`Latest translations,' she said.
`Thanks.’ Rebus looked down at a note he'd made to himself `Correze trip necessary??’
Well, the Farmer had said he could have whatever he wanted. He looked up at Kirstin Mede and wondered if the budget would stretch to a tour guide. She was sitting opposite him, putting on half-moon reading glasses.
`Can I get you a coffee?’ he asked.
`I'm a bit pushed today. I just wanted you to see these.’
She laid two sheets of paper on his desk so that they faced him. One sheet was the photocopy of a typed report, in German. The second sheet was her translation. Rebus looked at the German.
`- Der Beginn der Vergeltungsmassnahmen hat ein merkbares Aufatmen hervorgerufen and die Stimmung sehr gunstig beeinflusst.’
`The beginning of reprisals,' he read, `has brought about a marked improvement in morale, with the men now noticeably more relaxed.’
`It's supposed to be from Linzstek to his commander,' she explained.
`But no signature?’
`Just the typed name, underlined.’
`So it doesn't help us identify Linzstek.’
`No, but remember what we were talking about? It gives a reason for the assault.’
`A touch of R amp;R for the lads?’
Her look froze him. `Sorry,' he said, raising his hands. `Far too glib. And you're right, it's almost like the Lieutenant is trying to justify the whole thing in print.’
`For posterity?’
`Maybe. After all, they'd just started being the losing side.’
He looked at the other papers. `Anything else?’
`Some further reports, nothing too exciting. And some of the eyewitness testimony.’
She looked at him with pale grey eyes. `It gets to you after a while, doesn't it?’
Rebus looked at her and nodded.
The female survivor of the massacre lived in Juillac, and had been questioned recently by local police about the man in charge of the German troops. Her story hadn't changed from the one she'd told at the trial: she'd seen his face only for a few seconds, and looking down from the attic of a three storey house. She'd been shown a recent photo of Joseph Lintz, and had shrugged.
`Maybe,' she'd said. `Yes, maybe.’
Which would, Rebus knew, be turfed out by the Procurator Fiscal, who knew damned well what any defence lawyer with half a brain would do with it.
`How's the case coming?’
Kirstin Mede asked. Maybe she'd seen some look cross his face.
`Slowly. The problem is all this stuff.’
He waved towards the strewn desk. `On the one hand I've got all this, and on the other I've got a wee old man from the New Town. The two don't seem to go together.’
`Have you met him?’
`Once or twice.’
`What's he like?’
What was Joseph Lintz like? He was cultured, a linguist. He'd even been a Professor at the university, back in the early 70s. Only for a year or two. His own explanation: `I was filling a vacuum until they could find someone of greater standing'. He'd been Professor of German. He'd lived in Scotland since 1945 or 46 – he was vague about exact dates, blaming his memory. His early life was vague, too. He said papers had been destroyed. The Allies had had to create a duplicate set for him. There was only Lintz's word that these new papers were anything but an official record of lies he'd told and which had been believed. Lintz's story – birth in Alsace; parents and relatives all dead; forced enlistment in the SS. Rebus liked the touch about joining the SS. It was the sort of admission that would make officials decide: he's been honest about his involvement with that, so he's probably being honest about the other details. There was no actual record of a Joseph Lintz serving with any SS regiment, but then the SS had destroyed a lot of their own records once they'd seen the way the war was headed. Lintz's war record was vague, too. He mentioned shell-shock to explain the gaps in his memory. But he was vehement that he had never been called Linzstek and had never served in the Correze region of France.
`I was in the east,' he would say. `That's where the Allies found me, in the east.’
The problem was that there was no convincing explanation as to how Lintz had found himself in the United Kingdom. He said he'd asked if he could go there and start a new life. He didn't want to return to Alsace, wanted to be as far away from the Germans as possible. He wanted water between him and them. Again, there was no documentation to back this up, and meantime the Holocaust investigators had come up with their own `evidence', which pointed to Lintz's involvement in the `Rat Line'.
`Have you ever heard of something called the Rat Line?’ Rebus had asked at their first meeting.
`Of course,' Joseph Lintz had said. `But I never had anything to do with it.’
Lintz: in the drawing-room of his Heriot Row home. An elegant four-storey Georgian edifice. A huge house for a man who'd never married. Rebus had said as much. Lintz had merely shrugged, as was his privilege. Where had the money come from? `I've worked hard, Inspector.’
Maybe so, but Lintz had purchased the house in the late-1950s on a lecturer's salary. A colleague from the time had told Rebus everyone in the department suspected Lintz of having a private income. Lintz denied this.
`Houses were cheaper back then, Inspector. The fashion was for country properties and bungalows.’
Joseph Lintz: barely five foot tall, bespectacled. Parchment hands with liver spots. One wrist sported a pre-war Ingersoll watch. Glass fronted bookcases lining his drawing-room. Charcoal-coloured suits. An elegant way about him, almost feminine: the way he lifted a cup to his lips; the way he flicked specks from his trousers.
`I don't blame the Jews,' he'd said. `They'd implicate everyone if they could. They want the whole world feeling guilty. Maybe they're right.’
`In what way, sir?’
`Don't we all have little secrets, things we're ashamed of?’
Lintz had smiled. `You're playing their game, and you don't even know it.’
Rebus had pressed on. `The two names are very similar, aren't they? Lintz, Linzstek.’
`Naturally, or they'd have absolutely no grounds for their accusations. Think, Inspector: wouldn't I have changed my name more radically? Do you credit me with a modicum of intelligence?’
`More than a modicum.’
Framed diplomas on the walls, honorary degrees, photos taken with university chancellors, politicians. When the Farmer had learned a little more about Joseph Lintz, he'd cautioned Rebus to `ca' canny'. Lintz was a patron of the arts opera, museums, galleries – and a great giver to charities. He was a man with friends. But also a solitary man, someone who was happiest when tending graves in Warriston Cemetery. Dark bags under his eyes, pushing down upon the angular cheeks. Did he sleep well? `Like a lamb, Inspector.’
Another smile. `Of the sacrificial kind. You know, I don't blame you, you're only doing your job.’
`You seem to have no end of forgiveness, Mr Lintz.’
A careful shrug. `Do you know Blake's words, Inspector? 'And through all eternity/ I forgive you, you forgive me.” I'm not so sure I can forgive the media.’ This last word voiced with a distaste which manifested itself as a twist of facial muscles.
`Is that why you've set your lawyer on them?’
‘'Set' makes me sound like a hunter, Inspector. This is a newspaper, with a team of expensive lawyers at its beck and call. Can an individual hope to win against such odds?’
`Then why bother trying?’
Lintz thumped both arms of his chair with clenched fists. `For the principle, man!' Such outbursts were rare and shortlived, but Rebus had experienced enough of them to know that Lintz had a temper…
`Hello?’ Kirstin Mede said, angling her head to catch his gaze.
`What?’
She smiled. `You were miles away.’
`Just across town,' he replied.
