Whisper For The Reaper Jack Gatland (interesting books to read txt) 📖

keyboard, he rummaged through a small pile of discarded papers, eventually pulling out the note that Ilse had given him after their lunch together.

‘It’s the same paper source,’ he said, comparing it to the one on the screen. ‘Same lines. Joanna will have to confirm that, but—‘

‘But Ilse had access to the same paper stock that Rolfe used for his suicide note, and spoke and wrote English in a style that fit the language in it,’ Declan replied. ‘And I’m assuming she could have learned how to mimic his style, especially if she’d spent days up in her room alone.’

‘Okay, so let’s say that Ilse wrote this note,’ Anjli leaned back as she considered this. ‘How does that help us? She was in the Snug with Karl when Rolfe died. We have CCTV of them.’

‘Unless there was another killer out there,’ Billy suggested. ‘We’d already mentioned that Müller senior could still be around.’

‘There’s an easier answer,’ Declan slammed his hand on the table as realisation hit him. ‘Billy, when you got down there during the fight in the bar, did Dave suggest the Snug, or did Karl?’

‘I think it was Dave,’ Billy thought back. ‘But that said, I can’t be sure. They were talking about a quiet place. Out of the way. Dave mentioned the Snug… they could have led him to suggesting it though.’

Declan rose from the table. ‘Both of you, come with me,’ he said. ‘It’s time to see if an old legend is true or not.’

Johann Hoffman was a grumpy old man with no hair, a thick handlebar moustache and an arrogance that made him almost insufferable to speak to, as Monroe and Bullman faced him across a table in a small, dank and well past its prime local bar.

‘I am here because Peter vouched for you,’ he grumbled. ‘I will not be coerced by you though.’

Monroe nodded. Peter Banisch had warned them about Johann; although he was a friend, possibly the best friend of Karl Meier, he was also a staunch believer in the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, believed that the fall of the wall was a mistake, and more importantly believed that Berlin post-wall was a joke, an eyesore and a shame for the whole country. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who still believed this, and ten years earlier had moved to a small community in the north-east quarter of Berlin, where he and many others around him mourned the collapse of the SED, discussed leaving this weaker state, and worked as volunteers for the far-right Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or National Democratic Party of Germany.

Monroe hated Hoffman from the moment they met.

‘We only have a couple of questions,’ Bullman smiled as she spoke, as if a woman smiling might actually help Hoffman warm to the two detectives. It wasn’t working so far.

‘You want to speak about Hauptmann Müller,’ Hoffman replied. ‘He was a good man. A misunderstood man. And Karl took advantage of that.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘By having an affair with his wife,’ Hoffman replied haughtily. ‘He was not even careful about this. He openly mocked Müller.’

‘I thought you were supposed to be like brothers?’ Monroe responded. ‘This doesn’t sound brotherly.’

‘Brothers don’t have to think the same way,’ Hoffman retaliated. ‘I loved him, but Karl was a fool, right until the very end.’

‘The end?’

‘The fall of the wall,’ Hoffman replied. ‘It was a terrible day. There was chaos. People in the streets cheering. We were the villains of the story. We were hunted, beaten. And debts were settled.’

‘What sort of debts?’ Bullman wrote in her notepad as she spoke. ‘Debts between Müller and Meier?’

Hoffman nodded. ‘That is what people believe.’

‘Hold on laddie, I think we’re going a little off piste here,’ Monroe muttered. ‘We were told that Karl Meier ended up buying a new identity from Müller. So what do you mean when you say people believe?’

‘Karl was given a new identity by Müller, that is correct to say,’ Hoffman chuckled. ‘But it was not the identity he wanted.’

‘Because he was named Reaper?’

‘No, because his identity went from alive to deceased!’ Hoffman laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘They found him dead outside a small warehouse, half a mile from the watchtower!’

Monroe and Bullman stared at each other for a moment.

‘Karl Meier is dead?’ Monroe replied, slowly.

‘Yes!’ Hoffman almost shouted this. ‘Are you stupid? Deaf perhaps? Protesters killed him during the riots that followed. He was stabbed through the heart, right here.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Right through the Reaper badge we were all made to wear. Sure, people wondered whether it was Müller that did this, that perhaps he learned that the small child he called son was a bastard, but we would never know.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he disappeared the same day, too.’ Hoffman crossed his arms as he finished. ‘He had friends in the Stasi. I believe that he feared retaliations from families of dead border crossers, and so he forced the Stasi to give him a new identity, so he could leave.’

‘Why would they do that?’ Bullman frowned. ‘Surely they’d want him close by, to ensure his silence?’

‘The Stasi had no say in what he did by then,’ Hoffman replied. ‘As soon as he was away from them, he turned on them all. Made a deal with other people, Americans in grey suits.’

‘You saw them?’

‘We all saw them during the fall,’ Hoffman spat. ‘Trying to put out the flames of the folders the Stasi burned. People like Müller, who’d saved many files, were a Godsend to them. To the CIA.’

‘He turned informer? Made deals with Langley?’ Monroe was surprised. Hoffman sniffed.

‘He gained privilege,’ he replied. ‘Wilhelm Müller was immune to all prosecution. He could have stayed under the name, but although the people he now allied with were happy to give him a kind of… what do you call it? A Diplomatic Immunity, the families would still hunt him down. His marriage was over after the news of the affair came out, and so he had nothing to