Berlin: A Novel (40 page)

'Name?' she barked at him.

'Klaus Dietrich. Inspector in the Criminal Investigation Department in Berlin. I have a visiting permit.' He handed her the red paper.

She put it down on the desk in front of her. 'Undress,' she ordered. Dietrich froze. 'Didn't you hear?' His two guards had positioned themselves by the door, arms folded, obviously ready to help. He knew he had no choice. He had entered the lion's den of his own accord, and now it would be unwise to provoke the lion. With studied indifference, he took his clothes off. He kept on his prosthesis, with its shoe and sock. It was his only support: there was nothing else to hold on to.

The Russian woman rose and waddled towards him. She walked slowly all round him, looking him up and down. Then, just as slowly, she waddled back to her desk. She brought a stamp down on the red paper and gave it to him. 'Get dressed,' she ordered, without giving him another glance. Then he understood: the whole thing was routine; every visitor had to go through it.

He fastened his last trouser button. 'Pleased to have met you,' he said wryly. She took him at his word, and a broad smile appeared on her round face.

An officer with NKVD tags on his collar was waiting for him in a large office on the first floor. 'Lieutenant-Colonel Korsakov,' he introduced himself. 'CID Inspector Dietrich, am I right?' He spoke excellent German. A vodka?'

'Thank you very much, Tovarich Lieutenant-Colonel.' After his treatment in the cellar, this reception was reassuring.

Korsakov filled two glasses, and they tossed them back standing up. Now, please sit down. Tell me, how is he?'

'You'll have to tell me who you mean first.'

'Why, Gennat, of course. Detective Superintendent Ernst Gennat. Fatso Gennat, that's what your bunch used to call him. A great police officer. Inventor of the flying squad for murder cases. We adopted that idea ourselves, it was very successful.' It turned out that Korsakov was a detective superintendent with the Moscow CID, and an admirer of its Berlin counterpart.

'He retired quite a while ago. I think to somewhere in the Rhineland,' Dietrich improvised. 'I'm afraid I don't know any more details.'

'Well, give him my regards if he ever comes to Berlin. Another vodka?'

'No, thank you. You know why I'm here, and I'll need a clear head for that.'

'Chief Superintendent Schluter. Another Berlin CID man. Pity about him. He's waiting next door.' Korsakov opened the door to the next room. 'Please go in. Knock when you've finished.'

The room was empty except for a chair and table, and a stout wooden armchair in front of it. Straps on the arms and legs of this chair left no one in any doubt of the methods of interrogation employed here. The man at the barred window wore a mended drill suit which was the same dirty grey as his thin face.

'I'm Wilhelm Schluter. Don't suppose you want to shake hands with me.'

'Klaus Dietrich. Acting head of the Zehlendorf CID. I'm not your judge.' The inspector offered his hand.

Schluter gratefully took it. 'My successor, are you? What do you want from me, Herr Dietrich?'

'Your help. It's about the murder of a woman back in 1936. You were leading the inquiries at the time, and the files have disappeared. I'd be very glad to know all the details.'

'Why?'

'Three women have been tortured and murdered on our patch.'

Ah. Vaginally abused with a sharp object, strangled with a chain. All of them fair-haired and blue-eyed.'

Klaus Dietrich swallowed. 'How do you know?'

Schluter was pacing up and down. Finally he stopped right in front of Dietrich. 'It wasn't just one murder. There were six of them, between 1936 and 1939.'

'Six?' Dietrich was appalled.

'What the FBI calls a serial killer. At the time I read everything I could about similar cases in the USA, to get more information. That series of murders in Milwaukee, for instance. The murderer tied his victims to a tree and throttled them with his bare hands before raping them. Eighteen redhaired girls and women.'

'Six murders at Onkel Toms Hiitte, all following the same pattern?'

'Only the first was made public. When the second woman was killed, it was clear we were dealing with the same murderer, and that he was fixated on a certain type. The following cases confirmed it. Himmler commandeered the files and put his own people in charge. He ordered secrecy. A manic sex murderer didn't fit the picture of the healthy German nation. He forbade us to say anything more about it.'

And you obeyed his orders?'

'I went on working on the case on my own initiative. It was a challenge to any true investigator, and those Bavarian amateurs in the Gestapo weren't getting anywhere.'

'The murders were all similar?'

'Particularly in the way the murderer played cat and mouse with me. He knew I was after him, and he accepted the challenge.' Schluter laughed soundlessly. 'Case number three. Gerlinde Unger. Probationary teacher at the Zinnowald School. That was in the winter of '38. He buried her in a sandbox at the Onkel Tom U-Bahn station, leaving her face showing. She looked like a Madonna. I found her after he left a clue in my car, a bag of sand. Gritting sand for the roads was mixed with red salt at the time, so I knew where to look.'

'But you still didn't catch him.'

'I was hot on his heels. I hoped the tools he used would lead me to him. But the murders suddenly stopped at the beginning of the war.'

'Because the murderer was called up,' said Dietrich, excited. 'He was away right through the war. Now he's back, and killing again.'

Schluter stopped pacing, and pointed to the sturdy chair with its leather straps. 'They've stopped torturing me. They've got all I know out of me.'

'What advice would you give me, Herr Schluter?'

'Carry on where I left off. Look for the tools he uses, like I said.'

'The chain?'

Schluter did not reply. He was gazing into the distance. 'They'll shoot me soon now. A bullet in the back of the neck at close quarters. It's quick. My men and I did it thousands of times in the Ukraine. Goodbye. I wish you and our country a better future than the one we thought we must murder for.'

Klaus Dietrich hammered on the door. Lieutenant-Colonel Korsakov let him out. A serial killer, how interesting. I wish I could work with you in Berlin.' He had listened to the entire conversation.

Six hours in the sidings at Potsdam because of endless Russian military transports and two laborious inspections by Saxon railway police officers made the journey back to Berlin as bad as the journey out. They passed through Zehlendorf West station at snail's pace, which meant that Klaus Dietrich was able to jump out on the platform and land unharmed. From there it was only a few paces to the police station.

Another woman murdered, inspector.' Franke received him with this depressing news. And we're not a step further forward.'

Dietrich's reaction was matter-of-fact and professional. 'What do we know?'

'The murder was committed around ten yesterday evening, at 198 Argentinische Allee. The victim lived there. Name of Marlene Kaschke. Same type: blonde, blue eyes, worked for the Americans. Usherette in the Onkel Tom cinema. Strangled with a chain like the others. And the autopsy findings match the others too.'

'I'd like to see the scene of the crime. Is the car heated up? We can leave in five minutes.' Klaus Dietrich went to the men's room, where he pulled his trouser leg up above his knee. Groaning, he took off his prosthesis, then hopped over to the wash basin, ran it full and dipped in his reddened stump. The cold water felt wonderful. He dried the scar tissue with his handkerchief and sprinkled powder in the hollow depression at the top of the artificial leg. He always carried a small can of it with him.

The car was ready. Franke stepped on the accelerator, making the Opel cough indignantly. 'The toggle chain.' Dietrich reflected out loud. 'What does that tell us?'

'Nothing much,' said Franke, shrugging. 'You can get a thing like that in any pet shop, if they've opened again. It's what they call a throttle collar, meant for large dogs. If Fido pulls on the leash too hard it tightens round his neck. No, sir, we won't get far that way.'

Ten minutes later they were standing in front of the wrecked facade of Number 198. 'She was hanging from the third floor up there,' the sergeant told him. A tenant in the building found her, man named MUhlberger. As far as we can tell, the murderer pushed the dead woman over the edge. The belt of her dressing-gown got caught in those twisted steel bars, that's what stopped her falling.'

'Or else he was deliberately putting her on show up there,' said the inspector. 'He has a sense of the macabre. Think of the dead girl inside the roll of barbed wire, and that other poor woman in the garbage container.'

They climbed up to the third floor in the intact part of the building. 'Our colleagues have sealed off the apartment.' Franke tore away the official seal, which still bore the eagle and swastika.

A pot of geraniums, used glasses, plates and an empty bottle of champagne stood on the table in the bedroom. Three candles burnt down to their stubs were a reminder of yesterday evening's power cut. Klaus Dietrich looked at the poorly executed picture of a rutting stag in an autumnal landscape that was hanging over the chest of drawers, shaking his head. An order lay on it, under the picture. 'Cross of the French Legion d'Honneur. I wonder what junk dealer she got that from?'

Franke helped himself to a single prune wrapped in bacon which lay on one of the plates, and followed it up with a few peanuts. 'She had a visitor.' He pointed to the rumpled bedclothes.

'Her murderer?' The inspector opened the door to what had once been the living room. Less than a couple of paces lay between him and the drop to the street. 'Let's find out if the other tenants know anything.'

Franke knocked on the door of the second-floor apartment with a nameplate saying 'Miihlberger'. A man in a casual jacket opened it. A black dachshund was yapping between his check slippers. ' CID. Sergeant Franke. This is Inspector Dietrich.'

'You're lucky to find me home. I'm off work sick. I work for the Yanks.'

'We'd like to ask you a few questions, Herr Muhlberger.'

'Sure. I mean, I found her.'

'Can you tell us when that was?'

Around ten-fifteen. That's when I take Lehmann here walkies. Only a step or so outside the house because of the bloody curfew. Lehmann likes to do his business on that sandy strip where they're going to build the second carriageway some time. As I was standing there, I could see something pale dangling level with the third floor.'

Franke was sceptical. 'In spite of the dark?'

'I have a strong torch and a few batteries. I was works security guard for Leuna during the war. Only been back a few weeks.'

And you heard a motorcycle start up nearby, I expect,' said Dietrich casually.

'That's right. It moved away pretty quick. An NSU 300. I'd know that chugging exhaust in my sleep. Had a bike like that myself once. Hey, how'd you know, inspector?'

A guess. Go on, Herr Muhlberger.'

'Well, so I shone the beam of the torch up and saw her hanging there. Very sad, sure, but no great loss. Cheap little tart, she was.'

A woman in a headscarf and apron was coming up the stairs. 'That's what he says because she wouldn't have anything to do with him. Brauer, first floor,' she introduced herself. 'She was a good girl, she was, just wanted to be left alone. Who knows what she'd been through.'

'Did she have many men visitors?' asked Franke.

Frau Brauer shook her head. 'Hardly at all.'

'Except the bloke that did her in,' Muhlberger said. 'Fellow with a dimple in his chin.'

Inspector Dietrich pricked up his ears. 'You saw him?'

You bet your life. Just before ten, it was. Come on in, gents. Not you, Frau Brauer.' Frau Brauer moved away with an injured air. The police officers followed Muhlberger into his apartment, as Lehmann growled with hostility. 'Where was I? Yes, right, so just before ten I hear someone coming down from the third floor. I open my door. After all, you want to know who's hanging around the place in these difficult times. Had a candle in his hand. Probably helped himself to it up there so's not to fall down the stairs. I saw the dimple in his chin quite clearly.'

The sergeant was not satisfied. 'Can you describe him in more detail?'

'Had a dyed uniform jacket on.'

A German one?'

'Nope, it wasn't German.'

Franke took a framed photograph off the sideboard. It showed a younger Mi hlberger astride a motorcycle, his booted feet braced in the sand to left and right of it. He was wearing gauntlets, and had pushed his protective goggles high up on his leather helmet, just like his companion. Both their faces were stained with dust.

'My mate Kalkfurth and me,' said Miihlberger proudly. After a crosscountry in the Grunewald before the war. We were in the NSKK, the National Socialist Motorcycle Corps. We did some pretty good cross-country runs in those days. It wasn't all bad back then.'