‘Make sure you send me a postcard,’ said Joe Sixsmith.
23
The Hackers lived in a 1930’s semi on a neat little estate in the southern suburbs of Luton.
Joe walked up the concrete path alongside a tidy square of lawn flanked with Michaelmas daisies. At the door he pressed the bell lightly once and stood back. Something told him it would be enough.
It was, but it wasn’t fast. First there was a movement of curtain at the front bay. Next came a light in the hallway twinkling through the peephole in the door till it was darkened by the pressure of an eye. Then came the sound of bolts being drawn, and the door opened on a chain, and the eye became visible. After a long scrutiny, the door was closed again. For a moment, it felt final. But at last he heard the sound of the chain being removed.
‘Come inside, Mr Sixsmith,’ said Taras Kovalko.
He led the way into a cosy parlour containing a three-piece suite a little too large for it, a coffee table bearing a shot-glass half filled with a colourless liquid, and a television with the sound switched off showing three men chasing a fourth across a gloomy marshy landscape. The emulsioned walls were hung with paintings, mostly classic reproductions, but interspersed with watercolour landscapes in whose bottom right-hand corner appeared the initials T.K.
‘These yours?’ asked Joe.
The old man nodded.
‘Not so good,’ he said. ‘But my daughter is proud of what her old father can do, and she had them framed. It is good for children to be proud of their parents, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve always thought so,’ said Joe. ‘They don’t look like round here.’
‘No. They are from home, from the Ukraine. Painted from memory, of course. Best way to paint landscape, I think. You do not have to sit outside on a little stool in the wind and rain.’
He shivered at the thought. There was a fire crackling in the grate though the night was not too cold.
‘Old blood runs thin,’ said Taras, as if catching Joe’s thought. ‘I find a little vodka helps thicken it. You will take some?’
‘No thanks,’ said Joe, feeling that already the setting was far too cosy for his mission. ‘Mr Kovalko, there’s something I want to talk to you about. First, I think that recently you’ve been bothered by a young man who’s been asking questions about you, particularly about what you did and where you were during the war.’
‘Ah. A historian, perhaps?’ said Kovalko, faintly mocking.
‘No, he’s a journalist, and he’s interested in whether or not you worked for the Germans.’
The old man bowed his head, as if to hide an emotion. Then he said, ‘Is that all? One way or another every one of my countrymen worked for the Germans. If anybody tells you different, they are lying. To themselves, at least.’
‘Come off it!’ protested Joe. ‘A lot of them must have fought in the Red Army.’
‘To defeat the Germans, you mean? Same thing. Look at Europe now. That too was working for the Germans.’
He’s diverting me, thought Joe. This is a cunning old sod. But keep plugging away, you’ll get through.
‘You don’t seem all that surprised to see me here,’ he said.
‘What’s to surprise? You are a detective, everyone knows that. The other night at the club I saw you talking a long time with old Vansovich. No one talks long with that one without a purpose. Later she said what a nice young man you were, so interested in the old days. You should try to be more subtle if you want to surprise people, Mr Sixsmith.’
‘I’ll work on it,’ said Joe. ‘Mrs Vansovich thinks it’s a pity you remember so little about the old days, ’specially coming from the same town. No street scenes from Vinnitsa in your paintings, I see. Memory not so hot on bricks and mortar?’
‘That’s right. Trees and skies and water I recall, but buildings will not come.’
‘Not even the Hotel Pripyat?’
There! First penetration! Kovalko reached for the vodka bottle and refilled his glass, taking his time.
Joe said encouragingly, ‘That’s right. Have another drink. Seems to help the memory. You’d had a few the other night when you mentioned the hotel. It was where you trained as a chef, you said.’
‘Is that so? A name, nothing more. A piece of debris from the past. No picture with it.’
‘Understandable,’ said Joe sympathetically. ‘Even Mrs Vansovich couldn’t remember it. Not even the name. Not in Vinnitsa. Though there was Hotel Pripyat in Kiev. Still is.’
‘A man is not tied to the town he is born in,’ said Kovalko, back in control.
‘No? So it was in Kiev you worked as a cook?’
‘Who knows?’ said the old man. ‘I wish I could remember.’
‘Well, it would help if you could,’ said Joe. ‘It would help shut up all these nosey people who can’t get it out of their minds that you might really be some other guy. Someone called Boris Kovalenko, maybe. He worked for the Germans too. Not like you though. You worked in the kitchens, didn’t you?’
‘Yes. In a forced labour camp.’
‘They’d want trained chefs there, of course,’ said Joe. ‘Somewhere near Regensburg, wasn’t it?’
‘I don’t know. It was just a place in Germany they sent us to.’
‘But it wasn’t too far from Regensburg you were picked up,’ said Joe. ‘There was a camp, another kind of camp, at Regensburg. That’s where this guy with the name like yours worked. Boris Kovalenko. Change a couple of letters, scratch out a couple more, and it would be exactly the same, wouldn’t it?’
The old man picked up a remote control unit from the floor and pointed it at the television set. The three pursuers had caught up with their quarry and were systematically beating him up.
‘They chase, they catch, they beat. Without the sound, who is the good, who the bad, can you tell me that, Mr Sixsmith?’ He pressed the zapper and the picture vanished. ‘None of this you say to me is new. Do you think they have not investigated this possibility before, the man Wiesenthal and his helpers, back in the seventies?’
‘I know,’ said Joe.
‘Then you will know they had descriptions of this man Kovalenko. He was tall, I am short. He had black hair, mine used to be brown. He had dark eyes, almost black, mine are blue. I do not understand why, when the professionals have proved me innocent once, the amateurs should start asking the same stupid questions again.’
‘That’s a good point,’ agreed Joe. ‘Here’s another. Why, when like you say, the pros have found you innocent, should you be so worried about an amateur asking questions?’
Taras Kovalko held his drink out to the fire, warming the glass and his hands.
‘I am now much older and less able to bear pain,’ he said. ‘I know what trouble the press can cause even by just hinting at guilt, even when they have no evidence.’
‘But you didn’t know it was the press asking questions, not till I told you,’ said Joe. ‘And when you heard, you were relieved, weren’t you? Why was that? Because it wasn’t the pros back again, the pros who might have the tools to really dig, especially since the Iron Curtain went up?’
Kovalko smiled, apparently genuinely and said, ‘Mr Sixsmith, I did not take you for a fantasist. What is your part in this anyway? Think how desperate a newspaper man must be to hire a private detective to do his dirty work!’
‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ said Joe. ‘It’s not the journalist who’s hired me. It’s Gallie, your granddaughter.’
That really was a body blow. The old man’s pale face turned grey. Joe watched uneasily.
‘Gallie … but why?’
‘To protect you, of course. When she heard about this reporter and saw the way it was bothering you, she wanted to get it stopped. But she’s a bright lass. She got really indignant when she realized what it was all about, but like me she started to wonder about the way you were reacting to it. Me too. And this business about you not being able to remember anything about Vinnitsa. That seemed a lot too conveni
ent.’
‘But I told you … they have a description of this man … it is not me …’
He was completely on the defensive now, ageing ten years in the last couple of minutes.
Joe said, ‘Shoot, anyone with half a mind has to know you’re definitely not this guy Kovalenko. I mean, there’s no doubt he was born in Vinnitsa, so if you were him, you’d know all about the place. No, the only reason for you to fake amnesia is that you’ve never been near the place!’
The old man was clearly only half following him. Joe felt a bit of natural disappointment. It was a fair bit of deduction that he’d made, and it would have been nice to get an appreciative nod. On the other hand, the poor old devil was obviously in a hell of a state from hearing that Gallie was mixed up in all this. Time to get to the truth and hope it did as much good as the trick cyclists and Aunt Mirabelle liked to claim.
He said, ‘Here’s what I think, for what it’s worth. You’re not Boris Kovalenko, but you’re not Taras Kovalko either. And you’re hiding something you did during the war that you’re frightened might still be used against you after all these years, so it has to be something pretty big.’
The old man said desperately, ‘So you admit I am not this man? Tell this to the journalist so he will stop persecuting me …’
‘The journalist’s no problem,’ said Joe gently. ‘It’s Gallie. And me telling her anything isn’t going to be enough. Doesn’t matter how much you love someone, an idea gets in your head, it’s like a worm in an apple. Nibble nibble. Doesn’t matter even if the person you love dies. The worm’s there in the memory, nibbling forever …’
He was getting quite poetic. But he wasn’t sure if he was getting anywhere else. He picked up his carrier bag and took out the book he’d bought in London.
He said, ‘Taras, or whatever your name is, I don’t know what it is you’re hiding, but take a look at these pictures. This is what your granddaughter is starting to worry about.’
He opened the book at the photographs and thrust it into the old man’s trembling hands.
‘Look at it,’ he urged. ‘Ask yourself if any truth you have to tell can be worse than her suspecting you were mixed up with this!’
He stood up and turned away. He didn’t want to watch the old man suffering. Also, he thought there’d been a noise outside. He opened the door into the small entrance hall. The front door was opening and he heard a voice. Gallie’s. He stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind him as the young woman came over the threshold followed by Dunk Docherty.
‘It’s no use,’ she said when she saw Joe. ‘We couldn’t keep it up. Neither of us.’
Dunk said, ‘You fooled me, Joe. Nice one.’
Joe said aggressively, ‘You here as a journalist or a friend of the family?’
‘It’s OK, Mr Sixsmith,’ said Gallie soothingly. ‘We got things sorted. After I told him I’d kill him if he ever wrote anything about Grandda. Where is he?’
‘He’s in there, but don’t go in just now, not till I’ve …’
She was a strong-willed woman in the making, and in her own home she wasn’t going to have anyone telling her what to do. More in irritation than anger, she pushed by Joe and entered the sitting room.
‘Grandda!’ she cried. ‘What the hell has he been doing to you?’
The old man was sitting with his head bowed over the open book, with tears streaming down his face and dripping into the shiny pages. She ran to him and knelt by his side, embracing him with fierce love. The old man stroked her hair with his gnarled fingers and his gaze met Joe’s over her head.
‘You are right, Mr Sixsmith,’ he said. ‘I do not know what I have been thinking of. It is time for the truth.’
24
Midnight. And a black one with a light drizzle falling. The headlights of the Morris opened up the dark like a surgeon’s knife. Behind, the wound closed without trace of a scar.
Joe was in a hurry. He had spent longer at the Hackers’ house than he intended, but with some things you couldn’t force the pace.
The old man’s story had been dramatic and moving, holding them riveted from the moment he said, ‘My name is Victor Maksimov. That is the first time I have spoken it or heard it spoken since 1945.’
He’d been nineteen, commis chef at the Hotel Pripyat, when the Germans took Kiev in 1941. Much of the city had been stomped flat by shells and bombs but miraculously the Pripyat had survived with the loss only of its windows and a few tiles. An intelligence colonel and his staff had quickly grabbed this prize.
‘When the SS started rounding up all the able-bodied men, Colonel Pacher said, “The cook stays.” He was slightly mad and most people were afraid of him, even the SS. It helped that I was ethnic German from my great grandfather. Colonel Pacher called me Maxim and told people that the Paris restaurant was named after me. When I saw what the other choice was – forced labour camps or fighting with the Germans against the Reds, I was glad to stay. So anyone who says I collaborated with the Germans is telling the truth.’
He looked around defiantly. No one spoke. He went on with his story.
During the next three years he’d accompanied Pacher all over the place. He didn’t pay much attention where they went. All he knew was that as long as he stuck close to the colonel, he was safe. Early in ’forty-five they were stationed in Regensburg.
‘Everyone knew the war was lost but no one dared say so. It was a hard time for civilians. American bombers came over night after night, everything was in short supply. Only the military had any guarantee of food or cigarettes. I did OK. Pacher used to say “Grow fat, Maxim. No one trusts a skinny cook!” There were many women who were willing to give favours for food. There was one I knew who seemed different. I thought she liked me for my own sake. I thought I was in love with her. So because I wanted to look after her, I asked her to marry me.’
‘Was that possible?’ asked Joe. ‘A German woman to marry a prisoner? I mean, that’s what you still were, right?’
‘A prisoner? Hardly. I am telling the truth here. For a long time I had enough freedom to run away any time I liked. But where would I run to? No, I had as much freedom as any other man on Pacher’s staff. But you are right. For a German woman to marry someone in my position was impossible in normal times. But times were far from normal. We found a priest who was only too pleased to save at least one of his flock from prostitution. Under Nazi civil law, perhaps we were not married. In the Church’s eye, we certainly were.’
A small furry creature scuttled out of the hedgerow and halted petrified in the car lights. Joe slammed the brake on and skidded to a halt. The animal fled into the darkness. It had done him a favour, he realized. The final turn off to Hoot Hall lay just ahead and he might have overrun it in these conditions.
He negotiated the turn carefully then began to build up speed again on the long straight lane.
Victor Maksimov’s happiness, if happiness there had been, didn’t last long. The man had been blunt.
‘I was a fool not to guess that I was not the only man she had used for essential supplies. Though I was certainly the only one who offered marriage. Obviously she could not come to live with me in my official quarters, so I still used to visit her in her room in the town. I called it our home! Was there a moment when she believed it too? I do not know. All I do know is that getting away from my duties unexpectedly early one day, I went round to this home of ours and found her in bed with another man.’
‘Kovalenko,’ said Joe, who could spot a rat when it sat in his headlights.
‘Yes, I did not know him but as soon as he spoke to me in my own language, I guessed that he must be a guard from the camp. No other way for a Ukrainian to be at liberty in this city.’ He laughed bitterly and added, ‘Unless, of course, he was a German officer’s cook.’
‘Did you know what was going on in the camp?’ asked Joe.
‘I knew nothing except that this terrible world was so full of people ten thousand times worse off than
me that I was terrified to do anything that might send me plunging to join them.’
He regarded them defiantly. Don’t press it, thought Joe. He said, ‘But you risked getting married?’
‘In terror and alone, love is the only medicine to give you sweet dreams,’ said Victor. ‘And now I saw this man lying with my wife. Worse, when he saw me, he showed no fear, but spoke to me in my own language, pulling the blanket off them to reveal her nakedness, and saying, “Don’t look so shocked, my friend. Come in and join us. There is plenty here for two.” She turned her face to the pillow and tried to pull the blanket back. But he would not let her.’
He fell silent. Galina and Dunk were sitting side by side, their young faces showing how far beyond their experience this story took them. Joe noticed that Galina’s hands had grasped the reporter’s arm and she was hanging on to it like a lifebelt.
‘So what did you do?’ asked Joe.
‘I killed him,’ said Victor Maksimov, very cold, very precise. ‘With my bare hands. She was screaming so I hit her in the face and she fell to the floor and lay quiet. Then I went through his pockets and found his identity card. Boris Kovalenko. It was a good card, giving even more freedom of movement than mine. It had been folded so the middle letters were almost rubbed off in the crease. I scraped them off entirely and with a pen turned it into Kovalko. Then I altered Boris to Taras. It was the best I could do. To be found without a card meant certain arrest, if not instant death. The authorities would be looking for Victor Maksimov, not Taras Kovalko. My wife was recovering. I knew beyond doubt that if she started to talk to me I would kill her too. So I left. I headed west, towards the light of the setting sun. I had no plan, no hope. Perhaps because I didn’t act like a fugitive nobody troubled me. Two days later, I walked through a company of fleeing Wehrmacht soldiers till a shell blew me off my feet and out of my sense. I awoke days later in a US Field Hospital. I said nothing, I could remember nothing. I was Taras Kovalko, born in Vinnitsa. I am not sure to this day how much I was faking. My personal pain meant more to me than all this terrible war, all these horrors the allied forces were finding.’
Born Guilty Page 18