‘The second time Ava refused me,’ Volker repeated, louder now, ‘I had her placed into this ring of whores, to be abused by so many filthy, sexually deprived men, over and over again until their animal desires were satisfied.’
‘She was pregnant!’ Johann seethed. He had tears in his eyes, and his muscles were bound so tightly now that his whole body began to shake. He aimed his pistol again.
‘Yes, even while she was pregnant with your son,’ Volker said. ‘But then I’m sure that only added to the entertainment. Still, at least I got my ring back. It wasn’t really my grandmother’s, you know. I took it from an old Jewish woman who had no further need of it.’
When Volker punctuated his words with a satisfied grin, Johann could take no more. But instead of pulling the trigger, he hurled the gun at Volker.
‘Shooting you would be too easy!’ he said, and before the gun had clattered to the floor, he hit Volker hard in the face. He heard bone crack and he hit him again. He pulled Volker from the chair and threw him to the floor where he pinned him down with his knees and rained blow after blow down onto him until his face was a blood-red mask. Images flashed through Johann’s mind of the first time he had met Volker. He was back in that corridor at the Hitler Youth training academy. Back then it had been the bully, Günther, who had rained punches down on Volker’s face. Now it was Johann. Volker wanted Johann to kill him, and now Johann would do so gladly.
Volker offered no fight. Just as Günther had beaten him that day in the Hitler Youth, Johann now continued to beat him. He beat him until his arms felt too heavy to continue, and when at last he could not find the strength to throw another punch, he stopped. He looked down at the lifeless body beneath him, to the man he had just killed, and he could now barely recognise him as the friend he used to know. He rolled off Volker’s body, his hands dripping with blood, and he lay silent and still for several minutes, until gradually his rage subsided and his strength returned.
At length Johann got to his feet, weary and exhausted. His only thought was that he had to leave Dachau and return to his son, but as he reached the door he heard a cough behind him and he stopped. He wondered how Volker could still be alive, yet he knew as he turned to face him that he was. In his hand, Volker was holding Johann’s Luger.
‘I lied to you, Johann,’ Volker said, garbling his words as he wiped his own sticky blood from his jaw. ‘I would not have allowed Ava to be violated. I worshipped her, don’t you understand? I wanted you to shoot me for what I did to her, but you let me down, my friend.’
With that, Volker aimed the pistol at Johann’s head, pulled the trigger twice, and watched him slump to the floor.
Chapter Forty-Three
Present day.
At hearing what the old man in the wheelchair opposite him had just said, Jefferson Tayte felt the colour drain from his cheeks. He felt suddenly light-headed and nauseous, not least because he knew his life was in danger. He wanted to run for the door, but confusion and a degree of curiosity rooted him to the spot.
He swallowed hard and said, ‘You’re Volker Strobel?’
The old man nodded gravely. ‘Yes, I’m Strobel. I’m Der D?mon von Dachau. And so you see, the second terrible thing I had to do, as a result of being responsible for the death of Ava Bauer and her family, was to kill my best friend. Now, as I warned you, I’m afraid it’s too late for you to reject who you are.’
‘I’m Johann’s grandson,’ Tayte said, almost to himself, still shell-shocked by the revelation that this man sitting before him had killed the real Johann Langner and hidden behind his name all these years. It pained Tayte to think that his grandfather had as good as survived the war, only to be killed by his best friend.
‘So it would appear,’ Strobel said. ‘I know Johann’s son, Karl, also had a child. From what you’ve told me I imagine that was you. But now we come to the consequences of who you are.’
With that, Ingrid Keller, who had been standing behind Strobel’s wheelchair as he finished telling Tayte his story, produced a handgun and pointed it at Tayte. A moment later the door to the drawing room opened again and Max Fleischer entered, grinning from ear to ear. His gun was already drawn and now it too was trained on Tayte.
At seeing Fleischer, Tayte said to Strobel, ‘So The Friends of the Waffen-SS War Veterans have been protecting you?’
Strobel laughed. ‘The FWK don’t know who I am. Max here has dealings with them, but he works for me. I knew his grandfather during the war.’
‘Then the FWK had nothing to do with this?’
Strobel shook his head. ‘I sent Max after you and your friend as soon as you left the hospital when you first came to see me. I arranged your friend’s car accident, and prior to that I set you up for murder. We knew who the Kaufmann’s insider was. By having Max kill him we were doing the FWK a favour, not that we could ever tell anyone. But you just wouldn’t give up.’
‘I see,’ Tayte said.