The Legacy (35 page)

The inspector answered, ‘He's already told us that, Mrs Farrington. There's no suspicion attached to you, but we have to interview everyone who might have a motive, however unlikely. Our efforts are being concentrated in Birmingham. He had received death threats; certain restaurant proprietors didn't like competition from his curry house franchise. The Asian community is very law abiding but even they have their criminal elements. The motor cycle assassin is more of a Middle Eastern tool, but it's caught on in the drugs world for instance. It's possible that drugs were involved here too; Mr Farrington might have been getting into more than he reckoned. Well, thank you for your time. We'll be off now.'

Christina stood up and walked to the front door with them. On the top step the inspector turned to her. ‘Nasty business,' he said. ‘I hope we catch the man who did it, but I don't hold out much hope.'

Then he hurried down the steps to the police car, and they drove off. Harry had come out beside her. He slipped his hand through her arm. ‘That was quick. I told them they were wasting their time. Come on darling, you're shivering; inside, out of the cold.'

She didn't notice what he had called her. In the hall she asked him, ‘Do you think they'll catch the man?' He shook his head.

‘Not a chance. He was a pro; probably out of the country by now. Contract murder is a very expensive business; the boys in Birmingham must have paid out a fortune. Hello, Mrs Manning. Those are nice roses.'

She passed by them into the study carrying a vase. ‘I've done my best, but I'm not able to do arrangements like Mrs Farrington.' There was a fire blazing in the grate. The space above was empty; the Tudor child was still in London being examined by the excited experts. Mrs Manning put the vase on the table by the window. Christina took the white card out of her pocket and dropped it into the heart of the fire.

‘Who sent those?' Harry asked. ‘A secret admirer? I'm jealous.' She had her back to him when she answered.

‘You needn't be. Just a friend, wishing me luck.'

‘Well,' Harry said, ‘you won't need it now; there won't be a case. My guess is Fay only went along to support Alan. So you're safe now, Christa; you and Belinda. I don't care if it sounds callous, but it couldn't have happened to a nastier man. Whoever killed Alan did you a favour.' For a moment she looked at the red roses, standing stiffly in a tall vase.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I suppose they did.'

It was nearly a month before another police officer came. The hunt for Alan's murderer hadn't produced a suspect and public interest had long since died down. She had sent flowers and a letter to Fay, but Fay had ignored the letter and returned the flowers to the florist. The case was withdrawn from the High Court list. Christmas was only ten days away when a man from Scotland Yard's Special Branch drove down to see her. He looked round the hall, decorated with holly and ivy, and with the massive Christmas tree glittering in the oriel window. He was quite a young man, probably in his late thirties; he could have been a middle manager in some business.

‘Lovely place you've got here,' he remarked. ‘Christmas must be great in a house like this.'

Belinda and two friends came hurrying past them, giggling and clutching CDs. They were going through a pop music phase; Christina had given Belinda her present ahead of time. It was a complete tape and CD player, state-of-the-art, she was assured by the salesman. It was upstairs in Belinda's room and out of earshot.

The policeman's name was Malcolm Dunn, and there was a faint Scots lilt when he spoke. ‘It's very good of you to see me, especially at such a busy time,' he said, ‘but I'm away after the holiday and didn't want to delay till I got back. Is there somewhere private we can talk, Mrs Farrington?'

In the red study they sat opposite each other. Mrs Manning, beady-eyed with curiosity, brought them a tray of sherry. The Tudor portrait, identified as school of Holbein, rather than a work by the great painter himself, watched them from above the fireplace. The experts had been deeply disappointed. Malcolm Dunn sipped his sherry.

Christina said, ‘You said you wanted to ask me some questions, Mr Dunn. There's nothing more I can tell you about my stepson than I told the police at the time.'

‘I haven't come down to talk about your stepson, Mrs Farrington. I'm here to make some enquiries about Rolf Wallberg.' He saw her stiffen. ‘He acted as your lawyer I believe?'

‘Yes,' Christina answered. ‘He was attached to my solicitors, Harvey & Stone. My stepson was disputing his father's will. Would you please tell me what this is all about? Why do you want to ask me about Rolf Wallberg?'

‘You spent a lot of time together,' he remarked, ‘working on your legal affairs. He came down here quite frequently.' He saw a flush of colour come into her face. He'd touched a nerve and he was satisfied.

‘Yes, he did. So?'

‘Don't misunderstand me,' his tone was conciliatory. ‘I'm not questioning your relationship. He stayed here, and you also met in London; he must have talked about himself; it can't have been legal jargon all the time, surely?'

He could see how wary she was, how defensive. He decided to take a soft line; he didn't want her to hold anything back because he had antagonized her. He had a friendly smile and he used it then. ‘Mrs Farrington, I don't want to be intrusive, but I have to ask these questions. Let me put it another way. Did you and he become friendly? Did he talk about himself?'

Christina hesitated. ‘Not much. He was a very private person. I knew he was Swedish, like me, and he practised law in Stockholm.'

‘And that was all he told you?'

Another hesitation, then she said, ‘He did say he was adopted and brought up in Gothenburg; it sounded a miserable childhood. That's all I know.'

He sipped the sherry again. ‘Well, that was the truth anyway,' he remarked. ‘He was adopted by a couple and brought up in Gothenburg, but he is not Swedish. He's a German, Mrs Farrington.'

She wasn't good at hiding her feelings. She stared at him.

‘German?'

‘Yes. Why don't I just paint the picture for you, then maybe you can come up with something that might help me?'

‘If I can,' Christina said slowly. ‘If I understood what this is all about.'

‘Wallberg is his adopted name. Both his parents were German born, so-called refugees who got into Sweden at the end of the war. Your country was neutral, but it had a pro-German element; they made it easy for some very dubious characters to slip in and settle there, and Wallberg's natural father was one of them. His mother was only seventeen when he was born, unmarried—seduced by this much older friend of her family. It's a common story, happens all the time. When the boy was born, her family didn't want to know about him and the father didn't want to know either; they put him up for adoption and he ended up in Gothenburg with a childless couple—God-fearing Lutherans. If he told you it was miserable, I'll bet it was.' He paused. ‘He was clever and studied hard. He left home as soon as he graduated; there wasn't much love between them, and he cut himself off as soon as he could—didn't even go to their funerals.'

‘How do you know all this?' Christina demanded. ‘Why would you investigate him like this?'

‘Because it's my department's job,' he explained. ‘We work very closely with Interpol. Terrorism is a worldwide problem and we rely on each other's services for this kind of information.'

Terrorism.
He saw her hand clench on the arm of her chair; that had touched another nerve.

‘Like a lot of adopted kids,' Dunn went on, ‘even ones who've had loving parents and been happy, he wanted to find out about his real family. Being a clever man and trained in the law, he soon got the basic facts. Unfortunately that didn't satisfy him, so he started digging deeper. What he found, Mrs Farrington, had a disastrous effect on him; it changed his life.' He looked up at her shrewdly. ‘His father was an SS officer, wanted for war crimes. He'd been based in Poland, working closely with the Gestapo, and had amassed a nice fortune from Jews hoping to save their lives by bribing him. He sent them to the death camps; he was responsible for hundreds of people going to Auschwitz. If he hadn't got out of Germany, he'd have been tried and hanged, but by the time Simon Wiesenthal's organization traced him to Sweden, it was too late. He was dead.' She had lost colour, but said nothing.

He went on, ‘He'd managed to smuggle the loot into Sweden, because apparently he was living very comfortably until he died of cancer in the late Sixties. Wallberg was born in '58, so he'd have been about eleven at the time. He didn't try and trace his mother; what he discovered about his father was enough. Now a shock of that kind can affect people in different ways, either they brush it aside—“I wasn't born, it's nothing to do with me”—that sort of reaction, or defensive—“I don't believe it; it's lies put out by the Allies and the Jews.” There's quite a few who took that line, and got on with their lives. But not Wallberg, he was different; it ate into him. I think a son of one of the biggest war criminals hanged at Nuremberg became a priest and tried to expiate the sins of his father like that, but Wallberg took another route. We only got on to him by chance. We were watching someone else—a woman; a very dangerous woman with the same background as his, only much worse. Her father had escaped to Chile via the SS underground organization that helped wanted Nazis with visas and forged passports. He'd married a rich Chilean girl, and this woman was their only child. Apparently,' he smiled in irony, ‘she was her father's pet; he doted on her. She found out what he really was when the West German government tried to extradite him for war crimes. They didn't succeed because the Chileans protected him, but there was a lot of publicity. He'd been a general in the SS in charge of the death squads in Russia and Poland, and was responsible for the murder of a million Jews by mass shooting, burying alive, and finally the mobile gas chamber—that was his brainchild; it killed thousands in a day. When the truth came out his wife refused to believe it, but his daughter did; she left home and came to Europe. She was a wealthy woman and she used her money; she made contacts, and Wallberg was one of them; that's when we started watching him. I know this all sounds like past history now, but a group of Germans hunting down ex-Nazis was something new. The woman, Irma was the name she used, was involved in kidnappings and several murders. She'd made her own atonement by offering her services to Mossad, Israeli counter-intelligence, and Wallberg and others did the same. We couldn't pin anything on them, but we knew what they were about. When Wallberg came to England to work for a Jewish firm, he became our responsibility. He'd come here for something or someone, and you were the only person he drew close to. Has anything I've said made sense to you?'

Christina drew a deep breath. ‘No,' she said.

He persisted. ‘Nothing at all?'

‘Nothing,' she repeated. ‘In fact I find the whole story very hard to believe.'

‘In a way', Dunn remarked, ‘I feel sorry for him.' He had dismissed her denial. ‘Guilt like that must be a nightmare. For him; for all of them. You know he's disappeared?'

‘I heard he'd left,' she answered. ‘Ruben Stone told me. I thought he'd gone back to Stockholm; his time in England was nearly over.'

‘He's not in Stockholm,' Dunn said. ‘We checked with his firm, and they don't know where he is. His flat's been cleared and the lease terminated; he's vanished. That's why I'm here.'

‘Yes,' Christina said. ‘Yes, I understand now.'

He shook his head a little; he sounded reproachful. ‘I wonder if you do, Mrs Farrington? These people are driven by guilt to make amends, but the irony of it is, they're behaving true to their genes. Irma is more her father's daughter than she realizes. You can't wipe out blood by more blood. Wallberg hasn't been involved in actual violence so far as we know, but there'll come a time, there always does.'

He stood up. Christina didn't move. ‘I've upset you,' he said, ‘I'm sorry. But it's better you know the truth. If he gets in touch with you, will you let me know?'

‘If I hear from him,' she said, ‘but I don't expect to.'

He nodded. ‘Probably not. My guess is he's pulled off something big for Mossad. I'd say he was in Israel; that's the deal they offer: a home and citizenship. Goodbye, Mrs Farrington. Don't get up please, I can find my own way out. And have a good Christmas.'

‘Thank you.' She heard the door close. A log broke in half and one smouldering end fell into the grate. Christina watched it smoking till the little flicker of flame died out. Dunn's empty sherry glass was within reach; slowly she got up, put it on the tray. The housekeeper would come in to collect it, now that the visitor had gone.

The little red room was full of him, he seemed to materialize in front of her. She had the illusion of being held in his arms, trying to resist and wanting to surrender. The man who'd instinctively filled her with disquiet, had been fleshed out now by the soft-spoken policeman. Driven by guilt, without roots or ties; deliberately cut off from human love.

She shivered, the room felt cold, claustrophobic. Outside the wintry sun was bright in a cold blue sky. She needed to feel space around her.

She walked for a long time, crossing the hard ground of the parkland, still rimed with frost in places. The red roses had died long ago and been thrown away.

He would be a life-long exile, because he had broken his own rules and learned to love.

Snow clouds scudded up from behind the thick woodlands and a shower, already turning into sleet, blew up and stung her face. The sharp crystals melted with the tears already there, as she turned against the squall.