed to jump out at him. They seemed to have an extraordinary power compared to the smaller and blander Latin-based characters on the opposite page.

  A proffered hand at last told him the service was over. He almost felt reluctant to hand back the prayer book. He looked up to see Danielle eyeing him from the hallway. His heart skipped a beat. This was stupid, he told himself. He had known her only a couple of months. She weaved her way towards him.

  “We’ll stay around for a few minutes,” she whispered in his ear. “I told everybody I had to interview somebody tonight, but you can take me for a drink round the corner. There’s no chance anyone here will be there.”

  “Do I say anything to them?” said Edwards, eyeing the row of bereaved seated on the odd chairs that had had their legs cut off halfway down.

  “Yes, just shake their hands and wish them a long life.”

  “A what?”

  “Just say, ‘I wish you a long life’.”

  A few minutes later they both joined the procession of people paying their respects. There were a few cousins there Danielle had not seen in years. Cousin Stephen the optician, cousin Melvyn the chemist, Cousin Roy, big in ladies’ skirts. She kissed them all warmly except for Joe Hyams’ two sons. They got more of a peck. Edwards grimaced as he passed down the line. He felt acutely emba
rrassed.

  The reporter only wound down after the first swallow of a whisky mac in a local pub burnt its way down his throat and gave him a warm glow in the pit of the stomach. “Phew, I needed that,” he said in relief.

  “Come on,” said Danielle, “it wasn’t that bad, was it?”

  “I suppose not. But I’d much rather be at a wedding than a funeral.”

  “Here’s to simchas, then,” she said, raising her glass of gin and tonic.

  “What’s simchas?”

  “Happy events,” smiled Danielle, the perfect teeth framed by lips that glistened.

  “Not many of those around at the moment, are there?” he sighed. “Dani...”

  “Yes.”

  “I know we agreed not to talk shop, but something’s been bothering me and I just feel I want to get it off my chest.”

  “Shoot,” she said, placing her hand on his.

  Edwards, looking squarely into his lover’s emerald eyes, spent the next twenty minutes telling her about everything that had happened to him during the past few days.

  Danielle, listening intently, did not interrupt him until he had signalled that he had finished. He had not noticed her eyes widen at the mention of the strange caller and was unaware of the turmoil in her mind.

  “Mark,” she said, gripping her glass, “are you saying that this caller claimed the killer is a man called Hans Schreiber who was an SS officer at the Small Fortress in Theresienstadt?”

  “Yes.”

  “How odd.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know whether there is anything in this, but it seems an amazing coincidence.” She paused to take a long swig of the gin and tonic.

  “Well?” said Edwards, intrigued.

  “Henry Sonntag,” she said bluntly.

  “Who’s he?”

  “He’s a Jewish multimillionaire bonds dealer I’ve just interviewed, a sort of British George Soros. He made his fortune after arriving here as a penniless refugee after the war. He made no mention of this Schreiber, but he did say he was a survivor of the Small Fortress. The things he described that went on there defy belief. Mark ...”

  “Yes,” he said, eager to hear more.

  “I got a strange phone call at the office from Sonntag the day before yesterday. He pleaded with me not to publish my interview. He said he couldn’t explain and sounded really scared.”

  “Jesus!” Edwards exclaimed. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “I think you’d better chase up that German professor friend of yours. I’ll try to make contact with Sonntag again, but he sounded pretty agitated.”

  “Maybe I should give him a ring,” said Edwards, the crime reporter’s inquisitiveness rising to the fore.

  “No, Mark,” she said firmly. “I promised him. I like the man. I don’t want you barging in like a bull in a china shop. He’s suffered enough.”

  “I can be diplomatic, you know,” he said in a hurt tone.

  “I’m sure you can, but let’s just try to get some more information before we jump to any conclusions.”

  Edwards nodded in agreement. Only two things were uppermost in his mind. He was hoping that Dieter Müller would find something on Schreiber. More importantly, he was praying that his anonymous caller would continue to ring him.

  CHAPTER 6

  Howard Plant was the sort of man whose favourite perfume epitomized his psychological makeup. He doused himself in Calvin Klein’s Obsession, hardly the subtlest of fragrances, with the passion of one who believed that natural body odours were an affront to olfaction. Plant’s other obsessions were myriad: fast cars, large houses, small boys, money. But not necessarily in that order. Howard Plant was not a very nice man. Unsurprisingly, therefore, Howard Plant tended to have more enemies than the Leader of All the Russias.

  “Bates!” he bellowed. “Bates, where are you?”

  “Coming right away, Mr Plant,” came the effeminate reply. The squeaky voice emanating from the kitchen carried nuances both of obeisance and sarcasm. For Richard Bates, a gangling and prematurely bald leech, was nothing if not used to his master’s idiosyncrasies. Ten years of catering to Plant’s every whim, from the procuring of various new “toy boys” to allowing even the occasional sexual violation of his own body, meant that Richard Matthew Bates had earned the right to share in some of the multi-millionaire’s extravagances. If ostentation was the mark of the insecure, then Howard Plant was a brightly hued dragonfly, darting to and fro in a desperate attempt to impress the world. The biggest house in Chigwell, two Rolls-Royces, three Lamborghinis, two Maseratis and the odd Ferrari made it clear that Plant enjoyed being the oldest “Essex boy” in the county. Despite his proclivities, he had become the darling of the press thanks to a burgeoning software company that was the Great English Hope, expected to counter the Microsoft explosion. Plantware was gobbling up the market like a deranged Pacman.

  “Here it is, here it is,” the manservant said soothingly as he entered the TV room where his master lay naked and spread-eagled on the floor, his large genitalia grotesque appendages to what was in effect a slight and somewhat emaciated frame. The man was a middle-aged weasel, and although Bates was used to seeing his boss naked, he believed fifty-year-olds were better satiated under the sheets and with the lights out.

  Plant continued with his gentle callisthenics as Bates placed the tray gently on a side table. The tray held the usual selection of vegan supper dishes and vitamin supplements.

  “Did you blend the carrots with the tomato juice, Master Bates?” asked Plant in time-honoured fashion. Plant’s continual use of the honorific as a synonym for “masturbates” had become a repetitive form of verbal torture for Bates, assuaged only by the luxury of a lifestyle that most other servants would envy.

  “Yes, sir,” sighed the hireling.

  “Did you make sure you extracted all the pips from the fresh orange juice. I found one in there the other day.”

  “Yes, Mr Plant.”

  “Good, Bates. Now run along and get my clothes ready. My visitor will be here shortly. It’s Henry Sonntag. He’s been here before. Lives up the road, on the border with Abridge. You remember him, don’t you?”

  “Yes, sir. Nice chap.”

  “Well, he’s going to be in for a bit of a shock tonight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I haven’t been too satisfied with his performance lately.”

  “Funny, I thought you always swore by him,” said the servant, who knew full well that Sonntag had helped make Plant very rich.

  “No, not any more. I think I’ll dump him.”

  Richard Bates paused. He had always believed that Jews did not do this kind of thing to their own. Still, if there were going to be any fireworks, he did not want to be around. He had other plans for the evening.

  “Er, Mr Plant ...”

  “Yes,” said Plant, tucking into his health food supper.

  “May I, er, take an hour off after Mr Sonntag arrives?”

  “Perhaps. Where are you going?”

  “The King’s Head. I’m meeting someone there.”

  “Does he have a friend?” asked Plant lasciviously.

  “Maybe. I’ll ask him for you.” Bates knew how to hook his master. If the truth be known, Plant was like putty in his hands.

  “Okay,” said Plant, wiping along his pencil thin moustache and the corners of his rubbery mouth with a red serviette, “but don’t be gone too long. It’s not your usual night off.”

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll go and prepare your clothes.”

  Plant continued his naked callisthenics for the next ten minutes while his trusty manservant prepared a charcoal-grey Armani suit and a handmade white shirt from the Burlington Arcade. Bates could never understand why his master insisted on dressing formally to receive his business cronies in his own home. The man frolicked naked one minute and dressed to the hilt the next. Still, he thought, rich men usually exercised their right to do whatever they damn w
ell pleased.

  “Here are your clothes, sir,” he said. “Shall I dress you?”

  Howard Plant growled an affirmative and then stood transfixed with arms outstretched as his manservant dressed him speedily and skilfully. Within a few minutes, the man who had gone from rags to riches in less than a decade was preening himself before his hall mirror. “Dapper” was how the newspapers labelled him, and dapper he was. He accepted the various labels with equanimity, for image was no strange bedfellow to vanity.

  “Ah, it must be Sonntag,” he called out as the doorbell sounded. “Bates, be ready to fix our guest a stiff drink. I think he’ll be needing it.”

  Plant opened the front door himself. “Ah, Henry, my good friend,” he enthused. “I hope you didn’t get lost on your way from the front gate.”

  “Still the same old jokes, eh, Howard?” smiled Sonntag.

  “Come in, come in.” Plant took his guest by the arm with all the bonhomie of a Black Widow and led him into a drawing room festooned with Old Masters.

  “There’s lots to talk about. Bates, fix Henry’s usual. Never forgets a face and never forgets a drink to go with it, does our Bates.”

  “Yes, sir. Whisky and dry on the rocks, wasn’t it, Mr Sonntag?”

  “Well remembered, Bates,” said Sonntag, handing the manservant his coat.

  Plant ushered his guest towards a Regency chaise longue.

  “Terrible goings-on, eh?” he muttered.

  “You mean the murder?”

  “Yeah. Must bring back memories of the war for you. Must have been a fascist bastard.”

  “They never really go away, Howard.”

  “Yeah, I know. But who would have thought that this kind of thing could happen in our own back yard. It’s a fucking disgrace.”

  “I’m sure the police will catch the man responsible,” said Sonntag, trying to calm the fear that had crept into the younger man’s voice.

  “I tell you, I’m dead scared, Henry. No Jew is safe while this nutcase is on the loose. A cab driver, noch. Maybe next time he’ll go upmarket.”