The Whistler: A Murderer's Tale

by Ben Stevens

  Seconds later, one of the same two men had his drink spilt by the toothless drunk who usually sat in the corner.

  ‘Look out, would you?’ he demanded although not aggressively; for he rather pitied this pathetic alcoholic creature.

  The former trade unionist grabbed his arm, his horror-filled eyes staring intently at the man as he pleaded:

  ‘Please, it’s him. You have to help me… It’s him….’

  The enormity of what had just penetrated his alcohol-soaked consciousness choked his voice, his plea falling on unenlightened and consequently deaf ears. The two men worked in a sawmill – the pay was good but it was brutally hard work, and they’d both been looking forward to the beer since lunch-time.

  Being by no means happy about this interruption to their evening, they nevertheless restrained their tempers on account of the man’s apparent terror.

  ‘Go on, mate, get out of it,’ one said gently, as the toothless man looked frantically around the room, his eyes seeming to search far beyond what he could see physically. It was as though he was looking for a force powerful enough to combat the evil that had just walked back out into the night.

  ‘Will no one help?’ he shouted: a universal plea. The regulars looked in mutual surprise at one another – even when absolutely intoxicated the man was never nearly as vocal as this. And with a last, despairing cry he ran from the inn out into the cold, mean streets of a city that was still rebuilding itself.

  Ahead he saw the hunched-over, strangely crablike figure of Schmidt, and he halted. Then the madness – caused both by his chronic alcoholism and the horrific memories he could never forget – overrode the bone-numbing fear he felt. He shouted incoherently as he ran to catch up with Schmidt, but the man with the ruined face did not turn around.

  Instead, Schmidt surreptitiously withdrew a switchblade knife from his inside jacket pocket and opened it. Moonlight reflected off the keen blade; rain flecked the steel. Only when the man was right behind him did Schmidt suddenly turn, bringing the knife hard up to where he guessed the heart to be.

  Schmidt guessed correctly and the man fell to the ground, a sucking sound coming from the wound. Blood mingled with the rain on the cobbled road, the derelict houses on either side windowless witnesses of the foul tragedy that had just been enacted.

  As Schmidt prepared to run he realised that the man was whispering something, and he strained to hear just what this was.

  ‘The Whistler… It’s... The Whistler…’

  As the man breathed his final ragged breath and the moon ducked behind a cloud, Schmidt considered that to flee immediately would actually be extremely stupid. Better to first dispose of the body somewhere it wouldn’t be found.

  So Schmidt easily hoisted the dead man onto his shoulder and began walking. It was fortunate for him that his construction team had recently begun renovating a derelict house not two hundred yards away. The well-to-do family who owned it were one of the lucky ones who had somehow recovered their pre-war fortune, and so were fully able to pay for the work.

  This renovation work had commenced just four days previously, but already Schmidt and his men had cleared the virtual jungle from the front and back gardens and begun to dig trenches for an extension.

  Negotiating his way in near pitch-black darkness around the side of the house to the back garden, Schmidt felt for a trench with his foot and then threw the man into it.

  The trench was approximately four feet deep – he would get here at five o’clock tomorrow morning, three hours before his men were due to start work, and make it six before filling as much of it as he could with concrete. By the time his men arrived, the corpse would be covered.

  None of Schmidt’s men would be the slightest bit surprised that their employer was on-site and working before them. For he was well-known as being a workaholic who had the stamina of a horse.

  Satisfied, Schmidt walked back out into the road and then began to run – there was blood on his clothes and so it was essential he get back to his lodgings without being seen. But it was late: there was hardly anyone about.

  Schmidt treated what had just happened as a salient lesson: his damaged face was no guarantee that those who’d suffered under him would be unable to recognise him, and so he must forever exercise extreme caution...

  Marie

  1

  Berlin 1938

  Humboldt University’s largest annexe was constructed in a rough ‘U’ shape, wide steps sweeping up to the ornately-carved stone pillars in front of the building’s main entrance. The surrounding grounds were beautifully maintained, so that it was a pleasure for the students to sit within them during their lunch hour and after lessons.

  Giving his name to the seat of learning he’d founded in 1810, Wilhelm von Humboldt had declared his intention of pioneering the ‘mother of all modern universities.’

  His aim – to provide a unity of teaching and research that would allow students an all-round humanist education – would become a concept adopted by many fledgling universities during the eighteenth century.

  But now red flags with a black swastika in their centre adorned the roof of the building, the Nazis having transformed this university into a centre for their own ideology to be taught. Five years before, in 1933, many of its students and lecturers had taken part in the burning of literature banned by Goebbels.

  Erich Heinemann walked towards the main entrance, along with the many other students about to begin their first term at the university. In contrast to the general atmosphere of optimism and excitement his feeling was one of wariness, almost fear. From his encounter with the Gestapo just the previous evening, he knew what to expect should he take just one step out of line...

  He’d no doubt that this once acclaimed school of learning, Humboldt University, was now as repressed as everything else within Germany. But to what extent was such repression applicable to the course he was about to commence?

  Through quiet discussion with Frau Stielke he’d been made aware that the Socialists had already tampered with classical music, ‘advising’ orchestras that they should have a preference for works by Richard Wagner and banning all of Mendelssohn’s compositions outright. Even the Fatherland’s leading composer, Paul Hindemith, had recently been compelled to emigrate to Switzerland due to the ‘impropriety’ of his compositions.

  Walking through the open doors Heinemann entered a large reception hall, students stood clustered together in many small groups around its perimeter. Several young men were wearing the light brown uniform of the Hitler Youth, displaying their loyalty to the Fuhrer along with the fact that they were not yet nineteen years of age.

  In the centre of the hall stretched orderly queues before several desks, where severe-looking women sat signing the new students in and instructing them on where to go.

  The floor was marble; the walls, ceiling and the wide staircase in one corner constructed from oak. In his mind’s eye Heinemann momentarily visualised a likely scene from years before: elderly and bearded scholars walking slowly along, the large oil paintings of their predecessors looking perhaps a little scornfully down upon them, forever contesting the advancement of knowledge.

  Such scenes were long gone, ruthlessly swept aside by the Nazis. The paintings on the walls now were of a style approved by the Party, laughable in their inferiority to those imagined by Heinemann. The many banners had the eagle of the Third Reich stencilled upon them, its talons grasping the swastika.

  Amidst this Teutonic order something assailed the Mischling’s nostrils; or perhaps not Heinemann’s olfactory system but rather some sixth-sense keen to his surroundings. There was the almost undetectable smell – sense – of fear; the suggestion of the countless indignities and atrocities perpetrated by the National Socialist Party...

  He joined a queue, his violin in its case held by his side. He was soon confronted by one of the women sat at the desks.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I am here to study music under the direction of Herr Rath
.’

  ‘Your name?’ came the bullet-like question.

  ‘Erich Heinemann.’

  The woman nodded curtly, her thin lips pursing as she scanned a list on the desk.

  ‘Fourth floor, room eighty.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  While walking up the stairs past other floors and rooms Heinemenn heard loud, impassioned voices talking of the ‘Fatherland’ and ‘Mother Earth.’ He assumed that these voices belonged to the teachers, and so braced himself for the Nazi-loving tutor who was to reputably develop his talent for music.

  Reaching the last floor of the building he then walked along a long corridor, for the first time hearing the gently-bowed notes of a cello coming from a room close to its end.

  Drawn to the music he paid no attention to the numbers of the rooms on either side of him – it was obvious where room eighty was. The sound of the instrument was beautiful, hypnotic; he was consumed with the desire to discover who was capable of producing it.

  Entering the room, he saw a woman of approximately the same age as himself sat alone at one of the desks which were arranged as three sides of a square. In between her legs was the cello, her slender hand weaving the bow back and forth across the strings.

  Heinemann was able to observe her for a short while before she noticed him, and he realised that he found her beautiful. There was a certain coldness in her features but this only made her all the more alluring: it gave the impression that she needed nobody.

  Looking up from her instrument the woman saw the thin, black-haired youth. There was little warmth in her faint smile – it contained a definite guard and was clearly given only out of courtesy.

  ‘Hello,’ he said hesitantly. ‘My name’s Erich Heinemann.’

  ‘Heinemann? You must be the one who’s recently been playing for the Berlin elite.’

  Her voice contained neither sarcasm nor admiration; it was as though the young woman was merely stating a simple fact.

  Heinemann felt slightly lost, and in the midst of his confusion he looked about the room. The posters on the wall were like those in any other music class – advertising performances, makes of instruments – the marble busts of Beethoven, Mozart and various other famous (and non-Jewish) composers placed on the desk and the shelves.

  Heinemann wondered whether the young woman was anti-Semitic; this would of course provide an explanation for her distant behaviour. But then – with an undeniable feeling of relief – he somehow understood that her aloof manner was just her way of dealing with the strange, dark days of 1938.

  ‘My name,’ she said with an indifferent tone, ‘is Marie von Hahn.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you – we must be early.’

  Marie nodded.

  ‘Obviously.’

  Her hair was a light auburn shade, her eyes a luxurious blue. Her nose was ever so slightly upturned, and on the occasion she’d smiled the corners of her mouth had turned down rather than up. It was this that Heinemann found most attractive.

  A third person entered the room: a slightly plump, red-haired man of approximately twenty. Nodding to Marie and Heinemann in a surly manner the man sat down at a desk and produced several large books on music, one of which he began to read.

  Six more people entered the classroom during the next five minutes, each one quietly seating themselves and avoiding eye contact. There were no introductions between the new students.

  Something kept niggling Heinemann, but only when the ninth and last person had entered did he realise just what this was: only Marie and himself had brought their instruments.

  He glanced at Marie, who sat four chairs away from him. She had put her cello in its case and propped the instrument against the wall; she appeared the most at ease out of all the nine students. The red-haired man carried on reading his book, while the others stared at their desks.

  The awkward atmosphere was broken by the arrival of a person Heinemann assumed was Herr Rath, a tall man with a straight back and a direct gaze with which he studied his class before speaking.

  ‘Everyone here? Good. There being only one female student in this class I can take an astute guess at the identity of Frau Hahn, but my memory for faces being a little poor will Herr Heinemann kindly identify himself?’

  Heinemann obligingly raised his hand.

  ‘Thank you. Frau Hahn and Herr Heinemann – I assume that you failed to receive the posted message requesting an interview with myself, as you didn’t attend and it was then that I informed the other students that they will not be needing their instruments for a good while yet. Still, never mind.’

  Rath began to pace around the edge of the room, walking behind the students sat at the desks. ‘As you are all doubtless aware my name is Enrich Rath – I will be your sole tutor during this four-year course.

  ‘The syllabus we will be following has been developed by the Reich Music Chamber, and as a class we will be visiting places such as the Berlin Philharmonie Concert Hall and the Deutsche Staatsoper, where you will be able to study some of Germany’s finest musicians while they are performing. This is not intended as recreation, more as…’

  Rath’s voice droned on unheard by Heinemann, as the Mischling no longer cared to hear it. Something in the man’s voice had quickly led him to suspect that his tutor believed none of what he was saying.

  To study some of Germany’s finest musicians – he doubted that he’d imagined the almost undetectable sneer with which the man had said these words.

  Rath looked to be in his mid-thirties, Heinemann already aware that he was both a virtuoso pianist and violinist. What no one knew – least of all Heinemann, or any of the other eight music students – was that although Enrich Rath followed the Nazis’ dictates, he despised the ruling Party with every ounce of feeling left inside of him. He’d seen Jewish friends of his, many talented musicians, simply disappear, while others had decided to emigrate before such a fate befell themselves.

  The only thing Rath hated more than the Nazis was himself – for his lack of courage in not making a proper stand against this heinous treatment of the Jews. He’d once begun to do so, several years before, but had been warned to desist so firmly that he’d stopped almost immediately.

  Due to this acquiescence he was now the only music lecturer at Humboldt University, responsible for the advancement of some of Germany’s finest young musicians. Such a senior position meant little to Enrich Rath, however – he hated himself too much to appreciate anything...

  Now Heinemann forced himself to listen to what his tutor was saying, for this introduction to the course had quickly became extremely technical with different timings, scale patterns and modes noted and explained in context to the relevant historical period.

  Rath spoke of the church’s influence on music, of their dislike for the diabolus in musica – the ‘devil in music’ or the tritone – and of how a few medieval composers who’d dared to use it had been rewarded with the stake for their troubles.

  This brought a snort of derision from the red-haired student, which made Heinemann suddenly realise that the portly young man was an ardent supporter of the National Socialist Party. For Nazi ideology branded all religion archaic, and so what else could have been expected from such a ridiculous organisation as the Catholic Church during the Middle Ages? This question had been all but voiced through the red-haired man’s derisive snort.

  The nine students were compelled to make voluminous notes in the lined books distributed by Rath as he talked, and they marvelled at their tutor’s memory and knowledge.

  And as Rath lost himself in his detailed introduction he became slightly more animated, his interest in his favourite subject aroused and so his self-perceived shortcomings temporarily forgotten.

  At one o’clock the class was dismissed for lunch. They made their way downstairs to a large hall with a kitchen at its end, long tables and chairs occupying most of the space. The hall was full of people and the general hubbub of conversation. The music students queued to receive their
meal, which was free.

  Few women either studied or taught at Humboldt University, and as Heinemann and the other music students occupied the end of one table they noticed the admiring glances Marie was receiving from several males seated at other tables.

  The red-haired man spoke, breaking the silence that had until now been prevalent amongst the music students.

  ‘Well, this course seems excellent. We have a superb tutor whose loyalty to the Fuhrer cannot be doubted, and so we will be taught in a way that makes us most beneficial to the Socialists and the Fatherland as a whole.’

  There were a few polite murmurs of agreement, though no one else spoke. Heinemann felt the first, strong stab of dislike towards this man.

  ‘With the kikes removed from the German musical establishment, we are reclaiming our rightful role and destiny. German music will be the very best, performed only by true Germans,’ the man finished, apparently unable to say the word ‘German’ enough times.

  The hand holding the fork stopped near Heinemann’s mouth, and his flinty grey eyes met those of the person who’d just spoken. He in turn stared menacingly back, which gave the thin violinist an idea of what to expect in the future.

  The other students looked quietly alarmed at this opening of hostilities. It was not right for the red-haired man to speak so: the Jewish-looking teenager’s acceptance on this course was not to be questioned or remarked upon by any of them.

  Only Marie seemed not to notice the tension that was fast mounting, though she quickly ate her lunch and left without saying a word.

  Heinemann attracted curious glances from some of the other students seated around the hall. Those who cared about such things considered that by some misfortune the thin youth happened to look slightly Jewish; or perhaps he was one of those confusing grades of half- or quarter-Jew with whom the Nazis had yet to decide how to deal.

  Those other students who recognised Heinemann as being the Mischling violinist had, for the most part, spent their summer involved with the Hitler Youth. Their duties had consisted of waiting upon some of Berlin’s leading citizens as they socialised away from work. They’d served drinks and food, opened car doors and generally looked smart and efficient. And at many of these occasions, the Mischling had provided the musical entertainment.