Free Goodbye Again by Joseph Hone Page B

sun moved up over the houses on the other side of the square, shining directly into the room, illuminating the nude of Katie on the far wall. I wandered over and looked at it. I used to phone her most early evenings, from the box outside my local pub near Chipping Norton: and even if I didn’t get through, I knew she’d always be back at the house, having fed the horses and about to feed her dogs, so I could usually be sure to reach her later on the phone.
    I found it difficult to grasp the fact now, that Katie wasn’t available anymore at the end of a telephone.
    I turned. ‘I could do with a drink, Harry.’
    ‘Sure, it’s in the kitchen. What do you want? I’ll join you. I’ve some good vodka in the fridge, the real thing, the Polish restaurant downstairs gets it for me.’
    A few minutes later, glasses in hand, Harry raised his shot of cold vodka and tossed it back. ‘Looted, sold, and some of it still hidden somewhere – yes, that could figure.’
    ‘So my father and Elsa’s must have been into some big Nazi art-looting business during the war. With Dr Frank and his pals. Must have been Nazis themselves.’
    ‘Wait a minute, Ben, your father was a Jew. Sent to Auschwitz. He couldn’t have been involved in any of this.’
    ‘We’ll come to that. But after the war these Nazis took gold out, maybe paintings, to support themselves.’
    ‘Yes, to South America, most of them. Frank had a number of other Nazi friends in on the art-looting game then – including his SS sidekick in Krakow, Helmuth Pfaffenroth – another one of the worst, an obsessional Jew killer, couldn’t get ‘em into the gas showers quick enough.’
    ‘All good friends of Dr Frank’s. Among them my father, and Elsa’s, who went to Ireland, where Elsa’s father flogged all these paintings for the two of them in Dublin. Bergen was a Nazi, myfather was involved with him and their clients were big crooks as well, and what they didn’t sell is still hidden somewhere. That’s the long and the short of it.’
    Harry shook his head. ‘Ben, it’s only a theory about your father and Bergen. No real proof – just like your suspicions about Elsa. Why haven’t you told her about this list?’
    ‘I told you. There’s something not quite straight about her. Why did her father tell her she had to meet me just before he died without telling her why? Well, maybe he did tell her why and she isn’t telling me. Maybe she hopes we’ll become chums, accomplices , lovers – whatever – and I’ll lead her to the hidden loot.’
    Harry frowned. ‘Hardly lovers. You told me she liked women.’
    ‘One woman.’
    ‘Ben, you’re suggesting far too big a business altogether.’
    ‘Am I? You said the stuff on this list was priceless. Worth millions now, in the hands of some crooked dealers, or maybe some of the old Nazis, still looking for the stuff. That’s big business surely?’
    ‘I doubt it. No one could sell any of those paintings, the illuminated bibles or the Dürer drawings on the open market. They’re all far too well known.’
    ‘A private market, then. That happens – some crazy millionaire keeping the pictures in a secret room …’
    ‘No, Ben, that’s a fantasy, got up by idle journalists.’
    ‘May I?’ I went and got another shot of vodka. I was annoyed with Harry. He’d changed tack completely, putting up obstacles to all my theories, which he continued to do when I returned.
    ‘Whatever about your father or Elsa being involved, if you’re right and the rest of this hoard is still hidden somewhere, and there are old or new Nazis looking for it – I’d keep out of it, Ben. I remember Dr Frank and his sort. Gave evidence against some of them at Nuremberg. With Nazis, old or new, you’d be playing with fire.’
    ‘Yes, like Katie.’ I drank the vodka.
    ‘I don’t follow?’
    ‘Burning herself alive in that car.’ I turned to Harry. ‘When I saw Elsa, I thought this was the chance to make things right, all that