“Leonard,” Therese said warily, “you know what he’s accused of?”
Hanna did not interrupt her work, but went on loading hay into the troughs.
“Do you know who reported him?”
“Don’t know,” Hanna threw out, “but there must be something to it. Nobody says that kind of thing for no reason.”
Therese gripped her arm tightly. “Did you . . . ?”
Hanna flung the pitchfork to the floor, prongs first; the short, harsh scratching sound mingled with the metallic clang of the cows’ chains as their heads moved up and down.
“And what if I did?” asked Hanna, her head held high. “If it’s not true, he has nothing to fear.”
“You mean . . . Leonard and Jacob? You’ve . . . ?”
Hanna went back to her work. Then, suddenly, she shouted, “I saw them! I saw them at the lake!” And Therese heard a mixture of pain and anger; she heard Hanna’s voice crack.
She went up to her and whispered, “Hanna, you have to go there and tell them it’s not true.”
“Never! Never!” she cried. Fear flared up in her eyes. “If you say anything, my father will kill me. But I’ll never take it back. Never. It’s the truth.”
Now, beneath the rattling of the chains, there was a humming sound, distant and strange, and for the first time Therese felt this lurching sensation within, as if something she had been holding in equilibrium was about to break away.
She could not remember how she got home. Later, she sat on her bed, incapable of putting her thoughts in order, deaf and mute with helplessness. “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” “Thou shalt not kill.” The word truth shriveled up in her head, trembling, thin, and melting into nothingness.
The next day, she came home from the Kruse farm. Her father met her at the door. “Something’s happened,” he said quietly. A weak light fell from the kitchen window onto the yard; the moon was nearly full, and it made her father’s face look unnaturally waxen.
Had she immediately thought of Leonard? She no longer knew. All she knew was that she had put her hands over her ears and that her father’s voice sounded muffled. “Leonard has hanged himself,” he said, and she hit out at him, shouting that he mustn’t say that, that it couldn’t be true.
Therese Mende got up from the sofa and closed the sliding door to the terrace. She tried to ignore the brief stabbing sensation in her chest. The wind had gotten up some more; the pounding of the breakers was audible inside the house. Luisa, busy in the kitchen, was humming as she prepared supper.
Leonard had torn his shirt into equal-length strips and hanged himself from the window grate in his cell. They had wanted names from him; if he told them who he had “done things” with, he could expect a light sentence, they had told old Kramer. He pleaded with his son, but Leonard remained silent.
The days after his death seemed frozen in the flat expanse, rigid with grief and shock.
The pastor refused to bury him in the cemetery. His father and Herr Kramer begged him, but he stood firm. “A suicide, and furthermore someone who . . . No. Never in consecrated ground.” His mother agreed with the pastor. She got down on her knees at her pew and prayed for the young, lost soul.
Using a pickaxe, they cut a hole in the frozen earth just outside the cemetery, next to the hedge. Herr and Frau Kramer, Therese and her father, Alwine and Frau Kalder, gathered for a small, unobtrusive ceremony. Jacob, who was in France, knew nothing of all this. Wilhelm had been contacted in Stuttgart, but he had not come.
Alwine spoke to her again for the first time that day. “Why isn’t Hanna here?” she asked.
Because it’s her fault, Therese wanted to say, but she replied, “I don’t know.” She had wanted to say, Just stay beside me. Tell me about your happy days in Cologne. Say this is all a bad dream.
The lurching in her insides, the sense of disorientation, made her remain silent.
Years later, she had been at an art exhibition in London with her second husband, Tillmann. A sculpture caught her eye: scorched logs, piled up on top of one another, that required an invisible spike, a kind of core, to stabilize them. The figure, apparently defying the force of gravity, stood upright on a granite base. The name of the artist was written on a small brass plate. Underneath, it said, “Inner Equilibrium.”
She had felt it again there, this lurching sensation, and understood that her faith in the simple rules of her Catholic childhood had been lost that day.
Chapter 22
April 23, 1998
Karl van den Boom parked his car in the street, took his pistol out of the glove compartment, and walked the three hundred yards along the path to the cottage. As he approached, he saw that the lit-up window they had seen from the Höver farm was that of Rita Albers’s study. He got off the path, followed the hedge around the boundary of the property, and opened the little gate at the end of the garden. Apple blossoms lay on the grass, glimmering in the darkness like freshly fallen snow.
Van den Boom unbuttoned his jacket. It was tight across his shoulders and restricted his movements. For a moment, he asked himself whether what he was doing was wise, and whether he ought really to report his whereabouts to the dispatcher in Kleve. Then he edged over to the front of the terrace and looked over the balustrade. A man was standing by one of the shelves with his back to the window, apparently busy with a file. He was wearing a gray jacket over his jeans, and he was unusually tall.
Van den Boom ducked his head down, muttered “Shit!” and went around the terrace to the front of the house. His Homicide colleagues’ blue car was in the drive, just behind the carport.
Hurriedly, he put the gun in his jacket pocket, buttoned up the jacket, and rang the doorbell.
His colleague Brand showed himself at the kitchen window for a moment, then opened the front door.
Karl van den Boom greeted him briefly. “Saw a light and thought I’d better take a look.”
Brand, known to one and all as “the Long One,” nodded. “I thought maybe we’d overlooked something.” He sat down at the desk and looked at Van den Boom. “You live here, don’t you?” he said pensively. “What’s the story with this Peters? What’s behind it?”
Karl shrugged. “Have you read the files?”
The Long One, eyes narrowed to slits, said acidly, “Yes, just after you did.”
Van den Boom held his gaze eye and rumbled, “Hmm . . . Don’t really see what anyone can say about that. I thought maybe I’d have a word with Gerhard . . . Ask why they closed the file after only two months.” He did not mention the hint Paul Höver had dropped.
The Long One burst out laughing. “If anyone’s going to talk to Gerhard, it’s us. You keep yourself—” His words were interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. After the third ring, the answering machine clicked on. A man’s voice spoke. “Hey, Rita, it’s me. Wanted to hear how far you’d gotten with the Peters story. Call me . . .”
The Long One grabbed the receiver. “Hello.” Silence fell at the other end of the line. Van den Boom pressed the “Speaker” button, and the Long One frowned with irritation. “Hello, who’s speaking?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” came the response from the other end, after a short pause. “That’s Rita Albers’s line, after all.”
“This is the police,” Brand replied. “And now I’ll ask again: whom am I speaking to?”
Van den Boom turned the telephone toward him. The display said “Thomas.” He pointed this out to the Long One.
“Where’s Rita?” came from the receiver, which was now lying on the blotter as the Long One made a note.
“Frau Albers is dead.”
The “Good God!” came immediately, and the reaction was genuine.
“Look . . . Thomas. Tell me your full name and what you have to do with Frau Albers.”
“Was she . . . Was she murdered?”
&nb
sp; “What makes you say that?”
The other person hung up. Brand slammed his open hand down on the desk and leapt to his feet. “What an asshole! Does he think we’re stupid, or what?” He went through the telephone’s address book and noted down the number. He reached for the receiver, but Van den Boom held him back.
“No, no,” he rumbled calmly. “Let’s give him a couple of minutes to think it over.”
The Long One was about to make a retort, but he thought better of it. Two minutes later, the telephone rang again, and Van den Boom grinned with satisfaction.
It was Thomas Köbler. “Look, I’ll make a deal with you. You keep me updated on this case, and I tell you what I know. I’m in Düsseldorf right now, so I could be with you in, say, an hour and a half.”
The Long One was about to tear him off a strip, but Van den Boom snatched up the receiver and said, neutrally, “In an hour and a half, at the police station here in Kranenburg. That suits us fine.”
He hung up.
He smiled benevolently at his young colleague.
“Always best to take one step at a time,” he said slowly. “Let’s let him come here first. Then we’ll form an opinion. I mean, if this really is about that story from fifty years ago, a couple of hours now won’t make any difference.”
Chapter 23
April 23, 1998
Robert Lubisch had called his friend Michael Dollinger that afternoon. By the time Robert arrived, the lawyer had a bottle of the finest Rioja and was studying the menu at a corner table in Brook, the restaurant. They had shared an apartment for a long time as students, and although they could not have been more different, they had soon become friends. Michael was one of those men who was easy to overlook, and as his life went on, he had learned to turn this fact to his advantage. His was one of the largest legal practices in Hamburg. A business with no headlines and no sensational cases. An address trusted by Hamburg’s elite.
Once Robert had sat down, Michael put the menu aside and examined his friend critically. “You look like shit,” he said bluntly as he poured Robert some wine. “Now, tell me everything, from the beginning. What you told me on the phone left me none the wiser.”
Robert laughed bitterly. “I can hardly believe it myself.”
The waiter came to take their order three times in the next twenty minutes, but he had to go away again each time, his mission unaccomplished. Robert told his friend the truth about what had happened, beginning with his discovery of the papers and ending with the police’s visit at noon.
When he had finished, Michael pushed the menu over to him. “Let’s eat something,” he said dispassionately, lighting a cigarillo. Once they had ordered, he leaned forward. “You think you’re suspected of murder? Have I understood correctly?”
Robert gulped. Expressed so clearly, it seemed monstrous, but it was true. “Yes.” He ran his hand over his face. “The officer told me to remain at his disposal.”
Michael made a dismissive gesture. “That doesn’t mean a thing. I mean, what motive are you supposed to have? I can take care of it, but I don’t think you need to worry.” He looked at Robert with his honest eyes and winked encouragingly. “They’re checking you out, because you were probably the last person to see her alive. It’s normal.” He paused for a long while. “You know what I find much more interesting? Why you suddenly stopped being interested in the search for the woman.”
Robert answered him directly. “Because she was this Peters’s wife and not—as I suspected—some earlier lover of my father’s. I didn’t want to know any more than that.” He thought for a moment. Then he corrected himself. “It’s like this: I don’t know what happened back then, but I know it probably wasn’t what my father told me.”
“And you’re not curious?”
Robert shook his head. “No,” he said vehemently. “Not anymore.”
Their appetizers arrived and they ate in silence. Robert was listening to the murmur of voices in the restaurant, the quiet laughter, and the bright clinking of glasses as a couple at a neighboring table toasted each other.
“This whole story threatens me,” he said impulsively. “You know I never got on particularly well with my father, but now . . . the story of his escape was actually the only thing I knew about his past, and when Rita Albers found out it couldn’t be true, well . . .”
Michael chewed his salmon roulade with relish. When it became obvious that Robert was not going to finish his sentence, he did it for him: “You thought, ‘Who knows what else she might bring to light?’ Or, better expressed, perhaps, ‘If what my father told me is a lie, what else has he kept quiet about?’ ”
Robert took a deep breath and smiled uncertainly at his friend. “Yes, more or less . . . But then I think again: The papers of this Peters are crusted with blood. He was obviously lying on the battlefield, and maybe my father really did think he was dead. He was a young, frightened soldier who just wanted to get away. It may have been like that.”
Michael agreed. “Of course it may have been like that. It probably was like that, and your father has nothing whatsoever to do with what came after. After all, this Rita Albers said she had found Therese Peters. So the woman exists somewhere.”
They ate in silence again. Then Michael leaned back. “At your last meeting, all she said was that the Peters woman had married again?”
Robert tried to remember the conversation. He saw Rita Albers in front of him, her agitated fidgeting. Had she been afraid? No. She had been furious. Combative.
“I asked her what a story like this was worth, and she said, ‘Yesterday it was still a local-interest story, but its value has risen considerably in the course of a day.’ ”
Michael wiped his mouth with a napkin, lit a new cigarillo, and blew the smoke out with a hiss. “Now, that is rather interesting.”
Robert nodded intently. “And then, I think, she said Therese Peters’s maiden name was Pohl or Pohle, and that she had remarried under that name. I hope I’m remembering this correctly, but . . . she said 1956—1956 in Frankfurt.”
Michael raised his eyebrows. “Well, it’s possible to find out.”
Robert raised his hands defensively.
Michael snorted. “Come on, Robert. You know as well as I do that the uncertainty’s going to bother you to the end of your days if you don’t resolve it now. And I’m not a journalist, after all, dead set on a story, but your friend and, what’s more, a lawyer. At least think about it.”
He signaled to the waiter, and they ordered espressos.
Robert thought about how liberated he had felt when the sale of his parents’ home was signed and sealed. That was only a few months ago. “A line drawn under it,” he had said to Maren. “A late, but definitive, line.” And now he was more preoccupied with the old man than ever; he was even placing himself in a protective position over him.
“Okay,” he said at last. “Find out.”
Chapter 24
1941/42
Leonard’s parents moved in with relatives in northern Germany that spring, and it was as if the last witnesses of his existence traveled with them. Leonard, it sometimes seemed to her, had been buried deeper than most dead bodies, and the little cross was soon covered by the budding branches of the hedge.
Alwine had returned home at her parents’ request. Her mother was overwhelmed by the running of the estate, and she was to support her. Therese had reached the end of her labor service and found a job in the offices of the Hoffmann shoe factory. Wilhelm was back too; now he was wearing an SS uniform and went everywhere with Hollmann. He was often to be found at the Kalder estate.
Therese was meeting up with Alwine regularly again, and she took care to avoid encountering Wilhelm. Although Alwine was part of her old, carefree life, and they often laughed together again, they were unable to regain their earlier intimacy. They did not talk about either Wilhelm or Leo. It was on a r
ainy Sunday in May, as they stood by the window of the small parlor of the Kalder house—Jacob had written to announce a short visit on home leave—that Alwine first told her: “Jacob doesn’t know.”
Therese looked at her in disbelief. “Jacob doesn’t know Leonard is dead?”
“Yes, of course he knows that.” Alwine avoided her eyes. “But the other thing, he doesn’t know that.”
“But what did you . . . ?”
“That he killed himself,” she said defiantly. She reached for Therese’s hand. “Therese, it won’t bring Leo back to life, and Jacob would . . . You know what he’s like. Mother’s afraid he would create difficulties for himself, and I beg you—in her name too—don’t tell him it happened in prison.” She smiled. “Do it for love of Leonard. So that Jacob has a good memory of him.”
The rain was falling in soft, vertical threads, collecting in sand-brown puddles in the yard and raising bubbles that danced on the surface for seconds at a time and then burst.
“But he’s sure to ask,” she whispered. “He’ll ask where he took his own life, and why.”
And Alwine narrated a perfectly constructed story for her. Leonard had hanged himself at home. He had been unable to embark upon his studies because he was still unwell. This had depressed him greatly. Nobody knew what he had written in his letter to Jacob, but one could be sure he wouldn’t have wanted to worry his friend. Alwine whispered conspiratorially, “I’ve discussed it with Hanna and Wilhelm. They agree it’s for the best.”
It was an absurd moment. She stared out of the window and felt as if she could see Leonard in the distance and hear him say, “That we promise, here and now, never to lose sight of each other, and always to be there for the others.” She fought back her tears, unable to explain to Alwine how pernicious the lie was without giving Hanna away.
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