The Night Gate

Chapter Nineteen

The flight to Berlin had been half-empty, and the cabin crew rearranged the seating so that everyone aboard sat well apart. Enzo wiped down his tray table twice, watched by Kirsty who told him that she thought once was probably sufficient. She took a coffee, but Enzo refused. He had gelled his hands before entering the plane, and again as he left. And now, as they sat in their taxi, separated from the driver by Plexiglas, he was glad of the card terminal in the back that accepted contactless payment.

They stepped out into a chill wind blowing along the canal, and a brooding sky that seemed to scrape the rooftops.

Bauer’s apartment stood near a bridge that led across the water to Maybachufer, and the red-roofed, six-storey, white-painted apartment blocks that lined it. A path flanked by black wrought-iron railings led to an arched doorway, past a row of mailboxes. Tall windows in the varnished wooden door revealed a long marble hallway beyond it.

Enzo stepped back and looked up at the building. ‘Nicole wasn’t wrong when she said there was money in his family,’ he said. ‘Apartments in a place like this must cost the earth.’

Bauer’s name was printed beneath a third-floor buzzer on the door entry system. Enzo pressed it and they waited for a response that never came.

Then the rapid sound of heels on concrete made them turn as a young woman approached. She pulled up her mask when she saw them standing by the door, and navigated around them to punch in her entry code.

She seemed startled when Kirsty spoke to her. In German. And Enzo had no idea what she was saying. He watched the girl carefully as she and Kirsty exchanged several words, and he saw her pupils dilate and the skin around her eyes turn pale. Immediately she delved into her handbag to retrieve her mobile phone, tapping a name hurriedly into its memory before making a call.

Enzo’s impatience was barely contained by his mask. He turned to Kirsty. ‘What’s going on?’

‘She lives across the landing from Bauer. She and Bauer’s girlfriend, Lise, were friends.’

‘Were?’

‘Apparently Lise moved out when she and Bauer split up.’

‘Recently?’

‘Last week,’ Kirsty said. ‘She hasn’t seen or heard anything from Lise since. She was shocked to hear that Bauer was mixed up with a murder in France and thinks that Lise will be, too. She’s calling her now.’

It was a good twenty minutes before Lise turned up at Katie’s Blue Cat. The café stood just across the canal in Friedelstrasse, next to the orange-fronted Neuköllner Backstube bakery. It was little more than a collection of fold-up wooden tables and chairs on the uneven stone mosaic of the pavement outside a large window displaying cakes and pastries. Lise had suggested it as a meeting place.

It was cold, and Enzo and Kirsty sat huddled over their cappuccinos, lowering their masks to take sips, and looking up and down the street with impatience as they waited.

At length a young woman wearing a large pair of sunglasses appeared from Maybachufer, walking briskly around the corner, a long fawn coat unbuttoned and billowing in her wake. She wore jeans, and knee-length high-heeled leather boots, and a fawn beret that matched her coat. Black hair cut in a fringe fell over the lenses of her shades, and tumbled to her shoulders at either side. She came to a stop in front of them. ‘Herr Macleod?’ she asked. Unnecessarily, it seemed to Enzo, since he and Kirsty were the only ones there.

He nodded. ‘Lise, I take it. Your friend said you spoke English.’

She nodded and sat down at the next table, taking out an ill-fitting mask to slip over her face before pushing a cigarette between its folds to hold in her lips through the cloth. She dipped her head to her lighter and sucked in smoke through the cotton. A circle of nicotine stained the mask, betraying this to be a regular habit. Smoke seeped out from either side of it.

‘Would you like a coffee?’ Enzo asked.

She shook her head. A quick, nervous dismissal. ‘Hans has murdered someone?’

‘We don’t know that,’ Enzo said, ‘but he is the prime suspect of the French police.’

Her hand trembled as she took another draw on her cigarette. ‘I knew it would happen someday. I knew it.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘He has a fearsome temper, Herr Macleod. When he loses it, he is capable of almost anything.’ She drew away her sunglasses to reveal the bruising around her eyes and cheekbones. ‘I should know.’

Kirsty gasped. ‘Good God, he did that to you?’

Lise nodded and slipped on her sunglasses once again to hide her shame. But not before Enzo had taken in the sadness in her dark eyes.

Enzo said, ‘It would appear that this was not a murder committed in the heat of the moment, Lise. From what we can tell, it seems to have been pretty much premeditated.’ He saw her frown.

‘Then I doubt if it was Hans.’

‘Why?’

‘Because in normal circumstances he was not a violent man. And when his temper led him to lose control, he was almost crushed by contrition afterwards. He hated himself for it. I can’t imagine him committing a murder in cold blood.’ She paused. ‘Who was killed?’

‘A French art dealer from Paris. A man called Emile Narcisse.’ He wished she were not wearing sunglasses so that he could see her eyes. ‘Do you know that name?’

But she shook her head. ‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘Did Hans speak to you of his plans to go to France?’

Again a shake of the head. ‘No.’

‘So you don’t have any idea what he was doing there?’

‘None.’

Enzo was disappointed. It looked like this was going to prove a wasted journey.

Kirsty said, ‘How long was he abusing you? Physically.’

‘As long as I’ve known him.’

Kirsty frowned. ‘And you were with him for how long?’

‘Two years.’ She pre-empted Kirsty’s next question. ‘I know. Why did I stay with him? Everyone asks me that.’ She took another nervous puff at her cigarette before throwing it away across the cobbles. ‘It’s hard to explain. I guess I loved him. And probably still do. He wasn’t like this all the time.’ She touched her face. ‘He was loving and kind and generous, and he hated himself when he lost his temper.’ She lowered her head and took off her sunglasses again, this time to wipe the first tears from her eyes. Then she stared them down, almost defiantly. ‘He’d got kind of obsessed about it, lately.’

‘About what?’ Enzo said.

‘Whatever it was that made him mad, that caused him to lose control and lash out. He told me once that when he was a child he had discovered pleasure in hurting a neighbour’s dog, and that it frightened him so much he wouldn’t go near it again, even though the animal itself seemed to bear him no ill will. I think he believed that there was some kind of malign force within him that made him do these things. Recently he’d been searching the internet for something he called the evil gene. I truly think he wanted to believe that it wasn’t his fault. That it was inherited in some way, and that he really wasn’t to blame.’

Enzo was intrigued. ‘What did he find?’

‘Oh, nothing much, I don’t think. Some shit about inherited violence. When his mother died he discovered some stuff among her papers. An old birth certificate that showed his father had been the illegitimate son of a married man killed in the war. His real grandfather. There were letters that this man had written to Hans’s grandmother, and diaries that he had left in her care.’

She fumbled to light another cigarette with hands that shook, and Enzo could not tell if it was the cold or emotion.

‘And that became his new obsession. Finding out who his grandfather was. What kind of man he had been. There was no one else in his family that Hans knew of who had ever displayed his violent tendencies.’

Kirsty said, ‘So he thought he might have inherited it from his grandfather?’

‘I’m sure that’s what he hoped. Anything that would relieve him of responsibility for his own behaviour. He went to the records office in Würzburg where his family are from, to see if he could find out.’

‘And?’ Enzo was fascinated. His sense of Bauer was becoming more three-dimensional with everything that Lise revealed about him. But he was disappointed by her response.

‘I don’t know. I took advantage of him being away to pack my things and leave.’ She had no intention of sharing with them the ugly scene which had played out in the apartment when he returned earlier than expected.

‘So you don’t know what he found out?’ Kirsty said.

‘No, but you could ask his Mitarbeiter.’

‘Mitarbeiter?’ Enzo was at a loss.

‘Volunteer,’ Kirsty told him, though it didn’t make much sense to her either. She turned to Lise. ‘What kind of volunteer?’

She shrugged. ‘Apparently the archive people appoint a Mitarbeiter to help people find their way through the records. Hans asked me to scan some documents for him and send them to her. The email address must still be in my phone.’

She dug it out from her coat pocket and began navigating through her mailer.

‘How far to Würzburg from here?’ Enzo said.

‘Four or five hours, I think.’ Lise’s focus was still on her phone.

Enzo and Kirsty exchanged looks. Enzo checked the time and said, ‘We could hire a car and overnight there. Then drive back first thing tomorrow to catch our flight.’

‘Got it.’ Lise looked up. ‘Greta Jung. Do you want me to email her, or will I forward you the address?’

It was a long drive for a short meeting. Greta Jung had responded to their email while they were still on the road. She had lectures all day, she said, and could only spare fifteen minutes or so in the late afternoon.

They met her at the same Zweiviertel café where Bauer had bought her an extravagant breakfast in return for the information she had dug out of the archives. Enzo and Kirsty kept their masks firmly in place and made no attempt to drink the espressos they had ordered to reserve their table. Greta Jung, on the other hand, while she described her meeting with Bauer, was gulping down cake and cappuccino as if she hadn’t eaten for a week. Her leggings today were red, her lips black, and she wore a scarf that alternated blocks of red, green and blue.

‘Strange guy,’ she said. ‘Good-looking. Might even have fancied him. But he had such cold eyes.’ Her English was crisp and concise.

‘What were you able to tell him about his grandfather?’ Enzo asked.

‘Well, he already knew the name from his father’s original birth certificate. I got him extracts from family records going back a couple of generations. Nothing very exciting. The most interesting stuff I found was on the internet.’

Kirsty expressed her surprise. ‘There was information available about his grandfather on the internet?’

‘Sure. He was a big time art dealer in the twenties and thirties. And during the war he was co-opted on to Hermann Göring’s staff to acquire — or should I say steal — art for his private collection. Göring got him a commission in the Luftwaffe and had him attached to the ERR in Paris.’ She looked up from the last of her cake. ‘You know what that is?’

Enzo nodded. ‘What was his grandfather’s name?’

The girl reached down and into a knitted orange and yellow satchel that she had hung from the back of her chair. She produced a red folder. ‘It’s all in here. If you’re interested.’ A knowing little smile animated her lips.

‘How much?’ Enzo said.

Greta Jung said, ‘I get nothing for my work as a Mitarbeiter. And all I got from Herr Bauer in return for my efforts was breakfast.’

Enzo sighed and took out his wallet. He slipped a fifty-euro note across the table. ‘Enough?’

Greta Jung smiled and quickly took the note before sliding the folder towards him. ‘His grandfather’s name was Karlheinz Wolff.’

‘What happened to him?’ Kirsty said.

The student just shrugged. ‘No one knows. He was listed as missing in action somewhere in France in 1944.’