‘There has to be a child,’ he told himself again.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Munich. 26 April 1945.
Johann Langner spent four days in Gilching. Having collapsed by the fireside in the company of his host, she had put him to bed where he drifted in and out of consciousness in a state of constant delirium. In his wakeful moments he was aware of Frau Olberg watching over him, soothing his brow with cold towels, until gradually the savage images of war that would make him cry out in his sleep, succumbed to peace. On the morning of the third day, his fever broke, and by the afternoon he felt well enough to get out of bed, his determination to recover having been fuelled by his need to find Ava.
Johann’s legs still felt weak as he pedalled through the outskirts of Munich on Martha’s rattling old bicycle. Whatever its state, Johann was grateful for it. He had set out from Gilching early, beneath an overcast sky, and he had taken frequent breaks out of necessity along the way, avoiding the busiest places as best he could. Johann was also grateful for the civilian clothes he now wore, which belonged to Ava’s uncle, Heinz Schröder. He had chosen the dullest clothing he could find in Herr Schröder’s wardrobe so as not to stand out, and he wore a cap pulled down over his brow. Martha had warned him that many of the people had turned against the military, the SS in particular, because the people blamed them for the lack of food, and the destruction and poverty the war had brought about. She feared that if he wasn’t picked up by the Gestapo and shot for desertion, then the people of Munich would almost certainly try to lynch him from the nearest tree if they knew he was a member of the once elite Leibstandarte.
It was late morning by the time Johann turned the bicycle onto Landsberger Strasse, which followed the main railway tracks to the station terminal. Here, evidence of the bombings was soon everywhere he looked—the railway having been a key target for the Allied air strikes. He was looking for a public telephone booth. He was desperate to speak to Volker and he knew he couldn’t just cycle up to the gates of the concentration camp at Dachau and ask to see him as he had before. Things were very different now that he had no papers allowing him to be there.
As the bomb damage only seemed to increase the closer he came to the main railway terminal, Johann decided that any telephone booths still standing in the area were unlikely to work. So he made a turn and headed towards the centre of the city, which he had hoped to avoid. As the streets became busier he found himself looking away from everyone he passed, and from every vehicle that passed him. Then somewhere along Sonnenstrasse he saw the word Fernsprecher—long distance. The red telephone booth had a small queue standing outside it, which was a good sign. Clearly it was in working order.
Johann cycled past it and turned into a narrow alley. He propped the bicycle against the wall and pretended to adjust the chain so as not to arouse suspicion as he watched the booth. He had a frustrating wait as it seemed that every time someone left the queue, another person joined it. This pattern continued for thirty minutes. Then when the last person entered the booth, he pulled his cap further down over his eyes and left the alley to wait outside it, hands thrust deep into his pockets, nervously flicking at the coins Martha had given him. His shoulders were scrunched and his head was bowed low. When the occupant came out, he turned away and coughed into his hand. Then he slipped inside.
Volker had previously given Johann a telephone number for the administration building at Dachau concentration camp, and Johann had written it in his Soldbuch—the personal identification and pay book given to him as a new recruit when he joined the Leibstandarte, which he had since been obliged to carry everywhere with him. He lifted the handset from its hook on the side of the receiver box, inserted his coins, and dialled the number. A few seconds later the call was answered.
‘Hello?’ Johann said. The line was poor. ‘Could I please speak to Lagerführer Strobel?’
‘Please state your business.’
‘It’s a personal matter. I need to speak to him urgently.’
‘Are you family?’
‘No, I’m a friend.’
‘Well, I’m sure you can understand that Lagerführer Strobel is a very busy man. I cannot interrupt his duties without first verifying the urgency of your call.’
‘I told you, my reasons for calling are personal. If you can just let him know I’m on the line, I’m sure he’ll want to speak to me.’
Johann was squeezing the handset tightly in frustration. He wanted to slam it against one of the telephone booth windows, but he constrained himself. Outside he could see that there were already two people waiting.
After a considerable pause, the man at the other end of the line sighed and said, ‘What is your name, please?’
‘Does it matter?’
In a more aggressive tone, he asked again, ‘Your name, please.’
‘It’s Langner. He’ll know who I am.’
‘One moment. I’ll see if Lagerführer Strobel is available.’
Johann inserted the last of his coins as he waited, listening to the static clicks on the line for what felt like an eternity. Outside, he saw that the queue had built further, and he could see that those who had been waiting longest were growing impatient. Someone tapped on the window and he turned his back to them.
‘Hello? Herr Langner?’
‘Yes, hello,’ Johann said with urgency.
‘I’m afraid Lagerführer Strobel is not available. I’m sorry.’
It was not what Johann wanted to hear. ‘Did he give you any message for me?’
‘No, there was no message.’
Johann couldn’t believe it. He began to doubt then whether this man had found Volker at all. Surely his friend would have something to say to him.
‘Did you speak to him yourself?’
The man’s tone became impatient. ‘As I said, Lagerführer Strobel is a very busy man. Goodbye.’
The call ended and Johann just stared into space for several seconds as he tried to understand the situation. Volker, it seemed, did not wish to talk to him. Another tap-tap at the window snapped him out of his thoughts and he quickly hung up the handset. There was a sarcastic cheer from someone in the queue as he opened the door and left at a pace with his head bowed low, knowing that if anyone so much as saw the youthfulness in his eyes, they might stop him to question why he was not fighting for the Reich in what now seemed to Johann to be its dying days.
Johann continued south along Sonnenstrasse, pedalling as fast as his limited strength would allow before dizziness threatened to overcome him. He slowed down, and he was panting hard as he turned off onto Lindwurmstrasse in the Ludwigsvorstadt district, heading for the borough of Sendling, southwest of the city, where Ava and her parents lived. He had hinged so much hope on the belief that his friend would have at least some answers for him, but now that hope had been dashed. He tried to tell himself that Volker was simply too busy to speak to him—as the person he had spoken to on the telephone had suggested. With the Allied forces pressing in from the west and the Soviet army coming ever closer from the east, he supposed that Volker had far more important matters to attend to. He suspected there was more to it, however, and that troubled him.
Johann’s only idea now was to return to Ava’s home. He thought perhaps a neighbour might have seen or heard something that could prove useful to him in his search. He knew he would be running a great risk as he would have to knock and ask questions at every door without first knowing who would answer, but it was a risk he had to take. The road he was on ran into Sendling, which was essentially a residential quarter. When he reached the end of Lindwurmstrasse, he turned left, heading towards the spire of St Margaret’s church at Margaretenplatz. The area seemed eerily quiet, as though the soul had been stripped from the place in the time since he last saw Ava there.
He passed the church and turned into the road where Ava lived, wondering whose door to knock on first. He could see Ava’s home further down on the right. He rode up to it, thinking to start with the imm
ediate neighbours, but when he pulled up at the kerbside and dismounted the bicycle, he glanced at the house again and noticed that some of the boards were missing. He was sure of it. A week or so ago, when he had called at the house before going to Gilching, the doorway had been fully boarded. Now there were at least four planks missing from the lower section. His hopes lifted when he thought that perhaps Ava and her parents had returned home, but he was equally conscious of the fact that the boards could have been removed by looters.
Johann approached the house with caution and saw the missing boards in a loose pile to the side of the porch. The door was set back and just visible through the gap, enough to see that it was ajar. He ducked his head and passed through, teasing the door further open. Once inside, he was greeted by a stale and musty odour. The air was cold and it was too dark to see much at first, but his eyes quickly adjusted and he knew the place well enough. Ahead of him, a narrow staircase ran up from the entrance hall to the first floor. The family room was on his left and the kitchen and dining areas were straight ahead. He stepped further in and suddenly froze as he heard a rattling sound coming from the family room. The door was open and Johann stepped carefully towards it, until he was standing in the frame.
The sound came again and Johann’s eyes were drawn towards it. This room was partially lit by the gaps in the boards at the window, and in the half-light he saw the silhouette of a man in an overcoat, bent over a cabinet, rummaging for something—valuables, Johann supposed. He despised looters, who preyed on the misfortune of others. He leapt at the man, grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him round, pinning him back against the cabinet.
‘Get out of here!’
Johann drew his fist back ready to hit the man, whom he could now see more clearly. He was an older man, perhaps in his fifties. He looked terrified.
‘Candles!’ the man said. ‘I was looking for candles.’
‘Johann?’
Johann’s muscles went limp at hearing his name, but it was not the man before him who had spoken. It was a woman’s voice. She sounded weak and frail, and so very old. He let go of the man and turned around. And there, sitting in an armchair with blankets piled around her, he saw a woman he barely recognised. The grey daylight from the gaps in the window boards revealed a gaunt and pallid face. Her head was shaved, and her hollow eyes seemed to stair back at him. Johann was immediately reminded of those unfortunate souls he’d seen at Dachau when he went there to see Volker. It was Ava’s mother, Adelina, and in her lap …
No, it can’t be.
Johann had to step closer, convinced that his eyes were playing tricks on him in the half-light. But it was true. She was holding a baby.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Present day.
Following Jan Statham’s phone call to the civil registration office in Ingolstadt, having asked them to retrieve the vital records they held for Ava’s paternal uncle, Kurt Bauer, Jan came back into the meeting room where she had left Tayte, and he thought she had even more of a spring in her step than when she’d left. Her face was full of smiles. She had several printouts in her hand, and Tayte imagined they were the reason she was so excited.
‘Wow, I’ve heard about German efficiency,’ he said with a grin. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve sent the records for Kurt Bauer over already.’ He was grinning because he knew full well that such a feat was impossible in such a short time frame.
‘No, silly. They’re from Starnberg,’ Jan said as she sat down.
She placed the printouts onto the desk in a pile in front of Tayte, and he immediately began to share her excitement. On top of the pile was a printout from the Sterberegister. It was for Adelina Bauer.
‘Ava’s mother,’ Tayte said as he recognised her name.
‘Month of death, May,’ Jan said, showing Tayte the corresponding column on the record. ‘Year of death, 1945.’
‘So Ava’s mother died just as the war was ending.’
Jan nodded. ‘The cause of death says Lungenentzündung. That’s pneumonia.’
Tayte took a deep breath as he wondered whether the record offered any significance to his search. Adelina Bauer had died prematurely, but he imagined many people did for one reason or another during those dark years. He turned to the next record. It was from the Heiratsregister showing Heinz Schröder’s marriage in 1910 to Frieda Schäfer. Jan had already found Heinz’s birth certificate, which Tayte slid across to keep Heinz’s vital records together. The following printout showed another entry from the Sterberegister and Tayte sighed to himself at seeing it.
‘Heinz’s wife also died prematurely,’ he said, noting that the death certificate, or Sterbeurkunde, for Frieda Schröder had been issued in 1933, twenty-three years after their marriage. ‘She was only forty-two years old.’
‘Some of the records I see are enough to make anyone weep,’ Jan said. ‘It took me a while to get used to seeing people’s lives laid out like this—sometimes a birth certificate one year, and then a death certificate for the same child a few years later. You deal with it, don’t you, but I don’t think it’s something you ever really get comfortable with, or want to for that matter.’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Tayte said. ‘I find it can help to look for the positives. In this case I’d like to think that, although Frieda’s life was cut short, she spent twenty-three happily married years with Heinz before she died.’ Tayte turned to the next record. It was a birth certificate. ‘And look, they had a son, Franz Schröder, born in 1913, just before the Great War.’
‘That must have been a hard time for Mrs Schröder.’
‘I’m sure it was,’ Tayte said, turning to the next record and reading the word Sterbeurkunde again.
‘Oh dear,’ Jan said when she saw it. ‘That’s her boy’s death certificate. 1942.’
Tayte nodded. ‘What does this mean?’ he asked, pointing to the section where the reason for death appeared. ‘Gefallen.’
‘It simply means fallen,’ Jan said. ‘Heinz Schröder’s son was killed in action during the war. Look here, it shows the place of death as Russia.’
Tayte shook his head. Whatever side a person was on during a war, he imagined that every parent shared a common grief at such a loss of their child. He turned to the next record. It was another birth certificate—a Geburtsurkunde—for a second son, Werner, born little more than a year after his brother Franz. Tayte hung his head over the next record when he saw that it was almost identical to the previous death certificate.
‘Two sons killed on the Russian Front in the same year.’
‘Perhaps it’s a mercy their mother had already passed away by then,’ Jan said. She shook her head. ‘Terrible times. I don’t know how any mother could cope with such news.’
‘Or father, come to that,’ Tayte added. ‘By the end of 1942, poor old Heinz Schröder seems to have lost all his immediate family.’
‘There’s a couple more records to go,’ Jan said, prompting Tayte to look at the next one.
‘This is another marriage certificate,’ he said, scanning the details. ‘In July 1945 Heinz Schröder married Helene Schmidt.’
‘It’s nice to know he remarried.’
Tayte smiled. ‘See, that’s a positive, right there.’
There was nothing particularly noteworthy about the marriage. The bride’s address told Tayte she was a local woman, perhaps someone Heinz had known for some time, given that his first wife had died more than ten years earlier. The witnesses were a neighbour called Martha Olberg and another member of the Schmidt family. Tayte turned to the last record, and as soon as he saw it a shiver ran through him. His breath caught in his chest as he scanned the details.
‘Karl Schröder?’ he said, unable to believe his eyes.
‘Does that name mean something to you?’
Tayte nodded. ‘It’s what I’m looking for. At least, I think it is.’ His eyes were all over the document, taking everything in, and at the same time trying to understand what this discovery meant. He was lo
oking at a copy of Karl Schröder’s birth certificate. The father was listed as Heinz Schröder, the mother as Helene Schröder née Schmidt. The place of birth was shown as Gilching. ‘This was issued in September, 1945,’ he added.
‘So it gets even more positive for Heinz,’ Jan said. ‘He had another son. This time with his new wife, Helene.’
Tayte scrunched his brow. ‘I don’t think so. See here. The date of birth is shown as February, 1945, yet this certificate wasn’t issued until September that year, seven months later. The date of birth is also five months before Heinz and Helene were married.’
Jan looked more closely. ‘That’s curious then, isn’t it?’ She pointed to something written on the record. ‘And this field asks whether the child was born legitimate or illegitimate, and it says “legitim”, which is something of a contradiction, too.’
‘I think that what we’re looking at here is an amended birth certificate. I don’t believe Heinz and Helene are Karl’s biological parents at all.’
‘You think he was adopted?’
Tayte reminded himself that if this was the Karl he was looking for, the same Karl who had later married his mother, then he had gone to see Tobias Kaufmann’s father, Elijah, back in the 1970s with a view to tracing his parentage. If Karl had believed that Heinz Schröder was his biological father, Tayte could see no reason why Karl would have done that. There would have been no need to look any further.
‘I’m sure you’re aware that it’s common practice to change the facts on amended birth certificates so it appears as if the adoptive parents are the child’s biological parents. The place of birth can be changed to suit the adoptive parents’ address, even the date of birth can be altered. I think on this occasion the date of birth must be correct, or it would likely have been amended to something closer to the date when the child was named.’
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