‘How’s that hand?’ he asked Jean with a smirk.
‘I think it’s a little bruised, but it was worth it.’
‘I’ll bet. You’re pretty tough for your size, aren’t you?’
‘You did call me a tough biker chick once, remember?’ Jean jabbed her fist at the air and Tayte laughed until his wound forced him to stop.
He turned back to Tobias and pointed over to Rudi, who was surrounded by police officers as he lowered Volker Strobel into their custody.
‘Tobias, do me a favour, will you? Don’t let that old man out of your sight.’
Kaufmann scoffed. ‘You have my word on that, Mr Tayte. I’ll see he gets to trial. I don’t care how old he is. The Demon of Dachau will face the families of his victims and justice will be done at last.’
Two ambulances arrived and Jean helped Tayte towards them.
‘I also found out about my parents tonight,’ Tayte said, finding it hard to think about anything else.
‘What did you find?’
‘Strobel told me he killed them.’
Jean’s shoulders slumped. She squeezed his hand, her eyes doleful and sympathetic. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yeah.’
Tayte was still somewhat shell-shocked by what he’d heard in that basement room, and yet he had to remind himself that he’d seen no hard proof to back up anything Strobel had said. Maybe Tayte was in denial about it, but for now he figured all he had was Strobel’s account of events, and he supposed Strobel would have told him just about anything to make him pull that trigger. He liked to think that Strobel had invented at least a part of his story, but he knew that a simple DNA sibling test could prove whether he and Rudi were from the same mother and father, and that would back up Strobel’s story of how he came to adopt him. And there was the niggling question that had always haunted Tayte.
If my mother was alive, why didn’t she come back for me?
As Tayte and Jean were met by two of the ambulance crew, wheeling a stretcher towards them, Tayte drew a deep breath and moved the conversation on. He didn’t feel up to talking about it just now. Instead, he turned his thoughts to Rudi. He would give him a few days to get used to the revelation that his adoptive father was really Volker Strobel, but he was anxious to see him again. If Rudi would agree to take the DNA test and it proved positive, he figured they had a lot of catching up to do. And he wanted to tell him that, contrary to what he believed, his mother did want him. He thought about getting home, too, so he could start digging around in the archives again, knowing he now had everything he needed to start building his own family tree, and to proving, or disproving, the things Strobel had told him about his parents.
But all that would have to wait.
‘I guess we missed our flight,’ he said as he sat on the stretcher.
‘I guess we did,’ Jean replied. ‘Not that you’re in any fit state to go anywhere other than to the hospital.’
‘And I guess you’ve had a pretty busy afternoon,’ Tayte added, wincing as he was helped into a lying position by the medics. ‘Right now might not be the best time for explanations, though.’
‘No, perhaps not,’ Jean agreed. ‘Let’s talk about it in the morning. I’ll come to the hospital with you.’ She paused, smiling. ‘Someone’s got to make sure you don’t get into any more trouble.’
Tayte smiled back, but his smile quickly faded when he heard a chilling scream. He looked back at the burning building. There was a figure at one of the upper windows. It was difficult to make out who it was because of the bright flames that engulfed him, but Tayte knew it had to be Max Fleischer.
Having thought her father dead, in her haste to cremate him and kill everyone else in the room, Ingrid Keller had clearly not given a thought to Fleischer, who had still been in the building. Tayte watched him climb out of the window onto the ledge, and then, screaming, he jumped to his death.
Chapter Forty-Seven
It was just after ten the following morning, and having spent the night at the hospital, Jefferson Tayte was with Jean, strolling along the Renaissance Antiquarium at the Munich Residence. It was a lavish sixteenth-century hall of some sixty-six metres in length, with painted walls and ceilings, housing Duke Albrecht V’s collection of antique sculptures, from which the room took its name.
‘A promise is a promise,’ Tayte had told Jean as soon as they sat back in the taxi on their way there.
Tayte had also wanted to get away from the hospital as soon as he could, and Jean was in complete agreement that they had spent far too many hours there between them already that week. Tayte’s side was still understandably sore from his ordeal the day before, but the bullet Rudi had meant for Strobel had passed cleanly through him, an inch or so below his ribcage, thankfully missing his stomach. He had a few stitches to scratch at, and he would no doubt have the scars to look back on once everything had healed, but it was nothing more than a flesh wound.
‘And you’re sure my briefcase is okay?’ Tayte asked as they walked, sounding more concerned for his old friend than he had been for himself.
‘It’s absolutely fine,’ Jean said. ‘I told you, you can have it back when we leave for the airport. I want you all to myself until then.’
‘Okay, I’m all yours,’ Tayte said with a grin. ‘You know, I must thank Mr Goodbar next time I see him,’ he added, his grin widening. ‘I know I’m trying to cut down, but apart from that bar you bought for me on our first day in Munich, I’ve missed him this trip.’
‘Thank him for what?’
Tayte patted his stomach. ‘Well, if I didn’t literally have a soft spot for Hershey’s, particularly Mr Goodbar, I wouldn’t have built up this protective cushion around me. He might just have saved my life.’
Jean shook her head, laughing. ‘If you didn’t have your “protective cushion” in the first place, that bullet would have missed you altogether. Have you thought about that? And I suppose I didn’t have anything to do with it?’
Tayte paused while he pretended to think about it. ‘Well, maybe just a little,’ he said, teasing.
Jean gave him a playful slap. Then she put her arm around his waist and hugged him closer. ‘Well, I rather like you as you are, so I’ll say it for you. Thank you, Mr Goodbar!’
They both started laughing then, until they realised they were the only people making any sound in the otherwise reverently quiet hall.
‘So,’ Tayte said. ‘Now we’re away from that hospital for what I hope will be the last time, I think you have some explaining to do. How did you find me? I’ve been trying to work it out all night.’
‘The money,’ Jean said. ‘When I finally cleared the hospital, I picked up your message. I knew you’d left the record office and I tried to call you, but after several attempts I started to worry.’
‘How are you? I’m sorry, I should have asked sooner.’
‘I’m fine. There was some internal swelling, but it’s okay. They wanted to run another scan to be sure. Anyway, when I couldn’t reach you I went to see Tobias. It was mid-afternoon by then and he said he’d been expecting us.’
‘I called him earlier in the day. I said we’d drop by and lend a hand with the tidying up. He was trying to find a report he wanted to show us.’
‘Well, he’d already found it by the time I got there. After we told him Langner had had a child with Trudi Strobel, and that he’d paid her off for the child, he’d had his government contacts look into Langner’s business accounts.’
‘Tobias said he was keen to follow just about any new lead that came along.’
Jean nodded. ‘And it proved worthwhile. They found that Langner was still making payments to Trudi and her daughter. He’d set up an account in the name of a bogus art restoration company, so that without further examination it wouldn’t be obvious who was getting the money. There were several business accounts, but this one stood out because the sums of money being paid into it seemed disproportionately high for the services being paid for.’
&n
bsp; ‘And on closer inspection,’ Tayte offered, ‘they found the company registered to Trudi Strobel and Ingrid Keller?’
‘I don’t think it was quite as straightforward as that, but that’s the crux of it, yes. They found that the money was ultimately being drawn by Trudi and Ingrid. It wasn’t a bad setup either. I doubt it was even illegal. It went unnoticed for so long because, until we connected Langner to Trudi Strobel through her daughter, Ingrid, no one had cause to investigate the reputable art dealer Volker Strobel was posing as.’
They were halfway along the expansive hall when Tayte paused beside a piece of illuminated statuary and gazed up at the colourful frescos on the ceiling, glad to see that not everything so beautiful had been destroyed by the war.
‘So, what did you do with this information?’ he asked.
‘I went back to see Trudi Strobel.’
‘You did? How did that go?’
‘It was quite confrontational to begin with.’
‘I’ll bet,’ Tayte said, recalling how cold Trudi had been towards both of them when they visited her together.
‘I stood my ground, though,’ Jean added. ‘A couple of hours had passed by now and I was worried sick about you. When I went to Trudi’s house and mentioned the bogus company she’d been drawing from the gates couldn’t have opened faster. I told her what I knew and I showed her the proof. Tobias had made a copy for me, the poor man. His own copier was broken, along with just about everything else in his office. He had to go to another business on a different floor to borrow theirs.’
‘He’s a good man,’ Tayte said. ‘I hope he and his father will find some peace now that Strobel’s in custody.’
Jean nodded and continued her explanation. ‘I came right out with it and asked Trudi why she’d lied to us about the money—why she’d told us Langner paid her off for the child all those years ago, when in truth he didn’t have that kind of money back then. She became very uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t be put off. For all I knew, your life was in danger.’
‘It was.’
‘Exactly, so I told her everything that had happened to us since we arrived in Munich, and that I was deeply concerned about you because you weren’t answering your phone. Then I came back to the large sums of money she was still receiving from Langner and I asked her why. Well, she seemed to break down in front of me. She became angry at first, but I kept asking her why Langner was still supporting her, and whether the payments were really just to keep her quiet about his daughter, Ingrid. It was then that she began to break down and she told me Langner wasn’t Ingrid’s father. She just came out with it. I still don’t know whether she meant to say it or not, but that was the moment the penny dropped. Trudi went very quiet after that, but she’d already said enough and I think she knew it. I realised that if Langner wasn’t Ingrid’s father, the money had to be coming from someone else—someone posing as Johann Langner.’
‘And who else could that be other than Trudi’s husband-in-hiding, Volker Strobel,’ Tayte said, smiling at Jean and wondering what he’d done to deserve her.
‘I went back to Rudi Langner after that,’ Jean continued. ‘When I told him what I knew about his father and his nurse, it must have come as such a shock. He was so upset. It was clear to see how much he looked up to his father. Imagine finding out that he was really the Demon of Dachau and that he’d been lied to all his life.’
‘I can see why he was so mad at Strobel when you both found me,’ Tayte said. ‘How did you know I was there? Rudi can’t have known what really went on at that place.’
‘We tried the house first,’ Jean said. ‘Langner wasn’t there, and neither was Keller, so we called the German Heart Centre to see if he’d been readmitted. They hadn’t seen him. Langner’s former Hitler Youth building was the only other place we could think to check, and we knew something was wrong as soon as we arrived. As I said when we found you, there was a strong smell of fuel in the air and we followed our noses to the basement. I almost bumped into Ingrid Keller.’
Tayte grinned. ‘And then she bumped into your fist.’
‘You’re not going to let that go, are you?’
‘Sure I will—eventually. Just remind me not to get on the wrong side of you.’
As they came to the end of the hall, Tayte held Jean close to him and gazed into her eyes. ‘I really thought I was going to die last night. I haven’t said it yet, but thank you, Jean. You saved my life. How can I ever repay you?’
‘Oh, I’m sure I can think of something,’ Jean said. A moment later she stood on her toes and kissed him, and her whole face lit up as she said, ‘Marry me?’
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Katie Green for helping to shape and structure this story, to Catja Pafort for copyediting the book and helping with my German, to Emilie Marneur and the team at Amazon Publishing for all the many things that go on behind the scenes, and my continued thanks to my wife, Karen, for her support and the invaluable input that goes into every Jefferson Tayte story. I would also very much like to thank you, the reader, for reading or listening to this book. I hope you enjoyed it.
About the Author
Photo © Karen Robinson
Steve Robinson drew upon his own family history for inspiration when he imagined the life and quest of his genealogist hero Jefferson Tayte. The talented London-based crime writer, who was first published at age sixteen, always wondered about his own maternal grandfather—‘He was an American GI billeted in England during the Second World War,’ Robinson says. ‘A few years after the war ended he went back to America, leaving a young family behind and, to my knowledge, no further contact was made. I traced him to Los Angeles through his 1943 enlistment record and discovered that he was born in Arkansas …’
Robinson cites crime writing and genealogy as ardent hobbies—a passion that is readily apparent in his work. He can be contacted via his website, www.steve-robinson.me, his blog at www.ancestryauthor.blogspot.com, and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SteveRobinsonAuthor.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Acknowledgements
About the Author
th friends
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