Where was he going with this?
‘Perhaps,’ he continued, ‘you could do me a favour?’
50
Rath gazed out of the window. You could see the Rhine from here, and the peaks of the Siebengebirge mountains. Was that the Drachenfels? The so-called Dragon’s Rock? Now the name of the road made sense. Eva Heinen, the widow Engel, lived in the Gronau district of Bonn, in a splendid villa on Drachenfelsstrasse, not far from the banks of the Rhine, but, according to the man-servant who opened the door, was currently indisposed.
‘I don’t know that the mistress can receive you. She’s very busy.’
‘I think she’ll make time. I’d hate to ask the mistress to accompany me to the police station.’
Rath’s words worked like a charm, and soon the man was leading him up to the first floor, to a kind of drawing room, where he was asked to wait. He had been standing here ever since, smoking and gazing into the dawn. Towards the north the view was hampered by a modern building covered in scaffolding, but the Rhine panorama directly in front of the Heinen residence remained unspoiled.
He turned from the window and ambled across the room to a photograph of a man in captain’s uniform, by his side an attractive, serious-looking woman; in front of them two children, a small curly-haired girl, and a boy of perhaps twelve who looked just as serious as his mother despite standing in front of a Christmas tree. Like many Jewish families, the Engels seemed to have celebrated Hanukkah like Christmas. Was this the last time they’d marked it as a family? Benjamin Engel had been missing since March 1917.
December 1916 was also when the war diaries came to an end. Seeing them on the shelf Rath began leafing through them. Benjamin Engel’s estate: less stories of combat than everyday routine, and written in such a way as to be suitable for female readers, devoid of obscenity and the cruelties of war. A sanitised account for the family.
The door opened after he’d finished his second cigarette, and the servant announced that the mistress would be with him presently. He just had time to return the notebooks to the shelf before she appeared.
He recognised her from the photograph; a slender, dark-haired woman in her mid-forties whose natural elegance made him gasp. He almost kissed her hand, settling in the end for a simple ‘Good morning.’
Eva Heinen led him to a suite by the window and invited him to take a seat.
‘Jakobus, would you make some tea,’ she said, and the servant disappeared. ‘I was told you’d be here, Inspector – only, I’m afraid I must have misunderstood your colleagues from Bonn. It concerns my dead husband?’
‘That’s right, yes.’ Rath cleared his throat. He felt as if he had been blindsided. He’d hoped to begin on a more innocuous subject. ‘It’s… Frau Heinen, is it possible that your husband survived the war?’
‘What sort of question is that? Are you trying to mock me?’
‘Absolutely not. It’s just… We believe it’s possible that he wasn’t killed in action, and…’
‘Don’t you think I’d know about it? That Benjamin would have contacted me? His wife, his children?’
‘You have children with him?’ Rath asked, knowing that she did.
‘Two. Walther is studying in Berlin, Edith lives here with me. She’s just turned nineteen.’
‘Then your daughter was nine when you had your husband declared dead. It was ten years ago, am I right?’
‘Nine.’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Why did I do what?’
‘Rob your children of a father.’
‘That was the war, not me.’
‘You had him declared dead without needing to.’
‘Why do you think I did it?’
‘You tell me.’
‘For seven years I clung to the hope that he might have survived. Can you imagine what that felt like?’
Rath could imagine it all too well. His brother Anno had fallen in the first year of war; his mother had only accepted his death once she had seen her eldest son’s corpse.
‘What about your children? How did they take it?’
‘At some point you have to deal with the fact that reality doesn’t always care about your wishes. That’s why I had Benjamin declared dead. Because I couldn’t spend the rest of my life waiting for a ghost, and I couldn’t expect my children to either.’
Rath was glad to see the maid appear with the tea and an opportunity to change tack. He waited until she had filled their cups and taken her leave.
‘I’d like to get a picture of your husband. How would you characterise him?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Was he a quiet sort? Or more temperamental? Choleric, even?’
‘He was a quiet, gentle man. A little distant, perhaps. Some people thought he was arrogant as a result.’
‘Could he be cold-blooded?’
‘I don’t know what he was like in the war. I imagine he would have been as cold-blooded as any captain in the reserves.’
‘I mean in the sense of unscrupulous. Merciless.’
‘Inspector, I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Why don’t you just tell me what this is about, so I can answer your questions.’
Rath sighed and told her about Achim von Roddeck’s war memoirs and what had been happening in Berlin. Eva Heinen listened without interrupting.
‘He shot three people? You don’t seriously believe that? This author of yours must be delirious.’
‘It’s the first you’ve heard of it?’ She nodded. ‘Soon the story will be available to read in the paper, and that, according to Roddeck, is why these people, these witnesses, are being murdered. Because your husband is alive, and means to hinder publication at any cost.’ Eva Heinen shook her head indignantly. ‘I realise it’s hard for you to conceive of your husband as a murderer, but believe me, if there’s one thing I have learned in all my years as a homicide detective, it is this: anyone can kill. In war, it goes without saying.’
‘This whole story… it can’t be true. Why, in all these years, has no one filed charges against him?’
‘Because the witnesses felt guilty on account of the theft, and when your husband died the following day, in their eyes justice was served.’
‘You believe he’s still alive, don’t you? So, what now?’
‘I believe in facts,’ Rath said. ‘But yes, there are former companions of your husband who believe it, two of whom have been murdered.’
‘Then catch their killer, but don’t chase a phantom. My husband is dead!’
‘I understand it’s hard for you to believe what I’m saying, but there are many clues which corroborate it.’
‘Such as?’
‘Did your husband own a trench dagger?’
‘I was never interested in that sort of thing. And he… he didn’t leave anything behind, no uniform, no weapons. Not even a body. We buried an empty coffin, down at the cemetery.’
‘The Jewish cemetery?’
‘No, why?’
‘Your husband was of the Mosaic faith…’
‘What makes you think that? Benjamin was baptised Roman Catholic before our wedding. My parents insisted on it, and he didn’t mind. He was never especially religious. Do you really think he could have become a reserve officer in the Prussian army as a Jew? It was only possible because he was baptised.’
‘He was still perceived as Jewish, and experienced difficulties because of it.’
‘Once a Jew, always a Jew… Perhaps people resented him for being allowed to serve as an officer.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘My husband wasn’t someone you could get close to.’ Eva Heinen sounded brusque. ‘And that had nothing to do with being Jewish.’