‘And she almost certainly didn’t live behind the station in Borgfelde,’ Stave remarked, almost cheerfully. ‘Winterhude maybe? Or Blankenese? Definitely a better part of town than here. Somewhere that survived undamaged. A neighbourhood that’s still intact, which means somebody must know her.’
Czrisini pointed to her left ring finger then to her abdomen. ‘Probably married too. In which case there’s a husband. But with a scar like that, I doubt she’d have had children. On the other hand this could help the investigation. Operations like that are a lot less common than appendectomies or dental work. There has to be a surgeon or gynaecologist who remembers carrying it out.’
‘Can we estimate a time of death?’
‘Not here and now. I’ll thaw the body out back at the institute. We’ll know more once we’ve cut her open. I expect the brain will have started to rot.’
Stave’s sudden moment of euphoria evaporated. ‘So you think the body may have been here for some time?’
The pathologist nodded. ‘For more than a day or two at least.’
It’s unbelievable, Stave thought. A rich woman, with a husband, neighbours; if this woman was murdered days ago then surely somebody would have missed her by now. But he couldn’t remember a single report over the past week or so that would fit the victim. I need a breath of fresh air, he thought.
‘We’d better talk to the men who found her,’ Stave said. ‘Dr Czrisini, your people can take the corpse as soon as the photographer has done his work.’
August Hoffmann and his workman Heinrich Scharfenort were scrap metal dealers, both pale-faced and around Stave’s age.
‘You found the victim?’ The chief inspector had deliberately chosen a neutral expression.
Even so Hoffmann gave him a guilty look. ‘We really thought it was a man. I’ve only just heard that it’s a woman down there.’
‘The main thing is that you reported it,’ Stave replied. ‘Tell me what happened.’
The workman glanced at the ground, leaving his boss to answer.
‘We were looking for baking trays.’
‘Baking trays?’
‘Up until ’43 there used to be a major bakery here. I recently found a huge baking tray in the rubble. By chance,’ he was quick to add, ‘I thought to myself there might be some more lying around. So Herr Scharfenort and I came round today to…’
He hesitated.
The chief inspector nodded understandingly. ‘Find more metal,’ he finished the sentence. ‘That’s why you were down in the cellar.’
‘Exactly. The ground level ruins have all been stripped long ago. We brought carbide lamps to illuminate the cellars.’
‘And you took those down with you?’
The scrap metal man nodded, looking as if he wanted to go behind a wall and throw up, but in the end he managed to pull himself together.
‘We came down the steps and lit up the first room, then the second. All of a sudden I spotted a naked foot.’
‘What about you?’ Stave turned to the workman.
He glanced up and said, ‘I was behind the boss. I didn’t see anything. Herr Hoffmann called out, “There’s a body.” And we got out of there.’
‘Anything else unusual strike you?’
‘That was unusual enough.’
‘You didn’t see anybody?’
Both of them shook their heads.
‘Were you here over the previous few days? You said you’d found a baking tray here.’
‘Three days ago I took a shortcut I’d not taken before. That was when I spotted it in a partly blocked cellar entrance, and then I got the idea to bring the carbide lamps. Apart from that I’ve never been here before.’
‘Do you know if there’s anyone here regularly? Somebody else who might take the same shortcut.’
Once again they shook their heads.
Stave nodded and dismissed the pair of them.
‘Anything new?’
Stave was standing in front of his boss. Cuddel Breuer wasn’t looking at him. He was staring at a sniffer dog wandering, half frozen and unenthusiastically, around the rubble. ‘He can’t find a scent,’ he remarked.
Stave ditched the formalities too. ‘Dr Czrisini reckons the body had been here for several days. Doesn’t look like this was the scene of the crime.’
Breuer nodded silently, then dug deep into his broad overcoat and pulled out a big flashlight, and still without saying a word went down the steps into the cellar.
He doesn’t trust me any more, Stave thought.
A few minutes later, Breuer came out again. ‘You’ve got one damn difficult case on your hands, Stave. Come and see me when you’re done here.’ He turned around and left without saying goodbye.
At least you didn’t find any more than I did, Stave said to himself, sombrely.
As Breuer turned round a remnant of wall twice the height of a man, he nearly collided with a figure stumbling through the ruins: Kleensch from Die Zeit.
‘Looks like everything’s about to hit the fan today,’ Stave muttered. He dithered for a second. Should he just ignore the reporter? Dismiss him? But then he would nose around, ask questions. Cause trouble. Better to take things in hand. Stave went up to the reporter, shook his hand and led him down into the cellar.
‘A new rubble murderer victim,’ the journalist said, looking at the body in the yellowish light of the torch. Calmly.
He’s already thinking about the article he’s going to write, Stave realised. He told Kleensch everything they knew and indicated the clues that suggested the victim had been well-to-do.
‘Nowadays it seems nobody notices when the rich go missing, just like the poor. That really is democracy,’ Kleensch quipped.
‘You’re not going to write that?’
He smiled. ‘I don’t think my publisher would like to see that in print. And the British wouldn’t like it either. I prefer to hold on to my job. Cigarette?’
‘Please don’t smoke at the crime scene,’ the chief inspector replied, shaking his head at the same time. He waved a hand back towards the door.
‘Nobody would want to read that,’ he said when they were back outside, in a half-hearted attempt to stop the man writing his story.
Kleensch gave him a wry smile. ‘I’m afraid you’re wrong there, Chief Inspector. People enjoy reading murder stories. Horrible stories. The problem is nobody heeds the moral of the story. So I shall leave out the philosophical bit and concentrate on the details. If you know what I mean.’
Stave nodded in resignation. ‘You do your job and I’ll do mine.’
‘People are going to be afraid even if I were to promise you to be economical with the truth. The rubble murderer is becoming a personification of evil, a bogeyman. It’s as if he’s given this vile cold a human face, even if nobody knows what it looks like. It could be anyone. Every figure walking along the street behind me, every shadow in the ruins, every taciturn new neighbour. People are starting to suspect one another. We could end up with more accusations than we had under Hitler. But there’s not much to do about it. People are going to give you hell, I’m afraid. But sooner or later you’ll catch the villain responsible. And then you’ll be a hero.’
‘I appreciate your optimism.’
‘It’s necessary. Especially in the face of death.’ Kleensch doffed his hat and stumbled away.
At least he didn’t talk to anybody else, Stave reflected. It wouldn’t have been good news if he’d started annoying Breuer with his questions, or Stave would have had to explain himself.
A while later Stave drove back to the office in the Mercedes, alone. Maschke had declined a lift under the flimsiest of excuses – he preferred to walk to keep fit. Driving along Jungfernstieg the chief inspector suddenly stepped on the brakes. The car spluttered to a halt in a few metres. This is my opportunity, Stave thought.
For the past few days, despairing over his lack of leads, Stave had considered involving a psychologist, and had asked around as to who the best in Hamburg were. But then he had put the idea to one side. Partly because he was embarrassed about the idea; nobody much in the murder squad had high regard for psychologists. Partly because he was ashamed that doing so would show his colleagues how little confidence he had: going to a shrink. Who knows, maybe he should put himself on the couch.