Sam Bourne - The Final Reckoning

Tom focused on Gershon. He looked at least ten years older than his wife, already bald, the prodigious crop of hair on his chest silver. But his body was in remarkable shape, the muscle firm and toned, the chest and stomach hard and flat. And his eyes were as luminous as his daughter's.

Tom went back out into the living room, examining the slashed remains of a single well-worn armchair by the window. Next to it stood a table bearing a telephone and a radio-cassette player, a hulking relic of the 1980s. All over the floor, emptied out from a large, glass-fronted cabinet, were candlesticks, assorted silver knick-knacks, a few books and many more family photos. One caught Tom's eye: Rebecca with a wide smile and a mortarboard, her whole life ahead of her.

He found her in the bedroom contemplating another depressing scene: clothes strewn across the carpet, cupboard doors flung wide open. Each sock drawer had been emptied; ties dangling like forlorn party decorations. Tom expected her to sink onto the bed and burst into tears, but instead she went back into the living room. A look of relief passed across her face. ‘They're still here.’

She knelt down and began poring over the framed photographs dumped on the floor. Tom joined her, instinctively searching for any pictures from the 1940s, from the dawn of DIN. Perhaps they would find an image of the teenage Gershon Matzkin in the forests in his patched-together uniform, maybe with his lover and partner-in-grief, Rosa. But most of the snaps were of Gershon's post-war self, settled in Britain: the newly minted Gerald Merton.

Rebecca studied one of these images closely. It was in that peculiar shade of dull orange that seemed to veil all colour photographs from the 1970s and it showed five men beaming widely, four of them wearing large square glasses. Tom recognized Gerald, his wide sideburns flecked with grey. All five were in black tie, though they had their jackets off. The one on the far right was raising a glass.

‘Joe Tannenbaum. He must have died soon after this picture was taken,’ Rebecca murmured. ‘And Geoffrey Besser, he died about ten years ago.’ Her finger hovered over the last man in the shot, cheerfully drinking to the health of the photographer. ‘I can't remember him though.’

‘What is this picture?’

‘These were my dad's best friends.’

Tom looked at her face, scanning it for a sign of nostalgia or reminiscence. But her brow was furrowed.

‘I don't understand. What are you looking for?’

‘Sorry. I should have said. This would have been my cousin's wedding in 1976. And this group here,’ she angled the picture for him to look at it properly, ‘this is the poker club.’

Tom took a step back, crunching a picture book of Jerusalem under foot as he did so. The photo showed five middle-aged men, their jowls thickening, their heads getting balder, probably laughing at a corny joke. They were five survivors of the inferno who had made new lives in London: Gerald Merton with his dry cleaning shop and Henry Goldman's father, wholesaler of ladies' outerwear. Looking at this photograph, no one would have guessed what these men had been capable of – the focused, unwavering campaign of targeted killings they had pursued across several continents. And no one would have known the hell they had endured to make them do it.

‘There's Henry Goldman's father, just there,’ she pointed, her voice still quiet. ‘The only one I don't know about is this bloke here. Sid something, he was called.’

Tom looked hard at the man she indicated, the one with the raised glass. Now that he knew the story of this band of brothers, was he deluding himself or could he really see something else in these five faces? Gerald Merton had a wariness in his eyes discernible in every photograph Tom had seen. But there was something like it in the gazes of the other men, too. A steel below the surface, despite the apparently avuncular smiles. And then Tom saw it.

‘Is that what I think it is?’ he asked, pointing at the blur of grey on the forearm of the Sid whose last name Rebecca could not remember. His sleeve was rolled up, his forehead twinkling with sweat, perhaps the aftermath of a strenuous dance. Tom had been to a Jewish wedding once, a friend from college. Those traditional dances were quite a workout.

‘Yes, that's what you think it is. Sid was in Auschwitz.’ And her finger hovered over the blurred image of a number, tattooed on the arm of a man, raising his glass at a wedding more than three decades earlier.

Tom couldn't help but stare into his eyes, barely visible behind the thick apparently tinted glasses. What horrors had they seen? Had the images lingered? Could Sid see them even then, on a night of dancing, sweaty dress shirts and toasts?

‘Sid Steiner! That was his name. Sid Steiner.’

‘Is he alive?’

‘I have no idea. But I think we'd better find out.’

The place was still not tidied up as they sat next to each other, in the dead of night, on the slashed remains of Gerald Merton's couch, both staring at the small, brightly lit device cradled between Tom's hands. It was his BlackBerry, though they were not using it for email. The machine also had an internet browser, even if it did move with painful sloth. They were trying to navigate their way around the online archive of The Jewish Chronicle , searching past editions of the paper's personal announcements. Tom was struggling to concentrate against the noise of the TV set. Turning it on had been his idea: if someone was eavesdropping on their conversations, as he was convinced they had at Goldman's Canary Wharf office, then at least they could make the eavesdroppers' job a little more difficult. It was a low-tech form of counter-surveillance but he couldn't think of anything better.

At Rebecca's suggestion, he had typed in the single word ‘Steiner’ and the website had come up with hundreds. They scrolled through looking for Sids and, to Rebecca's dismay, they had found a Sid Steiner easily, dated six years ago:

STEINER. Sid. Passed away peacefully, aged 89, after much suffering. A much loved and special gentleman who will be sadly missed by wife Beryl, son David and daughter-in-law Gaby, grandchildren, Josh, Daniel, Richard, Simon and sister-in-law Helen. May he rest in peace.

‘OK, that's not him. Wife wasn't called Beryl.’

‘You sure?’

‘I'm sure. Hold on, here's another one.’ This was more recent, just two years ago.

STEINER. Sid. Our dear dad who is now at peace and reunited with his Ada. A strong, supportive and wonderful father who will remain in our hearts forever. May his soul rest in peace. Ruth and Jack.

Tom looked at Rebecca, next to him on the couch, with an eyebrow raised. She shook her head. ‘Kids didn't have those names.’

‘How can you be sure? You didn't remember his last name a minute ago.’

‘They had a son called Daniel. Dan. I remember because I had a crush on him.’ Absurdly, Tom felt a stab of jealousy. Then, remembering their kiss just a few hours earlier, it turned into a pang of desire. He looked at her for a second or two longer, fighting the urge to touch her: he couldn't make a pass at her here, in the trashed apartment of her dead father, even if he desperately wanted to. He forced his gaze back to the machine: he could see no more Sid Steiners.

‘OK, I think that's our lot,’ he said.

‘You haven't tried Social and Personal.’

‘Those were the personal ads. That's what we've been looking through.’

‘No, those were the classified personal ads. There's also Social and Personal; different column. Bigger type, different page. Costs more.’

‘Two different classes of death announcement? You're kidding.’