Hans Bergemann was putting together the final version of the robbery report – Gruber had read through the first draft and ordered some changes to it – when he sensed Gruber standing behind him looking over his shoulder. He continued working, waiting for Gruber to speak.
‘Hans,’ he said finally. ‘Do you remember? It’s been a long time now, two or three years at least, maybe more. This pretty redhead came in, said she was looking for Willi Geismeier?’
Bergemann paused and thought. ‘When was that, Sergeant?’
‘No, I’m sure you were here, Hans. Let’s see: when would that have been? Do you remember when that was?’
‘I don’t think it was me, Sergeant.’ Bergemann went back to assembling the robbery report, but his heart was pounding. Of course he remembered. He had followed Lola from the station that day. She had overheard talk of the SS raid that was meant to arrest Willi. He had warned her, and then had told Gruber that he hadn’t found her. He had hoped that would be the end of it, and it had seemed to be. Except he hadn’t remembered one thing: her name and probably her address would be in the desk sergeant’s log. Damn it! He had forgotten about the logbook.
‘Yeah, Hans, I’m pretty sure you were here then.’
‘I’m sure you’re right, Sergeant. I just don’t remember it.’
Gruber nodded, stepped to the outer office door, and called out to the clerk. ‘Would you bring me the logbooks from 1932 up to now?’ The clerk soon brought a stack of thick green ledgers and dropped them on his desk with a thump. Gruber spent the rest of the day with his door closed, scanning the columns of dates, names and signatures, moving his index finger slowly down one page and then down the next. That evening he turned off the light in his office later than usual, and locked his office door. ‘Goodnight, Hans,’ he said.
‘Goodnight, Sergeant.’
Normally, when Bergemann wanted to speak to Willi, he used circuitous means to make contact. But this was different. Bergemann had made a serious error, and Willi and Lola were in danger. He left the office and headed for the Mahogany Room. Lola saw Bergemann at the far end of the bar. She headed for the door that opened on to the alley where they met.
The following morning Gruber came to the office early. Bergemann was already there. ‘Did you find what you were looking for, Sergeant?’
‘Not yet,’ said Gruber.
‘You know, last night I was thinking about what you said. I think I do remember that woman, the redhead looking for Geismeier. As I recall, I even tried to follow her. By the time I got outside, she was gone. Do you remember that?’
Gruber grinned at Bergemann. ‘Here, Hans.’ He dropped the stack of ledgers on Bergemann’s desk with a resounding thud. ‘See what you can find.’
‘Oh, c’mon, Sergeant. I’ve got two new cases …’
‘Boo hoo,’ said Gruber. ‘Poor overworked Hansl.’ He went back into his office and closed the door.
Bergemann found the ledger page with Lola’s name and address. He briefly considered removing the page or rendering it illegible, but that was a foolish idea. Maybe he could somehow use Lola’s logbook information – name, address – to get ahead of Gruber. If he could do the interview with Lola, even if Gruber were present, he might manage to control some of the damage. Maybe with luck he could turn this whole episode into a dead end.
He knocked on Gruber’s door and handed him the ledger. ‘Here she is, Sergeant.’
Gruber’s eyes went straight to her signature; he had seen it already the day before.
‘You want me to track her down?’ said Bergemann.
‘Never mind,’ said Gruber with a grin. ‘We’re already on it.’
Corpus Delicti
Two schoolboys spotted a woman’s body bobbing face down amidst sticks and other debris against a bridge piling. Once the police pulled her from the water it became obvious that she had been savagely murdered. She had countless stab wounds up and down the entire front of her body. She was young and had been dead for several days.
Gabriella Mancini, seventeen years old, had been reported missing by her parents two weeks earlier. When Bergemann showed them a photo of the dead girl’s face, they both began to cry. After some difficult questioning, they admitted that Gabriella had left school at fifteen, had worked as a nanny for a short time, but more recently had been working as a prostitute. She still looked in on her parents every week and gave them part of her earnings. ‘She was a good girl,’ said her mother between sobs.
Gabriella had been found some distance from Pfortzheimgaße. But the spring rains had been heavy this year, and the Isar was running high and fast. She could easily have been washed that far down stream. Lili Marlene burst into tears as she confirmed that Gabriella had been one of her girls. ‘She was just a child,’ she said. ‘Girls come and go; I just assumed she had moved on.’ She paused and thought back to the earlier case of her robbed clients. ‘My God, was it Jacky Prinz?’
‘No. He’s locked up,’ said Bergemann. ‘Anyway, it’s much too early to know about suspects. We’re in the very early stages of our investigation.’
Sergeant Gruber went pale when Bergemann told him that Gabriella was one of Ingeborg Lützmann’s girls. This thing could screw up his life even more than it already was. At least I didn’t know her, he thought. He went into his office, shut the door, and spoke to someone on the phone.
‘I want you to take over this case, Hans,’ he said a little later. ‘And make it your number one priority. A dead girl in the water can really spook the public.’
From the coroner’s report and the circumstances, Bergemann concluded right away that this was not what was normally called a crime of passion so much as a crime of rage. The savagery with which Gabriella had been killed – the coroner counted over fifty stab wounds, mainly in the breast and pelvic area – led Bergemann to wonder whether there might have been similar killings elsewhere in the city. Bergemann sent out a query to surrounding precincts. He heard nothing back for a long while, until one day a Detective Prager from the Nineteenth called. ‘We had a case like this back in ’thirty-five, a young prostitute stabbed multiple times. Really butchered. Twenty years old. She was found in an alley, near our station, actually.’
Bergemann wondered why he had not heard about that case until now. Prager couldn’t say. He had expected that his Sergeant would send out queries, but for some reason he never had.
‘What’s the status?’ said Bergemann.
‘Still an open case,’ said Prager. ‘But a cold one.’
‘Did you turn up any suspects?’
‘A bunch. Mostly customers of hers. They all had alibis.’
‘Where was she found?’
Detective Prager named the street. ‘An alley not far from the whorehouse she worked at.’
‘Any evidence at the scene?’
‘Nothing.’
‘So, where are you now with the case?’
‘Understaffed,’ said Prager. ‘We’re down to five detectives total, so we have to deal with the cases where we can get some results. The sergeant’s always worried about the closure rate.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Bergemann.
‘And you know the attitude: “She’s just a whore.”’
‘Can I look at the file?’ said Bergemann.
In both cases the medical examiners had determined that the murderer had stabbed with both hands using one knife, stabbing with his left hand for a while and then switching to his right. In the Nineteenth’s case, the body had been found near where she was murdered. She had staggered a few steps as she was being stabbed and died right there. The killer had paused when he was finished to wipe off his knife on the girl’s dress. But aside from all the blood, there was no evidence. Bergemann sent out more queries, this time to all the precincts in the city.
Bergemann decided to walk the riverbank from the point where Gabriella had been fished from the water to the point nearest Pfortzheimgaße. Gruber was against it at first. ‘Waste of time,’ he said. Af
ter thinking about it, though, he said, ‘Take a couple of uniforms with you.’
The sun was out. The sky was dotted with white fluffy clouds. There was a light breeze. Bergemann and his two young juniors were happy to be outside. ‘What are we looking for, Detective?’ said young Hans, a strapping blond boy with just the beginnings of a mustache.
‘Anything that doesn’t belong where you find it,’ said Bergemann.
They walked the two kilometers slowly, keeping as close to the water as possible, their eyes to the ground. In any city there is usually trash on the riverbanks, but the south bank of the Isar seemed to be the exception. Young Hans explained that the Hitler Youth had been along the day before, picking up trash, doing their part for civic virtue. They were unlikely to find any clues. Young Hans beamed with pride.
Two days later, when Bergemann arrived at work, a detective from the Fifth was waiting. He took two file folders from his briefcase. Two young women had been stabbed to death in the same fashion about a year ago, one a clerk in a department store and the other an elementary school teacher. The store clerk’s body had been found in a small park across from the building where she lived. The teacher was found in a different park. Both had been killed late at night, the clerk coming home from a night out with friends, the teacher returning home after an evening cultural program at the school where she worked.
‘Come in, Sergeant Gruber,’ said Captain Wendt. Gruber had called Wendt with the news that Munich had a serial killer on its hands. Wendt had immediately notified his superiors, both police and SS. The political authorities had also been notified.
Gruber and Wendt took a police car to police headquarters on Ettstraße. They sat side by side in silence on a hard wooden bench in a waiting room. A large colored photo of the Führer seemed to be looking at something just behind them.
After a while they were summoned, and Gruber followed Wendt into a large conference room. A dozen men sat around a massive table. Gruber was relieved to see Major Reineke among them. ‘Heil Hitler!’ said Gruber, standing at attention with his arm raised in the direction of yet another Hitler portrait. Gruber couldn’t help thinking, He’s everywhere.
‘Now, Sergeant Gruber,’ said Reineke, ‘tell us what we know so far.’
Gruber had written out extensive notes and had even rehearsed the report he intended to deliver. He wanted to present a thorough and cogent summary of the case. His case! After all, his squad had discovered the connections between the four murders and were gathering evidence at that moment. He didn’t want to leave anything out of his report (except his connection to the whores at Pfortzheimgaße). If he played this right, it could be a career-making moment for him.
No sooner had Gruber begun speaking, though, than he was interrupted by a small man in an SS uniform. ‘Spare us the details, Sergeant,’ said the man, drumming his fingers on the table. ‘A broad overview will suffice.’ After Gruber said a few more words, the man interrupted again. Gruber realized then that it was Heinrich Himmler interrupting him. Gruber managed to stammer out a few more words before falling silent. An animated discussion began between Himmler and others around the table.
‘We have to keep this out of the papers.’
‘It may be too late for that.’
‘What kind of political fallout should we expect?’
‘And what will the international press do if they get hold of this?’
‘We can’t let them get hold of it.’
‘The killer is probably a Jew.’
‘Probably? I’d say certainly. We will make certain he is.’ They laughed at that.
‘When do we tell the Führer?’
‘And how do we tell him?’
‘And what will he say?’
Himmler noticed Gruber still standing there. He gestured with his chin and gave a dismissive wave with the back of his hand to the policeman standing by, and Gruber was escorted from the room.
Erna Raczynski
By the time all the police precincts in and around Munich had checked in, eight murderous attacks on women had been reported over the last three years, all obviously committed by the same killer. Only one woman – Erna Raczynski – had survived, and only because the attack on her had been interrupted and the killer had been scared off.
Munich had a serial murderer who had been killing women for three years without the police command even noticing. How was this even possible? The Führer was furious. ‘The utter incompetence!’ he fumed. ‘Heads will roll!’ Himmler should take over the case in person and should devote himself to it until the perpetrator had been caught and brought to justice. And that had better be soon. The entire resources of the SS and Gestapo and police departments in all of Germany must be mobilized, and it would all fall under Himmler’s purview.
First of all, they were to go through case records to find every similar unsolved case and to report all relevant information about each case to Himmler’s office and to the office of Gruppenführer Heinrich Müller of the Sicherheitspolizei, the security police. The matter was to be considered top priority and top secret. The news that there was a serial killer at large was to be kept from the public as long as possible.
Hans Bergemann stood at the bulletin board reading the police directive signed by Gruppenführer Müller. ‘What’s going on, Sergeant?’
‘What do you mean, Bergemann?’
‘You were there, weren’t you, when the decision was made?’
‘You read the directive, didn’t you, Bergemann?’
‘Yes, Sergeant, I did. But what are they thinking? When this gets out, there’ll be panic. That’s not—’
‘It’s not going to get out, Bergemann. That’s the point. As to what they are thinking, that is none of your business. One thing they’re thinking is you should get your nose to the grindstone and find this killer.’ Bergemann was becoming more and more like that goddamned Geismeier, asking questions when he shouldn’t, meddling in matters that were way beyond his responsibility. Yes, all right, he had been the one to discover that there was a serial killer. But the search for this monster was just getting started – the real work was yet to be done. Everyone had to do his part to solve it and to see that the story remained a secret. Was that entirely clear?
‘Yes, Sergeant,’ said Bergemann. Even his obedience came out sounding like an insult. Just like Geismeier, thought Gruber.
Gruber’s humiliation at Himmler’s hands had stung. But at the same time, when he gave it a bit more thought, he was glad the serial-killer matter was out of his hands. No one was going to escape this case undamaged. His best bet was to get back to finding Geismeier. That was where his career would be made. And he had already turned up some good leads, not the least of which was Lola Zeff. He had her address, and if, as he suspected, she was somehow connected to Geismeier, Gruber was one giant step closer to bringing that son of a bitch to ground.
Bergemann decided to tell Willi about the serial killer. Willi was liable to have some useful ideas about the case. As it happened, Willi already knew something about the case. The story was out, and he had been thinking about it plenty. It had brought to mind the attack on Lola.
‘That was at least four years ago,’ said Bergemann.
‘More,’ Willi said.
‘But they’re nothing alike,’ said Bergemann.
‘That seems true,’ Willi said. ‘We’ll see.’
‘These were all stabbings. Lola wasn’t attacked with a knife.’
‘That’s true,’ Willi said.
The leads in the case were few and insubstantial. Muddy footprints at one of the scenes suggested the murderer was not very heavy. He was young and fit and dexterous. The soles of his shoes were lightly worn, suggesting he was not impoverished, but there was nothing beyond that. As far as the killing went, his stabbing motion was always the same, stabbing upward with his left hand and downward with his right. He had used the same large knife in all the known cases, switching it from hand to hand, and then, when he was finished, cleanin
g the blade on the victims’ dresses, a chilling detail that revealed an odd cold bloodedness – odd in light of the fury that had gone beforehand. He went from collected to enraged and then to fastidious. He held the knife in his left hand while he cleaned it with his right. He did that in every case with ritualistic regularity. None of the women appeared to have been robbed. The victims had not been sexually violated. However, given how the stabbings were directed toward the victims’ pelvis and breasts, these murders had to be seen, in part at least, as sexual assaults.
Bergemann studied the victims’ photos. Though the women ranged in age from sixteen to forty, they all looked young and bore a superficial resemblance to one another. They all had light complexions and were slim-waisted and full-figured.
Bergemann travelled across town to meet with Erna Raczynski. It had been over a year since her attack, and the stab wounds she had suffered on her arms and shoulders had largely healed. She had been through multiple surgeries, but she still suffered muscle pain, and her doctors told her she probably always would.
The thirty-year-old housewife and mother of two small children had been walking from the streetcar to her home at five o’clock one morning after sitting all night with her ailing mother. The old lady was suffering from dementia, and Erna sometimes spent the night at her bedside. Just as she arrived at her own house, she was grabbed from behind, spun around, and stabbed. At that moment her husband, Horst, a streetcar conductor on his way to work an early shift, came out of the building. Erna screamed, fell backward against the iron fence, and was flailing against the slashing knife. Horst dived down the three stairs, knocking the murderer back and taking a serious cut to his arm. The murderer jumped up and ran off.
He had worn a dark shirt, a suit jacket and dark pants. He was in shadow and his face was mostly distorted with emotion. Erna described him as clean-shaven with a narrow face, a long nose, and thin lips. His hair was trimmed close on the sides and longer on top, what some called a Nazi haircut. When he grabbed her by the throat, his hands seemed soft, not hard or calloused. As she thought of it now, she started to cry.
The Constant Man Page 9
