Red Rainbow by G Johanson (top books of all time TXT) 📗

She could have organised a memorial once they were free to feel better about it.

Live and learn. If she managed to stay alive. Patience was asked to attend the Gestapo offices again the day after the funeral. They even sent some young soldiers to give her a lift. She was questioned by one of the same officers as last time with a different colleague. She’d had the senior one, in rank and age, last time, Big Gut as she christened him to herself as she’d not stored the name. Big Ears had sat in with him during the previous interrogation. He had Dead Eyes with him this time. She could not call them Balding Nazi purely because that could have been any of the three, all three of them fighting a receding hairline at different levels and thicknesses. The stresses of oppressing a nation. Big Gut’s hair seemed the thinnest, Dead Eyes still at the widow’s peak stage. Dead Eyes would appear handsome from a distance or with sunglasses on, strong-jawed and athletic, the blond member of the trio. His nickname was the problem. She expected cruelty from any of them, but he would – well, not even necessarily enjoy it, but he could inflict torture on her without a flicker of emotion for he appeared dead inside.

Patience had to work harder at getting their names right. Kretschmer, not Big Gut. The uniform surely masked the full girth, but she could see from his head, his chin and general shape that he was a portly man, late 40s or thereabouts. He did most of the talking just like last time. Mourning was not a crime, last she looked. If foolishness were, she was screwed. Attending a funeral just to make herself feel better. That didn’t work, she felt like shit now. She didn’t even remember fully what she’d said last time. She felt she’d been mostly truthful – she hoped she had as the questions came, with Kretschmer looking down at notes – in German – which she assumed was her previous statement.

“Remind me how you came to work for Deveral Meyer?”

“He offered me the job three years ago.”

“How did you find out about the vacancy?”

Patience exhaled and said, “Let me think.” She knew fine well how it came about, a job offer received at her father’s wake. She didn’t want to reveal the connection between her father and Deveral if she could help it.

“Take all the time you need.”

“I think... I think I heard about it at the market. I’m not 100% on that.”

“I’ve had two adult jobs and one boyhood one. A milk round – worse mornings than markets, though your father’s fish stall may have been an early start. I remember how they all came about,” Kretschmer said.

“It may have been my father mentioning it there, I’m not sure.”

“He was dead then, wasn’t he?”

“When he started the job, I was. He was. He may have mentioned it before, I mean. He hadn’t been dead long when I started.” Her words were a jangled mess. She didn’t know what she wanted to say or what they wanted to hear.

“Your father and Deveral Meyer knew each other, I understand.”

“They did, yes. But me and my mother didn’t know Deveral, he never came to the house, apart from the funeral. If you’re saying did that connection get me the job, absolutely.”

Dead Eyes had a contribution to make. “I understand your father used to offer his services as a medium.”

“Very rarely. People came to him.”

“What, they just psychically knew he could do it? They don’t sound like they would need his services,” Dead Eyes said wryly.

“It was known that he could do it. He didn’t advertise it, they sought him out. The fish market was his trade.”

“And you worked in the market too. Not with him, correct?” Kretschmer said, taking the lead again.

“We would go in together, sometimes meet for lunch. After work... it would depend, we both had social lives.”

“You sold jewellery, correct?”

“I assisted, yes.”

“Did you sell charms?”

“No. Sorry, I think we did. It wasn’t a magic stall.”

“I didn’t say it was and I didn’t ask the question.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologise for that,” Kretschmer said. What did he mean by that, that she had something else to apologise for? “Your father is offering contact with spirits to parties who came to him. Deveral Meyer and Florence Pascoe dabble in something supernatural that allows them to slaughter 85 men without laying a finger on them, no trace of poison in their lungs or elsewhere in their bodies. That’s a connection to my eyes. Pity your father isn’t here to consult with Meyer, though I’m sure his spirit would try and flee too. Mrs Pascoe has fled too, unfortunately. You met her?”

Patience nodded.

“Impressions?”

“...Unusual.”

“Even for theatrical folk?”

“She wasn’t... It’s hard to articulate. Her personality, her character, was the act. Her voice wasn’t standout. It wasn’t the voice of an angel.”

“That is a good way of putting it.”

She hadn’t meant it like that, but he seemed to approve. Patience had heard Florence singing the last night she spent in the theatre, the night before the massacre. There were always going to be consequences, and now she was stuck in the middle of it. Four men had survived the massacre, two dying subsequently, but one had given them a statement from his hospital bed and hadn’t incriminated her. She was not there and they knew it, yet it didn’t make any difference.

Dead Eyes left midway through the interview, which suited Patience. She directed most of her answers at Kretschmer anyway. Not that he was a pushover, demonstrated when he gave her his current conclusions.

“I’m going to share with you my theory about Meyer. He fired all of his staff less than a week before his death, in a particularly showy manner. He withdrew all of his money from the bank too, he’d finalised the sale of his house. He had nothing to bequeath. Whoever got it all, there’s no paper trail. He didn’t want to make