Deadly Secrets (Detective Erika Foster #6)(90)

‘Officers, this is too much. My mother is an old lady, look at her!’ said Charles.

‘Too much?’ said Erika, starting to lose it. ‘Just because she’s an old lady, we should just forget? Or perhaps I’m being too political? Or am I trying to force my liberal agenda onto you?’ Charles was shaking his head. ‘It makes me sick that people think anything to do with the Holocaust and concentration camps is somehow diminished by time. The systematic slaughter of millions of people based on their genetic makeup or the colour of their skin is something which should never be forgotten or excused. It’s still going on today. Your mother is as guilty today as she was all those years ago.’ She stared at Elsa, and looked around at the opulent house, at Elsa’s fine clothes and at the diamond earrings lying in their open box next to the tea cups.

‘Dr Schmidt, Dr Schmidt,’ muttered Elsa. ‘How old is he?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Erika.

‘Is he the same age as me?’ she said, thumping her chest with her fingers.

‘He’s of working age. In his fifties.’

‘Then how can he possibly know what it was like?’ Elsa spat.

‘You were a guard at a concentration camp, Elsa. It wasn’t a holiday camp!’ said Moss.

‘And if I had refused the job, they would have put me in that camp!’ insisted Elsa, her voice low, her eyes blazing. ‘The German soldiers, they came knocking around the farms… Where we lived it was farmland, we had a farm. My father was one of the best farmers for miles around, and they went to the farms, demanding that the young adults came to work at the camps. They told us if we didn’t, then we’d be put there with our families. You people never lived through it; you can’t imagine what it was like!’

‘And yet you lived through it, and you must have watched hundreds die, even thousands,’ said Erika.

‘Do you have family?’ snapped Elsa.

‘No.’

‘You?’ She pointed at Moss.

‘Yes,’ said Moss.

‘You have children?’

‘I have a small son.’

‘Then if the Germany army knocked on your door and told you that if you didn’t go and work in the camp, your little boy would be gassed? What would you do?’

‘I would fight. I would fight for my boy, and I would fight them,’ said Moss, red-faced and shaking.

‘Everyone has morals until it matters.’

Erika resisted the urge to punch the old woman in the face, and when she looked across, she could see Moss fighting the same impulse.

‘So, you trotted off every day to work and brutalised prisoners, sent people to their death, and played your part in the extermination of millions. Did you whistle on your way to work, thinking that you were safe?’

‘Of course not!’

‘The concentration camp where you were a guard was labelled grade three, which were the toughest camps for the “incorrigible political enemies of the Reich.” It was also one of the most profitable.’

‘How many times do I have to tell you. I didn’t agree with Hitler! I worked there because I had to!’

They were silent for a moment, and Erika could hear the clock ticking again.

‘Elsa. Your son married a Jewish woman,’ said Erika. ‘I just don’t understand.’

‘We didn’t know,’ said Charles, speaking for the first time. ‘My father went to his grave not knowing. My mother, she changed her details when she immigrated to England. She forged her papers. Dad knew she was Austrian, and that she was the daughter of a farmer. He knew that Austria had been occupied, but none of us knew…’ He buried his head in his hands.

‘When did Marissa find out your identity?’ asked Erika.

‘A few weeks before Christmas. I have kept this secret for years, and all it took was for the safe to not be locked properly.’ Elsa shook her head. ‘One mistake, one small mistake and it all… It all comes crashing down.’

‘You kept the paperwork in that safe, and your husband didn’t know?’

‘I had a safety deposit box in a bank in London… I opened it when I first came to the UK in the 1950s. I kept hold of that paperwork, because that was who I was. My family name wasn’t anything to do with the Nazi party. It was a good name. I should have burned the papers, but I couldn’t. Then, the bank was moving premises, and they contacted me a few years ago, just after my husband died, and I put them in my safe here at home.’ Elsa sat back and closed her eyes.

‘When did Marissa start to blackmail you?’ asked Moss.

‘Yes. I let her have those diamond earrings, to begin with. I thought it would be enough to keep her quiet, but it wasn’t. She realised what the consequences would be for my family, for Charles and his family, if people found out. The Litman’s have a lucrative jewellery business in Hatton Garden, which is historically a Jewish place of business. Think what would happen if it was made public that his mother…’ her voice trailed off. She looked weary now, resigned to her fate.

‘You told us that Marissa had been grabbed by a man wearing a gas mask, a few weeks before Christmas,’ said Erika.

‘Yes.’

‘You wanted to make us think that she had been targeted by him before?’