‘Thanks,’ Tayte said to both Jan and the young man who brought his sandwich in. He didn’t know how much it cost, so he gave him a ten Euro note and told him to keep the change, which he thought should amply cover the tip.
Tayte was just finishing his sandwich when Jan returned with the record he’d asked to see. She placed it in front of him as he swallowed his last mouthful and hurriedly wiped his fingers on the hem of his jacket. He could see it was only a copy of the original record, but all the same, he didn’t want to risk getting mayonnaise on it. He didn’t need Jan’s help this time to find what he was looking for. The father’s details were tellingly blank, which confirmed why Trudi Strobel had agreed to see him. To Tayte’s mind, she clearly didn’t want anyone to know that Johann Langner was Ingrid’s father, or most likely it was Langner who didn’t want anyone to know.
‘That’s exactly what I was expecting to see,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘No problem at all. That’s what I’m here for. On to the siblings then?’
They started with Volker Strobel as Strobel’s family were local to this particular civil registration office. Trudi Scheffler’s information, on the other hand, proved to be rather more time consuming as Jan had to call a contact at the Standesamt in Stuttgart, where Trudi’s family were from. Because of this it took a while to reach the conclusion between them that Volker Strobel had been an only child, and so had Trudi Scheffler.
Tayte had thought it worth looking to see if Volker Strobel in particular had any siblings. He thought that if Volker had fathered a child out of wedlock, there was a chance the child might have been brought up by someone else in the family, although he knew it was more likely that the child’s mother or someone in her family would have taken care of the baby. He’d come across such things before, and he knew from experience that children displaced in such a manner were never easy to find.
He began to think about that. It was usually the mother’s family who wound up caring for such children, perhaps to hide an indiscretion, or in this case for any number of reasons. It made him think about Ava Bauer—the girl caught in the middle of the friends’ affections. He knew Ava had married Johann Langner, but even if she’d had a child, that didn’t mean it had to be Langner’s.
‘Let’s move on,’ he said to Jan. ‘These other records are presumably about Johann Langner?’
‘Yes, they show he was born in Dresden and that he was married to Ava Bauer here in Munich, also during the Second World War, as with Volker Strobel and Trudi Scheffler.’
She slid the records she’d found on Langner across to Tayte, and looking at their record of marriage his eyes fell on Ava Bauer’s name. He tapped it. ‘I’d like to see what else we can find on Ava Bauer,’ he said, writing down her parents’ names, Gerhard Bauer and Adelina Bauer. He also noted down the witnesses as he had before: Heinz Schr?der and Lorenz Richter.
‘Do you want to look for siblings again? Aunts and uncles?’
‘Let’s look at everything. I’d particularly like to know whether she had any children, and whether there’s any further record of marriage for her.’ He paused as he wondered again whether she’d survived the war, and what had become of her if she had, reminding himself that she was no longer with Johann Langner.
‘And do you think that’s going to help you find this war criminal, is that it?’ Jan said. ‘If Ava knew him, she might have had a child with him no one knows about. And if you can find the child, you think that might lead you to Volker Strobel?’
‘Maybe,’ Tayte said, thinking that if Volker Strobel was his paternal grandfather then his research might well lead to him.
Jan pulled her glasses down over her eyes and started working the computer again, checking the indexes, Tayte supposed. He understood so little of what was appearing on the screen and he’d never felt so out of place in a record office before. He would have loved Jan to explain everything to him, but he thought it would take too long and he knew the best time for explanations was when he had the records he hoped she was locating in front of him. He was idly perusing the records Jan had already prepared for him when his phone rang, playing the overture to Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, which Jean had taken him to see in London’s West End recently. Her name flashed up on the screen.
‘Excuse me,’ he said to Jan as he stood up to take the call. He went to the corner of the room and pressed his phone to his ear. ‘Hi, how’re you feeling?’ he asked Jean, speaking softly. ‘I hope the tests went okay.’
‘I’m fine,’ Jean said. ‘I’ve been given the all clear so I don’t have to stay here overnight after all, but I do need to pop back in the morning for another check over before we fly home. Actually, I’m a bit bored.’ Tayte heard her laugh. ‘Can you come and get me out of here?’
‘Sure,’ Tayte said, thinking about the research and knowing it would have to wait. ‘I’ll get a cab right over. Maybe we can go and get a bite to eat and I’ll tell you all about my day.’