Stave lifted his hands. ‘People handle all sorts of stuff on the black market. Maybe somebody’s got a set of false teeth for sale? Or a truss? If so, we’d like have a chat with him or her. Maybe we’ll find a few pushers of American cigarettes or homemade hooch. They might have nothing to do with the murderers, but sit them down in the interrogation room and you never know what they might suddenly recall. Maybe they’ll remember somebody else touting the clothes of a young woman one day and those of an old man the next? Maybe they’ll have heard of a medallion with a cross and two daggers on it? I grant you it’s a slim chance, but we need to pick up any lead we can.’
‘Who cares? The black market is the black market. A raid is always worthwhile.’ The head of Department S – once a chubby character, but now shrunken to a shadow of his former self, shivering in a suit too big for him – rubbed his hands with glee. ‘We haven’t done a big job since Christmas. It’s high time we pushed the gentlemen spivs in the hot seat again. Good training for my lads. I suggest we hit Hansaplatz Square. That’s where you find most customers and more stuff for sale than anywhere else.’
Nobody contradicted him.
Stave nodded. If there was one place absolutely made for the black market then it was the Hansaplatz, once a tranquil spot in the St Georg district surrounded by four-storey middle-class apartment blocks. As if by a miracle the buildings had survived the hail of bombs undamaged and the square was only a short walk from the main station. The smugglers and pushers brought their goods from all the occupation zones and even abroad to the station first and foremost. The spivs would hide their stocks of penicillin, cigarettes, coffee and hard spirits in the cheap hotels or rented apartments around the square. On a few occasions the lads from Department S had discovered what were effectively warehouses full of contraband. Piece by piece this contraband would make its way down to the Hansaplatz where every day the good citizens of Hamburg would turn up in search of something or other that was not available on the ration cards.
Nobody who lived in St Georg would ever grass on one of the dealers or their customers, because they lived on the crumbs from the illegal trade: a pound of butter in monthly rent perhaps for somebody who would let a room in their apartment without asking too many questions, a case of Lucky Strikes for a couple of lads who would keep watch, a discount on illicit hooch…
‘When do we start?’ Stave asked.
‘Now, today,’ the man from Department S said. ‘Before anybody gets wind of it. Just give me the time to get my people together. We’ll need about 100 in uniform, a couple of British lorries so we can get our people to St Georg without being noticed. Let’s say, 5 p.m. this afternoon. That’s when you’ve got people coming out of offices and shops, the square will be full and the spivs will all have stocked up. Also it’ll be dusk and they won’t notice us coming until it’s too late.’
‘Good,’ the chief inspector said. ‘I’ll be at the Hansaplatz at 4.30 p.m. to take a look around. Nobody there will notice me. Maybe I’ll spot someone suspicious. Then at 5 p.m. we bag the lot of them and ship them to the police station. I want everyone we grab to be interrogated before the end of the day. And a complete inventory of every article seized.’
Stave’s colleagues filed out of his office, smiles on their faces, whispering to one another. Adrenalin flowing. Eager for the hunt.
It took barely half an hour to walk from the CID HQ to the Hansaplatz. Stave walked across the Lombard Bridge with his coat collar pulled up high and his head down. The Outer Alster on his left was a great blue-white expanse of ice, tinted pink by the pale afternoon sun. Two children were skating in squiggly patterns over the ice, a few couples walking over it uncertainly. Stave made a face. Icy surfaces were always a good excuse to slip and grab hold of one’s partner for support. A certain romance, even when it was 20 degrees below.
The quickest way would have been to go straight to the station, and then turn left towards Hansaplatz, but Stave decided to take a different route. It was true that nobody in the St Georg black market knew him, but he regularly hung around the station, asking about his son. So he took the back streets through St Georg until he came to Brenner Strasse, which would lead him into the Hansaplatz on the opposite side from the station. He passed by the Wurzburger Hof hotel where the lads from Department S last autumn had unearthed several barrels of preserving alcohol stolen from the State Institute for Zoology. The thieves had also taken the glass jars complete with their content: tapeworms, lizards and snakes. The preserving alcohol was palmed off on the black market as home-made ‘double caraway schnapps’ at 500 Reichsmarks per litre. By the time the authorities had got the tip-off and managed to raid the store, almost half of it had gone down the throats of unsuspecting drinkers: 10,000 litres of tapeworm happiness.
At the end of Brenner Strasse two teenage layabouts were hanging around, keeping watch. They gave him no more than a bored passing glance. Stave was hardly the only one heading for Hansaplatz. Men in long overcoats and flat caps; old women with wicker baskets; a one-legged veteran scouring the ground for cigarette butts and almost falling on his face every time he bent down to pick one up; workers from the port; men with bulging worn briefcases; two Chinese standing by the entrance to the Lenz bar.
Stave wandered amongst the throng. Slowly he began to make out a pattern, like waves on an ocean, like the ripples created by a stone tossed into the water. There would be quiet whisperings and then suddenly off would come an overcoat or a briefcase lid would be opened, cigarettes and Reichsmarks would pass from hand to hand, each exchange done quickly, inconspicuously.
In the entrance to an apartment block a young woman was offering a pair of men’s shoes: ‘400 Reichsmarks,’ she whispered, a flurry of motion and the shoes went to an elderly man with a briefcase who handed her something in return, then both walked off in opposite directions. An old man was offering bread coupons to three women standing round him clearly outraged by the price. The old boy looked round nervously, obviously an old soldier, with boots too big for him, in a dyed Wehrmacht greatcoat held together with safety pins, and pulled out a tin can from his pocket: ‘Butter two nine.’ 290 Reichmarks for one pound. Some smugglers must have brought a big load through the control points, otherwise it wouldn’t be anywhere near so cheap. Either that or it’s not the real thing. Two men were whispering together in a doorway and then suddenly there was an aroma of coffee in the air, before the banknotes changed hands, lots of banknotes. An old, careworn woman disappeared with one of the Chinese into the bar. A boy, barely 14 years old, was heedlessly calling out ‘Flints’, ‘Flints for cigarette lighters, just 18 Reichsmarks!’ Another teenager was peddling Lucky Strikes, seven Reichsmarks each. Stave opened his ears and let the prices roll over him: ‘Wehrmacht cutlery, rust-free, four-piece, very useful for refugees – 23 Reichsmarks. A ball of yarn – 18 Reichsmarks. A pound of sugar – 80 Reichsmarks. A month’s food rations – 1,000 Reichsmarks.’
We must have a word with the man selling the ration card, thought Stave to himself. Most workers and office employees earned no more than 50 Reichsmarks a week. If you had to keep your nose to the grindstone for six weeks to buy a pound of butter, then you really were poor – and ready to deal yourself on the black market. Or to take risks.
Watches, gold coins, dollar bills in shoe polish tins. Two metres of zinc guttering. Three freshly caught trout. A clean false identity card to get through the denazification process. Blank passports. A tiny Persian rug. Penicillin from Allied supplies. A leather suitcase. A woman’s blouse.
But no false teeth, no truss, no medallion.
Damn it, thought Stave, the boy from the search team was right; how on earth could you link any of the objects for sale here to one of the victims? Could the blouse have belonged to the young woman? Did the old man pull the piece of guttering out of the rubble and get himself killed for it?