Oppenheimer caught a movement on the edge of his vision. It had to be the stenographer. Two strong hands gripped him and dragged him off Kalle, who was gasping for breath.
Oppenheimer didn’t want to let go, reached out his arms, but he was jerked back and manhandled out into the corridor. He heard the door to the interrogation room close.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “I almost had him there!”
Oppenheimer was let go, and he realized that it was Vogler who had dragged him out of the room.
“From now on, that’s our job,” Vogler said. “Many thanks for your help. Now that we have the murderer, the SS will take over.”
Oppenheimer was too agitated to understand. “Give me an hour. Just one. I’ll get the information out of him!”
“Thank you for the offer, but we have our own methods. Wait for further instructions. I’ll be in touch if there is anything else you can do for us.” With that, Vogler returned to the room.
Oppenheimer’s breathing returned to normal. The throbbing in his head stopped. He slowly realized that he no longer played a role in the investigation. It was over, and he had delivered an unworthy spectacle in the final stages. Gradually, he realized what he’d done. He had almost killed a suspect. Within just a few seconds, he’d thrown everything he’d ever believed in overboard. He’d flouted his mentor’s maxim. He’d attacked a suspect to force a confession. Oppenheimer didn’t know whether he’d ever be able to forgive himself. What would have happened if Vogler hadn’t stopped him in time? He didn’t dare think of it. Through the door, Oppenheimer heard Vogler begin to shout at the suspect. “We have witnesses who saw you, Ziegler!” Vogler was clearly gambling. He was probably planning on putting Kalle under pressure with false evidence until he confessed to everything. Oppenheimer had heard that this was the Gestapo’s standard method. But he was not interested in the SS man now; he was preoccupied with himself.
He had caught the murderer and suffered a huge defeat at the same time. Oppenheimer stood in the corridor, dazed, deeply ashamed by his own behavior.
* * *
He held on to the smooth enamel of the sink. It was dark. A thin ray of sunshine fell into the room through the window that was as narrow as an arrow slit. Despondency had gripped him and had become so strong that he almost believed he would never be able to escape it. He had to concentrate, recover his control so that he could think straight once more. He didn’t know what to do. Only the belief in his mission prevented him from giving up.
He had already found pleasure in killing during the war. But at the time, that was nothing special. After all, his comrades at the front had endured the same fate. Back home, it had taken him a few years to realize that he was different.
When, in an attack of rage, he had throttled a prostitute who’d laughed at the sight of his member, he’d still been naïve. He’d actually felt panic back then when he realized that the wench with the brightly made-up face was dead. He’d fled from her digs, hoping that nobody had seen him. In the days that followed, he avoided his room, lying low in town, always ready to move on at the sight of a policeman. But no one looked for him, no one wanted to bring him to justice. When he dared to go back to his lodgings, his life returned to its usual rhythm. And yet to him, the world had changed irrevocably.
He turned around and looked at the alarm clock. After having checked that the color had had enough time to work, he leaned forward and started to rinse it from his hair.
When he thought about how awkwardly he’d gone about killing the first wench, he almost had to laugh. What an amateur he’d been back then. Insecure. Fearful. Driven by an urge he initially couldn’t understand.
But after he’d spent a lot of time thinking about it, the time had come when everything made sense. He’d suddenly appreciated how everything hung together and understood the role he himself played in it. Since then, he’d been aware that something had embedded itself deep inside him a long time ago, something that grew incessantly, became stronger, and then freed itself with a forceful outburst.
He dried his bleached hair. When he put the towel aside, he couldn’t help but stare at himself in the mirror. Now he once again resembled the person he wanted to be. Full of pride, he looked at the deadly monster, the führer’s prophecy come true.
After he’d made sure that his original hair color was no longer showing at the roots, he was content. But he knew that the creature in the mirror was not yet complete. It was a constant learning process. In the last few years, he’d already taken many steps in the right direction. And he was particularly proud of one of his skills: the keen sense he’d developed in finding his victims. He was able to discover prostitutes in places where in his naïvety he initially hadn’t assumed them to be. Even the doctors who had treated him for a while were unable to imagine the danger that emanated from the prostitutes. He was almost grateful to the stupid wench for laughing at him and awakening his distrust.
He had placed the four cut-off arms in front of the Reich Chancellery to provoke a reaction. But that had turned out differently from what he’d expected. Now the roles had been reversed. He had become the prey. The SS lackeys followed him like a criminal. They wanted to eliminate him. No question, the situation was serious.
He went toward the door but stopped after a few steps. Heeding an inner impulse, he approached the preserving jars that were arranged on a shelf in an orderly row. He hoped to feel some sort of reassurance at the sight, but doubt had already gripped his heart again. He didn’t know whether he was still capable of continuing his mission, despite his many capabilities. The next step would be to manage without Kalle.
He reproached himself for being naïve enough to trust an idiot like Kalle. But the man had been useful, taking on the tasks from which he himself shied away. Without Kalle, it would have been difficult to protect himself from the prostitutes’ contaminated blood. Kalle wasn’t afraid of carving the genitals out of the women’s bodies and putting them into saline solution. He knew that his helper didn’t believe in the same things, and he hadn’t considered it appropriate to enlighten him. Kalle didn’t care about anything, as long as he could play his games with the women. And now he’d gone. Disappeared, just like that.
He leaned against the cold wall and asked himself the unavoidable question. Had all his work been in vain? He looked across toward the preserving jars once more to gather courage. But the malignant genitals trapped in there just looked like dead pieces of meat. He realized that the memories of his deeds were fading. But he needed these memories, needed them as confirmation that he was not idle, but continuing to follow the right path.
He thought he could hear the shrill laughter of the whore in the distance, but he knew it was just his mind playing tricks on him. He pulled on the gas mask he always carried with him. Underneath his second face, he felt secure. Once he’d affixed the mask, he felt his former assurance slowly return. When he took a deep breath, the distant laughter had disappeared. The only sound that remained was the sharp hiss of the filter, and there was no more room for doubt.
Calmly, he weighed the options. The fact that Kalle had disappeared probably meant that the SS people had picked him up. They would interrogate him, and he didn’t doubt that Kalle would crack at some point. His storage hut was well hidden in the woods, but he wasn’t safe here anymore. His pursuers could turn up any second.
He now knew what he was looking at. He realized he had a head start. He could calmly make all the arrangements before snatching the next prostitute.
And he had no doubt that he needed to continue with his task. Even if they were chasing him, he would not stop. Catching. Killing. There were still so many who needed to be punished. He couldn’t stop now.
At least Kalle had left the delivery van behind. That was very valuable. Now he just had to find a way of protecting himself in case someone found his hideout.
He stood in the middle of his storehouse, looked around, and thought about how the attackers would proceed. They w
ould have to take the deserted forest path to get onto the property. There were two doors to the building, but he’d already closed the back entrance off with bricks several years ago so that the prostitutes couldn’t flee. Then there was the iron hatch down to the coal cellar, but that was hard to find because it was overgrown with shrubs and could be opened from the outside only with a blowtorch. So it was obvious which way the intruder would have to come in to overpower him: through the front entrance, straight through the storage area to the workroom. Where he killed the women.
He tried to put himself in the pursuer’s shoes. Crouching down low, he crept along the wall and jumped through the doorway.
Now he was in his workroom. When the wooden floor creaked beneath his feet, he looked down. Seen from the outside, the storage hut seemed to consist of strong brick walls, but the inside was a ramshackle construction. Only a few rotten beams ensured that he didn’t break through the floor and fall into the cellar.
Suddenly, he had the idea he’d been waiting for. No, they couldn’t touch him. Now he knew how he could get away. Now that he’d resolved this, he felt ready. For the next deed.
* * *
“The race is almost over. There’s a hot favorite now, but the horse was replaced shortly before the finishing line. I think we can fetch our old nag from Happegarten now.”
Hilde understood Oppenheimer’s description of the situation. “The knacker has been informed. However, we’ll need at least three hours to get to Happegarten. It’s quite a long way to the trotting track.”
There was a note of disappointment in Oppenheimer’s voice. “As I said, there is nothing more we can do. See you later.”
He replaced the handset on the cradle and contemplated the telephone a while longer. He had to think of other things now. Very well, Vogler had taken the case off him, and the ending had been disappointing, but there was nothing to be done about it. Now that Oppenheimer was no longer needed, he was in an extremely dangerous situation. He could not afford to look back. The next goal had to be to get out of Germany and seek refuge somewhere. He still had three hours. All of a sudden, that seemed an extremely long time to Oppenheimer. So much could go wrong.
He exited from the post office and at first didn’t know where to go. Potsdamer Platz lay before him; countless people were walking to the train station, which was not really surprising, as the first people were leaving work for the day. A horse-drawn cart turned from Leipziger Straße into Hermann-Göring-Straße and almost forced a cyclist off the road, who rang his bicycle bell wildly. Life in the city was running its usual course, but Oppenheimer felt cut off from it all. He stood in the midst of the hustle and bustle, suddenly a stranger in the pulsating metropolis.
Hoffmann was nowhere to be seen; he probably had to drive more important people through Berlin now. Oppenheimer decided to take the subway line A-II to the Krumme Lanke station. He estimated that this would get him closer to the Kameradschaftssiedlung than the commuter train to West Zehlendorf. However, the roof of the subway station at Potsdamer Platz had been bombed during the big attack on Wednesday. Oppenheimer could see it was cordoned off. It seemed they were still working on it. He hoped that some sort of replacement transport had been arranged.
He was just about to cross Saarlandstraße when someone called out his name. “Mr. Oppenheimer! Wait!”
He turned but couldn’t spot anyone familiar. A figure limped through the crowd, waving his hat, his head almost bald. Güttler. Oppenheimer remembered. He’d given the man a task after they’d found the body of the whore called Friederike, who had been Verena Opitz before the SS gave her the alias Edith Zöllner. Ms. Becker had seen the murderer creep away from the graveyard in Steglitz, but her two descriptions of the perpetrator had contradicted each other.
“There you are!” Güttler said happily. “I was just about to go to Hauptsturmführer Vogler because I didn’t find you in Zehlendorf.”
“How are you, Güttler?”
“That’s quite a job you gave me. A veritable Sisyphean task, finding Ms. Becker.” With a proud smile, he then announced, “I’ve been successful, though.”
“You know where she lives?”
“Ms. Becker is staying in Dahlem. Her name was misspelled at the registration. Elfriede Bäcker, spelled ä instead of e. It took a while for me to figure that out. She claimed that all her papers were destroyed during the bomb attack.”
Oppenheimer stopped. This didn’t make sense. When he’d questioned Ms. Becker, she’d had no problem identifying herself. And there had been no further bomb attacks until she’d disappeared without a trace. This was not the behavior of an innocent person. This lady was hiding something. Oppenheimer made a note of the new address.
“Has anyone been informed about this yet?”
“Of course not. You set me on the task, and I wanted to report only to you.”
“Thank you, Güttler. Good job. I hope we see each other again. Maybe on the next case.”
With this empty promise and a handshake, Oppenheimer took his leave of the SD man. Before he knew it, his thoughts were revolving around the case again. Once he’d checked that the subway was working properly, he decided to get out a few stops earlier. Dahlem-Dorf was four stops before the final stop, Krumme Lanke. So paying Ms. Becker a visit was not a detour, and after all, Oppenheimer still had just under three hours.
* * *
CLOSED UNTIL THE ULTIMATE VICTORY, the large letters on the yellowing sign said. The tailor had placed the note behind the glass entrance door. Whether this was his cynical comment on the current war situation or whether he possibly still believed the German army would win was not clear.
Oppenheimer looked at the house. This was number seven, the address Güttler had given him. If his information was correct, this was where Ms. Becker was living.
So far, the building had remained untouched by bomb hits. In fact, the entire street was still intact. There were two floors above the tailor shop. Curtains hung in the windows. So someone was living here.
The entrance to the flats was at the side of the building. Oppenheimer looked for Ms. Becker’s name on the four mailboxes, and there was one with the name Becker on it.
When he reached the top floor and rang the bell, he heard agitated clattering inside the flat. A moment later, the door opened, and Elfriede Becker squinted at him from behind her glasses.
“Yes?” she asked. Oppenheimer felt that her voice sounded shaky.
“Elfriede Becker?” he asked.
The woman instinctively pulled her cardigan closer around herself. “What can I do for you?”
“Inspector Oppenheimer. We’ve met. Back at the cemetery in Steglitz. I have a few more questions. Could I come in?”
“I … That’s not convenient. I have to leave in a moment. I have an appointment.”
“It will really only take a few seconds,” Oppenheimer assured her, and before she could react, he had pushed his way into the flat. She appeared just marginally younger than that night at the police station. Oppenheimer guessed she was in her early to midthirties. Hesitantly, she led the way into the living room.
“You really are hard to find,” he said as he sat down in the armchair.
“How do you mean?”
“The address that you gave us doesn’t exist anymore. The house. And you gave a false name at the registration office.”
“What? That can’t be right. One of the clerks must have written it down wrong. It’s not my fault. It’s always so busy there.”
A framed photograph stood beneath the table lamp. A young Elfriede Becker was beaming at Oppenheimer from a wedding photograph. So, in actual fact she was Mrs. Becker, not a Miss.
“Do you live alone?”
“My husband fell at the eastern front last year, if that’s what you mean. It’s probably best if you ask your questions frankly.”
“You said that you saw the person leaving the cemetery on the night in question. Unfortunately, you gave two contradicting descriptions.”<
br />
“That was a mistake. It was only later when I thought about the event that I remembered everything in detail.”
Oppenheimer pricked up his ears. Someone had coughed in the next-door room, muffled, but quite clearly perceivable.
“The neighbors,” Mrs. Becker hurried to explain.
Oppenheimer looked her in the face. Then he got up and went straight into the room that the noise had come from. A bedroom. The back wall was taken up by a large wardrobe.
“I told you, it’s the neighbors,” Mrs. Becker protested.
“Is that your wardrobe, or was the room already furnished?”
“It was already here. Just like all the other items.”
Oppenheimer walked up and down in front of the wardrobe and examined the large doors. In a loud voice, he then addressed the large item of furniture. “You can come out now! The game is up! Do you hear me?”
Silence.
Very slowly, one of the wardrobe’s doors began to open. Two eyes stared at Oppenheimer, full of fear.
“I’m waiting.”
A rustling noise. Caught out, a man made his way out from between the clothes. He was in his early twenties, definitely of an age fit for military service. Now Oppenheimer understood Mrs. Becker’s strange behavior.
“Which battalion?”
“Eighth,” the young man answered, intimidated.
Of course, a deserter. Like so many others who didn’t report back to the front after their leave, preferring to take the risk of being shot by a firing squad should they be caught. When he saw how Mrs. Becker put her arms protectively around the shaking young man, he understood what had happened. If what she’d told Oppenheimer was true, then her husband had been killed, and she had fallen in love again. Unfortunately, her lover was a deserter. No one must know of his existence. Doubtlessly, she was crazy about the boy; otherwise, she wouldn’t have taken the risk of hiding him in her flat. His life depended on her behaving correctly. Hence the deception once the police had become aware of her. But now the house of cards these two had built had collapsed.
Germania: A Novel of Nazi Berlin Page 34
