Deadly Secrets: An absolutely gripping crime thriller

  ‘Careful,’ said Moss, watching as Erika slowly pushed the knife up through the seam between the two pieces of card. Erika finally got the two pieces to part.

  Inside lay a small brown envelope.

  ‘We should take this to forensics,’ said Moss.

  ‘I know,’ said Erika. ‘I won’t touch where the envelope is stuck down. Forensics will have to test for saliva… If it is anything that needs testing.’

  She carefully slit along the top of the envelope with the scalpel, and she pulled out two pieces of folded paper. The first was a scanned image of a set of German identity papers, dating back to October 1942. They were of a young woman called Elsa Neubukov. The woman in the sepia photo was twenty-two, having been born in January 1920. There were three fingerprints in the identity papers: a thumb, and a right and left index finger. What chilled Erika was the stamp of the Third Reich, Nazi Germany: the eagle with wings spread, and underneath, the swastika. The woman in the sepia photo had short fair hair, a high forehead and a handsome face, staring almost defiantly at the camera.

  ‘This Elsa was born in 1920. She would be ninety-seven, almost ninety-eight, now,’ said Moss quietly. They turned their attention to the second piece of paper. It was another scanned-in image, this time of an Austrian passport. It was dated six years later, three years after the end of the Second World War. The photo was different, but it was the same woman. This time the name said Elsa Becher. It had the same date of birth and a set of fingerprints.

  Moss and Erika looked at each other.

  ‘What is Elsa Fryatt’s date of birth and maiden name?’

  ‘We can soon find out,’ said Erika. She took out her phone and called up Elsa Fryatt’s address, and the council tax records. ‘Date of birth is the same. We’ll need to check out her maiden name.’

  ‘Elsa Fryatt has been living under another identity?’ started Moss.

  ‘But these are scans, where are the originals?’ asked Erika. She turned over the first German identity papers scan, and she saw that on the back was a phone number written in pen. It was long, and Erika didn’t recognise the code. There was also an obscure web address ending in the .de German domain.

  ‘You think this is Marissa’s handwriting?’ said Moss.

  ‘We’ll soon find out,’ said Erika, already dialling the number.

  Sixty-Nine

  Two days later, after following up several leads, Erika and Moss arrived at Elsa Fryatt’s house. It was a grey morning, and the street outside was empty and quiet. Moss glanced nervously at Erika as they opened the gate and started up the path to the front door. They were about to ring the bell when Mrs Fryatt appeared at the gate behind them, carrying bags of shopping.

  ‘Good morning, officers. Can I help you?’ she asked, taking a key from her coat pocket. As she walked toward them, Erika thought how sprightly she was for a woman of ninety-seven.

  ‘Morning, Mrs Fryatt. We’ve come to return the diamond earrings my colleague took away for forensic examination,’ said Erika, holding up a small evidence bag containing the small velvet box.

  ‘And it takes two of you to do this?’ said Mrs Fryatt, putting the bags of shopping down and opening the front door.

  Erika gave her a disarming smile. ‘We understand they are very valuable, and we just need you to sign a couple of forms to confirm that we are returning your property, and everything is in order.’ There was a moment when she thought Mrs Fryatt wouldn’t invite them in, but she relented.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. Moss went to pick up the shopping bags for her, but Mrs Fryatt batted her away. ‘I can manage.’

  They followed her into the house and down the long hallway to the kitchen. Charles was filling the kettle, and he went very pale when he saw Erika and Moss.

  ‘Charles, would you make these officers some tea? They are here to return my earrings.’ She gave him a look and he nodded. She took off her coat and hung it over a chair. ‘And put my shopping away.’

  They left Charles in the kitchen and followed her through to the large living room. Mrs Fryatt showed them to a sofa, and took the armchair opposite.

  ‘Okay. Here are your earrings,’ said Erika, placing the small clear evidence bag on the polished coffee table in front of her. ‘Please can you check them over.’

  Mrs Fryatt put on a pair of glasses, took the box from the bag and opened it. The earrings nestled, sparkling on the small blue cushion.

  ‘Yes, my babies,’ she said, peering at them and holding them up to the light.

  ‘We also need you to sign a form, which states that your property has been returned to you,’ said Erika. ‘If you could make sure everything is in order and that they are in fact your earrings.’

  There was a rattling sound as Charles brought in a stack of teacups on a tray. His hands shook as he took them off and placed them on the table.

  ‘Charles, I need you to cast your expert eye over these,’ said Mrs Fryatt, handing him the earrings in the box. ‘I have to sign that they are mine. I can tell the difference between a diamond and a zircon, but I need to be sure these officers aren’t taking me for a ride.’ She smiled across at Erika and Moss, but the smile didn’t quite make it to her eyes. Charles took a jeweller’s eyepiece from his pocket, and peered through it at the earrings.

  ‘He always comes prepared.’ Mrs Fryatt grinned indulgently. Charles peered at them, breathing heavily, and then went to the window to catch them in the light. The clock ticked.

  ‘Everything okay?’ asked Erika.

  ‘Yes,’ he said coming back and placing the box on the table. Moss opened the folder she was carrying and took out a pre-filled form, and put it in front of Mrs Fryatt.

  ‘Check we have your name and address correct, and sign underneath,’ she said.

  Mrs Fryatt took a pen from a corner of the table and scanned the form, then signed her name at the bottom.

  Erika leaned over and placed the scanned identity papers for Elsa Neubukov on top of the form. Mrs Fryatt stared at the sepia photograph and the swastika stamp of the Third Reich for a long moment, frozen in shock. Then she looked up at Erika. Her eyes moved to Moss, and then to Charles, whose mouth was also agape. She sat back and put a shaking hand to her mouth.

  ‘We found these papers concealed in a print on the wall of Marissa Lewis’s bedroom,’ said Erika. ‘Along with these…’ She placed a copy of the Austrian passport for Elsa Becher, dated six years later, beside the identity papers. Then she produced a copy of a marriage certificate, for Elsa Becher and Arnold Fryatt, and placed it beside the Austrian passport. ‘You can see we have a paper trail from Elsa Neubukov, to Elsa Becher and then Elsa Fryatt. All of them are you.’

  ‘This is absurd,’ Mrs Fryatt said. All the colour had drained from her face, and her hands shook. She leant forward and took the scan of the German identity papers. ‘This isn’t an original. This is a sick joke. That girl was a liar, and you can do all sorts of things on computers these days…’

  ‘You’ll see there’s a phone number written on the back,’ said Erika. ‘Marissa’s mother has confirmed that is Marissa’s handwriting. It’s the phone number for a Dr Arnold Schmidt, who works in Hamburg at an office responsible for investigating historical Nazi war crimes.’

  Charles had slumped against the wall by the door, and he looked pale and ill.

  ‘You should sit down, Charles,’ said Erika. He moved to the sofa and sat at the opposite end to his mother. ‘Dr Schmidt wasn’t aware of your identity, Mrs Fryatt, but Marissa was. Or she put two and two together when she found these identity papers. She called him a few weeks before Christmas, making some vague enquiries. She said she had seen an article in one of the tabloid newspapers that these so-called Nazi hunters were offering a reward for information about anyone who worked in concentrations camps during the war. He says he told her that the reward was two thousand euros… I think Marissa realised that she could make much more money from blackmailing you.’

  ‘Lies!’ she hissed. ‘That littl
e bitch; she made this up. Where are the originals? Tell me? Where?’

  Moss opened the file again and gave Erika a sheet of paper.

  ‘Mrs Fryatt, or can I call you Elsa Neubukov? Elsa, you worked at the Mauthausen–Gusen concentration camp in upper Austria.’

  ‘Lies! Austria was never a willing participant in the war. We were annexed into the German Third Reich. The people didn’t have a choice, we just became part of it all, on the whims of politicians.’

  ‘Dr Schmidt was able, very quickly, to access records from the Mauthausen-Gusen camp. You worked there, Elsa,’ said Erika.

  ‘Don’t call me that,’ she cried, putting her hands to her ears.

  ‘You took part in the extermination of people. based purely on the race they were born. They were used for slave labour, experimented on, tortured.’

  Elsa slammed a hand down on the coffee table. ‘You think we were responsible for this? You think the Austrian people wanted this? We had no choice!’ she cried, her eyes blazing.

  ‘Mauthausen was one of the biggest concentration camp complexes in the German-controlled part of Europe,’ said Erika.

  ‘I don’t need a fucking history lesson!’ cried Elsa. Charles was staring blankly at the paperwork on the table.

  Erika went on, ‘Prisoners at Mauthausen–Gusen were forced to work building arms, quarrying stone. The conditions were horrific. What did you do, exactly? The records state that you were a guard, which is very broad, but it was your job to control the prisoners, yes? To move them from place to place, to dole out discipline and order, to carry out orders. And what were those orders? They were from Hitler and the Third Reich. Orders to reshape Europe to their Aryan ideals. Do you see yourself as part of a superior race? What do you think of me, Elsa? I’m Slavic, and we were thought of by the Third Reich as a subhuman inferior race.’

  ‘Officers, this is too much. My mother is an old lady, look at her!’ said Charles.

  ‘Too much?’ said Erika, starting to lose it. ‘Just because she’s an old lady, we should just forget? Or perhaps I’m being too political? Or am I trying to force my liberal agenda onto you?’ Charles was shaking his head. ‘It makes me sick that people think anything to do with the Holocaust and concentration camps is somehow diminished by time. The systematic slaughter of millions of people based on their genetic makeup or the colour of their skin is something which should never be forgotten or excused. It’s still going on today. Your mother is as guilty today as she was all those years ago.’ She stared at Elsa, and looked around at the opulent house, at Elsa’s fine clothes and at the diamond earrings lying in their open box next to the tea cups.

  ‘Dr Schmidt, Dr Schmidt,’ muttered Elsa. ‘How old is he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Erika.

  ‘Is he the same age as me?’ she said, thumping her chest with her fingers.

  ‘He’s of working age. In his fifties.’

  ‘Then how can he possibly know what it was like?’ Elsa spat.

  ‘You were a guard at a concentration camp, Elsa. It wasn’t a holiday camp!’ said Moss.

  ‘And if I had refused the job, they would have put me in that camp!’ insisted Elsa, her voice low, her eyes blazing. ‘The German soldiers, they came knocking around the farms… Where we lived it was farmland, we had a farm. My father was one of the best farmers for miles around, and they went to the farms, demanding that the young adults came to work at the camps. They told us if we didn’t, then we’d be put there with our families. You people never lived through it; you can’t imagine what it was like!’

  ‘And yet you lived through it, and you must have watched hundreds die, even thousands,’ said Erika.

  ‘Do you have family?’ snapped Elsa.

  ‘No.’

  ‘You?’ She pointed at Moss.

  ‘Yes,’ said Moss.

  ‘You have children?’

  ‘I have a small son.’

  ‘Then if the Germany army knocked on your door and told you that if you didn’t go and work in the camp, your little boy would be gassed? What would you do?’

  ‘I would fight. I would fight for my boy, and I would fight them,’ said Moss, red-faced and shaking.

  ‘Everyone has morals until it matters.’

  Erika resisted the urge to punch the old woman in the face, and when she looked across, she could see Moss fighting the same impulse.

  ‘So, you trotted off every day to work and brutalised prisoners, sent people to their death, and played your part in the extermination of millions. Did you whistle on your way to work, thinking that you were safe?’

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘The concentration camp where you were a guard was labelled grade three, which were the toughest camps for the “incorrigible political enemies of the Reich.” It was also one of the most profitable.’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you. I didn’t agree with Hitler! I worked there because I had to!’

  They were silent for a moment, and Erika could hear the clock ticking again.

  ‘Elsa. Your son married a Jewish woman,’ said Erika. ‘I just don’t understand.’

  ‘We didn’t know,’ said Charles, speaking for the first time. ‘My father went to his grave not knowing. My mother, she changed her details when she immigrated to England. She forged her papers. Dad knew she was Austrian, and that she was the daughter of a farmer. He knew that Austria had been occupied, but none of us knew…’ He buried his head in his hands.

  ‘When did Marissa find out your identity?’ asked Erika.

  ‘A few weeks before Christmas. I have kept this secret for years, and all it took was for the safe to not be locked properly.’ Elsa shook her head. ‘One mistake, one small mistake and it all… It all comes crashing down.’

  ‘You kept the paperwork in that safe, and your husband didn’t know?’

  ‘I had a safety deposit box in a bank in London… I opened it when I first came to the UK in the 1950s. I kept hold of that paperwork, because that was who I was. My family name wasn’t anything to do with the Nazi party. It was a good name. I should have burned the papers, but I couldn’t. Then, the bank was moving premises, and they contacted me a few years ago, just after my husband died, and I put them in my safe here at home.’ Elsa sat back and closed her eyes.

  ‘When did Marissa start to blackmail you?’ asked Moss.

  ‘Yes. I let her have those diamond earrings, to begin with. I thought it would be enough to keep her quiet, but it wasn’t. She realised what the consequences would be for my family, for Charles and his family, if people found out. The Litman’s have a lucrative jewellery business in Hatton Garden, which is historically a Jewish place of business. Think what would happen if it was made public that his mother…’ her voice trailed off. She looked weary now, resigned to her fate.

  ‘You told us that Marissa had been grabbed by a man wearing a gas mask, a few weeks before Christmas,’ said Erika.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You wanted to make us think that she had been targeted by him before?’

  ‘It was the perfect opportunity. He was making headlines, the man in the gas mask; the public were afraid… It was around the same time that I heard people in our local shop talking about a young woman who he had attacked, late at night, on her way home from the train station.’

  ‘It was feasible that he could have attacked Marissa,’ said Moss. Elsa nodded.

  ‘To commit the perfect murder, you need the perfect cover,’ said Erika. ‘And Taro Williams was your perfect cover.’

  ‘It’s taken us some time to access Marissa’s mobile phone records. We now know she phoned you, Charles, shortly before she boarded the train to Brockley on Christmas Eve.’

  He looked up from where he was slumped on the sofa. ‘She phoned me to say she wanted more money, or jewellery, whatever was quicker,’ said Charles, putting his head in his hands. ‘She said she was going away, she needed it fast... We had already given her the earrings and money. I didn’t have a choice. It
would never have stopped; she would have gone on blackmailing us and threatening us.’

  ‘Where did you get the gas mask?’ asked Erika.

  ‘It was from a second-hand shop in Soho,’ said Charles. He hung his head and started to cry.

  ‘The only problem, Charles, is that you have an alibi for Christmas Eve,’ said Erika. He looked up at her. ‘We have CCTV footage of you on a petrol station forecourt in North London, eleven minutes before the CCTV images we have of Marissa’s murder. There is no way you could have been here.’

  They looked back at Elsa.

  ‘No one will believe that a ninety-seven-year-old woman had it in her to kill a strong, young twenty-two-year-old,’ Elsa said, giving them a nasty, sly smile. A chill descended over the room.

  ‘Are you admitting you did it?’ asked Erika.

  Elsa shook her head, still smiling.

  ‘The post-mortem showed that Marissa was killed by a particular kind of paring knife. An eight-inch blade, with a serrated edge at the top,’ said Erika. ‘When the police searched your house with the warrant, one of my officers took away an identical knife… It wasn’t classed as valuable, so you weren’t informed. I’m sure you washed it, but you’d be shocked to discover what tiny amounts modern forensics can work with. We found microscopic amounts of Marissa Lewis’s bone and blood on that knife…’

  The smile had now been wiped from Elsa’s face and her mouth was agape in horror. Erika went on, ‘Not only that, we were also able to match the knife to the cuts and slashes on Marissa’s body. Your knife is the murder weapon. We’ve also used the latest technology to study the CCTV camera opposite Marissa’s house, which caught the murder. We can match your height with the height of the figure in the gas mask.’

  ‘No… No!’ cried Elsa.

  ‘And the last piece of the puzzle, well, it’s the best yet. On Christmas Eve, when Marissa got off the train at Brockley, she was wearing those diamond earrings,’ said Erika, indicating the box which was still open on the table. ‘Jeanette Walpole has confirmed Marissa was wearing them, and we also saw, again, on CCTV at Brockley station, that Marissa spoke to two drunken young men at the bottom of the footbridge. They were sleaze bags, and were trying to chat her up, and they asked her for a selfie, no doubt to show their mates.’