‘Please come in,’ Therese Dubois told them, leading them through to a glassed-in, heated veranda, with wicker chairs and rubber plants in big ceramic pots. Stave had to stop himself staring – it had been years since he’d seen houseplants.
He explained why he was there, mentioning the other two murders also. Then he cleared his throat and took out the photo.
The teacher looked at it. Her face turned paler, but she studied it attentively. Then she shook her head. ‘I’ve never come across this poor creature. I’m quite sure of it. She’s not one of ours.’
Stave was silent for a few moments, drumming nervously with his fingers on the arm of the wicker chair, then realised what he was doing and folded his hands. ‘Do you think any of your children might have known her? Perhaps gone to school with her?’
‘You want to show this photo to the children?’
‘If it helps me to find whoever murdered this one, then yes.’
Therese Dubois leaned back in her chair and thought. ‘We currently have 30 children in the home,’ she said quietly. ‘Some of them are just two years old. They never leave here. Those of school age are taught here, not in German schools.’ The tone of her voice suggested those schools were prison camps.
‘At present we do have two children who are allowed to go out, to do errands, go on trips or just to play, although of course it’s been too cold for that of late. I’ll call them.’
‘And may I show them the photo?’
‘They’ve both seen more dead children than you have, Chief Inspector.’
She left the room and came back shortly with a girl and a boy, both of whom Stave guessed to be about 15.
Therese Dubois introduced them as Leonore and Jules. The pair stood shyly in the middle of the room.
Stave smiled, MacDonald nodded encouragingly, Maschke coughed and got to his feet.
‘I’d like to smoke if you don’t mind,’ he said.
Stave nodded and Maschke disappeared out into the park. Before long the bare oak trees were being treated to the smoke from an English cigarette. Stave had no problems with that: the fewer adults these children had to face, the better. And Maschke’s cynical comments were the last thing he needed right now.
He calmly explained to the children why he was here. Therese Dubois translated for the boy, whispering in French. The girl seemed to understand him.
Then Stave showed them the photo.
Leonore and Jules stared at it. There was pity written all over the girl’s face, clinical interest on the boy’s. But even before they said anything, the chief inspector knew what their answer would be.
‘I’ve never seen this girl,’ Leonore said, quite certain. Her accent was thick, from way out in the east, Stave guessed. Galicia maybe.3
‘Non, je n’ai jamais vu cette fille,’ Jules mumbled. Nobody needed a translation.
Stave put the photo back into his coat pocket, disappointed on the one hand that once again he had had no luck, relieved on the other that he no longer had to hold the photo beneath the children’s noses.
‘Has either of you ever been down to that part of the port, the Bille canal, to gather coal?’ Stave asked them.
‘Our children have no need to go looking for coal,’ Therese Dubois said under her breath, clearly shocked. Stave ignored her.
Leonore smiled uncertainly and, Stave thought, a bit enviously. ‘Never been there, it’s too far.’
The teacher sighed and translated the question into French, drumming in irritation with her fingers. Jules smiled the smile of a boy who’d been out of the home a lot more than the grown-ups knew. But he shook his head too.
Stave got to his feet. ‘That’s all, then,’ he said.
‘Will you find whoever did this?’ Leonore asked.
The chief inspector was taken aback for a moment. Then he saw the urgent look in the girl’s big, earnest eyes.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I will.’
‘What happens then?’
‘Then the murderer will go to court and be sentenced. There’s no getting away with things like that these days,’ and he indicated his coat pocket with the photo in it.
The girl reached out her hand and said, ‘Good luck.’
Therese Dubois smiled for the first time since they had arrived and led them back to the entrance,
‘What will happen to the children?’ Stave asked, his hand already on the door handle. MacDonald was behind him, and Maschke was striding up and down outside like a caged tiger, watched curiously by a group of boys and girls who had come out of the guest house and were standing under an oak.
‘When they’re healthy enough we’re going to organise transport to Palestine, to their new homeland. It’s easier to fix from here in the British-occupied zone of Germany than anywhere else, because the controls are more lax. One of the ironies of history?’
MacDonald looked as if he’d just choked on a peppercorn.
Stave remembered hearing somewhere that the British had occupied Palestine ever since the end of the First World War. He’d also heard about the fighting between Arabs and Jews and that the British were not allowing any more Jews from Europe to travel to the Middle East. But the Jews, those who’d survived the mass murder, wanted out and would do anything to smuggle themselves on board ships to Palestine. No wonder that the lieutenant looks so uncomfortable, he thought to himself with just a hint of Schadenfreude.
‘Should you come across anything, please let me know.’ He pulled a page from his notebook and gave her his name and telephone number.
‘It must be hard to get things back to normal,’ she said, folding the piece of paper carefully.
The chief inspector wasn’t sure if he’d quite understood her meaning and gave her an inquisitive look.
‘After so many catastrophes,’ she explained. ‘There’s so much to clean up – and I don’t just mean the rubble in the cities. And there aren’t many men like Herr Ehrlich and you.’
‘You know the public prosecutor?’
‘I was a witness in the Curio House trial.’
‘Ehrlich is in charge of this case too.’
‘As if he didn’t have enough on his hands. A man with a mission!’
She accompanied her guests to the jeep. Maschke joined them, smelling of smoke. As he climbed into the jeep Stave noticed that one of the girls standing under the tree was saying something to her companion, nodding at the vice squad man. Then she brought her hand up to her throat and made the quick slashing gesture of somebody cutting a throat.
She knows Maschke, Stave realised with a shock, and not as a friend.
Rather more awkwardly than necessary, he went to the jeep and took Therese Dubois discreetly to one side.
‘Who is that girl?’ he whispered, a fleeting gesture with his right hand indicating the little girl, not worrying whether or not the question would worry the teacher. He had only seconds before Maschke noticed.
She realised that it was important. Hardly moving her lips she whispered, ‘Anouk Magaldi, eight years old, arrived a few weeks ago.’
‘From a camp?’
‘No. She’d been living in France, near Limoges. Her parents, both Jews, were murdered there. We’re also bringing orphans like her to Hamburg because, as I said, it’s easier to organise transport to Palestine from here.’
‘Goodbye then,’ Stave said out loud. ‘Many thanks for all your help.’ And with that he climbed into the jeep.
On the way back Stave stared silently out of the window, uncertain as to whether he knew more than he had known this morning or not. The dead girl was clearly not from the home, and probably not a Jew from one of the camps. So did that mean she was from Hamburg, or a German refugee, or a DP? Which non-Jewish DPs were still living in Germany 19 months after the end of the war? Primarily Russians and Poles who were afraid of the communists and therefore didn’t want to go home. Should he send pictures of the bodies to the Polish and Russian police? How would you do that? And would the former enemies even be bothered about looking for people who preferred to hang about in the ruins of the Reich rather than return home?