“On a bicycle?”
“Herr Detective Inspector, withhold your skepticism for a moment and consider possible alibis instead. Since he was working at the hospital, someone must have seen him in one of the cellar bunkers after an air raid siren. If no one saw him at the time of the crime, and he had no alibi, then follow up accordingly.”
“I have to tell you, Werner: when I leaned over this man last night to feel for his pulse, I’m certain I had my other hand on his stomach. And those there”—Heller pointed at the knives—“I did not feel on him.”
“Who brought the corpse here?”
“Someone called for a vehicle. I stayed until it came. They loaded him on and drove off. It was dark. I didn’t get here for another hour.”
They stared at the dead man.
Oldenbusch said, “You could be wrong, Max. You were worked up, because of Strampe. There’s the bike too. What about that?”
“I’m having it checked out.” Heller didn’t add that the dead man’s teeth didn’t match the bite marks left on the third victim.
Oldenbusch pondered it all for a moment, then shook his head. This seemed to help him move on. He thrust out a hand to Heller.
“Max, it’s always a pleasure!”
Heller reached for Oldenbusch’s hand. He didn’t shake it, but he didn’t let go of it either. He was searching for the right words. He’d known Oldenbusch for ten years and had often been stern with him. But Oldenbusch’s goodbye had moved him. What could he say that wasn’t just hypocritical or didn’t contain some false hope? Oldenbusch shouldn’t be harboring any hope at all, not where he was now heading.
“It was a pleasure for me as well,” Heller said. Oldenbusch tried to pull away, out of respect, but Heller kept holding his hand tight. Then he placed his other hand on top for emphasis. “Come back, Werner. I need good men like you around here.”
The wind blew hard in Heller’s face. He struggled to keep pedaling, and his hands were freezing despite his gloves. How absurd, to be riding a piece of evidence to go question a witness. But there was no way he was going to have Strampe drive him, so he had commandeered the bicycle instead. He hadn’t told Klepp the details of last night’s incident and hadn’t filed an official complaint. Some might call it gutless, since a certain level of gutlessness was forcing him to take such a step. Something Oldenbusch said had confirmed it for him. He wouldn’t put anything past types like Klepp and Strampe. They were murderers. The only reason they couldn’t be called out on it was because they were killing the enemy and traitors to the Volk.
Heller turned into Güntzstrasse to avoid the wind but got caught in a flow of bicycle riders, carriages, and people with pushcarts either coming from Albert Bridge or heading there. He was doing a poor job of avoiding all the obstacles, not having ridden a bicycle in years, so he turned off as soon as possible. He took a side street instead, and finally reached the spot where last night’s incident happened.
Most people hurried past the bullet holes in the walls without noticing them. Many were carrying furniture from their homes, as the authorities had started urging people to vacate the inner city. A few boys were the only ones fascinated by the damage. They poked their fingers into the holes in the plaster, trying to pry out bullets.
Someone had rinsed the Frenchman’s blood off the cobblestones, and the water between the stones had frozen into white ice. Heller halted and placed one foot on the ground, trying to re-create the scene in his mind. Where Strampe was standing, where the man came out of the building. It was a wonder Heller was still alive.
On a whim, he yelled out, “Hey, boys!”
The young boys turned his way.
“How come you’re not in school?”
“Closed. Got no coal for heat,” one replied.
“What happened here?”
“Killed someone last night. Right under my window,” the boy said with pride. “Gunfire all over. Just like in the Old West!”
“My mom told me it was a spy!” boasted another.
“It was the bogeyman,” announced the biggest one. He was ten at the most.
“No one can kill the bogeyman, you dummy!” countered another.
The biggest one shook his head. “Everyone can get killed,” he said, then shoved his hands in his pockets and walked away.
Heller pushed off and continued pedaling. He still had one thing to do before he could finally ride home to Karin so he wouldn’t have to make her worry any more than necessary.
Nurse Rita Stein wasn’t in her ward yet, so Heller figured he’d find her at the nurses’ quarters. It wasn’t easy getting through the hospital grounds, as refugees occupied every available spot. Many had resorted to relieving themselves in the bushes despite signs warning against it. Heller soon had to dismount and push his bike forward. At the entrance, where a family with three small children was camped out, two nurses passed by laughing, arms linked as they continued on. Heller didn’t know where to put the bike, fearing it would get stolen if he left it at the entrance. Unable to find any other solution, he picked up the bike and carried it up the steps to the front door. It was unusually quiet inside. He figured one shift was sleeping while the other worked. He sighed at the stairway awaiting him, then gave in to his fate.
Up on the fourth floor, still panting, he stowed the bike in the hallway and tried to recall where Rita Stein’s room was, marveling at the brightly polished linoleum floor little more than thirty yards away from all those fugitives outside in their misery. He removed his cap, pivoted to get his bearings, then passed a big clock on the wall and yet another likeness of Hitler. It had to be down this way, he recalled, third door from the last. The door was cracked open. He approached, his steps halting.
“Frau Stein? Nurse Rita?” he asked in a low voice. No one replied; he heard nothing. He cautiously pulled the door open a bit more, taking a look through the crack. He instinctively reached into his overcoat pocket and pulled out his pistol.
Heller tiptoed into the room, his right foot brushing a pile of clothing on the floor. It was bloody, and so were the small towels next to it. One locker was open, and he spotted smeared red fingerprints on one door. He touched the prints with his index finger, then rubbed it on the tip of his thumb. The blood was fresh. He took one of the towels and stuck it in an overcoat pocket. He looked around the room, then got down on a knee and looked under both beds. Nothing. He crept over to the second locker, took a deep breath, and pulled on the door. It was locked. He left the room just as quietly and stood still in the hallway, listening, holding his breath. There was a faint sound, like someone gagging. He crept over to the washroom door on tiptoe and bent down to look through the keyhole, but he couldn’t make out a thing.
Now he could hear it clearly. Someone was in agony. Or being tormented. He placed his free hand on the door handle, pushed it down, and opened the door as quietly as possible. The washroom was empty, but a thin stream of water was running from a faucet, and a bloody hand towel was lying on the floor.
A hoarse screech, coming from near the toilets, made Heller jump. He bounded over to the stalls. He spotted a wet hand towel lying there and could see bare feet under the stall door. He ripped the door open.
Rita Stein screamed with horror. She was kneeling at the toilet bowl. She jumped up and nearly tripped over the toilet. She grabbed onto the wall of the stall, struggling to keep upright.
Heller just stared, the door handle in one hand, his pistol in the other.
Rita was naked and wet, her hair down. She looked tired and worn out. A nasty sensation of embarrassment and guilt shot through Heller as he realized he was staring at her breasts and her pubic area. He bent down for the hand towel, handed it to Rita, and tried not to look at her.
Rita angrily yanked the towel from his hand, holding it before her body. She was furious and frightened but clearly too weak to voice her anger. As she tried to leave the stall she lost her balance, and Heller caught her from falling. He held her like that for a few endless s
econds, his arms around her, her bare skin pressed against his coat before she elbowed her way free and stumbled out through the washroom and into the hallway. He then heard her door slam.
He stood there for quite a while, his eyes closed as the shame of it all burned away inside him, reddening his face and ears. He couldn’t lose the image of her naked body. Only the unpleasantly sour smell brought him back to reality. He put his gun away, stepped into the stall, pulled on the chain to flush the toilet, and closed the door, only then noticing his cap lying on the red slate floor. He snapped it up and went out into the hallway.
It took all he had to knock on Nurse Rita’s door. She opened it before he could say anything. There she stood before him, fully dressed.
“Please forgive me, I saw the bloody—”
“Doesn’t bug me,” Rita said. “Not the first time I’ve stood naked before the likes of you.”
Her harshness stung. “Come again?”
“It doesn’t matter. Now if you’ll excuse me!”
Heller went to grab her by the shoulder but immediately let go. “Are you doing all right? You look exhausted. And you were throwing up.”
“There are moments when my strength fails me, believe it or not. But don’t go telling your friend Schorrer.”
Her cynicism hurt his feelings. “Schorrer’s not a bad person,” he felt he had to say.
“Not true. You’d think he’d have me transferred to his ward for my skills, but evidently he’s just wife hunting. That’s been made clear enough.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that was his intention. But a person can’t exactly blame him, can they?”
Heller felt stupid for blabbering away like this. He only did it to hide his embarrassment. So he started over.
“I came here to question you about something. Then I saw those bloody things in your room. That’s why I stormed in on you like that—I was afraid something had happened to you.”
“We were doing an emergency amputation, and one of the younger nurses didn’t clamp an artery well enough. So I had to wash and change. Then I felt like I was going to faint.” Rita stared at Heller, her eyes sharp. “Is it true you shot that technician?”
“The technician?” It took him a moment to realize who she meant. “You mean Claude Bertrand? No, that was Strampe.”
“Everyone called him ‘Frenchie.’ And who’s this Strampe? Don’t know any Strampe.”
“Bertrand tried running from us last night. I didn’t want him to die, but he shouldn’t have fled.”
“Yeah, I’m sure anyone trying to run is probably guilty. Look, I have to get going.” Rita brushed Heller aside and headed down the hallway.
“Is that your bicycle?” Heller yelled after her. “It’s a Diamant.”
Rita slowed down and stood next to the bike. She flipped open the spring-loaded clamp on the rear rack and let it snap back down, then ran her finger along a paint scratch on the crossbar. “It is,” she said.
“Bertrand was riding it. And he had a leather holder with two sharp knives on him.”
“He did?” Rita stared at Heller, curious.
“Do you know if he talked with Klara Bellmann?”
Rita didn’t answer.
“Come on, Nurse Rita.”
“Yes. Just as friends . . . as happens in times like these.”
She hadn’t told him that back in December, when he’d asked her about Klara Bellmann’s contacts. He took out his notebook and made a note.
“Where does everyone here go when the air raid siren sounds?” he asked. “Down to the cellar?”
“That, or the cellar of whatever building they’re in. But that’s hundreds of people. You’ll never find out if he was in one of those cellars. There’s an air raid siren every other day. No one would remember him.”
“But he lived here.”
“Not in the building. Lived over on Marschall, in some basement. I don’t know the address. Some big white house. They’d assigned him a tiny room there.”
“Did he and Klara Bellmann meet there?”
Rita shook her head. “Never. They only talked during work. I wouldn’t know where else they might have met.”
Her answer was elusive, but Heller didn’t want to dig too deep. He was finally gaining a tiny shred of trust from her.
“Do you think someone around here could have been jealous of them?” he said.
“You have someone special in mind?”
“I need to hear it from you.”
Rita shook her head again. “You don’t really believe it was the Frenchman, do you?”
Heller sighed and picked up the bicycle. “Me? I never believe anything.”
The Frenchman’s small room was barely larger than one of the cells at police headquarters. It had a narrow bed, a little table, no chair. A bare bulb with a broad shade hung from the ceiling, and a narrow wardrobe stood in the corner. The shelf on the wall was just two thin iron brackets holding a single board, with a few books in French and a stack of letters.
Heller looked through them. His little French was enough to decipher that Bertrand was writing to his mother in France. Heller knew nothing about his hometown.
He put the letters back and turned his attention to the red woolen blanket on the bed. It was the first thing that had caught his eye when the caretaker had opened the door and led him in.
“Has he had this long?” Heller asked.
Herr Schubert, tall and thin, with a thick and curving Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, tilted his head. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I was never in his room.”
“Never once taken a quick look inside, say, walking past?”
“Sure, but a blanket?” Schubert shrugged.
“You must have noticed.” Heller looked the man in the eye but decided not to press him. Better to change the subject. “So what was he like? Quiet? He have any visitors?” He plucked one of the stray threads from the thick blanket, flipped open his notebook, took out the wool thread from the tennis grounds, and compared them in the light.
“No. He was very quiet. Never requested anything, never acted suspicious or said anything derogatory.”
“He have any female visitors?”
“That’s forbidden.”
At first glance, the threads seemed identical. Heller placed them in his notebook.
“Was he able to prepare meals in here?”
Schubert shook his head. “He got all that at the hospital. Sometimes he’d bring something back. Bread, a sandwich.”
“You get any theft in this house? Anyone complain about knives missing?”
Schubert didn’t know anything about that.
“Did he own a bicycle?”
“He was given one a while ago, yes.”
“Given one?”
“Yes. That surprised us too. But he apparently required one for urgent errands, I believe, obtaining replacement parts for heating and the like.”
“You don’t know how long he’d owned the bicycle exactly?”
Schubert shrugged again.
“A week? A month? Longer?”
“Longer, I’d say.”
“So do you know what it looked like? Was it a men’s model? What color? Was it always the same bike or did he used to have a different one?”
“I’m not very good at recalling such things.”
“So at night, whenever the air raid siren sounded, did he go down into the air raid shelter with everyone?”
“He often had the late shift. Was working on the heating and doing various repairs, which gave him special permits. But when here, yes, he was in the cellar during the air raid sirens.”
“Not always, though?”
“Not always, no.”
Heller felt around the shelf again, flipping through the pages of each book with the spines up. Then he lifted the blanket, together with the actual bedspread, and the mattress. He finally went over to the wardrobe and opened it. He found a few rolled-up stockings, u
nderwear, long underwear, work pants, various sweaters, a cardigan. Cardboard boxes, more letters. Shaving kit, comb, tooth powder. A small round plastic case. He opened that to find an unused condom covered with silky white powder. Talcum. He touched it, rubbing it between fingertips. He tilted the case, then tapped on it like a salt shaker, watching the white powder float through the air like dust before coating the floor of the wardrobe in a fine film. Then he put the case back. He summarized: no whetstone, no receipt for any knife, no bicycle oil. No female hair, no blood. Though there was that white dusty powder. He pulled the wardrobe out a little and tipped it forward. Without prompting, Schubert held it so Heller could glance under it. But there was nothing underneath it nor atop it, nor under the bed, nor attached to the underside of the table, and no hiding place in the frame of the small double windows either. The floor was cement. The walls weren’t hollow. Heller even stood with one foot on the bed, propped himself against the wall, and checked around the lampshade.
He was sweating a little. He clapped dust off his hands. “Was anyone else here? Inside this room?”
“Not that I know of.” This meant little since the room wasn’t ever locked.
“What about the toilet?”
Schubert stepped out of the room and pointed at a small door to the right. It was a tiny chamber without any hiding spots. Heller climbed onto the toilet bowl, lifted up the lid of the toilet tank on the wall, rolled up his sleeves, and checked around inside. Nothing. He shook the water off his hands and stepped down.
“What are you looking for, if I might ask?”
“When I find it, I’ll let you know.” Heller was irritated. Because he’d found nothing. No withered tongue, no eyelids, no little bits of skin, no women’s underwear.
He needed Oldenbusch to examine the Frenchman’s corpse for red woolen threads. “Do you have a telephone?”
“Upstairs in the foyer.”
Heller nearly ran the whole way, found the phone on the wall, and dialed Oldenbusch’s number. No one picked up. Then he dialed the switchboard and had himself connected to Klepp’s secretary, Frau Bohle, because he couldn’t think of anyone else to call.
The Air Raid Killer (Max Heller, Dresden Detective Book 1) Page 11
