Hoffner almost let himself get drawn in. Instead he turned back, took the wedge of bread, and dunked it in the tiny puddle of soup. “No, that’s true. We Bolsheviks do like to stay together.” He took a bite.
“Don’t make fun of him, Nikolai,” said Martha. “You don’t have to go to that school every day.”
Hoffner looked across at her, the first hint of frustration in his eyes. He swallowed. He could sense that Sascha, too, was unhappy that his mother had come to his defense. “Yes,” said Hoffner, his tone now more pointed as he mopped up the last of the soup, “I suppose giving in to them is the best choice.”
Sascha had reached the limits of his self-control. His cheeks flushed; his large eyes grew larger still. “You think you know, but you don’t,” he said with as much restraint as he could. “You think you can laugh about it, like you laugh about everything else. Well, I’m glad they killed them. I’m glad they killed those Reds. I’m a German. A German. I’m not like them. I’ll never be like them.”
Sascha saw his mother start toward him; with a look, he stopped her. He waited for his father to turn. When Hoffner continued to stare into his bowl, Sascha bolted from the room. Martha stood to go after him, but Hoffner quickly reached out and held her back. She turned to him. She said nothing.
The ring of the telephone startled them both.
It was a recent addition. Headquarters had been insisting for years that Hoffner have one installed: a detective inspector needed to be reached. Hoffner saw it otherwise: the one at the porter’s gate was sufficient; nothing could be that pressing. Präger, however, was not to be denied. So, with the new flat had come the new device. To Hoffner’s way of thinking, they might just as well have removed the building’s walls: anyone could break through now, so what difference did it make?
In the year they had had it, the telephone had rung twice: the first at a prearranged minute so that Hoffner could sing to Georgi on his birthday; the second for a misconnection. Neither time had the ring occurred later than four in the afternoon.
Hoffner let go of Martha’s arm, jarred if not slightly relieved. The look on her face had turned to panic. He gave her a reassuring shake of the head, stood, and headed out into the hall, she behind him, stopping at the living room door as he found a light and moved across the room to the telephone. She waited in the hall. Georgi was already at her side as Sascha appeared from behind the two of them.
Hoffner said, “Go back to your room, boys.” It was a tone of voice he rarely used. Georgi and Sascha quickly moved back down the hall and Hoffner picked up the receiver. “Hello?” It was Fichte. He sounded frantic. “Yes, it’s me,” said Hoffner.
“She’s missing,” came the rasped voice over the line.
“Calm down, Hans,” said Hoffner. “Who’s missing? Where are you?”
There was a pause. Fichte tried to control himself. “At headquarters. The morgue. No one’s here.”
It took Hoffner a moment to digest the information. “Headquarters? What are you doing at the morgue? Calm down.”
Another pause. “Lina wanted to see.”
“You took the girl—” He stopped himself. Again, he needed a moment. Then, in a strong, controlled voice, he said, “This is a police matter. Anyone on the line, please disengage.” The sound of the operator’s click brought him back to Fichte. Again, Hoffner spoke very deliberately. “You need to explain to me, Hans, why you took Lina to the morgue, and then you need to tell me who is missing.”
“We’d come before,” said Fichte, his panic mounting. “It was nothing. The guard let us look around.”
Hoffner had trouble believing what he was hearing. With a practiced calm, he said, “All right. And who is missing?”
There was a long pause on the line. Finally Fichte said, “No one’s here. No guard. And the body—”
“Which body, Hans?” Hoffner cut in. He could hear Lina in the background. “Not a name, Hans, just left or right.”
Another silence. It was clear Fichte was trying to orient himself. “Right,” he said. “Right is missing.”
“All right,” said Hoffner. “Send the girl home. She’s to say nothing. You understand?” A muted “Yes” crackled on the line. “Stay there. I’ll be there as soon as I can.” He paused. “You’re not to do a thing.”
Hoffner placed the receiver in its cradle. He stood there staring at it for several seconds. Missing. What was Fichte—the thought turned his stomach. Hoffner looked at Martha. She was already holding his coat.
416
The first cabs began to appear up by the Hallesches Gate: at this hour, the great marble Peace Column at its center—a nod to a way of life the German people had yet to grasp—stood as the outermost edge of the city’s nightlife. The few cabs that did venture this far south raced around the bright-lit obelisk at speeds of almost forty-five kilometers an hour, all too eager to get back north and the possibility of a fare out to the rarefied air of Charlottenburg. Hoffner had no choice but to stand out in the middle of the roundabout, his badge held windshield high, before he finally flagged one down.
At the Alex, a trio of seasoned Soldaten had replaced the boy-soldiers from this afternoon; the night shift around headquarters evidently required a sterner face. Hoffner produced his badge, then his papers—a necessity in the city these days—and impatiently waited while they slowly pored over them. “New evidence, just in,” he said. “A murder case.” At once, all three looked up at him.
Hoffner always found this strangely amusing, if not slightly disturbing: hardened men, who in the last five years had witnessed more death than he had seen in his twenty with the Kripo, never failed to flinch at the mention of murder. Until a few weeks ago, he had seen it as a kind of vanity, the nobility of their own art—the defense of a nation’s honor—sneering down at the dirty business of pure killing. He wondered, however, how far the revolution had gone to shake that certitude.
“Good,” said the oldest of the three as he slapped the papers into Hoffner’s chest. “All is in order here. You may go in.”
The entrance atrium was empty, a cavernous corridor that ran the length of the building. An older sergeant—Fliegmann or Fliegland, Hoffner could never remember which—sat behind the now superfluous security desk at its center, the dim gaslight overhead just enough to give the newspaper in his hands the pretense of focus; no doubt Fichte and Lina had snuck by without too much of an effort.
“Good evening, Sergeant,” said Hoffner, momentarily startling the man.
FliegFlieg’s recovery was instantaneous. “Good evening, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar,” he said, laying the paper on the desk. “I wasn’t told you’d been called back in.”
“Lots of activity tonight?” said Hoffner as he signed the sheet. He noticed Fichte’s name was nowhere on the page.
The question seemed to confuse Der Flieger. “No, Herr Inspector. Quiet enough. I suppose those boys outside have something to do with that.” He waited, then took the offensive. “Is there someone you want me to contact for you?” He reached for the phone.
“A scarf, Sergeant,” said Hoffner as he started past the desk and toward the courtyard doors. “I’ll be sleeping on the floor tonight if I come home without it.”
FliegFlieg let go of the receiver with a nod. “Can’t have our detective inspectors sleeping on the floor, now can we?”
The sound of tobacco-laced laughter followed Hoffner out into the courtyard, which was now dotted in tiny pools of reflected moonlight; they gave the impression of countless cats’ eyes peering up at him as he made his way across the cobblestones. He quickly reached the door to the sub-basement, and was pulling it open, when the ring of the phone back at the sergeant’s desk stopped him: instinctively, Hoffner tried to make out what the man was saying, but it was too far off, the echo too thick under the dome. Hoffner let it pass and stepped through to the stairs. At once he found himself in near pitch blackness.
Odd, he thought as the door clicked shut behind him. Fichte would have left the
lights on. Or maybe the boy had just been overly cautious? Better yet, maybe he had been setting a mood, although what kind of mood Fichte had learned to fashion in a morgue was anybody’s guess. Hoffner considered the unsettling, if mildly titillating, image as he traced his hands along the wall in search of the lights: the touch of cold steel, he thought. The smell of formaldehyde. Why not? Hoffner located the knob for the lamps and headed down.
Two floors on, he again found himself in virtual darkness. Luckily the light from the stairwell was spilling out just enough to give a sheen to the blackened glass of the morgue’s windows at the far end of the hall; the desk sat empty and there was no sign of Fichte. Hoffner moved down the corridor, his hand along the wall to guide him. To his surprise, he discovered that the doors were locked. He did his best to peer in through the windows, but could see nothing.
Hoffner never felt uneasy in moments like these; he never let the dark create what wasn’t there. Instead he focused on what was out of place, and that was the locked doors. Fichte had been here alone, or at least alone with Lina. He had clearly been inside the ice room to see that a body had gone missing, which meant that he had been beyond these doors. Yet Fichte had no keys for the morgue, no way to lock them. Hoffner again peered in through the glass. “Hans,” he said in an unconvincing whisper.
The sound instantly dissolved into the void beyond. The silence grew more acute and made the sudden ring of the telephone on the desk like a kick to the ribs. It snapped Hoffner’s head to the side as he waited for a second, then a third ring. He stepped over and slowly placed his hand on the receiver—the feel of the vibration in his palm—before picking up. Hoffner listened through the silence.
“Yes?” he finally said; it was more a question than an invitation.
“Kriminal-Kommissar Hoffner?”
Hoffner did not recognize the voice. “Yes,” he repeated with greater conviction.
“Would you be so kind as to join us on the fourth floor. Zimmer vier-eins-sechs.”
“Who is this?” said Hoffner.
“Room four-one-six,” the voice repeated. “Kriminal-Assistent Fichte is with us.” The line disengaged.
For the second time in the last hour, Hoffner found himself staring at a silent receiver. The fourth floor, he thought. The Polpo. Hoffner placed the phone back in its cradle and began to tap at it in the dark. Wonderful.
Locked doors and shadows notwithstanding, his current situation was now crystal clear. Even so, Hoffner felt a first twinge in his gut: this wasn’t what he needed. The deviations he sought—those fine quirks that he had come to recognize—populated a world that, for him, respected the inviolability of truth and falsehood. Naturally, the span between them was where most everything played itself out, but the boundaries themselves remained fixed, and thus tangible: deviation made sense only if there was something genuine to deviate from. That, however, had never been the case with the men of the Polpo: they saw no edges, no discernible absolutes. Even the way they had summoned him—“Zimmer vier-eins-sechs . . . 0A0; Kriminal-Assistent Fichte is with us”—reeked of obfuscation and the dramatique. Hoffner pictured a group of university toffs in robes and cowls teaching each other solemn oaths and hand signs, secret societies for the adoration of bad beer and oak tables and girls they knew they would never have. He had seen such groups firsthand in his days at Heidelberg, their trips to the Schwarzwald in the dead of winter so as to run naked through the trees while proclaiming their own divinity, the none-too-subtle markings on their arms or chests or wherever they had chosen to burn the insignia into their flesh, all of it to make certain that their associations, though wrapped in mystery, were at least well enough on display to provoke envy. Hoffner had always felt little more than mild amusement when in their company. He had even been asked to join one of the more exclusive Geheimkreisen in his second year. When he had politely declined, he had been presented with looks of mild shock. He doubted a refusal to join the boys on the fourth floor would elicit a similar response.
Hoffner stood catching his breath on the final landing, the extra flights on either end of his usual three-floor climb having taxed him to his limits. He knew he was in poor condition; he just preferred not to be reminded of it. He mopped a handkerchief across the back of his neck and waited for his heart to dislodge from the base of his throat. No wonder the boys up here were always in such a foul mood.
There was little to distinguish the corridor from its counterpart on the third floor: the intervals between offices were identical; the wood creaked with equal regularity; and the smell of lavatory disinfectant and stale cigarettes lingered in the air. It was all too familiar, except for the little 4s that appeared on each of the office doors. A trivial detail, thought Hoffner, yet monumental: their stark angularity was so contemptuous as compared to the soft curves of the 3s below. In his twenty years with the Kripo, Hoffner had ventured up—or rather, had been summoned up—half a dozen times, always to the same office, always to the same clerk for the mundane exchange of files, yet even the clerk, in his role as bland bureaucrat, had maintained an air of impenetrability, as if he, too, drew strength from those dismissive 4s. There was no such thing as “mild amusement” on the fourth floor.
Room 416 looked to be like any other on the hall. Hoffner heard voices through the door: he knocked once, the din stopped, and a moment later the door opened to reveal Kriminal-Oberkommissar Braun.
“Good evening, Herr Inspector,” said Braun, still immaculately combed and pressed. In a strange twist, he, too, had lost his jacket; Hoffner wondered if there might be a steam pipe somewhere in the vicinity.
“Kriminal-Oberkommissar,” said Hoffner. Braun nodded once and ushered him in.
Two other men stood to the left by a long desk; a third was seated behind. The gaslight was keeping the office as bright as possible. Hans Fichte was by himself in a chair at the far end of the room, bits and pieces of him lost to the shadows. He sat up eagerly as Hoffner entered.
“Kriminal-Assistent,” said Hoffner with a look to keep Fichte where he was.
Fichte seemed slightly disappointed; he settled back into his chair. “Herr Kriminal-Kommissar,” he replied quietly.
“Ah, here we are, Nikolai,” said the man from behind the desk. “Nice to see you again.”
Polpo Kriminaldirektor Gerhard Weigland stood and offered his hand. He had aged considerably since Hoffner last saw him: the hair was virtually gone except for a neat ring of curly white at the temples; the beard had grown long and full, stained a mucinous yellow around the chin and moustache from decades of cigarettes; and the face had thickened, pressing the eyes deep into the twin cavities above the gray-red cheeks. Never tall, Weigland seemed squatter still from the added weight. His hand, though, remained powerful. The knuckles drove up through the flesh as if the fingers intended to squeeze the life out of anything they touched.
Hoffner peered at the two other men, then stepped over and took the PKD’s hand. “Herr Kriminaldirektor,” said Hoffner.
“It’s been a long time, Nikolai,” said Weigland; he released and sat. “Only a floor above and—well, a long time.”
“Yes, Herr Kriminaldirektor,” said Hoffner, who remained standing at the edge of the desk.
“It seems your man was in the midst of giving a little tour,” said Weigland through a half-smile.
Hoffner said, “Hans is very enthusiastic, Herr Kriminaldirektor.”
“As we discovered,” said Weigland with a laugh. The other men laughed, as well.
Hoffner waited. “I’m sure that’s not why we’re here, Herr Kriminaldirektor. After all, we were all Assistenten once.”
Weigland stared up with a smile that claimed to know Hoffner better than it did: everything about Weigland claimed to know more than it did. “Always right to it,” he said. “A lesson for us all, eh, Herr Oberkommissar?”
Braun, who was now at Weigland’s side, seemed to grow tauter still. “Indeed, Herr Direktor.”
“We needed a bit more time with
the Luxemburg body,” said Weigland in an equally casual tone. “You understand.”
“We?” said Hoffner, peering again at the two other men.
Weigland followed Hoffner’s gaze. “You know Kommissaren Tamshik and Hermannsohn?”
“No, Herr Kriminaldirektor.”
“Ah,” said Weigland. “My mistake.” He made the introductions. “They’ve been brought in, now that it’s a political case.”
Ernst Tamshik had the look of the military about him, the way he kept his hands clasped tightly behind his back, the way his broad shoulders hitched high so as to keep his back ramrod straight. There might even have been something protective to him had it not been for the expression on his face: he was a bully, and a particularly brutal one, judging from the child’s sneer in his eyes, an ex–sergeant major, Hoffner guessed, who had reveled in the terrorizing of his young recruits. But, like all bullies, he had learned to play the innocent while under his mother’s watchful gaze. Hoffner had yet to figure out which of the two, Weigland or Braun, had assumed that role.
Walther Hermannsohn was far less graspable. He was slighter, though just as tall, and had no need for Tamshik’s stifled violence or Braun’s clipped affectation. He projected nothing and, for Hoffner, that made him the most dangerous man in the room.
“A political case?” said Hoffner. “That seems a bit premature, don’t you think, Herr Kriminaldirektor?”
Weigland was momentarily confused. “Premature? Why do you say that?”
Hoffner explained, “Luxemburg has the same markings as the other homicides. Why assume that it wasn’t simply bad luck for her and poor timing for us—or, rather, for you, Herr Kriminaldirektor?”
Weigland tried another unconvincing smile. He shifted slightly in his chair. “It’s just Direktor now, Nikolai. Direktor, Kommissar, Oberkommissar. We’ve dispensed with the Kriminal up here.”
Hoffner waited before answering. “That’s convenient.” Weigland showed no reaction. “Then, my mistake, Herr Direktor.”
Weigland’s smile broadened. “No mistake, Nikolai. Just a bit of new information.”
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