Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘Well, I never got one,’ said Reinhardt.

Padelin went still in his chair. ‘You met her?’

‘Even danced with her. At Christmas. She was invited to a party for the officers.’

Padelin turned back to his food. ‘ Picku materinu ,’ he muttered. He glanced up at Reinhardt. ‘Means you were lucky.’

‘I suppose I was,’ Reinhardt agreed. That memory came again, the intense conversation, her blue eyes boring into his as he talked of the trenches.

‘Me too, I met her,’ said Padelin. He was staring up at the hills. ‘I was her police escort. Once in Mostar, and once here. She was very kind.’

Reinhardt could imagine the effect a woman like Vukic would have on someone like Padelin. ‘She was born here?’ Padelin nodded again around a mouthful of burek . ‘And you?’

‘No, I am from Mostar.’

‘So she was Ustase? A member of the Party?’

‘Yes. You know what the Party says about women? It is the same as you Nazis. The woman, she is to look after the house, produce sons for the motherland.’ He said this without any trace of irony. ‘It was hard for her, to be a woman in that world. She must have needed to be tough to survive. Maybe is why she went to the difficult places. To the Eastern Front. To Norway. To the desert. On a U-boat. She did humanitarian work. With the Red Cross. And with some of the other humanitarian organisations. She was… how do you say it?’ he asked, reaching for his glass. ‘About the rules, and the… the…’

‘The exception that proves the rule?’

Padelin nodded in his slow way as he drank his yogurt. ‘That’s it. She was the exception that proves the rules.’

‘What was she doing here?’

The detective sat back in his chair and ran a hand around the back of his neck. ‘She had just finished making a film about army operations in eastern Bosnia, and doing this welfare work with the Croatian Army soldiers and the Ustase. She was up by Visegrad.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘There was an interview with her in the newspaper two, three days ago,’ Padelin replied, complacently.

‘So we should speak to her crew, then?’

‘It is being arranged. Probably only for tomorrow, though.’

‘Speaking of filming and photography, did you see her darkroom? It had been turned upside down. Vandalised,’ he explained, seeing Padelin’s frown at the words. ‘I think there may be material missing from there. Photographs. Maybe some film.’

Padelin grunted. ‘Interesting,’ he said, sounding anything but.

‘What about the bodies? Anything strike you?’ Padelin frowned. ‘Anything interesting occur to you?’ Reinhardt clarified.

‘It was ugly.’

Reinhardt nodded noncommittally. ‘So, what are your impressions? Who did it?’ he asked, biting down on his growing frustration with this man.

Padelin yawned, hugely, and scratched his chin. ‘Me? Partisans, Communists, Jews, Serbs, take your pick. She liked none of them, and none of them liked her. She lived alone. She was an easy target. You know, she was offered a police guard, several times, but she said no.’

Reinhardt pinched the base of his nose. ‘You know, Padelin, in my experience you don’t usually have to look far in murder cases to find who did it. More often than not, it’s someone the victim knew. Someone in their entourage. Their family, even.’

The detective heard him out with those heavy-lidded eyes of his. ‘You think I don’t know that?’

‘Of course not,’ said Reinhardt. Too quickly, he thought. ‘I’m just saying that before you head off rounding up suspected Partisan sympathisers, let’s work through this methodically first.’

‘Well, maybe we can do both,’ replied Padelin. He twined his big fingers together, working them against each other. ‘But it seems self-evident to me, as it should to you as a former detective, that there is an innate criminal nature that some people have. Some races also have it. The Jews. The Serbs. Gypsies. They cannot help themselves, and they will commit crimes.’

Reinhardt had not heard anything like this in years, not since the Nazis took over the Berlin police academy and began teaching this sort of rubbish.

‘I should tell you,’ Padelin continued, ‘Zagreb is already demanding results.’ He looked directly at Reinhardt, who raised his eyebrows questioningly. ‘I have explained. Vukic, she was popular, and she was connected. Her friends in Zagreb, they want this solved quickly. And efficiently.’

Reinhardt sat back, and nodded slowly. ‘You’re saying what?’

‘Putkovic told me the governor is calling already the chief of police. The chief wants results, so he can tell the governor, and the governor can tell Zagreb.’

Reinhardt found himself thinking back to his last, dark days in Berlin’s Kripo when police work ceased to be distinct from politics. ‘I am not sure the German authorities will be happy having the investigation into Hendel’s death treated as a political matter.’

Padelin blinked. ‘Our priority is Vukic.’ Reinhardt took a long, slow breath. It looked like Freilinger was right. The Croats were interested only in her. ‘Convoy is gone,’ Padelin said suddenly. ‘We should get going, maybe.’ Reinhardt pulled his wallet from his pocket, but Padelin stopped him. ‘I paid already,’ he said as he swung on his jacket.

‘Thank you,’ said Reinhardt, as they walked out from under the shade into the blare of the sun. The dog looked at them reproachfully as Hueber shooed it away. Reinhardt felt the kubelwagen ’s engine shudder into life behind him as he sat back in his seat. Claussen accelerated back onto the road, not a moment too soon, as another convoy was visible to the west as they turned. The road ahead was clear, though, and the trip back to the city passed in relative silence.

As they approached Marijin Dvor, Reinhardt’s eyes were drawn towards the cathedral on the left, standing tall and white in the sun. He watched it a moment, then turned in his seat. ‘Where does the mother live?’

‘In Bistrik. Not so far from your barracks.’

‘Very well. Claussen, take us back to the barracks, please. The inspector and I will continue from there.’

As they sped down Kvaternik, swerving around a tram, Reinhardt felt his gaze drawn to the ruin of the Ashkenazi synagogue on the other bank, sacked on the second day of the German occupation back in April 1941, its four towers like blackened chimneys. At Cumurija Bridge, where Gavrilo Princip had assassinated the archduke in June 1914, Claussen crossed the river and turned left and up to the barracks. Claussen stopped the car across from the main entrance and left the engine running as he and Hueber got out. Reinhardt motioned to Padelin to get in the front as he as well stepped out of the car.

‘Hueber, you’re dismissed, with my thanks. Claussen, you are assigned to me, according to Major Freilinger. I need you to find where Hendel was quartered and start going through his things. See what you can find. Anything that linked her to him.’

‘What, other than she was a bit good-looking, and he liked to chase skirts?’

Reinhardt chewed his lower lip and shook his head. ‘Just a gut feeling, but he wasn’t her type. No doubt he’d have gone for her if he could.’

‘So something else was on offer?’

‘She was a journalist, as well as a filmmaker. Maybe she was onto something, needed to tell someone about it.’

‘Well. I wonder what it could have been to have Hendel out there at the time he was.’ Reinhardt motioned for him to go on. ‘The doctor said the time of death was sometime late Saturday night. If Hendel wasn’t out there in the expectation of getting into bed with her, then what was he doing there at that time?’