City of Shadows

by Ariana Franklin

  He felt in his pocket, tossed one of the river policeman’s Wimpels to Willi and lit another for himself. Big and frightens women. That’s if it is the same man and our Anna isn’t being pursued by a posse of different murderers and I’m not on the wrong fucking track altogether.

  Why the gaps between his appearances? And what the hell connects him in Clara Peuthert’s poor mind with our good-natured Willi? Size? Bad feet? Schmidt allowed his gaze to linger on his sergeant, upright in his chair, his cigarette’s lit end turned in toward his palm in the way men had learned in the trenches when to show a speck of light attracted a bullet.

  Hell. I don’t know.

  “I don’t know, Willi,” he said. “Tomorrow we’ll have to start on Potrov-skov’s nightclubs, see if any of them have been providing a big scary monster with information they shouldn’t have. Now I’m going home to my pregnant missus. You can present the report to Ringer tonight—serve you right for carrying on with Clara. Ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  THERE WAS HOMEMADE bratwurst with onion gravy and sauerkraut for dinner. Hannelore had been shopping with Willi’s wife.

  “There was pork and veal, Siegfried,” Hannelore said in the tones of one who had not only seen the Holy Grail but been allowed to bring it home. “And onions and cabbage. And so cheap.”

  Guilt flavored his every mouthful. The eyes of the starving children at the hospital were only slightly averted when Hannelore said, “I took some downstairs to Frau Busse for the little ones. Is that all right?”

  “It certainly is.” The Busses had three children and, since Herr Busse had lost his job as an accountant, were having a hard time of it. He suspected that Frau Busse had a hard time of it anyway; Franz Busse was frequently to be heard barking orders at his family and to be seen herding them off in all weathers to march through the Grünewald and enjoy themselves. Schmidt didn’t like him, although, having to explain why to Hannelore, he’d only been able to come up with “He wears shorts.”

  “Siegfried.”

  “All right, he makes Frau Busse wear shorts.”

  Tonight was not improved by a visit from the very man. Hannelore ushered him into the living room, where he bowed. “I have come to thank you both. It was a fine meal.” He was long and thin, with steel-rimmed glasses and a way of sounding, even when grateful, as if he were making an accusation.

  Shamefaced, Schmidt mumbled, “Hannelore ...They happened to have . . . Think nothing of it.. . . Lucky . . . Procured through a friend.”

  Herr Busse lifted a finger to stop him. “I do think much of it. Nor is there need for explanation, Herr Inspector. It is right in these times that the police should keep themselves fed and strong.”

  He wasn’t being ironic, Schmidt thought. He meant it.

  “Also,” Busse continued, “I have to tell you that Frau Busse and the children and I are moving.” Another finger stopped their expressions of concern. “We can no longer afford the apartment and are going to live with Frau Busse’s mother in Wedding.”

  It was awful; Wedding was awful—one of the poorest districts in Berlin. “We’re sorry to lose you,” Schmidt said, and under these circumstances he was. Busse had struggled out of poverty to become a hardworking member of the middle class; inflation was sending him back to a district of poor housing where, the last time Schmidt saw the statistics, the infant mortality rate was 30 percent.

  And, from the look behind his spectacles, somebody was going to pay for it. Busse’s eyes were narrow with rage.

  Schmidt walked him to the door, commenting on the band newly adorning Busse’s left arm. “Haven’t seen that one before. Wandervogel?” The volkisch movement had spawned dozens of youth groups, all dedicated to ensuring that German boys and, to a lesser extent, girls breathed good German air and sang good German songs around good German campfires. He’d belonged to such a one as a boy, but now there were so many he’d lost track.

  “An offshoot. It is the Jugenbund—you know I am interested in the youth movement—we are the first, I think, to affiliate ourselves to the National Socialist Party. We have placed ourselves under the order of the Sturmabteilung. You know the NSDAP?”

  “Seen the posters,” Schmidt said.

  “You should join, you know. Adolf Hitler is the only man who can get us out of the mess all these traitors and Jews have got us into.”

  “Yes, well, as a policeman I’ve got to stay neutral.”

  “There can be no neutrality,” Franz Busse said.

  “I am so sorry for them,” Hannelore said, nearly weeping, when Schmidt rejoined her.

  “So am I. I’d be more sorry if the bugger hadn’t joined the Nazis.”

  They sat together in front of the ersatz fire, Hanne’s legs on Schmidt’s lap while he massaged them. Her ankles were still swollen. “I carried too much shopping back,” she said. “I was greedy. They’ll be better tomorrow.”

  She went to sleep, her legs still in his lap, and he laid his head back against the crocheted antimacassar to think.

  For the tenth time, he put himself by the entrance to Charlottenburg Park, keeping in its shadows, watching for the figure that would come stealing in to wait for the girl he’d lured to it. It was male and it was big. It had come on foot via Spandauer Damm or Tegeler Weg—there’d been no sightings of a car. Here it came, a huge shadow, a woman frightener with something about it, if a troubled lady were to be believed, that resembled Willi.

  He woke Hannelore by sliding his hand up her thigh and tickling her.

  She smiled at him. “You are a naughty man, Siegfried Schmidt.”

  He said, “Imagine you’re meeting Willi Ritte for the first time. What’s your impression?”

  “A big, kindly man.”

  “No, that’s because you know him. Your first impression.”

  “Well.” She squeezed her eyes shut to concentrate. “He’s very much a sergeant, isn’t he?”

  “Military, do you mean?”

  “Yes. Yes, I suppose I do.”

  They went to bed.

  Schmidt dreamed. What the dream was, he never remembered, though Franz Busse was in it somewhere, but in the middle of it he woke and sat up.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. “I know who he is.”

  15

  “ALL RIGHT, who is he?” Willi asked, regarding Schmidt’s desk, on which papers were being pushed this way and that.

  “I don’t know his fucking name, do I? I just know who he is.” Schmidt snatched up some of the papers and came around the desk, jabbing his finger at them. “See this?” It was the report from the house-to-house inquiries made near Charlottenburg Park. “See who was on the streets the night of the murder?”

  Willi ran his eye down the list. “Jew with handcart, courting couple, large woman, two Communists, SA man, Rudi Mach— it’s not Rudi the Flasher, is it?”

  “No, it isn’t,” Schmidt said irritably. “Now, look here—this is the incident report about what was going on at the Landwehr Canal the day our Anna went into it.”

  “Couple of drunks, kid fell in, secondhand-clothes man, Tiergarten demonstration and the usual trouble, illegal fishing.”

  “Now then.” Schmidt shook the papers at him. “What’s the common denominator?”

  Willi went over the lists again, and his face was touched by a dawn. “Jew with a handcart at Charlottenburg, secondhand-clothes man at the Landwehr. It’s a Jew.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Willi. Our man’s big. Solomonova said so, Clara said so, Natalya said so. How many big Jews do you know?”

  “Well, there’s Manny Finkelstein. He weighs in about—”

  “It’s not fucking Finkelstein.” Schmidt gave up and went back to his desk. “I’ll give you a clue. Pieck thinks a trench knife was used to cut Natalya’s throat.”

  “Yes?”

  Schmidt expired. “Look, our man’s big and he’s military—that’s why he resembles you. You look like a soldier, so does he. On the night Natalya was murdered, an SA man, a storm trooper,
quarreled with a couple of Communists. He was alone, so he was careful not to get into a fight. Now, that’s unusual—the Brownshirts usually travel in packs, the bastards. Am I right?”

  “Ye-e-es,” Willi said.

  “Good. At Dalldorf a big man turns up and frightens Peuthert. He’s big, he resembles you, which means he’s military. All right? Turns up again at the Green Hat, still big, uses a knife.”

  “Ye-e-es.”

  “Very well. Go back three years, to Landwehr Canal and Anderson plopping into it. What was happening that day? And not far away either?” His eyes rolled with exasperation at Willi’s frown. “There was a demonstration by the Communists, wasn’t there? At the Tiergarten? And who turns up at Communist demonstrations in order to start a riot?”

  Willi hit the side of his head. “Storm troopers.”

  “The Sturmabteilung. Exactly.” Schmidt leaned back in his chair. “And that’s who our killer is. He’s SA, sport trooper, storm trooper— whatever they call themselves nowadays.”

  Willi bared his teeth, clicking them as if tasting the argument. “Sure we’re not being carried away by politics, boss?” Schmidt’s loathing of the far Right was something that his sergeant regarded as an obsession— he himself was conservative with a small c and merely disliked troublemakers of all political persuasions.

  Schmidt thought about it. Was he? No, damned if he was.

  “I’ll tell you another thing,” he said. “He’s not a Berlin man. He does his soldiering elsewhere. That’d account for the periods when he left Anna to her own devices.”

  “Only does his murdering on leave, you mean?”

  Schmidt grunted. Put like that, it sounded silly.

  “It wouldn’t stand up to an examining magistrate, boss,” Willi said.

  “Maybe not. But that’s who he is. And I’m going to prove it. I’m off to see Eisenmenger.”

  THE POLITICAL and Intelligence Section had a corridor to itself. Which was carpeted—something that had not gone unnoticed by the lesser mortals in Crime who had to make do with linoleum. Eisenmenger’s office was also carpeted. He had some small, exquisite landscapes on his walls, while his large posterior was fitted into a padded leather chair beside not a desk but an escritoire.

  Schmidt was offered real coffee made in a French cafetière. He stated his request.

  “Well, you won’t find them in the phone book,” Eisenmenger said, “their activities being frowned on by authority. Recruitment’s through personal contact at rallies or the less salubrious beer halls. And they get their publicity by doing what they do, fighting the Reds and beating up the occasional Jew. Cheaper than giving out handbills.”

  “They must have an HQ,” Schmidt said.

  “Munich,” Eisenmenger said. “They’re all run from Munich. Very big there, as you know, very organized. Down there they’ve progressed from acting as Herr Hitler’s personal chuckers-out to being his National Socialist private army, equipped and trained. My opposite number in Bavaria is expecting a putsch any day now.”

  “A putsch? They’ll try to take over down there?”

  “Looks like it.” Eisenmenger might have been forecasting rain. “Röhm seems keen on it.” He raised his eyebrows. “Ernst Röhm? My dear Schmidt, if you’re investigating the Sturmabteilung, you should know their leader. A rather common fellow of questionable sexuality, but an excellent soldier, wounded at Verdun. You can’t miss him; a shell fragment took away part of his nose. Rabid right-winger, of course, but as a military organizer he is nonpareil. He can make soldiers out of sewer rats, they tell me. And does. He’s also the deviser of their uniform.” Eisenmenger’s own fastidious nose wrinkled. “He threatens to submerge the republic under a sea of brown.”

  “Like shit, you mean,” Schmidt said.

  “Don’t underestimate him. My information is that he’s in Berlin at the moment in order to invigorate the local thugs, who, since they lack the sympathy from our police that Munich boys are used to receiving from the Munich force, have not been killing enough Communists for his taste.”

  “The ones I’ve seen brawling in the streets are invigorated enough for me,” Schmidt said.

  “Oh, I agree, I agree. However, in Bavaria they’d be drummed out of the SA for sensitivity. Here’s the address.. . .” Eisenmenger screwedhis monocle into his right eye socket and plied a gold fountain pen on an embossed notepad. “As far as we can tell, such administration as the SA has in Berlin seems to be centered here in Kreuzberg. I’m told it’s an unlikely-looking venue—that’s deliberate, of course—midway between the railway and the water tower.” He paused before handing over the note. “Should you be thinking of paying them a visit, and should you want to see Mother again, may I urge on you the necessity to be polite.”

  IT WAS AN old fire station, long abandoned by what had been a horse-drawn fire brigade. Both of its two huge and dirty doors were shut. Nailed to the central pillar was an equally dirty piece of cardboard, which said KREUZBERG SPORTS GUILD.

  Like Eisenmenger, Willi was stressing the need for restraint as he and Schmidt awaited an answer to their knock on the great doors. “We don’t want to rile them, boss, not till we find out what we want to know. What do we want to know?”

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  There were sounds of activity beyond the doors, and somebody yelled, “Password?”

  “Police,” Schmidt shouted back.

  There was no answer, not even to the kick Schmidt applied to the bottom of the door.

  They were returning to the street after a fruitless attempt to find a back entrance when they saw a contingent of small boys, led by a tall, skinny youth, marching up to the doors. They reminded Schmidt of the Wandervogel of his youth, though these kids looked even poorer than he’d been; one or two had knapsacks and proper boots, but the rest had homemade sacks strung on their backs and worn-out shoes. Each of them, though, was equipped with a smart khaki peaked cap.

  “Wayfarers,” said Willi sentimentally.

  “Never liked it,” Schmidt said. “My group didn’t take girls.”

  “Mine did. Unofficially.”

  On an order from the youth, the urchins lined up in professional military formation, shuffling into arm-measured distance from one another.

  “Atten-shun.” They snapped to it. “Hats off.”

  The caps were whipped off, collected by a small child with a corpo-ral’s stripe on his ragged sleeve, and handed to the youth.

  “Heil Hitler!”

  Twenty sets of breath puffed into the cold air, and twenty arms went up in the salute given to Roman emperors. “Return for inspection at five o’clock,” they were told. “Dismiss.”

  The children scattered. The youth knocked on the door. They heard his shout: “Robber Baron. Lieutenant Alvens to report.”

  As one of the doors grated back, Schmidt and Willi moved up to push in behind the young man. The door swung back on them but was hindered by Willi’s boot, and they went inside.

  It was a gymnasium, startling in its size and cleanliness and—consid-ering the poverty of the Kreuzberg district—lavish sports equipment.

  Against the white walls were climbing bars, ringed ropes hung from the ceiling, and a vaulting horse stood in the center of the room, surrounded by exercise mats. One corner was a boxing area, complete with punching bags and a raised ring in which two boxers, both of them bleeding from the nose, had suspended activity to stare at the two policemen. As had the rest of the occupants—forty or fifty of them, all of them male, most of them young, and none of them showing a welcome.

  It was not a comfortable moment. Ill will emitted by half a hundred youths, all in splendid physical condition, tends to daunt.

  Schmidt knew he and Willi had only two advantages. One: they were fully clothed, which gave them the superiority of normality over opponents who wore only breechcloths—a group of boys just emerging from a side door, toweling themselves, were totally naked. Two: they belonged to a police force that had inculcated respect,
not to mention fear, into its law-abiding and criminal citizens alike over many years. A new god was being worshipped in this place, but Schmidt had to count on the fact that the old one still spoke to blood ancestry.

  “I am Inspector Schmidt, Berlin City Police. This is Sergeant Ritte. Who is in charge here?” He snapped it out—he wasn’t going to get anywhere with this bunch by saying please.

  The scales trembled. Glances were exchanged, fists tightened, but in the end nobody moved.

  They were fine looking, thought Schmidt. Some, if not all, must have come from the slums, but, if so, the SA had been feeding them well. Where the hell did this organization get its money?

  The smell of liniment from their shining white muscles mingled in the air with that of sweat and fresh paint. They looked like a beautiful frieze on a Greek vase; he could have been proud of them if it hadn’t been for the massive swastika that hung from the ceiling.

  Menaced though he was, he felt pity—and shame. We let them down, he thought. We lost the war for them, and nobody has pointed out to them that it shouldn’t have been fought in the first place. Instead of the sword-waving, Wagnerian, “Deutschland über Alles” romances their heads have been filled with, we’ve handed them a feeble, poverty-stricken republic that promises nothing. Hitler offers them glory and power.

  Eventually the youth that had been leading the wayfarers said sulkily, “Captain Schwerte is out.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “Soon.” It was spit out, suggesting And then we’ll see.

  “And you are?”

  “Lieutenant Alvens.”

  Schmidt looked him in the eye, stuck his chin up, put a deliberate sneer to his mouth, like an officer, he thought, like a bloody lion tamer. Without moving his eyes, he pointed to a half-glazed door marked OFFICE. “I’ll wait for him in here.”