The Murderer in Ruins

by Cay Rademacher

‘I suppose there is that argument.’ Stave said nothing for a few moments, thinking the matter over. ‘You have my word that I’ll make no mention of Operation Bottleneck,’ he eventually promised. ‘There’ll be nothing more about Hellinger in the files. Nor about the way the files went missing.’

  MacDonald took a deep breath. ‘Thank you for that. I would have found it deeply disagreeable to have to do something as unpleasant as kidnapping you. But I am obliged to do everything I can to keep this operation secret.’

  ‘Do you find it equally unpleasant kidnapping people like Hellinger?’

  ‘No,’ the lieutenant replied without hesitation. ‘The Nazis had their butchers to do their dirty work, in the Gestapo, in the concentration camps. I’m sure you know the type I mean. Brutal men, with no conscience, but not bright enough to do too much harm on their own. Hitler needed cleverer men for that. Like our good Dr Hellinger with his trigonometric calculators. They worked brilliantly, as 10,000 sailors’ widows from Liverpool to Halifax will testify. No, he doesn’t get my sympathy.’

  ‘We have something in common there.’

  ‘That’s why I enjoy working with you so much, Chief Inspector.’

  ‘Would you say the same for my colleague, Maschke?’

  Suddenly MacDonald was cautious. ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘How much do you know about him?’

  The lieutenant shrugged his shoulders. ‘When I was seconded to this investigation, obviously I read through the personnel files of those I would be working with.’

  ‘Very thorough of you.’

  ‘Just being professional. But I didn’t see anything particularly interesting in Maschke’s file. That’s all I know about him.’

  ‘Would you get the personnel files for me to look at?’

  ‘Gladly, as thanks for your cooperation in the Operation Bottleneck business. But why were you asking about Maschke in particular?’

  ‘Now I have a secret from you, Lieutenant. But I promise you I’ll let you in on it before long. When the time is right.’

  MacDonald nodded and got to his feet. ‘Fair enough. Just let me know.’

  When the lieutenant already had his hand on the door handle to leave, Stave cleared his throat. ‘Just promise me you won’t ask me to be godfather to your child,’ he said. ‘even if it might have been conceived in my office.’

  ‘Touché,’ said MacDonald, touching his cap to Stave as he left.

  Stave stared out of the window for a long time after the lieutenant had left. He was relieved to have his files back again. I’m such an old stickler for doing things by the book, he thought to himself. Margarethe would have laughed. She would have told me not to make such a fuss.

  But things were getting clearer. He could trust MacDonald after all, and, it seemed, Erna Berg too, even if he was still shocked at the idea that, despite being a married woman, she had offered herself to an officer of the army of occupation here in his office. On this desk.

  The disappearance of the files had been cleared up. Hellinger was no longer part of the investigation. He was not a suspect, and, thank God, not another victim.

  Stave now had enough witnesses and statements to take Maschke to court and charge him with being a former SS man involved in the Oradour massacre. He wondered if it might not be wiser to have Maschke arrested straight away. Or should he leave his former colleague in the dark, play him until he somehow gave himself away? I’m going to have to talk to Ehrlich again, he thought. The public prosecutor must have some idea that Maschke had a Nazi past. Why else had he bumped into him that night in Maschke’s office? He was snooping after something. But he almost certainly had no idea that Maschke had been at Oradour. The Nazi-hunter would be grateful when Stave presented him with the evidence. He would have a new trial, maybe back in the Curio House.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. Erna Berg popped her head in. ‘You have a visitor.’

  It was Andreas Brems from the Search Office.

  Stave wanted to get up, as politeness demanded, but all of a sudden his leg went as limp as a deflated bicycle tube. He was about to say something but he couldn’t get a word out.

  The researcher, no doubt used to giving people bad news, smiled forgivingly, pulled up a chair, sat down and unfolded a sheet of paper, all without saying a word. Then he pointed down at what was a mimeographed sheet of paper with a list of names on it. Names, names and more names.

  ‘We’ve found your son,’ he said. And quickly added: ‘Alive.’

  Stave gripped the edges of his desk, his mind in a whirl. Karl, a 17-year-old in a Wehrmacht uniform far too big for him, a look of scorn and disgust on his face as he said farewell to his father. Stave forced himself to thank Brems formally, shook his hand across the desk, then bent his head over the list, lifted it in his hand, no longer caring that it was trembling so much it was making the sheet of paper rustle.

  The one and only link to his son: ‘Stave, Karl.’

  And then one more word. Stave stopped and read it again, having no idea what it meant. ‘What does this mean? Vorkuta.’

  ‘It’s where your son is at present.’ Brems cleared his throat. ‘A prisoner-of-war camp. In Siberia.’

  ‘Siberia?’

  Stave closed his eyes. People in Hamburg had been talking for months about ‘Siberian temperatures’. And he’d seen the bodies of the murderer’s victims, frozen to the ground. He’d heard of others frozen stiff too; victims not of a murderer but of the cold itself. If it was as cold as this in Hamburg, what must it be like out there?

  ‘What can I do?’ he heard himself say flatly, though his voice was filled with hope.

  ‘Nothing. At least not for the moment. The Red Cross furnished us this list. It may be that at some stage a representative will gain access to the camp to talk to the prisoners or bring them post. We can’t be certain of that, but we will do everything we can to improve conditions for the prisoners.’

  ‘When will they let him go?’

  ‘Ask Comrade Stalin. Nobody can say. When the trains were still running, prisoners did return from Siberia. At the moment it’s still too cold, but the winter won’t last forever.’

  ‘Can I write to him at least?’

  ‘We’ll be happy to take a letter for you. But there’s no rush. It will take weeks before we can get a representative to northern Russia. If at all. You’re confused. Happy but confused. I understand that. I see it every day. For now just enjoy the good news. Give it time to sink in. Wait until then before writing a letter.’

  ‘One way or another, at least he’s been found.’

  ‘And once we’ve found someone, we don’t lose track of them.’

  At last Stave managed to get up from his chair. ‘Thank you very much,’ he said. ‘And for coming to tell me personally.’

  ‘You came often enough to us,’ said Brems, shaking his hand in farewell.

  When he left the room, Stave stared out of the window again. Night was coming on, black as ink. In the outside office he heard a chair scrape over the linoleum floor: Erna Berg getting up from her desk to go home. An air bubble gurgled in a radiator that was little more than cold, the sound of footsteps down the corridor, and then nothing but the silence of an abandoned question.

  I need to get myself a map of Russia, Stave thought to himself. Find out where Vorkuta is.

  A Letter

  Tuesday, 18 March 1947

  Stave woke up and sensed something had changed. For a second he was afraid there was somebody else in the room. He sat up, looked around. Nobody there. It was only then that he realised what it was that had changed.

  Outside a bird was singing. There was no hard sheet of ice across his window, just puddles on the window sill where the frozen patterns made by the frost had melted. He could no longer see his breath, his hands no longer ached, he didn’t automatically shiver, not even when his bare feet touched the floor.

  Carefully Stave got to his feet, still not trusting the temperature, made his way to
the window and looked out. He could see sunlight. The wall opposite shone a warm yellow. Three or four people were walking along the street, still cautiously wrapped in coats and scarves. One of them dared to take his hat off. When did I last see that, Stave asked himself. An uncovered head in the open air.

  He didn’t bother with breakfast, just splashed some water on his face and dashed to the door. Should he take his coat or not? Let’s not be overconfident, he thought and grabbed the heavy woollen thing. He took his gun, shoved it inside his jacket, along with his police ID. But he left his pocket torch lying on the shelf below the clothes hook. Why would he need a torch on such a bright and sunny day?

  Out on the street, he felt as if his body was divided in two, with the border somewhere just above his knees. The ground was still frozen solid, and the cold crept up from it. Stave took a deep breath, hoping to inhale the promise of spring: flowers, leaves, grass. But it was still too early for that. The odour of dust, rust and decay still filled his nose, stronger than ever. He unbuttoned his coat, walking slowly, revelling in every footstep. At the street corner people queued in their dozens, tin buckets, jugs, old canisters in their hands, waiting patiently for their turn to fill up whatever container they had with water from a stand pump. These were the unlucky ones whose domestic water pipes had burst over the past few weeks and had since been obliged to get their water from pumps out on the streets. Stave walked past the queue; until yesterday it had been a silent wall of wrapped-up shapes, today he could see faces, hear people talking. From somewhere he even heard a laugh from behind him as he walked along the road. An old man walking towards him doffed his hat in greeting. When he glanced at a passing woman, she blushed and smiled shyly. A couple of schoolboys were kicking a broken cobblestone back and forth, before finally kicking it into the ruins. Survivors, thought Stave to himself, that’s what we are: survivors.

  He wondered if the thaw had set in out in Siberia. Or would it still be cold there? With Brems’s help he had located Vorkuta after failing himself to find anywhere of that name on the map of the Soviet Union he had acquired. A dot at the northern end of the Ural Mountains. Far, far away from any town or railway line marked on the map. The chief inspector asked himself how his son might have got there, from Berlin to Vorkuta. He had written a letter to him, sitting over it by candlelight one long night. It had been difficult to find the words. ‘You’re no poet,’ Anna von Veckinhuasen had teased him.

  He had not mentioned her to his son. He was too ashamed. He didn’t mention the rubble murderer either. Instead he wrote of Margarethe, memories, described Hamburg, but not in too much detail. He didn’t want to worry his son. General stuff. Only at the end, when he had signed off with ‘Your father’, did he add, as a postscript: ‘I love you and miss you.’

  When had he last told his son that? Had he ever? He couldn’t remember having done so.

  Survivors, Stave thought to himself again, glancing discreetly at the passers-by on the street, walking as if they’d just been liberated from some camp. If we could survive this winter in Hamburg, why not in Vorkuta too? Karl was young and strong. He would survive. He had to.

  It was four weeks since MacDonald had come clean to him about the stolen files, and revealed the existence of Operation Bottleneck. Four weeks since he had found out Maschke’s true identity. Four tough weeks in which nothing else had happened.

  But that in itself was something, the chief inspector told himself. There had been no more bodies. Every day with no new spectacular discovery saw the leash he was on lengthen a little. Stave felt he could act a little more freely, as if he had more room to manoeuvre. No new corpse meant no new headline. No popular panic. And no panic had meant no more awkward questions from the mayor, or Cuddel Breuer, or Ehrlich. And now overnight, like a miracle, it was spring. Before long everyone would have forgotten the rubble murderer.

  Everyone but me, Stave thought. I won’t.

  When Stave got to the office, Erna Berg turned her head away while saying hello to him. The chief inspector stopped for a moment, bent down and looked her in the face. Her right eye was swollen and bruised.

  ‘Your husband?’ he asked.

  She nodded towards her stomach, which was slightly but noticeably distended. ‘I told him. I couldn’t keep it a secret any longer.’

  ‘I’ll deal with it,’ said MacDonald who had come in from the hallway without either of them noticing.

  ‘Let’s talk in my office, not out here,’ Stave said.

  ‘All three of us,’ the lieutenant said, taking Erna Berg’s arm.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Stave asked, sitting down at his desk.

  Erna Berg sat opposite, MacDonald standing behind with his hands on her shoulders.

  ‘I want to get divorced,’ the secretary answered.

  ‘I have already got Frau Berg an apartment,’ the lieutenant said. ‘And when this sorry affair has been dealt with, we’re going to get married.’ He smiled.

  ‘But you already have a son,’ Stave said. He said no more. The way things stood, a judge would almost certainly give the father custody; it was the mother who had committed adultery.

  ‘I’ll deal with it,’ MacDonald said. He sounded determined. ‘The boy will grow up living with us.’

  The chief inspector stared at him long and hard until he realised that the lieutenant was serious – and that the lieutenant would win. He should have felt sympathy for Erna Berg’s husband, who had lost a leg in the war and now was going to lose his family too. But he had been shocked at the sight of his secretary’s swollen eye. All of a sudden, without intending it, his sympathies had switched to this young British officer who was so polite, so self-confident, so nonchalant, everything that he, Stave, was not.

  ‘You have my blessing,’ he said.

  ‘I wasn’t aware you were a pastor,’ MacDonald said.

  Stave could see a twitch in the side of Erna Berg’s face that wasn’t swollen. Any minute now she’s going to burst into tears, he realised.

  ‘Any new developments in the case?’ he asked, before they all went sentimental.

  ‘No, Chief Inspector,’ his secretary answered, taking a deep breath, pulling herself together and smiling shyly, almost conspiratorially. ‘No new bodies. And no queries from Herr Breuer.’

  ‘I’m not sure which I was dreading more,’ Stave sighed with relief. Then he lifted his right hand as if he were trying to scare the pair of them away, but the gesture became part blessing, part friendly wave.

  ‘Take some time off,’ he said. ‘You’ll need time to sort out your new apartment. And I imagine there are one or two other things you need to deal with.’

  Within 30 seconds they were gone.

  Stave sat there looking at the thin files on the murder case, spread out neatly on his desk. He was beginning to realise that he wasn’t going to get any further. And that he probably never would.

  The fact that there was no new victim was on the one hand a good thing, but it could also mean that there was no opportunity for the killer to make a mistake. The murders could be at an end because he was afraid that a victim might fight back successfully, or that somebody would spot him in the act. Or that somebody in Hamburg would come forth to identify the victims. It might mean it was all over, without a proper ending.

  Now that the thaw had set in, it would eventually rain. And rain would soak the posters on the streets and wash the photos to the ground, along with Stave’s urgent pleas for help. There was no way he would get permission to print new ones, to worry people again.

  What was he to do with these four cases? The paperwork was spread across his desk; he’d carried out every search imaginable, questioned every witness he could find, followed every lead. Maybe, at some stage, chance would come to his assistance. Maybe the killer would get drunk in some bar and give himself away; it had happened before. Maybe some newcomer to Hamburg would find one of the few posters to survive the winter and call in to say, ‘I know who that is.’

  But
what if they didn’t? Then the rubble murderer would get away with it, Stave was forced to admit. And I’ll spend the rest of my life thinking about it, he thought. And I’ll never stop asking myself: what might you have missed?

  Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to do any good, he told himself, carefully collecting the folders and putting them back in the filing cabinet. He got up from his chair and strode towards the door, another file under his arm: the personnel file on Lothar Maschke that MacDonald had procured for him. And another couple of interesting documents. It was time to go and talk to Ehrlich.

  But as he walked down the corridor, he kept thinking to himself, what might I have missed? Missed? Down the staircase with the irritating pattern on the steps. Missed? Through the entrance hallway, past the little bronze elephant. Missed? Past the Mercedes outside in the street. Missed? Walking to Ehrlich’s office. Missed? The sculpture of a woman. Ehrlich. Woman. Ehrlich.

  ‘What an idiot I am!’ he suddenly shouted aloud.

  And he began running.

  Names

  Stave ran all the way back to the office. Damn his leg. He was running so fast that he stumbled. By the time he was back outside the grandiose building he was coughing for breath. The Mercedes was still standing there. The key was in the ignition. Stave pulled the door open, jumped into the driver’s seat and sped off with the engine howling. To hell with traffic rules.

  There were bicycles everywhere and people out walking, soaking up the sun. The chief inspector swore, parped the horn, held the steering wheel tight as he roared round the bends.

  The answer had been lying on his desk for a month, but not in the files he had so worried about, but in his own notebook. And I didn’t see it. He could have thumped himself in the face. I just hope the witness is still alive, he suddenly thought. I just hope she isn’t one of those who froze to death over the course of this long winter.