Adam Rock wasn’t alone, of course. He was surrounded by Unity’s friends and acolytes. Frances de Pole was there and, surprisingly, Clarice Goodall, who had said that she and Unity didn’t get on. The permanent shadow Fritz Mannheim was present, of course, keeping an eye on Unity, and a few others, mostly English. About ten in all.
Unity’s little speech in imperfect German must have bewildered the crowd, but they seemed to enjoy it and applauded her as she left the stage with another salute, leaving it free for the enormous figure of Germany’s second most powerful man, Hermann Goering.
‘Damned hot today, Inspector Wolff. Why don’t you join us for a drink?’ Adam Rock said. ‘I know that Unity admires you and speaks very highly of your cigarette-fetching skills.’
‘Thank you, Mr Rock, perhaps we will seek you out later. By the way, were you and your friends here all night?’
‘Oh, good Lord no, we stayed in a rather pleasant hotel not far away. A pretty little town whose name escapes me. Much more civilised than camping. Boy scouts ruined all that outdoors stuff for me.’
‘Do you think we might arrange to meet up for a little talk when this is all over?’
‘What a strange request.’
He shrugged. ‘Nothing sinister. As I think I mentioned before, I’m still keen to talk to everyone who knew Miss Palmer.’
‘Really? You have your killer. One sharp blade and that surely will be that.’
‘I have reason to believe the killer was not alone, that he had an accomplice.’
‘And what exactly has that got to do with me?’
‘I’m being thorough, Mr Rock. That’s what everyone wants from their police, isn’t it? Just like your own Scotland Yard.’
‘Thorough? Questioning me? That sounds more like damned impertinence. I don’t know if anyone’s ever mentioned it to you, but you somehow manage to make the most casual of conversations sound like an interrogation.’
‘I’m sure you’d like me to find anyone who harmed your friend.’
‘Is this your unsubtle way of accusing me of something?’
‘I believe I was merely asking for a friendly chat at some future date. If I had cause to suspect you of a crime, I would arrest you and take you in for a proper interrogation, not arrange to meet you at your own convenience.’
‘Go to hell, Wolff. I suggest you try reminding yourself who won the war and crawl back into your little hole. Now if you’ll excuse us, we have to go and find Bobo. Who knows, we may run into you later.’
There again, that choice of words. On first meeting he had said, You know what happens to 175s in the Third Reich. Now he was saying, We may run into you later. Innocent enough phrases in normal conversation, perhaps, but in present circumstances, loaded.
Someone had tried to run into him on Schellingstrasse. Someone had killed Caius Klammer, ostensibly because he was a 175.
What was it about Adam Rock that made him so easy to dislike?
‘I know what you’re thinking, Inspector Wolff.’ It was Frances de Pole, speaking in English. She had held back from the others.
‘Miss de Pole.’
‘Oh God, call me Frankie, won’t you? Everyone does.’
‘My pleasure, Frankie, and this is Frau Schuler. Hexie Schuler.’
Hexie put out her hand.
‘Ah, the girlfriend,’ Frances de Pole said in good German. ‘Very pleased to meet you, too.’
‘You were saying that you knew what I was thinking,’ Seb said. ‘What would that be?’
‘You were thinking that Adam Rock is a frightful boor. We all agree with you but he considers himself the bee’s knees. Someone told me that when he was at school he considered himself a cut above everyone, including the headmaster. Anyway, we can’t get rid of him.’
‘Would I be right in thinking that he takes all this historical German Völkisch stuff rather seriously?’
‘Good Lord, yes – just don’t get him on the subject of runes and rituals and holy mountains.’ She switched to English. ‘Not so much boor with a double “o” as bore with an “o-r-e” when he lets rip on all that stuff. He thinks Adolf is the reincarnation of some Nordic god-king.’
‘He may not be alone in that.’
‘Dear me, Herr Wolff, do I detect a hint of scepticism in your voice? You do like to live dangerously, don’t you? Anyway, must dash. We all have to tell Bobo how wonderfully she performed, or she’ll sulk all day.’
The wind was getting up and Goering was droning on, striding around the stage, waving his arms even more expansively than Streicher. Hermann was in his element, a natural showman, responding with ever more enthusiasm to every cheer and round of applause. The crowd loved him.
And at the finale when Goering said, ‘Adolf Hitler is everything, is Germany, is our creed, our movement, our very future!’ Seb began to wonder whether the speaker and his rapt audience might not all experience one enormous simultaneous orgasm.
But then it was all over. Two hundred thousand people – all sweating in the intense midsummer heat – proved their loyalty with salutes and sieg heils and a banner went up above the stage saying, ‘See You All Next Year’ or words to that effect.
Some way off, among the vast mass of swastika banners and pennants, one flag caught Seb’s eye: the sunwheel swastika of the Thule Society – the hooked cross with rounded edges fitting neatly within a circle, along with a short sword or dagger at its heart. So they were here mingling with the common people and Otto Raspe was certain to be amongst them. Was this what Hexie overheard them talking about in Hoffmann’s studio? Was Regensdorf here, too, and perhaps even a whole group of these odd, superstitious, fanatics?
Seb began moving through the great mass of people and flags in the direction of the Thule standard, not sure why he was going there or what he hoped to find. Hexie pulled at his arm.
‘Where are we going now?’
‘I saw a Thule flag.’
‘So?’
‘I want to see who’s there.’
‘What exactly are you looking for, Seb? What are you hoping to find?’
‘A killer . . . killers. Or a clue.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of doubting your skills as a detective, but don’t you think you might do well to cast your net a little wider? Munich and Nuremberg are large cities with many mad and unpleasant people. Anyone could be behind this.’
‘But at the moment this is all I’ve got. The runes . . . the Völkisch movement, the whole Thule thing. None of it might be solid evidence, but there are no other clues.’ He looked ahead, trying to catch sight of the Thule flag. ‘Come on, let’s find them.’
Lines of marching bands and youth groups – Hitler Youth, SA, SS – were stamping back and forth across the open plain, tents were being dismantled and fires extinguished and cleared, and it was difficult to get through them or past them, but Seb had made a mental note of the position of the Thule standard and he forged onwards, Hexie either at his side or close behind.
Ten minutes later, Seb realised he had completely lost the flag. He had reached the eastern area of the Osterwiese where his sense of direction told him it should be, but there was no sign of the flag or Otto Raspe or anyone else he knew to be associated with the Thule Society.
‘Is that it then? Can we sit down and have our picnic?’ Hexie looked bored and disconsolate.
‘They’ve just vanished.’
‘Now you see me, now you don’t. Must be all that Völkisch magic.’
Seb couldn’t conceal his irritation. He looked at her hard. ‘This really isn’t a joke, Hexie. It wasn’t a joke for Rosie Palmer, Caius Klammer and Hildegard Heiden – and it isn’t a joke for Karl Friedlander.’
‘I’m sorry. It all just seems so unreal.’
‘Well, it’s not. Jurgen’s girlfriend might have died here last night. That was real enough, I promise you.’
‘Forgive me.’
A flash of light to the east, across the dip known as the Druid’s Valley, caught his eye. No, not light, the fluttering of a square piece of fabric in the stiff breeze. A flag perhaps. Was it possible they had made their way across there, going to ground, like a fox evading hounds.
Seb pointed in the vague direction of the flag. ‘I’m going over. Why don’t you stay here? Have a drink and some food. I’ll meet you by the rostrum.’
‘I want to come with you.’
‘All right, but we’re going to move with stealth now. We no longer have the protection of the crowd. Why have they left the Osterwiese, that’s what I want to know? And who the hell is carrying the flag anyway?’
They strode across the gap separating the west and east uplands of the Hesselberg hill. Seb was beginning to doubt that he had seen anything, for there was no sign of the flag. Had he imagined it all from the very beginning?
He stopped near the clearing where he had found Silke the night before and looked around, his hand on his gun, half expecting to be fired on from the woods. Then moved on across the dip to the lower part of the hill, the Schlössleinbuck. In the distance he heard the sound of church bells and remembered that this was Sunday, and all was well.
Except it wasn’t.
‘There’s nothing. I’m sorry.’
‘I really don’t like it here, Seb. It’s eerie.’
‘Hildegard Heiden’s mother said much the same.’
‘Let’s go back. Please.’
How could a place – a gentle limestone hill of grass and trees, wildflowers, turtle doves and warblers – be so disturbing? Seb supposed it must have always been this way, which would have been why their German ancestors found themselves drawn to its strange energy and considered it sacred. Found their gods and demons here. Perhaps a better word than sacred might be unholy. Could this really have been a place of the geblōt – of human sacrifice?
Which brought him back to the same question that had been haunting him since discovering this place: if Hesselberg was so important to the killers, why was Rosie Palmer’s body discovered 150 kilometres away in the teeming heart of Munich?
*
It had been an exhausting, pointless outing, leaving Seb irritable and none the wiser. Hexie was probably right; his obsession with the Thule Society and the runes and the sacred hill was taking him nowhere.
‘Talk to me,’ he begged her, a few kilometres along the road on the long drive home. ‘Keep me awake or I might fall asleep at the wheel.’ But he was wasting his breath; she was already asleep herself.
The road wasn’t busy and there wasn’t much to hold his attention, and as the journey dragged on he was aware that he was becoming drowsy. He stopped in a lay-by for a while, got out, stamped around and drank some water from the flask they had brought. They were on the last leg of the journey, five kilometres out of Munich, almost home. If it had been further, he might have simply slumped down and gone to sleep. But he forced himself to get back in the driver’s seat and get them both home and to bed.
Setting off again the Lancia quickly gathered speed. The stop had refreshed him and he knew he’d be OK; he congratulated himself on doing it, he’d stay awake.
That was when the enormous cream-coloured Maybach appeared in his rear-view mirror. The larger, faster car swept up, then swerved in front of the Lancia. Seb jumped on the brake.
Nothing happened.
He stabbed his foot at it again, but there was no response. His reaction was immediate. He grabbed at the handbrake beneath the dashboard and wrenched it back, simultaneously trying to force the gear lever down to first, but he was too late. The Lancia was heading straight for a sharp right-hand bend and he couldn’t kill the speed in time. The rear wheels were out of control from the emergency gear change; the tyres had lost their grip. Burning rubber scraped on asphalt like a streak of charcoal.
The nose of the Lancia lifted as though about to take flight, thundering onto the grassy verge, then, instantly, it came down in a nosedive with a bone-crunching impact and stopped dead.
Seb’s hands were still on the wheel. His head had snapped forward and then back. In his mind, the incident had unfolded stage by stage, each one memorable like a series of scenes from a drama, from the appearance of the other car, to the failure of the brakes, his attempts at a handbrake and gear-stick stop. But in fact it had taken no more than a second or two from start to shattering finish.
Now, shaking, heart pounding, his immediate instinct was to wonder whether the whiplash had broken his neck, then all his thoughts were for Hexie. But his eyes were still on the road and the cream Maybach disappearing into the distance.
He turned towards Hexie. She was slumped forward onto the windscreen and there was blood. A lot of blood.
He could hear her breathing, see movement. She was alive, but she was unresponsive when he touched her and tried to speak to her. He realised she must be unconscious. Blood was streaming from her forehead down her face, and her body was twisted with her right shoulder forward, up against the side of her head.
‘Hexie, can you hear me?’
Still no response.
He levered his door open and crawled out on to the grass and rocks. Somehow, he needed to get her to hospital. Should he try to remove her from the car? He was back in the trenches, helping injured comrades. He knew how to stem blood flow from severed limbs, knew how to bandage a head. But he was painfully aware that there had been times when moving a wounded man might have done more harm than good, resulting in permanent spinal damage and paralysis.
And yet he had to do something. There was a powerful stench of petrol. A single spark could turn the car into an inferno.
‘Hexie, I’m going to try to get you out of the car.’ His arms were around her, easing her gently back into the seat. She was slender and light and yet a dead weight always feels heavy and she could offer no assistance.
A van was pulling up a little way ahead. Two burly men got out and walked towards them at a fast pace. Seb moved away from Hexie and the car and his hand went to his gun, but then stopped. It was a removals van and the men were in overalls. They were trying to help.
‘Are you all right, sir?’ the shorter, broader of the two men said.
‘Yes, but my girlfriend, she’s unconscious. She’s bleeding. I’m worried about moving her.’
‘I was a stretcher-bearer in the war, sir,’ the man said. He was grey-haired and had a reassuring smile. ‘Let’s take it slow and easy, check her injuries and get her to hospital. But you’re sure you’re all right, yes?’
‘Don’t worry about me.’
‘But you’re shaken up.’
‘The brakes failed. I lost control.’
‘Well, let’s get you both to hospital, just to be sure.’
‘Thank you.’ The kindness of a stranger, in a time of hatred and bitter prejudice. Perhaps there was hope after all.