Once Upon a Time

by Barbara Fradkin

  Green reached into the briefcase at his feet and withdrew the plastic bags with the black box and the identity booklet. Even before he could say anything, the widening of her eyes betrayed her. She looked at the things in silence for a moment, then swallowed.

  “You were thorough, weren’t you.”

  “Maybe you’d better tell me the whole story.”

  She rose and began to clear teacups off the table. They rattled in her hands. “I wish Eugene had destroyed those things before we came over. I was always afraid they’d come back to haunt him.”

  “And did they?”

  She placed some cups in the sink and swung around to face him. “That depends on you.”

  “I’m an officer of the law. If a fraud has been committed—”

  “But it hasn’t!” She coloured. “At least…not knowingly. Eugene didn’t remember anything! The box, the name on the papers were meaningless to him. Was it a crime just to begin anew with a clean slate?”

  “Eugene may not have remembered anything, but you knew he might be an officer in the enemy army.”

  She sat down again opposite him and massaged her joints. Finally she shook her head. “At the convalescent home, when Eugene and I were engaged, he showed me those papers. The Red Cross had wanted to take them away from him in Belgium, and he had hidden them in that secret compartment. Eugene was absolutely paranoid about his possessions. He clung to them as if his life depended on them. He actually believed he was Wilhelm Ganz. He said we had to keep it secret because they wouldn’t let us into Canada, and the British would send him back to Germany. He insisted on taking my name. But I couldn’t leave it like that. Somewhere in Germany a family was wondering what had happened to their son. My brother was killed in the war, and I saw what it did to my parents. So I wrote to Wilhelm Ganz’s address in Potsdam, simply saying that we had a wounded man at the hospital who might be their son, and could they please send a picture.” She hesitated, then rose, wringing her hands. “They wrote back that their son was dead. He had been killed in action defending a bridge outside Dresden on May 8, 1945. They had seen the body, and there was no mistake. They sent me a picture of him in his uniform, and it didn’t look anything like Eugene.”

  Another twist in the trail, he thought. “So the papers were stolen?”

  She inclined her head slightly. “But perhaps not knowingly. When Eugene, in his state of shock, took the uniform off the soldier’s body to clothe himself, perhaps the papers were in the pocket and he only found them later. By which time he had forgotten where they came from and what he had done.”

  “Did you tell him what you had found out?”

  “That he wasn’t Wilhelm Ganz? Yes.”

  “And how did he react?”

  She cocked her head in thought. “He didn’t. At least not to that. He was cross at me for writing. He didn’t seem to care who he was or wasn’t.”

  “Did you believe him?”

  “Yes,” she replied, too quickly.

  “No, you didn’t. You thought he was hiding something.”

  “From himself!” she shot back, then checked herself. Facing him, she propped herself against the sink and folded her arms over her chest. Buying herself time, he thought, and waited. “Honestly, Inspector, I don’t know what else I can tell you. I don’t know how he got those papers, or why. But I do believe he was as much in the dark about his past as I.”

  Green slid the box out of the bag and turned it in his hands, letting the tools slide out. “What about these things inside? Did you try to trace anything? Or check out this name engraved on the bottom?”

  Her arms fell to her sides as if the tension had drained from her. Something about those papers bothers her, he thought. Some fear, some remnant of doubt. Her colour returned as she turned her mind elsewhere. “Before we emigrated to Canada, I wrote to the Polish embassy in London asking them to check the existence of such a company in Ozorkow. It took a long time, but eventually they informed me that there had been a tool and blacksmith shop in Ozorkow run by a man called Kressman. The Kressman family, however, had disappeared during the war, and no one had yet turned up to claim the shop.”

  “Disappeared”. Green grimaced inwardly at the euphemism. No one had turned up because they were probably Jewish and lying at the bottom of a lime pit somewhere. Ninety per cent of Poland’s Jews had perished in the Holocaust.

  “Did the Polish authorities give you any details on this man Kressman? His full name or age?”

  She frowned in dismay. “At the time, yes, but I’m afraid I can’t remember much.” Her delicate brows drew together as if in an effort to concentrate. “Joseph, I think that was the shopkeeper’s name. He’d been in business for over thirty years, so he had to have been middle aged.”

  “And you didn’t try to find out if there was a connection? There was a whole chunk of your husband’s life missing.”

  He had tried to sound gentle, but when she looked up, she was flushed and her tone was defensive. “There was chaos in post-war Europe. It took years for the dust to settle and for the fate of people to be uncovered. And Poland was in Stalin’s hands. You didn’t simply ask for information.”

  “But later. In all this time, did you never check?”

  “Eugene was a fragile man, Inspector. I helped him to live again, but I never made him whole. Whoever he was, he was a victim of this war, and he had suffered dreadfully. I wanted to put all that behind us—the papers, the box—and try to help him turn towards the future.”

  “He had no desire to know his past?”

  She shook her head. “On the contrary. Whenever I broached it, he’d become very upset. In fact, the merest hint of Poland and his youth would send him over the edge. I decided if the past was so terrible that Eugene couldn’t face it, it was better left alone.”

  He laid his notebook down and reached out a soothing hand. “I didn’t mean to be critical, Mrs. Walker. I’m just trying to find out as much as I can, and we’ve got a huge chunk of the picture missing.”

  To his surprise, she didn’t soften. She pushed the box away with distaste. “I don’t see how it’s relevant. After all this time, to dredge up all these questions seems needlessly cruel. He was probably just some innocent peasant or handyman living out a quiet life in the Polish countryside, and then the Nazis came along and turned his world upside down. Whoever he was and whatever he had done during that time, it had no bearing on who he was today.”

  Her vehemence surprised him. He had merely asked about the black box, but she had reacted as if he had accused her husband of something heinous. Of what? Of stealing a dead man’s ID? People had done far worse in the middle of war.

  * * *

  The puzzle still tugged at him as he left the Reid house. He glanced at his watch and saw it was nine-thirty, still early yet. A quick phone call to the babysitter revealed that all was quiet on the home front. Tony was fast asleep, and Sharon wouldn’t be home from work for at least two hours. There was still time to pursue one more small lead.

  He stopped for soup and coffee at Tim Hortons and asked to borrow the Yellow Pages from the acne-faced teen behind the counter. About a dozen phone calls later, he finally roused an antique dealer in Centretown willing to take a look at the black box. The man lived above his shop, and after much grumbling agreed to come down. Green drove past the shop twice before spotting the tiny, lead-windowed door wedged in between a photographer’s studio and a Chinese take-out. The old English lettering on the door read “Fine Antiques and Jewellery, Harry Fine, Prop.”

  The door activated a small bell as he pushed it open and stepped inside. Shelves overflowing with china dishes and knickknacks ran the length of the narrow room, and Green had to negotiate carefully to avoid knocking over the tables and stools that blocked the aisles. Dusty curios occupied every surface.

  A stubby, barrel-chested man emerged from the back and rolled towards him.

  “Mr. Fine? I’m Inspector Green.”

  Fine ignored the outstr
etched hand and peered up at Green over his half-glasses. He nodded at the box tucked under Green’s arm.

  “That it?”

  Green removed the box from its bag and held it out. Fine snatched it without a word and lumbered back down the aisle to the rear of the store. When Green caught up, he had already spread the contents out on his battered desktop and was adjusting the beam from a lamp. Slowly he turned the keys over in the light. Then, with a grunt, he peered through his jeweller’s magnifying glass.

  “I’m not making any promises,” he muttered as he focussed the glass. “I’m not saying I know much about Eastern European antiques, or tools and locks. I just know more than the rest of the clowns in this town.”

  “Can you tell me where it’s from?”

  Fine turned the box over impatiently and rapped his fingers against the bottom corner. “Orzokow. The box is made by this fellow Kressman. Handmade.” Fine studied the bottom with the glass and nodded. “This Kressman knew his trade. Nothing shoddy about this piece.”

  “What else can you tell me?”

  “If you stop asking stupid questions, maybe a thing or two.” Fine turned abruptly and disappeared through a curtain. He reemerged two minutes later with an armful of musty books. Keeping one eye on him, Green browsed through the store in a bored and distracted way. Although he loved the crumbling landscape of the inner city, that sense of history had never extended to bits of dented kitchenware. Half an hour crept by. On a dusty mahogany tabletop in a corner, he found a small pair of silver candlesticks and was checking the price when Fine appeared at his elbow, scowling.

  “Those are special ceremonial candlesticks. I won’t sell them to you.”

  “I know what they are, Mr. Fine,” he replied with a smile. “Shabbas candles. I wouldn’t buy them at that ridiculous price anyway.”

  Understanding flickered in the dealer’s eyes, and Green thought he even looked sheepish. “They’re from Poland. An old lady brought them to me last year before she died. They were all she brought with her out of the Holocaust.”

  Green turned them over curiously, noting the delicate engraving of a bygone era. Neither of his parents had brought anything with them out of the Holocaust. He felt oddly reluctant as he set the candlesticks back down on the shelf.

  Fine’s scowl returned. “You want to know about your box or not?” He held up the hammer and the set of keys. “I can’t tell you much. This is not my area. Maybe in Toronto or Europe you’ll find a dealer who knows more. It’s an interesting item. With its false bottom, no ordinary tool box. And the things inside were not made at the same time. The tools are older, solid iron, hand forged by a blacksmith. Good job. Probably this guy Kressman. See the small ‘K’ at the base? The keys are machine cast and not very good quality.”

  “What kind of locks?”

  Fine shrugged and held up the keys, which measured four to six inches. “Big locks. Padlocks, maybe?”

  “Like a peasant might have for his barn or gate?”

  Fine consulted his pages of keys and shook his head. “These keys are mass produced, and the metal seems very poor quality. Very porous. And I think that’s an old German company. If I had to guess, I’d say they were made during the war, when they used lots of recycled metals. Likely for some big buildings like warehouses or storage depots. A peasant would probably have older locks, made by the local locksmith. Just a guess, but for bopkes in the middle of the night, that’s all you get.”

  * * *

  By the time Green had returned the bags to the property room, he knew he was in trouble, for what had begun as a minor line of inquiry had taken up more than three hours. Sharon might be home by now and would have found out from the sitter that he’d spent a grand total of two hours with his son before rushing out again. At least he had cleared up the kitchen and collected the CDs Tony had scattered on the floor.

  When he arrived home, however, he found all the lights out and Sharon just settling down to sleep. She gave him a bleary frown as he greeted her.

  “Just kiss me goodnight and I’ll give you hell in the morning, Green. I’m dead.”

  Contrite, he leaned over to kiss her. “Everything okay, honey? Brian or Adam call?”

  “Lots of people called, except of course my husband. I had a nice long talk with Brian Sullivan.”

  He sized her up warily. She was languid and half asleep, cuddled among the pillows with the duvet up to her ears. With her eyes half closed, she looked too weary to be much of an adversary.

  “Did Brian say anything?” he ventured.

  One eye opened fully, and for a moment Green caught a glint of triumph. She smiled.

  “Yes, he said to give you two messages. First, that he’s found out something really exciting. And second, that he was taking his phone off the hook till nine o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Seven

  February 20th, 1941

  We rock to the swaying of the truck,

  stranger pressed against stranger to stay warm.

  Heads droop, eyes close as the truck drones on.

  Ahead to the east, an endless ribbon of grey,

  Behind us, a horror burned forever in my soul.

  Tadeuzs’ farm seized for the superman in our midst,

  A neighbour with Prussian ice in his veins.

  We woke to shouts, jackboots overhead.

  The neighbour counting hens,

  inspecting his bounty,

  lifting the straw…

  Gestapo guns herded us on the truck.

  Driving away, I turned to wave good-bye.

  Saw Tadeuzs and Marzina roped to the old pine,

  spinning slowly in the wind.

  “Green, I don’t think at seven o’clock on a goddamn Sunday morning!”

  “So take another sip of coffee. I’ll wait.”

  Sullivan hunched over the plastic table and cradled the mug of Tim Hortons coffee in his large hands. He glared across at his colleague, who sat clean-shaven and smiling opposite him. Green had come knocking at his front door at six-thirty in the morning.

  “How do you do it? How much sleep did you get?”

  “Enough. We’ve got a lot of work to do today, and we have to start early because I also have to paint the living room.” He took an impatient gulp of his coffee while he waited for Sullivan to stop laughing. “Come on, Sharon said you found out something exciting.”

  Sullivan sobered. “You’ve landed yourself quite a woman this time. Just don’t fuck it up.” He let the silence lengthen as long as he dared then returned to safer ground. “Okay. First, Ident’s been working their butts off on this non-case. I tell you, after this is over, you’ll have to buy Lou Paquette a bottle. He lifted dozens of prints off the key surfaces of the Walker house—the certificates, the booze, drawer knobs, that kind of thing—and he spent all of his Saturday night going through them. So far, most of them seem to be Mr. or Mrs.”

  “Most?”

  “He lifted some off the certificates and the booze in the basement that don’t match the Walkers.”

  “Tell him to print Donald and Margaret Reid.”

  Sullivan glowered briefly over his coffee cup. “I’m ahead of you. He’s going over to the Reids’ today.”

  “Well, we might get lucky. What about the tire tracks? I suppose we wrecked them all.”

  “Nope. They have some great imprints of my tires, but at the bend in the road we didn’t swing quite as wide, and so the tracks are separate. The RCMP will work on the tire make first thing tomorrow. Lou would like to see some paperwork, though, so he can put in for the overtime.”

  Green grinned. “He’ll get it, once Jules knows we’re investigating the case.”

  Sullivan took a deep swig of coffee and shook his head wearily. “I don’t know how you get away with it. Jules is going to have our heads over this.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of Jules. You just keep working. What about Gibbs and the immigration records? Walker’s and Josef what’s-his-name’s?”

/>   Here Sullivan came alive. Triumphantly he pulled out his notebook and flipped it open. “There, old buddy, we finally hit pay dirt. According to their immigration applications, both Walker and Mr. G. came from the same town in Poland. Ozorkow.”

  “But Walker doesn’t even remember where he’s from.”

  Sullivan shrugged. “That’s what he wrote down on his application. Ozorkow.”

  * * *

  Superintendent Adam Jules, head of Criminal Investigations, had turned a delicate hue of pink and the nostrils of his fine aquiline nose flared. It was the only outward manifestation of his outrage. That and the thin, tight line of his lips. Green had called on him at home, which had not improved his mood.

  Jules placed his fingertips together on his lap and studied them. “Michael, Dr. MacPhail’s report lists the death as natural causes. Eighty years old, enough disease to sink an elephant, and according to the blood work-up, nearly twice the legal limit of alcohol in his system. By all means harass grieving widows, tie up the OPP, build up our overtime bill in Forensics.”

  Green grinned. Nothing got past Jules. “Adam, just because he could have died of natural causes doesn’t mean he did.”

  “Do you have one shred of evidence to point to homicide?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What?”

  “A small depression wound on Walker’s temple which couldn’t have been made as he fell, because nothing in the vicinity matches the shape.”

  Jules’ eyebrows rose, and the thin line of his lips grew thinner still. “This is evidence?”

  “It’s a shred. That’s all you asked for.”

  Jules studied him in silence for a minute with no hint of expression in the perfectly groomed exterior to betray his thoughts. His grey eyes seemed emotionless, but Green sensed that he was weakening. Jules sighed.

  “Do you have a theory?”

  Green relaxed. “Some possible ones, all of which suggest premeditation. But I’m going to need to assign some men to the case.”

  “And given MacPhail’s report and the family’s complaints, I’m going to need something to justify it, Michael. Shea and our public image, you know.” Jules rolled his eyes almost imperceptibly as he mentioned the new Police Chief.