Schreiber's Secret (8 page)

Sonntag paused for a moment, as if waiting for a sign that his guest fully understood the implications of the story.

“The moral is”, he continued, “that no one can forgive crimes committed against other people. It’s therefore preposterous to assume that anybody alive can extend forgiveness for the suffering of any one of the six million people who perished. According to Jewish tradition, even God himself can only forgive sins committed against Himself, not against Man.”

Danielle, in the pregnant pause that followed the apocryphal tale, was once again astounded by her host’s conviction and learning. “That’s some story,” she said at last. “Certainly a provocative after dinner turn.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing,” she shrugged, adding quickly, “It’s just that I imagine you must have told this story to friends before. It’s the sort of thing that exercises the grey matter. Tell me, Henry,” she continued, altering course, “are you religious? I believe you belong to the loca
l
shu
l
.”

“I’m like most of my Jewish clients. I go three times a year on the High Holy days. You’re the same, aren’t you?”

Danielle suddenly wished she had been a more observant Jew. “I’m afraid I don’t even bother to go on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, although I do take the days off work. I spend most of the time in bed.”

“Do you fast?”

“Sometimes, if the mood takes me. Do you?”

Sonntag smiled conspiratorially. “Off the record, no. I’m a bit of a chameleon, in point of fact. I act religious if I need to.”

“What do you mean?” asked Danielle, genuinely surprised.

“With my ultraorthodox clients I wear
a
kipp
a
. It makes them feel more comfortable.”

“It’s funny,” Danielle laughed, “but I can’t imagine you wearing a skullcap.”

“No, I suppose not.” He winked.

Danielle returned to her point. “By religious, I really meant in a spiritual way. In effect, do you believe in God?”

Sonntag’s eyes glazed momentarily. “It depends on how you define God,” he said wistfully. “The God of the Jews?”

“If you must.”

“The God of the Jews died in the concentration camps,” he said dully.

“This is off the record, you understand. Officially, to paraphrase Ivan Karamazov, it’s not that I don’t accept God, it’s the world created by Him that I don’t and cannot accept.” The pain in Sonntag’s voice was tangible.

Danielle breathed deeply. “I’m sorry, Henry, maybe I’m being too personal. It’s not really germane to the article I want to write.”

The old man smiled kindly. “It’s the prerogative of a beautiful woman to make mistakes ... and to be forgiven instantly.”

She nodded in relief. “Just one final question, Henry, and then I’ll leave you in peace.”

“So soon?” He smiled again.

She looked at her watch. “My goodness, it’s been nearly two hours. Where do you get the strength to go through all this? What keeps you going?” Sonntag stroked his chin, “I often think about that. I suppose it’s a bit like schizophrenia. One cannot allow the past to become so overwhelming that it will make one unable to function in so-called normal life. Yet it’s always there, giving me a total world view. You might call it extreme pessimism – really knowing the truth about people, about human nature, about death, really knowing the truth in a way that other people don’t know it. And all of this truth is harsh, and impossible to really accept, and yet you have to go on and function. I suppose I have a complete lack of faith in human beings, whether it’s politics or anything else. You hear one thing and you believe another.”

Once again Danielle felt an overwhelming sense of humility before her elderly host. It was as if he encompassed all the terrible trials of a lost generation.

“I think we’ll leave it there,” she said, switching off the tape recorder. “All I can say is that it’s been a privilege meeting and talking with you. I only hope my feature will do you justice.”

“I’m sure it will,” beamed Sonntag. “I feel better for getting all this off my chest. Thank you.”

Glancing at her watch, Danielle smiled sweetly. “By the way, our photographer, John Chivers, will be here shortly as arranged. He knows what shots to take. Usual stuff. A head and shoulders and some in the dealing room.”

“I don’t photograph very well.”

“Don’t worry,” she laughed, “with modern technology we can make the Elephant Man look like George Michael.”

“Who’s George Michael?”

“A pop star.”

For a fleeting moment Sonntag looked sad. He sighed. “Having no wife and children means I’ve missed out on all those sorts of things. I’m what you English call an old fuddy-duddy.”

“It’s never too late for romance, you know.”

“Maybe. One day.
In the meantime
,
zeime gezin
t
.

“And you should be healthy too, Henry. Until one hundred and twenty, as they say.” She held up the tapes. “I’ll make copies of these tomorrow and send them to you right away. Don’t worry, I won’t misquote you.”

“I have complete faith in your journalistic principles, my dear,” Sonntag responded. “Just make sure whoever edits the feature doesn’t distort the truth. It’s so easily done.”

“I’ll make sure I have the last word on this one,” she said reassuringly. She allowed Sonntag to help her with her coat.

“Take care, it’s a horrible night for driving.”

“Thank you once again, Henry,” she said, shaking his hand warmly.  As she took her leave of her host she could not help feeling that th
e
Mail on Sunda
y
magazine was the wrong forum for the story of this remarkable man. Only a book could do Henry Sonntag real justice.

CHAPTER 3

Joe Hyams was dog-
tired. He was tired because he was working all God’s hours in order to pay the household bills. He was tired because his wife and children demanded more than he could give them. Anyway, that’s what he tried to convince himself. If the truth be known, of course, it was them he was trying to keep away from. There was only one thing worse than the Jewish mother syndrome. The Jewish wife and kids syndrome.

Joe picked thoughtfully at his fleshy nose and prayed that the next fare would be going his way. True, there was less traffic on nights, but six years of working through the early hours was getting him down. It had ruined his metabolism and had probably ruined his marriage. 

Still, the Heathrow run wasn’t too bad. At least he usually got a decent class of fare. No drunks, no anti-Semites. He knew he looked very Jewish and it didn’t happen very often, but there was always the odd occasion when he might pick up a fascist, drunk or otherwise.

Joe spotted Sam Spiegel two cabs ahead in the rank. Bastard had nicked a good fare off him more than once. Now lived with the wealth
y
hoiche Fenster
s
in Edgware. Ilford was no longer good enough for him. “I hope you get a last fare to south London
,
mumse
r
,” Joe mouthed as Spiegel leant out of his cab and smiled.

“How’s things, Joe?” the man with flat cap asked.

Hyams gave Spiegel a middle-finger salute. Why waste breath on the man, he asked himself as he edged the cab closer to the front of the rank. Please let him get Croydon and me Ilford. Please.

There they were.
A couple of Yank tourists by the look of them. Lucky bastard’ll probably get Edgware. One straight road. All the way home. Joe watched Spiegel pull away and then jumped out of his cab.

“Hey, you,” he called to the cabbie in front, “did you hear where his fare was?”

“Yeah, Croydon, I think.”

“Bingo!” Now all he needed was
for the second half of his win-double to come true. The driver in front was soon loaded up with a couple of Pakis and now it was his turn.

“Over here, sir,” he called out to a man leaving the exit to the terminal carrying a briefcase. It was obvious he was looking for a cab.

“Where to, guv?” Joe Hyams called out with false nonchalance.

“Do you know Ilford?”

Bingo! This time Joe Hyams exulted inwardly.

“Of course, guv,” he enthused. “Know it well.”

“Drive to Fairlop station. I left my car there.”

Strange accent, thought Hyams as his fare climbed in. Like someone trying to pretend to be a Kraut in a bad war movie.

“Where have you just come from, guv?” the cabbie called out as he drove away. “Anywhere nice?”

“Berlin,” said the fare. “But you’ll have to excuse me. I’m not feeling so well and I’d like to get some sleep, if you don’t mind.”

“No trouble at all, guv,” said the cabbie kindly, and he closed the glass partition. What did he care? The man was going his way and Joe Hyams Esquire wasn’t bothered if he kep
t
shtu
m
all the way home.

Joe switched on the radio. The dark early November night was damp but not cold. Just the way he liked it. Although he preferred to do the North Circular, the shortest route was through the West End and City. Best not to bother the fare again, he thought. The man seemed all in. Must have had too much schnapps.

Joe Hyams knew the way blindfolded. At Stratford Broadway he tired of listening to James Last and the other muzak of the night. As he leaned forward to switch off the radio, his horn-rims did their usual skiing act. He was always meaning to get his nephew Stephen the optician to tighten them up but never seemed to get around to it. “Maybe I should try out some contact lenses,” he muttered, suddenly startled by the sound of his own voice. Becky might fancy him more without glasses. She certainly couldn’t fancy him any less. That’s why she made him do nights. It was Becky’s way of saying she had a headache. On the other hand, maybe it was his own way of sayin
g
h
e
had a headache. The plain fact is, Joe Hyams, old boy, he mused, your whole bloody life is a headache. Your wife doesn’t understand you, and your two sons, glorified barrow boys each, areconsumed by dreams of bright-red Porsches. Love and respect for the father didn’t matter anymore. Not like the old days, when children catered to their father’s every whim and the mother was
a
balabust
a
who was for ever tidying the house and could cook the hind legs off a donkey. His wife must have been one of the first Jewish princesses. To boil an egg she had to consult a cookery book.

Consumed by his cheerless existence as a balding, bespectacled and powerless Jewish patriarch, Joe Hyams was startled to find himself already driving along Forest Road and nearing his destination. He stopped by the entrance to Fairlop station.

“We’re here, guv.”

“Just drive on a little further, please.
Closer to the car park entrance. It has started to rain and I don’t want to get wet.”

Joe Hyams, accustomed as he was to taking orders from fares, duly pulled to a halt a few yards further on. The wind was starting to get up and the rain whipped cruelly against his windscreen. It was turning into a filthy night. “That’ll be forty-five pounds please, sir,” he said, stretching to open the partition window without turning round.

There was precious little time for Joe to appreciate the tickle of cold steel against the nape of his neck. No time at all to make peace with his Maker. The worries of Joseph Stanley Hyams were truly over. He was also spared the indignity of knowing that his killer had left as a calling card the symbol most despised by his race.

Discounting dreams, it was only when he was asleep that Mark Edwards did not breathe, eat and drink newspaper reporting. Many had forecast that he would burn himself out by the age of forty. Well, that was ten years away and too much of a distant threat to worry him.

His list of police and criminal contacts was second to none, and even the old hacks among the nation’s crime reporters were forced to give him his due. Respect from those who could still remember when Fleet Street was more than just a generic term was respect indeed.

Edwards switched on the table lamp by his bed. After a couple of seconds his eyes managed to focus on his watch. It was five-thirty in the morning. Not the time he usually awoke. But now he was up he knew he was unlikely to doze off again. He was a morning person. The biorhythms dictated that. He really believed that some people were night owls; the
sort that loved to go to bed in the early hours but could never get up in the morning. Their minds just could not function as well in daylight. He was different. He could function on six hours’ sleep, as long as it was early to bed and early to rise.

He thought back to the dream that had woken him. There he was, on yet another story about police corruption. Some of his best friends were coppers, and the bad press worried him as much as it did them. He knew his reports were bound to tarnish the innocent, for Joe Public was beginning to believe that all coppers were bent. He, Mark Edwards, might work for one of the popular newspapers, but he prided himself on searching for and writing the truth. The headlines, however, were not his responsibility, although he sometimes wished they were. Some of the sub
-editors in the glass menagerie got carried away. He often wondered whether they ever read the stories they subbed.