Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘Is it too early for a suspect of your own, Captain?’

Reinhardt looked back at Freilinger, at the shift and slither of his hands. ‘Yes, sir. Too early.’

‘The most likely, in your opinion?’

‘Sir, respectfully, I must decline to be drawn on that.’

‘Oh?’ Freilinger’s hands paused in their movements, fingers interlinking and falling still. ‘Your next steps, Captain,’ he said, dropping the subject.

‘Sir, I have an appointment with Inspector Padelin tomorrow to speak with members of Vukic’s production team. I will also speak with Major Gord. He is in the propaganda companies and was mentioned by Vukic’s mother as being friends with her daughter. I will be visiting a nightclub tonight that Hendel and Vukic apparently frequented. I also hope I may have greater success with the Feldgendarmerie in reviewing their traffic records.’

‘Yes, that you should have,’ rasped Freilinger. ‘I do not know what happened with my request, but I made it in good time and order. Becker may be playing games with you, and I’m sure not much I could say would change your mind about that. But someone over there is not treating this with the urgency I requested. If you do not have what you need tomorrow morning, I will personally intervene.’

‘Sir, in addition to their traffic records, I would like to see a list of attendees at the planning conference for Operation Schwarz.’ He did not mention he had completely forgotten about it. He opened his notebook to the page he had marked. ‘We were briefed about it last week, on Tuesday,’ he said, scanning his notes. ‘Final preparations for Operation Schwarz. All divisional commanders. Hotel Austria, in Ilidza.’

‘Why do you need that?’

‘I have Vukic’s murder taking place close, far too close, to a gathering of soldiers who could have stepped out of her photos. I find it hard to believe she would not have known of such a gathering and taken steps to attend it. Personally and professionally, it would have been well worth her while to have done so. Additionally, I must assume the murderer was affected by what he had done. Emotionally, and physically. It would have been next to impossible for a civilian to move around unseen out there at that time. But a soldier might have been able to.’

Freilinger watched him from under hooded eyes. ‘That information could be useful, and I could get it for you. But I will not give it to you until you can satisfy me more that there is a link.’

‘Sir, I must protest,’ replied Reinhardt. He clenched his fingers hard around his notebook. ‘How can I make a link if information is denied to me simply because of whom it might importune?’

‘Reinhardt,’ said Freilinger, as he shook a mint from his tin, holding it between the tips of his fingers. ‘I will not have you pestering every officer of general staff rank as to his whereabouts and whether he was familiar, or even intimate, with a woman like Vukic. Not without very good information that such questioning would be merited. Certainly not at this time.’

‘Sir, what you call “pestering” I would call -’

‘Call it what you want, Reinhardt,’ Freilinger interrupted. Reinhardt felt a rush of blood rise to his face and knew that it showed. ‘Find out she was there; that would be a start. Establish that she knew any of the officers attending. That would be another. But I’m not having you pestering senior officers and their staff with this. Not until you have a lot more to pester them with.’ He fixed Reinhardt with his cold blue eyes as he popped the mint into his mouth. ‘Dismissed.’

Reinhardt drove himself back to the barracks. The duty officer gave him a letter that, from the handwriting, was from Brauer, and he turned the envelope in his hands as he went back up to his room, feeling suddenly drained. He flopped onto his bed, watching the long light of the sun as it shone through his window, resting the envelope on his chest. A drink would be nice. In the little park in front of the barracks, down by the river. Or maybe on the square. He closed his eyes.

The grass is heavy with a night’s rain. The smoke from a thousand cook fires drifts through the trees like mist. The rustle and creak of the accoutrements on the men around the terrified young officer sound like thunder. Across the meadow, shapes move in the trees, commands shouted in a strange language. Somewhere, artillery rumbles across the sky. Grey-clad infantry are drawn up in ranks to either side, and the young Reinhardt tries desperately to swallow, finds he cannot. The rustling and shifting of the men suddenly quiets, and Reinhardt feels someone behind him. He turns, and the colonel is looking at him with those grey eyes. From across the meadow comes a guttural roar.

‘Ouraaah! Ouraaaaaaah!’

The colonel rests a gloved hand on the lieutenant’s shoulder. ‘Are you frightened, sir?’ All the lieutenant can do is nod. The colonel nods back, squeezes his shoulder firmly, leather gloves creaking softly. ‘Remember,’ he says, as another battle cry rolls from the woods opposite, and the dim shapes swell and coalesce into a mass of men, rifles tipped with bayonets swaying into the wind of their passage, ‘so are they.’

Reinhardt gasped and sat up, the letter falling to the floor. A thin film of sweat covered his head, and the light had lengthened, but not by much. He could have been asleep only a few minutes, but the dream… He had not dreamed that one in a long time. His first taste of action, at the Battle of Kowel. The first time he had met the colonel. Tomas Meissner. The man who all but became the father he had always wanted, and a centre around which to build a life. Until he met Carolin and found that his centre was only one of two competing poles of attraction, and him in the middle. He had not contacted him in a while now. That was wrong of him, even if he had been told it would have to be that way. Reinhardt owed the man his life, many times over.

He leaned down and picked up the letter, then walked to the window. The park in front was in shade, and there was a band playing this evening. He could see them warming up, but he fancied something else. Picking up a fresh pack of cigarettes, he walked back out past the sentries and headed upriver. He crossed at the Emperor’s Bridge, along a little alleyway and onto Bascarsija Square over to a small cafe on its western side. He sat at a table, ordered Turkish coffee from a thin waiter with distant eyes, and lit a cigarette, watching the world go by, letting his mind drift over the case and the slow shuffle of people along and through and around the square.

Women went by hunched under the burden of food or firewood, followed by an old man who leaned heavily on a cane. A pair of policemen with rifles on their shoulders; three children and their mother who gave them a wide berth. Men washed their hands and feet in the fountain at the top of the square, and the hammers of the metalsmiths in the tiny alleys that wound around the foot of the old Ottoman mosque that stood at the corner of the square never seemed to stop. The roofs of the wooden-walled shops and cafes that lined the square were all of red tile. A couple of shops had swastika flags hanging over the entrances, or the NDH’s red-and-white checkerboard sahovnica , more an invitation to the soldiers who usually thronged the city than out of any political allegiance, he was sure. A group of tank officers in black uniforms saluted him as they went by and vanished into the alleys to visit the craft shops that sold trays and plates and cups of beaten and worked metal, and beer tankards with Gruss aus Sarajevo on them that the men sent home as souvenirs.

What little joy this city’s citizens had, it seemed, they took together, in places like this, and it gave Reinhardt some peace of mind to watch them. Friends walked with friends, and couples strolled together. Children played across the square’s cobbles. Elsewhere, in the ruins of the Jewish neighbourhoods, in the squalor where the thousands of refugees from the countryside eked out a precarious existence, and in the Serb quarters where people moved cautiously the city was dark, crouched around itself. And always, above and around, the mountains that sometimes seemed to cradle the town in the folds of their slopes, and sometimes seemed poised to clench and crush it.