The unknown man staggered down Holstenwall, then turned right at Millerntor, finally getting as far as the warren of tiny streets north of the Reeperbahn, to a half-destroyed rental block, with bits of cardboard next to the doorbells giving the names and birth dates of recently moved-in homeless. The man stopped, still bent over, then leaned down and scraped a handful of snow together to wipe his face. Trying to make himself presentable before his mother sees him, Stave thought to himself. The young man fumbled in the pocket of an overcoat that was way too big for him, his hands numb with cold and possibly also with bruises. When eventually he managed to find the key, Stave quickly approached him.
‘CID,’ he said in a low voice. No need to wake the neighbours.
The man turned round, an expression of horror on his face. ‘What do you want now?’
He was barely 20 years old, Stave reckoned. Undernourished. Perhaps this was the first time in his life he had been badly beaten. On the other hand: who knew what he might have done in the war?
‘Who did this to you?’ Stave asked, indicating his swollen eyelid. He was too tired to beat about the bush. Also he was counting on the young man being afraid. Ask a simple question and he might get a simple answer.
‘A policeman,’ the lad said. ‘While I was being interrogated.’
Stave closed his eyes and cursed under his breath. ‘Which one?’
‘Inspector Maschke.’
Why am I not surprised? Stave asked himself angrily.
‘Why did he treat you like that?’
The young man stared at him as if he’d asked a stupid question. ‘Maybe your colleague learnt his trade with the Gestapo,’ he said at last.
Stave offered the lad a cigarette. A few more questions and he had got the basic facts. His name was Karl Trotzauer, 19, resident in St Pauli district, unemployed and caught on the black market with a bottle of schnapps and an oil painting of a farmhouse in a gold-painted frame. But you didn’t beat people up for being in possession of a bottle of schnapps and a piece of kitsch. Apparently Maschke had also asked where he had been on the night of the twentieth of January. And Trotzauer, with no idea what he was on about, had told him he had been over at his aunt’s house in Eimsbuttel and had then come home via Lappenbergs Allee.
‘That’s when he started hitting me,’ he said, pointing to his swollen eye. ‘No warning, no shouting, just laying into me with his fists and kicking me. I thought I was going to die.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘When I came to my senses he asked me how I had killed the old man.’
‘The old man?’
‘I had no idea what he was talking about. It was only after he had beaten me some more that I realised he was on about a murder victim. Gradually it dawned on me that he wanted me to confess to killing some old man.’
‘And did you?’
Trotzauer glowered at him. ‘It hurt like hell but I’m not stupid. Obviously I didn’t confess because there was nothing to confess to. I didn’t kill any old man. I told Maschke that, again and again. In between his blows. Eventually he let me go, promising that he would get me in the end.’
‘Off you go,’ Stave said.
On the long way back the chief inspector had plenty of time to reflect. On one occasion he had to stop to show his CID pass to a British patrol. Other than that, he saw nobody. It was as if Hamburg was deserted, the streets ruined and ripped apart, the shops stripped bare, the bombed-out railway stations all abandoned by the inhabitants, all of them gone somewhere else to build a new and better city.
Had Maschke been in the Gestapo? He was supposed to be relatively fresh out of police training college, so he couldn’t have been there since before 1945. Nor could Stave imagine his big, gawky, chain-smoking colleague who still lived with his mother getting up at five in the morning to kick down the door of some Jew or other.
But even if Maschke had been in the Gestapo: why would he want to beat up some low-life black marketeer? Over-enthusiasm? Just because somebody had been in the area around the supposed time of the murder was no reason to beat him up. Why would Maschke want to make a suspect of a 19-year-old on practically no evidence? Why would he want to beat a confession out of him when he almost certainly had nothing to do with the real murderer?
The truth is I know nothing at all about Maschke, Stave thought to himself when he finally reached his own front door. Maybe it’s time I looked into that. Tomorrow. After a few hours’ sleep.
The following afternoon Stave had the first opportunity to find the answers to a few questions – and almost completely screwed up.
They were discussing the case in his office. He was staring at the snowflake patterns on the ice on his window, glinting like cold stars, while MacDonald was going over their next steps. The lieutenant was leafing through yellow pages looking at names, descriptions and dates of birth. Hundreds of them as far as Stave could see.
‘This is a copy of the Hamburg missing persons list,’ MacDonald said. ‘I’ve gone through all the names – and there is no one there who fits either of our two victims. There are, of course, young women and old men, but their descriptions do not match either of the two. Nor can I find any pattern in the lists. Missing men, women and children. People unaccounted for since the bombings, people lost amongst the stream of refugees fleeing the east, or just gone missing because that is the way things are after a war. There are cases of husbands or wives reported missing, relatives and friends, employees reported missing by their firms or offices. If any of them should have ended up amidst the rubble with strangulation marks on their throat, I have no idea how we should find out their names from what we have here.’ MacDonald folded the list up and put it in his uniform jacket pocket. Then he raised his hands in apology.
‘Same thing here,’ said Maschke, his tone of voice sounding as if it made him furious not to have found something the Brit had missed. ‘No dentist ever examined this old boy’s choppers, and no doctor ever examined him down below.’
MacDonald gave him a querying look and he smirked.
‘I mean his rupture was never treated by any hospital or dear old family doctor in Hamburg, that’s pretty much for certain.’
‘Maybe he was treated by a doctor who didn’t survive the war?’ Stave suggested.
‘I went round to the Street Clearance and Rebuilding office too,’ Maschke continued, flicking open a grubby notebook. ‘Did you know that in Hamburg more than 250,000 apartments and houses were destroyed by bombs? As well as 3,500 offices, 277 schools, 24 hospitals, 58 churches, and that altogether there are 43 million cubic metres of rubble. The rubble boys are pretty proud of their statistics department.’
‘That’ll keep them in work for the next 20 years,’ Stave said morosely. ‘But what’s it got to do with looters?’
‘It just shows that there’s a lot of opportunity. But the rubble boys say there are no turf wars between gangs looting treasures from the ruins. At least not at the moment. Since it’s been so cold, the stones, concrete slabs and all the dirt around have been frozen solid so that it’s hardly worth it for the professionals to go out hunting for booty. They’re waiting for the thaw. At present there are only amateurs out there amongst the ruins, looking for a metre of stovepipe, an oven plate or firewood. Too few of them to get into each other’s way. Fewer looters out there than there were a couple of months ago, and almost no incidents of fighting between looters. Whatever happened to the girl and the old man, it almost certainly had nothing to do with looting.’
‘Great,’ said Stave, before he realised what a stupid thing it was to say. He sighed and rubbed his forehead. He could do with an aspirin, he thought, but you had to go to the black market to get those.
MacDonald finished up for the day. Stave held back his vice squad colleague under the pretext that he wanted further details about what he had found at the Clearance and Rebuilding office.