Hexie regained consciousness soon after arriving at the university hospital, but she was in no state to be allowed home for there was always the fear of a skull fracture and internal bleeding. The only cause for optimism was that it was her forehead that had sustained the full force of the impact. Given the toughness of the human skull at the brow, there was optimism that all would be well.
The flow of blood had slowed to a trickle. It had come from the forehead and mouth where her tooth had cut into her lip and tongue. Those injuries were not serious but she would be bruised and they would take some time to heal.
‘What happened, Seb?’ she demanded as he sat at her bedside. ‘I don’t remember anything.’
‘You were asleep. A car swerved in front of us and I braked, but nothing happened. We ended up on the verge.’
A car. Not just any car, but a big cream car that looked very much like a sleek and expensive Maybach.
Seb had been checked over himself and he stayed with Hexie for an hour, holding her hand, until the nurses told him he couldn’t stay, that she would be fine but she needed sleep.
*
He arrived home late in the evening, exhausted and worried about Hexie and wondering what to do about the Lancia, stuck out of town on the verge of the main road. There was a chance he could get it to the garage driving slowly and using the gears to decelerate and the handbrake to stop, but his tired brain told him that it would be better to sort that out in the morning. The smell of petrol was still in his nostrils and that was a concern.
Opening the front door, he was surprised to see the light on in the kitchen. Mutti would certainly be in bed by now and she never wasted electricity by leaving lights burning. ‘Hello,’ he said.
A voice from within. A familiar, reedy and unwelcome voice. ‘It’s me, Sergeant Winter.’
Seb heard a scraping of chair legs on the floor, then there he was at the kitchen door, Hans Winter, his eyes downcast.
‘Come to arrest me again and take me back to Dachau, have you?’
‘Your mother let me in. I have to talk to you.’
‘And has Mutti gone to bed?’
‘I think so. She offered me supper and a beer, but I didn’t accept. Your son’s here as well, but he’s gone to his room.’
‘Winter, you always look a mess. Your clothes are grim and stained and you slouch like a half-starved hyena. Yet this evening you look worse than ever.’
‘You look a bit rough yourself, Inspector Wolff. You’ve got blood on you.’
Of course he did – Hexie’s blood.
‘My car crashed,’ he said bluntly. ‘But you?’ He looked him up and down. ‘Well, at least you removed your shoes this time, so I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies. Mutti certainly will be.’
‘Can we talk then?’
‘Let’s sit down and have that beer, shall we?’
‘If you insist, just a small one.’
‘That’s all I was offering.’
*
They sat across the kitchen table. Winter had made sure the door was closed. ‘I take it no one can overhear us?’
‘Well no, unless your lot have bugged the room, Sergeant.’ Seb took a large draught of his beer. He knew that neither his mother nor Jurgen would have their ear to the keyhole; it wasn’t their nature. ‘I take it this is about our little chat at the Wittelsbach Palace earlier today.’
‘Tell me what you know? What did your friend in Dortmund say about me?’
‘You must know exactly what he said.’
‘I can’t bring myself to say it.’
‘You have Jewish blood in your veins, that’s what he said, Winter. He found this out from your family who, I must tell you, are deeply ashamed of you and your reaction to this news. It seems you left Dortmund with no word of farewell and you have not been in touch with them since. Why would a man abandon his family?’
‘They’re ashamed of me? I’m the one who feels shame, Inspector. You can’t begin to imagine my shame and disgust. I grew up a true German, a church-going Lutheran, only to discover that my grandfather was a rabbi who converted to Christianity just forty years ago.’
Seb simply listened. He might have said, ‘Why would that worry you?’ but that would have been cheap and disingenuous, for it was obvious why it would worry him: were it to be revealed to his seniors or anyone with a mind to denounce him, then Hans Winter would not only lose his job with the secret police but he would be persecuted in exactly the same way that he had almost certainly been persecuting other Jews as a member of the Dortmund Gestapo.
It was a bitter irony. Seb might have laughed, but he actually felt some strange pity for the man.
‘My mother and father both knew but they never told me. I discovered it purely by chance while looking through an old trunk with photographs and letters. There was a picture of him – Simon Greenbaum, my mother’s father – in his rabbi’s shawl and cap before he converted. And there was a scroll with Hebrew script – a Jewish Bible, I think. At first I didn’t make the connection, but I showed the picture to my father. “Why do you have a picture of a dirty Jew?” I said. He laughed at me. “That’s your grandfather,” he replied. And then he told me everything. I walked out and didn’t turn back. Anyone would have done the same.’
‘Drink your beer.’
‘Do you have anything stronger?’
Seb got up and fetched an old bottle of Steinhäger gin from the larder, then poured them both a sizeable glass.
‘And now what will you do, Inspector? Denounce me? I suppose your friend has already told everyone else at the Dortmund Gestapo office so word will be passed to Munich in no time.’
‘You don’t know my friend, Sergeant, and you clearly don’t know me very well. My friend has told no one except me and nor will he unless you act against my interests. And nor do I have any intention of telling anyone. Unlike you, I harbour no ill will towards the Jewish race – or any other race for that matter. And despite everything, Winter, I harbour no ill will towards you.’
‘Why should I trust you?’
‘Do you have any option?’
Winter shook his head slowly then downed his drink in one.
He really was a miserable wretch, Seb decided, a man with no saving graces except that he had saved his life. ‘This must be very difficult for you – the fear that you will be discovered. Is that why you picked on Friedlander? Overcompensating to protect yourself from suspicion of being a Jew yourself? Is that what happened?’
‘Those marks looked like Jewish writing. I saw some, remember. The marks on the scroll were like writing, but nothing like our alphabet. I know what I’m talking about.’
‘And that was enough to condemn a man to death? The vague belief that you could identify some scribbled lipstick marks as Hebrew script? And then you bribed the maidservant, Lena Popp, to say she saw him from her tram on the night of the murder. Perhaps I should denounce you, Winter.’
‘You don’t understand the pressure I’m under.’
‘Does your family worry you? Do you fear they will tell someone?’
‘What? And put their own necks in the noose? Anyway, they don’t know where I am, and nor will they.’ The blood drained from his gaunt face. ‘God in heaven, your Dortmund friend hasn’t told them I’m in Munich, has he?’
‘I honestly don’t know.’
Seb poured more Steinhäger. He suddenly found himself laughing, incongruously and irreverently given the circumstances. He was about to say, So I suppose this means no more pork chops for you, Sergeant? But that would have been vulgar and uncalled for and so, in the event, he held his counsel.
‘What’s so funny, Inspector? Do you take anything seriously? Can you even imagine what it is like to believe yourself a pure-blooded German one day and then to discover that you are defiled the next? I have lost so much – my sense of worth, my pride. Yet you laugh at me, the way you laugh at everything.’
‘I’m sorry, Sergeant. You’re right, I shouldn’t laugh. By the way, are your BPP friends still trying to follow me?’
‘I don’t believe so.’
‘The question is, what do we do now? How can we save Karl Friedlander, who we both know to be innocent?’
Winter was silent.
‘Well? You’re going to have to say something to the court, get it stopped.’
The secret police officer screwed up his face as though afflicted by some unknown pain, and his eyes turned away so that Seb shouldn’t see them.
‘We can’t do anything,’ he said.
‘What do you mean? We have to.’
‘He’s dead. He was executed by guillotine in Stadelheim earlier today. I got a call to get along to the jail to be there as a witness, and I saw it.’