The Milan Contract Read online

  “I admit that it is strange, and I can’t explain it yet.”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. Criminals don’t always act in ways we expect. But tell me, Lieutenant, do you think you will ever hear from her, or him again?”

  “Absolutely, Colonel. I believe they’re just two young people who have somehow managed to get themselves mixed up in a whole pile of trouble.”

  The colonel’s eyes didn’t leave Conza’s.

  “But according to the Abebe girl, this Kadin Bennani lad has admitted killing Stolz.”

  For the first time during the meeting, Conza felt less sure of himself – and his instincts.

  “Of course you’re right, sir. But until I’ve heard what he has to say, I’m not prepared to throw him to the wolves.”

  For one dreadful moment, Conza feared he’d spoken too forcefully, so was relieved when a smile touched the colonel’s lips.

  “I agree. Thank you, Lieutenant. Keep me informed.”

  The colonel turned to a folder on his desk and Conza was left in no doubt that the meeting had ended. He stood up and had to resist the urge to tiptoe out of the office. Conza saluted and gently pulled the door closed behind him.

  He went back to his office and debated whether to bother re-interviewing Katherine Harper. It seemed pointless now and the Stolz family rift was almost certainly irrelevant. But Moretti’s story about Lukas Stolz and his sister had pricked his curiosity and even though he was desperate to hear the voice of Kadin Bennani, that call was still five hours away; if he called at all. Time would drag if he just hung around the office. He had to keep himself moving.

  He left the office and waved down a taxi.

  51

  Hotel Castello, Milan, Italy

  He’d called ahead, so it wasn’t long before Katherine Harper appeared in reception.

  The lobby was bare oak, black slate and smoked glass. Vivaldi’s ‘Spring’ trickled through unseen speakers. The air was tinged with fragrant rosemary and expensive perfume. Two early morning tennis players sauntered by; tanned legs, bright white skirts and gold wristbands. They gave him a playful smile as they passed by. ‘Perfect teeth,’ thought Conza.

  Two uniformed concierges eyed him with interest. They’d heard him say “Lieutenant” to the receptionist. Policemen, at least low-ranking policemen, were not commonly seen at the Castello.

  Conza’s mother would have opined that Katherine Harper ‘had looked after herself’. She was slim, bright-eyed and dressed in a calf-length black dress. A small tear drop of pink and blue diamonds hung on a slender chain around her neck. Her hair was grey, but the wrinkles were light and only around her eyes. She was with another woman, younger, not quite pretty, but attractive all the same.

  “Lieutenant Conza, this is my private secretary, Georgina.”

  Georgina smiled but did not offer her hand.

  “Thank you for agreeing to meet me, Mrs Harper. Please accept my condolences.”

  Her eyebrows rose for a moment.

  “You speak English very well, Lieutenant.”

  “My mother was English. In many ways, it was my first language. At least when I was young.”

  “You are still young, Lieutenant.”

  He felt his face warm. Georgina smirked.

  “I asked the hotel to provide us with a room so that you and Katherine can talk,” Georgina said as she turned away to lead them along a glass-walled corridor. She ushered them into a small oak-panelled anteroom set back from the main foyer. On the other side of the window, the tennis players were warming up.

  “I will bring drinks. Coffee for you, Lieutenant?”

  “Thank you, yes.”

  Conza turned to Katherine Harper who was watching the two young women on the court outside.

  “Thank you again for seeing me. I only have a few questions. Just following up on your discussion with Sergeant Moretti.”

  Conza took out a notepad.

  She turned her back on the window and paused before answering, her eyes warm, the hint of a wry smile.

  “I have to say, I’m not surprised. I don’t think your sergeant was wholly satisfied with some of the answers I gave him.”

  Conza knew better than to respond. She would fill the silence.

  “The story behind my family is somewhat complicated. I’m not sure how much of it is relevant to the murder of my brother, but I have arrived at the conclusion that if I leave Italy without telling you the truth, I will always wonder. Which is why I agreed to this meeting.”

  Conza smiled encouragingly.

  “All I can ask is that if you discover what I’m about to tell you is as irrelevant as I suspect, you give me your word that it will remain between us. There has been too much pain in my family for too long, I really don’t want to add to that misery.”

  “Mrs Harper, you have my word that if you tell me something that is unconnected to the death of your brother, I will never tell a soul.”

  “Very well. I will take you at your word. But we need to start again. And, if I’m to expose my family’s dirty laundry, I need to do it with someone I can at least call by their first name.”

  “Raphael. My name is Raphael; with a ‘ph’ on the insistence of my English mother. Or Raffy if you prefer.”

  “Thank you, Raffy. Please call me Katherine.”

  Conza placed his notepad on the coffee table. She acknowledged the gesture with a thin smile.

  “Secrets. My family has always had secrets. Now, where to begin?”

  She moved over to the sofa and sat down, feet together, hands clasped on her knees.

  “The first thing to tell you is that Stolz isn’t actually our family name. My father was born Dieter Reisman. He was Jewish. In 1936, he worked as a junior clerk in the Interior Ministry in Berlin. He saw what was coming. He was a very clever man. He moved his parents to France and took the name of a dead dock worker from Bremerhaven.”

  “The authorities never found out?”

  “No, he had a meticulous mind. Lukas inherited many of his traits. Not that my brother would credit him, of course. My father left Berlin, extinguished all traces of the Reisman name and moved to Potsdam.”

  “Why didn’t he go to France with his parents?”

  “Because he was a patriot, Lieutenant. Germany was his weakness.”

  She shuffled in her chair but quickly composed herself.

  “The labour camps opened up after Kristallnacht in 1938, and my father took a job as a postal worker. I don’t think he was very good at it, but the work gave him access to the names and addresses of those he was trying to help.”

  “Jews?”

  “And others, especially in the early days. Many of his communist friends were among those he helped get out of Germany.”

  “He was a communist?”

  “Very much so. Communism was his real faith, far more than Judaism. Indeed, he despised religion.”

  “It must have been very dangerous work, infiltrating the Nazi regime.”

  “I’m sure it was. But I believe it was in his blood, helping others escape tyranny. I think he saw it as a war, his own private insurrection.”

  “Sort of anti-authoritarian?”

  “You’re beginning to understand, Raffy. My father was a revolutionary.”

  The door opened. Katherine stood up and looked out of the window as Georgina set down a tray of drinks and pastries. When they were alone again, she returned to the sofa.

  “He met my mother in 1949. They were married a year later. She was fifteen years younger than him. Quite common in those days.”

  She poured coffee into two Meissen porcelain cups.

  “Germany was in a sorry mess after the war ended and it only got worse after the wall was built. East Germany became isolated. My father said that from then on, he’d always thought of himself as an exile.”

  “But as a communist, didn’t he welcome East Germany’s move towards the Soviet Union?”

  She placed her cup down and dabbed the co
rner of her mouth with a fine damask napkin.

  “When I was ten, my father showed me an empty factory building in Mitte. There were holes in the floor where the machinery used to be bolted down. The Russians had all the best machines in East Germany shipped back to Moscow.”

  She was staring into the distance now.

  “He said, ‘The uniforms may not be the same colour, but they’re no different to the Nazis. Stalin, Hitler, Brezhnev. They’re all cut from the same cloth.’ I think he quite liked Khrushchev, but he didn’t last long. Germany had been ripped apart. He had a new revolution to fight.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Oh, she agreed. Even before they met, she’d been helping people escape, over the border, and inside Berlin, across the wall.”

  “And she was shot trying to help a family escape?”

  “Yes.”

  Katherine Stolz was staring into her past. Seeing her mother again. Blood running down her leg from the hole in her back, beseeching little Katherine to run. The searchlights. Dogs barking. A siren.

  “I was with her that night because a mother and child were rarely stopped by the patrols. She was a nurse at the hospital in Friedrichshain. She taught me how to feign sickness. When we were stopped, she would tell them I was ill and she was taking me to the doctors, or hospital.”

  “You must have been very scared.”

  “I don’t remember feeling frightened. It was all a game, I suppose.” She smiled, but Conza could see sadness in her eyes.

  “Who was the family? The ones trying to escape that night?”

  She sat upright, as if the question had startled her.

  “Felix and Eva Schuman, and their son. You may have heard of him. Josef Schuman.”

  “You mean Josef Schuman, the ex-German vice-chancellor?”

  “The very same.”

  “Yes, my father met him once.”

  “Really? Was your father in politics?”

  “No. Well, sort of. He was a diplomat. He died when I was quite young, but I remember him talking about Josef Schuman.”

  She wasn’t smiling and Conza suddenly felt very self-conscious.

  “What did he think of him?” It was a demand more than a question.

  Conza could see the entry in his diary, ‘Papa said Herr Schuman was a horrible beast.’

  “Truthfully, I don’t think he liked him very much. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be disrespectful. His family took you in after all.”

  “Please don’t concern yourself. Your father was right. He’s not a very nice man.”

  Conza felt as if he had passed a test. She suddenly relaxed.

  “Anyway, it wasn’t Josef who gave me a home, it was his parents. I don’t think he would have done the same if given the choice.”

  “Why did the Schumans need to get out of East Berlin?”

  “Felix Schuman was about to be arrested for treason. He had a job in the Defence Ministry and was passing confidential information to the British. He would’ve been shot, Eva and Josef sent off for re-education, if they were lucky. My mother overheard two Stasi officers talking about it at the hospital. The Schumans owe their life to my mother.”

  “What happened? What went wrong?”

  She closed her eyes.

  “There’s a bridge over the River Spree in Berlin called the Michaelbrücke. It used to mark the border between East and West Berlin. On the eastern shore, the bridge passes under the U-Bahn viaduct. Below are warehouses that open onto the water; built to service river barges, presumably. My father noticed that patrols in the area were sporadic and a narrow stretch of river near the bridge was not covered by floodlights.”

  “And that’s where they crossed?”

  “We all did. The Schumans, mother and me. In a small rowing boat, yes. We had to go with them, so we could take the boat back. So others could use it to escape.”

  “But you were spotted?”

  She stopped looking at Conza. She was in the boat. The oars knocking against the gunwale. Her mother pleading for Josef to lower his voice. The river lapping gently against the prow as they edged forward. The hollow rasp of wood on concrete as the keel scraped along the shoreline.

  She looked up.

  “We reached the western side of the river but were still in no man’s land. The Schumans managed to scramble up the embankment and get away, but I think the noise of the boat alerted the guards.”

  Conza could see tears gathering in her pale eyes.

  “I remember everything turning white, hearing the gunshot and my mother falling to her knees. Blood, I remember the blood.”

  “She was very brave, Katherine. She was wounded but managed to get you to safety.”

  “It’s nice of you to say that. But she died doing what she wanted to do, for other people.”

  ‘But not for you,’ Conza thought.

  “So, you shared a house with Josef Schuman in England, I understand?”

  “Yes, for two years. Until he was old enough to return to Germany. I haven’t seen him since. Never wanted to.”

  “You didn’t get on?”

  “Raffy, I’m not the sort of person who speaks ill of others. We’re all products of our childhoods, I’m painfully aware of that. And we don’t get to choose our parents. I have always tried not to judge.”

  Conza pretended to write.

  “And God knows, young Josef had his fair share of troubles as a young man. Imagine what it was like for him, being ripped away from home, school, friends. Escaping a regime that he knew would have almost certainly executed his father.”

  “It’s bound to have an effect,” Conza agreed.

  “I’m sure it did. But even without the trauma, Josef Schuman was not a nice person.”

  “In what way?”

  “He was devious, manipulative. He could be charming when it suited him, thoughtful, kind even. But he possessed a dark side, a cruel side.”

  Kathrine Harper leant forwards.

  “It may sound stupid, but he used to hurt my dog. Pinch her, make her cry. I think he got some sort of kick from inflicting pain. Or maybe he just enjoyed exerting power over the weak. Lulu, my poor dog.”

  “Did his parents ever challenge him?”

  “His father did. Actually, he was quite intolerant of Josef, perhaps even disappointed. I think Felix knew how nasty and underhand his son could be. Josef’s mother idolised him, however. She would never allow a bad word to be spoken about her son.”

  “You were ten when you escaped, how old was Josef?”

  “He’s almost six years older than me. A year younger than Lukas. He went to university in Germany when I was thirteen. It was like a shadow had lifted. I was comparatively happy for a while.”

  Conza wrote a couple of dates in his notepad.

  “I left when I was eighteen. I was grateful to the Schumans, especially Felix. He was a caring and generous man, Raffy, and I will never forget his kindness. He protected me.”

  “From Josef?”

  “Yes, I think he did. There were always rows and I was often at the centre of them. I didn’t recognise it at the time, but I now believe Felix stood up to Josef because of the way he treated me.”

  “And how did he treat you?”

  “Oh, you know; crueller than teasing, but short of anything criminal. My toys would go missing, or I would find them broken or burnt. That sort of thing. Sounds trivial now, but at the time, it was very painful.”

  “No really, it doesn’t sound trivial. You’d been taken from your family. You must have felt very lonely.”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Georgio, Sergeant Moretti, told me you managed to stay in touch with your father?”

  “On the odd occasion. Sometimes an escapee would deliver a coded note. Secrets, Raffy, always secrets.”

  “I expect you missed him and your brother, of course.”

  She glanced at him and shook her head gently.

  “I will get there, Lieutenant, be patient. This is the firs
t time I’ve discussed my family with a stranger. I will get there.”

  Conza looked down at his shoes.

  “My father sent me a message after the Berlin Wall fell. We arranged to meet in Berlin.”

  “In January 1990?”

  “That is correct. We visited my mother’s grave together. It was the most difficult day of my life.”

  “But your brother…”

  “Wasn’t there. That is also correct.” She stood again, staring out of the window.

  “Can you tell me why, Katherine? What did your father say to you?”

  She turned, the tears picking out the soft down on her cheeks and chin. She suddenly looked old.

  “He told me what Lukas had done. My father was dying and needed me to know.”

  She folded her arms, angry palms slapping against her biceps. Conza didn’t blink. And then it came; bubbling and angry, like water from a burst main.

  “My father told me the truth. It was Lukas who had informed on Felix Schuman. Lukas who told the Stasi what Josef had confided to him about his father’s secret radio. Lukas who started the chain of events that put my mother and me on the embankment that night. He may not have pulled the trigger, but it was Lukas who killed my mother.”

  52

  Garage 8, Vialle Vincenzo Lancetti, Milan, Italy

  The tip-off came early on Wednesday morning in the form of an anonymous call to what had been dubbed the ‘Hotel Napoli incident room’.

  The garage and surrounding area were cordoned off and the padlock on the door removed with a bolt cutter. Two plastic-suited forensics experts started to catalogue and search the property for the gun and clothes that had been used in the murder of Lukas Stolz.

  After three hours, the cordon was packed away, and a letter, sealed in a plastic bag, was taped to the door. The letter apologised for any inconvenience caused by the ‘legitimate police operation’ and invited ‘Whoever it may concern’ to contact the Ministry of Justice to file a claim in compensation for the broken lock.

  In the garage next door, a blue Vespa continued to gather dust.

  53