88
…HAMBURG
Fraulein Einspenner’s last rites were at the crematorium in Billstedt. Anselm, four elderly women, and a middle-aged man were the only mourners. He knew one of them, Fraulein Einspenner’s neighbour, Frau Ebeling.
Afterwards, she came up to him and they shook hands. She was carrying a parcel wrapped in brown paper.
‘It was very peaceful,’ she said. She had a round face, curiously unlined.
‘I’m glad,’ said Anselm.
‘She went to the doctor and in the waiting room, she was sitting there, and she closed her eyes and she died. They didn’t notice for a while. Her heart.’
Anselm nodded.
‘It was as if she didn’t expect to come home again. Everything was packed. Her clothes, everything.’
Anselm didn’t know what to say.
‘She was so fond of you,’ said Frau Ebeling, putting her head to one side and studying him as if to find the reason.
‘I was very fond of her,’ said Anselm. ‘I loved her.’
‘Yes. Your whole family was very dear to her. She spoke often of them. Frau Pauline and Herr Lucas. Frau Anne and Herr Gunther and Herr Stefan and Fraulein Elizabeth and Herr Oskar. I know all the names, I heard them so often.’
‘Did she ever speak of Moritz?’
‘Moritz? No, not that I can recall.’ She held out the package. ‘This has your name on it. Perhaps she was going to give it to you when you visited again.’
It was almost dark when he got back to the office. He parked outside the annexe. Cold but no wind, it was going to be a clear night.
In his office, he unwrapped the parcel. A cardboard box, the size of two shoeboxes. It held five framed photographs of different sizes, unframed photographs, a dozen or more, old letters tied with a blue ribbon.
The face jumped out of all the photographs. A blond boy growing into a tall, fair-haired young man. In one of the framed pictures, he was in a dinner jacket, elegant, laughing, cigarette between long fingers. The dark-haired young woman at his side had a nervous look, as if she wasn’t quite sure what was happening.
The unframed pictures would fit the empty spaces in the old albums, fit neatly back into the corners that once held them.
It would be restoring the albums, Anselm thought, filling the gaps, making the record whole. He could put Moritz back into the family memory.
He untied the ribbon around the letters. They were all addressed to Fraulein Erika Einspenner in a slashing hand.
Not only letters. There was a photograph.
A group of soldiers, hands on each other’s shoulders, a truck behind them.
Moritz was in the centre, bare-headed, smiling.
Anselm turned the picture over. On the back was written in the same bold handwriting:
On service with the colours.
What colours?
He went down the passage. Baader, one leg on his desk, was reading a file.
‘What do you know about World War Two uniforms?’ said Anselm.
Baader looked at him, at the picture he was holding. ‘What’s that?’ he said.
‘A photograph.’
Baader held out his hand, looked at the picture. ‘Himmler’s scum,’ he said. ‘
He turned the photograph over. ‘Even worse.
He turned it back, studied it, looked at Anselm, back at the photograph. ‘Looks a bit like you, the blond major. What’s the interest in these murderers?’
Anselm held out his hand, took the photograph.
‘Just something I found,’ he said.
He went onto the balcony and smoked a cigarette. He stood in the corner, looked at the winter city, the white tower and the glowing skyscraper, the low lights of the Poseldorf shore, a ferry heading for the Rabenstrasse landing. The light from Beate’s desklamp lay across the balcony in a shaft, lay on him. His smoke drifted across it, sheet white, met the darkness, vanished in a straight line.
He took the final draw, arched the stub into the night, a dying star falling on the old, forgotten roses. Roses without names.
In his office, the phone rang.
‘Are you running?’ she said.
‘I’m running.’
‘When?’
‘Five minutes.’
He waited for her to say it.
‘Don’t let me pass in the dark,’ she said.
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘You can,’ she said. ‘You can.’
