Four Canberra Crimes by Greg Cornwell

Author:Greg Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby

CHAPTER TWO

Once forensics had finished the two officers moved back into the lounge room to more closely examine the two blank wall spots.

Both showed no sign of haste. Whatever had been there had been carefully removed. Surrounding paintings gave no indication of any compatibility with the missing duo. They were European granted but the usual collection of a few photographs, of landscapes, snow and sea scapes. DI Lech recognized Prague and possibly old Dresden before it was flattened in Worlds War II, a few still life of flowers and interestingly no portraits.

Assuming they were part of the crime scene they must be evidence of something connected with it, DI Lech decided. Perhaps a site, perhaps people. She didn’t consider them to be anything other than possibly incriminating photographs. Perhaps the distance on the wall between them indicated a time difference too of when they were taken. The care in their removal also suggested they were not going to be destroyed but treasured elsewhere.

Which helped them how?

If DI Lech was a betting person, which she wasn’t, her money would have been on the missing frames being of people not places and among those people was the killer. Mr. Newman’s background was the obvious place to begin.

Of German extraction, originally Neumann, he was a widower of several years. An emigrant from north Germany many years before Horst Newman, or Harry to his friends, was a successful independent businessman, a mining engineer, working from home.

“There’s nothing suspicious about his background, ma’am,” Sergeant Parker reported several days later. “Very respectable, right clubs though not strongly sociable, no bad debts, and no scandals. Nothing improper. “

Among Harry Newman’s possessions they had found an old out-of-date German passport, which DI Lech suggested should be followed back.

This too revealed little of importance save history..

His father, Hans, interestingly had been a young cadet on a copra planation in German New Guinea before the First World War. Following Australia’s takeover of the territory in 1914 young Hans had been interned and repatriated home in 1919 to Kiel in Schleswig-Holstein. Here he became involved in shipping, principally timber out of the Baltic.

He also joined the National Socialist German Workers’ or Nazi Party.

This was not unusual in the nineteen twenties, as DI Lech had been told by her elders. Germany and its people was smarting from its wartime defeat, angry at what many saw as betrayal and wanted to see the Fatherland great again.

Initially too old to be conscripted Hans fought only in World War II’s last days and was captured by British forces in a devastated Kiel.

Life was hard in Germany. The country was divided and in ruins and, while available, work did not offer good prospects for ambitious young men like Horst, who decided to emigrate. Australia at that time needed more people and more people needed homes.

The Snowy Mountain’s Hydro-Electric Scheme, a major engineering undertaking providing peak power demands for much of south-eastern Australia and which had employed thousands of migrants was winding down and displaced workers were looking elsewhere for new jobs.

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