‘Who are you afraid of? Heinrich Wosniak is dead.’
‘But not his lieutenant.’
‘You mean Roddeck.’ Thelen nodded. ‘Listen, I think he set the whole thing up, but don’t know why. I can’t prove anything either.’
‘He killed Wosniak, I’m certain of it. The man had served his purpose. Roddeck no longer needed him.’
‘Kill his faithful Heinrich?’
‘They weren’t quite as cordial as Roddeck’s novel makes out.’
Rath considered this. Perhaps that really was Roddeck’s plan, only Fritze had got in the way. They were passing the gasworks by the Landwehr canal. His old neck of the woods. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘Go ahead.’
He felt for his cigarette case and lit up. ‘Where are my manners? Can I offer you one?’
Thelen reached back. ‘Overstolz,’ he said. ‘A taste of home.’
‘You’re from Cologne?’
‘The Rhineland anyway. Like most of us back then.’
‘You returned after the war?’ Thelen nodded. ‘And worked as a driver for Engel Furniture?’
‘Only after Captain Engel asked me to.’
‘You were in contact with him the whole time?’
‘I thought he was dead until he got back in touch.’
‘How did he do that?’
‘By post. One morning there was a letter in my mailbox from a certain André Bonnechance, who addressed me as old friend and claimed his real name was Benjamin Engel. He had survived the boobytrap, and been dug out by English and French troops. I couldn’t believe it, but went to the address he provided, a lousy attic flat in Cologne, and saw the price he’d paid.’
Time and again Thelen paused to attend to his cigarette or the road ahead.
‘Go on,’ Rath said.
‘Fate would have shown greater mercy in allowing him to die. He had to wear a prosthetic mask. Half his face was missing: an eye, part of his lower jaw. He could barely speak, and wrote most things down.’
‘How did you know it was him?’
‘Half a face is all you need to recognise a man, and he knew things about me that only Captain Engel could know.’
‘Such as?’
‘I’d rather not discuss it, Inspector. War, more than anything else, teaches you about your fellow man.’
‘He had changed his name?’
‘Not him, the French.’
‘I’m surprised they didn’t beat him to death. A Bosch, buried and barely alive in a German trench.’
‘The whole thing’s a miracle.’ Thelen’s eyes fixed on his in the rearview mirror. ‘Captain Engel couldn’t remember a thing when he wakened from his death-like state. He didn’t know who or where he was. Everyone around him spoke French, so when his voice returned he spoke it too. Perhaps they thought he was a French spy caught behind German lines, but they patched him up, gave him a new name and put him in a home for veterans. He remained there until the war ended, and that was the day he remembered. The gun salutes, the fireworks, all that racket around the armistice… brought it all back. The explosion, and everything that went before.’
‘You remember you’re a German soldier, only to find yourself in a home for French veterans.’
‘That was nothing beside his longing for his wife and family.’
‘Yet he hid himself in a garrett?’
‘He didn’t want them, didn’t want anyone, to see him like that. Besides, his fate was already sealed.’
‘The shrapnel…’
‘The doctors in France gave him five years, but he lived almost ten. It was Eva who kept him alive, and it was for her sake that he didn’t make an end. Her and the children. He told me to apply for a driver’s job in the furniture store the first time we met. Sometimes I think it’s the only reason he got in touch with me.’
‘You were to keep an eye on his family?’
‘I visited him regularly to report back. He wanted to know every last detail. We would meet every Sunday.’
‘Did you reveal your identity to Eva or the children?’
‘Captain Engel didn’t want that under any circumstances, but things changed with inflation.’
‘Which is when he remembered the gold.’
‘What do you know about that?’
‘Whatever Achim von Roddeck writes in his memoirs.’
‘That’s only half the story, and it’s twisted at that, but you’re right. Engel knew where the gold was buried and briefed me on its location. It was the first I’d heard of it.’
‘This would be four or five years after the war? Why wait so long?’
‘Because it was no picnic. Even today the French are incredibly wary. All Germans require a visa, and you have to say where you are headed and why. Throw in a hoard of gold to be smuggled across the border, and you start to get a picture.’
‘But you had a plan.’
‘We needed to let his wife in on it first.’
‘You had to tell her he was alive…’
‘The captain still didn’t want her to see him, but they wrote almost every day.’
‘You were about to say how you got the gold back to Bonn.’
‘It was simple.’ Thelen’s eyes smiled in the rearview mirror. ‘We ordered furniture from a French factory near Cambrai and drove across the border in a big van. Captain Engel wasn’t certain we’d find the gold, but it was exactly where he’d described, albeit the forest was no more. The boulder was the only thing spared by war.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘I took Walther with me. He was only sixteen, but capable. It was quite a business, in the dead of night, but we managed. We stowed the bars behind the furniture. No one noticed a thing.’
Rath leaned back. So, Engel junior hadn’t told him the full story. ‘But these gold bars belonged to a French bank. They were embossed, weren’t they? How did you turn them into cash?’
‘Frau Engel has a banker friend who exchanged them into currency. Don’t ask me what he did with the bars. Probably had them melted, and stamped with his own seal. He’d be glad to top up his bank’s supplies.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Rath said. ‘Eva Heinen, Engel as she was, experiences this great miracle of her husband’s survival, but shortly after has him declared dead. Why?’
‘It’s how the captain wanted it. She was to bury Benjamin Engel along with his name.’
‘As well as rebrand the store.’
‘Bearing in mind what happened two weeks ago with the boycott, it was the correct decision. Knowing he was alive made it easier for her to declare him dead. The only thing she and the boy found hard was that they still couldn’t see him. No one knew his address. I took care of his errands and whatever else he needed.’
‘Then you had two jobs: van driver and orderly.’
Thelen’s eyes flashed in the rearview mirror. ‘It was friendship. It might be hard for someone like you to understand, but that’s how it was.’
‘So, why the hide-and-seek? Why the false name? Because he wanted to spare his wife the sight of a crippled veteran?’
‘No.’ Thelen shook his head. ‘Benjamin Engel was certain he’d survived an assassination attempt. The explosion was no accident.’
‘An unloved superior, murdered by his unit. Just like Grimberg said.’
‘Grimberg? The demolition expert? You spoke to him?’
‘Didn’t Frau Heinen mention it?’
‘I must say I’m surprised. It was Grimberg who detonated the charge.’
‘I thought he was with you when the trap went off? He could have been killed himself.’
‘He knew exactly where he was when it happened. Apart from the shock wave we were both unscathed.’
‘Why didn’t you report him at the time?’
‘Because I didn’t know! I believed what he told me. He was the expert. He even came with me to look for the captain. It was only when the artillery fire became heavier that we called it off. How was I to know he was behind it?’