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‘Did you look for any dependants?’ he asked. ‘I’m particularly keen to find out whether Ava had any children.’

Jan nodded. ‘Yes, I did.’ Her nod turned into a shake of her head. ‘I couldn’t find any.’

‘That’s okay. I didn’t expect this to be easy.’

Tayte turned to the names on his list and began to go over his earlier thinking about the possibility of a child having been brought up by another member of the family. Ava’s parents were good candidates, but apart from them only one other name really stood out for Tayte. It was the name he’d previously underlined: Heinz Schröder. Tayte figured he was most likely Adelina Schröder’s brother—Ava’s uncle. Ava’s christening record told him that her maternal grandfather was called Gottfried, so Heinz couldn’t have been Ava’s grandfather, which Tayte thought might have made him too old to be a potential candidate. The fact that Heinz had been a witness at Ava’s and Johann’s wedding also told Tayte that they had been close at the time, which to Tayte’s mind made Heinz Schröder, along with Ava’s parents, the obvious choices. He didn’t know who the other witness, Lorenz Richter, was—perhaps a friend or neighbour, or even someone provided by the registration office on the day of the wedding. He couldn’t rule anyone out, but it made sense to start with the strongest candidates.

‘I’d like to see everything you can find for Ava’s parents, Gerhard and Adelina Bauer, née Schröder,’ Tayte said. ‘And for Heinz Schröder here,’ he added, tapping the witness section on Ava’s and Johann’s marriage certificate.

Jan looked at it again. ‘I see he lived in Gilching at the time of the marriage,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to call the Starnberg
Standesamt
. It’s not far from Munich. Gilching is a municipality of Starnberg, you see.’

‘Great, and as there’s a family connection to the area, perhaps you could ask them to dig out whatever they can find on Ava’s parents, too. Do you know how long it’s likely to take?’

‘Hard to say. I’ll tell them it’s urgent and have them send the results over electronically. While they’re working on all that, I’ll see what I can find here.’

‘Thank you, Jan,’ Tayte said with a smile. ‘I’ll sit on your shoulder, if you don’t mind—see if I can learn something.’

Jan laughed. ‘I shouldn’t do that,’ she said. ‘Big fella like you. You’ll squash me flat!’

Tayte was smiling at Jan’s joke as they stood up. He followed her out into the large office area to make her call to the civil registration office in Starnberg, and as she dialled, he began to feel optimistic about the results he hoped would come back. Family history was all about making connections, and as Jan began to give her counterpart in Starnberg the information they had on Heinz Schröder from Ava’s marriage certificate, the back of Tayte’s neck began to tingle at the thought of what new connections he might soon discover. More importantly, he wondered where they would lead him next.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Gilc
hing. 22 April 1945.

‘There’s no one home. Hasn’t been for months.’

Johann turned away from the house he’d been directed to on his arrival in Gilching and saw an elderly woman standing by the gate in boots and a long overcoat. The wide-brimmed hat she wore was still dripping rain from the downpour Johann had just been caught in. She was a short, stocky woman. She had a sour expression on her face and a quizzical squint in her eyes.

‘What’s your business here?’ she added.

Johann approached her with caution, unsure from her brusque tone whether her interest in him was well meant. ‘I was told that my wife’s uncle lives here. Herr Schröder?’

‘This is Heinz Schröder’s house,’ the woman said. ‘He’s not here.’

‘Do you know where I can find him?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine. His last letter was from Holland, but that was several weeks ago.’

‘Holland?’

‘That’s what I said. Has the war made you deaf? Both his boys were in the
Wehrmacht
. They died on the Russian Front. At hearing the news, Herr Schröder took off.’

‘And what of his wife?’

‘
Frau
Schröder died more than ten years ago.’

‘I see,’ Johann said, already contemplating what to do next. It occurred to him then that Volker could not have called on Herr Schröder to enquire into Ava’s whereabouts, as he had said in his last letter. How could he have if Herr Schröder was not there? Johann wondered why Volker would lie to him, or whether there had been some mistake. Clearly, his next move was to contact his friend to find out.

‘You’re SS?’ The woman said, eyeing Johann’s apparel.

The
Sieg
runes on his tunic were barely visible beneath his greatcoat, but her keen eyes seemingly missed nothing. Johann nodded.

‘Why aren’t you fighting?’

Johann was about to explain how he came to be there when it began to rain again.

‘Never mind,’ the woman continued. ‘You can tell me later. You look as though you need something to eat more than you need to stand around in the rain explaining yourself to an old busybody like me.’ She took Johann’s arm and led him out into the lane, which was no more than a muddy track between hedgerows. ‘Look at you,’ she added. ‘You need dry clothes, too. You’re shivering.’

‘I must go back to Munich,’ Johann protested. ‘There are things I have to do.’

‘
Ja
,
ja
. All in good time. If you don’t take better care of yourself, pretty soon you won’t be able to do anything.’

Johann found that he didn’t have the strength to resist the woman, and how his stomach groaned. He’d lost track of how long it had been since he’d last eaten. They came to another gate and turned onto an even muddier track that ran to a single-storey dwelling with a smoking chimney. Johann couldn’t deny that it looked inviting after all he’d been through since fleeing Vienna five days ago. The woman took him inside and led him to a bedroom where she began to undress him. It was only then that she could see how dishevelled he really was. His wet clothes were close to threadbare in places and torn in others.

She tutted. ‘If you’re all that stands between me and the Russians, heaven help us!’ she said. She soon had Johann stripped to his underwear. ‘I’ll leave you to deal with the rest. You’ll find blankets in the closet.’

‘Thank you,’ Johann said, and the woman left the room with his clothes over her arm.

Johann could have collapsed onto the bed beside him and not cared if he ever woke up again were it not for his need to find Ava. For now he found the blankets and began to wrap them around him, catching his pallid, malnourished body in the dressing table mirror as he did so. He wondered how it was possible for one man to collect so many cuts and bruises and yet still be able to stand long enough to look upon himself as he did.

Drawn by the heat from the fireplace, he found the old woman in the sitting room. She was putting more logs onto the glowing embers as he entered.

‘Sit down,’ she said, indicating the chair closest to the fire.

As the logs began to flame, instantly brightening the otherwise grey afternoon, the woman left Johann to gaze into them with his thoughts. A short while later she returned with a steaming mug in one hand and a hunk of bread in the other.

‘It’s soup,’ she said. ‘It’s all I can offer you for now.’

Johann took it and immediately began to devour the meal. The soup was almost too hot to drink, but he didn’t care. He gorged himself for a full minute until it was all gone. ‘Thank you. I’m Johann. What’s your name?’

‘I’m Frau Olberg,’ she said. Her tone softened. ‘You can call me Martha.’ She sat down opposite him. ‘Now what are you doing in Gilching? Are you a deserter?’

Johann didn’t like to think of himself as such, but he was unable to deny it. His reasons seemed justifiable to him under the circumstances, and they were certainly not borne out of fear or cowardice. But as he had made no attempt to rejoin what remained of his regiment, he doubted a court martial would see it that way.

‘I plan to find my unit again as soon as I’ve finished my business in Munich,’ he said. ‘I’ve come from Vienna. The Russians overran the city and we retreated.’ He went on to tell Martha about the air attack and the shelling. ‘Something struck my head,’ he continued. ‘When I regained consciousness I found myself alone with nothing but the bodies of my
Kameraden
around me. If anyone survived the attack, they must have fled for their lives, but it seems the shelling was only a farewell as no Russians came for me. They must have had another objective in mind. Berlin, I suppose.’

‘You were lucky. I’ve heard what the Russians do to their prisoners.’

‘Yes, I was lucky,’ Johann said. ‘But then only the lucky survive such things.’

‘That’s likely true enough. How’s your head? Let me see it.’

Martha stood up and began to inspect Johann’s head. It took no time to find the wound. ‘The blood has dried in your hair. I’ll have to clean it. Does it hurt?’

‘Not any more.’

‘Good.’ Martha sat down again. ‘So why are you here?’

Johann briefly explained the situation with his wife and her parents, and how he had decided he must return to Munich to find out what had happened to them.

‘I had a motorcycle,’ he continued. ‘It had taken a little damage, but it still ran, so having no idea where else to go, I rode through Linz and then to Salzburg. The fuel ran out soon after I crossed the border into Germany. After that I was forced to make the rest of the journey by bicycle and on foot.’

‘You have a bicycle?”

‘No. I picked it up near Rosenheim, but I was forced to take a less direct route, off the main road, across the countryside. Both tyres punctured and I had to abandon it. I had to be careful to avoid the Gestapo and the SD, who I’m sure would have taken me in for questioning had they spotted me. My reconnaissance skills came in handy, I can tell you.’

Johann paused. The effort to talk had begun to make him feel dizzy, and he could still feel himself shivering, despite the dry blankets and the heat from the fireplace.

‘You’re sweating,’ Martha said. ‘I felt your head just now. You have a fever. You should lie down and rest.’

‘No,’ Johann said, thinking of Ava. ‘I’ll be okay in a moment.’ He closed his eyes and took a few slow breaths before he continued. ‘When I reached Munich I went straight to my wife’s parents’ house. It was boarded up as I expected it to be, but I had to see it for myself. Then I came here, hoping Ava’s uncle could help.’

‘And what will you do now? How will you find her?’

‘I must return to Munich. Perhaps a neighbour knows something, and there’s a friend I need to speak to.’ Johann started to get up. ‘Do you have a bicycle I could borrow?’

‘Yes, but your clothes . . . They will take hours to dry and you need to rest.’

‘No, I can’t,’ Johann insisted. He stood up and immediately began to sway. He put a hand on the back of the chair to steady himself. ‘Thank you, but I must—’ He paused. The room was suddenly spinning. He took a step towards the door, and then another. And then he collapsed.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Present day.

Tayte had been at the civil registration office in Munich close to two hours, and it was approaching midday by the time Jan Statham had exhausted her search for records on Ava’s parents. They were still waiting on the records concerning Ava’s uncle, Heinz Schröder, from the Starnberg office, which Tayte hoped wouldn’t be too much longer. He was conscious of the time, thinking that Jean could call him away at any minute.

As they went back into the small meeting room and sat down, Jan set the documents out between them, and having paid close attention to everything she had done, Tayte found that he had now picked up many of the basic words and phrases that were relevant to genealogical research in Germany, giving him a better understanding of what he was looking at. Jan had also run a search for records relating to Heinz Schröder, but she had found nothing more than an entry in the
Geburtsregister,
recording his birth in Munich in 1887. All other events had clearly been registered elsewhere, such as at the Starnberg office, under whose jurisdiction Heinz was living at the time of Ava’s and Johann’s wedding.

Tayte picked up the copy of Adelina Bauer’s birth certificate. ‘There are fewer records here than I’d hoped for,’ he said. There was another birth certificate, this one for Ava’s father, Gerhard Bauer. Tayte held the two records side by side. ‘Between these two birth certificates we have the names of both sets of Ava’s grandparents, and the names of both her maternal and paternal great-grandmothers. It would all be highly useful information if I was trying to build Ava’s family tree, but that’s not why I’m here.’

‘No,’ Jan agreed. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t find any record of death for either of Ava’s parents. I’d have thought perhaps their deaths might have been registered in Munich as they were born here and lived here. Still, you can’t say we didn’t try. People are prone to moving about, aren’t they?’

Searching for Ava’s parents’ death certificates had taken up most of the time, not least because finding them would have given Tayte hope of locating a last will and testament, and because of that he hadn’t wanted to stop searching until every avenue had been exhausted. He figured that if Ava had had a child that had been brought up by Ava’s parents then there was a good chance of finding mention of that child in their will. But they had found nothing, suggesting that Adelina and Gerhard Bauer had died outside the areas covered by the Munich
Standesamt
, necessitating a wider search, which, unless those records were covered by the Starnberg office, would take time—perhaps more time than Tayte had.

The only other record they had found for Ava’s parents was from the
Heiratsregister
—Adelina’s and Gerhard’s marriage certificate. Tayte picked it up as he set the birth certificates down.

‘This at least gives us another name to look into,’ he said, looking at the witness section. ‘I’d imagine Kurt Bauer here is Gerhard’s brother. Maybe he was his best man at the wedding.’

‘That seems likely,’ Jan said. ‘He’s not mentioned on any of the other certificates. He’s not his father or grandfather.’