‘You never kept in touch?’
As Karen intended, the question cut through the start of a potentially awkward silence and took both men by surprise.
‘No.’ It was her father who answered. ‘We never had any understanding that we would. Beyond one letter to say that we had safely arrived in England, I don’t think I ever considered it.’
He paused. Karen watched him choosing his words, picking his way through a language he hadn’t spoken properly in years but was determined not to be defeated by.
‘With hindsight, I would say that was deliberate, wouldn’t you, Michael? Neither of us wanting to play any more part in the other’s life than we already had.’
Michael nodded. ‘With you, yes. I did, however, write to Liese, although not as regularly as I would have liked. It wasn’t easy, especially when Western intransigence forced Russia to blockade Berlin in 1948 and cut it off from the rest of the world. But once that was lifted, I did my best to stay in touch. Did she show you my letters, or tell you about them?’
Andrew shook his head. Michael sighed. It sounded as if he was letting go of a long-held hope.
‘Then it is as I feared: my letters meant nothing to her. She never wrote back to any of them. I convinced myself at first that, because I moved around so much in the first years after you left, her replies didn’t reach me. Then there was no answer to the card I sent in 1953 with a permanent address and I couldn’t fool myself any longer that she cared. I stopped writing after that.’
Andrew refilled his cup. ‘I may have had a hand in her silence. I encouraged her to leave her life in Germany behind. I didn’t necessarily include you in that but—’
‘You’re not sorry if that’s how she took it.’
Andrew shrugged. ‘It’s not as if remembering did her any good, so, no, I’m not sorry at all.’
Karen watched with increasing unease as the two men circled each other. They were both so stubborn; both so determined to prove that they had cared for Liese the best. She didn’t want the meeting to fall apart before she outlined her plan for the rest of the trip, but she had a nasty feeling that’s where it was heading. She glanced over at Markus, who nodded and interrupted in time to stop Michael from snapping back.
‘It might not have been your influence, Mr Cartwright, that stopped her writing. It could have been guilt, or fear.’
Michael’s tightly contained anger shifted from Andrew to his son. ‘What are you talking about?’
Markus turned to his father, speaking slowly enough so that Andrew could keep up, waiting if Karen needed to help him, and continued as if he hadn’t registered Michael’s sharpening tone.
‘Karen has told me about the problems Liese was having in the last years of her life. We haven’t had time to discuss those yet, but I understand a fear of being caught runs through the scrapbook she kept, as well as guilt for a number of things she saw herself as responsible for. Some of her “crimes” make more sense than others, but the events surrounding the guard’s death were chief among them. Perhaps she felt she had left you in too much danger. You were, after all, the one on the ground if anything came to light. Perhaps staying in contact was simply too much for her.’
‘Markus might be right.’
To Karen’s relief, her father’s voice had lost its combative edge. He rubbed his eyes and coughed, and his tone grew softer.
‘She missed you, Michael. If she got your letters, they would have meant a good deal to her. She used to mention you sometimes, after Karen was born, and wonder if you were all right. It occurred to me then that I should try to find you, but I didn’t know how. I knew nothing about the postcard until Karen uncovered it. Liese could easily have forgotten she had it.’
He stopped suddenly and then sat up straighter. ‘I’m sorry, Michael. I owed you more. The truth is, I was afraid. That one day, despite what she decided when the body was found, that she would leave me and choose you. I was afraid of that my whole marriage.’
He slumped back as he finished, as if the confession had winded him.
Michael stumbled as he started to speak. Karen gripped Markus’s hand to stop him trying to find Michael’s words for him. When he recovered himself, Michael’s voice was as soft as Andrew’s.
‘You are so wrong. She wouldn’t have. She never could have. You heard her say it: when Liese looked at me, all she saw was Lottie’s shadow. It hurt beyond words to hear that, but I had no doubt she meant it. She chose you, and that was the right thing. The only chance of happiness, the only chance of safety Liese had lay in marrying you.’
Andrew was already shaking his head.
Karen repeated Michael’s words in English in case Andrew hadn’t fully followed them but it was clear that wasn’t the problem: he understood what Michael had said, but he wouldn’t accept it. Karen couldn’t bear to see them both trapped in a loop of guilt and denial. She turned to Markus. ‘Tell them what you know.’
He jumped straight in on her cue with the facts. ‘There was an investigation into the murder.’
His directness snapped Andrew and Michael out of the fog that was circling them exactly as Karen had hoped. Their heads shot up as if they were pulled by the same string. Markus turned to his father.
‘The original article that you kept about the body being recovered was from the Berliner Morgenpost. I went to their offices and had a dig in their archives. There were more reports filed than the one you kept. You never saw any of them?’
‘No.’
It was clear from the shock on Michael’s face that he was telling the truth.
‘Once Liese left, I threw myself into my work. I was writing then, and I was more and more in the Russian sector of Berlin, more immersed in the doctrines that eventually split the East off from the West in 1949. A newspaper like that would have quickly slipped off my radar. And the papers I did read wouldn’t have mentioned the death of a Nazi, unless there was a specific link to Russia or the communist struggle.’ He shrugged. ‘I have lived my life in a narrow world, Markus. I am too old to apologise for it.’
‘I don’t need you to. All that matters is that you both know the truth now.’
‘They identified the guard then? I assume it was from the scar on her hand?’
Her father sounded so tired; Karen slipped her fingers through his and squeezed them.
Markus nodded. ‘Yes. From what I could gather, it took almost six weeks in the end to get the post-mortem done and marry up the body with the missing persons’ report. Her name was Hilda Grieff; she was thirty-four. She had lived her whole life in Fürstenberg. There was nothing special about her, except where she chose to work and half the town, if the paper is to be believed, found employment in the camp the same as her. At first, her husband raised the roof and demanded her killer be found and brought to justice. Then he went quiet and that’s when the Morgenpost got interested. It didn’t take them long to discover she had been a guard, especially as the Ravensbrück trial was still ongoing. They managed to unearth a picture of her in her uniform. It jogged memories. Someone remembered Lottie.’
‘Then the thing we were most afraid of happened.’
Karen wasn’t sure which man said it.
Markus corrected himself quickly. ‘Yes, but it wasn’t as clear-cut as I made it sound. Someone remembered a child being murdered by the lake, but no one remembered the name and the dates were hazy. But the paper ran the story packed full of outrage, and if Liese had been in Berlin and seen it…’