Rundle Mall was crowded. The Christmas Pageant had finished hours ago, but the city was still teeming with hot sweaty shoppers. I hadn’t been to the pageant since I was ten – the year Lily left. Nothing seemed to have changed. Red-faced parents snapped at their children, kids in Santa hats whined to go to the Magic Cave, teens in shorts and thongs slouched in the shade sucking on Boost smoothies, women hurried between the air-conditioned shops, their middle-aged husbands trudging behind them, loaded down with bags. Okay, the Boost smoothies might have been McDonald’s thick shakes back then, and no one had been walking around texting or talking on their phones, but the atmosphere was the same. Excitement and festivity worn thin by heat, sunburn and sore feet.
If I’d known it was Pageant Day, I never would have come into the city. I’d been working, struggling through the first draft of my new novel, Homecoming. I say struggling because it seemed to be fighting me, heading down paths that I didn’t want to travel, dark, violent paths. But as usual when I was working, I was cocooned in my own world and had barely been aware that October had turned over into November, let alone that it was Pageant Day.
I checked the address on my phone and headed up King William Street, the crowd thinning as I left the busy mall behind. I walked purposefully, checking over my shoulder occasionally out of habit. Dietrich Sauer had been in custody for a month now, but still the crowds made me nervous, every passing face or footstep a potential threat. The psychologist Detective Norton had recommended said this was normal, that the feeling of being followed would fade with time. And while I knew in theory that Sauer was no longer at large, Kubel was still out there, somewhere in the world. Sauer had been on his way to America when he was arrested. And a part of me couldn’t shake the fact that he was likely to have friends. Powerful friends, and lots of them.
Crossing over Grenfell Street, I continued on to Pirie, turned the corner, and ducked into a doorway, pretending to check my phone while I waited for the light to turn green and the other pedestrians to continue on their way. My underarms were damp with sweat and I knew it wasn’t just the heat. I told myself to stop being paranoid; I had yet to catch anyone acting suspiciously. But still, I waited until I was satisfied the coast was clear before moving on.
I continued down Pirie Street for half a block and stopped in front of a tiny shopfront. The window was dusty, a few worn items displayed haphazardly. The interior was dark and gloomy. Pushing aside the voice inside my head that was telling me this was a bad idea, I went in.
It was dark and cool, despite the lack of air conditioning, and there was a smell of mothballs, old wood and leather. Most of the items for sale were junk, a few antiques mixed in with knick-knacks, tarnished musical instruments and second-hand clothing. Inside glass display cases were the more valuable items: jewellery, watches, precious coins and rare stamps. And the dangerous: knives, guns, even a samurai sword.
‘May I help you?’
I approached the woman behind the counter. She was elderly, stout, with thick glasses and an untidy mop of black hair, the grey roots showing where it parted down the middle. Before I could change my mind, I retrieved the slip of paper I’d brought with me from my purse. It was so worn as to be almost illegible, a small square with a number on one side and the shop’s name and logo on the other. When I’d first found it among Opa’s paperwork I’d almost thrown it away. Only the hoarding instinct I’d inherited from my grandmother had stopped me. And a growing suspicion that it must have had some value for him to have kept it so long.
‘I believe you have an item on hold for me,’ I said, showing the woman the pawn ticket.
She took it from me and examined the faded print before placing it on the counter with a surreptitious glance in my direction.
‘Just a minute,’ she said, disappearing behind the beaded curtain.
As soon as she left my heart started racing. I had a strong urge to leave, escape before she came back, before she could tell anyone I was here. Paranoia, again, I told myself. I stayed put.
She returned a moment later with a metal box in her hands, placing it carefully on the counter before me. Her hands held it a moment too long, as if reluctant to let it go.
‘So it’s true? He’s dead?’ she said as I reached for it.
I stopped, glanced at her sharply. ‘You knew my grandfather? Karl Weiss?’
She nodded. ‘For many years, although I never knew his name. You could set a calendar by him. He came every year, not a day late, not a day early. I thought I recognised his picture in the obituaries, but I wasn’t certain. I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, pulling the box towards me. There was an intricate pattern etched on the lid, a few scratches on the side. It wasn’t heavy.
‘Will you be requiring the arrangement to continue?’
When I hesitated, she elaborated. ‘One hundred and fifty dollars for storage for the year.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. ‘Would you excuse me for a minute?’
I turned my back and took the box to a table in the corner. I ran my hands over the metal, felt the etchings under my fingers, the lock solid and trustworthy. If there’d been any doubt in my mind about what I might find here, it was gone. While Karl hadn’t made any mention of the documents in his letters, he’d told Grete of the goods Hans had left him, and how he’d exchanged some of them for cash at a pawn broker in Adelaide before going on to the mines. It hadn’t taken much to realise that the faded ticket among the papers was likely from the same shop. Seeing the box now, there could be no doubt about what was inside. Sixty years and more this lockbox had lain hidden here, held its secrets from the world.
I unzipped the change pocket in my purse and took out the key, put the head in the lock. For a moment I stood poised, listening to the blood pounding in my ears. What would I find inside? Was I opening Pandora’s Box? If what had happened in the past weeks was any indication, the documents within were as dangerous as they were valuable. What would be the consequences of their emergence? Would it bring Dietrich Sauer’s neo-Nazi comrades swooping down on me? Would it stir them up all over again? Or would turning the documents in, making them public, end it all? Absolve me of any association?
There would be questions, an investigation of Karl’s life and no doubt mine and Lily’s as well, Oma and Opa’s home and belongings searched once again.
And what about Opa? He would be implicated, his name associated with the atrocities documented therein. The Nazi hunters would proclaim him a war criminal, put him on trial post mortem, if not officially, then unofficially, through the media. Could I do that to him? Should I? Would the emergence of the documents compensate for the besmirching of his name? Would any good come from it?
My hand was shaking and slowly I pulled the key out of the lock.
The contents of the box had lain hidden for decades, with none the wiser. Would it do any harm for them to remain there a while longer? Perhaps one day they would be revealed, Opa’s secret exposed, but it was not a decision I was prepared to make. Not yet. I couldn’t do that to him, or to myself. I tucked the key back in my purse and took the box to the counter.
‘Yes, the same arrangement,’ I said. ‘Do you take Visa?’
‘Cash only.’
I paid her the money and watched as she took the box into the back room again. ‘I’ll come back one year from today,’ I said when she returned.
‘I’ll be counting on it.’
I left the shop, pulling the door closed firmly behind me.
Outside on the street I leaned against the wall and took a deep breath, waited until my heart had slowed. I turned the pawn ticket over in my hand, the ticket Karl had kept for so long. The key to the secret he had kept for so long.
Carefully I placed the ticket into my purse and snapped it closed, pulled out my phone.
Coffee later? I texted.
I’m off at 4, Lily texted back.
I’ll pick you up.
I put the phone away and headed back towards the mall. I didn’t look back.