The Air Raid Killer (Max Heller, Dresden Detective Book 1)

by Frank Goldammer

  Heller looked around. “Real nice and warm.”

  “Better small than none at all! My wife isn’t here, otherwise I would offer you tea.” Glöckner seemed eager.

  “You’ve heard about the death of Nurse Bellmann?”

  “Yes. They say she was horribly mutilated.”

  They all knew about it, to Heller’s dismay. “Did you know Nurse Klara or any acquaintances, friends, or people who were close to her?”

  “No, I only knew her in passing. Pretty little thing. They say she was messing around with some private here on leave. And supposedly she was making eyes at one of the doctors.”

  Glöckner might not know her, but he certainly knew the rumors.

  “They say she was expecting—from that private—but she got rid of it.”

  Heller heard a soft patter and turned around. A German shepherd came out of the kitchen. Through the open door Heller spied various foods on the kitchen counter that he hadn’t seen for a long time, among them a whole stack of chocolate bars.

  “I named him Zeus,” Glöckner said with pride. “Zeus, sit!” The dog sat, staring at Heller and panting loudly—it was too hot for him in here.

  “Plenty of lowlifes around the building at night, and the girls get all kinds of wild ideas. But no one gets by Zeus. Zeus, Heil!” The dog raised its right front paw. Glöckner smiled.

  “So no one ever came here inquiring about her? Never any other issues or talk involving her?”

  “Well, the two of us did have a little spat.”

  “About what?”

  “She, with her Berlin mouth, thought she could get the best of me. She got these ideas in her head that the heating wasn’t hot enough, that the water was brown. I quickly cured her of that notion. I reported her and complained about her behavior, which took care of things. She was out the door by that point anyhow.”

  “You know of any girls showing envy or jealousy? Any enemies, feuds?”

  “Sure, there might have been, but my knowledge only runs so deep. She got along with that other Berliner.”

  “Who?”

  “The Stein girl.”

  “Rita Stein is from Berlin?”

  “That’s what I heard. But been here awhile.”

  Heller took out his notebook and made a note.

  “And your wife, what’s she do?”

  “She works here, as head nurse. She was the one who got me this job seven years ago. But that’s not something everyone needs to know, do they?” Glöckner winked.

  “You looking for me?” asked Rita Stein. Heller had taken the stairs up to the fourth floor and waited in the hallway.

  “I need to question some of the nurses about Frau Bellmann, if possible.”

  “You won’t find out anything. Most are so young; Klara had no use for them.”

  “Did Frau Bellmann have a certain reputation?”

  Rita’s eyes narrowed.

  “It does have to do with my trying to solve her murder.” The fact that he even had to remind her of this was only further proof of her arrogance.

  Rita didn’t answer.

  “Her tongue was cut out,” Heller added. “Did you know that?”

  Rita turned and waved him into her room. “Come in. Have a seat.”

  Heller sat down at the table. The room had two beds at odd angles. Two lockers separated them, and another wall had a sideboard and small stove. The bulky radiator under the window rattled away as if full of pebbles. A joyless room.

  “What do you want to know?” she said.

  “It’s crucial that I learn about any contacts Frau Bellmann had. That includes who she was socializing with, what kind of reputation she had, whether she was considered easy, whether some envied her, and whether her divorced husband was still in contact with her.”

  Rita was sitting across from him but made it a point to look past him, out the window. “He’s a Jew. He’s not allowed to leave his own city or to have contact with anyone. He might not even be in Berlin anymore. The way I hear it, most Berlin Jews were taken to Warsaw.”

  “I’m hearing about her and some private as well as a doctor.”

  “What? What kind of blabbermouth went and told you that?”

  “They’re saying things about her over in the Schurigs’ building too.”

  Rita placed her hands flat on the table and stared at Heller. “These are uncertain times; you know that. People cross your path and disappear forever. You take what you can. Klara, she’d been through plenty. She wasn’t thinking about the future, only about the here and now. But that doesn’t concern you, and it’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “Why did you two get along so well? Because you’re a Berliner too?”

  Rita’s eyes narrowed again. “Who told you that? Yes, I was born in Berlin and lived there until I was ten. Then my parents moved us to Dresden because my father found a job here. I was friends with Klara because I liked her. Such things do happen, you know.”

  “All right, all right.” Heller sighed and stood up. He wasn’t going to learn much more from Rita Stein today. “I won’t keep you any longer.” He nodded goodbye, put on his cap, and left the room.

  “So it has to be that Jew! This Kohn.” Klepp leaned back in his chair, eyeing Heller.

  Heller held his stare, despite sitting across from a man who used to slaughter for a living. “What about his motive?”

  “His motive? Isn’t it clear? It’s revenge for divorce.”

  “Don’t you think he’d have far greater concerns than making his way here from Berlin just to hunt down Klara Bellmann and take his revenge?” Heller tried not to sound too sarcastic. Klepp had made it his mission to support the local Gestapo with every means at his disposal—together they were rounding up the last of the Jews, removing them from the few Jewish homes left, and sending them to the temporary camp in Hellerau or directly to the concentration camps at Theresienstadt or Buchenwald.

  Klepp placed his fingertips together like Schorrer had, only his fingers were much fatter than the doctor’s. “It’s exactly what he’d do. He had nothing more to lose. I saw far worse in Poland, believe me. Revenge is the only thing keeping some Jews alive. The Bellmann girl had her divorce documents sent from Berlin. So that put him on her trail. Who knows who he knows in the registrar’s office? The Jews, they’ve infiltrated all our best institutions! So he comes here and kills her. Who else would do such a thing?”

  Heller stared at his superior. Obersturmbannführer Klepp could not be this dim-witted. Clever and brazen, sure, but not dumb.

  “What about now?” Heller said. “Where has he gone?”

  Klepp waved his hand. “Gone’s what he is, taken off, headed underground. They’ll smoke him out somewhere.”

  “Still, have you been able to confirm where Kohn was at the time of the crime?” Of course Klepp couldn’t have.

  “That’s completely irrelevant now. Because we really have our hands full. Nieland, that weakling of a mayor, summoned me today. Gauleiter Mutschmann has been complaining to him about conditions near the train station being unsustainable. The refugee camps are bursting at the seams. Camp number one is a particular thorn in his side. It’s supposed to be just a transit camp, but it’s been overflowing for some time. None of those people want to move on. They feel safe here, they’re getting food, they’re waiting for relatives. It’s causing theft, assault, rape, and surely there’s more than enough subversive elements for you there, Herr Detective Inspector—possibly spies or even Jews on the run.”

  “Hold on. You’re taking me off the case?” Heller sat upright in his chair. This could not be happening. It was absurd and defied all sanity.

  “Heller, we’re at war. People are dying every second, and no one can do a thing about it. What’s important are the living! Why bother with one Jew? Together with the Gestapo, I’m planning a big raid for that whole part of town—homes, cellars, attics, hovels, lavatories. You’ll see. We’ll find that bastard somewhere along the way.”

  �
��I can’t work like this,” Heller complained to his wife that evening. “That Klepp, he’s just incredible.”

  Karin didn’t respond. She stood at the sink, washing the dishes with only water.

  “Today, Frau Zinsendorfer, know what she said?” Karin said without looking up. “She said they heard howling outside, night before last. Like a wolf.”

  Heller stared at Karin.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “But then dogs howl in the night too, and fright always plays a part.”

  “Are you afraid, Karin?”

  She set aside the last plate, dried her hands, and leaned back against the cupboard. She was getting thinner, her housedress hanging off her, the belt around her waist as tight as it could go, her skin dry. All her worry about their two sons was branded on her face. To Heller she was still beautiful. Even now he could see that twenty-year-old he’d met all those years ago on a summer retreat in the spa town of Bad Schandau. When he saw her for the first time, she had just stepped off the Elbe River steamboat, and in the village square a brass band was playing “In the Prater the Trees Bloom Again.” She had her blonde hair tied up high, and the wind was blowing golden strands into her face and they were catching in the corners of her mouth. She’d pushed them off her face, laughing, and looked right at him.

  “Yes, I am afraid. Afraid of being alone,” she said. She wouldn’t look at him.

  Heller rushed over and took her hands in his. “You are not alone. You’re not.”

  Karin looked up, just as she’d done when they were married—in church, like she’d wanted. Her eyes had glistened with so much joy and emotion back then. Now they revealed only a tiny glimmer of hope. “Promise me,” she whispered.

  “I promise you.”

  The air raid siren sounded again during the night. Down in the cellar, Heller sat across from Frau Zinsendorfer—seventy years old, gray hair tightly bound, eyebrows raised. She kept crossing herself, again and again, and was speaking to God under her breath. He tried not to listen. The siren stopped, which meant they still had to wait for the all clear. Heller tried listening for anything out in the dark night. But the cellar walls were thick, reinforced with concrete, and there were no windows. All he could hear were people breathing, then the flak guns started up somewhere in the distance, spluttering briefly before falling silent again.

  December 18, 1944: Morning

  Heller pulled out his handkerchief and held it over his nose and mouth as he forced his way through all the people and horses. It was unusually warm for December, and dust filled the air. His overcoat had turned gray from all the street grime swirled up by everyone’s footsteps. The air stank from all the unwashed people who’d been on the run for weeks with so few clothes to change into. It smelled like rot, urine, and feces. DDT powder drifted over from the delousing stations.

  The first time he went to the refugee camp, he was horrified. The people looked like beings from another world—homeless, hounded, disillusioned, filthy, reduced to their basest instincts, having to relieve themselves where they stood, prodded by constant fright and fears and the hope of eventually trading their immense troubles for lesser ones.

  And yet their fellow countrymen were here too—Germans fleeing Silesia and points east, the women wearing head scarves and the men fur boots, toothless, half-starving, their faces dreary, lacking expression. Tied to their carts were old nags about to collapse, little more than walking dead.

  Heller did what he could to help. He went around reassuring people, registering them, taking their questions about searching for loved ones, giving instructions on where to find water and food. He marked down the people coming from delousing, sent those with the worst illnesses to the medics and helpers from the Order of St. John charity. He tried to avoid getting sick from the ones with tuberculosis, staying clear of bodily contact and of all the dysentery and diphtheria, and tried not to let the constant misery get to him. The infants crying from hunger, the old ones with ulcers on their feet, the children with rags for shoes, the other children who’d become separated from their loved ones amid the panic and chaos, lost and forgotten, not knowing where to go and having lost all spirit from such an unspeakable loss. Every night he’d leave this world to return to a warm home, a hot meal. Every day brought a worse feeling of helplessness, since the flood of people would not subside. For every few hundred cleared for transport to a new destination, hundreds if not thousands of new refugees arrived in their place. Their speech became more and more alien, and in turn the locals’ will to accept them and view them as fellow countrymen turned weaker and weaker, since they were all becoming competitors for the little food that still remained, and for housing, for clothing. The locals’ own fear of not getting enough grew stronger, as did those rumors that had survived the long trek from the easternmost borders of Silesia. The Russians, the Russians, just don’t let the Russians get through. The Russians devour the children, the women. They murder, they rape, and they’re not humans at all but monsters bringing the Devil incarnate.

  Heller knew it wasn’t true. Both of his sons had told him what the Russians were like when they’d visited on their last leave home, back in the fall of ’43. Most were uneducated, but not barbarians. Poor, but not criminals. What his sons did reveal to him were the acts German soldiers had committed in plain sight. There was this ditch, Klaus had explained to him in a low voice, a long ditch, barely covered over, with the shoes of women and children lying before it. Hundreds. His sons had asked him how they were supposed to act when confronted with all that. And when Heller said nothing, since he knew their dilemma all too well, Karin had advised them to keep acting in a way that would get them back home alive. And yet none of this meant Heller’s chest did not tighten at the thought of what could happen when the Russians conquered the city. It made his fingers go cold and his legs stiff. Good thing he always had his duty weapon on him. That meant, at the very worst, that he always had the option of putting a quick end to things, for himself and for Karin.

  There were those other rumors too. They were a strange mixture of religious apparition, of wishful thinking, of revenge fantasy—Hitler was their savior, their messiah, their faith healer. They whispered about “wonder weapons.” The wonder weapons, they rejoiced, were sure to wipe all foes from the face of the earth, while there at the German border their soldiers stood tall as one, determined to halt the enemy, to send the Bolshevik wave crashing down like the surf against a steep cliff.

  They were now counterattacking in the west too, in the Ardennes forest of Belgium. It was then, of all times, that a long-delayed letter from Erwin came telling them he was being transferred to the Western Front. The letter was already six weeks old, and its stamps and seals told them what a rough journey it had traveled. Not the most reliable proof that Erwin was still alive.

  “Herr Heller! Herr Detective Inspector!”

  Heller stopped and gazed around the refugee camp.

  “Herr Detective Inspector!”

  Heller saw a hand waving above dozens of heads in the distance. It was a military medic. “A call came for you. You should check in with headquarters. By telephone. Right away.”

  “I’m coming.” Heller hurried after the medic, relieved that he could depart this place.

  Heller saw a large cluster of people in front of the tenement building at the corner of Holbeinstrasse and Silbermannstrasse as the medic slowed his VW jeep to let Heller out. They were speaking to each other in whispers but hushed as Heller approached.

  “Heil Hitler!” bellowed a policeman from the entryway, thrusting out his arm.

  The concerned onlookers opened a path to let Heller inside the building, where he raised his arm to return the Hitler salute.

  “It’s up in the attic,” the policeman said, then turned on his heel and headed up the stairs.

  At the third floor, Heller stopped so he could give his sore right foot a break. The policeman waited in silence on the landing before continuing at a slower pace.

  Th
e policeman halted again when he reached the open door to the attic. “With your permission, I’d rather stay here—I’ve seen enough for today.”

  “That the detective inspector?” Heller heard Oldenbusch shout from up in the attic. He sounded a little distressed.

  “It is. He’s coming up,” the policeman said.

  “Max, wait, I’m coming down.”

  Heller grimaced. This did not bode well. Let alone that Klepp thought it necessary to call him away from the refugee camp.

  Oldenbusch came clattering down the steep wooden stairs. “I want to show you something first,” he said, and took Heller by the arm.

  Heller shook his arm free. “Go get personal details from those residents outside,” he ordered the policeman. “And let no one up here—no one!”

  “They’ve all been up here already,” Oldenbusch told Heller. “A Frau Dammke from the top floor was screaming so loud it got the whole neighborhood up here. Not that you can blame her. Now come on, Herr Detective Inspector.”

  Oldenbusch took Heller by the arm again and led him into Frau Dammke’s apartment.

  “There, see that?” Oldenbusch pointed through the open door into the living room. A plate-size brown stain had formed on the ceiling. In the middle of it hung a dark, heavy, congealed drop. “Coagulated blood. Bet you’ve never seen that before.”

  “I’ve seen a lot in my time, Werner.”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. But that was during the war. This is man-made.”

  “Everything I saw was man-made.”

  “But that was random chance. Or fate. A shell lands two yards away, showering mud on you while the others die horribly. My father once found himself lying under four dead men. They had to pull them all off or he wouldn’t have made it. But that up there—”

  “Enough, Werner. I’ll go take a look for myself.”

  Heller straightened his shoulders and went upstairs.

  It was warm in the attic stairway. The sun had been shining down on the roof, heating the space like a greenhouse. The air was thick and humid and carried a tang like rotting garbage. It reeked so badly of blood that Heller didn’t want to breathe in. He held the back of his hand to his nose, breathing in the grit of the street, the rare bit of soap that Karin used for his laundry.