By the time he got to his office Stave was still lost in thought. He sat down at his desk and looked again at the piece of paper that he had managed to persuade Frau Hellinger to give him, though she had been reluctant to do so. Perhaps she thought it might be the last link she would have with her husband, the chief inspector reflected. She might well be right.
‘Drum up MacDonald and Maschke for me,’ he shouted to his secretary through the closed door.
He caught the smell of cold tobacco before the door even opened. Maschke came in. A few minutes later MacDonald also arrived.
He gave both men a quick summary of what he had been up to. Maschke thought long and hard and then nodded appreciatively. MacDonald just stared at him attentively. Stave returned the look.
‘Bottleneck,’ he said at last. ‘That’s what’s on the piece of paper. Just that.’ He showed it to him.
The lieutenant looked pale. ‘What could it mean?’ he whispered.
The chief inspector held up his hands. ‘It means you’re going to have to ask around amongst your colleagues again. It might have something to do with our murderer. Then again maybe not, but in any case the disappearance of Hellinger is odd. And this is the only lead we have. An English lead.’
MacDonald let his head drop so that they could no longer see his face. Difficult to make out what it meant, Stave thought to himself. Was he ashamed because the clue pointed to one of his compatriots? Or was it anger at a German policeman accusing an Englishman?
MacDonald looked up, his face expressing agreement. ‘You’re right, Chief Inspector. An English lead. I’ll get on to it.’
The Briton was just getting to his feet when there was a knock on the door. It was Erna Berg, who gave him a quick smile before turning to Stave.
‘There’s a lady here who wants to speak to you.’
‘Who is it?’
‘An Anna von Veckinhausen. She says you know her.’
Stave ignored the curious glances from MacDonald and Maschke and nodded goodbye to them. The vice squad man squeezed past the dark-haired woman outside without saying a word. MacDonald was more polite, waited for her to come in, greeted her and then closed the door behind him.
At last, thought Stave. He indicated the chair on the other side of his desk. Involuntarily he glanced at her hands and noticed a bare patch on the ring finger of her right hand. A missing wedding ring? Divorced? Widowed? Or was it nothing to do with a ring at all? Maybe it was a healed wound made by a loop of wire she’d been holding in her hands? I’m getting paranoid, the inspector realised.
Her almond-shaped eyes were watching him carefully. Maybe she regrets having come here, Stave wondered. He let her take her time.
Anna von Veckinhausen sat down on the chair opposite him, her right arm folded diagonally across her chest, her hand on her left shoulder. The same defensive pose. Then she forced a smile.
‘You know why I’m here.’
‘I have my suspicions.’
‘I didn’t tell you everything.’
‘When I first questioned you, you told me you took the path through the rubble to get from Collau Strasse to Lappenbergs Allee. The second time you told me you had been going along Lappenbergs Allee and took the path to get to Collau Strasse, the opposite of what you said the first time.’
‘I shan’t underestimate you again,’ she murmured.
Stave suppressed a smile. ‘So what were you really doing out there in the ruins on the night of the twenty-fifth of January? And what did you see?’
‘I didn’t see anything in the rubble on the evening of the twenty-fifth of January. In fact, I wasn’t even there.’
Stave opened his notebook and leafed through this scribbles. ‘But you reported the murder on the twenty-fifth? At the nearest police station.’
‘But that wasn’t when I found the body.’
‘So when did you find it?’
‘Five days earlier, on the twentieth of January. I was coming along the footpath in the rubble, from Collau Strasse as it happens, though that hardly matters now. I saw the body, but didn’t report it to the police.’
‘Why not?’
‘I was afraid. I didn’t want any trouble. I’ve never had anything to do with the police in my life. I’m not from Hamburg. I don’t know anyone here who would help me if things got difficult. I thought I could just leave it to somebody else. There was nothing anybody could have done for the dead man anyhow.’
‘But nobody else reported it.’
‘It was unbelievable. I read the newspapers, expecting each day to see a report about a naked corpse. Nothing. Eventually I realised that the body still hadn’t been discovered. It wasn’t really that surprising. Probably very few people used that path. And even if anyone did, they wouldn’t necessarily spot the body. It was lying in a bomb crater, a bit to one side of the path. I started feeling guilty. After five days I could take it no longer. I reported it to the police and let on that I had just discovered it. Ever since I’ve been thinking about the lie and wondering if it might somehow have hindered the search for the murderer. So I came here to tell you everything, I just hope it’s not too late.’
The chief inspector sat there silently for a while. Then he said, ‘If it wasn’t easy to spot the body from the path, how did you come across it?’
‘I was looting,’ she said. ‘I had left the path and was searching the rubble.’
Stave didn’t react.
Anna von Veckinhausen gave a sad smile. ‘I wasn’t looking for what you might think,’ she continued. ‘I come from Konigsberg, as you can probably guess from my name. A noble family. The usual estate, the usual education. The usual hasty flight.’
‘When did you arrive in Hamburg?’
‘I fled in January 1945. On the Wilhelm Gustloff.4 When it sank, I was picked up by a minesweeper and taken to Mecklenburg. From there I made my way onward as best I could and got here in May 1945.’
‘On your own?’
‘On my own,’ she answered quickly, decisively.
Stave stared down at the pale line on her finger. He would have liked to know if she had been alone when she boarded the Wilhelm Gustloff. And if she had got to the west before the Red Army reached the east.
‘And ever since you have lived in a Nissen hut on the Elbe canal?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a long way from Lappenbergs Allee.’
‘I was a specialist looter. Most people are after wood or bits of metal or electrical goods. I was looking for antiques.’
The chief inspector couldn’t believe his ears. ‘In the bomb wreckage of ordinary people’s rental apartments?’
‘Obviously they weren’t villas with art collections hanging on the walls. But almost every family has one inherited piece of some sort in their apartment. And each block of ruins once housed hundreds of apartments. You wouldn’t believe what you can find, if you have a trained eye. Medals from the Kaiser’s time, silver coffee spoons, grandfather’s pocket watch.’
‘And you have a trained eye?’
‘I grew up amongst valuable antiques. And over the past few years, I have trained myself to spot things like that, often bent, grimy, inconspicuous, lying amidst bricks and tiles.’
‘Then what?’
‘I clean them up, write on a piece of paper what I know about them: age, origin, et cetera – and then I sell them to British officers. Or to Hamburg business people who’ve come through the war okay.’
The word ‘bottleneck’ flashed across Stave’s mind. ‘Do you sell valuable bottles? Old glass? Perfume bottles or stuff like that?’
She gave him a surprised look. ‘No. You don’t normally find stuff like that in these ruins. At least not undamaged items.’
‘Do you know a Dr Martin Hellinger? An industrialist from Hamburg-Marienthal? Maybe a customer of yours?’ He showed her the man’s photograph.
‘Never seen him. Never heard the name either. Why do you ask?’
‘It was just a passing thought. Had you just sold something on the black market when we arrested you? You were carrying 500 Reichsmarks.’