‘Johann?’
Johann’s muscles went limp at hearing his name, but it was not the man before him who had spoken. It was a woman’s voice. She sounded weak and frail, and so very old. He let go of the man and turned around. And there, sitting in an armchair with blankets piled around her, he saw a woman he barely recognised. The grey daylight from the gaps in the window boards revealed a gaunt and pallid face. Her head was shaved, and her hollow eyes seemed to stair back at him. Johann was immediately reminded of those unfortunate souls he’d seen at Dachau when he went there to see Volker. It was Ava’s mother, Adelina, and in her lap . . .
No, it can’t be.
Johann had to step closer, convinced that his eyes were playing tricks on him in the half-light. But it was true. She was holding a baby.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Present day.
Following Jan Statham’s phone call to the civil registration office in Ingolstadt, having asked them to retrieve the vital records they held for Ava’s paternal uncle, Kurt Bauer, Jan came back into the meeting room where she had left Tayte, and he thought she had even more of a spring in her step than when she’d left. Her face was full of smiles. She had several printouts in her hand, and Tayte imagined they were the reason she was so excited.
‘Wow, I’ve heard about German efficiency,’ he said with a grin. ‘Don’t tell me they’ve sent the records for Kurt Bauer over already.’ He was grinning because he knew full well that such a feat was impossible in such a short time frame.
‘No, silly. They’re from Starnberg,’ Jan said as she sat down.
She placed the printouts onto the desk in a pile in front of Tayte, and he immediately began to share her excitement. On top of the pile was a printout from the Sterberegister. It was for Adelina Bauer.
‘Ava’s mother,’ Tayte said as he recognised her name.
‘Month of death, May,’ Jan said, showing Tayte the corresponding column on the record. ‘Year of death, 1945.’
‘So Ava’s mother died just as the war was ending.’
Jan nodded. ‘The cause of death says Lungenentzündung. That’s pneumonia.’
Tayte took a deep breath as he wondered whether the record offered any significance to his search. Adelina Bauer had died prematurely, but he imagined many people did for one reason or another during those dark years. He turned to the next record. It was from the Heiratsregister showing Heinz Schr?der’s marriage in 1910 to Frieda Sch?fer. Jan had already found Heinz’s birth certificate, which Tayte slid across to keep Heinz’s vital records together. The following printout showed another entry from the Sterberegister and Tayte sighed to himself at seeing it.
‘Heinz’s wife also died prematurely,’ he said, noting that the death certificate, or Sterbeurkunde, for Frieda Schr?der had been issued in 1933, twenty-three years after their marriage. ‘She was only forty-two years old.’
‘Some of the records I see are enough to make anyone weep,’ Jan said. ‘It took me a while to get used to seeing people’s lives laid out like this—sometimes a birth certificate one year, and then a death certificate for the same child a few years later. You deal with it, don’t you, but I don’t think it’s something you ever really get comfortable with, or want to for that matter.’
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Tayte said. ‘I find it can help to look for the positives. In this case I’d like to think that, although Frieda’s life was cut short, she spent twenty-three happily married years with Heinz before she died.’ Tayte turned to the next record. It was a birth certificate. ‘And look, they had a son, Franz Schr?der, born in 1913, just before the Great War.’
‘That must have been a hard time for Mrs Schr?der.’
‘I’m sure it was,’ Tayte said, turning to the next record and reading the word Sterbeurkunde again.
‘Oh dear,’ Jan said when she saw it. ‘That’s her boy’s death certificate. 1942.’
Tayte nodded. ‘What does this mean?’ he asked, pointing to the section where the reason for death appeared. ‘Gefallen.’
‘It simply means fallen,’ Jan said. ‘Heinz Schr?der’s son was killed in action during the war. Look here, it shows the place of death as Russia.’
Tayte shook his head. Whatever side a person was on during a war, he imagined that every parent shared a common grief at such a loss of their child. He turned to the next record. It was another birth certificate—a Geburtsurkunde—for a second son, Werner, born little more than a year after his brother Franz. Tayte hung his head over the next record when he saw that it was almost identical to the previous death certificate.
‘Two sons killed on the Russian Front in the same year.’