He flinched. Something glinted on the grimy oil-covered floor of the lift shaft, something that must have been uncovered from the oil by the shoes of one of the porters. Something silver.
‘Dig that out,’ he said to one of the crime scene men, nodding at the object.
A minute later the chief inspector was holding in his hand an oily silver medallion. About the size of a small coin, one side smooth and plain. And on the other a cross and two daggers.
‘Our murderer makes mistakes,’ he thought to himself.
‘People normally wear medallions round their necks,’ MacDonald mused. ‘It would seem that in the case of the last two victims the medallion was ripped off while the murderer was throwing his garrotte around their necks. He took everything from his victims but seems to have missed the little silver medallions.’
‘Or placed them there,’ Maschke suggested, ‘as a sort of visiting card.’
‘Some sort of nutcase, planting clues for us?’ Stave wiped his brow with his right hand. He was tired. He didn’t want to go along with Maschke’s theory, not least because the last thing he wanted to do was to get inside the head of some deranged killer in an attempt to imagine his next moves. But he reminded himself that he was supposed to be a professional. ‘In that case why didn’t we find a medallion next to the first victim?’
‘Maybe the killer is developing his style,’ Maschke replied. ‘Or maybe he did leave a medallion there, and we were just too stupid to find it?’
Another accusation, Stave thought to himself. If you keep on like this, I’ll have you moved to traffic duty, if it’s the last thing I do!
‘I think MacDonald’s suggestion is the more likely,’ he said. ‘At least in that case there would be a link between the old man and the child. The two of them were wearing the same medallion. Maybe they belonged to the same family.’
‘So what about the young woman?’ Czrisini asked.
‘Maybe she was wearing a medallion too but in her case the murderer spotted it and stole it. Or maybe we really were too dim and didn’t find it. I’ll send somebody over to Baustrasse again to search the rubble.’
‘If the medallions were ripped off at the time of the attack,’ MacDonald developed his train of thought, ‘then that means the victims were murdered where we found them, or else the medallions wouldn’t have been next to the bodies.’
‘But if they’ve deliberately been left by the killer,’ Maschke interjected, ‘it means nothing. He might have strangled them anywhere, and afterwards just sought out somewhere in the rubble he could dump the corpses, and leave them with his parting gift.’
‘But he hasn’t left any two bodies in the same place. Each time he has chosen a new lot of ruins,’ Stave said. ‘You were down at the Street Clearance department. Just how many lots of ruins are there to choose from to hide a corpse?’
The vice squad man shrugged: ‘Hundreds, maybe thousands. There are a couple of posh areas like Blankenese that we can exclude – too little bomb damage – and then there are a few areas like the port: badly bombed but cordoned off by the British, where nobody would get in without being noticed. Apart from that, take your pick in what is the greatest ruined cityscape in Europe.’
‘Maybe the killer wants us to find his victims,’ MacDonald suggested. ‘Maybe he’s challenging us? Trying to provoke us?’
Stave waved the idea away. ‘No point in coming to premature conclusions. Wherever the killer might hide the bodies they’re going to be found sooner or later. How’s he going to make a corpse simply disappear? Weight it down with a couple of concrete blocks and throw it into the water? Even out on the Elbe the ice is a couple of metres thick. The Alster and the Fleete are frozen solid. Bury it? The ground is frozen hard as iron. Burn it? There’s next to no petrol and or coal in Hamburg, hardly even any wood. In one respect at least this winter is the policeman’s friend – there’s no way for a killer to simply dispose of his victim.’ Stave stretched. ‘Any more witnesses?’
The lieutenant gave a wry smile. ‘Maybe. I have the boy in a car with one of our military police. It’s not quite so cold in the car and there was no need for the lad to see this.’ He nodded towards the stretcher with the body being carried off between a couple of broken walls.
‘Maybe he should,’ Stave muttered, and made a sign to the two men in dark coats to put the stretcher on the ground.
MacDonald barked something in English and a military policeman brought over a skinny boy, almost invisible inside a grown-up’s overcoat that was far too big for him: unkempt brown hair, probably lice-infested, a scabby rash on his neck, missing one of his front teeth.
‘What’s your name?’ Stave asked him, indicating to the British soldier that the boy shouldn’t come too close.
‘Jim Mainke.’
‘Jim?’
‘Wilhelm.’
‘Age?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘Try again. Age?’
‘Fourteen. That is, I’ll be fourteen this summer.’
‘Where do you live?’
Wilhelm Mainke waved a hand somewhere across the ruins.
‘With your parents.’
‘No, thank God,’ the boy replied with a smile. ‘If I did, I’d be in Ojendorf Cemetery.’
The cheeky answer irritated the chief inspector but he kept calm. ‘Do I have to drag everything out of you? Or can you string more than a couple of words together at a time?’
Maine averted his eyes. ‘My father worked at Blohm amp; Voss,2 my mother was a housewife. They were both killed by a bombing raid in 1943. I was staying with my grandmother out in the country at the time. I live in a cellar in Rothenburgsort, with a few friends.’
That was more or less what Stave had guessed. There were more than a thousand vagabond orphans on the streets of Hamburg, some whose parents had been killed in the bombing raids, some refugees who’d got separated from their parents. A few of them had joined gangs and were literally fighting for their existence; many survived by collecting lumps of coal, looting amongst the ruins, working for the black marketeers – or sold themselves on the station platforms.’
‘You come here a lot?’
‘Of course. I know my way around the port area. I used to be able to visit my father at the shipyard. I come here looking for coal.’
‘Other kids do the same thing?’
Mains shrugged. ‘You get a few hanging around. Thirty, maybe forty. Not so many right now. Too cold.’
‘And you were out and about here this morning?’
‘Yeah. Until the patrol nabbed me.’
‘Did you see the girl?’
Mainke quickly shook his head. ‘When I got here, the cops were already on the scene. They wouldn’t let me get any closer.’
‘But you know why the police are here?’
The boy nodded. ‘One of the military police told me.’
‘Were you here yesterday too?’
‘No, had to find myself a bite to eat. It’s two, maybe three days since I was last here.’
‘Do you think the girl could have been lying in the lift shaft then and you wouldn’t have noticed her?’
The boy moved his head from side to side indifferently. ‘She could have been there for years and I wouldn’t have noticed her. I usually keep to the riverbank. That’s where you find lumps of coal, if you’re lucky. As soon as I find a couple, I’m out of here. Not worth staying around any longer. Not worth wandering around in the ruins, nothing left there.’
‘Apart from a dead girl.’
Jim Mainke went silent.
Stave sighed. ‘I’m sorry about this, but I have to ask you to come with me.’
‘Are you arresting me?’
‘You could say that, but it’s not exactly what I mean at the moment.’
The chief inspector led the boy over to the stretcher, where the two porters were standing having a smoke. The military policeman gave Stave a dirty look and glanced at MacDonald, but dropped it when the lieutenant gave an imperceptible nod.