Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

“How is this case coming, Willi? The Dresden Alley case?”

“Slowly, sir.” He added grimly, “Resources are occupied, it seems. Our resources.”

“Yes, something is going on. An alert of some sort.”

“Indeed.”

“Have you heard anything about it, I wonder?” Horcher asked.

“No, nothing.”

“But still we are under such pressure. They think the world is watching and one dead man near the Tiergarten might ruin the image of our city forever.” At Horcher’s level, irony was a dangerous luxury and Kohl could detect none in the man’s voice. “Any suspects?”

“Some aspects of his appearance, some small clues. That’s all.”

Horcher straightened the papers on his desk. “It would be helpful if the perpetrator was-”

“-a foreigner?” Kohl supplied.

“Exactly.”

“We shall see… I would like to do one thing, sir. The victim is as yet unidentified. This is a handicap. I would like to run a picture in The People’s Observer and the Journal and see if anyone recognizes him.”

Horcher laughed. “A picture of a dead body in the paper?”

“Without knowing the victim we are largely disadvantaged in the investigation.”

“I will send the matter to the propaganda office and see what Minister Goebbels has to say. It would have to be cleared with him.”

“Thank you, sir.” Kohl turned to leave. Then he paused. “One other matter, Chief of Inspectors. I am still waiting for that report from Gatow. It’s been a week. I was wondering if you perhaps had received it.”

“What was in Gatow? Oh, that shooting?”

“Two,” Kohl corrected. “Two shootings.”

In the first, two families, picnicking by the Havel River, southwest of Berlin, had been shot to death: seven individuals, including three children. The next day there’d been a second slaughter: eight laborers, living in caravans between Gatow and Charlottenburg, the exclusive suburb west of Berlin.

The police commandant in Gatow had never handled such a case and had one of his gendarmes call the Kripo for help. Raul, an eager young officer, had spoken to Kohl, and had sent photos of the crime scene to the Alex. Willi Kohl, hardened to homicide investigations, had nonetheless been shocked at the sight of the mothers and children gunned down. The Kripo had jurisdiction over all nonpolitical crimes anywhere in Germany, and Kohl wished to make the murders a priority.

But legal jurisdiction and allocation of resources were two very different matters, particularly in these crimes, where the victims were, Raul informed him, Jews and Poles, respectively.

“We’ll let the Gatow gendarmerie handle it,” Horcher had told him last week.

“Homicides of this magnitude?” Kohl had asked, both troubled and skeptical. The suburban and rural gendarmes investigated automobile accidents and stolen cows. And the chief of the Gatow constabulary, Wilhelm Meyerhoff, was a dull, lazy civil servant who couldn’t find his breakfast zwieback without help.

So Kohl had persisted with Horcher until he got permission to at least review the crime scene report. He’d called Raul and coached him in basic investigation techniques and had asked him to interview witnesses. The gendarme promised to send the report to Kohl as soon as his superior approved it. Kohl had received the photographs but no other materials.

Horcher now said, “I’ve heard nothing, Willi. But, please – Jews, Poles? We have other priorities.”

Kohl said thoughtfully, “Of course, sir. I understand. I only care that the Kosis don’t get away with anything.”

“The Communists? What does this have to do with them?”

“I didn’t form the idea until I saw the photographs. But I observed there was something organized about the killings – and there was no attempt to cover them up. The murders were too obvious to me. They seemed almost staged.”

Horcher considered this. “You’re thinking the Kosis wanted to make it appear that the SS or Gestapo were behind the killings? Yes, that’s clever, Willi. The red bastards would certainly stoop to that.”

Kohl added, “Especially with the Olympics, the foreign press in town. How the Kosis would love to mar our image in the eyes of the world.”

“I will look into the report, Willi. I’ll make some calls. A good thought on your part.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Now, go clear the Dresden Alley case. If our chief of police wants a blemish-free city, he shall have one.”

Kohl returned to his office and sat heavily in his chair, massaging his feet as he stared at the photographs of the two murdered families. It was nonsense what he had told Horcher. Whatever had happened in Gatow, it was not a Communist plot. But the National Socialists went for conspiracies like pigs for slop. These were games that had to be played. Ach, what an education he’d had since January of ’33.

He put the pictures back into the file folder labeled Gatow/Charlottenburg and set it aside. He then placed the brown envelopes of the evidence he’d collected that afternoon into a box, on which he wrote Dresden Alley Incident. He added the extra photographs of the fingerprints, the crime scene and the victim. He placed the box prominently on his desk.

Ringing up the medical examiner, he learned the doctor was at coffee. The assistant told him that Unidentified Corpse A 25-7-36-Q had arrived from Dresden Alley but he had no idea when it would be examined. By that night possibly. Kohl scowled. He had hoped the autopsy was at least in progress, if not finished. He hung up.

Janssen returned. “The Teletypes went out to the precincts, sir. I told them urgent.”

“Thank you.”

His phone buzzed and he answered. It was Horcher again.

“Willi, Minister Goebbels has said that we cannot display the picture of the dead man in the newspaper. I tried to convince him. I was at my most persuasive, I can tell you. I thought I would prevail. But in the end, I was not successful.”

“Well, Chief of Inspectors, thank you.” He hung up, thinking cynically: most persuasive, indeed. He doubted the call had even been made.

Kohl told his inspector candidate what the man had said. “Ach, and it will be days or weeks before a fingerprint examiner can even narrow down the prints we found. Janssen, take that picture of the victim… No, no, the other one – where he looks slightly less dead. Take it to our printing department. Have them print up five hundred etchings. Tell them we’re in a great hurry. Say it’s a joint Kripo/Gestapo matter. We can at least exploit Inspector Krauss since it was he who made us late for the Summer Garden. About which I am still perturbed, I must say.”

“Yes, sir.”

Just as Janssen returned, ten minutes later, the phone buzzed once more and Kohl lifted the handset. “Yes, Kohl here.”

“It is Georg Jaeger. How are you?”

“Georg! I am fine. Working this Saturday, when I’d hoped for the Lust-garten with my family. But so it goes. And you?”

“Working too. Always work.”

Jaeger had been a protégé of Kohl’s some years before. He was a very talented detective and after the Party had come to power had been asked to join the Gestapo. He’d refused and his blunt rejection had apparently offended some officials. He found himself back at the uniformed Order Police – a step down for a Kripo detective. As it turned out, though, Jaeger excelled at his new job too and soon rose to be in charge of the Orpo precinct in north-central Berlin; ironically he seemed far happier in his banished territory than in the intrigue-mired Alex.

“I am calling with what I hope is some help, Professor.”

Kohl laughed. He recalled that this was how Jaeger had referred to Kohl when they were working together. “What might that be?”