Stave pulled the blanket back from the head end of the stretcher. ‘Do you recognise this girl?’
Mainke didn’t throw up, didn’t even go pale, just stood there looking at the body. Eventually the chief inspector had had enough and pulled the blanket back over the victim’s unseeing eyes.
‘Never seen her before,’ the boy said.
Stave nodded to the porters for them to take the stretcher away.
‘What’re you going to do with me now?’ Mainke asked. ‘Can I go back to looking for coal?’
‘You’re too young. I can’t just let you loose around here. The policemen will take you to Rauhes House.’ It was a charitable institution where all the orphans picked up by the police were taken in. A former locksmith was in charge and a few volunteers; Christian idealists looked after the boys and girls, delousing them and washing them, patched up scratches and dealt with other minor illnesses, gave them hot soup and a clean bed. Even so, most of the children did a runner within a day or two.
Mainke turned round and walked off behind the military policeman.
‘Where did you get the name Jim from?’ Stave shouted after him.
Maine turned and gave him a real boyish grin. ‘I have an uncle in America. Honest. In New York. I’m going to go to him as soon as big ships start docking in the port again.’
‘Good luck,’ Stave murmured, but Mainke was already too far away to hear him.
‘A witness?’
Stave turned round on hearing his boss’s voice: Cuddel Breuer was standing there facing him.
‘I don’t think so. The boy only got here after the police were already on the scene.’
‘So, anything else?’
Stave almost said, ‘Just the usual,’ but stopped himself in time. He quickly went over what they had found.
‘Do you think the killer is the same?’ Breuer asked.
Stave paused, took a deep breath, then nodded: ‘Yes. Victims two and three have something to do with each other. Members of the same family, I suspect, even though we have no proof as yet. The circumstances are remarkably similar: both strangled with a thin wire, stripped naked, left amidst the rubble. It is even possible the little girl was murdered at the same time as the other two.’
‘A killer wiping out an entire family?’ Breuer looked around. ‘Anything else to do here?’
‘The crime scene man will go over everything again. But there’s nothing more for us to do.’
‘Good. Let’s go back to head office. I’ll give you a lift.’
Stave followed his boss to his old Mercedes. Breuer drove himself. He was a relaxed, self-confident, fast driver. They soon left Maschke in the old patrol car far behind.
‘So, we have a serial killer,’ said Breuer, looking dead ahead through the windscreen.
‘I’m afraid it seems so.’
‘We’re not going to be able to keep this under wraps much longer. The type of killing, the appeals for identification of the victims – sooner or later some journalist will put two and two together and get a story.’
‘And we can’t control what he might write.’
‘Not these days, thank God. That is one of the prices of democracy, made in Great Britain. One way or another we’ve done well, you and me, Stave. But even so, in this one particular case, I almost long for the old days when you could simply tell them what they could print, and what they couldn’t.’
‘Even that wouldn’t help. People talk. There’ll be rumours. I’d prefer a piece in the newspaper, so at least we know where we are.’
‘And where are you?’
Stave shrugged. ‘They can’t write any more than we know. And that’s precious little.’
Breuer, for the first time, turned and looked at him, even though they were turning fast into the square outside headquarters. ‘We have a serial killer, one who attacks people in the ruins, amidst the rubble, or at least that is what people are going to think. But nearly all of Hamburg is in ruins. Worse: the victims are a young woman, an old man and a child. What are people going to make of that? That they’re all members of one unfortunate family? Victims of some domestic drama? Hardly. They are going to believe that anybody is likely to be murdered. That men and women are in danger, and even children. That the killer is someone who can strike almost any citizen in almost any part of the city. That is what they’re going to make of it.’
‘And they might be right,’ Stave mumbled.
‘That doesn’t exactly make the job any easier. Your job, I might add. Enjoy your Sunday, Chief Inspector.’
Stave climbed out, nodded, closed the heavy Mercedes door and watched as the car moved off.
‘Enjoy your Sunday,’ he muttered, than went into the office. It didn’t look as if he was going to have time today to hang out at the station looking for his son.
He didn’t even manage to get as far as his office without being stopped. A shadow emerged from between the columns by the doorway to the building: a young man, freshly shaven, bright, with notebook and pencil in hands that were still blue from the cold.
‘Ludwig Kleensch, from Die Zeit,’ he introduced himself. ‘Can I have a word?’
Stave had to make up his mind quickly. Should he just ignore the journalist? Or would he speak to him. The British had allowed daily and weekly newspapers to start up. Most were run by political parties and were local Hamburg-only papers. Die Welt was unaffiliated to any party and was available throughout the British zone, as was Die Zeit, the weekly that was the first to be licensed by the British authorities. But in this winter even the daily newspapers only had four to six pages and were published just twice a week. There was too little paper, even the yellowish, unrefined stuff reminiscent of old cheap drawing paper for children, but thinner.
The chief inspector did his calculations. Today was Sunday; between now and Thursday when Die Zeit came out he would be left in peace, at least as long as Kleensch was the only journalist already in on the story.
‘Very well,’ he said, trying in vain to manage a smile as he held the door open for the journalist. ‘At least in my office your hands won’t drop off from the cold.’
Kleensch nodded, grateful and surprised to be treated so cordially.
‘I want to talk to you about the rubble murderer,’ Kleensch said when they were upstairs.
‘The “rubble murderer”?’
‘That’s what I intend to call him. It has a ring to it. Or would you prefer the Hamburg Strangler?’
Stave didn’t bother to answer, nor did he bother to ask how the journalist already knew so much, even the fact that he was the one running the case. He thought about the crammed newspaper pages, which had to carry official notices, wedding and death notices and news from all round the world. Kleensch wouldn’t have much space. Maybe the readers wouldn’t even notice his story. After 12 years of Nazi censorship nobody believed anything they read in the newspapers any more.
As if he’d read Stave’s mind, Kleensch leaned towards him and said, in a rather threatening tone of voice, ‘I’ve already told the editor it’s a big story.’
The chief inspector nodded resignedly, then gave the journalist a straightforward account of the case, handed him copies of the posters requesting information about the victims and told him what the CID had done so far. He only kept to himself what he planned to do next. He felt it might sound a bit pathetic.
‘Will there be more murders?’ Kleensch asked, scribbling so intensely he didn’t even look up from his notepad.
What a stupid question, Stave thought to himself and then realised that it was a trap. If he said, ‘We can’t exclude that possibility,’ the journalist would quote him on it, and that wouldn’t sound good. Instead he said, ‘We hope to have our hands on the killer within the next few days.’
Kleensch smiled, half in disappointment, half in recognition of what the inspector had done. He left Stave a card, printed on the same grubby paper as the newspapers themselves. ‘If anything should turn up, I’d be grateful if you’d give me a call. I don’t want to get anything wrong.’