Silence

by Mechtild Borrmann

  Wilhelm ran into her a few days later as she was fetching her father’s shoes from the cobbler’s. He was waiting by her bicycle and said, with a slightly reproachful tone, that she had not been seen much lately. She talked about a lot of work at the company, her father hardly ever being at home, and the gardening, which now fell to her and her mother. She slung her shoes, tied together by the laces, over her shoulder and reached for the handlebars. “I could pick you up on Sunday,” he suggested. “We could go for a ride along the Rhine, or into town. Surely you need to see something different occasionally.”

  “That’s sweet of you, but I really have no time,” she said hurriedly, pulling the bicycle toward her. Wilhelm gripped the saddle and said quietly, “Therese, I . . .” He grabbed her arm. “Can’t we at least meet up every now and then?” She looked down, shaking her head. “No, Wilhelm. That wouldn’t be good.” His voice changed. “Is there someone else?” The sharpness of his tone startled her. For a moment, she thought, He knows. Her heart started pounding with fear. A bitter smile played about his lips, and he asked quietly, “Is it someone from the factory?”

  She hid her relief.

  Therese Mende opened the terrace door. The rain had slackened; the glimmerings of dawn painted a slender, pale gray edge onto the still-turbulent, night-dark sea. During the course of the next few hours, the remaining clouds would migrate across the island, and by midday at the latest the sky would be blue again.

  How stupid she had been. Wilhelm’s question had seemed like a sign from fate, and she had confirmed his suspicion. She had believed he would give her up if she was no longer available. She had said, “Yes, someone from the factory.”

  Chapter 27

  April 24, 1998

  Karl van den Boom had slept badly, and at six o’clock he shuffled down to the kitchen to make himself some breakfast. Lili rubbed herself against his legs, while Marlene lay curled up on a cushion on the windowsill, fast asleep. As usual, he talked to Lili. “If the municipal archives open at nine, I should be able to reach Schröder at home at eight, shouldn’t I? What do you think?” The cat now added the feeding bowl to her circuit, tracing regular figures-of-eight around legs and bowl, while Marlene opened her green eyes from time to time and then immediately closed them, bored.

  The scent of coffee spread. He put two slices of bread in the toaster, placed jam, butter, and cheese on the table, and brought in the newspaper. Rita Albers’s death was the lead article in the local section. The headline read, “Woman Found Dead in Country House.” Karl laughed mockingly. “Oh, Lili, they have to exaggerate everything. Now even a cottage is a country house.” In his article, the reporter speculated it was a break-in gone wrong. So Karl’s Homicide colleagues had not released any information.

  On the dot of eight, he picked up the telephone and called Schröder, the archivist. The man had heard rumors the previous evening. “But . . . for God’s sake, I didn’t know it was that journalist.”

  He explained what Rita Albers had been investigating. “My impression was that her interest lay in the death of Wilhelm Peters and the suspicion hanging over his wife. So do you think her death . . . that this research had something to do with it?”

  Van den Boom reassured him. “No, no. We’re just trying to reconstruct what Frau Albers was working on.”

  Schröder then recited from when till when Rita Albers had been with him, which documents he had shown her, and what questions she had asked. Van den Boom was impressed by the man’s capacity for recall. He was about to leave, when Schröder added something else: “Maybe it’s not important, but it seemed to me that she reacted with great excitement when she learned that a duplicate of Therese Pohl’s birth certificate had been issued at the end of 1952. The document wasn’t mailed out, so it must have been picked up on-site.”

  Van den Boom brought the conversation to a close, pondering whether he should tell his colleagues that Köbler had come the previous evening after all and would report to them during the day. He opened a can of cat food and filled the two feeding bowls. Now Marlene was wide awake too. “Ach, they’ll soon notice him when he turns up,” he rumbled quietly to himself, poured himself a last cup of coffee, then contentedly watched the cats eating.

  Half an hour later, he was on his way to Kleve.

  Theo Gerhard lived in an area of six-story apartment blocks. His apartment was on the second floor, and the door was buzzed open a few seconds after Van den Boom pressed the doorbell. He was climbing the first few steps, when a head appeared over the banister and barked down at him, “Who are you? What do you want?”

  “Van den Boom,” growled Karl. He shouted upward, “I’m a police officer. But maybe I should come up first—it’ll be easier to talk.”

  When he reached the second floor, he found before him a man whose cheeks and nose were purple with burst blood vessels. Bushy eyebrows made his expression look somewhat dull-witted. “A colleague? So what is it?” The old man made no move to go into his apartment; he seemed determined to discuss the matter on the landing.

  “It’s about an old case you handled, which may have something to do with a current case. In other words, I need your help,” said Karl ingratiatingly. Gerhard nodded complacently and now made a move toward his front door. “Well, come into my parlor then,” he shouted, and Van den Boom did not know whether the man was hard of hearing or the volume was part of his self-importance. The living room was paneled in oak veneer, and the gray-green furnishings had seen better days. But throughout the place there was a cleanliness and order that irritated Van den Boom.

  Gerhard sat down opposite him. He did not offer any coffee, which caused Karl mentally to dismiss him as a colleague. A man was entitled to expect a drop of coffee, after all.

  With a condescending gesture, Gerhard told him to go ahead: “Go on then, shoot.”

  “Do the names Wilhelm and Therese Peters mean anything to you?” Karl asked. He noted that Theo Gerhard did not show the slightest surprise.

  “The Peters case? Of course I remember. The woman was a murder suspect. Went underground.”

  “Correct. I’ve read the file.”

  “So you know.”

  “Well, yes, but the file is rather thin, and that’s not just because of the lightweight paper. I was struck by the fact that it was closed only two months after Frau Peters disappeared.”

  Gerhard snorted derisively. “Yes . . . and so what? That’s the way it was back then. Searching for a missing person was difficult, and God knows we had other things to do. Besides”—he drew his bushy eyebrows together in a frown—“our evidence was purely circumstantial.” He paused, trying to read Van den Boom’s expression.

  “And why were you certain it was a murder?” asked Karl.

  Gerhard looked him up and down, then leaned forward. “Wilhelm would never have just taken off, you see? He had no reason to. Besides, his family was sacred to him, and he would at least have told his parents.”

  Karl seemed absorbed in an examination of the tiled coffee table, stippled with morning sunlight filtered through white net curtains. He went on, casually. “Now a journalist who was taking an interest in the case, a woman, has been killed, and I ask myself whether there were other reasons to close the case.”

  The purple lines on Gerhard’s cheeks seemed to darken a little, but that was only because the skin around them had turned pale. Karl went on. “I heard you were an old friend of Peters’s. You were in the SA, and he was in the SS, after all.”

  Gerhard exploded. “What do you mean by that? Those were different times, and after the war, I went straight back into the police. Oh sure, that would have been possible if I’d had skeletons in my closet.”

  Van den Boom leaned back, crossed his hands over his belly, and played the part of the man misunderstood. “But, Herr Gerhard, I don’t think any such thing. I just wanted to know, since you were friendly, what kind of people they were.�
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  There was a pause. The old man sniffed hard, then got up and went over to the dresser. He put a bottle of brandy and two snifters on the table and poured. It was a little early for Van den Boom, but if it would make the old man more talkative, it was all right by him. He suddenly realized what had irritated him so much when he stepped into the living room. The room seemed so tidy because there was nothing to tidy. No personal items, no little bits of decoration, no knickknacks that might reveal an inclination in any particular direction. There was nothing on the windowsill. What he could see of the dresser was empty. There were no framed pictures of friends or family, and on the coffee table, where the bottle and the two glasses now stood, there was only a TV guide. The home was silent about its occupant.

  Gerhard sat down again. “Wilhelm and I were investigated as part of the de-Nazification process and cleared.”

  Cleared, thought Van den Boom. It sounded better, of course, than Schröder’s “a follower, against whom nothing could be proved.” But he said nothing and nodded understandingly at Gerhard. “And Frau Peters? What was she like?”

  The old man made a dismissive gesture.

  “She was a slut, if you want my opinion. Wilhelm was crazy about her. The love of his life. He didn’t understand what kind of a person she was.” He picked up his glass, drained it in one go, and put it back on the table heavily.

  “During the war, she could make good use of him. That was why she married him. It had been touch and go for her father since the late thirties. Only managed to save his skin because he was a doctor, and his respectable little daughter had someone at the front and carried on with another one here. Wilhelm risked his career for that little slut; he was completely blinded by love. And once the war was over, she didn’t need him anymore—he was a burden to her. He suffered like a dog, I can tell you.” He poured himself some more, not noticing that Van den Boom had not yet touched his own glass, and went on. “And then, as if by magic, he disappeared in 1950, after she had had a loud argument with him at the Marksmen’s Fair.” He nodded to himself knowingly. “And a few weeks later she was gone.”

  Karl pushed his snifter to one side. It made a scratching noise, naked and harsh. He waited; he felt certain the old man had not finished. Gerhard sat leaning forward, elbows resting on his knees, perhaps absorbed in the old images. Then he said, “That journalist woman called me.” He looked up. “Day before yesterday. But I got rid of her, told her I wouldn’t talk to her.”

  Karl did not allow his surprise to show; he just nodded contentedly, as one does when one hears things one has been expecting.

  “What did she want?”

  “Don’t know,” Gerhard snapped. “I told her I wouldn’t talk to her.”

  Van den Boom saw uncertainty in Gerhard’s eyes, and he thought he knew what the problem was. Gerhard had been drunk, as he probably was routinely from midday on. He couldn’t remember exactly.

  Karl mentally went through his notes. He asked, “Did she mention the name Lubisch?”

  The old man shook his head and thrust out his lower lip. “No. No, who would that be?”

  Karl believed him. “I got a tip-off,” he said, changing the subject, “that something to do with this Peters must have happened at the end of the war. I was told I should ask you about it.”

  Gerhard’s heavy-lidded gaze became watchful. “That’s enough.” His voice, not loud anymore, hissed menacingly. “Clear out of here right now.”

  “What are you so worried about?” Van den Boom asked innocently.

  “Out!” the old man bellowed, indicating the exit with an outstretched arm.

  Karl felt certain he would get no farther here. He heaved himself out of the armchair. At the door, he turned around again. Gerhard had remained seated and was staring ahead. “You know what I think? I think you were quite glad when Therese Peters disappeared and the file was closed so quickly, because you weren’t interested in finding her.”

  The old man glanced into his snifter and did not move.

  On the way back to his car, Karl decided to pay a visit to his colleagues in Homicide. Just to find out whether they had anything new. And maybe Köbler had been there.

  Chapter 28

  April 24, 1998

  Michael Dollinger called Robert Lubisch at the clinic at ten o’clock.

  “That was quick,” Robert joked, firmly convinced that Michael had gone a little too far the previous evening and was now about to tell him the matter was more difficult than he had assumed.

  Dollinger did not give him time to follow this train of thought for long. “Are you sitting down?” he asked.

  It took Robert two seconds. “Have you found her?”

  “I certainly have,” came from the other end of the line, “and now it becomes clear why that journalist thought the story was worth money.”

  Robert waited tensely.

  “Are you still there?” asked Michael Dollinger.

  “Yes! Get on with it! Tell me.”

  “Does the name Mende mean anything to you?”

  Robert Lubisch thought about it. “No. Is that her name now?”

  Michael laughed. “The name would mean something to your wife. Maybe you’ve heard of Mende Fashion?”

  “You mean the design firm?”

  “The very one. Mende Fashion. Established in London in 1964 by Tillmann and Therese Mende. In 1983, they transferred the company to Germany. Tillmann Mende was the designer, responsible for creative matters, and . . .” Michael paused, then spoke the next words with relish. “His wife, Therese, née Pohl, whom he married in 1956, was the business brains. Today, the company has outlets all over Europe. Tillmann Mende died in 1995. One year later, his wife handed control of the company to their daughter and retired. She lives in Mallorca now.”

  Robert listened, his thoughts in turmoil. He had led Rita Albers to this. Had she threatened to expose Therese Mende?

  “Hello?” he heard his friend saying at the other end.

  “Yes, I’m just trying to get this in order. I mean, this would have been a full-blown scandal for this Mende woman. Do you think . . . ?”

  “I don’t think anything, but I have the address and phone number here, and I suggest you hand this over to the police. In any case, even if you did hit upon the story, you can assume the consequences have nothing to do with your father.”

  Robert wrote down the address and phone number. He took a deep breath. “Michael, I owe you one.”

  “Not for this. This was three phone calls, and I did it with pleasure.”

  Robert looked at the address he had copied into the space for the following day in his week-at-a-glance calendar. Saturday.

  “Tell me, how did you find out so quickly?”

  Dollinger laughed, then said something about trade secrets and how it was all about good contacts in his line of work.

  They said good-bye to each other. Lost in thought, Robert stared at the entry. Maren would be in Brussels until the middle of next week. He was only on duty till noon today, and he was free on Saturday. He turned the page. There was nothing special on Sunday either, only the late shift.

  He put off the call to the police till later. For the next two hours, he looked after his young patients, noting the scraps of thought rolling gently along beneath the routine. In the corridor he spoke to one of his colleagues and asked whether he could swap his Sunday shift with him. Quite spontaneously. It was not until he left his office at noon, having not called the police, with Therese Mende’s address on a slip of paper in his breast pocket, that he admitted to himself that he had already made his decision during the telephone conversation with Michael Dollinger. He used a travel agent to book a flight for that evening, two nights in the place in Mallorca where Mende lived, and a return flight for Sunday evening.

  At home, he searched the Internet for entries about Mende Fashion. He found pho
tographs of Tillmann Mende and some later ones in which he was seen together with his daughter, Isabel. There was only one photograph of Therese Mende at her husband’s side. It dated from 1989 and was part of a publication marking the company’s twenty-fifth anniversary. He recognized the features immediately, and yet it seemed like another woman. The gaze that had so drawn him in his father’s old photograph had disappeared. Here, a serious woman in a high-cut dress looked remotely, almost arrogantly, out at the camera.

  Was it credible that this woman had removed Rita Albers from her path? He studied the picture for a long time and confessed to himself that he had made the arrangements for his trip because, thanks to the old photo, such a link had seemed unthinkable. Because he had thought his curiosity might have created some difficulties for the woman, and he ought to clear them up. But now?

  He shook his head abruptly. Then he packed a travel bag. He took Peters’s identity card, the safe-conduct pass, and his father’s discharge papers out of his jacket pocket and added them to the contents of the bag. There was still another hour before he had to leave for the airport, when the doorbell rang.

  The two police officers from before were standing at the door. They needed his fingerprints. “Routine,” said Söder. He licked his lips. “It’s just to distinguish your prints from others,” the woman explained. He was glad she was the one who pressed his fingers onto the ink pad and then the paper.