Philip Kerr - Berlin Noir

Inside, I walked across the floor of the central ticket hall towards the police barrier that had been erected in front of the lost property and left-luggage areas. I flashed my badge at the two men guarding the barrier and carried on through. As I rounded the corner Deubel met me halfway.

‘What have we got?’ I said.

‘Body of a girl in a trunk, sir. From the look and smell of her she’s been in there sometime. The trunk was in the left-luggage office.’

‘The professor here yet?’

‘Him and the photographer. They haven’t done much more than give her a dirty look. We wanted to wait for you.’

‘I’m touched by your thoughtfulness. Who found the mortal remains?’

‘I did, sir, with one of the uniformed sergeants in my squad.’

‘Oh? What did you do, consult a medium?’

‘There was an anonymous telephone call, sir. To the Alex. He told the desk sergeant where to find the body, and the desk sergeant told my sergeant. He rang me and we came straight down here. We located the trunk, found the girl and then I called you.’

‘An anonymous caller you say. What time was this?’

‘About twelve. I was just going off shift.’

‘I’ll want to speak to the man who took that call. You better get someone to check he doesn’t go off duty either, at least not until he’s made his report. How did you get in here?’

‘The night station-master, sir. He keeps the keys in his office when they close the left luggage.’ Deubel pointed at a fat greasy-looking man standing a few metres away, chewing the skin on the palm of his hand. ‘That’s him over there.’

‘Looks like we’re keeping him from his supper. Tell him I want the names and addresses of everyone who works in this section, and what time they start work in the morning. Regardless of what hours they work, I want to see them all here at the normal opening time, with all their records and paperwork.’ I paused for a moment, steeling myself for what was about to follow.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘Show me where.’

In the left-luggage office, Hans Illmann sat on a large parcel labelled ‘Fragile’, smoking one of his roll-ups and watching the police photographer set up his flashlights and camera-tripods.

‘Ah, the Kommissar,’ he said, eyeing me and standing. ‘We’re not long here ourselves, and I knew you’d want us to wait for you. Dinner’s a little overcooked, so you’ll need these.’ He handed me a pair of rubber gloves, and then looked querulously at Deubel. ‘Are you sitting down with us, inspector?’

Deubel grimaced. ‘I’d rather not, if you don’t mind, sir. Normally I would, but I’ve got a daughter about that age myself.’

I nodded. ‘You’d better wake up Becker and Korsch and get them down here. I don’t see why we should be the only ones to lose our rat.’

Deubel turned to go.

‘Oh, inspector,’ said Illmann, ‘you might ask one of our uniformed friends to organize some coffee. I work a great deal better when I’m awake. Also, I need someone to take notes. Can your sergeant write legibly, do you think?’

‘I assume he does, sir.’

‘Inspector, the one assumption that it is safe to make with regard to the educational standards that prevail in Orpo is that which allows only of the man being capable of completing a betting-slip. Find out for sure, if you wouldn’t mind. I’d rather do it myself than later have to decipher the Cyrillic scrawl of a more primitive life-form.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Deubel smiled thinly and went to carry out his orders.

‘I didn’t think he was the sensitive type,’ Illmann commented, watching him go. ‘Imagine a detective not wanting to see the body. It’s like a wine merchant declining to try a Burgundy he’s about to purchase. Unthinkable. Wherever do they find these face-slappers?’

‘Simple. They just go out and shanghai all the men wearing leather shorts. It’s what the Nazis call natural selection.’

On the floor at the back of the left-luggage office lay the trunk containing the body, covered with a sheet. We pulled up a couple of large parcels and sat down.

Illmann drew back the sheet, and I winced a little as the animal-house smell rose up to greet me, turning my head automatically towards the better air that lay behind my shoulder.

‘Yes, indeed,’ he murmured, ‘it’s been a warm summer.’

It was a full-sized steamer trunk, and made of good quality blue leather, with brass locks and studs – the kind you see being loaded on to those high-class passenger liners that sail between Hamburg and New York. For its solitary occupant, a naked girl of about sixteen years old, there was only one kind of journey, the more final kind, which remained to be embarked upon. Partly swathed in what looked like a length of brown curtain material, she lay on her back with her legs folded to the left, a bare breast arching upwards as if there was something underneath her. The head lay at an impossibly contradictory angle to the rest of her body, the mouth open and almost smiling, the eyes half closed and, but for the dried blood in her nostrils and the rope around her ankles, you might almost have thought the girl was in the first stages of awakening from a long sleep.

Deubel’s sergeant, a burly fellow with less neck than a hipflask and a chest like a sandbag, arrived with a notebook and pencil, and sat a little way apart from Illmann and me, sucking a sweet, his legs crossed almost nonchalantly, apparently undisturbed at the sight which lay before us.

Illmann looked appraisingly at him for a moment and then nodded, before beginning to describe what he saw.

‘An adolescent female,’ he said solemnly, ‘about sixteen years of age, naked, and lying inside a large trunk of quality manufacture. The body is covered partially with a length of brown cretonne, and the feet are bound with a piece of rope.’ He spoke slowly, with pauses between the phrases in order to allow the sergeant’s handwriting to keep pace with him.

‘Pulling the fabric away from the body reveals the head almost completely severed from the torso. The body itself shows signs of advancing decomposition, consistent with it having been in the trunk for at least four to five weeks. The hands show no signs of defence wounds, and I’m wrapping them for further examination of the fingers in the laboratory, although since she clearly bit her nails I expect I’ll be wasting my time.’ He took two thick paper bags out of his case and I helped him secure them over the dead girl’s hands.

‘Hallo, what’s this? Do my eyes deceive me, or is this a bloodstained blouse which I see before me?’

‘It looks like her BdM uniform,’ I said, watching him pick up first the blouse, and then a navy skirt.

‘How extraordinarily thoughtful of our friend to send us her laundry. And just when I thought he was becoming just a little bit predictable. First an anonymous telephone call to the Alex, and now this. Remind me to consult my diary and check that it’s not my birthday.’

Something else caught my eye, and I leant forward and picked the small square piece of card out of the trunk.

‘Irma Hanke’s identity card,’ I said.

‘Well that saves me the trouble, I suppose.’ Illmann turned his head towards the sergeant. ‘The trunk also contained the dead girl’s clothing and her identity card,’ he dictated.

Inside the card was a smudge of blood.

‘Could that be a fingermark, do you think?’ I asked him.

He took the card out of my hand and looked carefully at the mark. ‘Yes, it could. But I don’t see the relevance. An actual fingerprint would be a different story. That would answer a lot of our prayers.’

I shook my head. ‘It’s not an answer. It’s a question. Why would a psycho bother to look at his victim’s identity? I mean, the blood indicates that she was probably already dead, assuming it’s hers. So why does our man feel obliged to find out her name?’