Part 30 (1/2)

'Have there been incidents in the past?'

Only after he spoke did he realize the absurdity of what he had said. Adding 'apart from the Holocaust' wasn't really an option. Isha guessed his thoughts. He saw her smile.

'You mean recently?' she said. 'You mean here?'

'Yes.'

'Not so much. Someone once sprayed a swastika on the wall, but that was years ago, and we would sometimes find literature in the mailbox vile letters and pamphlets. But the men and women who do that, they are cowards. They can't even find the courage to face an old woman during the day. They sneak by at night to spread their hatred.'

'The man who killed your daughter was a professional,' said Parker. 'I don't think he was the kind to paint swastikas on walls, then run away.'

'I know this. The detective told me.'

'Detective Walsh?'

'Yes.'

'He's a good man.'

'He said the same thing about you.'

'Did he have to grit his teeth first?'

'Na, na!' Isha Winter looked appalled at the thought. She slapped his hand gently, scolding him. 'He meant it.'

'Did he also tell you that a connection might exist between your daughter's murder and your time in the camp at Lubsko?'

'He said this, but I could think of nothing.'

'What about the man the Justice Department is investigating Kraus?'

'But I looked at the photograph, and it was not who they said it was. They wanted me to say that it was Reynard Kraus, but it was not!'

He let it go. Perhaps he was coming at this from the wrong angle. Could Ruth Winter have discovered something, independent of her mother's past that had then brought her into contact with Bruno Perlman? It seemed unlikely.

He asked her about Perlman, and she described again her only encounter with him, at that same kitchen table. From what she told Parker, Perlman was fascinated even obsessed by Lubsko, and by the hunt for the last surviving n.a.z.i war criminals hiding in the United States.

'He told me,' she said, 'that he had helped to find n.a.z.is in the past. He said that he had provided information to the government.'

Parker didn't know if that was true. He suspected it wasn't. Epstein had said nothing about it, and neither had Walsh.

'He showed me the tattoos on his arm,' said Isha.

'The Auschwitz numbers?'

'Yes, the numbers.' She shook her head. 'I don't think he understood why I found it such an odd thing to have done. He knew so little of his people, only their names. He did not do it for the purpose of commemoration. I think he was looking for something to be angry about. I think' she tapped a forefinger to her right temple 'in his mind, he had almost convinced himself that he was there with them, at Auschwitz and Lubsko.'

'Did he meet your daughter while he was here?'

'Yes, but just for a short time.'

'Your daughter and granddaughter used to live with you, didn't they?' he asked.

'For many years, yes. My husband owned all of this land.' She gestured through the walls at unseen fields. 'He built a guest cottage so that friends could come and stay with us, and enjoy the sea, but not many ever did. We rented it out, but after he died it seemed like so much trouble. I just left it empty, but then Ruth came back here with Amanda, and it was a good place for them to live.'

'And Amanda's father?'

'He was not her husband,' said Isha, answering another question entirely, but one that was apparently important to her. 'They were not married.'

'What did he do?'

She leaned forward, and lowered her voice.

'He beat her.'

'I meant for a living.'

'Oh, he worked in a garage,' she said, putting all of the contempt she could muster into the last word. 'But really, he was a criminal. Ruth told me. Stolen cars, drugs. He was a Kriecher. You understand Kriecher? A lowlife. She almost lost the baby once, he hit her so hard. When he died, it was a blessing.'

'As I understand it, he didn't just die: he was murdered.'

'The police said it was over drugs. He was shot.'

Her tone suggested that it was the least he deserved.

'And so Ruth came to live with you?'

'Not immediately. But it was hard for her with the baby, and money was a problem. Why would she live in a dirty apartment when she could use the house here? It was just common sense.'

'And why did she then move to Boreas?'

Isha began wringing her hands again.

'Because I am a nosy, demanding old woman. Because even in separate houses, there was not enough s.p.a.ce for us. I think she felt that I was always looking over her shoulder, always criticizing.'

'And were you?'

The tears came again.

'I think that I was. And now she is gone.'

They spoke for a short time longer. Isha Winter talked to him of Lubsko, of her first sight of it with her parents 'the little houses, the gardens there were even bathtubs!' They arrived with four other families, each of them unable to believe quite what they were seeing. Within days, pressure was being placed upon them: discreet at first, then more insistent. Lubsko was not free. A life there had to be paid for.

'My father did not trust them,' said Isha. 'But he paid up, like the rest. He was an art dealer in Aachen before the war, and he had hidden paintings in two vaults in Duren, the old cemetery. One of them was a Bellini Madonna; another was a nude by Rubens. These are only the ones that I can remember. The other families, they offered money, jewelry, and diamonds, whatever they had put away in the hope that they might be able to come back for them after the war.

'I know now that most families lasted a month, but we were given only two weeks. Before us, the n.a.z.is had taken their time in the hope that more hidden treasures might be revealed to them, or so they could convince men with secret wealth to name others with the promise that they, too, could be brought to Lubsko. But it was 1945, and they knew that the end was coming. Lubsko was to be closed, so they were in a hurry to bleed us dry and be gone. They held on just too long, though, because they were greedy, and by then die Russen were almost at the gates.'