Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

This fact troubled Kohl, and Janssen caught his boss’s expression.

“Because,” the inspector explained, “he not only cut the labels from his victim, he took the time to find the shell casing.”

“So. He is a professional.”

“As I say, Janssen, when making deductions, never state your conclusions as if they are certainties. When you do that, your mind instinctively closes out other possibilities. Say, rather, that our suspect may have a high degree of diligence and attention to detail. Perhaps a professional criminal, perhaps not. It could also be that a rat or bird made off with the shiny object, or a schoolboy picked it up and fled at the terrifying sight of a dead man. Or even that the killer is a poor man who wishes to reuse the brass.”

“Of course, Inspector,” Janssen said, nodding as if memorizing Kohl’s words.

In the short time they’d worked together, the inspector had learned two things about Janssen: that the young man was incapable of irony and that he was a remarkably fast learner. The latter quality was a godsend to the impatient inspector. Regarding the former, though, he wished the boy joked more frequently; policing is a profession badly in need of humor.

Janssen finished taking the fingerprints, which he’d done expertly.

“Now dust the cobblestones around him and take photographs of any prints you find. The killer might’ve been clever enough to take the labels but not so smart to avoid touching the ground when he did so.”

After five minutes of spreading the fine powder around the body, Janssen said, “I believe there are some here, sir. Look.”

“Yes. They’re good. Record them.”

After he photographed the prints the young man stood back and took additional pictures of the corpse and the scene. The inspector walked slowly around the body. He pulled his magnifying monocle from his vest’s watch pocket again and placed around his neck its green cord, braided for him as a Christmas present by young Hanna. He examined a spot on the cobblestones near the body. “Flakes of leather, it seems.” He looked at them carefully. “Old and dry. Brown. Too stiff to be from gloves. Maybe shoes or a belt or old satchel or suitcase that either the killer or victim was carrying.”

He scooped these flakes up and placed them in another brown envelope then moistened the gum and sealed it.

“We have a witness, sir,” one of the younger Schupo officers called. “Though he’s not very cooperative.”

Witness. Excellent! Kohl followed the man back toward the mouth of the alley. There, another Schupo officer was prodding forward a man in his forties, Kohl estimated. He was dressed in worker’s clothes. His left eye was glass and his right arm dangled uselessly at his side. One of the four million who survived the War but were left with bodies forever changed by the unfathomable experience.

The Schupo officer pushed him toward Kohl.

“That will do, Officer,” the inspector said sternly. “Thank you.” Turning to the witness, he asked, “Now, your card.”

The man handed over his ID. Kohl glanced at it. He forgot everything on the document the instant he returned it, but even a cursory examination of papers by a police officer made witnesses extremely cooperative.

Though not in all cases.

“I wish to be helpful. But as I told the officer, sir, I didn’t actually see much of anything.” He fell silent.

“Yes, yes, tell me what you actually did see.” An impatient gesture from Kohl’s thick hand.

“Yes, Inspector. I was scrubbing the basement stairs at Number forty-eight. There.” He pointed out of the alley to a town house. “As you can see. I was below the level of the sidewalk. I heard what I took to be a backfire.”

Kohl grunted. Since ’33 no one but an idiot assumed backfires; they assumed bullets.

“I thought nothing of it and continued scrubbing.” He proved this by pointing to his damp shirt and trousers. “Then ten minutes later I heard a whistle.”

“Whistle? A police whistle?”

“No, sir, I mean, as someone would make through his teeth. It was quite loud. I glanced up and saw a man walk out of the alley. The whistle was to hail a taxi. It stopped in front of my building and I heard the man ask the driver to take him to the Summer Garden restaurant.”

Whistling? Kohl reflected. This was unusual. One whistled for dogs and horses. But to summon a taxi this way would demean the driver. In Germany all professions and trades were worthy of equal respect. Did this suggest that the suspect was a foreigner? Or merely rude? He jotted the observation into his notebook.

“The number of the taxi?” Kohl had to ask, of course, but received the expected response.

“Oh, I have no idea, sir.”

“Summer Garden.” This was a common name. “Which one?”

“I believe I heard ‘Rosenthaler Street.’”

Kohl nodded, excited to find such a good lead this early in an investigation. “Quickly – what did the man look like?”

“I was below the stairs, sir, as I said. I saw only his back as he hailed the car. He was a large man, more than two meters tall. Broad but not fat. He had an accent, though.”

“What kind? From a different region of Germany? Or a different country?”

“Similar to someone from the south, if anything. But I have a brother near Munich and it sounded different still.”

“Outside the country, perhaps? Many foreigners here now, with the Olympics.”

“I don’t know, sir. I’ve spent all my life in Berlin. And I’ve only been out of the fatherland once.” He nodded toward his useless arm.

“Did he have a leather satchel?”

“Yes, I believe so.”

To Janssen, Kohl said, “The likely source of the leather flakes.” He turned back. “And you didn’t see his face?”

“No, sir. As I say.”

Kohl’s voice lowered. “If I were to tell you that I won’t take your name, so you would not be further involved, could you perhaps remember better what he looked like?”

“Honestly, sir, I did not see his face.”

“Age?”

The man shook his head. “All I know is that he was a big man and was wearing a light suit… I can’t say the color, I’m afraid. Oh, and on his head was a hat like Air Minister Göring wears.”

“What kind is that?” Kohl asked.

“With a narrow brim. Brown.”

“Ah, something helpful.” Kohl looked the janitor up and down. “Very well, you may go now.”

“Hail Hitler,” the man said with pathetic enthusiasm and offered a powerful salute, perhaps in compensation for the fact he needed to use his left arm for the gesture.

The inspector offered a distracted “Hail” and returned to the body. They quickly collected their equipment. “Let’s hurry. To the Summer Garden.”

They started back to the car. Willi Kohl winced, glancing down at his feet. Even wearing overpriced leather shoes stuffed with the softest of lamb’s wool did little to help his distraught toes and arches. Cobblestones were particularly brutal.

He was suddenly aware of Janssen, at his side, slowing. “Gestapo,” the young man whispered.

Dismayed, Kohl looked up and saw Peter Krauss, in a shabby brown suit and matching felt trilby hat, approach. Two of his assistants, younger men, about Janssen’s age, held back.

Oh, not now! The suspect might be at the restaurant this very moment, not suspecting that he’d been detected.

Krauss walked toward the two Kripo inspectors leisurely. Propaganda Minister Goebbels was always sending out Party photographers to stage pictures of model Aryans and their families to use in his publications. Peter Krauss could easily have been a subject for a hundred such pictures: He was a tall, slim, blond man. A former colleague of Kohl’s, Krauss had been invited to join the Gestapo because of his experience in the old Department 1A of the Kripo, which investigated political crimes. Just after the National Socialists came to power the department was spun off and became the Gestapo. Krauss was like many Prussian Germans: Nordic with some Slav blood in his veins but office gossip had it that he’d been invited to leave the Kripo for the job on Prince Albrecht Street only after changing his first name from Pietr, which sniffed of the Slavic.