Tayte still had his hand pressed over the area that was bleeding. ‘It hurts like hell, but I don’t think it’s too serious,’ he said. ‘I don’t imagine I’d be standing here if it was.’
He saw Ingrid Keller again then. She was in handcuffs, as dour faced as ever as she was helped into the back of a police car. And good riddance, Tayte thought.
‘How’s that hand?’ he asked Jean with a smirk.
‘I think it’s a little bruised, but it was worth it.’
‘I’ll bet. You’re pretty tough for your size, aren’t you?’
‘You did call me a tough biker chick once, remember?’ Jean jabbed her fist at the air and Tayte laughed until his wound forced him to stop.
He turned back to Tobias and pointed over to Rudi, who was surrounded by police officers as he lowered Volker Strobel into their custody.
‘Tobias, do me a favour, will you? Don’t let that old man out of your sight.’
Kaufmann scoffed. ‘You have my word on that, Mr Tayte. I’ll see he gets to trial. I don’t care how old he is. The Demon of Dachau will face the families of his victims and justice will be done at last.’
Two ambulances arrived and Jean helped Tayte towards them.
‘I also found out about my parents tonight,’ Tayte said, finding it hard to think about anything else.
‘What did you find?’
‘Strobel told me he killed them.’
Jean’s shoulders slumped. She squeezed his hand, her eyes doleful and sympathetic. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Yeah.’
Tayte was still somewhat shell-shocked by what he’d heard in that basement room, and yet he had to remind himself that he’d seen no hard proof to back up anything Strobel had said. Maybe Tayte was in denial about it, but for now he figured all he had was Strobel’s account of events, and he supposed Strobel would have told him just about anything to make him pull that trigger. He liked to think that Strobel had invented at least a part of his story, but he knew that a simple DNA sibling test could prove whether he and Rudi were from the same mother and father, and that would back up Strobel’s story of how he came to adopt him. And there was the niggling question that had always haunted Tayte.
If my mother was alive, why didn’t she come back for me?
As Tayte and Jean were met by two of the ambulance crew, wheeling a stretcher towards them, Tayte drew a deep breath and moved the conversation on. He didn’t feel up to talking about it just now. Instead, he turned his thoughts to Rudi. He would give him a few days to get used to the revelation that his adoptive father was really Volker Strobel, but he was anxious to see him again. If Rudi would agree to take the DNA test and it proved positive, he figured they had a lot of catching up to do. And he wanted to tell him that, contrary to what he believed, his mother did want him. He thought about getting home, too, so he could start digging around in the archives again, knowing he now had everything he needed to start building his own family tree, and to proving, or disproving, the things Strobel had told him about his parents.
But all that would have to wait.
‘I guess we missed our flight,’ he said as he sat on the stretcher.
‘I guess we did,’ Jean replied. ‘Not that you’re in any fit state to go anywhere other than to the hospital.’
‘And I guess you’ve had a pretty busy afternoon,’ Tayte added, wincing as he was helped into a lying position by the medics. ‘Right now might not be the best time for explanations, though.’
‘No, perhaps not,’ Jean agreed. ‘Let’s talk about it in the morning. I’ll come to the hospital with you.’ She paused, smiling. ‘Someone’s got to make sure you don’t get into any more trouble.’
Tayte smiled back, but his smile quickly faded when he heard a chilling scream. He looked back at the burning building. There was a figure at one of the upper windows. It was difficult to make out who it was because of the bright flames that engulfed him, but Tayte knew it had to be Max Fleischer.
Having thought her father dead, in her haste to cremate him and kill everyone else in the room, Ingrid Keller had clearly not given a thought to Fleischer, who had still been in the building. Tayte watched him climb out of the window onto the ledge, and then, screaming, he jumped to his death.
Chapter Forty-Seven
It was just after ten the following morning, and having spent the night at the hospital, Jefferson Tayte was with Jean, strolling along the Renaissance Antiquarium at the Munich Residence. It was a lavish sixteenth-century hall of some sixty-six metres in length, with painted walls and ceilings, housing Duke Albrecht V’s collection of antique sculptures, from which the room took its name.