Hoffner stood in the doorway, as yet unable to see the incongruity in the four pins sticking out from the map: the Mnz Strasse roadwork, the sewer entrance at Oranienburger Strasse, the Prenzlauer underpass, and the grotto off Blowplatz. And now another in the Rosenthaler Platz station. There was something odd to that one-as he had known there would be-the feel of it forced as he drove the pin through the paper. He stared at it for nearly a minute before moving to the desk.
The place was still an icebox as he pulled his notebook from his pocket: someone had promised a delivery of coal by the end of the week, but Hoffner knew better. Picking up the cup on his desk, he sniffed at the contents and then took a sip: something to mask the brandy. With a wince, he swallowed and headed for the corridor.
The KD was behind his desk and on the phone when Hoffner pulled up and knocked at the open door. Kriminaldirektor Edmund Prager looked up and motioned Hoffner inside. Like his own appearance, Prager kept his large office sparse: a long wooden desk-phone, blotter, and lamp-with two filing cabinets at either end, and nothing more. More striking, though, was the absence of anything that might have indicated that a battle had been fought on these floors in the last week. Whatever remnants might still be in piles of debris around the rest of the offices, here there were none. Prager had insisted on it. If the revolution was over, it was over. He had no desire to be reminded of it.
Hoffner watched as Prager continued to nod into the receiver, an occasional “Yes, yes, of course,” or “Quite right,” poking its way into the conversation. Another half-minute and Prager again motioned to Hoffner. Not knowing what to do, Hoffner moved over to the window and gazed out, his eyes wandering across the wreckage in the square below.
Willingly or not, Hoffner now saw the Alex as if through a sheet of fine gauze, all of it familiar, real, yet profoundly not. In a single moment it had changed forever. Whether over hours, days, weeks, Hoffner had discovered that, in revolution, the passage of time is instantaneous, the reality of the sequence irrelevant and irrevocable: perspective made the sensation only more acute. He had felt something similar to this once before, the same distortion, the same jarring disbelief. Then, he had not thought himself capable of striking Martha-he wasn’t-and yet, in that one infinite moment, he had sent her to the ground, his oldest boy watching in horror, the reality of it now lost, only its shame lived over and over: one moment, all as it was, as it had been; the next, fine gauze, and with it a sense of helplessness so deep as to make it almost illusory.
“She has the same markings?” said Prager.
Hoffner turned. The KD was off the phone and was busy writing on a pad as he spoke. “Yes,” Hoffner answered. “Identical.”
A nod.
“You’ve heard the rumor, of course,” said Hoffner. “We’re due for another new chief, any day.” He moved toward the desk. “What does that make-four, five in the last month?”
Still preoccupied, Prager said, “And when were you planning on starting this rumor?”
Hoffner smiled quietly to himself. “As soon as all the bets were in.” He thought he saw the hint of a grin.
“So this makes five,” said Prager as he flipped through the papers.
“Yes.”
“And that makes your maniac rather special, doesn’t it?” Prager stacked the pages, then placed them in perfect alignment along the top right-hand corner of his desk.
“Yes.” Hoffner waited for Prager to look up. “This one looks to be his first. She might even have had a personal connection with our friend.”
“Personal?”
“He’s preserved her. My guess is at least six weeks. That makes her different.”
“Different is good. And how’s Fichte working out?”
“Fine. He’s with the body.”
“Yes, I know. Allowing someone else to take care of your evidence. How far we’ve come, Nikolai.”
“A brave new world, Herr Kriminaldirektor.”
Prager motioned to the chair by the desk. “I need you to finish this one up.”
Hoffner sat. “I don’t think he meant for us to find this woman,” he said, as if not having heard the request. “The others, yes. This one, no.” Hoffner pulled open his notebook and flipped to a dog-eared page. “Preliminary guess is that she was asphyxiated like the others, then-”
“How close are we, here?”
Hoffner looked up. That wasn’t a question one asked in cases like these. In cases like these, one had to let it play itself out, each one unique, like the men and women who committed the crimes: degree was never an issue, and Prager knew that. Hoffner did his best to let the question pass. “As I said, we might have someplace to go with this one-”
“I need this finished,” Prager cut in. He waited. “Do you understand what I’m saying, Nikolai?”
Hoffner remained silent. “No, Herr Kriminaldirektor, I do not.”
Prager began to chew on the inside of his cheek: it was the one lapse in composure he permitted himself. “Almost half a dozen mutilated women in just over a month and a half,” he said, his tone more direct. “I’m not sure how long we can keep this out of the press. The distractions of revolution are beginning to fade.”
“They’re also not going to be getting in the way of an investigation anymore. And,” Hoffner continued, “correct me if I’m wrong, Herr Kriminaldirektor, but we’ve always been very good at using the newspapers to our advantage.”
“As you said, Nikolai, a brave new world.”
For the first time today, Hoffner was genuinely confused. “You’re going to have to make that a little clearer, Herr Kriminaldirektor.”
Prager’s tone softened. “Once in a while, Nikolai, you need to consider the world outside of homicide. You need to consider the repercussions.”
Hoffner had no idea where Prager was going with this, when the KD suddenly stood, his gaze on the door. “Ah.” Prager moved out from behind his desk. “Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you quite so-promptly.”
Hoffner turned to see a tall, angular man in an expensive suit stepping into the office: a chief inspector with a thin coating of meticulously combed jet-black hair atop a narrow head. Hoffner stood. He had never seen the man before.
Prager made the introductions. “Kriminal-Oberkommissar Gustav Braun, this is-”
“Kriminal-Kommissar Nikolai Hoffner,” said the man, a strangely inviting smile on his lips. “Yes, I know your work well, Inspector. A most impressive rsum.”
With a slight hesitation, Hoffner nodded his acknowledgment. “I wish I could say the same of you, Chief Inspector.” Hoffner then added, “I mean, that I know your work well. I don’t.”
Still coldly affable, Braun said, “No, no, of course not. We tend to keep ourselves to ourselves, upstairs.”
And there it was, thought Hoffner. “Upstairs.” Of course.
A step up from the Kriminalpolizei, both by floor and autonomy, were the detectives of Department IA, the political police. Hoffner had never figured out whether they had been created to combat or augment domestic espionage. Whichever it was, he had learned to keep his distance from the men on the fourth floor. Their influence, never lacking under the Kaisers, had grown by leaps and bounds during the last few months. It was simply a question of how far it would ultimately take them. Why they should be showing any interest in his case, however, was not at all clear. The first four bodies had been those of a sales clerk, two seamstresses, and a nurse, no connections among them-except perhaps that they had all lived solitary, isolated lives-but nothing to pique the curiosity of the Polpo: unless the boys upstairs knew something about number five that Hoffner had failed to see, which meant that Prager was obviously in on the secret.