HANS-JOACHIM PROBST.
Madden had never forgotten the name, nor the relish with which Angus Sinclair had pronounced it years before in describing the Berlin detective who had come to London to help with a murder investigation, and he had risen that morning with the welcome prospect ahead of finally meeting the man who had left such a deep impression on his old friend.
‘To look at him you might think he was a schoolmaster or some fussy bureaucrat,’ Sinclair had told him. ‘But don’t be deceived: he’s far from that.’
The chief inspector’s words came back to him a short while later when he arrived at the police station. Unable to find a taxi—it was still snowing heavily—Madden had been forced to make the short journey from the hotel on foot and he found Billy and his charge already seated in Morgan’s office and the meeting under way.
‘Mr Madden! What a pleasure to meet you after all these years.’ Probst had risen from his chair to shake his hand. His fluency in English came as no surprise: Madden had often heard Sinclair speak of it. A slight, unassuming figure, with thinning hair that receded from a high forehead, there was more than a touch of the schoolmaster about him. But although his polite bow as they shook hands only strengthened the impression of formality, Madden sensed something else behind the mild blue eyes that met his for a moment: a sadness that had no part in the present moment, but dwelt in some other realm beyond the reach of any healing touch.
‘I have heard so much about you from our mutual friend.’ Probst had pressed his hand for a moment. ‘It’s a pleasure finally to make your acquaintance.’
Their discussion had got under way before he arrived and Morgan had asked the German detective if he would mind repeating what he had just told them. Before responding, Probst had asked if the other two would bear with him for a moment while he satisfied himself on a point that was troubling him.
‘I understand you have not been able to make direct contact with Angus since he wrote that letter to me?’ He addressed the words to Madden, who had taken a seat beside him. ‘Inspector Styles tells me you are reasonably sure of his whereabouts. All the same I’d be grateful if you could tell me exactly what you know of his movements.’
In response, Madden outlined the inquiries he had made on arriving in Oxford and the conclusion he had come to as a result of them.
‘I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but all the signs are that he met someone he knew by chance in Chipping Norton, a lady he had met at a dinner in Oxford the night before. Realizing that he was stranded there—the bus service had been cancelled because of the snow—she appears to have offered him a place to stay for the night and taken him home with her. But because of the snow he’s been trapped there.’
‘I can add something to that,’ Morgan chipped in. ‘I’ve discovered that the phone lines in that area have been down since that day. I was going to tell you this morning, sir.’ He glanced at Madden. ‘I was told they started to clear the roads yesterday. But now we’ve got this fresh fall.’ He indicated the window behind him, where the thick white flakes could be seen spiralling down. ‘So I can’t say how long it’ll be before you can get up there.’
‘But the important thing is he’s safe.’ Probst nodded as though to reassure himself. ‘This is what was worrying me.’ He turned to face Madden. ‘I will explain now why I have been so concerned. As you know, it was Greta Hartmann’s name that caught our eye in Berlin. It is linked to a particularly brutal double murder that took place there in 1937. The victims were a widowed lady named Frau Klinger and her lawyer. The two murders took place on the same evening, but in different locations in the city and bore no similarity to one another. That is to say, Frau Klinger appeared to have been the victim of a deranged killer—she had been savagely attacked and her body badly mutilated—while the lawyer died of head injuries received in what seemed to have been a clumsy attempt to rob him in the street. Nevertheless, it was eventually accepted by the detectives investigating the cases that the two murders were connected and that the motive was the same in each case.’
‘And what was that?’ Morgan asked.
‘By killing these two people the murderer hoped to draw the attention of the police away from a quite different crime—one of embezzlement—in which he would have been a prime suspect. The lady in question had been systematically robbed of a large sum of money over a period of time. Because of the circumstances of her death—and her lawyer’s—this did not come out at once, but when it did it was assumed her lawyer had detected the fraud and paid the price, as indeed had Frau Klinger. In the event, these two murders were instrumental in giving the killer time to vanish from the scene. The case was eventually closed during the war, or at least put on ice, and has never been reopened until now.’
‘And how was Mrs Hartmann involved?’
‘She was a close friend of the deceased lady, who was a member of the congregation of the Lutheran church where Greta’s husband, Manfred Hartmann, was pastor.’ Probst frowned. ‘I believe you’re aware that he had spoken out against the Nazis and been imprisoned in a concentration camp as a result. At the time of the murders he had already fallen ill with typhus, from which he died soon afterwards. I mention that because of the effect it had on Frau Hartmann. She was in an extremely distressed state when she was interviewed by the police and probably not the most convincing witness, at least as far as they were concerned.’
‘What was it she was trying to tell them?’
‘That she had long held suspicions about a man who had somehow worked his way into Frau Klinger’s confidence and who the police eventually realized—though unfortunately too late—was almost certainly the murderer they were seeking. He was called Klaus Franck, though the name is unimportant. It was later learned that this same person had used a number of aliases in the past. In fact, determining his true identity proved difficult and delayed the progress of the investigation for some time.’
‘I take it you weren’t involved in the case yourself?’ Madden had needed a moment to absorb what he had just been told before putting the question.
‘I played no part whatever in the investigation. In fact, I was no longer with the police.’ Probst shrugged. ‘I resigned in 1933 shortly after the Nazis came to power. I had no wish to serve under such a regime in any capacity.’
‘But you returned to the force later?’
‘After the war ended I was offered my job back, though I did not accept immediately.’ A shadow crossed his face. ‘However, I decided in the end to take up my old profession again and at the same time I wrote to tell Angus, with whom I had lost contact during the war, only to find that he had retired in the meantime. We have continued to correspond since.’
Probst glanced at Morgan, who cleared his throat.
‘That’s as far as we’d got,’ he told Madden. He turned to their visitor. ‘Yet you seem to know a lot about this case, sir.’
‘You’re quite right, Inspector . . . but only in a sense.’ Probst sighed. ‘When I returned to my old job one of my first tasks was to review what I think you call cold cases—investigations that had been shelved for one reason or another. Needless to say this double murder was among them and I found it to be so extraordinary that I studied it in detail—without, I should add, coming to any conclusion as to how it might have been handled differently by the detectives at the time. It’s fair to say they were led by the nose—is that the correct expression?’ He paused to cast an inquiring glance at Morgan, who nodded after a moment. ‘But I was forced to wonder whether I would have done any better. It was clear that the killer was a criminal of a most unusual kind.’ He shook his head in seeming disbelief. ‘We are all familiar with confidence tricksters. We know how they seek out gullible victims and prey on their weaknesses. But in general they are thieves and nothing more. This man was different. Oh, a thief certainly—there was no question of that—but a cold-blooded murderer as well: a man who reacted with complete coolness when he realized his fraud was found out; who in the course of a day or two was able to plan and execute two murders, one of them excessively cruel and bloody, while maintaining a front of innocence that the police, for a while at least, found perfectly convincing. Have any of you ever come across a criminal of this kind?’
In the silence that followed, it was Madden who spoke.
‘You said this man had had various aliases in the past. So you know something of his background?’
‘A good deal, as it happens.’ Probst turned to him. ‘But most of it was learned much too late to be of any use. To begin with he was born in Argentina, of English parents . . .’
‘Good God!’ Morgan couldn’t contain his surprise.
‘Yes, that must come as a shock.’ Probst was apologetic. ‘But until now his connection with this country seems to have been nonexistent. His father was an engineer employed in the construction of railways, named Arthur Butler, who travelled to South America with his bride around the turn of the century. But after only three years, when they already had two children, a boy and a girl, he was killed in an accident in the Andes and a year later his widow married a German rancher who had also emigrated to Argentina, called Karl Voss. The two children subsequently took his name, so for purposes of clarity I will refer to the boy from now on as Heinrich Voss, since at some point, perhaps at his stepfather’s behest, he changed the name he was born with, which was Henry. The two children were raised speaking English and German as well as Spanish and this polylingual background was to come in handy for young Voss later in life. During the time he spent in Berlin he was taken for what he professed to be—a German brought up in South America, though he claimed Chile as his place of birth rather than Argentina for reasons that will become clear. I might add that what I am telling you comes from a variety of police sources not only in Argentina but also Peru and Mexico. Needless to say it took many months to gather it and by the time all the facts about Voss were assembled war broke out and the investigation was put aside.’
Probst broke off to drink from a glass of water that had been placed on the desk in front of him. Morgan watched him, frowning.
‘If I could interrupt for a moment,’ he said, ‘there’s something I’d like to clear up. As I understand it, the assumption is Mrs Hartmann may have recognized him when he stopped in . . . where was it again?’ He glanced at Madden.
‘Fernley. It’s a village in Hampshire.’
‘Let’s suppose it was this Voss character, and let’s suppose also that he knew he’d been spotted. Would he really have killed her as Mr Sinclair thinks? Wouldn’t that have been an extreme reaction?’ The Oxford inspector spread his hands. ‘All she could have had was a glimpse of him. Even if their eyes met it was hardly enough for a positive identification, particularly given the number of years that had passed since she’d last seen him. Is it likely he would have taken the risk of killing her in the open like that? What if he’d been seen?’
Probst put his glass down. He looked thoughtful.
‘To deal with your last point first, I think we may take it for granted that he would have made sure they were not observed,’ he began. ‘This is a very cool assassin we are dealing with, Inspector, a man of ice. But the really interesting question is, always supposing he did kill her, why should he have chosen to do so?’
‘Why?’ Billy broke in. Apart from greeting Madden when he’d arrived, it was the first time he’d spoken.
‘I mean, even if he knew or guessed that Mrs Hartmann had possibly recognized him, what could have prompted him to take such a risky course?’
‘The fear that she might report seeing him to the police, I suppose.’ To Billy the point seemed obvious.
‘Of course. But would even that have alarmed him enough to take violent action?’ Probst seemed to struggle with the question. ‘What sort of story would she have to tell? That she had seen a man who she thought might be someone she believed guilty of a murder committed in another country many years before. Even if the police took what she said seriously would they really have started a search for him on such flimsy evidence? All things considered I think this same coolheaded man, who was only passing through the village, who had no connection with Hampshire as far as we know, would simply have gone on his way, leaving her to her suspicions.’
‘Well, then why did he kill her . . . if he did?’ Billy felt he’d painted himself into a corner.
‘To answer that, I shall have to tell you a little more about Heinrich Voss.’ Probst acknowledged the problem with a nod. ‘In order to discover his real identity the Berlin CID had recourse to the International Police Commission, which was based at that time in Vienna. Although there was no mention of a Klaus Franck in their records they were in possession of information regarding three unsolved crimes that seemed related to the murders that had taken place in Berlin. Requests had been received from the police in both Peru and Mexico for any information regarding a criminal with a very particular modus operandi: a man who preyed on women, first robbing them and then killing them as a means of either hiding his crime or at least muddying the waters so that he had time to make his escape. Since this was almost a copybook example of what had happened to the unfortunate Frau Klinger and her lawyer, we were naturally interested to know more and it was by contacting the police in both Lima and Mexico City that we finally began to piece together the past of this dangerous man. I say “we”, though of course I played no part in these inquiries. But the detectives who handled the investigation were well known to me.’
Probst paused to take another sip of water.
‘One of two murders he committed in Mexico bore similarities to an unresolved killing that had occurred in Argentina some years previously. The Mexican police were aware of this as it had been something of a cause célèbre at the time, at least in Latin America. In both instances the bodies of the victims had been savaged with a knife; in the case under investigation in Mexico—it involved the murder of a young woman—the victim’s heart had actually been cut out and placed on her forehead.’
‘Good God!’ Morgan couldn’t stop himself.
‘And that wasn’t all. There were two servants in the house at the time—a cook and a maid—and both were butchered along with their mistress. It seemed like the work of a madman, as was no doubt the intention of the man who performed the act. Right from the start he sought to point the police in the wrong direction and away from the real motive of the crime. However, the brutality of the killings was reminiscent of the murder that had taken place in Argentina and the Mexican police got in touch with the Buenos Aires CID. In this way a tentative connection was made between the two crimes: a link that had now been communicated to us.’
‘So this Voss character had also murdered someone in Argentina? Have I got that right?’ Morgan was trying to keep up with the complicated story.
‘It would seem so.’ Probst shrugged. ‘But once again there was no positive evidence on which to charge him. The case I’m about to describe for you occurred in the late twenties when he was still at university in Buenos Aires. A fellow student of his, a young man from the provinces, was found murdered in his room. There was no apparent motive for the crime, other than possibly a sadistic one: the body had multiple stab wounds, none of them on its own fatal, but cumulatively enough to kill him. He was gagged and seemed to have taken a long time to die. This boy was one of a group of students with a proclaimed belief in a nihilistic creed, fashionable at the time, that rejected all religious and moral principles, and not surprisingly they all came under suspicion, though none of them in the end could be tied to the murder. Voss was one of the group, and interestingly, in hindsight at least, had the solidest alibi of all: on the night in question when this luckless boy met his end he was with his sister. Or so she said.’
‘His sister?’ This time it was Billy Styles who was the first to react.
‘Alicia . . . or Alice, as she had been named at birth; she was a year younger than her brother. At this point she was a student at the conservatory in Buenos Aires, studying the piano. They were very close—so close in fact that shortly after the affair of the murdered student she was sent by her stepfather to live with a brother of his who had settled in Córdoba, several hundred miles away . . .’ He paused deliberately.
‘Are we to assume the two facts were related?’ Madden asked the question.
Probst seemed unsure how to reply. He pursed his lips.
‘We are in the dark where that is concerned. But reading the reports we received from the police in Buenos Aires—and this was many years afterwards—I formed a strong impression that the detectives who investigated the murder of the student believed that in spite of his alibi Voss was in fact the culprit and that his sister had lied on his behalf. Both were questioned rigorously, but neither cracked under pressure. The police further believed, though they could offer no proof of this, that Karl Voss had deliberately separated the pair as soon as the investigation was concluded. It seems there was a suspicion among those who knew them that their relationship was . . . unhealthy.’
‘Do you mean incestuous?’ Madden asked.
Probst could only shrug in response.
‘What became of Heinrich?’
‘Soon after this affair, and without graduating from university—he was studying to become an architect—he left Argentina, never to return. The police had reason to believe that his stepfather cut him off from the family. He was known to have given him some money, enough to live on for a while, and was heard by servants at the ranch to have told his stepson that he never wanted to see him again. I should have mentioned that by this time Karl Voss was a widower. His English wife, and the mother of the two children, had died three years earlier. And one further point: when Karl Voss was asked some time later to provide photographs of both children he replied that he had destroyed every picture he had of them, an answer that speaks volumes, do you not think?’
Madden rubbed his chin. ‘It certainly sounds as though he believed his stepson was guilty of the murder.’
‘Indeed. And since he was not in Buenos Aires himself at the time it can only have meant that he based his judgement on what he already knew of the boy’s character—a disturbing thought.’ Probst’s face showed pain. ‘However, that was the sum of what the Argentine police were able to tell us about Heinrich Voss, and together with what we learned from the police in Lima and Mexico City we were able to form a rough picture of the career of this man of many aliases. In brief, he had managed to form relationships of a sort with women in both those cities and, having extracted considerable sums of money from them by fraudulent means, had disposed of them, though in the case of Mexico City, the death of the second of his victims, a wealthy spinster, was not initially treated as a case of murder—she drowned in her own swimming pool. But a subsequent examination of her financial dealings, in which Voss played a significant part, led the police later to regard it too as a likely case of murder.’
‘I take it he kept changing his name during those years.’ Billy spoke again.
Probst nodded. ‘We had a list of his aliases and just prior to the outbreak of war we also acquired photographs of him from the Argentine police. From these we were able to confirm from people who had encountered Klaus Franck in Berlin that it was the same man. However, I regret to have to tell you these photos were lost during the war. Because the case had been put to one side, they were stored with other evidence not involved in ongoing investigations in a warehouse that was destroyed in a bombing raid. Until I received Mr Sinclair’s letter a few days ago we had not thought to ask the Argentine police to send us copies. Despite the inquiries we had made via the international commission, there had been no reported sightings of Voss anywhere in Europe following his disappearance; nor had the investigation been advanced in any way during the war; to all intents and purposes it had been closed. That mistake has now been remedied. Requests have already been cabled to Buenos Aires asking for fresh copies of the photographs to be wired to Berlin. They will be forwarded to London as soon as possible. However, we can’t be sure how good the quality will be, given that the pictures were taken a long time ago and they’ll be radio photographs.’
Probst drank from his glass again.
Madden shifted in his chair. Watching him, Billy saw his old chief put a hand to the scar on his forehead.
‘I was wondering what happened to Voss’s sister,’ Madden said. Looking up, he found that Probst’s gaze was on him. The German detective had a wry smile on his face.
‘You must be a mind reader, Mr Madden. I was about to return to that very subject. To answer your question, Alicia Voss remained with her uncle in Córdoba until she came of age a little over a year later and then promptly quit his household and without even making contact with her stepfather disappeared. Did she rejoin her brother, who was in Peru? I cannot say. All I can tell you is that the police in both Lima and Mexico City had no record of her being there. Of course, she could easily have changed her name too, and may have done so at her brother’s direction.’
‘Is it thought he was controlling her?’ Madden asked.
‘Again, I can’t be sure. The simple truth is she disappeared—at least for some years. But the story doesn’t end there. When detectives began investigating the murder of Frau Klinger they naturally interviewed the man she had been seeing so much of, Klaus Franck, though not as a possible suspect at that stage, simply as a source of information. However, after Frau Hartmann had communicated her suspicions to them they questioned him again, in particular about his movements on the evening in question. He told them he had spent the night with a woman friend at the Adlon Hotel. She was a divorced woman who lived in Munich, he said; they had been in a relationship for more than a year. His story was confirmed both by the lady herself when she was contacted by the Munich police and by the Adlon, which is to say that they had both certainly checked into the hotel that evening.’
‘Though he could easily have slipped out.’ Madden nodded to himself. ‘And the lady from Munich . . . ?’
‘Resigned from her job with a travel agency quite soon afterwards and was not seen or heard from again. Eventually the Berlin police came to the conclusion that in all likelihood she was Voss’s sister, Alicia. There was no proof of that, of course, but it was hard to imagine who else she might be. A description of how he behaved with Frau Klinger when he appeared in Berlin, which we obtained from acquaintances of hers, painted a picture of a polite, rather diffident man who seemed genuinely fond of her while never overstepping the bounds of propriety; who seemed anxious only to help with the practical problems faced by a woman, recently widowed, who suddenly had to cope with the sort of difficulties her late husband had always dealt with.’
‘I assume they were of a financial nature?’ Madden framed the remark as a question.
‘Exclusively so. He managed to persuade her to invest a large sum in several South American companies which eventually proved to exist only on paper. It was this scheme that her lawyer uncovered after she had grown suspicious and turned to him for help. If only she had gone directly to the police she would at least have emerged from the debacle with her life, if not the money she had parted with. But she chose to give Voss a chance to explain himself, a decision that proved fatal to her—and her lawyer. It seems she had come to trust him utterly and probably couldn’t believe that he might have betrayed her. This at least will show you how persuasive a confidence man he was. None of her friends could credit what had happened either; they thought the person they knew as Klaus Franck was incapable of committing the crimes he was suspected of.’
‘Except Greta Hartmann . . . and now she’s dead too.’ Madden scowled.
Billy stirred uneasily in his chair. ‘Excuse me, sir, but what I don’t understand is how he managed to fool all these women. And how could he have known they were the kind of people who would fall for his line?’
‘That’s a fair question.’ Probst nodded. ‘And the short answer is, because he was willing to take the time to ensure they would. He was prepared to be helpful and understanding, always agreeable; to help them in every way he could with favours great and small; and above all to be endlessly patient. His first such victim was the widow of a Peruvian businessman, and it took him all of two years before he was ready to strike. Having convinced her that the financial advisers she had turned to after the death of her late husband were taking advantage of her, he had persuaded her to invest a substantial sum of money in what were purported to be government bonds. Needless to say this always helpful man handled the details of the purchase for her. The scheme would not have stood up to any sort of scrutiny beyond the first issue of interest, which was due six months after the purchase date, but by then the lady was already dead. She had an accident in her motorcar, which went off the road and tumbled into a ravine, where it burst into flames. It was only much later, and after exhaustive medical tests, that it was determined she had died prior to the accident. By that time Voss had made good his escape and later it became clear that he had gone to Mexico.’
Probst stretched to ease a stiff muscle. Billy glanced at his watch. They had been listening to their visitor for the best part of an hour, though the time seemed to have passed more quickly than that.
‘I have told you about this Peruvian incident in some detail so as to give you an idea of how this man operates. He was to follow much the same pattern in the crimes that followed. The important thing to notice is the time he was prepared to spend lulling whatever doubts his victims might have had about him before moving on to his prime purpose—and something else too.’
The Berlin policeman hesitated. A frown creased his brow.
‘What I say now is pure speculation, an idea I have formed about this man. It seems to me there is something almost sensuous about this lengthy period of near seduction he engages in, the many months he has been prepared to spend hiding his true nature, which is savage and pitiless, behind a mask of pretended benevolence. Did he gain some satisfaction from it? I ask myself. Was the prospect of what he would eventually do to these poor women enough to compensate him for what must have seemed many wearisome hours? In this regard we should not forget his first murder in Buenos Aires. He stood to gain nothing by the boy’s death. There was only the pleasure he took in killing him as he did, in prolonging the death agony over many hours. To say he is very likely a sadist is just to touch on the mystery that such a mentality presents. Or, to put it another way, is it the final act, the murder or murders he knows he will eventually commit, that mean the most to him—more even than the money he has extracted from his victims.’
Probst paused, weighing his next words. ‘Of course the irony is, had he waited a little longer, had he kept a curb on his appetites, he would have found himself living under a regime where his worst instincts might have been given free rein; protected by a black uniform with a death’s-head badge he would not have had to look far to satisfy his urges. But his life took another course and he has left a trail behind him that he must be aware of. This is the point I wish to get over to you.’
‘I’m not sure I understand . . .’ Morgan began, but he was cut off by Madden.
‘Yes, I see. That’s why he killed Greta Hartmann.’
‘Now you’ve lost me, sir.’ Billy shook his head.
‘He didn’t want the authorities alerted in any way,’ Madden explained. ‘While the police might not take anything Mrs Hartmann said to them seriously, they would remember it later if they had reason to and get in touch with the Berlin CID. The hunt for Heinrich Voss would be on again.’
‘If they had reason to?’ Billy still didn’t understand.
‘If a crime of the same sort took place again—only this time in England—and if they had been warned about this man in advance.’
‘This is what I fear.’ Probst broke in. ‘It’s why I persuaded my superiors to let me come here to lend any help I can to you. I was afraid too that Angus might actually confront this man without knowing how dangerous he was.’
‘Sir, I still don’t see . . .’ Morgan interrupted.
‘If Voss was the man Frau Hartmann saw, then we have no idea how long he has been in this country.’ Probst turned to him. ‘But if his past record is anything to go by, he may well have found a fresh victim by now, and if so, we have no way of knowing who she is or how long she has to live.’