Page 143 of The German Mother

Leila again felt her legs giving way beneath her.

‘Hey…I think it’s time I got you out of here and into the fresh air.’ Peter helped her back up the staircase, down a corridor and outside. He guided her to a wooden bench overlooking a lawn, where they both sat, and Leila breathed deeply, grateful for the fresh smell of newly mown grass.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Peter, ‘but I did warn you it would be shocking. I’ve spent so much time here trying to understand the process that I’ve become inured to it. I fear I may also have lost a little empathy on the way.’

‘I do understand, Peter. But, God…the inhumanity of it…’ She looked over at him, tears streaming down her face. She fumbled in her pocket and retrieved a handkerchief. ‘When I worked at the BBC, we ran a news story about the burnings – the bishop of this area had spoken out about it.’

‘I heard about that. It was back in ’41, I think.’

Leila nodded.

‘As I understand it,’ Peter went on, ‘the authorities stopped the gassing and the cremation at that point. But sadly, the killing didn’t stop – they just used more conventional means. And instead of burning them, the bodies were buried.’

‘What do you mean by conventional means?’

‘Lethal overdoses, starvation – the sorts of things that could go on in any hospital and not raise suspicion. When we broke into the pharmacy here we found over ten kilos of barbiturates – the sort used to sedate patients. But they can easily kill if the dose is high enough.’

‘How many people were killed in this way?’

‘More than you can imagine – thousands.’

‘Did anyone survive?’

‘A few, yes. We interviewed one nurse who explained they sometimes allowed inmates to live if they could be put to work. Those were the people you saw working in the garden or around the building.’

‘I know it’s a long shot…but might Clara have been one of those people?’

Peter shook his head. ‘I checked the staff list and there’s no one working here called Clara vonZeller.’

‘I see,’ said Leila. ‘That’s disappointing. I wonder, could I see the cemetery?’

Peter led her through the hospital grounds, until they reached a set of steep stone steps winding upwards. They finally arrived at the top of the hill, where the cemetery was laid out before them, with grassy mounds marking the graves.

‘There are no headstones,’ Peter explained. ‘Instead they wrote numbers on little wooden crosses that correspond to the numbers in the ledgers.’

‘It looks so orderly…’

‘It does on the surface, yes. But I have to tell you that we’ve already begun to examine the graves, and all is not what it seems.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When you think of a cemetery you imagine neat coffins, one in each hole in the ground, don’t you?’

Leila nodded.

‘That’s not what we have here. We found evidence of multiple bodies simply…tossed into holes in the ground. As we’ve exhumed them, we can see how painfully thin they were. Some were missing their heads – they’d been sliced clean off. So what we have here is evidence of a war crime. It’s certainly not a graveyard as any normal person would understand it.’

Leila felt her heart racing again. ‘Leila told me that she got Clara’s body back in a coffin…’

‘If they sent her back in a coffin, they would have acquired one specially, and placed the body in it. To be honest, Leila, from the evidence I’ve seen so far, I would doubt they even chose the right body. It’s really hard to identify anyone when they’ve been in a pit for a while. And when there are ten or twenty corpses in each grave – some with their heads missing, some so rotten their faces have been destroyed, or eaten by animals – it’s hard to tell who is who.’

Leila shuddered. ‘How awful. Have you examined Clara’s grave yet…you said it was number eighty-seven.’

Peter shook his head. ‘The team are working as carefully as they can through the cemetery. I’m afraid they started with the lower numbers. Inevitably, it’s a slow process, as we’re gathering criminal evidence for a court of law. We do also try to identify bodies – although, as I say, that’s obviously not easy…’

‘I understand,’ said Leila. She walked up and down the lines of crosses until she found number eighty-seven. The soil seemed firm, grass still growing on the surface. ‘Minki came here, you know, and said she couldn’t believe her daughter was buried here…and I think I understand that. It seems so impersonal. But after everything you’ve told me, is it possible that her body is, in fact, still here?’

Peter nodded.