The Murderer in Ruins (12 page)

Stave’s colleagues filed out of his office, smiles on their faces, whispering to one another. Adrenalin flowing. Eager for the hunt.

I
t took barely half an hour to walk from the CID HQ to the Hansaplatz. Stave walked across the Lombard Bridge with his coat collar pulled up high and his head down. The Outer Alster on his left was a great blue-white expanse of ice, tinted pink by the pale afternoon sun. Two children were skating in squiggly patterns over the ice, a few couples walking over it uncertainly. Stave made a face. Icy surfaces were always a good excuse to slip and grab hold of one’s partner for support. A certain romance, even when it was 20 degrees below.

The quickest way would have been to go straight to the station, and then turn left towards Hansaplatz, but Stave decided to take a different route. It was true that nobody in the St Georg black market knew him, but he regularly hung around the station, asking about his son. So he took the back streets through St Georg until he came to Brenner Strasse, which would lead him into the Hansaplatz on the opposite side from the station. He passed by the Würzburger Hof hotel where the lads from Department S last autumn had unearthed several barrels of preserving alcohol stolen from the State Institute for Zoology. The thieves had also taken the glass jars complete with their content: tapeworms, lizards and snakes. The preserving alcohol was palmed off on the black market as home-made ‘double caraway schnapps’ at 500 Reichsmarks per litre. By the time the authorities had got the tip-off and managed to raid the store, almost half of it had gone down the throats of unsuspecting drinkers: 10,000 litres of tapeworm happiness.

At the end of Brenner Strasse two teenage layabouts were hanging
around, keeping watch. They gave him no more than a bored passing glance. Stave was hardly the only one heading for Hansaplatz. Men in long overcoats and flat caps; old women with wicker baskets; a one-legged veteran scouring the ground for cigarette butts and almost falling on his face every time he bent down to pick one up; workers from the port; men with bulging worn briefcases; two Chinese standing by the entrance to the Lenz bar.

Stave wandered amongst the throng. Slowly he began to make out a pattern, like waves on an ocean, like the ripples created by a stone tossed into the water. There would be quiet whisperings and then suddenly off would come an overcoat or a briefcase lid would be opened, cigarettes and Reichsmarks would pass from hand to hand, each exchange done quickly, inconspicuously.

In the entrance to an apartment block a young woman was offering a pair of men’s shoes: ‘400 Reichsmarks,’ she whispered, a flurry of motion and the shoes went to an elderly man with a briefcase who handed her something in return, then both walked off in opposite directions. An old man was offering bread coupons to three women standing round him clearly outraged by the price. The old boy looked round nervously, obviously an old soldier, with boots too big for him, in a dyed Wehrmacht greatcoat held together with safety pins, and pulled out a tin can from his pocket: ‘Butter two nine.’ 290 Reichmarks for one pound. Some smugglers must have brought a big load through the control points, otherwise it wouldn’t be anywhere near so cheap. Either that or it’s not the real thing. Two men were whispering together in a doorway and then suddenly there was an aroma of coffee in the air, before the banknotes changed hands, lots of banknotes. An old, careworn woman disappeared with one of the Chinese into the bar. A boy, barely 14 years old, was heedlessly calling out ‘Flints’, ‘Flints for cigarette lighters, just 18 Reichsmarks!’ Another teenager was peddling Lucky Strikes, seven Reichsmarks each. Stave opened his ears and let the prices roll over him: ‘Wehrmacht cutlery, rust-free, four-piece, very useful for refugees – 23 Reichsmarks. A ball of yarn – 18 Reichsmarks. A
pound of sugar – 80 Reichsmarks. A month’s food rations – 1,000 Reichsmarks.’

We must have a word with the man selling the ration card, thought Stave to himself. Most workers and office employees earned no more than 50 Reichsmarks a week. If you had to keep your nose to the grindstone for six weeks to buy a pound of butter, then you really were poor – and ready to deal yourself on the black market. Or to take risks.

Watches, gold coins, dollar bills in shoe polish tins. Two metres of zinc guttering. Three freshly caught trout. A clean false identity card to get through the denazification process. Blank passports. A tiny Persian rug. Penicillin from Allied supplies. A leather suitcase. A woman’s blouse.

But no false teeth, no truss, no medallion.

Damn it, thought Stave, the boy from the search team was right; how on earth could you link any of the objects for sale here to one of the victims? Could the blouse have belonged to the young woman? Did the old man pull the piece of guttering out of the rubble and get himself killed for it?

‘P
olice!’

The word resounded across the square, like the warning cry of some Stone Age caveman.

Police helmets, green overcoats, truncheons cut down the side streets, screaming women, obscenely cursing boys. People pushing, shoving, clanking everywhere as tin cans, Wehrmacht cutlery, spectacle frames, work tools land on the cobbles along with cigarettes, false identity cards and bundles of Reichsmarks.

The experienced dealers realise straight away that they’re caught and immediately dispose of the evidence. It’s gone for good one way or another but if they don’t find anything on you the penalty is less severe.

However their customers are novices. They clutch their booty and run for it, into an alleyway, into the next doorway, into a bar. But the police are suddenly everywhere, staring at them fiercely or
maybe just laughing maliciously at them, even raising their hefty truncheons. But they don’t need to use them; it’s enough to bark out orders, then march towards the mass of people, crowding them ever closer together.

Stave cursed, pushing his way through the crowd, pushing and kicking his way through towards the man who had the ration card to sell. The man is not making a fuss, the ration card has almost certainly been dropped on the cobbles somewhere. He’s young, pale, dark hair shaved to a millimetre length, a horrible scar on his left cheek as if he’d been struck by lightning.

A former soldier, Stave reckoned. He had to be careful.

The chief inspector pushed an old woman to one side and found himself next to the man, took out his police ID and held it under his nose.

‘CID!’ he shouted at him.

There was more he wanted to say, read the man his rights for example, but all of a sudden a fist hit him in the face. It went black before his eyes and he could taste the salt of his own blood. Not very good manners, Stave thought to himself as the pain in his head diminished.

The younger man had turned, trying to flee. But he faced a wall of bodies. He pushed the old woman Stave had already shoved out of the way brusquely to the ground. But one foot got caught in her shopping basket, leaving him jumping up and down, swearing and kicking at the wickerwork.

Stave was on him in a split second, forcing his arm up behind his back and throwing him down on the cobbles so that the man cried out. The crack of ribs breaking. With the taste of his own blood still in his mouth, Stave leapt on him, both knees on his breastbone, and heard the crack of another. The dark-haired man didn’t cry out any more, just gurgled.

‘Nice move!’ somebody called.

Stave turned around and recognised the kid from the search team who had somehow fought his way through the crowd.

‘Judo,’ he replied, coughing, as he got to his feet and smoothed his hair. Eugene Hölzel, an average-sized man with yellow horn-rimmed glasses had turned up at the Hamburg Criminal Police department a year ago. He turned out to have been German judo champion several times over. The Brits had banned him from indulging in his sport other than to train the police. Stave, rather naïvely, imagined the training might help him overcome his limp. Now he thought to himself with no little satisfaction, at last Hölzel’s torture had been worth it, as he watched two uniformed policeman lead away the man, who was still bent double.

‘I’ll interrogate him first,’ Stave told the uniforms.

M
en, women and a few children were all lined up against the wall of a big grimy apartment block. The Hansaplatz was covered with a thick layer of snow, as well as tins, boxes, paper rustling in the icy wind and a few things that were unidentifiable at a distance. A few of the policemen were chasing after Reichsmarks whirling in the air.

Stave wondered idly how many of the notes would ever be handed in. His burst lip was no longer bleeding but it had swollen up. I just hope I don’t dribble like a drunk during the interrogations, he thought. The dark-haired character would go down for six months. That’s if he wasn’t linked to the killings, in which case he’d be for the noose.

The uniformed police were dragging the prisoners two by two on to the backs of trucks that had come down Brenner Strasse. One or two women were crying, a few men were cursing the police, but most were calm. They were tired. Resigned to their fate.

Stave’s mind went back to other prisoners, thrown on to the back of a truck by the police in broad daylight, in the middle of town. It was only a few years back. Would it all never end? And who was to say that this was more justified than what happened back then? He had to force himself to think of the two strangulation victims, and that their murderer might be amongst those being loaded on to the back of these trucks.

‘Back to HQ,’ he ordered the teams. ‘It’s going to be a long night. I wouldn’t mind if somebody brought a pound of the coffee lying around here with them so we could all have a decent cup.’ But of course, nobody touched the confiscated goods. They were all honest German officials. And besides, there were a couple of British occupation troops watching them.

B
ack at head office Stave, Maschke and a couple of the other CID men took charge of the interrogation rooms. The uniformed police would bring the prisoners from the overcrowded holding cells.

‘Bring me the dark-haired guy first,’ Stave said again.

However a few minutes later Stave would find himself in the situation of a poker player who has overestimated the strength of his hand. By a long shot.

The suspect, sitting bent over and pale on the chair in front of him, had a perfect alibi. He had been ‘organising’ food supplies in another city in the British occupation zone to bring them to Hamburg where people were prepared to pay much higher prices. But he had been spotted and arrested. The police had only found half his wares, but for that he was given two weeks behind bars. One call to his colleagues in Lüneburg told Stave that on the probable night of the murder, the twentieth of January, the man in front of him had indeed been sitting in a nice clean cell, 60 kilometres away from the ruins of Hamburg. Stave had the man led away, and wrote a report for the British judge who would take over the next day.

‘Next!’ he called to the policeman waiting outside, despondency clearly audible in his voice.

Next was a pale student, father reported missing at Stalingrad, mother killed by a bomb. He had 80 cigarettes and 17.40 in Reichsmarks on him. Next: a practised black marketeer with a record as a pimp, with 3,000 Reichsmarks but no contraband. Next: a housewife with a pound of butter. Next: a boy with no contraband, no cigarettes, no money. Stave sent him straight home. Next: an old man trying to palm off two old watches.

By two in the morning Stave felt as if somebody had driven a Sherman tank over him. Erna Berg brought him a cup of tea, but the world went black again when the hot tea touched his burst lip.

His eyes watered as during each interrogation he flicked through the CID records of known criminals: their description, fingerprints, distinguishing marks, last known address, front and side-profile photos.

He was hungry, cold. He felt a great temptation to smash the skull of the next person dragged into the room. It turned out to be Anna von Veckinhausen.

O
ne look in her dark eyes and he realised she was as angry as him. This could get tricky, the chief inspector thought to himself.

He decided to be polite, offered her a seat without mentioning that it was not the first time that he had questioned her. Maybe she hoped he wouldn’t recognise her amongst the dozens of others? She, likewise, gave no indication that they had ever met. Impressive self-control, thought Stave, a possible indication of a cold heart.

He leafed through the record book. No mention of her. Then he glanced at a piece of paper with her details that one of the uniformed police had handed him. Born 1 March 1915, Königsberg. No further information as to her family or when she moved to Hamburg. At least now he understood her accent.

‘What were you dealing on the black market?’ he asked her.

‘I wasn’t dealing,’ she said angrily. ‘I was just leaving the station and crossing the Hansaplatz when your…’

‘Raid,’ Stave genially supplied the word.

‘…your “action” began,’ she continued. ‘I already told the officer who arrested me that it was a mistake. But he wouldn’t even listen. Just like the Gestapo.’

The chief inspector ignored the deliberate provocation, although Anna von Veckinhausen wasn’t totally wrong. He looked down at his documents. ‘We found 537 Reichsmarks on your person,’ he said calmly. ‘Can you tell me what you hoped to buy on the black market with a sum like that?’

‘I don’t have to tell you anything at all. My money is my money.’

‘I was just wondering if you had sold something just before the raid. Maybe something that a couple of days ago had belonged to a man of about 70?’

Anna von Veckinhausen looked as if she were about to jump to her feet. But instead she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I thought you might have forgotten me,’ she mumbled.

Stave allowed himself a brief smile. ‘I wouldn’t be in this job if I had.’

‘I didn’t sell anything on the black market. I really was on my way from the station. You arrested everybody on the Hansaplatz. Ask any one of them.’