Seb found the house where Hildegard Heiden once lived a little to the south-east of Nuremberg, not far from the immense structures and paved areas where the annual rally was held.
The house was very neat, traditional Bavarian. Rather middle-class and bourgeois, not dissimilar to Baroness Laroche’s house where Unity Mitford had lodged in Munich. The people who lived here must have some money and status.
Seb parked the Lancia on the street outside the front door and hesitated about knocking. He had spoken to no one in Nuremberg. The note with the photograph had mentioned that the investigating officer, Hartmann, would refuse to talk so this was not a task he could do through official channels. If he spoke to the local police, the chances were he would be instantly shut down by the higher echelons. No one in the party wanted interference in a court judgement, certainly not one concerning anything even vaguely political.
Anyway, this would be seen as a local matter, nothing to do with a Kripo inspector from another city.
At last he steeled himself and rapped his knuckles on the door and stepped back. Half a minute later the door was opened by a woman in her forties in stockinged feet. She was homely and undistinguished and he knew that she had been crying because her face was stained with tears.
‘Frau Heiden?’
‘Yes.’
‘Heil Hitler. I am Inspector Wolff of the Munich Kripo.’
She stood glaring at him as though he had used the foulest language known to humanity. ‘If you say that name again, I will slam the door in your face.’
That name? Did she mean Hitler or Wolff? It had to be Hitler, surely. He bowed his head respectfully. ‘Forgive me, Frau Heiden, I know I am intruding on indescribable grief. But, please, may I come in and talk with you a while?’
‘Very well. I don’t suppose you have good news about my husband but yes, come inside. First, though, show me your badge and take off your shoes.’
‘This is about your daughter, not your husband. Why do you mention him? Has something happened to him?’
‘He is in Dachau, of course, for daring to tell the truth about that man, that Lucifer. And now I am alone and my life is destroyed.’
‘I am sorry. Your suffering is great, dear lady.’
‘But you are here about my child, my beautiful daughter. What does her death have to do with Munich?’
Seb was unlacing his shoes. He slid his feet into a pair of guest slippers and followed Frau Heiden through to her parlour. The first thing he noticed was an oil painting on the wall of a girl in a ball gown and he knew instantly that it was Hildegard, for having seen her picture in death he could tell that the likeness was a good one.
‘A girl was murdered in Munich and it is possible that there are similarities to the case of your daughter. But there are political implications, which is why I have come to you unannounced.’
She snorted. ‘Political implications. I know exactly what they are. Because my husband speaks his mind and protects the workers at his factory against the brutes, no one gives a damn about poor Hildegard. Her death is an embarrassment to Hartmann and the rest.’
‘I believe her body was found four days ago at Hesselberg.’
She nodded. Her tears had started again. ‘She was walking home from work last Saturday, exactly a week ago. A witness said a car stopped at her side and the driver spoke to her and then she got in the back. That’s all, that’s the last time anyone saw her.’
‘This car, do you know anything about it?’
‘No, except that it was white or cream coloured. Nothing else.’
‘Do you know anyone with such a vehicle? Could the driver have been an acquaintance or friend?’
‘I have no idea whether she knew the man – I assume it was a man, or men. My daughter was remarkably beautiful but she lived very quietly. She had broken up with her boyfriend just a month ago. He was a sweet boy but something happened between them. She wouldn’t talk to me about it. Young people are like that.’
The tears were flowing. Seb desperately wanted to help her, to give her some comfort. But how do you help someone who has lost everything with no hope of ever getting it back?
‘You mentioned she was coming home from work, Frau Heiden. What was her employment?’
‘Oh, it was nothing much. She served in a cafe in the city centre, but really she was just filling in time, earning a few marks before she could train to become a teacher.’
‘Perhaps you would give me details of the cafe, also the name and address of her former boyfriend. First, though, Frau Heiden, I am interested to know exactly where she was found. I am told hikers discovered her at Hesselberg, is that correct?’
She nodded helplessly. ‘The sacred hill. No it wasn’t hikers – Streicher’s men found her. They were up there preparing the stage for the Frankentag.’
Seb had no idea what she was talking about. ‘Frankentag? What is that?’
‘Why, it is Streicher’s big day. His gathering of the Nazis from Franconia and other parts of Germany to celebrate the pagan solstice on our holy mountain. I am told Goering will be there. Who knows, perhaps even the devil himself will pay a surprise visit.’
The devil. He assumed she was referring to Hitler, but better not to press the point. He would like to advise this woman to be careful with her tongue, but what was the use of such advice now that her husband was caged and her daughter dead?
Nor could he fail to notice that he was now in Julius Streicher territory. Her mention of the man had brought that to mind.
Nuremberg was in the Franconia region of Bavaria, and Streicher was gauleiter – governor – of Franconia, a region of historical rivalry with the greater Bavaria which had subsumed it. Streicher was the most fanatical of the anti-Semites. He had founded a journal called Der Stürmer which depicted Jews as greedy, bloodthirsty sexual fiends who were destroying the German state from within and had to be eliminated. It spoke of alleged ritual murder of innocent German girls and carried obscene cartoons of hook-nosed brutes.
One of its writers, of course, was Otto Raspe.
These facts jarred in Seb’s brain. Paganism, ritual murder, sex magic, the Thule Society, Hitler’s obsession with the occult, the runic symbol for the sun, the geblōt places of ancient Nordic sacrifices, the Völkisch writings of Otto Raspe. These words and concepts flashed before his inner eye like a horror film – Nosferatu, perhaps, or Frankenstein. And they were taking him nowhere except probably back to Dachau concentration camp.
He had to clear his head of this nonsense, think rationally. These mystical clues were as absurd as Streicher’s accusations that Jews murdered German children as part of their blood rites.
The plain truth was this: a murderer of young women was on the loose and he had to be stopped, whatever his obscene motive, before he killed again – and before an innocent man died by guillotine to satisfy Hitler’s foreign policy and his relations with Great Britain.
‘I would really like to go to the place where Hildegard was found, Frau Heiden. Can you describe it to me?’
‘If you have a car, we can go there.’
*
On the way in the Lancia, Frau Heiden told Seb about her husband. He owned a small ceramics business, making Bavarian artefacts and souvenirs for the tourist trade. He had never been a political man but when Streicher’s Brownshirt thugs came around demanding that his manager be sacked for the crime of being a Jew, Albert Heiden had erupted in fury.
‘He said no, he would not sack his manager. Why should he? He was a wonderful worker who had done more than anyone to build up the Heiden business. The lead Brownshirt spat on the ground and said that none of that mattered, all that mattered was the man’s race. That’s when Albert really exploded. He called Hitler and Streicher every name under the sun and said the Nazis were a disgrace to Germany. And then they beat him to the ground, handcuffed him and hauled him off to Dachau.’
‘When was this?’
‘Two months ago. I am allowed no visits and I doubt my letters are delivered to him. He doesn’t even know that Hildegard is dead. And perhaps it is better that way because the news would probably kill him.’
As they approached Hesselberg, Seb was astonished by the amount of traffic building up. Not just cars and trucks, but thousands of cyclists and pedestrians, too. And everyone seemed to be in swastika-marked uniform of one sort or another. Whole troops of boys and girls marched in file – boys in their Hitler Youth uniforms and girls in their League of German Girls outfits of dark mid-length skirts, white short-sleeved blouse and loosely knotted ties.
He drove a circular route at the suggestion of Frau Heiden and approached the hill from the south, stopping at the western edge of the village of Gerolfingen to gaze upon the scene. Smoke rose from bonfires and there was a distant din of drumbeats.
‘They call it the sacred mountain, the Nazis. The sacred mountain of the Franks. But does it look like a mountain to you, Herr Wolff? I would call it a hill, nothing more. Six or seven hundred metres at the most. No one who has been to the Alps could call this a mountain.’
He could understand her dismissive attitude. Why should she be impressed by this place after what had happened here?
‘The detective Hartmann brought me up here at my request. I suppose it was the least he could do. I think he’s actually a decent enough fellow for a coward, but he’s frozen with fear because he knows that we were already a marked family and he was terrified of uncovering something that others would like to remain hidden. But he’s not the worst. The worst people are certain friends who now cross the road to avoid me. They are too scared to be associated with a family of undesirables.’
There were many such people in Germany in 1935, thought Seb, men and women who simply kept their mouths shut because the consequences of speaking out were too awful to contemplate. Was he one of them? It was a shaming thought. Though he agreed with every word this woman said, he took the politik route and kept his own feelings hidden from her.
‘Come, we can drive a little further and then walk.’
In the event, they had to park behind a long line of cars and trucks two kilometres from the top before embarking on the long walk up the hill. Finally, at the summit, they found an area of flat meadow crowded with what seemed like thousands of people and decorated by flagpoles, each with a swastika fluttering in the light breeze. At the very centre was a broad stage, fronted with a large white eagle design above a swastika in an oak-leaf circle. Thousands of people were gathered around, as though waiting for something.
‘This area is called the Osterwiese,’ Frau Heiden said. ‘Our ancestors made a fortress here and this is where the Frankentag is being held today and tomorrow. Hildegard was found in woodland lower down on the northern side. Come, I’ll show you.’
The milling, marching throngs of young Nazis had made their own little camps around bonfires, each with their own flag and, on each standard, a metal plate bearing the district they came from: Frankfurt, Cologne, Würzburg, Bayreuth, Essen, Stuttgart, Dresden, Bremen, Hannover, Hamburg, Leipzig, and scores of other cities and towns. They were here from all over the Reich. Many thousands and increasing by the minute as more arrived.
Seb was taken aback. He knew all about the Nuremberg rallies, of course, but this was something new to him. And with the bonfires and the setting, it was alive with excitement.
‘It was not like this when I came before,’ Frau Heiden said. ‘It’s hateful and I don’t like it. Can we go, please, Inspector.’
‘Can you not first show me where your daughter was found?’
‘It’s over there.’ She nodded to the north-east. ‘We can walk there, but I have to get away from these people. I feel the diabolical energy. Don’t you feel it?’
In fact he did, though he did not like to admit it. ‘Come then, we’ll walk fast.’
It was quieter and a great deal more wooded on the eastern part of the hill, across the decline, but the smoke and the noise still drifted and swirled about them.
‘This is a terrible place. They say there are many caves and tunnels beneath us, where goblins and demons live. But it is those above ground that I fear most. Do you not feel Satan’s presence here?’
‘I cannot answer your questions, Frau Heiden. My own feelings are immaterial. I am here to investigate a terrible murder, nothing more.’
‘You are all the same. Cowards every one of you. You know the truth but you fear to speak it. My husband is ten times the man you are.’
He couldn’t argue with her because she was probably right. Yes, it was true, he was taking the path of least resistance. Why? Because he had to, for who else would look after Mutti and Jurgen? Who else would investigate these murders? If he stayed free, perhaps he could do some good, perform some small service to keep the flame of justice alive in his benighted yet beloved country. For no one else was remotely interested in finding the killer of Rosie Palmer and Hildegard Heiden.
‘This was where the body was found. You can still see the depression in the leaves where she lay. They said she was naked, her body exposed to the elements, though why they felt the need to tell me that I don’t know.’
It was an area of dry leaves just inside the perimeter of a wooded area. Seb could imagine the scene that the workmen chanced upon. In his mind’s eye, he superimposed the photograph he had been sent onto the indentation: her throat cut like Rosie’s, her body covered with lesions which may or may not have been intended to represent runes. And other similar marks, perhaps drawn with lipstick, though it was difficult to tell from the monochrome image. The photograph was secreted in the Lancia; it was not something he would show the mother.
‘Could I just have a few minutes to look around the area, Frau Heiden. It is always possible the killer left a clue.’
‘No, Inspector, I can’t bear to be here a moment longer. Come back if you must, but please take me home first.’