Jean got up with him. ‘We should report this to the police.’
‘Yes, and we will, but I don’t fancy spending the evening at the police station, and I still can’t see how there’s anything they can do beyond telling us to go home. I know it’s not going to be easy, but let’s try to forget about it for now and go find somewhere to eat. We’ll drop by and report it in the morning.’
Chapter Nineteen
They dined at the Spatenhaus an der Oper on Residenzstrasse. Having been denied taking lunch there by Max Fleischer the day before, Tayte had wanted to go there all the more to spite the man. He’d be damned if he was going to let Fleischer’s appearance outside the coffee shop deny them the pleasure of sampling the restaurant’s traditional Bavarian cuisine for a second time. Jean had wanted to forget about the research while they were there and just enjoy the meal—to pretend, for a few hours at least, that they were like any other sightseeing couple on a city break. Although Tayte managed to avoid talking about it, his mind was often elsewhere, going over everything they had heard that day.
He wondered again whether Karl was his father, and why he and his mother had gone to see Elijah Kaufmann about Volker Strobel in connection with finding Karl’s own father. Had a child come from Strobel’s marriage to Trudi Scheffler? And what about Johann Langner’s marriage to Ava Bauer? Another possibility for a child existed there. By the time Tayte and Jean arrived back in their hotel room, having had a quick nightcap in the hotel bar, Tayte was all the more eager to get his laptop out and continue digging into these lives that he felt more and more were connected to his own. It was just after eight in the evening, the orange glow at the window fading rapidly now as the sun began to set on Munich’s busy city streets.
‘That was a very pleasant evening,’ Jean said, kicking off her shoes. ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m sorry if I seemed a little distracted,’ Tayte said as he hung up his jacket.
Jean put her arms around him and gave him a squeeze. ‘I think you did very well.’
‘I just feel there’s so much at stake here. I want to stay focused in case I miss something.’
‘I know.’
Jean unzipped her dress as she continued into the room. She let it fall to her feet and slowly stepped out of it, catching Tayte’s eye as she stooped to pick it up.
‘That’s not helping.’
Jean laughed. ‘Don’t get your hopes up, big fella. We’ve got research to do, remember?’
‘Touché,’ Tayte said with a grin.
Jean swapped her contact lenses for glasses, and got herself cosy for the evening in her pyjamas and dressing gown while Tayte set up his laptop at the desk. He thought he’d look into Johann and Ava first, while the conversation with Rudi Langner was still fresh.
‘I don’t expect we’ll find much,’ he said as Jean sat beside him. He turned to her, drawing in her scent. ‘You smell great. Have I said that already?’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I remember thinking it. I don’t think I actually said it, did I?’
Jean shook her head.
‘Well you do,’ Tayte said. ‘You smell amazing.’
Jean gave him a wry smile and tapped his laptop. ‘Focus. Remember?’
‘Of course,’ Tayte said, turning back to the screen. ‘As I said, I don’t suppose we’ll find much without access to the records. I hope the Kaufmanns come good on that soon. We can run some general searches, but that’s about it. We know plenty about Johann Langner, but until this afternoon, we didn’t know that he married Ava Bauer during the war. Let’s see if we can find anything out about her.’
Tayte entered her name into the search field on his Internet browser. There were several hundred results, many of which were links to social media websites.
‘Do you want to check through those on your tablet?’ Tayte said. ‘I’ll see if any of the other references lead anywhere.’
Jean stood up with a yawn.
‘Sounds like someone’s ready for bed.’
‘It’s probably just the wine,’ Jean said as she sat up on the bed and woke up her tablet.