“I have been watching Oppenheimer,” Vogler added. “He is very thorough. Furthermore, we can use his professional experience for our purposes. If we really are chasing a Jew, then it might be an advantage if we also deploy a Jew to catch him.”
The Oberführer pursed his lips in thought. “I hope you realize that time is of the essence. Gruppenführer Reithermann is moving heaven and earth, right up to führer headquarters. He is complaining that no one has managed to solve the murder of his foreign-language tart. If we don’t get results soon, there will be trouble.”
Vogler knew that Reithermann could cause trouble. He had already met the Gruppenführer. He considered Reithermann nothing more than one of these opportunistic creatures that had been flushed to the top with National Socialism. And yet he held a position of power in the party that should not be underestimated.
When Vogler and Graeter were tasked with the investigation of Julie Dufour’s murder, it seemed to be a routine case. But by the time Inge Friedrichsen was murdered, even the most senior tiers in the Reich Security Main Office realized that they were dealing with a criminal mind that could become a danger to them. And Vogler also realized that his steps toward solving the case were being closely monitored. He had to provide results. Soon.
* * *
“Quick, let me in,” the man with the sunglasses said and pushed his way into Hilde’s treatment room. Taken by surprise, she closed the door before recognizing her guest.
“Richard?”
Oppenheimer removed the glasses. “I’ve got heaps to tell. Do you have any coffee?”
“I’ll make some in a moment. Hmm, I hate to say it, but you smell like a goat. Did you at least manage to shake off your tail?”
Oppenheimer followed her across the living room to the kitchen. “I came up with a small distraction, and it seems to have worked.”
Hilde put the coffee on and poured a clear liquid into her shot glass. “I have to admit, I can barely tear myself away from the radio, even if it is dangerous. If the BBC News isn’t just propaganda, then the shit really is hitting the fan right now. There were no night raids in the last few days, so there might be some truth to it. It’s about time. I can’t stand the sight of these Nazis anymore. The bastards have turned the entire country into a comedy dictatorship. As soon as I leave the house, I feel like I’m in a bad production of The Gypsy Baron. Just take Göring, that fatso squeezed into his ridiculous uniform like a sausage into its skin. And do you know what a Reich Marshal—or more precisely, Marshal of the German Empire—is, which is what he calls himself? I don’t. It didn’t exist before; I have no idea what job that is supposed to be. At least I can make sense of Göring’s title as Reich Hunting Master. A load of egotistical idiots, these Nazi bigwigs.” Before she took a sip of her schnapps, she asked, “Do you want one? It’s a special one. Genuine Italian recipe.”
“Italian? What’s in it?”
Hilde handed him the glass, but the thought of letting this doubtlessly disgusting swill trickle down his throat made Oppenheimer hesitate. “No, I don’t fancy it after all. We’ve found out quite a lot this week. There were earlier victims. The way it looks, we’re dealing with a mass murderer.”
Surprised, Hilde put the glass down without drinking. “That’s shitty news. Tell me more.”
While Oppenheimer put on a recording of the Piano Quintet in A Major, op. post. 114 by Franz Schubert, generally known as the Trout Quintet, he summarized the most important facts of the first two murders. After he had reported on Inge Friedrichsen’s connection to Lebensborn, Hilde frowned.
“The Friedrichsen girl worked for Lebensborn? And the place did not look like an Aryan brothel?”
“No, it didn’t. But there were a lot of odd characters running around.”
“I would have thought as much. But it would also surprise me if the Nazis managed to raise something other than their right arm.”
“Gruppenführer Reithermann doesn’t appear to be that type of Nazi. Apparently, everyone is convinced of the fact that Julie Dufour was not only his French foreign-language assistant but also his mistress.”
“The case is starting to get interesting. I am not surprised more victims are turning up. The ritual way the murders were carried out is indicative of it. And do you remember whom we compared our perpetrator to? Großmann, Kürten, all mass murderers. The three victims that we know of are just the beginning, that much is certain. At least we can now put together a chronology of the deeds. But I still wonder how to interpret the injuries.”
“You’re assuming he wants to tell us something?”
“We can probably be sure of that. I don’t know whether it is open at all to psychoanalytical interpretation. As we can only examine his victims, it is probably obvious to apply the behaviorist approach.”
“Yes, I know what’s coming.” Oppenheimer sighed. Hilde was on her hobbyhorse, the works of John B. Watson.
“Oh, really?” Hilde asked. “All right, then. Explain it to me. What does Watson say about actions?”
Forced into a corner, Oppenheimer tried to remember. “Well,” he began, “all actions can be dissected into a pattern with a stimulus that brings about a certain response.”
“Well done. The stimulus-response pattern. Watson assumes that there are just three types of emotional reaction: fear, anger, and love. All other reactions are learned, or, more specifically, learned through conditioning.”
They had already talked about conditioning. Of course, Oppenheimer knew of the experiment with the Pavlovian dog, which was always mentioned in this context. “That’s all very well,” Oppenheimer protested. “But some people are complexer than dogs.”
“I don’t know. In some cases, I wouldn’t be too sure. Look at arse-face Vogler. Pavlov’s dog dribbles at the sound of the bell; Vogler kills people when he hears a bell. What’s the difference?”
“Hilde, it’s not the same. The behaviorists say that the human spirit is nothing but—what’s it called again?”
“You mean the black box?”
“Yes. This theory, which says humans are little more than machines that transform stimuli into responses, is not enough to explain responses. It might work at a desk or even in a laboratory, but not in reality, and as a policeman investigating murders, I say it doesn’t work. And anyway, how is it supposed to help us? What should we do if things are as Watson claims?”
“We have to seek out the stimulus that brings about the reaction, so in this case, the murder.”
“Then why don’t you just say that we have to find the trigger and the cause for the deed? Why do you have to make everything so complicated?”
Hilde leaned back in amusement. “Well, then, we’re agreed.”
Sometimes Hilde really drove him up the wall. Exasperated, Oppenheimer mumbled something and looked for a new record. Somehow, he felt like chamber music today. He decided to put on Vivace ma non troppo from the Sonata for Piano and Violin in G Major, op. 78 by Johannes Brahms. Brahms’s symphonies had always left him cold. Perhaps the first, which was strongly orientated toward Beethoven, was quite acceptable. But in Oppenheimer’s opinion, Brahms’s strength was his chamber music. The way the composer managed to make the instruments sing, almost like a human voice—for Oppenheimer, there was something magical about it.
As the music played, he thought out loud. “Let’s approach this differently. If our perpetrator kills women who happen to cross his path, we won’t be able to stop him. Then we can just pray that he will be caught in the act at some point, like Großmann. There is only one realistic opportunity for us and only if he intentionally selected his victims. To determine this, we need to find out what the three women had in common and how that is connected to the motive.”
“Were the women similar in appearance?”
“I wouldn’t say so. Different builds and hair color. Ms. Gerdeler was a brunette, but quite light, Ms. Dufour was dark-haired, Inge Friedrichsen ash blond. Ms. Gerdeler dressed flamboyantly to emphasize her attr
activeness; Ms. Friedrichsen, on the other hand, didn’t, as far as I can tell. The appearance cannot be the deciding factor.”
“But they were all of a similar age.”
“Yes, they were all in their twenties. And if we consider their life circumstances, then they all had something to do with the NSDAP or party members.”
The silence that now descended upon them was inadequately filled by the music. The thought and the conclusion that might be drawn from it was not exactly pleasant.
“Wait a moment, though. In the case of Christina Gerdeler, that’s not necessarily true,” Hilde interjected. “She rooted out rich men in the Adlon and then let them have their way with her.”
“And who hangs out in the Adlon? Who has the money to spend there? Usually, it’s the party bigwigs. The probability is high that some of them were among her clients. Inge Friedrichsen worked at Lebensborn and was a member of the party; Ms. Dufour worked for an SS Gruppenführer. In this respect, there is a definite connection between these ladies.”
Hilde refused to accept this. She shook her head vigorously.
“I doubt that is a decisive factor. I mean, how many females still live here now that the families have been evacuated? Berlin has become a city of males in the last few years. The women who stayed here are normally employed. As the Nazis have infiltrated everything, it is almost impossible not to have any contact with them, professionally or privately. In particular here in Berlin, where all the administration offices are. Look at it realistically. Almost everyone had some sort of connection to the party.”
“Hmm, maybe you’re right,” Oppenheimer conceded. “Let’s try a different tack. Where does she come from? Inge Friedrichsen lives in Pankow, Christina Gerdeler in Stadtmitte, and Ms. Dufour in Friedrichshain. These boroughs are close to one another.”
Hilde reacted with a skeptical look. “Fine, but then look at the places where the bodies were found. Oberschöneweide, Kreuzberg, and Marienfelde.”
Oppenheimer thought for a moment, then he looked at Hilde. “Do you notice anything here?”
“Indeed. Oberschöneweide and Marienfelde are both farther out.”
Oppenheimer followed her lead. “Both are almost separate towns; both are in the south.”
“Kreuzberg is in the center of town, but also in the southern part,” Hilde said excitedly. They were onto something.
Oppenheimer concluded, “So while the victim’s homes are close to the city center, their bodies were found in the southeast. Why?”
“Because it’s more dangerous to transport a corpse than it is someone who’s unconscious?”
“Possibly,” Oppenheimer replied. “I wouldn’t be surprised if our murderer was also based in the southeast. He must have a base there.”
“Then we can take the next step and analyze his approach. He transports his victims quite a long way, so he must have a motorized set of wheels spacious enough to transport a dead body.”
“He abducts the women from their usual surroundings, takes them to an unknown place where he first tortures and then kills them. Then he deposits their bodies at some point during the night from Saturday to Sunday.”
“So this all takes place at the weekend,” Hilde added. “Which suggests that he might have regular work with no spare time on weekdays.”
“In other words, we are looking for a murderer with a vehicle and a strong work ethic,” Oppenheimer said contentedly.
“That could have been something I would have said,” Hilde commented.
* * *
After Oppenheimer had left, Hilde paced the room. She was concerned. Her cheerfulness toward the end of their conversation had been feigned. She could only hope that Richard hadn’t noticed. Things were not looking good, and they could get worse. And Oppenheimer of all people, whom she had always viewed as a close friend, might be to blame. If the investigation developed the way Hilde feared, they would soon run into difficulties.
She had another schnapps and reflected whether she would be able to influence Oppenheimer. But the undertaking seemed hopeless. He was incorruptible when it came to his job. He had already proved his extraordinary talent long before they had met and before Oppenheimer was persecuted as a Jew.
It had been one of those small coincidences that can change an entire life when she had discovered him on the pavement outside her house one evening. It was the day of the Reichskristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and Oppenheimer was little more than a terrified figure avoiding the glare of the streetlights and looking to hide from the paramilitary hoodlums of the SA. Was it really only six years since burning synagogues had lit up the sky over Berlin in tones of red? Such a lot had happened since then.
She still had strong memories of the propaganda that preceded the pogrom. The pretext was provided by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish immigrant, who shot Ernst von Rath, a secretary at the German embassy in Paris and member of the NSDAP. WORLD JUDAISM UNMASKED, the newspaper headlines clamored in uproar. But the people of Berlin showed little anti-Semitic hate. They remained calm, but an oppressive unease settled on them, as they could sense what was looming ahead.
The perceived spontaneous public anger that was then discharged against the Jews was planned with military precision. The Kurfürstendamm was transformed into an icy, glittering ocean. But it was not sudden frost that had covered the streets with ice on a meteorological whim; it was the shattered glass of Jewish shop windows refracting the first rays of sun.
On that day, people sensed for the first time what it was like to be a prisoner in your own state. Hilde, too, drove past the charred remains of the synagogues. The people in the carriage did not rejoice. “Anti-Semitism—fair enough, but this is going too far,” the passengers mumbled among themselves, or something along those lines. But no one stepped forward. They were cowards. And were embarrassed by that fact. This was also true of Hilde.
In the days that followed, Jews were fair game. The law of the jungle ruled the country; brute force brought about results without the need for argument. Hilde had watched the events powerlessly, aware that one woman’s resistance would not have any effect. To maintain the last scrap of self-esteem, she swore to herself that she would take in the first persecuted person she came across. And that was Oppenheimer. She hid him in her large house for the next three days, until the wave of arrests came to an end and Oppenheimer was able to return home. She met Richard’s wife too. Lisa had traipsed ceaselessly around the prisons in Plötzensee, Moabit, and Alexanderplatz, until Hilde was able to tell her that her husband was safe. During those days, Hilde had held highly interesting conversations with Oppenheimer behind closed shutters, especially after she had discovered that her guest had been an inspector on the Großmann case. In those hours, Oppenheimer had found a place in her heart. She had taken him in to save her soul and had received so much more in return.
And now there was a danger that Oppenheimer, of all people, was going to be used by the SD to silence Hilde’s kindred spirits.
Of which there were many. In her youth, Hilde had repeatedly visited her uncle and was introduced to the higher circles of society as a matter of course. She had quickly discovered that the military was a caste in its own right—especially the aristocrats among them. But as a vibrant young woman, Hilde also made a lot of other new friends. Her circles grew when she later studied medicine in Berlin. And so, Hilde found a lot of like-minded people who also opposed the ideology of fascism. Ever since that time, she was occasionally invited to “diplomatic teas” and could gauge from her own experience who in the Foreign Office sympathized with the Nazis and who one could trust. Even Hilde’s marriage to Erich Hauser, who later became an SS Hauptscharführer, was not held against her in antiestablishment circles. Her friends knew that she was all the more active in her opposition of the National Socialist idea because of her marriage. When Helmuth Graf von Moltke from the clandestine opposition around Admiral Canaris was arrested because he had planned to warn Consul General Kiep of his imminent arrest, Hilde
had become more cautious and only kept loose contact with those who thought like she did. But now things had come to a head. She sensed that she had to intervene to prevent worse from happening, even if this meant compromising her friendship with Richard. The time had come to break her silence.
When Hilde had moved into the outbuilding, she had insisted that a telephone line be laid to her new flat. Now she could talk without being overheard by the strangers in her house. However, it was possible that her phone was being wiretapped. But she had become a true expert in talking in code. Her contacts had to be told about Oppenheimer’s investigation. She had waited far too long already. Hilde pushed her scruples aside, took the receiver off the hook, and dialed.
11
MONDAY, MAY 22, 1944–THURSDAY, MAY 25, 1944
On Monday, Oppenheimer asked Hoffmann to not bring him straight to Zehlendorf in the morning. Instead, he stood outside the entrance to Höcker & Sons before they opened, his hands deep in his pockets. Lost in thought, he watched the goings-on in the street and chewed on his cigarette tip. He really hoped that his old war comrade Gerd Höcker would not turn up unexpectedly and involve him in inconsequential conversation before he got the opportunity to speak to Ms. Behringer.
A delivery van with a clattering wood gasifier drove past just as he saw her. She had wrapped a scarf around the lower part of her face, but her upright gait and the chestnut-brown curls beneath the black beret were unmistakable. She, too, had already spotted Oppenheimer. When she got closer, she pulled the scarf down and smiled at him. Her bright red lipstick was the only color in the drab grayness of the Monday morning. “Good morning, Inspector,” she greeted in a friendly tone. “Have you made any progress with the investigation?”
“Some questions have been raised, which is why I am here. I’d like to ask you something.”
“Of course. Go ahead.” She looked at him expectantly, pulling out a box of matches. “D’you need a light?”
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