Schreiber's Secret (34 page)

“Now, Pastor, did you attend an identification parade at Brixton?”

“Yes.”

“Did you pick somebody out there?”

“Yes. The man I knew as Schreiber.”

Blomberg turned to the judge. “For the record, my Lord, that man is Henry Sonntag, the defendant ... thank you, Pastor Warsinski.”

As Blomberg sat down, Mr Justice Pilkington turned to the prosecuting counsel’s adversary. “Any questions, Sir John?”

“Yes, my Lord,” Sir John Scrivener announced wearily, as if he were being overwhelmed by the prosecution. Nothing, however, was farther from the truth. He shuffled a few papers until he felt he commanded the jury’s full attention.

“Sir,” he said, turning to face the witness, “would you say that your experiences in the Small Fortress were the worst of your life? In fact, would you say the six-month period in which you were there seemed like years of mental and physical torture?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Would you say that your mind became tortured by this inhumanity and that, from time to time, became confused because of the strain?”

“Yes, but I will never forget my experiences or the man who inflicted such terrible tortures upon so many of God’s innocents. I think God would forgive me for calling that man a beast.”

“Your being a man of the cloth, sir, makes your oath to tell the whole truth all the more sacred, does it not?”

“Yes. I swear that I am telling the truth.”

“You would not wittingly lie?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You would not lie consciously.”

“I think not.”

“Sir, I would ask you to look at the man third from the left in the front row of seats at the back of the court. Can you see him?”

All eyes turned to Herschel Soferman. The old man cringed. Like everyone else, he had not expected this ploy from Scrivener.

“I’m afraid I cannot see him too well,” said the pastor, visibly irritated.

“My Lord, I beg the court’s indulgence and would request that the witness be allowed to step closer to the man in question.”

“We object, my Lord,” boomed Blomberg. “The previous witness is not on trial here.”

Mr Justice Pilkington considered the matter for a few seconds before pronouncing, “You may proceed, Sir John.”

The court usher led the priest to within two feet of Soferman, now ashen-faced and sweating profusely.

“Now, sir, could not the man you are facing be Hans Schreiber?”

The pastor peered at Herschel Soferman, instinctively adjusting his plain round spectacles. His voice betrayed his confusion. “Y-Yes ... I suppose it could.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Sir John as a buzz once more filled the courtroom.

“We have no further questions of this witness, my Lord.”

Nigel Blomberg sprang to his feet once again. In the circumstances there was only one course open to him to minimize the damage. His own turn would come if Scrivener chose to put Sonntag on the stand. “I close the case for the prosecution,” he said testily.

Edwards disembarked from the Lufthansa jet at Düsseldorf’s Rhine-Ruhr airport knowing that he had two choices. He could take the easiest option and head for the Brandt family address or he could travel the thirty-five miles northwest to Straelen. There was no contest. He owed it to Bill Brown to get to that small town as soon as possible.

He hired a 3 Series BMW and headed west along the A52. He could not help but acknowledge that he felt
a certainnostalgia for the country, especially for Düsseldorf, which had been his base during his summer student exchange. It was a country that made it very easy for the visitor. Everything was orderly and efficient, and yet the Germans were also extremely hospitable. If you left an item of clothing in a hotel bedroom, it would be forwarded rapidly. If your car broke down on a
n
autobah
n
, a patrol car would arrive quickly with free help. Most educated people spoke English but would let you try out your German, without being intolerant about it like the French. Danielle had feared that the new larger Germany would return to the nationalist arrogance of the past. He himself believed that the new Germans now looked to the European Community as a substitute for their old destructive nationalism. Of course there was racism, a certain animus against foreigners, but he believed that this was just as prevalent in other western European countries. There were still a few sentimental old SS veterans, but these were dying out fast.

He turned onto the
motorway heading north. The roads were a revelation. London’s M25 was but a distant bad dream. He was convinced that the Germans made the best roads in the world. But if they made good engineers they also possessed traits that infuriated him. Being a legalistic people, they devised rules and laws for all kinds of minor things which would be betterleft alone. They hated to break the law, or to see someone else breaking it. It seemed to offend against their profound need fo
r
Ordnun
g
. In England, people did not hesitate to cross the road when there was no traffic. Not so in Germany. They would wait sheepishly for the pedestrian traffic light to turn green. And the Germans also liked to mind your own business for you. Once he had walked down Königsallee with a shoelace undone. No fewer than seven people had warned him to do it up, not because they were concerned with his safety, but because it looked out of place
.
Ordnung muss sei
n
.  By the time Edwards had finished his musings, he was passing the sign announcing his destination. At first sight, Straelen looked a delightful town. Lying between the Rhine and the Maas, it struck him as an ideal location for the oft-repeated Patrick McGoohan television series
,
The Prisone
r
. Pastel plaster decorated the old townhouses and the cobbled central square had a timeless quality about it.

He approached one of the townsfolk and was directed to the local police station. He had decided that it would be necessary only to say that he’d read about the accident in the newspaper and thought it might be his friend.  “Why didn’t you go to the police in England?” asked the sergeant in charge of the case. It was his first major incident since being posted to Straelen. He tried to decipher the Englishman’s press card. A typical country bumpkin, thought Edwards.
Too much Bratwurst.

“I wasn’t sure, Sergeant. Anyway, I had to come to Düsseldorf on a story. I just arrived this morning. Here’s my ticket.”

“A friend of his, you say? Well, if it is him, I’m sorry. It’s not a pretty sight. He’s been patched up a bit, but the car hit him with such force that it broke nearly every bone in his body.” As an afterthought, the policeman added, “His face is pretty unmarked, though.”

Edwards followed the sergeant to the mortuary, his stomach knotted and his heart pounding. They entered the cold room. The body, enveloped in a grey sheet, was still lying on the slab. The German slowly uncovered the face.

The policeman was right. Bill Brown was completely unmarked around the face. Just below the chin, Edwards could see the beginning of the massive bruising which he knew must cover the rest of the body. “It’s him,” he said dully.

“Okay,” said the policeman, replacing the sheet, “let’s have a statement.”

More than an hour elapsed before the Englishman was allowed to leave the station. He had asked the policeman about Wolfgang Schreiber. The officer first checked the telephone directory. There were three Schreibers but no doctor and no Wolfgang. “It’s probably ex-directory. I can’t check the electoral register for you because of our stupid data protection laws,” he said, “but I can do the next best thing.” The man had then simply directed the reporter to the one person in town who he was sure would know.  Edwards drove the short distance to the town archivist’s office in Kuhstrasse. The policeman had assured him that there was nothing that Peter Schmidt did not know about the town or its inhabitants.

“I call my client, Henry Sonntag.”

Once again the tension in the court sharpened as all eyes swivelled to the man in the dock. The defendant strode the thirty feet to the witness box steely-eyed and with an upright bearing that signalled either innocence or arrogance. There were a few gasps from the gallery as he placed
a
kipp
a
on his head and took the oath on the Old Testament.

“Please tell us your name,” said Sir John.

“Henry Sonntag.”

“Is that the name you were born with?”

“No. I was born Herschel Soferman. At least, that’s what they told me in the orphanage in which I was brought up.”

“Why did you change your name?”

“I changed it because Herschel Soferman died in the Small Fortress.”

“You do not mean this literally?”

“No. I mean spiritually. His spirit was destroyed by Hans Schreiber. Henry Sonntag seemed as good a name as any to choose. Nobody seemed to care much after the war and all the records were destroyed anyway.”

“Tell us, Mr Sonntag, did you kill either Howard Plant or the taxi driver, Joe Hyams?”

“No, sir. But I know who did. I will never forget the hallmarks of the butcher Hans Schreiber. I am not that man.”

“Now, Mr Sonntag, please tell us about your life, starting at the outset of the Second World War.”

The court sat transfixed as Henry Sonntag’s story covered the same ground and described the same experiences as Herschel Soferman’s. It digressed only after the escape from Theresienstadt. The defendant told a complex and compelling tale of fighting with Polish partisans, fleeing the Red Army, and reaching Berlin by an incredibly circuitous route. He too had gained employment as a translator and interrogator of suspected war criminals for British Intelligence. He too had a story that it would be difficult to prove, or disprove.

“Ah, Herr Edwards, you rang me from the police station. Welcome to Straelen. Ours is a beautiful town, no?”

Edwards shook hands with Peter Schmidt, a lean and bookish man in his early forties.

“Please, Herr Edwards, be seated. I will prepare a cup of coffee for us both.”

The reporter looked around the small, well-lit ground-floor office. It was spotless and orderly, apart from some heavy books lying open on a pinewood table in the centre of the room. He stood up and moved closer to them. They were in old German script and must have dated back hundreds of years.

“You know, Herr Edwards,” Schmidt called out, “Straelen was first mentioned in a certified document more than nine hundred years ago.
In 1064, to be exact. Napoleon sojourned here also ... and we won the national medal for town design in 1979.”

“You must be very proud, Herr Schmidt.”

“I am, sir,” said his host, entering the office with a cup of coffee in each hand. “This is a fine town and it has fine citizens.”

“It’s about one of them that I want to ask you. You see, my grandfather was
German ...”

“Now I know why you speak such good German, Herr Edwards.”

“Thank you. I suppose I owe him and my mother a lot in that respect.”

“Milk and sugar?” asked the German.

“Just milk, please.”

The archivist poured the milk. “Please continue, Herr Edwards.”

“My grandfather – he died ten years ago – had a good friend who came from this town. A doctor by the name of Wolfgang Schreiber.”

“Really! How fascinating. It’s a shame your grandfather passed away.”

“Why?”

“Old Wolfgang is still alive and kicking at ninety-five, Herr Edwards. And what’s more, he still has all his faculties. A wonderful old gentleman.”

It was on returning for the afternoon session that Nigel Blomberg, QC, began the task of trying to wear down Henry Sonntag. Scrivener had made great play of the fact that Sonntag did not bear the tell-tale SS tattoo under his left arm or a scar in its place. His younger adversary had countered this by arguing that statistics dictated that at least some among the huge total of SS men were likely to have avoided the tattoo. Twenty minutes into the cross-examination, however, Blomberg was still far from achieving his goal.

“Now let us put to one side for the moment your true identity. You had every reason to murder Howard Plant, didn’t you, Mr Sonntag? After all, the man was going to dispense with your services and owed you a lot of money in commission. You don’t pretend that Hans Schreiber would have had any reason to kill Plant, do you?”

Sonntag looked squarely at the prosecuting counsel. “The man who murdered Howard Plant hated all Jews, rich or poor, and was determined to wipe them out.”

“But why particularly Plant?”

“You said yourself it wasn’t just Plant. Why should I kill a taxi driver?”

“Because you yourself said that the man who murdered them was a Jew-hater, and we maintain that that man is Hans Schreiber. We maintain that you are Hans Schreiber.”

“That’s a lie,” Sonntag hissed.

Blomberg changed tack. “I refer back to the police evidence and the notes left by the murderer. Tell me, Mr Sonntag, does ‘C-street 33’ mean anything to you?”