‘If somebody these days turns to the Search Office as well as the police, that means the missing person has left either no trace or highly enigmatic traces: that the indications are so few and far between that their family don’t believe the police will ever find them. That means that in those circles there’s a chance that I might get some clue as to the identity of our victims if I just work at it hard enough. Or – something I’m not hoping for – I come across the names of other potential victims whose bodies may be still lying out there in the rubble undiscovered. Maybe I’ll find some sort of pattern.’ Stave gave him a meagre smile.
Brems nodded slowly, but then it was as if somebody had turned a light switch on in his head, and all of a sudden he was interested. ‘A colleague of mine works on new requests of that sort. There can’t have been many in the past few weeks. I’ll ask her.’
He rushed out of the room and came back ten minutes later. ‘Just one,’ he said. ‘On the thirteenth of January.’
‘One week before we found the first body.’
Stave took the card from him. Dr Marin Hellinger, born 13 March 1895 in Hamburg-Barmbek, an industrialist, address in Hamburg-Marienthal, reported missing by his wife Hertha. There was a photo, apparently from an old passport: thinning hair, probably grey, nickel-framed glasses, pudgy cheeks, neck bulging out over his collar.
‘Definitely not a refugee or a soldier. Why did you even bother to include him?’
Brems coughed: ‘My colleague was bored and she was sympathetic to Frau Hellinger. So she opened a file and sent out enquiries. To England.’
‘England? Anywhere else?’
‘America too, but why just those two I don’t now. Frau Hellinger suggested her husband might be there. Kidnapped possibly.’
‘So why didn’t she go to the police?’
Brems coughed again, but said nothing.
Stave made a note of all the information on the card. Marienthal was a suburb near where he lived. It would do no harm to knock on her door.
‘Thanks,’ he grunted.
‘See you soon, Chief Inspector. We’ll let you know if we hear anything. About your son, I mean.’
Back at the office he met with Maschke and MacDonald. Stave let them give their reports first. The vice squad man reported that no ration card had been left unclaimed at any of the distribution offices. MacDonald had had no luck either; the murdered girl had not been registered at any Hamburg school, or at least no teacher recognised her.
‘We need to print yet more posters,’ Stave said wearily. ‘We need to warn people not to go anywhere with strangers. And not to buy any suspicious article of clothing.’
‘What constitutes a “suspicious article of clothing”?’ Maschke asked.
‘No idea. The first bit is a warning to the populace. The second is intended for the killer, to make him nervous, worried about selling his loot, if that is the motive for his murders.’
‘If…’
The two men turned to go. Stave opened his notebook and mentioned his little detour to the Search Office and read them the few details concerning Dr Martin Hellinger.
‘I’m going to pay a visit to his wife.’
Maschke turned and stared at him blankly. ‘I can’s see how that’s going to help us,’ he said.
MacDonald had reddened. For a moment Stave thought the missing man’s name had meant something to him. But then he noticed that the Brit had already opened his office door a fraction and was glancing at Erna Berg, who was standing with her back to them sorting out folders on a shelf. Happy and in love, Stave thought, feeling the needle of envy prick his heart. ‘I shall drop by Hellinger’s wife in the morning,’ he told them.
‘Will you need me with you?’ Maschke asked dismissively, making quite clear what he thought of the idea.
‘No,’ the chief inspector answered, not exactly devastated. ‘What about you, Lieutenant?’
MacDonald was still blushing. ‘I’m afraid I have a meeting tomorrow morning.’
A ‘meeting’ with Erna Berg, my secretary and a married woman, Stave thought, but he forced a smile.
‘Very well then. I shall go on my own. Just to dot the “i”s and cross the “t”s.’
A Witness and a Piece of Paper
Wednesday, 5 February 1947
Stave stared out through the iced-up windows of his apartment. It was early morning. There was no point in going into the office, only to come all the way back to Marienthal to speak with the missing man’s wife. On the other hand he could hardly ring her doorbell at 6 a.m. the way the Gestapo used to do. So instead he sat there counting the crystals on the thick ice in the middle of his windowpane, then breathed on it, trying in vain to ignore the cold and the pain in his leg.
Gradually the grey day dawned. At long last he got to his feet. If he walked slowly he wouldn’t be there before 8 a.m. – and in this weather nobody was still asleep by then.
Marienthal was a Shangri-la, a district of villas in the east of Hamburg only a few hundred paces from the rental block Stave lived in. The Allies had never attacked Marienthal; only the rare stray bomb had landed there.
Stave wondered along Ahrensburg Strasse towards the centre of the district. Grey light, passers-by who avoided one another. Nobody glanced at anybody else. Nobody walked next to the ruins even though they sometimes provided shelter from the icy wind.
He stopped by an advertising column to examine his department’s handiwork: a ‘wanted’ poster, put up early that morning. ‘5,000 Reichsmarks Reward!’ And the photos of the three victims. The words beneath read: ‘A murderer is at large. A monster in human form.’ Then there was a description of the victims and where they were found. ‘Has nobody missed any of these people? Can people simply disappear in this city without family, friends or acquaintances caring?’ Did I really write that, Stave wondered. I must have been tired.
There was a tiny park by the edge of the road, scarcely bigger than a domestic garden: cobblestoned paths, trees and bushes hacked down to stumps, the skeletons of two benches, their wooden seats long since stolen.
Stave turned into Eichtal Strasse, townhouses on other side, two stories, with a loft and a gable wall facing the street. Every house was that little bit different: some faced in red brick, others with white or yellow plasterwork, or covered with ivy. Chestnut trees and beeches grew from amongst the cobbles, some chopped down, some still standing. His footsteps sounded loud on the stone. Five hundred metres away, Margarethe had been burned to death. And yet here everything was still as it ever was.
A small untended front garden under a layer of dirty hoar frost. Behind it a villa. A few dirty streaks on the white plaster, one window knocked askew. Otherwise in good condition. A thin, blackish grey trail of smoke from the chimney, the bitter but oh-so-sweet stink of glowing coal. All of a sudden Stave was in a hurry to get indoors.
The doorbell made no sound, so he knocked. It took a while, but eventually the door opened. A wave of warm air washed out, causing the chief inspector to shiver involuntarily. A woman in her fifties, grey streaks in her long dark hair, a soft face, brown doe eyes, in an elegant if somewhat worn housecoat.