The Murderer in Ruins

by Cay Rademacher

  This time it was Anna von Veckinhausen who shrugged.

  ‘I had hoped the newspaper story would make the killer nervous,’ the chief inspector admitted. ‘Maybe so nervous that he would go back to the scene of his crime to remove clues or something. That sort of thing happens.’

  ‘And? Did he?’

  Stave shook his head. ‘Maybe he’s not bothered by our investigation. Maybe he feels he has nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Anna von Veckinhausen said, staring at the ice.

  ‘Have you had somebody watching me?’

  ‘No. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I’m your only witness, aren’t I? Don’t you think the murderer might be out there looking for me? To shut me up?’

  ‘He doesn’t know anything about you. Would you prefer it if we kept an eye on you?’

  She smiled briefly for the first time. ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘Do you feel as if you’re being watched?’

  She put her arm across her upper body, in that defensive position Stave had noticed before.

  ‘Don’t we all?’ she asked.

  She walks on, along the river, Stave following alongside. He’s hungry, weary; his leg hurts. He’d like to ask her into a cafe, even if it is only for a cup of thin cabbage soup in a bombed-out building. But he doesn’t dare even suggest the idea. He can’t think of anything else to ask her. Stupid of me even to have come here, he thinks to himself. But it’s nice, so very nice to have the company of a woman again. Even in this cold. Even in this desolate parkland, even if I have to be careful not to walk too close to her, making sure all the time there’s at least half a metre between us. The elegant way she walks, despite the shabby overcoat covering most of her body and the heavy boots on her feet. The strands of long dark hair poking out from under the headscarf, strands she absently pushes back from her eyes, though never quite far enough to stop them falling down again. The vulnerability, when she puts her arm across her breast protectively. The smile she uses so rarely. Stave even thinks he catches a whiff of perfume, which is impossible especially in this cold.

  Stop acting like an idiot, he tells himself.

  Because he can’t think of anything else, he asks her the same questions once more. She’s happy to answer him. But there are no more contradictions, as far as he can tell. But then there is a part of him that’s happy just to be there next to her, listening to the sound of her voice. At some stage, without discussion, they turn around and head back. It’s getting dark but the frozen river gleams like a silver ribbon.

  ‘You’re not getting very far with your case,’ Anna von Veckinhausen said. It was a statement, not a question, but not meant in a hostile way.

  He smiled, embarrassed. ‘I’ve never come across a case like this before, where we can’t even identify the victims.’

  ‘You’re surprised?’

  He stared at her, suddenly taken aback, and said, ‘Yes.’

  She shook her head. ‘You still believe there’s good in people? Despite all this?’ and she waved a hand at the ruins around them.

  ‘I can’t see what identifying the bodies of four people has to do with believing there’s good in people.’

  Anna von Veckinhausen smiled at him, sympathetically, he thought. ‘Take the old man who opened the door to you back at the Nissen hut. Johann Schwarzhuber. A widower, a refugee from Breslau, been in Hamburg eight months, used to be a carpenter, and a party member, now he’s a pensioner with no relatives. I know all of that despite probably never having exchanged more than a few dozens words with him. But what does he know about me?’

  ‘He didn’t even know your name.’

  ‘If I failed to return from our walk along the Wandse tonight, Chief Inspector, good old Johannn Schwarzhuber wouldn’t even report me missing. And if a photo of me suddenly appeared on posters around the city, he wouldn’t bother to go to the police to identify me. He would turn his head away and set to looting what little I have in the hut before somebody else did. For the last eight months, all there has been between him and me is a woollen blanket. We have starved and frozen together. But Schwarzhuber wouldn’t give a damn if I was dead. Or the two families with children who also share our hut. He wouldn’t give a damn about them either. Or anyone else on the whole planet. He would help nobody but himself.

  ‘Hamburg is full of Johann Schwarzhubers, thousands of them crawling about in the ruins, lurking in huts, staring out of frozen windowpanes. I bet you somebody out there knows your four victims, but is thinking, somebody else can take the trouble of going to the police.’

  ‘Maybe there are lots of Johann Schwarzhubers out there,’ the chief inspector argued, ‘but not everybody in Hamburg is a Johann Schwarzhuber. If you were not to return from our walk tonight, he might not report you missing, but somebody else would.’

  Anna von Veckinhausen looked long and hard at him, then shook her head with a weary smile. ‘You’re wrong,’ she murmured, letting her voice fade away and staring at the ice on the river.

  ‘Then it must be pure good luck that you at least made the effort to go to the police,’ Stave said. Would nobody really miss Anna von Veckinhausen, he wondered? How sad – but deep down there was a part of him that was gladdened by the news: it meant she had no husband.

  The all of a sudden something occurred to him. He took a photo out of his coat pocket, a photo of the earring that had belonged to the fourth victim. ‘You’re an expert on art and jewellery. Have you ever seen this before?’

  Anna von Veckinhausen took the photo, handling it carefully as if it was a piece of art itself. ‘René Lalique,’ she said after studying it for a few brief seconds.

  Stave stared at her. ‘Who?’

  She smiled charitably. ‘A jeweller, who makes items a policeman could not afford to buy. Art nouveau. René Lalique was a Parisian fine jeweller. He produced pieces like this from 1870 until 1914. Does it have something to do with your murders?’

  Stave took the photograph back. ‘If and when I catch this bastard, I may well owe it entirely to you.’ Then he told her the circumstances in which the earring had been found. ‘Where did this René Lalique sell his jewellery?’

  ‘Only in Paris. But this earring is virtually an antique. It may have been handed on several times before it became the property of your victim.’

  ‘But it could signify that the woman who wore it had been in France, possibly before the war, and that she was probably rich?’

  ‘Whoever it belonged to was undoubtedly rich.’

  Stave’s thoughts turned to the medallions. ‘Is there any religious meaning to starfish and pearls? Connected with some cult, or anything like that?’

  She looked at him, slightly puzzled for a minute or two, and then shook her head.

  ‘That’s a shame,’ the chief inspector said. ‘It would have been nice if you could have done the whole job for me.’

  Anna von Veckinhausen smiled again. When they reached the Nissen hut she held out her hand to him. Stave shook it, holding on just a second or two more than strictly necessary.

  ‘Let me know if you want a painting to hang on those bare walls of your office.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch,’ said Stave. ‘That’s a promise.’

  Lost in his thoughts, Stave wandered through the ruins, exhausted by the amount of walking he’d done, but strangely happy. I’m finally getting somewhere, he thought. And he could not help adding mentally, and I just might be beginning to get somewhere with Anna von Veckinhausen, although he didn’t dare ask himself where that ‘somewhere’ might be.

  Given that he had to pass near to Marienthal on his way home – the electricity had been turned off by now so it was too late for the trams – and that this seemed to be his lucky day, he decided to stop by the Hellinger household. Maybe the industrialist had turned up again without his wife bothering to inform the police. Things like that happened. Or maybe his wife will have thought of something else that might be of interest. And apart from anything else, it w
as warm in her villa, and she had hot tea.

  The street was lined with grand houses, each one as dark as a tomb. When he was close to the house, he had second thoughts for a moment. Then he spotted Frau Hellinger though the window, sitting at her kitchen table in tears. Stave hesitated for a minute, then knocked on the door anyway. It was a while before the door was opened. The industrialist’s wife looked pale, but if he had not caught sight of her a few minutes ago he would have had no idea that she had been sobbing her heart out. She looked at him worriedly.

  She must think I have bad news, Stave realised, and smiled quickly, telling her he had nothing new to report, but was just wondering if she had thought of anything more she might want to tell the police since he was last there.

  To his relief she asked him in. Into the warmth, the scent of hot coal and tea.

  ‘I’m not sure I have anything more I can tell you,’ she mumbled. ‘You know my husband was doing business with the English?’

  Stave said nothing, just sipped at the tea she had poured him.

  ‘You know also that he made navigation equipment for U-boats. What more is there to tell you?’

  The chief inspector had an idea. ‘Who was the last visitor your husband had before his disappearance?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘The day before…? Nobody called. But two days before an English officer was here. He used to come quite regularly to the house, or to my husband’s office. They talked about technical stuff, I assumed, though I don’t really know.’

  ‘Do you know his name by any chance?’

  ‘Oh yes, a charming young man. Not very military at all. Lieutenant MacDonald. James C. MacDonald.’

  Signs of Life

  Tuesday, 18 February 1947

  It was the cold that came to Stave’s rescue. He had tossed back and forth in his sleep, thrown the blanket off and lain there bathed in sweat on the crumpled sheet until the bitter cold chased away at the spectre of his nightmare. Fire. Bombs. Smoke. The stench of burning flesh. Margarethe’s face. Always the same scenes from the same movie – and yet every time they seemed fresh. As if Stave had seen Margarethe in the flames, had stood there next to the flames, screaming. Yet she never heard him, because her body was frozen to the floor, despite the heat of the flames. With a small red line around her neck. Staring at him with open eyes, coated in ice.

  I really need to solve this case, the chief inspector told himself, otherwise it’s going to haunt the rest of my life. Once upon a time he had been able to leave his investigations at the door, the way he hung up his coat on a peg. As soon as he got home, that was it with work; he stopped thinking about it. His apartment was his little fortress of domestic happiness. Until the bombs fell.

  Stave felt his way around the apartment. The ice on the windowpanes obscured the early dawn sunlight. He felt as if he was groping his way through a thick barley soup just to get to the kitchen table. The grey glow obscured his view of the wonky table and the chair with one broken leg. He reached for the back of the chair, nearly knocking the enamel coffee cup over. Not that it mattered. He didn’t have any coffee, and hot water was in as short supply as daylight,

  Power cut.

  Stave had forgotten that each district of the city had its power cut off for two hours a week, because there was not enough coal to fuel all of the power stations. This morning was Wandsbek’s turn. Where was his candle?

  He tried to build up his courage. I can still think, even in the twilight. MacDonald. The Englishman had been leading him up the garden path, not admitting his visits to the missing industrialist. But why? Did it have something to do with the murders? Was Hellinger the next corpse they would find in some cellar? Did he finally have a concrete lead to the killer? MacDonald? It seemed absurd.

  He hadn’t paid any attention to the lieutenant’s alibis. Erna Berg had said he was often missing for hours on end. What had he been doing during this time? He might be the killer. But what would the motive have been? Looting was hardly likely. The occupation officers lived like colonial lords, just think of the business Anna von Veckinhausen did selling them antiques. And in any case, Frau Hellinger hadn’t known any of the other victims – what could be the connection between those four and a missing industrialist? And how might MacDonald be involved in all of this?

  What about the missing files? Was that part of it? They had mentioned Hellinger by name, a name that had merely been languishing in the records of the Search Office and in a police station somewhere. But there were readers for the murder files: Stave, Maschke, right up to Cuddel Breuer and public prosecutor Ehrlich. That increased the possibility of somebody at some time making the link between Hellinger and MacDonald. And then there was that puzzling English word on the piece of paper Hellinger had dropped: ‘Bottleneck’. That had been in the files too. So maybe the lieutenant, who for some reason or other wanted to conceal his relationship with Hellinger, had got rid of the files. Obviously he would have known that he would get Stave’s attention. But he would also have known that in the circumstances, it would hardly have sent Stave running to his superior officer. Here and now in his quiet little office he could imagine it: a way to stop inquisitive eyes taking another look at the files. It was certainly a motive.

  Did he have the opportunity? MacDonald had been hanging around with Erna Berg frequently enough, including at times when Stave wasn’t in his office. It would only have taken a second for the files to have disappeared into his greatcoat. Or maybe his secretary had been in on the act and had stolen the files for her lover. If she had had a bad conscience about it, Stave would hardly have noticed, given how distraught she had been about her other personal circumstances.

  Then he turned his thoughts to the dead woman’s earring. A Parisian jeweller. Very expensive. When might the victim have been in the French capital? Before the war? Ten, at most fifteen years ago? As a young adult? Would a woman in her early twenties have worn jewellery like that? He tried to think what Margarethe would have thought of it. But the idea was absurd; when they’d been young and in love, she’d dreamed of other things. A bigger apartment. New toys for Karl. Another child. In any case, Anna von Veckinhausen had said the earrings had been made before 1914. At that time the fourth victim would have been too young to buy them or have anybody buy them for her. So maybe she had inherited them? But who in Hamburg had French jewellery? Least of all these days? Rich families. But surely somebody would have made a robbery or missing persons report?

  The investigation was getting somewhere, but Stave still didn’t see where. He watched his breath in the cold air, little blue clouds rising from his lips like cigarette smoke.

  Which brought him back to Maschke.

  Yesterday, he had been happy to have him as far away as possible. Today was different. Up until now he had reckoned that he could have relied on MacDonald to find Maschke and bring him back whenever it suited him. But now he felt he couldn’t trust the lieutenant any more either. So it would be better if he had the vice squad man back where he could keep an eye on him. He needed to get hold of him on the phone, and not give anything away, he realised. He would have to find an excuse to break off his questioning of the doctors and get him back to Hamburg as soon as possible.

  He pulled his heavy overcoat on awkwardly. Overnight a fine layer of ice had formed on it and when he pulled it over his shoulders it fell to the ground in a glistening cloud. It was a size too big for him now anyway. I’ve got so thin, he thought. All the clothes I have are now a size too large.

  Stave pulled on his hat, scarf, gloves, picked up his gun, his torch. Why do I even bother? Why do I go out into the cold, battle against the wind, spend my time with people like MacDonald, Ehrlich, Maschke or Erna Berg, who all have their own agendas? Agendas in which I’m nothing more than a nuisance?

  But what else was there to do? Sit alone in his grey apartment, thinking about the wife who’d burned to death? Or his estranged son who might or might not one day come home? If he was even still alive?

 
; I am 43 years old, Stave thought to himself, and I don’t have a lot to show for my life. And then he left the flat, locked the door as carefully as always, walked down the stairs and out on to the street where the freezing wind hit him in the face like a fist. As it always did.

  ‘How are things?’ he asked Erna Berg, when he got to the office an hour later.

  ‘The baby is doing well. The doctor says I’ll begin to show in a week or two.’

  So, no abortion. Stave wondered what decision she’d come to. Would she confess all to her husband? Would she break things off with MacDonald? But it was all personal stuff, not his business. He closed the door to his office behind him.

  He spent his time on the phone, but still couldn’t get hold of Maschke. It worried him that he couldn’t find a hotel where Maschke might have spent the night. Don’t let him have done a runner, he prayed, wondering if he might have given away that he was on to him. Eventually he got to his feet, left the police HQ and walked the few hundred metres to the public prosecutor’s office.

  Ehrlich ran a hand over his bald pate but seemed happy to see him. It smelled of tea in his office as always. Earl Grey, Stave reckoned.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  You could arrest my colleagues, was what Stave would have liked to say. But he wasn’t at that stage yet.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve got nothing more to report in the rubble murderer case. But I’ve been doing some other investigations for which I’d appreciate your support. In a few administrative matters. Discreetly.’

  ‘Discretion lies at the heart of a public prosecutor’s duty,’ Ehrlich said, smiling.

  ‘I need to see some files. I don’t want to tell you just yet about the case they relate to because it might not even be a case. I’m at a very early stage in my investigations,’ the chief inspector said, hoping his face didn’t give away the fact that he was lying.