‘Investigation’s halted?’ repeated Thallberg. ‘Who ordered it?’
‘Banja Luka. After pressure from the Feldgendarmerie here.’
Thallberg took some coffee, worked his mouth around it. ‘Fuck,’ he said, pushing himself back in his chair. He rose and went over to the window. ‘Look, sod that. I don’t care what some poxy staff officer said. This isn’t over. One of my boys is dead, and I want to know why, and who did it.’ He drank more coffee, and seemed to hesitate over something. ‘You don’t want to give it up, do you?’
Reinhardt felt a lurch, a sudden tilt deep inside. He did not want to give this up, no. But what did that mean? Where would it take him? He looked back at Thallberg before slowly shaking his head. ‘No. No, I don’t.’
Thallberg grinned, the man Reinhardt had met last night coming out. ‘Want to work for me, then?’
Reinhardt forced himself to think slowly. ‘Work for you? What would that mean?’
‘Just that, Reinhardt. You don’t need to pussyfoot around with this.’ He came back over to the desk. ‘You keep going with your investigation. Find whoever killed Hendel. Give me a name. Anything. I’ll take it on, I promise.’
Reinhardt swallowed hard, letting his eyes drift away, then back. ‘And then?’
‘Then? Well, then we’ll have our man. Or at least we’ll have Hendel’s man. And someone in Berlin will be very happy with us.’
‘And that’s enough?’ asked Reinhardt, quietly.
Thallberg heard it as a statement. ‘That’s enough,’ he said, firmly. ‘More than enough.’
‘Enough to do what? For what?’
‘Christ, Reinhardt, who cares?’ exclaimed Thallberg. ‘Enough to write your ticket out of this shithole, perhaps? Enough to catch the baddie? Isn’t that what you old-time coppers were all about?’
‘Nice of you to make the distinction,’ said Reinhardt, covering his confusion by drinking from his mug. Thallberg grinned, and Reinhardt felt a growing excitement. The chance to pursue the investigation, perhaps even finish it. With someone like Thallberg backing him up, it could be done. But the risks, to dance with the devil on something like this. Behind Thallberg’s boyish exuberance there had to be someone ruthless, merciless. He could never afford to forget that. ‘All right, then,’ he said, riding roughshod over his own misgivings, reaching out to grab the tiger’s tail.
‘Good,’ said Thallberg. ‘Well done.’ He took a piece of paper from a drawer and wrote quickly on it, then walked to the door and called for Beike. He smiled, self-consciously, it seemed. ‘It’s strange, Reinhardt. You know, you and all those other Berlin coppers were heroes to me when I was a boy. And now, here I am, working with one of you! It’s a bit like living a dream.’
Thallberg handed his paper to his corporal and Reinhardt kept his face blank, even as he struggled to understand who Thallberg was, and what he had just done agreeing to work with him. The GFP officer seemed to lurch between almost childish enthusiasm and a semblance of ruthlessness. Reinhardt had not yet seen that harder side come out, but he knew it was there.
‘So, where will you start?’ Thallberg asked, closing the door.
‘At the beginning, I think.’ Reinhardt put his coffee down on the table. ‘I’ll start by retracing the moves the killer probably made. I’m going to go back out to Ilidža and start from Vukić’s house. But first,’ he said, smoothing out Thallberg’s transfer list, ‘let’s have a look at this. Where did you get these names from, did you say?’
The captain came around to Reinhardt’s side, looking over his shoulder. There were seven names. ‘From here. General staff records.’
‘So it’s about as reliable as it comes, then,’ said Reinhardt as he read the names off. He pulled out his list of units involved in Schwarz, comparing the COs to the list of transfers. Only two names matched up: those of Generals Verhein and Ritter von Grabenhofen. Two other names were listed as having served until fairly recently in the USSR – Generals Eglseer and von Le Suire – but their units were not involved in the operation. He circled all four names with a pencil. ‘What do you know about these ones?’
Thallberg raised his eyebrows. ‘Grabenhofen, not much. Pretty tough fighter. Got involved in some rough stuff in the USSR at the beginning of Barbarossa. Verhein, I know a bit more about. Up and coming. Very brave. Loved by his men, apparently. Le Suire… typical Prussian aristocrat. Also pretty brave. Good with the ladies, they say,’ he added. ‘And Eglseer. Well, he’s a rough old bastard. Been in the army all his life.’
‘Yes, I think I know him, as well,’ said Reinhardt. ‘From the first war. Very well,’ he sighed out. ‘We’ve got four names. We can place them all in Sarajevo at the conference. Now, we have to match them to Vukić.’
‘Steady on, Reinhardt,’ said Thallberg. ‘Back up a little. What’s the reasoning behind that?’
‘Right. I owe you something of an explanation. Vukić travelled a lot. She was a member of the propaganda companies, in fact. She often visited the troops, and when she travelled she had a technical team with her. One of them is in Sarajevo now. He told me about her movements in Russia. She was there towards the end of last year and, according to him, she had a pretty tumultuous affair with a senior German officer that ended badly.’ Reinhardt paused, drank some coffee, and gestured at the list. ‘According to him, whoever that officer is, he transferred here not long ago, and Vukić was aware of it. Again, according to him, Vukić was not the sort of woman to come second best in love. She was certainly planning something this officer wouldn’t like.’
Thallberg seemed fascinated, hanging on Reinhardt’s words. It made him feel alternately uncomfortable and somewhat gratified. Something in the way Thallberg looked at him suddenly reminded him of when he was the mentor to a young detective called Sander, and the way he had absorbed Reinhardt’s advice, of the way he had seemed to look up to Reinhardt, the famous criminal inspector. Right up until Sander had joined the SS in 1934, claiming that police work was too much like hard work. Whichever it was, Reinhardt wanted to feel none of it.
Thallberg flicked his eyes over the lists. ‘So we need to compare movements.’
‘Correct. I have hers. Now we need to match them up to these four.’
The door opened and Beike slipped inside, putting a sheet of typed paper on Thallberg’s desk. ‘I don’t know, Reinhardt. It’s pretty thin stuff, isn’t it?’
‘I’ve built up good cases with less,’ replied Reinhardt, with a bravado that he did not quite feel. He had indeed done that, but in other places, at other times, and with a little less riding on the outcome.
‘All right, then,’ said Thallberg. ‘Leave them with me and I’ll start looking up more details. Shall we check back together later on today?’
Reinhardt nodded. ‘I’m going out to Ilidža. See if anything new occurs to me.’
‘Let’s hope so. I need to be getting back down to the front tomorrow.’ Thallberg went back around to his chair, suddenly all business and efficiency. ‘This is exciting, but I don’t want to miss the battle.’ He glanced at the paper, scrawled his signature over the stamp, and handed it to Reinhardt. ‘Until later, then?’
Walking back outside, Reinhardt paused on the steps, lighting a cigarette and looking across the junction at the little park, then down at the letter of authorisation he held in his hand, naming him as a GFP auxiliary. He drew deeply on the cigarette, drawing the smoke around the roil of emotions he was feeling. Satisfaction, even a sense of exhilaration, that he was still on the case. Trepidation, uncertainty at his new ally. Folding the letter away, he spotted Claussen waiting at the corner of the building and gestured that he should join him across the road.
He walked across to the park, over to the tombs. The stone was white, pitted, and the way they jutted out of the grass was like bones from a grave. Flowing Arabic script was carved into their sides, and the head of each tombstone was shape
d like a turban. His hand feeling furtive, he took Freilinger’s list from his pocket and unfolded it. He stared at it, then stared at Thallberg’s, his eyes moving back and forth between the two. He was not wrong. The two did not compare. One name was different.
22
He was quiet on the long drive out to Ilidža. The jarring rattle of the kübelwagen, the slap of its tyres on the crumbling road, he blanked it all out, his attention focused on that name and on why Freilinger might have failed to mark it, to draw it to Reinhardt’s attention. An oversight? Unlikely, but possible. An attempt to draw him away? Why? It was Freilinger who had put him on the investigation. Why would he then obstruct him? He was still worrying it over as Claussen parked the kübelwagen in front of Vukić’s house, and he realised he had not paid any of the attention he had intended to on the trip out.
Cursing under his breath, noting the policeman rising to his feet from where he had been lying in the shade under a tree in the garden, he stood in the lane and looked around. Quite some distance away, through the trees on the other side of the road, he could make out the white walls of the Hotel Austria. To his right, the lane arrowed straight on up to the source of the Bosna. He pushed open the gate, walking up to the front door, cursing himself again for not bringing Hueber as the policeman stood in his way.
The man was young, nervous looking. Reinhardt gestured at the house. ‘Speak German? Njemacki govorish?’ The policeman shrugged, a pained smile on his face. ‘Padelin. You know Padelin?’ The policeman nodded vigorously, repeating the detective’s name. Reinhardt’s hands fluttered back and forth as he tried to pantomime his relationship with him, struggling with his pidgin Serbo-Croat. ‘Me. Padelin. Good, yes? Friends. Drugi. Kolegi.’
‘Da, da, razumem,’ said the policeman, apparently coming to some kind of understanding. ‘Nema problema.’ He hitched his rifle onto his shoulder and took a key from his pocket. He pushed open the front door, standing to one side, and gesturing with his hand that Reinhardt could go in.
Reinhardt walked slowly in, the policeman standing uncertainly just to one side of the door. His boots waking the wood, which creaked softly underneath, Reinhardt walked the length of the hallway, opening the doors to either side and peering in. There was nothing in the rooms except furniture covered in sheets and the smell of dust and disuse. He went upstairs, up past the pitted stain on the wall where Hendel had been killed, up to the third floor. Pausing on the landing, he looked down and around. Just dust, as Claussen had said.
Back down to the living room, into Vukić’s bedroom, eyes passing across the blood-soaked mattress, the big mirror, imagining the room behind it. Someone had to operate that camera, but from where? He went back into the living room and sat down gingerly in one of the armchairs, feeling the leather creak comfortingly around him. He looked at the doorway to Vukić’s bedroom, at the stain of Hendel’s blood, at the righted drinks cabinet. A showdown, a setting for a denunciation. What were they thinking, those two? What had they hoped to accomplish? What made them think it was a risk worth taking? Moreover, why had Hendel gone along with it? Reinhardt was fairly sure his orders would not have countenanced something like this. So what was it? Had Vukić convinced him? Bewitched him, somehow?
He rubbed his hands briskly together, then put them to his mouth, sighing out and shaking his head in frustration. The policeman was still standing by the front door, his eyes uncertain on Reinhardt as he paused at the foot of the stairs and went into the kitchen. There were three doors, and none of them led down to a basement. He checked the ground-floor rooms without finding anything either. Wondering if there might be an entrance outside he walked briskly out, past the policeman, and made a tour of the house.
He found a garden shed in a far corner, almost hidden behind a big rosebush. The door was not locked, but dug into the ground as he pulled it open in fits and jerks. The interior was dim, the walls lined with tools and plank shelves on which rested the usual bric-a-brac of a garden shed. He ducked his head and walked in and, past a wheelbarrow and a lawn mower with earth and grass still stuck to the blades, saw another door. It was locked, but the lock had been shattered off. He put his shoulder to the door and pushed it open, the bottom dragging at the earthen floor of the shed, and stepped into the little room he had found. There was a table and chair, and along one wall under a dirty little window was a neatly made-up camp bed. The chair was incongruous, the wood dark and lustrous, with a plump red cushion and, on the table, resting on old newspaper, was what looked like the parts of a disassembled camera, together with an array of tools. A bottle and a glass turned upside down stood to one side, as did a pipe in a bowl, a little tin of tobacco next to it, and the slumped remains of a candle in a jar.
There was nothing else in the little room, and the surge of excitement he felt at finding it faded fast as he pawed through the junk on the shelves and peered into the shed’s corners. Someone had obviously beaten him to it, but he seemed to have found the place where Vukić’s cameraman waited. He could see no sign of any film, no photos, nothing hidden away. The floor of the shed was bare earth with no sign it had been disturbed. It was all detail. Useful detail, but nothing he could see brought him any closer to what he was looking for.
Back outside, he walked slowly down the side of the house, his feet crunching the gravel of the path. An army car drove slowly up the alley, towards Vrelo Bosne. The soldier driving peered at him as he drove past. Reinhardt followed the car with his eyes, and then his gaze fell on a stretch of path where the gravel had been scuffed and pushed, exposing the dark earth beneath. He paused, frowned. He turned to the policeman, standing by the now-closed front door. He pointed at the spot of disturbed earth.
‘There was a motorbike, here,’ he managed. ‘A motorbike. Brroom, brrroom,’ he said, miming revving the handles of a motorbike.
The policeman nodded. ‘Motocicl, da, da. Mi ga je dao natrag. Errrr…’ He trailed off, then pointed away, through the trees, over towards the hotels, his hand fluttering. ‘Tamo, je…’ He looked flustered, then pointed at his throat, his finger moving back and forth, tracing a shape.
Reinhardt frowned, then understood. A crescent. ‘You gave it to the Feldgendarmerie?’
The policeman smiled. ‘Feldgendarmerie,’ he repeated, his finger making the sign of a gorget again.
Reinhardt took some Atikahs from his pack and offered them to the policeman. He lit one for him, thanked him, then walked quickly to the gate. ‘Claussen, I need you to take me to the Feldgendarmerie checkpoint by the bridge.’
‘Sir,’ answered Claussen as he started the kübelwagen. Reinhardt did not know what he might find, but he remembered one of his first lessons from his old police mentor. It’s the simple things in life, kid, he had said. The simple things are usually the right things in any case. Nothing complicated. Why were Hendel’s files missing? Probably because he had brought them with him, to confront whomever it was he was after. It was Vukić who had staged it all, but Hendel would be the one to bring it to an end, and for that he would need evidence, and if Reinhardt’s hunch was right, the evidence was waiting in plain sight, where it had waited nearly a week.
Claussen pulled the kübelwagen over in front of a low grey building that stood across from the bridge over the Željeznica. Remembering another of that old copper’s lessons – bullshit baffles brains, kid – Reinhardt walked inside and up to a Feldgendarme on duty behind a battered wooden desk. He flashed his papers as the guard rose to his feet and saluted.
‘Corporal, my name is Captain Reinhardt, with the Abwehr. I am on a mission of internal army security.’
‘Sir,’ exclaimed the soldier. ‘I am afraid my lieutenant is not here at this time.’
‘Of no importance,’ replied Reinhardt with a flick of his wrist. ‘Tell me, do you have a parking lot, here? Yes? Then take me to it, immediately.’
The corporal took Reinhardt into the back of the building, down a short
corridor, and through a kitchen area where a squad of Feldgendarmes were eating at a table. There was a scrape and clatter of chairs as they rose to their feet and stood at attention. Reinhardt waved them back to their meal as he followed the corporal outside to where a handful of cars were parked. Reinhardt strode past them, stopping as he came to the end of the row.
‘This vehicle,’ he snapped, pointing at a motorcycle and sidecar. ‘Where did it come from?’
‘Sir, I do not know.’
‘When was it left here?’
‘A day ago, I believe,’ stammered the Feldgendarme.
‘You believe?’ sneered Reinhardt, putting as much into it as he could. ‘For Christ’s sake, Corporal, get back in there and find me someone who can answer my simple questions.’
Reinhardt waited a moment after the corporal had scurried back inside, then bent over the sidecar. The seat would not move. He ran his fingers down the side, finding nothing. He checked underneath the tyre fixed to the front of the sidecar. Nothing. He leaned forward, peering into the sidecar’s well. Nothing there either. On the off chance, he reached his hand in, running it all around the interior, and felt his fingers brush up against something bolted to the underside of the top of the sidecar. A shelf, or pocket of some kind. His fingers scrabbled around as he heard voices and footsteps, and his hand closed around the soft edge of a file.
His heart hammering, he pulled it out, put it behind his back, and rose to his feet just as the corporal came out with a sergeant, who cracked off a salute. ‘Sir, may I be of assistance to you?’
‘I most certainly hope so, Sergeant. What can you tell me of this vehicle?’
The Man from Berlin Page 23
