‘Don’t worry, the police won’t stop us,’ the chief inspector assured him.
Four bodies: two men, one woman and one little girl. Three of the corpses found in the east of the city, this latest approximately halfway between where the body of the first, the young woman, had been found and where the girl had been found near the canal. Was there a pattern emerging?
‘52 Anckelmann Strasse,’ Maschke only just managed to tell him.
Stave took the corner into Glockengiesserwall, the Mercedes swerving wildly when one rear wheel hit a roof tile frozen to the road, but he got it back under control.
‘A bit icy in patches,’ Maschke gasped.
‘I’m beginning to enjoy myself.’
Past the main station, then through St Georg. Black marketeers stared in their wake. When they reached Borgfelder Strasse, Stave put his foot down again. Half a kilometre, dead straight. Nobody around. Then two sharp right turns, and with a screech of brakes he brought the car to a halt.
‘One dead body a day is more than enough,’ Maschke muttered as he opened his door.
Stave climbed out too, leaning briefly against the vehicle’s dented hood. The engine was ticking as it cooled down. For a few moments, Stave held his hands on the hood, enjoying the warmth as it flowed into his veins like a hot liquid.
‘That feels good, doesn’t it?’
‘I’m quite hot enough,’ Maschke answered drily.
The chief inspector looked around; behind them stood the steel supports for the elevated railway, every sixth or seventh twisted and bent, empty facades of burnt-out apartment blocks, four or five storeys high, bombed-out office buildings, half-demolished warehouses. The cobbled street had been partly cleared, but there wasn’t a habitable building for at least 300 metres in any direction.
A pattern, Stave thought to himself, I’m starting to see a pattern.
A uniformed policeman emerged from between two half-height walls to their right, waved and came over. He was extremely young, little more than a kid. Stave had never seen him before. He gave them an almost military salute, looking as if he was about to stand to attention.
‘As you were,’ Stave said, introducing himself and Maschke. The lad had probably fought in the Wehrmacht. There were one or two habits he needed to lose. ‘Where is the man?’
‘It’s a woman, Chief Inspector.’
Stave stared at the young policeman, embarrassing him.
‘Two men found the body. In an unlit cellar. They ran out in panic and reported it to us. They thought it was a male corpse, but they obviously didn’t look close enough. It’s a woman.’
Stave was taken aback for a minute. Two women, an old man, a little girl – did that fit a pattern any better?
The uniform led the way. ‘The building at 52 Anckelmann Strasse is completely in ruins,’ he explained. ‘We could get to the cellar by going through the ruins, but it’s easier this way.’
He led Stave and Maschke some 50 metres along the street to a neighbouring building, which had only partly collapsed. A reinforced archway there led to several partly collapsed internal yards, through which they made their way back in the other direction.
Stave stopped outside the remains of a commercial storeroom. ‘The Hanseatic Mica Import Company’ was written in faded black letters against a red background. Someone was clambering though the ruins of number 52 Anckelmann Strasse. Dr Czrisini. The two detectives acknowledged the pathologist; the uniformed policeman nodded towards an entrance to a cellar.
‘Watch the steps,’ he warned them. ‘They’re loose.’
‘No door,’ Stave remarked as they walked down the fragile steps. Not much light. He took out his notebook and wrote down a description of the external aspect of the scene. The uniform fiddled with an old torch until finally it produced a weak yellow beam of light. A few other people appeared at the foot of the stairs. Stave could only make out their dirty shoes and the hems of long overcoats. He stared as if into a dark cave.
A room with a cement floor, a few fallen roof tiles, plaster fallen from the walls, a second room, dark because no light from the stairwell reached it. Plaster dust here too, but no rubble, no furniture.
Just a corpse.
Aged about 35, Stave reckoned, maybe a little younger. She was lying on the ground, naked. Frozen to the cement. There were blue-red blood settlement marks all over her body. Her mouth was slightly open, as were her eyes, her right hand on the floor, the left over her navel, fingers bent slightly. Without saying a word, Stave took the torch from the young policeman and shone it directly on the victim. The policeman looked as if he were about to be sick.
‘You can wait outside,’ the chief inspector told him.
Dr Czrisini took a large flashlight out of his doctor’s bag. It was brighter. He touched the woman’s face with a gloved hand. ‘Thin, long face. Well nourished though,’ he muttered. ‘Dark brown eyelashes, dyed, plucked eyebrows. Possibly remnants of face powder on her cheeks. Medium-blond hair, probably bleached. Ear lobes pierced. Nothing in the left ear. In the right…’ he hesitated, then felt with his hand round the back of the head, pulled at her hair a bit. ‘…right earring came loose, but caught in her hair.’ The pathologist handed Stave an earring.
The chief inspector looked at it closely, a pearl on a gold hanger. ‘Unusual shape,’ he mumbled. ‘The gold worked into the shape of a starfish with the pearl in the middle.’
‘I can’t tell you anything about that,’ Czrisini replied. ‘Jewellery isn’t exactly my specialty.’
The pathologist raised the corpse’s eyelids. ‘Grey-blue eyes.’ Then he pulled her jaw open and shone the light into her mouth. ‘Upper plate with two false teeth: the right inner incisor and the first right molar, and on the right two gold-filled molars.’
He began to examine her from the head down. ‘Frozen solid. Rigor mortis not evident. Strangulation marks on the throat, reddish brown, two centimetres wide at the front and to the left. To the right and rear, three to five millimetres. Well looked-after fingernails, with red nail polish, the tips finished with a nail pencil. Pale bands on her left wrist and ring finger. Presumably traces of a watch and ring. Long surgical scar, some 14 centimetres long, from her navel to pubic mound. Probably from an abdominal operation. Well healed. Scar tissue.’
‘No evidence in the dust on the cellar floor of the body having been dragged,’ Stave added. ‘No dirt on the body. Highly unlikely that she was killed here.’
‘She was killed somewhere else and brought here post mortem,’ Maschke said. ‘To hide the body.’
‘Maybe perhaps to undress and rob her without being disturbed,’ the chief inspector added. ‘One way or another, the killer must have come down those loose steps and left her here, carrying a torch at the same time.’
‘Obviously a strong man,’ the pathologist said.
‘But was it planned beforehand?’ Maschke interjected. ‘Did he know about this cellar and decide in advance this would be a good place to hide the body? Or did he just look for the nearest hiding place after the murder and come across this place by chance?’
‘He would have needed a torch.’ Stave scratched his head. ‘That suggests it was pre-planned. Unless of course he always carries one. Or else he knows the area so well that he could find his way to this cellar in the dark.’
‘I’m wondering where she came from,’ the pathologist mused.
‘She was obviously well-to-do, possibly rich,’ Stave said. ‘Gold teeth, gold earrings, a watch, a ring, nail polish. Can’t remember when I last saw a woman with a manicure.’
‘The nail polish is too expensive, too modest and too well-applied for a lady of the night,’ Maschke added. ‘This was a proper lady.’