Berlin: A Novel (2 page)

The boy's name was Benjamin, but everyone called him Ben. He was fifteen, dark-blond, and showed no ill effects of the events of the last few months - the British and American air raids, the chaos of the final days of the war, the havoc as the Red Army marched in. He had filed these experiences away in his head, making room for new impressions. New impressions included Glenn Miller, chewing gum, Hershey chocolate bars and automobiles a mile long, first and foremost the Buick Eight, closely followed by the De Soto, the Dodge and the Chevrolet. New impressions included brightly coloured ties, narrow, ankle-length trousers, Old Spice and Pepsi Cola. All these items arrived overnight when, in line with the agreement between the Allies, the Russians vacated half of Berlin and Western troops moved into the ruined capital.

Ben climbed the broad steps to the ticket windows and walked away down the barbed-wire passage and into the dusty summer heat, which instantly made him thirsty. In his mind he pictured a cold sparkling drink. woodruff flavour. When you took the top off there was a promising pop, and the fizz rose into the air like a djinn from its bottle. But there was no woodruff-flavour sparkling drink available, just the dusty heat and a lingering aroma of DDT insecticide and spearmint chewing gum. Even the smells were different now the Yanks were here.

Ben strolled over to the guard on duty at the entrance to the prohibited area. Haste would have suggested dismay. 'Dead woman on the U-Bahn,' he said.

'OK, buddy. It better be true.' The man on duty reached for the phone.

The call came from the Military Police. Inspector Klaus Dietrich took it. 'Thanks, yes, we're on our way.' He hung up and called, 'The car. Franke.'

'Just heating up. It'll take a good half-hour.' Detective Sergeant Franke pointed through the window at an old Opel by the roadside. It had a kind of sawn-off bathroom geyser fitted at the back, into which a policeman was feeding scraps of wood. When they were burning hard enough they would generate the wood gas needed to drive the engine. There was no gasoline available for the Berlin Zehlendorf CID.

'We'll take the bikes,' Dietrich decided. He was a tall man of forty-five, with grey hair and the prominent cheekbones of those who were living on starvation rations. His grey, double-breasted suit, the only one Inge had managed to retrieve from their bombed-out apartment on the Kaiserdamm, hung loose on him. He dragged his left leg a little. The prosthesis, fitted at the auxiliary military hospital in the Zinnowald School where he'd spent the end of the war, chafed in hot weather. His wound had saved him from imprisonment. and he'd been able to go home in May. Inge and the boys were living with her parents in Riemeister Strasse. Inge's father, Dr Bruno Hellbich, had survived the Hitler years in compulsory retirement but otherwise unharmed. He'd returned to his old position as a Social Democrat district councillor at Zehlendorf Town Hall, and he had been able to get his son-in-law a job as a police inspector. The Zehlendorf CID needed a temporary head, and Klaus Dietrich's pre-war work as deputy managing director of a security services firm and his lack of political baggage, compensated for the loss of his left leg below the knee and his absence of criminological training. In any case, he had soon found out that a sound understanding of human nature was perfectly adequate for dealing with black marketeers, thieves and burglars.

It took them fifteen minutes to reach the U-Bahn station, where their police passes got them past the gathering crowd.

'Oh shit, here comes my old man,' muttered Ben, making off.

An American officer was standing on the tracks with a military policeman and the stationmaster. They had laid the dead woman down on her back. She was blonde, with a beautiful face and regular features. Her blue eyes stared into space. Strangulation marks suffused with blood were notched in her delicate neck. Klaus Dietrich pointed to her nylon stockings, her nearly new pumps, and her fashionable, pale summer dress. An American,' he said, gloomily. 'If a German did this there'll be trouble.'

Sergeant Franke scratched his head. 'I feel as if I've seen her before.'

The American officer straightened up. 'Which of you guys is in charge?'

Klaus Dietrich answered. 'Inspector Dietrich and Sergeant Franke, Zehlendorf CID.'

'Captain Ashburner, Military Police.' The American was tall and lean, with smooth, fair hair. His alert, intelligent gaze rested on the inspector. And this is Sergeant Donovan.' The sergeant was a stocky man with broad, powerful shoulders and a crew cut.

Dietrich raised the dead woman's left arm. The glass of her watch was shattered; the hands stood at ten forty-two. 'Probably the time of death,' he commented, beckoning to the stationmaster. 'Who was on duty here yesterday evening, about quarter to eleven?'

'Me, of course,' said the man in injured tones. 'Until the last train, at 22.48 hours, and then again from six in the morning. They hardly give us time for a wink of sleep.'

'Were there many passengers waiting for the last train?'

'Couple of Yanks with their girls, two or three Germans.'

'Was the dead woman among them?'

'Maybe, maybe not. I had to clear the 22.34 to Krumme Lanke for departure. You don't look at the passengers separately. Nobody kind of caught my eye. Only that weirdo with goggles and a leather cap. Like a sky-pilot off on a tobogganing trip, I thought.'

'Goggles and a leather cap?'

'Well, kind of motorcycling gear, I'd say. But I didn't really look close. The lights at the far end of the platform have been a write-off for weeks.'

'So he was standing in semi-darkness.'

'The only one who was, now you mention it. The other passengers were waiting where the lights still work.'

'Did you see him get in?'

'Nope. I have to be up at the front of the train to give the guard the signal to leave. Now excuse me, here's the eleven-ten.'

'Hey, Kraut, take a look.' The MP sergeant handed Dietrich a shoulder bag. 'Not an American, one of yours. Karin Rembach, aged twenty-five. Works in our dry cleaners' shop over there.' He pointed to the shopping centre on the far side of the fence. 'I guess her boyfriend bought her the shoes and nylons in the PX. Man called Dennis Morgan, stationed with the Signal Corps in Lichterfelde.'

Klaus Dietrich opened the bag. Her ID, with a pass for a German employee of the US Army, indicated where the sergeant had gathered his information. He also found a note bearing the soldier's name and his barracks address. 'I'd like to ask this Morgan some questions.'

A Kraut wants to interrogate an American? Don't you know who won the war?' barked the sergeant.

'I know the war's over and murder's a crime again,' Klaus Dietrich replied calmly.

For a moment it looked as if the beefy Donovan might take a swing at him, but the captain intervened. 'I'll question Morgan and send you the statement. In return you can let me have the results of the autopsy. A Medical Corps ambulance will take her wherever you like. Goodbye, Inspector.'

Sergeant Franke watched the Americans leave. 'Not very friendly, that bunch.'

'Privilege of the victors. Franke, what do you think about this man in the goggles?'

'Either a nutcase, like the stationmaster says, or someone who doesn't want to be recognized. Inspector, why do they keep calling us Krauts?'

Klaus Dietrich laughed. 'Our transatlantic liberators believe we Germans live on nothing but sauerkraut.'

`With pork knuckle and pea puree.' A note of nostalgia entered the detective sergeant's voice. A siren came closer and died away. Two GIs with Red Cross armbands carried a stretcher down the steps. The morgue in Berlin Mitte had been bombed out and was now in the Soviet sector, so Klaus Dietrich had the corpse taken to the nearby Waldfrieden hospital, where his friend Walter Mi bius was medical superintendent.

'I'll do the autopsy later,' said Dr Mobius. 'I have to operate on the living while daylight lasts, and then until they cut off the electricity at nine. If you really want to watch the autopsy, we'll have the power back at three in the morning.'

A young man clad in the best pre-war Prince of Wales check suiting nonchalantly lit an extra-length Pall Mall outside the U-Bahn station. Ben looked enviously at the thick crepe soles of his suede shoes. He knew the man slightly. Hendrijk Claasen was a Dutchman and a black marketeer. Only a black marketeer could afford such a sharp suit. Ben wanted a Prince of Wales check suit and shoes with crepe soles too. He imagined himself appearing before Heidi Rodel in his made-to-measure outfit, on soles a centimetre thick. Then it would be curtains for Gert Schlomm in his silly short lederhosen.

The boy walked home from the station, glad to have avoided his father. Papa would have asked questions. In this case, he would have wanted to know why Ben was finding dead women on the U-Bahn instead of being at school. Papa had a quietly sarcastic manner which hit the vulnerable spot.

Not that Ben had anything against school in itself, only its regularity. The chaos of the recent past had brought with it not only fear and terror but adventure and freedom too, and he was finding it difficult to get used to an ordered existence.

He made for the back of the house, went into the shed at the end of the garden, and fished his school bag out from under a couple of empty potato sacks. His grandmother was weeding near the veranda. She had dug up the lawn months ago to plant tobacco. The district councillor was a heavy smoker and she dried the leaves on the stove for him, filling the house with a horrible smell, which was the lesser of two evils. Hellbich was unbearable when his body craved nicotine.

'There's a special margarine ration at Frau Kalkfurth's. Ralf's down there queuing already. Go and take over from him, Ben - your mother will relieve you later. She's gone to the cobbler's. With luck he can repair your brother's sandals again - the poor boy's going around in gym shoes full of holes.'

'OK.' Ben climbed the steep stairs to the attic room he shared with Ralf, and tossed the school bag on his bed. Before going downstairs again he put the empty cigarette packet away with the razor blade in a drawer. He'd work on it later.

There was no one in the kitchen. He pulled out the left-hand drawer of the kitchen dresser, reached into it, pushed the bolt down and opened the locked cupboard door from the inside. Inge Dietrich kept the family's bread rations in that cupboard: two slices of dry bread each in the morning and again at lunchtime. They ate a hot meal in the evening.

Ben hacked himself off an extra-thick slice and clamped it between his teeth, returned the loaf to the dresser, shut the door and bolted it again. Then he closed the drawer and went off to take his little brother's place in the queue. On the way he ate his looted slice of bread in bites as small as possible. That way you prolonged the pleasure.

Frau Kalkfurth's shop had once been the living room of a terraced house in the street known as Am Hegewinkel, 'Game Preserve Corner'. The surrounding streets, all with brightly painted houses, were named Hochsitzweg, Lappjagen and Auerhahnbalz, suggesting images of hides, hunting and capercaillies. A local mayor who was a keen huntsman had given them these names sometime in the past. The garage built on to the back of the house was used to store goods for the shop. It had once held the family car, for the Kalkfurths had owned a big butcher's shop in eastern Berlin. The butcher's shop had long been in ruins, and the car, an Adler, was only a memory now.

The widow Kalkfurth, having worked in a similar line before the war, was granted the coveted permit to run a grocery store after the fall of Berlin. Now, her former trainee butcher, Heinz Winkelmann, stood behind the improvised counter, while she oversaw the little business from her wheelchair, sticking her customers' ration coupons on large sheets of newspaper in the evenings. Someone from the rationing authority collected them once a week. She lived alone in the Am Hegewinkel house: discreet gifts of butter, smoked sausage and streaky bacon to the people in the Housing Department saved her from having the homeless billeted on her.

The queue outside the shop was grey and endless. Many of the women were dressed in old pairs of men's trousers and had scarves over their heads. There were no hairdressing salons these days. Ralf was standing quite a long way back, brushing a broken-off twig back and forth in zigzags over the pavement, while Frau Kalkfurth's tabby kitten tried to catch it. The game came to an abrupt end when a dachshund at the very end of the line broke away and attacked the kitten, which shot off into the garage.

Ralf grabbed the yapping dog's collar and hauled it back to its owner. 'Can't you keep your dog in order?' he asked loudly.

'None of your cheek, young man. Sit, Lehmann!' The man took the dog's lead.

Ralf went into the garage. Old vegetable crates and broken furniture towered up in an impenetrable wall at the back. 'Mutzi, Mutzi,' he called to the kitten. A plaintive mew came from the far side of the lumber. There was no way through. Or was there? The mouldering doors of a wardrobe were hanging off their hinges, and the back of it was smashed. The boy wriggled through. The little cat was crouching on a shabby eiderdown in the dim light. 'Come on, Mutzi. That silly dachshund's back on its lead.' He picked up the frightened animal, which had dug its claws into the eiderdown so hard that the quilt came up with it, revealing the saddle of a motorbike. Carefully, the boy freed the kitten's claws and put the eiderdown back in place. Then he scrambled into the daylight with his protege.