Tayte turned his attention back to the search results in front of him. He scrolled through the list, and a few pages on he followed an entry that matched Ava Bauer’s name to the Billion Graves website, which had proved useful to him many times in the past as it often listed other family members who were buried together in the same plot. It made sense to Tayte that he might find reference to a child born to Johann Langner and Ava Bauer on such a website, but the date of birth shown against this particular Ava Bauer meant that she would have been too young for marriage during the Second World War.
He followed the further results at the bottom of the entry, clicking on a link to the Genealogy Bank, but that only led him to a newspaper archive containing a birth announcement in 1987, which was too late. There was another link to a service called People Finders. It was a US based service, but as Tayte couldn’t rule out that Ava Bauer hadn’t wound up living in America after the war, he thought it worth a look. There were a few listings, although the current ages of the women he was looking at were all too young, mostly in their sixties. If Ava Bauer was still alive, Tayte knew she would be a little older than Johann Langner.
Thirty minutes passed while Tayte followed links to one dead end after another, and Jean’s silence told him she was having about as much luck as he was. He stood up, collected his laptop, and sat up on the bed beside her.
‘No luck?’ he asked her.
Jean shook her head. ‘Nothing. If Ava Bauer lived long enough to meet the social media revolution, I expect she’d have been too old by then to care about it.’
If she lived long enough . . . Tayte thought, his mind wandering back to the art gallery and the conversation with Rudi Langner. Clearly something had prevented Johann and Ava from being together after the war, something Johann didn’t like to talk about. Tayte wished he knew what it was, but as he didn’t, he decided to keep an open mind for now. All he did know was that Johann and Ava seemed to have fallen very much in love.
Chapter Twenty
Munich. August 1942.
Having arrived home for a short period of leave the previous evening, and having spent almost every waking hour since in the close company of Ava’s parents, with whom Johann was staying, he and Ava were alone together at last. They were balancing awkwardly on Ava’s bicycle, running an errand for her father, Gerhard, who had been forced to sell his motorcar in order to provide for the family’s essential needs. His Beckstein grand piano, the one thing that Gerhard obstinately refused to part with because he believed it would help get the family back on its feet again after the war, had a broken hammer shank that could not satisfactorily be repaired. He had managed to locate a spare that belonged to the family of a former pupil who lived on the other side of Munich, and Johann, tired as he was from battle and an inherent lack of sleep, had readily agreed to go and fetch it, glad of any excuse to be alone with Ava.
It was late in the hot afternoon and Ava was giggling in his ear. ‘Slow down!’
Johann was freewheeling the bicycle down a hill, Ava on the seat behind him as he stood on the pedals. He didn’t want to slow down. The faster he went, the tighter Ava held him, and he wanted that feeling to last. They were on the outskirts of Munich, travelling along a lane that ran parallel to a farmer’s field, which was tellingly devoid of the wheat Johann imagined would ordinarily be coming into harvest. They reached the bottom of the hill with the summer wind rushing at their smiling faces, and that simple pleasure made Johann so happy that he wished the war was over so he and Ava could stay like this forever.
‘Hold on!’ Johann called, squeezing the brake levers as he turned off the lane, still carrying enough speed to solicit an excited squeal from Ava.
There was an opening into the field and Johann took it, sure that they had plenty of time to spare before Ava’s parents would begin to worry about them. A sunlit patch of bleached grass to the side of the field drew Johann towards it and the bicycle bounced over the rough, baked earth, which was so hard he could feel Ava bouncing in the saddle. Just before they reached the grass the wheels caught in a rut and Johann lost control of the steering. They were carrying little speed by now, which was just as well as they were thrown off onto the grass. They were both laughing as they rolled together, Ava landing on top of Johann who had momentarily had the wind knocked out of him. The bicycle clattered to the ground a few feet away.
Johann sat up with Ava still in his arms. ‘I thought we could stop here and rest a while,’ he said with a grin, as though tumbling off the bicycle was all part of the plan.
Ava laughed at him as she straightened her hair. ‘If I’d known we were coming out for a picnic, I’d have brought some Schnaps.’
‘I didn’t think you had any Schnaps.’
‘Papa has a bottle. Volker gave it to him the last time he called.’
‘Volker’s a good friend. He’s been looking after you, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes. He brings Mama food every now and then, and Papa says he gave him a very fair price for his motorcar. I think they’ve both grown rather fond of him.’
‘He can be very charming.’
‘Yes, he can.’