until it was too late. He came to see me several times. He asked many questions about his grandfather. I saw afterwards that he wanted to make a hero of him. At the time I did not think. I answered the questions as kindly as I could. Then one day he asked me if I did not think that his grandfather Friedrich had been a fine and good man.” He paused and then went on slowly and carefully as if choosing words in his own defence. “I made the best answer I could. I said that Friedrich Schirmer had been a hard-working man and that he had suffered his long, painful illness with patience and courage. I could say no more. The boy took my words for agreement and began to speak with great bitterness of his father, who had, he said, sent the old man away in a moment of jealous hatred. I could not allow him to speak so. It was against the truth. I said that he was doing his father a great injustice, that he should go to his father and ask for the truth.” He raised his eyes and looked at George sombrely. “He laughed. He said that he had never yet had anything from his father that was good and would not get the truth. He went on to talk jokingly of his father as if he despised him. Then he went away. I did not see him again.”
Outside, on the iron balconies of the hospital, the shadows were getting longer. A clock tolled the hour.
“And what was the truth, Father?” asked George quietly.
The priest shook his head. “I was Friedrich Schirmer’s confessor, Mr. Carey.”
“Of course. I’m sorry.”
“It would not help you to know.”
“No, I see that. But tell me this, Father. Mr. Moreton made a rough list of the documents and photographs that were found after Friedrich Schirmer’s death. Was that all he had? Was nothing else ever found?”
To his surprise, he saw a look of embarrassment come over the priest’s face. His eyes avoided George’s. For a moment or two there was something positively furtive about Father Weichs’s expression.
“Old documents,” George added quickly, “can be very important evidence in cases like these.”
Father Weichs’s jaw muscles tightened. “There were no other documents,” he said.
“Or photographs?”
“None that could possibly have been of any value to you, Mr. Carey,” the priest replied stiffly.
“But there were other photographs?” George insisted.
Father Weichs’s jaw muscles began to twitch. “I repeat, Mr. Carey, that they would have had no bearing on your inquiry,” he said.
“ ‘ Would have had’?” George echoed. “Do you mean they no longer exist, Father?”
“I do. They no longer exist. I burned them.”
“I see,” said George.
There was a heavy silence while they looked at one another. Then Father Weichs got to his feet with a sigh and looked out of the window.
“Friedrich Schirmer was not a pleasant man,” he said at last. “I see no harm in telling you that. You may even have guessed from what I have already said. There were many of these photographs. They were never of importance to anyone but Friedrich Schirmer-and possibly to those from whom he bought them.”
George understood. “Oh,” he said blankly. “Oh, I see.” He smiled. He had a strong desire to laugh.
“He had made his peace with God,” said Father Weichs. “It seemed kinder to destroy them. The secret lusts of the dead should end with the flesh that created them. Besides,” he added briskly, “there is always the risk of such erotica getting into the hands of children.”
George got to his feet. “Thanks, Father. There are just a couple more things I’d like to ask you. Did you ever know what unit of the paratroopers young Schirmer was serving in?”
“No. I regret that I did not.”
“Well, we can find that out later. What were his given names, Father, and his rank? Do you remember?”
“I only knew one name. Franz, it was, I think. Franz Schirmer. He was a Sergeant.”
6
They stayed that night in Stuttgart. Over dinner George summed up the results of their work.
“We can go straight to Cologne and try to find the Johann Schirmers by going through the city records,” he went on; “or we can go after the German army records, turn up Franz Schirmer’s papers, and get hold of his parents’ address that way.”
“Why should the army have his parents’ address?”
“Well, if it were our army he’d been in, his personal file would probably show the address of his parents, or wife if he’s married, as next of kin. Someone they can notify when you’ve been killed is a thing most armies like to have. What do you think?”
“Cologne is a big city-nearly a million persons before the war. But I have not been there.”
“I have. It was a mess when I saw it. What the R.A.F. didn’t do to it our army did. I don’t know whether the city archives were saved or not, but I’m inclined to go for the army records first just in case.”
“Very well.”
“In fact, I think the army is a better bet all round. Two birds with one stone. We’ll find out what happened to Sergeant Schirmer at the same time as we trace his parents. Do you have any ideas about where his German army records would be?”
“Bonn is the West German capital. Logically they should be there now.”
“But you don’t really think they will be, eh? Neither do I. Anyway I think we’ll go to Frankfurt tomorrow. I can check up with the American army people there. They’ll know. Another brandy?”
“Thank you.”
A further thing he had discovered about Miss Kolin was that, although she probably consumed, in public or in the privacy of her room, over half a bottle of brandy every day, she did not seem to suffer from hangovers.
It took them nearly two weeks to find out what the German army knew about Sergeant Schirmer.
He had been born in Winterthur in 1917, the son of Johann Schirmer (mechanic) and Ilse, his wife, both of pure German stock. From the Hitler Jugend he had joined the army at the age of eighteen and been promoted corporal in 1937. He had been transferred from the Engineers to a special air training unit (Fallschirmjager) in 1938 and promoted sergeant in the following year. At Eben-Emael he had received a bullet wound in the shoulder, from which he had satisfactorily recovered. He had taken part in the invasion of Crete and had been awarded the Iron Cross (Third Class) for distinguished conduct. In Benghazi later in that year he had suffered from dysentery and malaria. In Italy in 1943, while acting as a parachutist instructor, he had fractured a hip. There had been a court of inquiry to determine who had been responsible for giving the order to jump over wooded country. The court had commended the Sergeant’s conduct in refraining from transmitting an order he believed to be incorrect, while obeying it himself. After four months in hospital and at a rehabilitation centre, and a further period of sick leave, a medical board had declared him unfit for further duty as a paratrooper or any other combat duty which entailed excessive marching. He had been posted to the occupation forces in Greece. There, he had served as weapons instructor to the Ninety-fourth Garrison Regiment in a Lines of Communication Division stationed in the Salonika area, until the following year. After an action against Greek guerrillas during the withdrawal from Macedonia, he had been reported “missing, believed killed.” The next of kin, Ilse Schirmer, Elsass Str. 39, Koln, had been duly notified.
They found Elsass Strasse, or what was left of it, in the remains of the old town off the Neumarkt.
Before the stick of bombs which had destroyed it had fallen, it had been a narrow street of small shops with offices above them, and a tobacco warehouse halfway along. The warehouse had obviously received a direct hit. Some of the other walls still stood, but, with the exception of three shops at one end of the street, every building in it had been gutted. Lush weeds grew now out of the old cellar floors; notices said that it was forbidden to trespass among the ruins or to deposit rubbish.
Number 39 had been a garage set back from the street in a space behind two other buildings and approached by an arched drive-in between them. The arch was still standing. Fastened to its brickwork was a rusty metal sign. The words on it could be read: “Garage und Reparaturwerkstatt. J. Schirmer-Bereifung, Zubehor, Benzin.”
They walked through the archway to the place where the garage had stood. The site had been cleared, but the plan of the building was still visible; it could not have been a very big garage. All that remained of it now was a repair pit. It was half full of rain water and there were pieces of an old packing case floating in it.
