Of course, the fact that Dieter, his wife and son had all died in the camps was a tragedy. But the idea that the daughter, Rachel, seemed to have just disappeared was intriguing. According to the British woman, someone who had called herself Rachel Austerlitz had arrived in Britain in 1946 with her English husband. But she hadn’t been Jewish. She’d married a Jew and lived as a Jew, but she’d been a Gentile. Was it possible that the Austerlitz family had adopted a Gentile child? Sara didn’t think so. Not back in the twenties or thirties when Hitler was on the rise. Jews were already beginning to bear the brunt of German anger even before the Nazis came to power. After all, someone had to be to blame for the Great War and the subsequent humiliation of the German defeat.
Sara wondered whether Rachel had been an imposter. Someone who passed herself off as a Jew in order to try and escape the orgy of rape and pillage that had accompanied the Soviet occupation of Berlin in 1945. There was some anecdotal evidence that may have happened, although it had made no difference to the Russians. They’d taken all and any women they had wanted. But then, in Rachel’s case, the soldier who had taken her had been British. And that in itself had been unusual in that sector of the city. Spandau had been captured by the Red Army in 1945 and remained under Soviet tutelage until 1989. Back in the early days there had been some movement between the Western and the Eastern Sectors, but not a lot. Once the Soviets arrived, they tended not to leave.
What was indisputable to Sara was that Rachel Austerlitz was still unaccounted for. And, as a Jewish Berliner, as well as a human being, Sara felt it was her duty to help this British woman find her. When Mumtaz and her business partner came to Berlin she would do all she could to help them. Even if that did mean having to meet a former member of the Stasi.
Sara had seen the file that hated organisation had kept on her once. Afterwards, she’d not stopped shaking for twenty-four hours.
The face on the computer screen wasn’t what he’d been expecting. Not that Lee had possessed a particular look in his head. He just hadn’t anticipated this one.
‘You sure she’d be blonde?’ he said as he peered at the image.
‘That’s grey,’ Lesley said. ‘She’d be fifty-six now.’
As usual Lesley was standing behind him, far too close. Whether she just had no concept of personal space or she fancied him, Lee didn’t know. But he suspected the latter. Which was troubling because, according to Lesley, they were in that massive house all alone.
‘Miriam, the kid, had blonde hair,’ Lee said.
‘Babies often do,’ Lesley said. ‘Most of them darken. It’s why blonde hair is so prized. Associated with youth.’
She was as grey as pewter and had been for as long as Lee had known her.
He could see she’d done well. Although the only photograph that Irving Levy had possessed of his sister had been a mother and baby shot, he could still tell that the projected adult Miriam had evolved from the small child. Lesley, as was her practice, had aged the child in ten-year sections, providing a projected likeness of Miriam at ten, twenty, thirty etc., up to the age of fifty-six.
‘Of course, this person’s image may have altered due to accident or illness, but this is what I estimate she’d look like now provided she’s kept reasonably well,’ Lesley said.
In spite of the grey hair, Lesley herself had a face that was almost completely unlined. This she attributed to a vegan diet and a lifetime of cod liver oil.
Miriam Levy didn’t look a lot like either of her parents. She was small-boned, but her face was wider than her mother’s, her skin darker. Lesley said, ‘Her hair would probably have been brown when she was younger.’
‘How’d’ya work that out?’ Lee said.
‘Well, the father had black hair …’ Lesley began.
‘And the mother.’ Lee pointed at the photograph of Rachel holding Miriam.
‘No,’ Lesley said.
He looked up at her. She almost had her hands on his shoulders, which was alarming. Christ!
‘The woman’s hair is dyed,’ Lesley said.
‘How do you work that out?’
‘The colour’s too harsh for her face. It looks matt, unnatural. Trust me.’
‘If you say so,’ Lee said. He turned back to the screen. ‘What about weight?’
‘Not easy to estimate because, again, shit can happen to people,’ Lesley said. ‘But both parents were slim so it’s likely that the daughter wouldn’t be big. Although I always adjust things upwards a bit when subjects arrive at middle-age. Most of us stack it on a bit post-fifty.’
She hadn’t and nor, Lee observed, had Miriam Levy to any great extent. He moved in closer to the screen and stared into the aged eyes of the woman he was seeking. There was still a sort of vestigial childish joy in them. Was that real or was that just something only Lesley had seen. But then if Lesley had seen it then so could others …
Lee felt what he feared was the slap of an unfettered breast against the back of his jacket and he froze. Had Lesley’s affections for him turned desperate over time? But then, mercifully he heard the front door open. A young man’s voice yelled into the kitchen.
‘Les! Can I pay you this month’s rent in sex, please?’
SEVEN
The old man didn’t take his eyes off the television screen.
‘The girl is young; one must let the young make their own choices.’
Eva said, ‘You didn’t let me.’
‘That was different.’
Bela laughed at some nonsense on the screen.
‘Gala doesn’t want Amber to fly and neither do I,’ Eva said. ‘I want things to stay as they are. Specifically, I don’t want you to meddle. If you didn’t encourage the girl, she wouldn’t have these ambitions. When you try to change things, nothing good happens.’
He looked at her. ‘Haven’t you had a good life, Eva?’ he said. ‘Haven’t you always had enough to eat? Somewhere to stay? Work? The love of a man, for a time?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t make me say something I don’t want to say.’
‘In case my poor old heart can’t take it?’ he said.
‘No. In case I can’t take it,’ she replied. ‘In case I say something we both know I shouldn’t.’
He turned back to the television screen.
He’d forgotten how far the Arnold Agency’s office was from Upton Park Tube Station. Almost in Forest Gate, for God’s sake! And then there were the stairs. By the time he arrived at the private investigator’s office, Irving Levy was exhausted. Just as well Lee Arnold had bottled water and made a very good strong cup of tea.
‘I would’ve come to you,’ the PI said as he put the drinks down in front of him.
‘Ach, I have to come this way to get home,’ Irving said. ‘I may get a taxi from here.’
It was eight o’clock in the evening, which wasn’t late for an experienced diamond man. Some of them worked well into the night. But he could tell that Lee Arnold was eager to be elsewhere. Mrs Hakim was nowhere to be seen.
‘I wanted you to see what the forensic artist came up with using your family photograph,’ Lee said. He laid an A4 sheet of paper down in front of him. ‘This is Miriam now.’
His mother had never allowed her hair to turn grey. Even as an old woman she’d kept it black and, in latter years, it had looked dreadful. Falling over her shoulders like limp, black strings. But he could see her in this stranger’s eyes. That look she always gave a person whereby they would feel she knew things that strictly she couldn’t. Or shouldn’t.
‘She doesn’t look like me,’ he said. ‘She was, as I recall, darker-skinned than me.’
‘This ageing technique is thought to be pretty accurate. But obviously not a hundred per cent. So what do you think? Is the impression what you expected?’
‘I have no way of knowing,’ he said. God, that face was making him sad! He’d hoped for maybe some recognition, but that only existed in the eyes and that made him want to weep. In his dreams Miriam was beautiful,
like his mother. But this woman wasn’t beautiful. Her nose was squat, like a pig’s, and her eyes slanted downwards, the opposite direction from his own. ‘I don’t know.’
Maybe sensing that the image had unnerved him, Lee Arnold said, ‘It just gives us something to go on. That’s all.’
‘It’s good …’
‘Ex-police artist,’ he said.
Irving handed the A4 sheet back.
Lee Arnold said, ‘Oh, that’s for you. I’ve got me own copy.’
‘Ah, yes.’
He took it reluctantly. He didn’t really want it.
Lee Arnold said, ‘We’ve also found out some more about your mother’s old house in Berlin.’
He was glad of the change of subject. He put the photograph in his pocket. ‘Oh?’
‘Yes, we have the current owner’s name, a Herr Gunther Beltz.’
He looked at Irving as if he maybe thought that name should be familiar to him, but it wasn’t.
‘Inherited it from his father, apparently,’ the PI continued. ‘But because Spandau was East Berlin in those days, of course that must’ve been dodgy.’
Made sense. In the communist world where all property was theft …
‘Turns out Herr Beltz was a member of the East German Security Forces.’
Irving wasn’t a political animal, but he did remember that the East German security forces were greatly feared. He also remembered what they had been called. He said, ‘The Stasi.’
‘Yes,’ Lee said. ‘I thought they’d all been tucked away donkey’s years ago. But apparently not. This is all Mumtaz’s work. She contacted a local synagogue and they’ve been very helpful. But, given who the current owner of your mother’s house is, there may be some problems gaining access.’
‘I have no issues with East Germany,’ Irving said. ‘My only desire is to see what it looks like now.’
‘Which is why I think that you should come to Berlin,’ Lee said.
Irving shook his head. ‘Even though I am in remission, the drugs I must take to keep things this way, as well as the ones I must then use to counteract the side effects of my medication, mean that if I travel I must get documentation from my consultant. It’s a major operation and I’m not sure that I’m up to it.’
‘I understand that,’ Lee said, ‘but I’m worried that someone who belonged to an organisation like the Stasi may be guarded and secretive, and I believe that you as a relative of the previous owner …’
‘I have nothing to prove that. My mother came here empty-handed.’
And yet to see that house … When he’d originally discovered that his mother wasn’t the person she had claimed to be, Irving had wondered whether the key to who she actually was remained somewhere in that house. Logically, after a devastating war and years of Soviet rule, that was unlikely. Also, he had no way of knowing, now that his father was dead, whether his parents had actually met in that house. Maybe his mother had been a prostitute his father had met and fallen in love with somewhere else in Berlin? Such things had happened. And yet if the house had remained in the hands of just one family ever since the war, there was a possibility that they had retained some of the original contents …
‘I just think that it would be more compelling, for this Herr Beltz, if you came too,’ Lee Arnold said. ‘Also, I think you want to come, don’t you?’
Irving smiled. ‘To see Berlin and maybe find some clue to this mystery? Of course I do,’ he said. ‘But I also don’t want to burden yourself and Mrs Hakim should I become ill.’
‘So speak to your doctor,’ the PI said. ‘And when we get back the fair will almost be upon us. As you said yourself, Irving, this is a big job. And we’re all on an uncertain timescale.’
That was a nice, tactful way of putting it. But then Lee Arnold and Mrs Hakim were nice people. In fact, they were probably the nicest people he’d met for a long time. Irving said, ‘I’ll make an appointment with my doctor as soon as I can.’
She’d expected him to call or even turn up in person, but hearing his voice still came as a shock.
‘Good evening, Wahid-ji,’ she said.
Her hand shook as it held the phone up to her ear. This was the man who had planned to marry her Shazia. Wahid Sheikh was the brother of local gangster Rizwan Sheikh, a scumbag, now disabled by a stroke, to whom her late husband had been in debt when he died. In reality, she had paid her husband Ahmet’s debt some years ago, but then blackmail had come into the equation. Mumtaz had seen the man who had stabbed her abusive husband one evening on Wanstead Flats. Naz Sheikh, favourite son of Rizwan, had been almost like her saviour at the time. As she’d watched Ahmet bleed out into dry grass, she’d given silent thanks to Naz for ending her misery. Only later had she discovered just who her ‘saviour’ was and why he had killed her husband. She’d fought to save Shazia from the pain of knowing that she, her stepmother, had effectively killed her father and the Sheikh family had exploited that. This had resulted in seventy-year-old Wahid demanding Shazia’s hand in marriage. And so Mumtaz had told the girl the truth herself. Shazia had left her that very day.
‘I’m still paying you. What do you want?’ Mumtaz said.
She knew that the wedding the old man had planned had been organised through the Sheikhs’ various companies and associates and that, in reality, Wahid Sheik had laid out no money of his own at all. But she was a pragmatist, she’d known all along there would be a price for his ‘disappointment’.
‘Now my doctor tells me I have a problem with my prostate,’ the old man said. ‘I cannot but think that, had I a wife to care for me, my life would be both pleasanter and cheaper. I will need an operation and then I must buy in care …’
‘So buy it in,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Use the money I still pay you to keep away.’
‘I fear it will have to increase,’ he said.
There had been a time when she’d almost been free. When she’d finally got her courage up to tell Lee. It hadn’t been easy. In spite of the terrible things the Sheikhs did to everyone around them, she’d felt like a traitor to her community. Lee had said he’d gather evidence on the family and when he had enough, he’d make sure he got them put away. But then they’d slept together, which had ruined everything. Now he didn’t seem to care any more …
‘I give you what I can whilst not putting myself on the street,’ Mumtaz said. ‘You have many successful businesses, Wahid-ji. You are a wealthy man.’
‘I manage,’ he said. She imagined him smiling, like the harmless old man he wasn’t. ‘But my health has broken down since your daughter disappointed me so badly.’
‘She’s—’
‘Oh, I know where she is, Mrs Hakim,’ he said. ‘With your parents.’
Of course he knew!
‘Now if she would change her mind …’
‘That’s not happening,’ Mumtaz said. ‘Leave her—’
‘Oh, I will. But it will be contingent upon an increased fee,’ he said. ‘No one is as sorry as I.’
And then he ended the call. Mumtaz allowed herself a flash of anger as she threw her handset across the room and shouted, ‘Fuck you!’
She’d already lost her house, all her valuables and her beloved stepdaughter due to these bastards! Her breath became short and laboured. She attempted to calm herself. At least Naz was dead, she had that to be grateful for. Murdered by a Pole he was pressuring to commit violent acts for him. He’d deserved to die. It was just a pity the Pole hadn’t taken a few more Sheikhs out too. Because those that remained were still blighting her life and, so far, she couldn’t see an end in sight.
Walking was good. Walking worked. At least it had always done so for Sara Metzler. And, even at night, her walking very often led her to this place, the Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park. Not that the memorial was just a statue or even a group of structures. It was a vast complex of immense red granite sculptures, heroic statues and sixteen huge sarcophagi representing the five thousand Soviet soldiers who had died during the Battle of Berlin
in 1945. As a child of East Berlin, Sara had visited the park with the school many times. Her teachers had, she clearly remembered, been at particular pains to show them the figure of a heroic Soviet soldier standing over the remains of a broken swastika.
‘That,’ her history teacher Frau Mueller had told them all, ‘is what happens to fascism.’
The subtext to that being, of course, that ‘if you Germans ever give Russians any problems ever again, we will kill you.’ It was fair enough and, as a Jew, Sara understood and was, for many years, grateful to the Soviets for saving her family from certain death. That was until she found out the truth.
When her mother was taken ill for the last time in the 1980s, Sara had already become disillusioned with the DDR. Not being allowed to have your own opinions, listening to endless bombastic nonsense dressed up as fact was galling, while being followed and having your every move recorded by the hated Stasi was terrifying. When Mrs Hakim had contacted her from London about the Austerlitz family and she’d found that their old house had been settled by an ex-Stasi operative, she hadn’t been surprised. Stasi officers always got what they wanted.
Before her mother, just prior to her death, had told Sara about her father, she had fantasised that maybe he was in the Stasi. But it was worse than that. He had been a Soviet officer, maybe even one of those who had raped her mother in 1945. After all, a lot of them never went home. That Gerda Metzler had been a Jew who had suffered at the hands of the Nazis had meant nothing to them. But it had meant a lot to Sara because she suddenly didn’t know who she was. Or rather, she realised that she had never known.
Of course, the English woman hadn’t told her a huge amount about her client. A member of the Austerlitz family, apparently, or so he had thought. Too sick to leave the UK himself, he was sending Mrs Hakim and her business partner instead. Although what they might find was anyone’s guess. Foreigners came to the city all the time looking for answers. The children of Nazis, grandchildren of Holocaust victims, the mad, the sad, the lost. Few found anything that improved their lives or even provided some enlightenment about their past. Where so much death and destruction had happened, was it too much to expect revelation? Probably.
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