A few minutes of conversation with a selection of these unfortunates was enough to discover that Ribe and Greiss had been regulars at the Glinka, that they had behaved themselves impeccably – or at least as impeccably as was required in the circumstances – and that they had left alone just before eleven p.m., which was just enough time for them to get back to the castle in time for the midnight roll-call. And I quickly formed the impression that the ghastly fate that had befallen the two soldiers could have had little or nothing to do with what had happened in the Glinka.
When I had finished questioning the Polish whores of the Glinka I went outside and drew a deep breath of clean cold air. Colonel Ahrens and Lieutenant Voss followed and waited for me to say something. But when I closed my eyes for a moment and leaned against one of the entrance pillars, the colonel interrupted my thoughts impatiently.
‘Well, Captain Gunther,’ he said. ‘Please tell us. What impression have you formed?’
I lit a cigarette and shook my head. ‘That there are times when being a man seems almost as bad as being a German,’ I said.
‘Really, captain, you are a most exasperating fellow. Try to forget your personal feelings and concentrate on your job as a policeman, please. You know damn well I’m talking about my boys and what might have happened to them.’
I threw my cigarette onto the ground angrily and then felt angrier for wasting a good cigarette.
‘That’s good coming from you, colonel. You wake me up to help out the local field police with an extra set of cop’s eyes and then you put on your spurs and try to get stiff when the cop’s eyes see something they don’t like. If you ask me, your damned boys had it coming if they were in there. I feel bad enough just going through the door of a wurst-hut like that, see? But then I’m peculiar that way. Maybe you’re right. Sometimes I forget that I’m a German soldier.’
‘Look, I only asked about my men – they were murdered after all.’
‘You got stiff with me, and if there’s one thing a Berliner hates it’s someone who gets stiff with him. You might be a colonel but don’t ever try to push a ramrod up my ass, sir.’
‘Captain Gunther, you have a most violent temper.’
‘Maybe that’s because I’m tired of people thinking that any of this shit really matters. Your men were murdered. That would be laughable if this whole situation in Russia wasn’t so tragic. You talk about murder like it still means something. In case you hadn’t noticed, colonel, we’re all of us in the worst place in the world with one boot in the fucking abyss, and we’re pretending that there’s law and order and something worth fighting for. But there isn’t. Not now. There’s just insanity and chaos and slaughter and maybe something worse that’s yet to come. It’s only a couple of days since you told me that sixteen thousand Jews from the Vitebsk ghetto ended up in the river or as human fertilizer. Sixteen thousand people. And I’m supposed to give a damn about a couple of off-duty Fritzes who got their throats cut outside the local sausage counter.’
‘I can see that you are a man under strain, sir,’ said the colonel.
‘We all are,’ I allowed. ‘It’s the strain of constantly having to look the other way. Well, I don’t mind telling you, the muscles in my neck are getting tired.’
Colonel Ahrens seethed quietly. ‘I’m still awaiting an answer to a perfectly reasonable question, captain.’
‘All right, I’ll tell you what I think, and you can tell me that I’m deluded and then the lieutenant here can take me to the airport. Colonel, your men were killed by a German soldier. Their side arms were still holstered so they didn’t believe they were in any danger, and in this moonlight it’s highly unlikely the murderer could have surprised them. Could be they even knew their killer. It’s an uncomfortable forensic fact, but most people do know the person who murders them.’
‘I can’t believe what you’re saying,’ said Ahrens.
‘I’ll give you some more reasons why I believe what I do in a moment,’ I said. ‘But if I may? The initial attack probably occurred on the street. The murderer hit them on the head with a blunt instrument and most likely threw it into the river. He must have been quite powerful because that’s how it looks from their head injuries – I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Ribe and Greiss might eventually have died from those blows alone. Then he dragged them down to the river. His doing that is another reason to assume he was strong. He made damn sure of what he was doing, too, from the size of the bayonet cuts. I’ve seen carthorses with smaller mouths than those wounds. He cut their throats while they were still unconscious, so he must have wanted to make sure they were dead. And I think that’s significant. Also I had the impression that the laceration ends higher on one side of each man’s neck than the other. The left side of the neck as you look at it, which might suggest a left-handed man.
‘Now then: maybe he was disturbed and maybe he wasn’t. It’s possible he meant to push the bodies into the water and let them float away to give him more time to escape. That’s what I would have done. With or without a head, a body that’s been in the water takes a while to start talking back to a pathologist – even an experienced one, and I don’t imagine there are too many of those in Smolensk right now.
‘When he got on his toes and made a run along the riverbank, he was running for his motorcycle – yes, I don’t doubt the SS sergeant was right about that. There’s nothing else sounds like an air-cooled BMW. Not even Glinka. Partisans can steal motorcycles, of course, but they’d hardly be brazen enough to ride one around right here in Smolensk, with so many checkpoints around the city. If he parked the bike to the west his name wouldn’t appear on a field policeman’s checklist either. And let’s not forget that it was a German murder weapon, too. According to the witness, the bike drove west along the road to Vitebsk. And given that the west bridge is down it’s certain that he didn’t cross the river. Which means your murderer must be stationed out that way. To the west of Smolensk. I expect you’ll find the bayonet somewhere on that road, lieutenant. Without the spring in the scabbard it might even have fallen out.’
‘But if he drove west,’ said the colonel, ‘that would mean you think he must have been going to the 537th at the castle, the General Staff at Krasny Bor, or the Gestapo at Gnezdovo.’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘If I were you, lieutenant, I’d check out the vehicle logs at all three. Chances are that’s how you’ll catch your man. German bike, German knife, and the perpetrator stationed along the road to Vitebsk.’