He had taken hold of her now, all pretence at civilized manners gone. And she was utterly at his mercy. Legally without protection, socially without position or influence. Completely defenceless.
He would take her boys. They’d be sent to a camp.
She had no choice.
Frieda kissed him. Hard on the mouth.
Reaching down she took a hold of him for a moment through his thick woollen trousers. He squirmed against the pressure of her hand.
‘At last,’ he gasped. ‘I will take what I want.’
‘But not here,’ she begged, breaking away. ‘The children—’
She did not finish her sentence.
And that unfinished sentence was the last Karlsruhen ever heard. The words ‘the children’ the final two words ever to enter his consciousness.
Which was fitting, for it was the children who killed him.
Otto struck the blow.
He, Paulus and Silke had been listening from the boys’ bedroom and when they heard the sinister conversation degenerate into scuffling sounds they had opened the door and entered the living room.
Karlsruhen had been too preoccupied to notice movement behind him and Frieda could see nothing but the sculptor’s huge face and body pressing down on her.
Otto acted, as ever, on instinct. He scooped up the nearest weapon, which happened to be the little bronze statuette of his mother that stood upon Wolfgang’s piano, and, leaping forward, smashed its heavy marble plinth into the back of Karlsruhen’s head. Splitting open the man’s skull.
Karlsruhen simply crumpled up. Pole-axed, slumping down on to the thick blue rug.
Frieda found herself facing the three young people over his prostrate form.
For a moment they all remained motionless.
Otto, breathing hard, holding the statue by the head, Paulus and Silke just behind him. Karlsruhen slumped on his side. Blood seeping from the back of his head. Frieda, eyes wide with shock, for once at her wits’ end.
‘What …? What do we do?’
It was all simply too overwhelming.
For her, but not for Paulus, who stepped forward, kneeling down beside the unconscious man and feeling his pulse.
‘Is the bastard dead?’ Silke asked from behind him.
‘No,’ said Paulus. ‘He’s still breathing.’
Without saying a world Otto raised the statuette in his hand, clearly about to bring it smashing down for a second time.
Frieda gasped in horror. Paulus raised his hand.
‘Stop it, Otto!’ he hissed. ‘We don’t want any more blood than there is already. Thank God he fell on the carpet and thank God it’s such a thick one. If he’d gone down on the floorboards we’d be in trouble. Can’t get blood out of wood.’
The news that Karlsruhen was alive cleared Frieda’s muddled thoughts, her natural instincts forcing her to focus.
‘If he’s alive then I should help him.’
‘What?’ Otto said.
‘Yeah. What?’ Silke echoed.
‘He’s injured, I’m a doctor.’
‘Mum,’ Paulus said quietly, ‘he’s injured because Otto hit him. You can’t help this man.’
Frieda paused. It was obvious he was right.
But it was hard for her nonetheless. For the first time in her life she must fail to help someone in need. Deny her Hippocratic oath. To most people, Paulus, Otto and Silke included, there would be no question. They would gladly let the swine die, even without the enormous threat that he posed to them if he survived. Simply because he deserved to.
But Frieda was not most people. She was that rare thing, a truly altruistic individual, and in that moment a part of her was lost. It was not the worst thing for which she would never forgive Adolf Hitler, but it was terrible to her nonetheless.
On the rug Karlsruhen began to stir. Paulus reached into the injured man’s top pocket and pulled out his handkerchief. A huge square of purple silk. The perfect affectation to complement the wide-brimmed hat and silver-topped cane that went to make up the man’s absurdly selfconscious ‘artistic’ image.
‘What the …’ Otto exclaimed, perhaps under the impression that Paulus was intending to use the cloth to try to bind Karlsruhen’s wound. The protest died on his lips, however, as Paulus began stuffing the handkerchief into the semi-conscious man’s mouth.
Perhaps some dream-like notion of the danger he was in jolted Karlsruhen out of his stupor and he began to writhe. Otto dropped down beside his brother and held the flailing arms while Paulus stuffed the last of the cloth deep into the gaping gullet, using the fountain pen he always carried in his breast pocket so as to avoid losing his fingers.
Then Paulus held Karlsruhen’s nose.
The dying man was big and heavy and desperation lent brute strength to his final convulsions. But the boys were strong too, particularly Otto, strong in arm and strong in hate, and they held him down till he was dead.
‘Paulus, Otto,’ Frieda murmured.
But she knew that what they did they had to do.
The Nazis had made killers of her boys.
Paulus stood up. His voice shook a little as he spoke but nonetheless he was calm. Even commanding.
‘We have to get rid of him,’ he said. ‘It’s night time and we can do this …’ He paused. Thinking.
Willing
himself to make a plan.
‘How, Pauly?’ Otto asked quietly. ‘Tell us how.’
Once more there was silence.
Paulus stood over the corpse, his fists clenched, his eyes closed. His features contorted with the effort of concentration.
Frieda looked down at the dreadful sight on the floor. The blood seeping from the fractured skull, spreading, creeping,
soaking
into the thick blue of the carpet.
‘Oh, Pauly, Pauly,’ she whispered, ‘how can we ever—’
‘Right,’ Paulus said abruptly, interrupting his mother, perhaps unaware even that she had spoken. ‘Otto, you run to old Sommer and borrow his cart. Tell him Mum’s selling some stuff. Park the cart by the bikes in the courtyard and come straight back up. All right?’
Frieda wiped a tear from her eye.
‘It’s no good, Paulus,’ she said. ‘Even if you got him out. When they find he’s missing they’ll retrace his movements.’
‘They’ll try, Mum,’ Paulus replied, ‘but I don’t think the trail will lead them here. Remember how he turned up? After dark. Collar up, hat down – he didn’t want to be seen, did he? Good Nazis don’t consort with Jews, they certainly don’t pay them house calls. Do you think he could afford for people to know he was trying to force a Jewess to be his mistress? And him a party member? No chance. Nobody knows he’s here and if we don’t panic and we make a proper plan, nobody ever will.’
Paulus turned to Silke.
‘You don’t need to be a part of this, Silks,’ he said, ‘you should get out now.’
Silke didn’t speak, she couldn’t, she was swallowing hard to keep from gagging, but she looked at Paulus and shook her head.
‘All right,’ Paulus said. ‘If you want to help you can. We’ve got to roll him up.’
Still without a word Silke knelt down on the floor.
Paulus turned to his brother. ‘What are you hanging round for, Otto? Go and get the cart!’
Otto had also seemed in something of a state of shock but Paulus’s words snapped him out of it.
‘Right,’ he said, making for the door, ‘the cart.’
Paulus got down beside Silke and began to go through Karlsruhen’s pockets.
‘Pauly!’ Frieda gasped. ‘You aren’t
robbing
that man.’
Paulus looked up at his mother. His face grimmer and more determined than she had ever seen it.
‘He’s not a man, Mum. He’s a corpse,’ Paulus said. ‘Me and Otto killed him. And the only chance we have of getting away with it is to stay absolutely calm and make the best plan we can. Money’s useful stuff when you’re in trouble and we have very little. The sensible thing to do is to take his. We
have
to do the sensible thing, Mum. No mistakes, not one. It’s the only way we’ll survive this.’
Silke had already found the dead man’s wallet, which contained more money than Frieda earned in three months.
‘We killed him in self-defence,’ Frieda said, ‘but if we rob him and you’re caught—’
‘If we’re caught, Mum, it won’t make any difference whether we’ve robbed him or not,’ Paulus said, heaving the heavy carpet over the body and beginning to roll it up. ‘But we won’t
get caught
. The only people who knew he was here tonight are us and him. He’s dead and we’re not telling. You can be bloody sure that when he made his complaint about Dad he did it anonymously. They always do.’
This last comment made Paulus pause. In all the horror of the situation he had forgotten about Wolfgang’s arrest. For a moment the fight and spirit seemed to drain out of him, but then drawing a deep breath he steeled himself once more.
‘Got to concentrate on the
plan
,’ he said, speaking, it seemed, to himself. ‘If we can just get him out of the flat and dump him, I reckon we’re safe.’
By the time Paulus and Silke had the body rolled up and tied with parcel string, Otto had returned. Then he and Paulus wrestled the rolled-up carpet with the body in it into the lift and got it downstairs, with Silke scouting ahead to ensure the coast was clear. The three of them then carried the heavy roll outside and wrestled it on to the cart. They were very lucky that nobody else in the block came or went during the time it took to do this but they were also ready to brazen it out with a sob story about having to sell everything to buy food. Of course with a man of Karlsruhen’s bulk inside the rolled-up carpet it did look strange but once they had brought other rugs and cushions from the flat and loaded them on to the cart all around the concealed corpse, it gave a pretty good impression of an impoverished Jewish family forced to sell off all their meagre possessions.
‘It’s only nine o’clock, Pauly,’ Otto whispered as they arranged the cart. ‘The streets will still be pretty crowded. Don’t you think we should wait till later? Till the middle of the night?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Paulus replied, ‘it’s better this way. Crowds are good. I wish it was lunchtime.’
‘What?’ Otto hissed. ‘Are you crazy?’
‘Otto,’ Paulus replied, ‘the only way to get away with something like this is to brazen it out. If we go sneaking around at dead of night then we’ll be stopped for sure. This way we’re just one of a hundred carts. Now come on.’
As the boys began to push the cart away, Frieda appeared in the doorway of the building.
‘Funny,’ she said, her voice strange and leaden, ‘I rode on this cart once myself, you know. You boys did too in a way. Your father was taking me to hospital to … to …’ Frieda could not finish the sentence. She simply stood there gulping down her tears.
‘We know, Mum,’ Paulus said gently, ‘you’ve told us about it lots of times. Don’t worry, Dad’ll be back. Some people do come back, you know. Especially now this bloke’s not in a position any more to keep Dad out of the way.’
Frieda returned to the apartment and Paulus, Otto and Silke began to push the cart away.
‘Where are we going?’ Silke said. It was the first time she had spoken since the murder.
Otto, who had been growing in confidence with his brother’s surety, went suddenly white with alarm. ‘Christ, Paulus! I hadn’t thought! Where
are
we going?’
‘To the river obviously,’ Paulus replied, already beginning to push. ‘With such a heavy carpet tied around him he’ll sink like a stone. All we have to do is get it in without anyone seeing. Or at least anybody caring.’ Paulus turned once more to Silke. ‘Silks,’ he said, ‘you’ve been so incredible helping us like this, but really, you shouldn’t come now. There’s only two cart handles and there’s no point you risking your life too.’
‘I think you’ll do better with a girl along,’ she said quietly. ‘It’ll just look more innocent somehow. Two lads on their own are much more likely to attract trouble.’
Paulus just smiled and once more put his weight to the cart.
As they made their way along the streets, they attracted the odd glance but nothing more. For the previous twenty years Berlin’s cobbles had rung constantly to the sound of metal cartwheels as desperate people traded and bartered what little they had to survive. The boys’ main fear was that somebody might take it into their mind to try and rob them and for that reason Otto kept his hand on his knife.
Fortunately he had no occasion to use it and after an hour or so of heavy work they found themselves down amongst the wharfs where Paulus pointed the cart towards a lonely jetty.
‘We do it quick and we do it bold,’ Paulus said. ‘No creeping, no skulking. That’s the way to get away with stuff. In my experience if you front people up they tend to mind their own business.’
‘They’d fucking better,’ Otto said grimly.
‘Right. Let’s do it,’ Paulus said.
‘That drunk’s watching us,’ Silke whispered in panic.
‘It doesn’t matter. There’ll always be someone watching. What will they do? Call the cops? People down by the river at night don’t like cops. Now’s as good a time as it’s ever going to be.’