Gavin Lyall - The Conduct of Major Maxim

"All quiet on the Western Front?" George was civil servant enough not to ask a simple question if a fancy one would do. "Did you get the paperwork?"

"I think I got it all." He gave George the details. "There's one fora Brigitte Schickert,née Krone, who was living in Dornhausen. That's a small farming village a few kilometres out of Bad Schwarzendorn. She died there at11.3 o. Husband's name Rainer Schickert: I'm assuming that's Gustav Eismark."

"Sounds like it. What was the cause of death?"

"It doesn't give one. None of them do, there's no space for it, but there were twelve other people who died at that same time at Dornhausen, and four more from Dornhausen who died in the Karls Hospital at Bad Schwarzendorn at times later in the day."

Over the telephone, George's grunt became an electronic honk. "Thirteen deaths at the same time, four later – that sounds like a bomb. She was supposed to have died from Allied bombing, so that ties up. Doesn't it?"

"The only odd thing is that according to the military history, the place had been overrun by American First Army, either the jrd or pth Division, I can't quite make out their boundary line, nearly two weeks before." George enjoyed military detail and Maxim had got lucky with the library.

"Well… Gustavneedn't have been telling the truth about the Allies – though it sounds as if he might have been telling it about his wife. You say you can't make anything of the photographs?"

"I could ask if anybody in the barracks has an enlarger. There might be a camera club -"

"Better not. You've got a new thrill on the way: Sims himself is coming over. You rememberhim'? You're at Alien-by Barracks? Good, he'll contact you there, it might even be tonight."

"Isn't he taking a bit of a risk coming to Germany? I thought he'd be in strife with the Verfassungschutz."

"That's his problem. I don't suppose he's travelling under his own name. Hejust wants to keep it all within his own unit. Anyway, you simply hand over everything you've got and try to be polite with it, by which I mean don't tell him how to do his own job. Buy himeine kleine Knackwurstand toddle home without a stain on your character. Is there any chance of your doing that?"

When George had rung off, Maxim reached for the First British Corps telephone directory which sat just beside the phone. He hadn't, after all, promisednot to look up the name and home number of the divisional security officer, and one small stain wouldn't really count and might not even show.

Captain Brian Apgood was a slight, very young-looking man with pale skin and wispy blond hair. In his Sunday dress of jeans and a fresh white shirt, he looked as if he'd get mugged the moment he set foot in a town with more cars than horses. He sat on the foot of Maxim's bed and lit a small cigar. "I'm not being inhospitable, " he explained, "but we have to assume the chance ofthem having my house and office both wired, and I imagine Number 10wouldn't like that. I know I shouldn't ask this, but -"

"That's right, you shouldn't," Maxim said politely. On the phone he had mentioned nothing but his name and rank.

Apgood smiled back. "Okay. Let's see what we'vegot. " He held up the packet of film against the light and made noncommittal noises. "It's infra-red, funny colours like this. Doesn't look like much, but I can print them up for you. Only black-and-white if you want them tonight…?"

"Please."

Apgood pocketed the film and sat down to browse through the stack of fragile old certificates.

After that, he said: "I suppose it would be a silly question to ask how you got these?"

"A… roundabout way. Am I right in thinking I shouldn't have them?"

"They're not secret, nothing like that. But they shouldn't be floating around loose. They aren't copies, they're the originals. They should still be in the files at the Standesamt. Unless they've microfilmed them, of course, and these are just waste paper. Theyare microfilming a lot of old stuff now… Does any particular one mean anything to you?"

"The top one."

Apgood skimmed through Brigitte Schickert'scertificate, her husband's name, parents' names, place and date of birth, and the address of the Leistritzfarmhouse, Dornhausen.

"I hope some of these names mean something to you; they don't ring any bells with me. "

"That's all right. I just wondered what else you could tell me."

"Like what?"

"Well…" by now Maxim was far from sure himself; "… perhaps why so many of them?"

"Did these get pinched from the Standesamt?"

"Ah… in a sort of way, yes."

"The simplest explanation would be that by pinching a whole day's deaths you help conceal an interest in just one of them. And you couldn't ask for copies of all these, you'd have to ask for just one, and that would give away your interest, too. Still, it seems a bit drastic to go and start looting the place."

"But these can't be the only versions?"

Apgood looked up at him curiously. "As a matter of fact, they most probably are. How much did you get taught about German documents at Ashford? – or Hereford?" The Army grapevine hadn't lost its bloom in the early heatwave: Apgoodhad a very good rundown on Maxim's background.

"Assume it's nothing. "

"Fair enough. Well… the thing to cling to is that everything like this is still decentralised. Births, marriages, deaths -all the routine stuff is still kept at the local Standesamtwhere it was first registered, andonly there. No copies to central government or anywhere like that. And since there's something like seven thousand Standesamterin West Germany alone, you can have quite a job looking somebody up if you don't know where to start. I imagine it's a legacy of the war: centralised personal data sounds too much like the Gestapo -though mind you, it would be a hell of a storage problem if youdid start collecting copies of all these. We'll see how long the libertarian principles last once everything's on microfilm. "

"If you destroyed these, would it destroy evidence of the deaths?"

"No-o… these things are numbered and they'll be cross-indexed to some sort of register of names. But you'd destroy the detail: time of day, exact place and so on. Unless, as I say, it's all been microfilmed and these arejust garbage. You could easily find out: just ring up the Standesamtat… ah, Bad Schwärzendem, and -Hold on a minute! The Standesbeamtethere got killed the other day. Shot. "

"I was in the UK at the time," Maxim reassured him.

Apgood pinched his nose like an airline passenger trying to clear his eardrums, and looked Maxim over carefully. Then he let out his breath in a puff. "We-ell… Has all that been cleared up? I seem to recall some mystery woman…"

"I think the police are treating the case as closed."

"Look – my first responsibility is to Division -"

"Of course. I just wanted an opinion. And I won't quoteyou.

Still looking wary, Apgood walked over to the washbasin, tapped the ash from his cigar and washed it away. "I can see why you might not want to go near Bad Schwärzendem. Shall I ring up?"

"If you can do it without…" then Maxim remembered that Apgood's whole life was devoted to doing things 'without'. He changed tack. "So you don't think there's any chanceof anybody having put a fake certificate into the files? – years after the event?"

Apgood instinctively picked up a certificate and glanced through it, then shook his head. "No. I don't mean just the forgery, and that's a hell of a job, trying to fake something that's aged as badly as these – it's the numbering. It wouldn't fit into the sequence, it wouldn't match up with the ledger. Anyway, why should somebody want to do that?"

He really looked so absurdly young and guileless, so like a starry-eyed subaltern about to go over the top into the machine-guns of the Somme, that Maxim almost answered. Just in time, he remembered he was talking to a thirty-year-old Captain from Int Corps who was deeply interested in anything that might be happening on his patch.