A pair in dyed Wehrmacht greatcoats passed them, pushing a battered pram with a squeaking front axle. It didn’t look as though there was a child in it, more like a lump of wood, the chief inspector thought. That reminded him of his own unheated apartment and then he wondered what it must be like at night in these thin-walled barracks.
Anna von Veckinhausen speeded up her pace.
She wants rid of me, the chief inspector thought, ever so slightly disappointed. She doesn’t want to be seen with me here.
‘Thanks you for accompanying me,’ she said, as she reached the door in the front of the Nissen hut. ‘Do you think I need a bodyguard from now on?’
‘Why do you say that?’ Stave asked.
‘Because the murderer saw me.’
The chief inspector thought back to his conversation with the journalist from Die Zeit, and with a feeling of pained guilt turned his eyes up to the grey sky. ‘That is if the figure you saw was the killer. And if this figure did see you then he probably saw no more of you than you saw of him. He didn’t see your face, and certainly doesn’t know your name or address.’
‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she replied, but it didn’t sound as if she was convinced. She held out her hand. ‘Good night, Chief Inspector.’
She waited until he had walked off a few paces, before opening the door. Stave didn’t get the chance to look inside. He politely doffed his hat as a mark of farewell but the door had already closed with a tinny clang. He turned round slowly and set off on the long walk to Wandsbek, without limping. There was always the chance that she was watching him from one of the Nissen hut’s tiny windows.
He strode along for few hundred metres, trying not to think of Anna von Veckinhausen, or his son, or his wife, but just the case. The goddamn case.
A Hamburg industrialist who had made military equipment for the old regime and the pretty conservative-minded aristocrat from East Prussia – could there be a connection? The word ‘bottleneck’ on a piece of paper, and looted antiques, sold to the Brits. Was there a connection to be made there? A shrouded figure amidst the rubble. A long coat. The smell of tobacco. If he could trust the statement of a single witness. And could he trust Anna von Veckinhausen? Don’t think about her, not now. But then could he trust anybody? MacDonald – in the light of all the leads pointing to the British? Maschke, after the orphan child had pointed to him, and who was obviously hiding something? Ehrlich, who might well be on a personal vendetta and not really interested in finding the killer at all?
He dragged himself up the staircase to his apartment, no longer trying to hide his limp. The stairwell was dark anyway. He was almost expecting to find Ruge or another uniformed policeman outside his door, with more, almost certainly, bad news. But the landing by his doorway was deserted. Stave unlocked the door, then carefully locked it behind him. He threw himself down on the tatty sofa, still wearing his coat and hat. It was freezing cold. He ought to go into the kitchen to get himself a bite to eat, but he was too exhausted. Anna. Don’t think of her. The chief inspector fell asleep on the sofa, his last thought before slipping into oblivion was astonishment at how weary he really was.
Number Four
Wednesday, 12 February 1947
Hell, Stave thought to himself, isn’t hot – it’s cold.
When he looked out of his office window he saw houses that had been cleaned automatically, their roofs and north or east gable walls blasted by a wind that had sucked up Arctic ice and used it to sand the tiles and plaster like an invisible plane. In places sheltered from the blast of the wind there were still pockets of sheet ice and layers of powder snow on the guttering, window frames and in the empty door-frames of bombed-out houses. The temperature had been constant since January, but the light had changed: for eight hours a day now there was a blue-shimmering sun in a cloudless sky, bathing the world in an eerie brightness that highlighted even the smallest of details. The cracks in the facade of the Music Hall on the square opposite looked to the chief inspector like a Durer engraving, each cracked capital on the columns casting grotesque shadows. Yet here I am typing in the dark, Stave mused; it was a bad joke.
Dr Czrisini’s third autopsy report was lying in his in-tray. Assumed date of death: twentieth of January. No other significant details. Stave wondered how many other people had been killed on that day – and when they would find their bodies.
Kleensch had published his article in Die Zeit: a measured piece with no absurd speculation, no hysteria, no inflated suggestion of hope – just enough to indicate that the police were making progress. Stave had warned Cuddel Breuer and Ehrlich in advance so they would not feel they were hearing it for the first time from the press.
But apart from that, nothing.
He had posted men near the Lappenbergs Allee crime scene, a pretty grim job in this cold. And now a few deep-frozen, bored-stiff officers hated him for it, because nobody had turned up. No reaction on the part of the killer, no information from the public, no new leads. Nothing, nothing, nothing.
No news either from Anna von Veckinhausen. Had she seen the article? Was she furious at him? Stave had asked MacDonald to check out her story about the sale of the kitsch painting. It appeared to be true. MacDonald hadn’t exactly identified which of his comrades-in-arms had bought the item of dubious value, but Anna von Veckinhausen was, it turned out, known to many British officers, who appreciated the goods she sold. The lieutenant had let him know in the nicest possible way that many of his superior officers would be extremely unhappy if her supply chain was interrupted. The chief inspector had just nodded and muttered something incomprehensible, but he had got the message.
He wouldn’t be able to threaten Anna von Veckinhausen with charges for her looting or dealings on the black market. Either she cooperated voluntarily or she didn’t. And if she did have something to do with the murders, then he had better have proper evidence before he arrested her.
As for ‘Bottleneck’, MacDonald had got nowhere. And Hellinger, the industrialist, was still missing.
Maschke had gone round all the older, retired doctors – it was his own idea and he had got their numbers from the medical council. He had asked all of them about the victims, the old man in particular. In vain. It had been a good idea though, Stave reckoned. He should have thought of it himself. The vice squad man was getting better and better.
Stave sat and stared at the thin files he had placed carefully next to one another on his desk. Three investigation files. Three murder cases. Three single sheets of paper and a few photos. Could it be that the solution to the case lay in these sparse files? Could he have overlooked something?
It was exactly midday when his door flew open, and Maschke charged in.
‘Ever heard of knocking first?’ Stave asked.
‘We have a new murder,’ the vice squad man blurted.
‘This time, I’ll drive,’ Stave told him in no uncertain terms two minutes later as they climbed into the old Mercedes. ‘What’s the story?’
‘We have a fresh corpse.’
‘Who is it?’
‘A man in a cellar, in Borgfelde, behind the Berliner Tor station. Just been found. It was reported to the local police station around 11.30.’
‘In the east of the city again.’
‘And another heavily bombed area.’
Stave put his foot down, racing down to the Alster and along the Jungfernstieg, pushing the old eight-cylinder as hard as it would go, and blaring his horn when a man in a Wehrmacht greatcoat didn’t get out of the way quickly enough. Maschke’s knuckles were white as he hung on for dear life to the passenger door handle.