Authors: John Le Beau
The ancient slash in the mountain dolomite that comprised the cave had always been a cold place; had been that way for millions of years. Day or night caused little difference in the temperature of the cave and there was dampness in the mildly fetid air. He had placed a lamp on the floor of the cavern and the light it cast was spectral against the creviced stone. Glancing around, he noted that nothing appeared amiss, the rows of dusty wooden crates lying undisturbed as they had for so long. Still, there had been an intruder, an unfortunate and potentially disastrous turn of events. Danger had been averted only due to the sheerest luck, that most fickle of commodities.
It was close to a mathematical impossibility that he, the protector of this place, had been in the woods near the cave when the intruder found his way here. Waiting outside in the slapping rain and darkness, he had watched the pale flicker of a flashlight within the stone chamber. And he had waited, not patiently, but angrily, but he had waited nonetheless. It would not have been prudent to rush in. What if the intruder had been armed? He had kept his head and thought the situation through with dispassion. Kill him when he leaves, when he isn’t expecting anything. Then think about next steps.
It would have been preferable if the body had never been discovered. He had thought of that at the time, but there were no other solutions. With the crime committed, with blood and other DNA traces on his clothing, he did not want to risk dragging the body somewhere. Killing was the main thing. Death brought with it one virtue: silence, pure and chaste.
He had believed that with the intruder dispatched, he would
have a few days to figure out what to do with the body before anyone stumbled upon it in that remote meadow. He had been wrong, but again, luck, this time bad, had to be held accountable for the rescue worker appearing in the area so unexpectedly. The discovery of the body had ensured predictable consequences: police and forensic experts wandering around, news broadcasts, and requests for potential witnesses to come forward. He allowed himself a thin smile. There were no witnesses other than him and no evidence that would lead anywhere. This meant that the crates and their cargo were safe. The cave was well concealed and far enough from the murder scene to remain secure.
Still, the episode carried a warning. Perhaps the contents of the cave should be moved to another location, possibly to a warehouse in Rosenheim. The items would have to be moved sometime soon anyway if they were to be put to use. The mountain recess, this primordial fissure, had served well for decades. But there had now been a total of three murders in the vicinity. Best not to tempt fate indefinitely.
The first two bodies had never been discovered and now lay, not far removed from the stone chamber, in improvised graves dug into the moist, pungent earth of the pine forest. He recalled how the victims had looked; mouths open in stupefied amazement, as he had slashed the life out of them in wide-arced gouging strokes. In their late teens, both of them, male and female looking so much alike; studies in pale skin, long, oily hair, and dilated pupils. Drug addicts with nothing on them but their narcotic and some needles, the clothes on their back, and a handful of soiled Deutsche marks. That had been almost a decade ago. This meant that nature and its attendant court of insects had doubtless done their work. The corpses would be nothing more than shreds of denim and fabric, and a collection of bones.
The couple had been camping under a tarpaulin in the woods, no doubt retreating from the society that they thought they had rejected but that had, in fact, cast them out. Their great misfortune was to have seen him as he made his way one late afternoon to the cave.
“Hi, man,” the male had said with a total lack of cognition.
It had been instantly clear that the two had to die. He could not risk any chance that they might follow him to his destination.
The rest had been simple, over in a couple of brutal, screaming minutes. He had walked wordlessly up to the two, pulled from his backpack the machete he used to cut through the brush, and started to slash. The male went first. The first slash was straight to the neck and delivered swiftly before the boy could raise his arms to ward off the blow. He went down, blowing a mist of blood with a gurgling wheeze. The female just whimpered during the seconds it took to kill her mate and didn’t even attempt to run. He swung his blade with full force into her dirty black sweater and she let out a loud, surprisingly baritone “Ooohh,” as she crumpled to her knees.
He had gone to the cave, taking the pairs’ tarpaulin with him, fished out a rusting shovel from a crate of tools, and returned to bury the sacks of dirty flesh. He had been careful to cover the site with generous mounds of pine needles, fir cones, and twigs. He had done this in such an accomplished manner that the area seemed undisturbed and he had difficulty finding the spot a week later. With trepidation he had read the newspapers for weeks after the murders and listened to the hourly radio news on
Bayern Funf.
But there had been no mention of a twin disappearance. He had concluded that the victims were such societal detritus that they enjoyed no family ties and were missed by no one. And so the circle of life and death for the two dropouts had closed seamlessly and quietly.
Chapter 7But all of that had been long ago, his memories of those moments less vivid, as if the color had drained from his recollections, leaving only a sepia trace. He now had to focus on the future and on moving the crates. He might be required to kill again, but he was content to let fate arbitrate that particular matter.
Gamsdorf slumbered in the waning sun of a long-shadowed late afternoon, its buildings looking much as they had for decades. The village was arranged in typical Bavarian form; a centuries-old church at its center, a whitewashed stone steeple rising high above it. The steeple was topped with a green-patina copper dome, shaped like a gigantic onion. A cemetery surrounded the church on all sides, braced by a low wall designed either to keep undesired visitors out or restless spirits in. The permanent residents of the churchyard comprised a democratic selection of the recently deceased and those who had lain in their graves for centuries. Some gravestones were so old that time and the elements had rendered them nearly blank stone slates, with only a gothic letter or two still discernible.
In one corner of the cemetery stood a large granite rectangle, relentlessly polished, topped with a gilded crucifix and a German soldier’s steel helmet. The monument memorialized the villagers, mostly young men with last names still common to the village, who had fallen in battle during the lost World Wars of 1914–1918 and 1939–1945. Their remains were not here, but scattered on battlefields from Tannenberg to Kiev, from Normandy to Tobruk.
Most of the graves, and the war memorial, too, were well tended and graced with bright flowers. The community of the dead was a full partner of the community of the living and often visited by the villagers, if mostly by the elderly, as if they were carefully inspecting their next residence.
A narrow street passed by the front of the church, lined by linden trees, thick leaves shading the pavement below. Across from the
church stood a three-hundred-year-old tavern, a painted shingle above the door identifying it as “
Zum Alte Post”
; The Old Post Office. Which it had once been, but that was long ago when Bavaria had been ruled by the whims of kings, both mad and enlightened. In those days, the tavern keeper had tended the mail and it was here that the royal mail wagons delivered packets, bills of lading, notices of births and deaths. Now bored federal postal employees in everyday garb delivered letters and advertising flyers in VW vans. The Old Post no longer kept the mail, but remained a tavern.
A dog yapped in the distance as Robert parked his car under the linden trees and made his way to the restaurant. The village was somnolent with no noise of traffic to mar the gradual descent of a summer’s evening. There was a trace of fertilizer and mown grass in the air, a reminder of the rolling farm meadows flanking the place.
The front double-door was made of rude, battered wooden planks decorated with a carved star at waist level. One of the doors was propped open with a crumbling brick to allow the outside air into thick-walled chambers. The doors faced into a broad hallway with a high-arched ceiling and red tile floor. A heavy oak country chest was placed against one wall; an equally heavy framed mirror hung above it. Robert checked his image briefly in the glass and noted dark rings under his eyes. He ran a hand across his hair to make his appearance a bit more orderly.
The hallway opened onto two large rooms, to the right and left. Robert peeked into the room to his left and found it festively decorated in rural Bavarian style with framed lithographs of alpine scenes, a few pieces of antique furniture bearing heavy vases of fresh mountain flowers. The dozen or so tables were covered with crisp blue and white linen tablecloths, and the places were set with matching napkins, wineglasses, and utensils. But there were no guests to be seen. The carefully prepared room was empty of life, looking a bit like a museum piece.
Animated conversation and muffled laughter drifted across the floor from behind, and Robert knew that the opposite room was occupied. Robert turned and entered the space that was the same size
as the room he had just vacated. Other than the similarity of size, everything was different.
This chamber was full of people dining and talking. A portly and expressionless waitress of indeterminate age clad in a green and red dirndl circulated among the tables distributing half-liter glasses of foaming beer. The unornamented tables here were bare wood with paper napkins. A large crucifix stared down from one corner, the pained grimace on the visage of Jesus presiding over a universe of gossip, humor, and malice.
No one looked up as Robert entered. The American surveyed the room for someone who might be August Sedlmeyer. The task took only a second. Nearly all of the guests in the room were seated in groups. Only one man sat alone. He was, as Robert had expected, quite old, his general appearance announcing someone in his early eighties. The man’s face and hands were burnished bronze and his hair startlingly white, with just a streak of muted black remaining.
August Sedlmeyer sat ramrod straight in his hard-backed chair, hands spread protectively around a glass of beer on the table before him, looking rather like a priest about to lift his chalice. The old man wore a well-brushed, if threadbare, collarless charcoal Bavarian jacket, the sleeves and pockets trimmed in forest green. He stared straight ahead as if lost in thought.
Robert walked to the old man’s table. “Excuse me sir, are you Herr Sedlmeyer? I’m Robert Hirter.”
The old man nodded an acknowledgment with a quick up-down wag of the chin and gestured to the empty chair opposite him. “Please have a seat Herr Hirter. I expected that you might show up. Order something if you wish; the food here is acceptable. Or just a beer perhaps? I will not detain you long. I intend to make my points succinctly.” The old man spoke in clipped sentences in a voice that was steady but betrayed the inflections of advanced age. Robert had the mildly discomforting feeling that Sedlmeyer was somehow in charge and accustomed to issuing directives.
The thickly built waitress suddenly loomed over the table, contemplating Robert with sullen eyes, as so many waitresses had
regarded their customers in so many guesthouses over the centuries. Robert ordered a Spaten ale and the woman disappeared, trundling away with a clumping, horsey gait.
“I got the note you left at the hotel,” Robert said, not quite knowing where to go conversationally. “I’m a bit confused by it, but I gather that you have something to say about my brother’s murder.”
The old man surveyed the American without blinking, his deep brown eyes conveying no humor. “My note was not clear, I suppose. It was meant to be an invitation that you could take or leave, Herr Hirter. Before we go further, let me ensure that you understand one thing: I do not know who killed your brother. What I am offering you is background that might be relevant—no more, no less. You must decide whether what I have to say is worth hearing.” The old man paused to see if his visitor would interject a comment. The waitress appeared from behind them and deposited a mug of pale beer on the table in front of Robert. She departed as wordlessly as she had arrived.
“One other thing,” Sedlmeyer rasped. “This story that you are about to hear is meant for you, not for the police. If you repeat what I say to the police and they make inquiries of me, I’ll deny that I said anything,
Klar?
Consider this conversation purely personal. Those are my rules. You can, of course, decide to just drink your
Helles
and leave without listening to me.” Sedlmeyer reached for his own beer but did not take his dark, deep-set eyes off of Robert.
Robert took a long draw of his Spaten.
In for a dime, in for a dollar
, he thought. “I’ll stay. I want to hear about this history. And you can be certain, Herr Sedlmeyer, that I won’t bring the police in if, as you say, there is no relevance to my brother’s murder. Fair enough?”
Sedlmeyer gave a sharp, martial nod and leaned his spare frame back in his chair, its legs issuing a protesting creak. The old man’s gaze found a place to rest somewhere over Robert’s right shoulder and did not wander. With his weathered, liver-spotted hands folded on the table, he began to relate what Robert would always remember as “
The SS Man’s Tale.
”