The Murderer in Ruins (4 page)

The second man followed the Brit into the office rather hesitantly. Stave put him at around 30, tall, lanky, in a rather tatty civilian suit that was far too broad for him. He had reddish-blond hair and a thin little moustache. The second and third fingers of his right hand were yellow with nicotine and his movements were a little twitchy – a chain smoker who couldn’t get his hands on enough cigarettes.

Stave nodded to him. Inspector Lothar from vice. He already knew him. Maschke was not long out of police academy, and he had already managed to fall out with most of the people in CID although nobody could quite say why. Stave reckoned he had grown
the moustache to try to make himself look older. And he had joked about Maschke in private because he still lived at home with his mother. A policeman! And in the vice squad at that!

‘Gentlemen,’ Breuer said, rubbing his hands together. ‘I can’t wait to see your results.’

‘Shall we go over to my office?’ Stave suggested.

He nodded in farewell to his boss and directed the other two men down the corridor. Just what I needed, he thought to himself resignedly, lagging behind as they walked by the dim light of the 15-watt bulb.

S
tave’s own office was bright. The window looked out on to the Musikhalle, and the ruins beyond it. Stave’s old wooden desk looked as if it was swept and dusted on a regular basis. He was particular about putting everything away in the desk drawers, and every case file was duly annotated and kept in a huge metal cabinet.

Erna Berg came in and gave him a large cardboard file with a sheet of paper in it: the new murder report.

The chief inspector introduced the two men to his secretary. Maschke just nodded but MacDonald reached over to shake her hand.

‘Nice to meet you,’ he said.

Stave was amazed to see his secretary blush.

‘I’ll bring in another chair,’ she said, just a touch too quickly.

‘Let me,’ said MacDonald, springing to his feet and bringing in another chair from the outer office. Erna Berg smiled at him. Stave nodded at her, indicating she should leave them and shut the door behind her. Then he thought of Margarethe and how he had been when they first met: that mixture of enthusiasm and embarrassment. And suddenly he felt envious of the young British officer. Stuff and nonsense. He banished thoughts of all women, except for one: the naked corpse.

‘Sit down,’ he said formally. ‘I’ll give you an overview.’

The chief inspector methodically went over the basics of the case:
the naked body with an appendix scar, the strangulation marks on her throat, the spot where the corpse was found, the two street lads, the questioning of the bunker-dwellers and the overall lack of leads. When he had finished, MacDonald took out a packet of English cigarettes and offered them around. Stave and Maschke hesitated, as if each was waiting for the other to react first. Then the chief inspector shrugged, and gratefully accepted the cigarette. In reality he had given up smoking but it was clear that Maschke had been waiting to see if Stave, now his boss for the duration of this investigation, was willing to take a gift from a former enemy. The vice squad inspector lit up and sucked so greedily on it that MacDonald, with a smile that was sarcastic and polite at the same time, forced a second on him.

‘So, what do we do now?’ he asked. ‘I’m a soldier, not a policeman,’ MacDonald added. ‘My experience is war, not murder investigations.’

Maschke coughed so loudly that a cloud of blue smoke poured from both his nose and mouth.

Stave forced himself to smile. ‘The more we know about the victim, the more we find out about the killer,’ he began. ‘Often the murderer and victim know one another. So first of all we’ll try to identify the victim. We’ll cut her open.’

‘We?’ said MacDonald, no longer smiling.

‘A pathologist will do it,’ Stave reassured him, smiling genuinely for the first time himself. The shocked naivety of his question had all of a sudden made the young Brit seem more likeable. Some soldier you are if you’re frightened of the dead. ‘We’ll just get the autopsy report. Then, hopefully, we’ll know a bit more – ideally the time of death. But I doubt there’s any pathologist in the world who could identify her.’

‘Save for the doctor who performed the appendectomy,’ Maschke interjected.

‘Yes,’ Stave said. ‘That’s a possibility. We’ll order up some copies and send them out to Hamburg hospitals. Perhaps somebody will
identify her. On the other hand an appendix operation is routine and it’s not likely that any doctor or nurse would remember.’

‘Especially as they’ve had rather a lot on their hands over the past few years,’ Maschke added. ‘Insofar as the hospitals are still standing and the doctors still alive.’

The chief inspector shot his colleague a warning glance. It was irritating enough to have an officer from the occupation forces in the investigation group. But there was no need to provoke him.

But MacDonald gave no indication he had even noticed. ‘And what if the doctors can’t help us?’

‘We’ll bring out posters with photographs of the victim and put them up around the city. Even if that might be a bit…’ Stave hesitated, searching for the right word, ‘…indelicate,’ he finished the sentence rather lamely.

The Brit raised an eyebrow questioningly, so Stave explained: ‘One way or another we need to do something to get some leads from the population in general. It’s possible that somebody knew the victim; in fact it’s highly likely. And I don’t want the citizens of Hamburg to find out by chance that there is a murderer out there. That could cause unrest.’

‘That’s why I’ve been seconded to the investigation,’ MacDonald said with disarming openness. ‘The British authorities are also keen to see this investigation concluded as quickly and discreetly as possible.’

‘I understand,’ Stave coughed, and put out the cigarette he had only half smoked, something noted with amazement by Maschke who had long since smoked his down to his fingertips. ‘We don’t have a lot to go on,’ he acknowledged, ‘just some very basics.’ He was reassured to see that the British officer was sitting up straight in his chair, paying keen attention. Maschke on the other hand just sat staring at the glowing tip of Stave’s cigarette lying in the ashtray. He knows what’s coming, Stave guessed.

‘Well-kempt appearance, clean hands with no marks, good skin, well enough fed – our victim is hardly working class, and I also
doubt if she’s arrived with some column of refugees from the east over the past few weeks. Nor do I think she’s a DP. Their bodies usually bear traces of their previous…’ Once again he found himself looking for the right word. ‘…difficulties.’

‘Difficulties?’ MacDonald queried.

Stave sighed. There was no point beating about the bush. Not in a team of investigators, least of all when they were investigating a murder like this.

‘No tattooed concentration camp number,’ he explained. ‘Apart from the scar from her operation, our victim bears no signs of having been beaten, kicked or severely undernourished. Obviously it’s possible she could be Polish or Ukrainian brought into the Reich to work. Maybe she was allocated to some farmer somewhere in Schleswig-Holstein or Lower Saxony or to some factory. And then, come 1945, she decided it was better to remain here as a DP than to go back to a home in the hands of Uncle Joe Stalin. But as we’ve noted, her hands are not those of a worker.’

‘The daughter of some well-to-do household,’ MacDonald speculated. All of a sudden it seemed the officer was enjoying the investigation, Stave thought to himself.

‘Possibly. But daughters who’ve disappeared from well-to-do households tend to be reported as missing fairly soon. Of course, it’s perfectly possible that someone will report her missing in the next few hours. But if we don’t receive such a report by tonight, then at least we won’t have to make a painful trip out to some villa in Blankenese.’

‘So who could the victim be?’

‘A “nightingale of the street”,’ Maschke suggested, having finally given up his anguished concentration on Stave’s smouldering cigarette.

‘I’m afraid that’s not an expression I know from my German lessons,’ MacDonald admitted.

Maschke laughed out loud. ‘A hooker. A whore. A woman of easy virtue. A pros-ti-tute. That’s why I’m part of the team, isn’t it?’

Stave nodded. He was coming to understand why so many officers didn’t like Maschke. ‘She could be taken for one, superficially,’ the chief inspector reluctantly admitted. ‘The circumstances of death too; there are certainly grounds enough to take Maschke’s usual customers to task.’

‘Sorry, what does that mean?’

‘It means we’re off to the Reeperbahn,’ Stave said, with a sour smile.

MacDonald gave a gleeful grin. ‘My colleagues down at the Officers’ Club won’t believe I got to do that in an official capacity.’

‘Always worth winning a war,’ Maschke said under his breath. Softly enough that Stave wasn’t sure the Brit had understood him.

‘I have to warn you, Lieutenant, that the gentlemen on the Reeperbahn won’t exactly be delighted to see us. And, I’m afraid, nor will the ladies.’

Then he called his secretary in. ‘We need copies of the photograph. Just the victim’s head, enough to be recognisable. And not too grisly, if possible.’

‘How many?’ Erna Berg asked, looking at the British officer rather than Stave.

So much for my authority, Stave said to himself. ‘A dozen for Inspector Müller of uniform. He should get a few officers together to send round the hospitals and stick the photo under the nose of every surgeon they can find. The vitamin had an appendectomy and maybe one of the gentlemen will recall performing the operation. Then one more copy for the print works. We need 1,000 posters,’ he hesitated for a second, then changed his mind and said, ‘no, make it just 500. I’ll do the words later. Tell the relevant people on the beat police that we’ll need their men to put up posters the day after tomorrow. And I’ll need a further three copies for these two gentlemen and myself.’

‘Consider it done, boss,’ Erna Berg said and hurried out.

MacDonald watched her go and then, when he saw Stave was looking at him, made a show of looking all around the room. ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said.

Stave gave him a long smile. Then he took a stub of pencil and a sheet of paper from his desk drawer and said, ‘Right, I’m going to write the wording for the poster. We’ll meet up outside the main entrance in half an hour. To take a stroll down the Reeperbahn.’

Exactly 29 minutes later Stave was standing in the entrance hall by the huge doors. He was hungry and cold, and there were a thousand things he would rather do than question a load of pimps and whores.

MacDonald was already waiting for him. Much to Stave’s annoyance, Maschke came running down the steps two minutes late, his coat flapping behind him. He wondered what his colleague from the vice squad had been doing for the past half hour.

When they got outside, MacDonald turned to Stave and in astonishment asked, ‘But where’s your car?’

‘Petrol is rationed for the police too, Lieutenant. We usually go on foot or take the tram. It’s only a stroll from here to the Reeperbahn.’

‘If I’d known, we could have used my jeep,’ MacDonald said, clicking his tongue in sympathy.

‘Oh yes? We’d have driven down the Reeperbahn from whorehouse to whorehouse in a British jeep,’ Maschke grunted, ‘with every British patrol saluting us.’

Stave shook his head in annoyance. Then he handed each of them a photograph of the victim, still reeking of chemicals.

‘Let’s go.’

He pulled up his coat collar. It was now early afternoon and he hadn’t had anything to eat since his miserable little breakfast. An icy wind was still whistling through the ruins. Stave felt like he was being beaten up by it. MacDonald on the other hand, in his pressed uniform and rosy pink cheeks, looked as if was going out for a pleasant afternoon stroll – which, Stave supposed, he probably was. Maschke had his second English cigarette clamped between his lips and walked a few paces behind, as if he wasn’t with them.

On the dirty wall of an apartment building were yellow posters, some as big as blankets. ‘Military Government – Germany/Law
No. 15’ Stave read as they walked past. Bilingual proclamations of the occupation. As a matter of routine, Stave scanned them. There was nothing new. Posters like these, a few handwritten notes, chalk scribbles on bare wall. These are the newspapers we’ve earned for ourselves, Stave thought. The actual local press appeared just once or twice a week, a few thin sheets; there wasn’t enough paper for more. He’d heard that a German radio station was going to be allowed to start up in the coming weeks. The newsreels in the cinemas depended on film supplied by the British or the Americans.

How else could you reach ordinary citizens other than by putting things up on walls? The military government stuck their proclamations all over buildings or on the few
Plakatsäule
advertising columns that had survived: new rations, curfew extensions, new laws – no German could say he hadn’t known And the Germans themselves, out of necessity, copied their new masters: posted notices up on the brick walls seeking information about missing relatives, swap offers, looking for accommodation. And we police join in, Stave thought, with our photos of criminals and murder victims on our ‘wanted’ posters.

They had got as far as Heiligengeistfeld, a vast, filthy square with no shelter from the freezing winds. Two giant bunkers stood out against the sky, massive heaps like temples of some ancient, extinct and dark religion. A makeshift sign indicated that the ground floor of the bunker housed the editorial of ‘Northwest Magazines’. On the other bunker was another sign, only slightly larger, which read, ‘Scala’. Underneath was the current programme:
1001 Women.
The bunker now housed a revue theatre, boasting a thousand seats and skimpily dressed girls in fantasy costumes made out of coloured cellophane. Stave found an establishment of the sort in a place like this particularly perverse. At the moment, however, it was totally deserted.

Even Hamburg’s amusement mile was a ghost town at present. The light was fading but nobody had electricity for neon signs. Several of the bars and clubs had been bombed: the Panoptikum, the
Volksoper and the Café Menke all lay in ruins. Barkeepers had set up shacks made of planks of wood and salvaged tiles amidst the rubble, tawdry dens in which men who still hadn’t had enough of shooting could practice their skills firing crossbows at wooden targets. But nobody was out to try their luck right at this moment.