‘You have a bicycle?”
‘No. I picked it up near Rosenheim, but I was forced to take a less direct route, off the main road, across the countryside. Both tyres punctured and I had to abandon it. I had to be careful to avoid the Gestapo and the SD, who I’m sure would have taken me in for questioning had they spotted me. My reconnaissance skills came in handy, I can tell you.’
Johann paused. The effort to talk had begun to make him feel dizzy, and he could still feel himself shivering, despite the dry blankets and the heat from the fireplace.
‘You’re sweating,’ Martha said. ‘I felt your head just now. You have a fever. You should lie down and rest.’
‘No,’ Johann said, thinking of Ava. ‘I’ll be okay in a moment.’ He closed his eyes and took a few slow breaths before he continued. ‘When I reached Munich I went straight to my wife’s parents’ house. It was boarded up as I expected it to be, but I had to see it for myself. Then I came here, hoping Ava’s uncle could help.’
‘And what will you do now? How will you find her?’
‘I must return to Munich. Perhaps a neighbour knows something, and there’s a friend I need to speak to.’ Johann started to get up. ‘Do you have a bicycle I could borrow?’
‘Yes, but your clothes . . . They will take hours to dry and you need to rest.’
‘No, I can’t,’ Johann insisted. He stood up and immediately began to sway. He put a hand on the back of the chair to steady himself. ‘Thank you, but I must—’ He paused. The room was suddenly spinning. He took a step towards the door, and then another. And then he collapsed.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Present day.
Tayte had been at the civil registration office in Munich close to two hours, and it was approaching midday by the time Jan Statham had exhausted her search for records on Ava’s parents. They were still waiting on the records concerning Ava’s uncle, Heinz Schr?der, from the Starnberg office, which Tayte hoped wouldn’t be too much longer. He was conscious of the time, thinking that Jean could call him away at any minute.
As they went back into the small meeting room and sat down, Jan set the documents out between them, and having paid close attention to everything she had done, Tayte found that he had now picked up many of the basic words and phrases that were relevant to genealogical research in Germany, giving him a better understanding of what he was looking at. Jan had also run a search for records relating to Heinz Schr?der, but she had found nothing more than an entry in the Geburtsregister, recording his birth in Munich in 1887. All other events had clearly been registered elsewhere, such as at the Starnberg office, under whose jurisdiction Heinz was living at the time of Ava’s and Johann’s wedding.
Tayte picked up the copy of Adelina Bauer’s birth certificate. ‘There are fewer records here than I’d hoped for,’ he said. There was another birth certificate, this one for Ava’s father, Gerhard Bauer. Tayte held the two records side by side. ‘Between these two birth certificates we have the names of both sets of Ava’s grandparents, and the names of both her maternal and paternal great-grandmothers. It would all be highly useful information if I was trying to build Ava’s family tree, but that’s not why I’m here.’
‘No,’ Jan agreed. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t find any record of death for either of Ava’s parents. I’d have thought perhaps their deaths might have been registered in Munich as they were born here and lived here. Still, you can’t say we didn’t try. People are prone to moving about, aren’t they?’
Searching for Ava’s parents’ death certificates had taken up most of the time, not least because finding them would have given Tayte hope of locating a last will and testament, and because of that he hadn’t wanted to stop searching until every avenue had been exhausted. He figured that if Ava had had a child that had been brought up by Ava’s parents then there was a good chance of finding mention of that child in their will. But they had found nothing, suggesting that Adelina and Gerhard Bauer had died outside the areas covered by the Munich Standesamt, necessitating a wider search, which, unless those records were covered by the Starnberg office, would take time—perhaps more time than Tayte had.
The only other record they had found for Ava’s parents was from the Heiratsregister—Adelina’s and Gerhard’s marriage certificate. Tayte picked it up as he set the birth certificates down.
‘This at least gives us another name to look into,’ he said, looking at the witness section. ‘I’d imagine Kurt Bauer here is Gerhard’s brother. Maybe he was his best man at the wedding.’
‘That seems likely,’ Jan said. ‘He’s not mentioned on any of the other certificates. He’s not his father or grandfather.’