Apportionment of Blame (37 page)

“My mother said there was a secret mission,” Ilse said. “And it said so in her journal.”

“There's one last paragraph,” I said.” Just listen to this.

“
Little was immediately known of Hess' co-pilot, but the description given by Hess fitted that of a man who was run over by a truck in Kilmarnock on the morning of 11 May 1941. His name is now believed to have been Hans Jurgen Schmid, and he is buried at the German Military Cemetery in Brocton, Staffordshire
.”

Ilse's hands had flown up to her face.

“My father,” she said. “That was his name. So that's what it was. He was flying Rudolph Hess.”

“Good God,” Oliver said. “What a connection.”

Pam was looking at Ilse who had tears running down her cheeks.

“Are you all right?” she asked her.

“I think so. It's almost as if my mother left this newspaper for me to find.”

“You said it was like a love story,” I said. “Her mother was taking him to a station to escape to Ireland,” I said to Pam and Oliver. “They'd met before, then he suddenly landed from the sky in her backyard. She must have been so excited to see him. And then she lost him the following day.”

“That's awful,” Pam said. “How sad. So many sad things have happened to us all.”

“But not anymore,” I said, having difficulty coping with the emotion around me. “Now we have a happier life to look forward to.”

“Thanks to you,” Pam said.

“Oh, stop it. I didn't do much. But I'm glad it all worked out.” And that was that. Ilse moved into her new home a couple of days later.

Oliver eventually started a business consultancy and Joyce helped him run things. I started to sort out my outstanding cases and slowly began to think of myself as a detective, on a small scale, of course.

Pam and Ilse became firm friends, if not sisters, and saw each other a great deal.

Oliver had railed against the effects of the war, and I suppose he was right, in a way. Without the war, none of it would have happened. Ilse would never have been conceived and Helen would still be alive. Oliver would probably still have lost his job, but there would hopefully have been Annie's inheritance to help him begin again.

But without what happened, it's likely I would never have told Joyce how I feel about her. So perhaps it's true that everything does happen for a reason.