Hitler's Angel Read online

  Inside, the mortuary smelled of decaying flowers. Father Pant bypassed the public rooms and took Fritz through a dark, unlit hallway. The air was cool here as well, as if someone had left the heat off, and the smell changed from dying flowers to the tang of formaldehyde. The smells seemed exaggerated, the silence heavy, and Fritz attributed his over reaction to his lack of sleep.

  Finally, Father Pant led him to double doors made of cheap stained brown wood. The brown had faded near the knobs where pressure of hands had rubbed the stain away. After Father Pant pushed the doors open, he reached for the light switch to the right.

  Immediately a string of uncovered electric bulbs lit, banishing the dark. Fritz understood why Father Pant went for the light first. The room was the size of three normal rooms, with lockers standing against the far wall. There was a basin sink near the lockers, and counters ran along the remaining walls. Wooden tables filled the rest of the room, all stained dark, but even the colour could not hide the black blotches that irregularly marked each surface.

  The body of an elderly woman, covered with a pale blue cloth, lay on a table closest to the lockers. Her silver hair draped across the side of the table, and the uneven ends brushed against the floor. Her eyes were open and sunken into her face, her mouth a silent ‘O’ of pain. Even the odour of formaldehyde could not hide the stench of rot.

  Father Pant said nothing. Obviously he had been in the room before. He pointed to an unpainted wooden coffin beside one of the counters.

  ‘That should be Geli,’ he said.

  ‘Have you seen her recently?’ Fritz asked. ‘Would you be able to recognise her?’

  Father Pant nodded, but didn’t move toward the coffin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Fritz said.

  Father Pant shook his head and sighed. ‘Sometimes I think God has cursed me, asking me to do his work during the last twenty years. The things I have seen…’ His voice trailed away. Then he turned to Fritz, eyes dark with sorrow. ‘Geli Raubal was an energetic girl, lighthearted, given to easy laughter. I cannot picture her dying by her own hand. I cannot picture her dying.’

  The priest’s words echoed in the large room. Fritz hadn’t realised until then how much the other man’s voice carried.

  Fritz walked over to the coffin. It was cheap, obviously hastily put together for transport. The men who had taken the body had not had a coffin with them – or had they? Frau Winter had been unable to answer his question about the way the men transported the body. He should have asked Frau Reichert, but he hadn’t thought of it. He would ask her, or the others, when he returned. He couldn’t imagine even the most grief-stricken being willing to put a blood-soaked corpse flat across the back seat.

  Someone had taped a piece of paper to the top of the coffin. It read ‘Angela Marie Raubal’, and had the address of the Central Cemetery in Vienna. Across the top was a stamp, marking the transportation paid. He took a photograph of the coffin’s lid, then set the camera on the counter next to a pile of tools.

  Fritz grabbed a hammer from the pile and prised the lid off the coffin. It took him a moment – the coffin had been sealed with a number of nails. Father Pant came up beside him and watched. The squeals of the wood and metal were the only sounds in the room.

  The odour seeping from the coffin made Fritz’s eyes water. Father Pant crouched beside him and helped him pull the lid off. The smell was overwhelming. Fritz put a hand over his nose and mouth, but too late. The stench had already coated his tongue and the back of his throat. He wouldn’t have expected this kind of odour on someone who had been dead a little less than 24 hours.

  ‘Merciful God,’ Father Pant said. He was staring into the coffin.

  Fritz stared as well. Geli had been a tall woman. She filled the coffin. Her blue nightgown had been pulled down over her thighs. A small round hole surrounded by powder burns was beneath her left breast. Fritz had expected that much.

  He had not expected her face.

  The area around her open eyes and her nose was black and blue. Her nose was flat, the skin swollen but not, it appeared, from the after effects of death. A bit of blood had dried beneath her nostrils. Her lips were cut, and she had another bruise beneath her left ear.

  He had seen a woman he loved look like that.

  He had touched her.

  Gisela.

  He closed his eyes for a brief moment, struggling for control. He had to think of the present, not the past. He had become a detective to blot the past from his mind.

  He opened his eyes.

  Zehrt had said that she had lividity in the back. The blood had settled. These wounds happened before she died.

  Her hands were at her sides. Fritz leaned over the coffin. Three nails on her left hand had been broken, and had not been filed, even though the remaining two were perfect ovals. Her right hand hung at an unnatural angle from the wrist. Her bare legs were covered with yellow bruises above the knees, older bruises that had occurred days before her death.

  ‘Merciful God,’ Father Pant said again. ‘The poor child.’

  The poor woman. For Geli was a woman full grown, with a slender body and long well defined legs. Fritz could not tell if she had been beautiful. The damage was too severe for that.

  ‘Father,’ he said softly. ‘I would like to check the rest of her body for injury.’

  ‘I think that would be wise, my son.’

  The familiar form of address surprised Fritz. Father Pant had been careful to call him ‘Detective Inspector’ before. They had gone from antagonists to conspirators in solving a woman’s murder.

  Fritz pushed up the nightgown, made of a soft satin, in a bizarre imitation of foreplay. Her skin beneath the satin was cold and rigid. His own action disgusted him. He was used to watching Dr Zehrt work on the corpses. He had never done so himself.

  The bruises ran up Geli’s legs and disappeared into her small black pubic thatch. Her waist was cross-hatched with red welts and a few scars. Her breasts and upper body were untouched.

  ‘The doctor did not examine her,’ Father Pant said.

  ‘I think he had no choice but to sign that document,’ Fritz said. He stood, and took the camera off the countertop. Father Pant said nothing, watching silently, his expression softer than it had been near the church. Fritz took as many photographs as he could, some of Geli’s face, others focusing on her torso, still others on her legs. The flashes left red and green spots in front of his eyes. When he was finished, he set the camera back on the counter, then bent over and eased the nightgown back down, attempting to give Geli what dignity he could.

  He had learned compassion since Gisela’s death.

  He shook his head. It was Geli before him. Geli, not Gisela.

  Gisela had been dead for years.

  He turned Geli slightly and examined her back. The nightgown was black with blood, her limbs discoloured as the remaining blood settled, just like Zehrt had said.

  The exit wound was as large as his fist.

  But there was no gun. Not beside her body, not beneath it, and not in her hand.

  He eased her down. There was no need to photograph her back. The evidence he needed was on her face and her legs.

  He had just grabbed the coffin’s lid when Father Pant touched his shoulder.

  ‘What’s that?’ Father Pant asked. He crouched beside Fritz and pointed to the material near Geli’s right breast. There, stuck into the satin, was a small, yellow feather.

  ‘One of the servants said she had a canary,’ Fritz said.

  Father Pant nodded, and without saying a word, the men replaced the coffin lid. Fritz also pounded the nails back in place. No sense in alarming the mortician or the unknown persons (if any) who had accompanied the body.

  ‘All morning I have worried about how to place her in consecrated ground,’ Father Pant said. He looked at Fritz, his face grey in the odd light. ‘I shall have no trouble doing so now.’ He ran a hand on the coffin. ‘Most merciful God.’

  ‘God has never been merci
ful,’ Fritz said. ‘And He never will be.’

  THIRTEEN

  F ritz smokes an entire pack of cigarettes before the girl arrives. He stands in the window and watches morning come to Munich, the first pedestrians on the sidewalks, the first cars speeding through the darkened streets. As the light comes, so does the laughter and loud conversation, faint but reassuring through the thick panes of his windows.

  He slept only three hours, and during those hours he dreamed of Geli. Not the Geli who has haunted him for years, but the Geli he knew, the dead woman whom he touched ever so lightly so many years ago. He knows he cannot speak of this properly, of the elongated feel to the event, as if each minute lasted a day, nor can he describe the physical reality of the smell. It had been another presence in that room, a living reminder of the reality of death.

  Father Pant had provided the only comfort, the only warmth, and that too Fritz cannot relay. How does he tell a girl he does not know about the faith he lost before the war? How does he explain that for a brief moment, Father Pant’s compassion revived that faith? The priest’s shock, horror, and concern revived similar emotions in Fritz, emotions he thought long dead, buried with his son, but dying since the war. He cannot explain how he needed to remind himself of God’s essential lack of caring, how often and how well God had shown his complete lack of mercy.

  How Father Pant would have looked at him, at Fritz, if he had known, truly known, what sort of man Fritz was.

  Fritz does not know how to explain the depth of his sudden feelings, the profound change Geli’s corpse and the priest’s humanity evoked in him. He has tried to find words for that experience since he awoke, but they are inadequate.

  All of the horrible events of his life crystallised in that one moment and pointed the way to the future, to the gas chambers and death squads, the casual murders and the upcoming war itself. The atrocities, which some now saw as isolated, were part of a fabric, a thread, woven long before Hitler was born, long before any of them were born, and honed to a fineness in the years after the First World War.

  Somewhere, somehow, the people around him took on a meanness, a lack of caring, a casual evil. And he had become so inured to it that it took a face like Geli Raubal’s, a reaction like the priest’s, to remind him that the world was meant to be different.

  And yet it is not, even now. He stands at his window and hears the sound of construction not too far away. The Olympic Games, symbol of hope, an attempt to cover over that casual evil. But the evil will appear somewhere during the event He knows that. He does not know how. And if he were still a detective inspector, he would go to his chief and remind him that nothing is easy in this land. That an entire people do not unlearn hatred in less than a generation. That such hatred breeds extremism, not just in the Germans, but in everyone who contacts them.

  Even the girl. Every time Fritz mentions Hitler, she shies back, as if she expects the man’s ghost to appear in the room. ‘I do not believe in studying the deeds of evil men,’ she has said, as if she had a choice, as if they all had a choice, as if closing one’s eyes made all the evil go away.

  Closing one’s eyes only makes the evil thrive.

  That is what he needs to tell her. Because in Geli Raubal’s face he saw a reflection, a reflection of all he had closed his eyes to, a reflection of all he has tried to forget.

  When the girl, Annie, does arrive, she brings pastries from the bakery he has pointed her to. They look fresh but he does not eat, wanting instead to speak of his dream, of his memory. He waits until she finishes, until her coffee is gone, and her tape recorder is in its place. Then slowly, carefully, he speaks the words he has rehearsed, watching her face as he does.

  Her eyes are wide, her cheeks flushed. As he describes the extent of the wounds, the edges of her mouth tighten. She is not an investigator. In her life, she probably has seen few corpses. She probably has seen only photographs of murder victims.

  He does not describe the smell.

  When he is finished, she says, ‘Why have I never heard of this case?’

  Her voice shakes. Even though he has glossed over the details and has not spoken of his own change, he seems to have conveyed it. She is clearly moved. If she was not involved before, she is now.

  ‘You have not heard of it,’ he says, ‘because you were not meant to.’

  FOURTEEN

  The hotel room that Fritz rented was tiny and damp. The radiator clinked as steam moved through it. The sheets on the bed were clean but the blanket was thin and full of cigarette burns. He took a short nap, and he was so exhausted that he did not dream. When the alarm clock awakened him, the sun was setting over the spires of the city.

  Before going to dinner he returned to the church. Father Pant’s car was parked at the rear. The windows overlooking the lot left squares of light on the gravel. The back door was unlocked, and Fritz went inside.

  The church smelled of dust and candlewax. He had entered through a large kitchen. The white sinks and stove showed some recent money in the parish. Dishes still dried on the counter from the afternoon. In the distance, he heard voices, one of them a woman’s.

  He followed the voices through a dark hallway, finally finding another square of light spilling on the red carpet. The voices were louder now. He recognised Father Pant’s, speaking softly. Then Fritz stepped into the light and rapped on the open door.

  They were sitting in a study, Father Pant on a large red upholstered chair, the woman on a couch. Theology books lined the walls, and behind Father Pant, a neat mahogany desk gleamed. Father Pant held a pipe and was twisting it round and round in his hands.

  The woman was small. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head in a fashion years out of date. She wore a black dress with a single gold brooch. Her waist was surprisingly narrow for a middle-aged woman. Her short legs were tucked under her long skirt. Only the tips of her sturdy black shoes peeked out. Even though Fritz had never seen her before, he knew who she was.

  Angela Raubal. Geli’s mother.

  If Geli had lived, she would have looked like this one day, a face of faded prettiness and quiet strength. Frau Raubal looked up at Fritz. Father Pant stood, said nothing about Fritz’s unexpected arrival, and made the introductions. When he was done, Frau Raubal turned an unexpectedly intense gaze on Fritz.

  ‘You’re the man who says my daughter was murdered.’

  Fritz stiffened, unwilling to look at Father Pant. Fritz had wanted to break the news to her, had wanted to see the look in her eyes the moment she knew. He wanted to know if she had faced the news with expectation, sorrow, or surprise. He stepped into the room, and uninvited, sat on the wooden chair beside her.

  ‘I do not say, Frau Raubal.’ He spoke softly, like Father Pant did, wanting to draw her into their conspiracy of knowledge instead of alienate her from it. ‘I know. You would as well if you saw Geli.’

  Frau Raubal glanced down at her hands. They were coarse, callused hands, the hands of a woman who had worked all her life. ‘The Minister of Justice says Geli committed suicide.’

  ‘The Minister of Justice has not seen her. He would have made a different ruling if he had seen the body.’

  ‘Seen! Seen!’ Frau Raubal glanced up, and her blue eyes caught him again, reminded him of someone he could not name. ‘What is so important about seeing her? What happened to my little girl?’

  Father Pant was watching him, hands carefully folded in his lap. Fritz was startled to realise the priest was wearing his robes. He apparently needed all the strength of his office to speak to this woman about her daughter’s death.

  Fritz took a deep breath. The woman was on an edge, and he needed her. He needed her to believe him to give his investigation strength. ‘Forgive me, Frau Raubal, for being so blunt, but someone beat Geli before she died.’

  Frau Raubal’s face went white. The power in her gaze faded, and she seemed to retreat into herself. ‘Beat her?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. The bruises she had could not have happened after
death.’

  ‘But they said she shot herself. Maybe when she fell –?’

  ‘No.’ Fritz kept his voice gentle. ‘Bruises look different before death. And the body does not bleed afterward. Someone broke her nose, Frau Raubal, so close to her death that Geli did not have time to wipe the blood off her upper lip.’

  Frau Raubal clasped her hands in her own lap. Her expression did not change, but her eyes took on a faraway look. Father Pant glanced at Fritz, as if surprised by Frau Raubal’s reaction.

  ‘Do you know what Geli did to provoke this?’ Frau Raubal asked.

  A chill ran down Fritz’s back. He had not expected that question. It was not one he would have asked if it had been his child in that coffin at the cemetery.

  Not now, anyway.

  Perhaps a few years before.

  Now he knew that people did not provoke beatings like that. Beatings like the one Geli Raubal suffered came from extreme rage. ‘We don’t know if she did anything. We don’t know what happened. We were wondering if, perhaps, you knew.’

  Frau Raubal bit her upper lip so hard that Fritz could see the pressure in her jaw. With a very small movement, she shook her head.

  ‘Angela,’ Father Pant said, ‘we would like to help Geli.’

  ‘There is no help for Geli,’ Frau Raubal said. Her teeth had left marks in her lip. ‘It was my mistake.’

  ‘What was?’ Fritz asked.

  ‘Sending her so far away. To Munich. She was not ready to go.’ Frau Raubal was staring slightly to the left of Father Pant, as if she were seeing something other than the warm, well-lit study.

  ‘She was a woman full grown, Angela,’ Father Pant said.

  ‘She was a girl. She was always a girl. She was so young. I should have listened –.’ Frau Raubal put a hand over her mouth, and shook her head again, her gaze never wavering from the spot past Father Pant.

  ‘Should have listened?’ Father Pant prompted. He was good. Fritz was grateful to be beside him.

  ‘When she complained. She wanted to come home to Vienna.’