‘That’s right,’ said Reinhardt. He felt nervous, hesitant, like someone on a high diving board for the first time, screwing up the courage to jump. This might take him somewhere. It might take him nowhere. ‘I’m hopeful for some good material coming out of this operation. Counterintelligence has been a bit slow lately.’ He winced as he said it, it sounded so weak.
‘Ah, well, some of them are here. The chaps from the conference. You could try to talk to them now, couldn’t you?’
‘I’m sure they have better things to do than chat with a captain of the Abwehr.’
‘Nonsense, come on. I’ll introduce you.’
Caution got the better of him, clenching a firm hand around his innards. That, and the memory of Freilinger’s ice-cold eyes. ‘No, shy;really, sir, you’ve been very kind to offer. I wouldn’t want to bother any of them.’
‘Well, fine then. But come, let me introduce you to a couple of my men, at least. I’d like you to meet them. Tomas, Pieter,’ he called. Two other panzer officers in the huddle of uniforms at the far end of the bar turned. Lehmann ushered Reinhardt down to them, a pair of lieutenants. ‘An old acquaintance from our first time in France. Gregor Reinhardt, of the Abwehr.’
Reinhardt shook hands with them, exchanging pleasantries. The two officers laughed when Lehmann recounted Reinhardt’s joke about firm ground under their tanks. More jokes followed. Reinhardt listened with half an ear, his eyes scanning the officers sitting around the reading corner, and found himself holding a glass of beer as well as his slivovitz.
‘What’s all this, Johannes?’ The four of them turned to see a colonel standing behind them. Reinhardt and the two lieutenants came to attention. ‘Share the joke, why don’t you?’
‘Faber, hello. Meet Gregor Reinhardt, an old friend from France. 1940! Fancy meeting him here, eh? We used to do prisoner interrogations together.’
Reinhardt looked at the colonel’s unit insignia. He was from the 118th Division.
‘Prisoner interrogations?’ repeated Faber, sipping from a glass of wine. ‘We don’t get too many of them around here, eh?’
‘Yes, sir,’ replied Reinhardt.
‘Oh?’ said Lehmann, looking between them. ‘Why’s that, then?’
‘Partisans tend not to surrender,’ said Faber. ‘And when they do, they tend not to get taken prisoner. And what is Abwehr’s take on this operation?’
‘Bound to be successful, sir.’
‘What are you working on now?’
Reinhardt took a deep breath inside and took the step he had avoided taking earlier. ‘I’m actually working on a murder case at the moment.’ Lehmann and his two lieutenants went quiet, and Faber’s eyebrows went up.
‘Somewhat outside the normal writ of the Abwehr, no?’
‘Normally, yes, sir. However, given the priority the coming operation is taking in terms of manpower, I was given this assignment.’
‘Come now,’ said Faber. ‘I find it hard to believe the Abwehr has nothing better to do.’
‘Quite the contrary, sir. Partly for the reason I just mentioned, and partly because one of the victims was a German officer. In fact, an Abwehr officer. There are standing arrangements for investigating such things.’
‘One?’ interjected Lehmann. ‘You mean there’s more than one?’
‘The second was a journalist. A Bosnian Croat. A woman. Apparently well connected.’
The calm had attracted other officers, who began to gather around. One or two of them he knew by name, a couple more by sight, members of the garrison. Others he did not know at all. Reinhardt began to sweat, and he put his glass back down on the bar, partly in order to stop himself from drinking, and partly to show he was ready to go, but if any of the officers caught his intentions they ignored it.
‘Well, apart from whether it makes operational sense, what would you know about investigating such a crime?’ asked Faber.
‘Reinhardt used to be a copper.’ One of the officers that Reinhardt knew slightly stepped forward, with a broad smile plastered across a freckled face. ‘Big star in Kripo. You might have seen his name in the Berlin papers, before the war. What was the big case, Reinhardt? The post box?’
‘The Postman, sir,’ said Reinhardt. ‘Dresner.’
Faber’s eyes widened. ‘Right, right. The Postman. I remember as well. There was another one. Some gangster, wasn’t there?’
Reinhardt nodded. ‘Podolski.’
‘Podolski! Riiight! What was it they called him?’
‘Leadfoot Podolski.’ He looked around at the flushed faces and raised eyebrows. ‘He had a habit of weighting his victims down with lead and dumping them in water.’
‘And Paris! There was something in Paris, no? At the universal exposition, back in thirty-seven. Something to do with the Russians? Yes?’
‘Yes,’ he said, feeling desperately uncomfortable at talking of his past. If someone here knew enough to link him to the policeman he had been, they might know more about what had made him leave that life.
‘Come and tell us of these investigations,’ said Faber. ‘It would make a change from what we usually end up talking about.’
‘Sir, really, I should not take up too much of your time.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Faber. ‘Just one story. A good detective story.’
‘Paris! Tell us about Paris!’
‘Tell us about the Postman.’
With Faber and Lehmann on each side, Reinhardt was ushered around the end of the bar to the sitting area, where about a half dozen colonels, and as many majors, were standing, sitting, or leaning against the bar. There was a round of introductions, and bouts of hand waving and head nodding as the officers looked towards him, some with the curiosity that they might show to an exotic zoo exhibit, others with dead, uninterested glances. Only a few names stuck in Reinhardt’s head, the first ones called out. There was Colonel Eichel, a tall, blond man with limpid blue eyes. Colonel Ascher, who looked like a monk all round and doughty with the top of his head bald, and the hair on the back and sides shaved short. Colonel Kappel, rotund and jolly looking. Reinhardt thought he remembered seeing him at the Ragusa the previous night. Colonel Forster, gaunt and cadaverous, with fingers like cords wrapped around his glass.
There were a few others, men whose names Reinhardt did not try to catch, and at least one or two of whom he was sure were at the club. His eyes, though, his eyes took in the uniforms, the insignia. 369th. A pair of SS officers from Prinz Eugen. 1st Mountain. 118th and 121st Jager Divisions. All of them were on his list, which felt like it was burning a hole in his pocket.
‘Dresner?’ asked Eichel. ‘Who is this Dresner?’ His voice had a slur from his drinking.
‘Dresner was a killer! A murderer,’ replied Faber. ‘Go on, tell us how you caught him.’
‘Well,’ said Reinhardt. He looked down at his feet a moment. ‘I was working with Berlin homicide at the time. It was 1935. A number of people, all men, mostly in their middle ages, had been murdered in their homes. All of them had been stabbed to death, with the killing wound under the left armpit. A very precise wound, either penetrating the heart or cutting the main arteries that led from it. All the victims had had their hands broken with a hammer, and had had their sexual organs crushed.’ Some of the listening officers winced, and one pantomimed clutching his groin and falling backwards into a chair. ‘There were no signs of forced entry,’ Reinhardt continued, ‘and no signs of anything having been stolen.’
‘A real mystery, indeed,’ said Eichel as he tipped his head back for his glass. A couple of other officers shushed him.
‘Go on, Reinhardt,’ said Faber.
‘I was called onto the case following the fourth murder. I was struck by the way the victims were killed. No forced entry, so the killer was likely known to the victims, or was someone who would normally be above suspicion. As we investigated, we realised in two of the murders witnesses had seen someone in a uniform in the vicinity. This, and the victims’ wounds, suggested it was the same person doing the killings, but nothing on why or who he might be. So, instead, we began to look more deeply into the victims’ backgrounds. We were sure there had to be something linking them together. While we were on those inquiries, another two people were killed in the same way. We eventually discovered that all of them had, at one time, worked in a boys’ boarding school that had been closed in the late 1920s due to rumours of abuse by the staff of some of the boys.