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

by Frank Goldammer

  “It’s all right. Do you know a doctor?”

  Constanze shook her head. “I found a room with a woman in Radebeul. She’s been putting me up the last three months. I’m sure she can help.”

  “I know a doctor, but we’d have to walk through half the city.”

  “I’ll make it.”

  They started on their way.

  “You’re a Jew?” Heller asked after a while.

  “Half. My father was Aryan. He refused to leave my mother. So we had to live in a Jewish building in Tiergartenstrasse. He was a doctor, only allowed to practice on Jews at that point. Klepp had it out for him; my father had a fortune. They took my mother away last December. She died of tuberculosis two months later, even though she’d been in perfect health before that. Father got ordered to the Gestapo last January. He never came back.”

  “So they thought you knew where his fortune was?”

  “After you interrupted the interrogation, they let me go. I did get another summons soon after, but then the air raid came. I tore off my yellow star and fled.”

  “And from then on, you intended to take your revenge on Klepp . . .” It sounded like a statement of fact, but the truth was, he needed her to confirm that this had all been worth risking his life for.

  Constanze Weisshaupt had understood. She looked him in the eyes.

  “A man like that shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. I wanted to make him suffer. When I happened to see you with that Russian, I thought you were helping them hunt down fellow Nazis. I was hoping you would lead me to Klepp. That’s why I followed you.”

  “Are you the one who gave Klepp that scratch on his face?”

  “No, not me, I never would’ve survived that. When you’re getting beaten, you simply have to keep still until they tire out.”

  “Who attacked you and locked you in that hole?”

  “Klepp’s wife and some young man. He said they needed to kill me.”

  “Why didn’t you want to talk to me?”

  “I was scared,” Constanze said. “Can you imagine? Being all confined down there, getting buried alive? Having to breathe like that, think like that, until the very end, without being able to move? And how could I know what side you were really on? It was just a few days ago that the Russians’ new best friends still had their swastika armbands on.”

  “You speak Russian?”

  “I was born in Görlitz. My father practiced medicine there until ’34 and always said it never hurt to know Russian. I know: Maybe we should go find my bicycle, and you can ride? I can ride on the handlebars.”

  “With a broken arm?”

  “It’s better than walking.”

  “So, Görlitz, you say?” Dr. Schorrer was examining Constanze Weisshaupt’s arm. He had received her and Heller without saying much. “A Dr. Armin Weisshaupt? Never crossed paths, though he must’ve been around my age. It’s a clean break. A nurse can splint it; you won’t need me for that.” The doctor gently set down her arm and waved a nurse over. Both women left.

  “Did you get rid of your Russian yet?” Schorrer asked Heller.

  “He’s happy now. Klepp is confirmed dead.”

  “There you go.”

  “No, what I meant was, Klepp was just killed a little while ago. He was hiding out in the slaughterhouses with some men. I still don’t understand why he didn’t flee well before the Soviet Army took Dresden.”

  Schorrer gave it some thought. “Taking off wouldn’t have been easy for him. He was quite well-known. They would’ve accused him of desertion, then tried and shot him on the spot. Maybe he only had a moment to decide and got it wrong. It’s actually not a bad idea, faking one’s death, since at the time it was certain the Russians would be advancing on Dresden within a few days. No one could’ve predicted that the Russians would get bogged down in Breslau first and then set their sights on Berlin. How was he supposed to resurface after? And what would’ve happened to his wife and son? It all seems plausible to me.”

  Heller reached for the water jug and poured himself some. He felt sapped, unbelievably tired, and his stomach ached from hunger.

  “But would the whole family have known about the murders?” Heller asked. “Would Magdalena Klepp have allowed her son or her husband to murder like that?”

  “Well, some women can show even less mercy than men,” Schorrer said.

  “And where is Irma Braune? Shouldn’t we have found her in Klepp’s house?”

  “Irma Braune? Who’s that?”

  Heller shook his head. He had no energy to explain.

  “So I hear the Russians hauled you away today too?” he asked instead.

  “They did. And everyone thinks it’s your fault.”

  Schorrer tapped at his desk pad.

  Which explains all the reserved behavior, Heller thought.

  “It wasn’t me. I had nothing to do with it. I was surprised myself. Was Rita Stein there too?” Schorrer straightened.

  “No, she wasn’t.”

  “Really?”

  “Why? Are you interested in her?”

  Heller recalled Rita Stein telling him about Schorrer’s advances on her. Maybe he hadn’t given up hope.

  “No, I barely know her. I’m also married, by the way, been so for twenty-five years.”

  “I don’t like that doctor,” Constanze whispered.

  Heller was escorting her outside. He had decided to take her home with him. For one thing, it was impossible to get back to Radebeul. For another, he was hoping to use her bicycle.

  “He seems like one of them to me,” she added.

  “Like a Nazi?”

  “That starched behavior, so affected. His detachment. I’ll bet he profited from the war like the rest of them, bet he doesn’t suffer from hunger, probably has plenty stored up somewhere. And he can sell medication and bandages. The other thing is, I’m surprised he didn’t know my father. Görlitz is not that big of a town, and Father met with the other doctors almost every week. They came to our house, and I always used to sit and listen in. There definitely was no Schorrer among them.”

  “What am I supposed to do?” Heller asked.

  Constanze thought about that for a while. “Probably nothing you can do. People like him, they always survive and find a way to get ahead. It’s inevitable.”

  May 18, 1945: Late Afternoon

  Karin was furious, but she tried to hide it. She eyed Heller’s filthy overcoat without comment. Then she politely greeted Constanze and didn’t say anything about how they now had to provide for yet another person. She set a bowl of potatoes on the table, small and cooked with the skins on.

  “Did you have to?” she asked Heller later, once they were alone.

  Heller took a deep breath and avoided looking at her. So Karin grabbed his chin, turned his face to hers, and made him look at her, carefully reading his eyes. “You still aren’t finished with this,” she said, and let go.

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You could’ve been killed.”

  “I know.”

  “Where’s your watch?”

  “Some Russian took it.”

  “Nice if you could’ve gotten marks for it,” Karin said. “For all the work you’ve done.”

  She was the only person who could criticize him for such a thing, considering all that she did for them. And Karin was still staring at him. She placed her hand on his forearm. “This going to last into the night?”

  Heller took her hand. “I don’t know yet. I can’t stop thinking that solving the case has something to do with Klara Bellmann. I need to go back and see her relatives again.”

  “That night of the air raid, when I came crawling out of that cellar and you weren’t there, I thought about just throwing myself into the fire.”

  Heller looked at his wife, held her face, and kissed her on the mouth. He stroked her hair. “But you didn’t, did you?”

  The wind cooled Heller’s face as he rode Constanze’s bicycle. She’d said he could borrow it if h
e needed to. Heller was wearing a light jacket from the deceased Herr Marquart’s surplus of clothes. He was able to get through the various military barriers easily because of his pass—without it, a man like him wouldn’t have been allowed to ride a bicycle. It was a lovely and mild evening, yet he felt uneasy. Every man standing idly on a corner could be an assassin. Every concealed hand could be carrying a weapon. Every civilian could be a lone member of Klepp’s gang. Rumors about the shootout had been spreading, and he was hearing the craziest stories at the checkpoints. A whole German regiment had supposedly engaged the Russians in battle.

  On his way to see the Schurigs, he took a detour around Soviet headquarters, as he didn’t want to run into Zaitsev. He took Wilhelminenstrasse and Charlotten and rode Radeberger to Jägerstrasse. The buildings were mostly undamaged here, yet they lacked electricity and water, and people were filling up at public water pumps. An old man was chopping a table into firewood. Otherwise, it was only women around, wearing head scarves and dresses made from coarse fabric.

  He encountered Frau Schurig in the stairway of her building, a smile flashing across her face when she saw him.

  “Herr Detective Inspector, I’m so happy you made it. I’m happy about everyone who’s made it! I can’t help you right now, unfortunately. My husband is inside, and he’s got such a bad case of fluid in his legs.”

  “I’d just like to take a look around Klara’s room one more time,” Heller said. He drew two cigarettes from his jacket.

  Frau Schurig took them and slid them inside her smock. “As you like, but people are living there now. They were sent here. Very taciturn. From Breslau.”

  “What about the furniture?”

  “All like it was. But I can’t imagine what you’re looking for. Oh, there was a young woman here a little while ago. She was looking for something too.”

  Heller leaned forward. “A young woman?”

  “That’s right. Today around noon. She said Klara had wanted to keep it safe for her.”

  “Did she find it?”

  Frau Schurig nodded and waved Heller into the apartment. She led him into Klara’s room, where two scared children stared with wide eyes.

  “Here.” Frau Schurig knelt before the wardrobe, and pulled out the larger lower drawer. “It was tacked under here, with those little kind of staples.”

  “What was?”

  “It was cardboard, real flat.”

  “A folder? Hanging file folder?”

  “Could have been.”

  “This woman, did she introduce herself?”

  “It was a nurse. I think I’d seen her and Klara together once.”

  Nurse Rita. Rita Stein had been here? What was Klara keeping that Rita needed to have?

  “Did Klara ever tell you anything, ever talk about her work?”

  “Not much. She resented us for asking about her divorce papers. But you do realize we had to, didn’t we? It would’ve been dangerous to take her in otherwise. Forbidden, wasn’t it? We’d have been risking our lives.”

  “She didn’t say anything? Nothing at all? Think about it, please.”

  “No, she didn’t. I’m sorry.”

  The ferryman demanded three cigarettes from each passenger and two extra for a bicycle.

  “How ya think I’m payin’ for all this diesel?” he told them when they complained.

  But Heller paid no attention to all the bickering on the overcrowded ferry. He was too busy putting himself in Klepp’s shoes even though it wasn’t getting him far. Something had to have kept the Klepps tied to the city. There had to be something else, something more than that plunder in his attic, something that had crept up to the house at night.

  Heller had to push the bike across the Vogelwiese riverbank meadow and was only able to climb back on near the hospital. Was it even Rita who’d visited the Schurigs? She hadn’t been at the hospital, yet hadn’t been taken away by the Russians either. Did Rita have some secret that Klara knew? Could the murders of Klara and the other women be separate cases after all? Or was there more to it somehow?

  Zaitsev had believed there was a clear adversary, someone who’d known about everything from the beginning. That had to have been Klepp. Either him, or his wife, or his son, or all of them together? And yet something didn’t fit. It didn’t fit those noises that he himself had heard. Ludwig Klepp was traumatized, fearful, submissive, and definitely a little insane. Still, he hardly seemed capable of acting without clear instructions. His spirit, his will, had been broken, whether by his father or the SS. Had Ludwig just been trying to prove himself to his father? Or was there something else that Heller had overlooked, all because the man in him had taken a liking to a certain nurse?

  He climbed off the bicycle and pushed it the last hundred yards to Klepp’s villa. He saw no sentries. If it were up to him, he would’ve had the building guarded day and night.

  He waited awhile, observing the house from a distance, and only dared approach the property once the sun was slowly sinking behind Grosser Garten park. He carried the bike into the house and hauled it up the stairs. Then he began his tour.

  The cellar door was still open, but there was no sense in searching the dark basement as he didn’t have so much as a match on him. So he devoted himself to the ground floor. Russian soldiers had trashed Klepp’s den. The Nazi flag was shredded, Hitler’s bust lay shattered on the floor, and the desk had been broken open, its contents gone.

  Heller clambered around the bombed rooms as well, yanking smashed furniture from the debris without knowing what he was looking for. An interior wall suddenly collapsed with a loud crash, so he let that be and went upstairs. He carefully went through each room, but there weren’t any other hiding places he could see. He continued upstairs before trying the attic. The upper rooms had been cleared out, their doors left open. Rainwater had soaked into the walls and floor, wallpaper hung down, mold was growing in corners, and the floorboards had warped.

  The way up to the attic was dicey, as it involved climbing over a stretch of busted wooden stairs kept in place by a single suspect piece of wood. He only made himself do it because he knew that Zaitsev had made it up to the top.

  Heller first had to place his right foot on the railing so he could stretch far enough to reach the ledge above him. He pulled himself up that way and found another toehold on the protruding beam in front of him. He swung his body, and hauled himself up. He now sat up in the attic, trying, for the moment at least, not to think about how he was going to get back down. He continued on, holding on to roof beams he ducked under to reach the part of the attic where the roof was damaged and the floorboards ripped up. Here in the floor, Klepp had been storing long metal crates of weapons. Zaitsev had had to tear out a whole floorboard to open one of the crates.

  Heller stood transfixed, because only now did he understand what Klepp had been up to. The crate was full of jewelry: necklaces, rings, brooches, cuff links. It wasn’t just a modest cache of stolen goods; this was an actual treasure trove. Heller bent down and pulled something out that he wasn’t able to recognize at first. He let it drop, disgusted. It was gold teeth. Klepp had not only been a thief—he was a killer, committing robbery homicide. Some of Constanze’s parents’ things might even be here among all these goods. And this was only one of at least six crates. The Klepps hadn’t even bothered hiding the porcelain and silver candlesticks. They were lying in an open wooden crate, just like all the everyday, superfluous household stuff that people stowed away in the attic. If it had come out that Klepp was withholding all this from the German Reich, he would’ve been put on trial. So was this why he had taken off right after the air raid—because he was afraid his treasure would be discovered?

  And yet this still didn’t have anything to do with those women being murdered. Heller gingerly returned to the stairs, where he was now forced to realize that the way he’d come up was not the way he would have to get back down. He lowered himself over the ledge until he was hanging by his outstretched arms, then he swun
g back and forth until he found enough momentum to bridge the distance between the stable stretches of stairs. He let go, landed on both feet, and grabbed onto what remained of the railing, which—luckily—supported him. A sharp pain shot through his knee.

  He limped back into Klepp’s bedroom and went through the letters scattered on the floor, then sat down in a corner and began to read. Yet after a while he grew tired and, having learned nothing new, had to put them aside. It was too odd reading such heartfelt declarations of love from a man who was a murderer and had just died that day, all to a woman who was now sitting in jail facing a nasty future. Heller knew what the Russians did to SS men and could only imagine how they treated their women. He could assume that Magdalena Klepp was facing prison with hard labor.

  The light was dimming inside. Swallows were circling the house, releasing their shrill cries. Somewhere in the distance, he could hear the hollers of drunken Russians as they happily fired their weapons into the air. Little fires flickered among the ruins. Heller felt strangely weak, alone, and depressed. That dark dungeon far below him seemed like a bad dream, waiting to drag him down.

  Heller woke with a start, his legs still asleep. It was now dark outside. He heard the wind rustling leaves in the trees and whistling through exposed attic beams. He pulled himself up, massaged his numb legs, and waited for the tingling to lessen. He felt something moist on his right hand. He rubbed his palm, sniffed it, and pulled back in disgust. Then he leaned forward and ran his hand along the floor. He discovered more moist spots, from a slimy substance. He comprehended at once and froze in horror. He promptly pressed his back up against the wall, not moving for the longest time, listening. But nothing stirred. He was alone. Or so he thought.

  It had been so close to him. It had watched him sleeping. Had it touched him? Smelled him? Heller tried to breathe calmly, to slow his pulse. Sweat covered his forehead, but he didn’t dare wipe it away. He didn’t dare do a thing.

  And yet? It hadn’t done anything to him. Although it had been so close. If only he had a pistol. He couldn’t just remain here like this the whole night, paralyzed, hoping something would happen, that nothing would happen. His ankle was hurting already. So he started moving, slowly, silently, away from the doorway, inch by inch, to the wall with a window, across from the door. There was something on the stairway. He thought he could see a face, eyes staring at him through the bars of the railing.