Wildfire (1934) - In the Wake of the Body: Wildfire, #2

By Kes Earnshaw

July 1934, Bavaria. And the SS have just shot Captain Rohm and his fellow leaders of the S.A. It's clear where Karl's loyalties shoudl lie. But life has a habit of giving us choices which are anything but clear.

Take Gustav: since he learned how to dream, he's been dreaming of a heroic life and death on the battlefield. But the first corpse he stumbles across isn't an enemy soldier like it should be - it's the body of a murdered woman in a clearing not a mile from his house.

Or Ludwig, the amateur herbalist who's never had ambitions beyond one day taking over the family farm. Now he finds himself embroiled in robbbing the garden of a local Party bigwig.

And Miti: beautiful, blonde, rich and talented, she shouldn't have problems beyond deciding what dress to wear for the next party. But instead, she's obssessed with questions of damnation and guilt - questions which only get more pressing as she leads her friends in a hunt to find the murderer.

 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: TrueFiction Books
• Release date: Jun 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393848646

Kes Earnshaw

Kes was born in the North of England, within sight of the Lake District. She can still do the both the forward splits and box splits, but can no longer do splits beyond 180 degrees up the wall! Entirely seriously, though her first and most enduring love was ballet, she was more talented as a pianist (and playing the piano is more respectable than dancing) so she got sent at an early age to an incredibly prestigious, enrirely horrendous, specialist music boarding school. The experience marred her for life and stopped her from growing up properly. (She never made it above 5ft.) Hence, she writes YA fiction, because the adult world still seems hostile territory. 

Book preview

PART I – THE BODY

DAY 1 – MONDAY 2nd July 1934, Midday

Karl stood in the doorway to the parlour and wondered if he could slip back out again unnoticed. He was used to seeing his father drink generously alongside his friends, most of whom either drank more or held it worse; he’d never seen the drink get the better of him before.

Robert Wiek raised his head and made an effort to focus his eyes. Karl, he began –

Can I get you something?

No. Come here. Come here and stand in front of me. Here, where I can see you.

Karl took a few steps forward. And another few – until he was close enough to smell the alcohol strong on his father’s breath. The eyes were quite steady, now. Too steady. Karl’s stomach gave a quick start – like a hand clenching in his gut. His father wasn’t normally the sort of man to make you afraid: he was tough; he expected his children to be successful, disciplined and resourceful. But so long as you were all that, which had never been hard for Karl, he was fair, generous, sometimes even playful.

There was nothing playful about him now. Nothing generous about the way he fixed his gaze on his eldest son. Salute.

Karl whipped himself upright, clicked his heels and shot out his arm. Heil Hitler! And he stayed that way – erect, arm outstretched – while his father, with a huge effort, pulled himself up to standing.

You are going to make me a promise.

Karl’s eyes continued looking straight ahead.

Promise me you will never join the SS.

Karl hesitated. He knew there’d been a lot of bad blood recently between the members of the SA who’d gone over to join the younger, more glamorous, more rigorous SS, and those who’d been left behind or stayed out of choice, loyal to their old comrades. Rumours had it that the leaders knew there wasn’t room enough for the both of them and there was a nasty struggle for supremacy in the offing. While the SA held the old guard – people like von Epp and Ernst Röhm who could command the respect of the entire nation for their courage in the Great War – the SS had the wits, the youth and the energy, and were gliding effortlessly into the driving seat. Robert Wiek himself, with his infallible nose for the way the wind was blowing, had been conflicted for a while about whether to join the SS. In the end, his friendships had won out and he’d stuck with the SA. But it was a lot to ask his son: to give up any chance of backing the winning horse.

Promise me you will not join the SS.

Karl went on standing, holding himself to attention. A muscle in his arm tried to twitch; he willed it to stop. His father was very drunk – it was a struggle for him to remain on his feet. Nonetheless, Karl knew this demand came from a place in him that knew exactly what he was asking. Deputy Gauleiter Robert Wiek would remember clearly the next day and the day after that, and probably every day until his dying day. He’d remember what Karl’s response had been – exactly how long he had hesitated. Five seconds? Seven seconds...

Promise!

It was a command. An order.

I promise.

His father nodded, then slumped back down into the chair.

They’ve shot Captain Röhm.

GUSTAV SET DOWN HIS pen. He stared for a while at the last sheet of equations, then blew on the ink so it would dry quicker.

It was dry already, of course: it was at least ten minutes since he’d written anything; at least ten minutes he’d been sat aimlessly watching the ‘x’s and ‘y’s and the little dancing 2s and 3s set themselves in stone. At least ten minutes of listening to his parents rowing downstairs.

He blew on the ink as if those ten minutes hadn’t happened.

If he went downstairs his parents, too, would act just like that those ten minutes hadn’t happened: his mother would smile her lovely to see you in the kitchen smile – the one she always thought fooled him – and his father would shuffle off to hide in his little engineering shop across the street as though he’d only just finished his lunch. If Gustav closed his eyes, he could imagine his mother’s arguing face – its skin taut with rage, spittle on her lips; and his father’s look, too – sagging and haggard. He knew if he went down now, he could change all that: he could make sure his mother pinned the stray hairs back up into her bun and stopped screaming about things she somehow thought he couldn’t hear.

He wasn’t deaf. He could hear. Half the street could probably hear. And though he wasn’t supposed to understand anything even if he could hear, he wasn’t stupid – he knew enough about what they were arguing over to know that half the street hearing them was a bad idea.

But he couldn’t face going downstairs so he got out his Latin grammar book instead, then realised he’d finished that homework, too. And his English assignment, and the piece of Schiller they had to memorise – he could recite it in his sleep. He could offer to recite it over dinner, if only his parents asked him.

Gustav snorted as he threw the Latin book back in his bag. Only a year ago, his mother had been obsessive about him getting into the Gymnasium and holding his own with all the other boys there. She never gave him a bite to eat without nagging him about his homework. Now, his grades didn’t seem to matter; he didn’t matter: all that mattered was how loud she could shriek. Malaria! came the cry, now. Your mother wants me to die of malaria!

Don’t be hysterical, said his father, wearily. She doesn’t want any of us to die; she just thinks things here are... volatile. What do you think happened to the men they took from... There was a pause, during which Moritz Schreiber was probably indicating clumsily in the direction of the Lake. Even Gustav knew they’d arrested Captain Röhm from the biggest hotel in Bad Wiessee on Saturday night, together with a whole load of his cronies. He’d heard whispers about the other men – that they weren’t quite manly; that they were drunk; that they were plotting; that they might be dead, now. Nothing would touch Captain Röhm of course: Röhm was a hero. Karl’s father had fought with him in the War and afterwards, winning land and all kinds of medals. He was the sort of soldier Gustav himself was going to grow up to be.

They were political, said his mother dismissively. We’re not political. We’re not anything. Nobody knows anything about us. We’re not...

Gustav suddenly realised  he could keep on pretending not to hear his parents for as long as it took but he couldn’t pretend not to hear the desperate call of nature for a moment longer. Making all the noise he could, he packed up his maths books, pushed his chair under the desk, slammed his bedroom door and clumped down the stairs, out the side door to the toilet.

After he’d done, he decided it would be better not to go back in the house. He thought of cycling over to Rottach to see Karl and Ludwig, but on reflection, he wasn’t quite sure what actually had happened to Röhm’s friends, and how that would affect Karl’s father, who was also, in a sort of way, Röhm’s friend. It would probably be better to wait until he knew what was what. If there were sides to be taken, he’d have to work out what side he should be on – what side Karl would be on.

So for lack of anywhere better to go, he wandered up towards the mountains, ambling past what had once been the Becks’ farm, before the Becks had moved away to the city and been replaced by some businessman-cum-Party official and his wife. The new couple had blocked off many of the footpaths that used to run across their land, but the main one – so pronounced it was almost a lane – was still accessible. Gustav followed it up past a large field (now weirdly empty of livestock) and behind the field to the woods. He thought he might go on up to Galaun, maybe even to the Riederstein. Then he thought that was too far – he might just turn off to the Alpenbeck clearing.

He broke off a stick and beat the brambles out of his way. They sprang back at him viciously and he stamped on them, half noticing the flowers underneath. He ignored them (flowers were for sissies like Ludwig) and tramped on into the clearing –

And that was where she was lying.

She must have been nearly fifty. Her hair was starting to go grey. For some reason, the first thing Gustav noticed were her shoes – incongruous shoes that looked like she should have stayed in the town, like she hadn’t belonged here in the countryside. They were still on her feet and her feet were set at an odd angle. Also, she wasn’t wearing a hat. A trickle of blood extended the line just under her mouth where she’d smudged her lipstick; a much bigger pool of blood formed a cushion around her hips. She was frozen into position and if Gustav had had any medical training, he’d have known from that she was already a few hours dead. But he didn’t. For all he knew, she’d been clubbed to death just moments before he arrived and the murderer was still there.

So he turned and ran, back to the house of the rich couple whose name he couldn’t remember. He crashed through their newly-installed gate and crushed the roses and flox. Murder! he hollered. Murder!  Murder...  A woman’s figure appeared in the doorway; she started running towards him then stopped dead as if she were a puppet whose owner had jerked her back with a string. Gustav felt himself pause, then –

LUDWIG GOT UP AND STARTED walking around the waiting room. There was nothing new there – nothing he hadn’t seen at least a hundred times before. Well, okay, a hundred was probably an exaggeration, but fifty anyway: he’d had a weak stomach and weak eyes and constant ear infections all through the first nine years of his life so he’d been a pretty frequent visitor to Dr. Grunfeld’s consulting room.

At some point during those nine years he’d decided he wanted to be a spy when he grew up, so he’d taken to observing and memorising the most minute details of any room he’d found himself in. Now, even though he no longer wanted to be a spy and he hadn’t been to the doctor’s for nearly a year, he could tell within a half minute that the only thing even slightly different was that the mantelpiece and windowsill had both acquired a substantial layer of dust.

At the spy-ambition time of his life, he would have tried to think about why that wasn’t a good sign – what it was a clue to. Now, though, he didn’t have the headspace. And he’d known Dr. Grunfeld far too long to suspect him of being a Soviet mole.

Ludwig was on his ninth tour round the waiting room when the consulting room door clicked open and an elderly woman limped out, followed by the doctor, whose eyes gave an alert twitch at the sight of Ludwig and whose hands motioned him to please be patient for a little while longer.

Ludwig turned back to the wall. I’m not ill, he mouthed to the fireplace; It’s not for me. I’m sorry to disturb you, it’s just...

The speech he was about to give jigged around his head like a skittish racehorse whose trainer was desperately trying to get it into the starting box. It had been jumping up and down like that for weeks. He had no idea what came after It’s just... but he’d rehearsed the beginning of it over and over, just like he’d rehearsed the answers to the interview for the Gymnasium.* He assumed – or at least, he hoped – that inspiration would come when he was sat on the comfortable settee, opposite Dr. Grunfeld’s familiar, unperturbable face. He’d never found himself unable to tell the doctor what was wrong, even when he hadn’t known till the moment he said it what exactly was wrong.

Still, his mouth was dry and jittery and there was a very real possibility, he would say: it’s just.. and then get up and run away.

He heard the doctor say a final, reassuring good-bye to his patient and felt him turn round. Come inside, Ludwig, he suggested gently, leading the way into the consulting room.

It was a beautiful room – not at all clinical, and without a trace of the dust that Ludwig had noticed outside in the waiting room. An ornate, walnut filing cabinet matched an oval writing table. A brown leather reclining chair (the doctor’s) and a Chesterfield sofa both melted into the huge, wine-coloured rug. A crystal decanter of water and six glasses stood ready on the table and a soft lamplight enhanced the little natural light that came in from the window – the waiting room faced onto the Lake; the consulting room had its roots in the mountain. Solid roots. They made sure that nothing could ever disturb the calm of Dr. Grunfeld’s consulting room – not unless Judgement Day came and the mountain itself crumbled.

I’m sorry to bother you, Doctor, Ludwig started, before the doctor had had time to close the door, let alone sat down. I’m not ill. It’s not about me. It’s just...

The front door of the house was flung open and there was a sound of boots crossing the hallway, into the waiting room. Before Ludwig had had time to wonder whether he should be relieved or annoyed at the interruption, a peremptory knock on the consulting room door was followed by the appearance of two policemen inside the room. One of them was young and looked like he’d only just graduated from the university. When he took off his cap, his blond hair sat evenly-parted and perfectly combed on his head. He was strikingly tall and so impeccably dressed in his uniform that Ludwig felt shabby by comparison.

The other man was older – at least the age of Ludwig’s father. He had a ruddy complexion and the sort of paunch which suggested his days of volunteering for extra duties or after-hours training sessions were long over and he probably preferred to spend his evenings indoors with a glass of beer and a good dinner. He was clearly in charge, though, so after introducing himself as Detective Inspector Blunt (and the other man as Sergeant Wiener) and apologising for interrupting (though both men looked entirely unapologetic) it was Blunt who explained their business. I’m afraid... (he cleared his throat and looked pointedly at Ludwig as though to suggest that Dr. Grunfeld might ask him to leave them alone. The doctor stayed silent.) ...afraid there’s been a fatality in the scrubwood area outside Tegernsee. The sort of thing that might require a doctor to view the body before it’s moved if you understand what I mean. And you’re the closest doctor to the station. Wonder if you’d be so good as to accompany us?

Dr. Grunfeld breathed a sigh that might have been exhaustion or might have been relief. Then he glanced appraisingly at Ludwig. I’ll just fetch my bag. Would you have room in your vehicle by any chance for young Ludwig to escort me? He has good eyes whereas mine are failing, rather.

When Blunt looked sceptical, he added: I’m thinking of training him up to be my assistant.

That wasn’t quite true, said Ludwig’s mind. Dr. Grunfeld was perfectly well aware that what he wanted to be (now he had given up on the notion of spying as a career) was a herbalist, not a doctor. And even if he’d forgotten that – even then – they hadn’t seen each other for a year – not formally, not properly – not anything other than a Hello, Ludwig; Hello Doctor, in the butcher’s. He wasn’t a sickly child any more; he was a strong young man; he...

It did the trick. Blunt gave him an encouraging smile. And ten minutes later he was marching down the footpath, up towards the clearing, noticing the clusters of lilies which had been recently trampled.

Then his eyes fell on the world’s most horrible corpse.

FRAU RÜCKER WAS IN an uncharacteristically good mood. Miti wondered whether she might ask for a second helping of lunch. Or whether she might ask a question. Which did she want most, she mused: food or understanding? Understanding? Food? Food, perhaps. She always seemed so hungry, lately. She looked at herself daily, many times a day – in the long mirrors of the hall where she had ballet lessons; in the full-length mirror in her parents’ wardrobe when she could sneak into their bedroom; in shop windows. She was not so much taller than last summer, when she’d climbed out of her bedroom window to run up the mountain after the boys. She wasn’t even that much broader; she’d checked that very morning. Still, her body felt different; it didn’t do tomboyish things quite as willingly. And it was always hungry.

She looked at the sliced meat and the dauphinoise potatoes. Her mother had taken only half a portion. As always. How did she manage to eat so little and still glide through the day? 

Miti put down her cutlery decisively: food could be wheedled out of her father later that afternoon if she went to surgery and helped out for an hour or so, calming the animals, arranging his notes, sterilising the syringes. But her father never talked about religion. Sometimes she worried that he didn’t really believe – that he’d be condemned to Hell for his unbelief, like the Protestants and the heathens and those who died in a state of mortal sin, having not made confession. Sometimes she worried that it was her responsibility to convince him and redeem his soul. But that was for another day. First, she had to understand...

Mutti, can I ask about the Jews?

The Jews, child? They’re no concern of yours; don’t worry.

Miti’s hair had grown back to shoulder-length since the day her mother had made her cut it all off as a punishment last summer. She fingered the ends of it absent-mindedly. Father Meyer gave a sermon about them at Mass yesterday.

Oh yes, so he did. Well, what was it you didn’t understand, dear?

Are all the Jews of today descended from the same Jews who killed Jesus?

Yes. Naturally. And they’d do it again as soon as blink.

Why?

Why what?

Why would they want to kill Jesus when he was doing good and healing the sick and...? (and why wouldn’t they have learned their lesson, she wanted to add).

Because they don’t think like you and I, dear. They’re not really concerned with good. Or with providing for the sick – unless it’s their own, of course. You may as well ask why the dog barks at the cat and the cat hisses at the dog, and both would take a good chunk out of the other given half the chance. You can’t ask Why?" about Evil. Evil just is. Some people are evil; it’s as simple as that."

But how does a person become evil?

Evil people are born evil.

With hindsight, the potatoes would have been a better idea, but having started to question, Miti couldn’t leave off until she had reached the end of what was bothering her. She knew from her catechism ever so many years ago that everybody is born evil. Since Adam and Eve and the Tree: that’s why the blood of Jesus was needed – to wipe away the sin in baptism... Mutti, what about the Jews who get baptised?  Father Meyer said they were damned too.

Well, so they are.

But then... doesn’t baptism count?  Wasn’t Jesus crucified so that everyone’s sins could be forgiven?

Frau Rücker started to pile up the plates – a sure sign she wanted Miti to stop asking questions, as normally she left them for the maid. In general, yes, she said with a sigh. But there are some sins which are so appalling, so unthinkable...  Frau Rücker shuddered. You’re lucky, my dear: you can’t imagine what Evil is really like. You said so yourself: you can’t understand why the Jews would have killed Jesus. Well neither can I. But I do understand why God would never forgive people who did that. Why! she gasped, Would you want to spend Eternity with souls like that?

Miti swallowed hard. She wasn’t hungry any more. Her mind was too full of memories of all the times she had been to confession – almost every week since she’d made her first Holy Communion when she was eight. It had never occurred to her that one day she might do something that would mean the priest wouldn’t grant her absolution. Or that if he did, it wouldn’t work. She looked at her mother over the table: how did she know for an absolute certainty that there wasn’t a single drop of Jewish blood in her ancestry, something that would make the evil take her over so she would end up doing something unforgiveable and spend Eternity apart from the rest of her family and all her friends and the love of God? 

The cuckoo in the clock in the hallway stuck its head out at her, like a mocking tongue. Two o’clock – time to move on with the afternoon tasks. Miti had been going to help her father; she remembered the intention clearly. As if it was the intention of another Miti in another house. Another century, perhaps. Aimlessly, she went out to their tiny garden, wandered around the greenhouse, under the pear tree arch and out of the gate to the road.

NOT THAT LUDWIG HAD anything to compare it to, but the corpse was quite a few degrees worse than he’d been expecting. Gustav, who’d not been bracing himself for the sight, had blacked out on the Pfennigers’ porch and only been revived by cold water, strong coffee and chocolate. Then he had been driven home by one of the two junior police officers who were the first to the scene – which had at least managed to silence his parents’ arguments for a few hours.

Rigor mortis clenched the woman’s teeth and her fists, and set her eyes unblinkingly wide, making her look like she was enraged as much as terrified. The blood around her had congealed and turned almost as black as the beetles which were clustering about the body – their incessant movement gave the unnerving impression that blood was still flowing. She must have been an oddly-shaped woman even alive – her head was too big and her wrists and ankles too thin. The doctor asked permission to open up her skirt to view the wounds, which required some skill and a strong stomach, as the blood had stuck the cloth firmly to her legs and some of the skin came away with the material. Her pelvis had been crushed on one side by something hard and blunt (Wiener made a note: Club(?) wound to Left Pelvis, though he thought privately the damage could have been achieved with a fist, too, if the person was particularly strong, or irate) and the femur had suffered a clean fracture. The right hand side had suffered less: Wound pattern consistent with a right-handed attacker facing the victim, he scribbled.

The legs were roughly drawn up, knees angled unevenly to the left, a fact which apparently indicated that the victim’s legs had not been tied. The amount of blood lost from the hip and pelvis, according to Dr. Grunfeld, suggested that that wound had preceded death by a considerable period – perhaps as much as ten or fifteen minutes. (Ludwig winced.)

Finally, with no regard for her dignity (she was, after all dead) they started to strip the body – having first made a note of the fact that her blouse and skirt were neatly buttoned and fastened in a secure way, a fact which suggested she had not removed her clothes or had them removed since dressing that morning. There was one large bruise mark on each arm: the marks were of equal surface area and indicated almost equal pressure (the bruise on the left arm was very slightly darker). The fingernail of the fourth finger on the left hand had been cut with a rough blade, or bitten off. She was wearing a large sapphire ring on the middle finger of her right hand but no wedding or engagement ring. There was no other jewellery on her person, aside from an earring in the left ear. It was an onyx, embedded in a gold stud. Her other ear had been ripped and was unadorned, suggesting that her attacker had torn out that earring. There was surprisingly little blood around the tear in the earlobe, which might suggest that the earring had been taken after death. There again, the evidence was inconclusive: as the doctor explained, earlobes don’t have many blood vessels.

Her thighs were skinny and unmarked. Out of consideration, perhaps, for Ludwig, they left her underwear on, but Dr Grunfeld made a brief examination of the parts her knickers concealed and gave a signal Ludwig took to mean she’d been untouched there. Then he moved to examine the blood round the back of her head. As he shifted it gingerly to one side, Dr. Grunfeld grimaced: there had been a brutal injury to the occipital bone – he pointed out how the back and base of the skull were cracked and splintered. Finally, very