Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘They’re saying, sir…’ He cut off, and Reinhardt looked back at the women. They were both staring at the boy like cats at a wounded bird. Hueber blushed bright red again. ‘They’re saying, at least, Miss Florica is saying, that Hendel, that is, Lieutenant Hendel, could not have Miss Vukic, so he used Anna as the next best thing,’ he finished desperately, his embarrassment written plain across his face. Anna’s face coloured, but when Hueber had finished speaking she held Reinhardt’s eyes nevertheless.

‘Very well,’ he said, finally. He brought his heels together and bowed his head to each of the women. ‘My apologies for the interruption, and my apologies especially,’ he said, looking at Florica, ‘for the way you were treated.’ The pair of them looked more than a little taken aback at the courtesy. ‘I wish you both good night.’

Clattering back down the steps, Reinhardt looked up at the stars. They shone bright here, even in the city. There was almost no light to rival them, just the mountains to frame and block them. Stepping back onto the street, he looked for a moment towards the looming bulk of Mount Trebevic to the south, along the rise and roll of its long summit where it cut the night sky in two, then turned back towards the car. In the darkness, with no one to see, he lifted his hand and smelled Anna’s perfume where it lingered faintly on the back of his fingers.

There was a metallic clack as Claussen stepped out of the shadows, putting the safety back on the MP 40. He had turned the kubelwagen around so it was pointing back towards the city, and he wasted no time in gunning the car down the narrow street and back towards the bridge.

Back in his room, Reinhardt slumped back against the door as he closed it, feeling drained. It had been one of the longest days he could remember in quite a while. The difficulty of thinking like a policeman again. The stress the city always engendered in him, with its labyrinthine character. The hostility of the people. The mistrust of his own side. But in the middle of that, he felt a sense of lightness. Of completion. A thread to long ago, a memory of a better man, better times.

He sat on his bed, emptying his pockets on the table. He poured a drink and knocked it back, poured another, and unholstered his pistol, watching the light ripple across its matte surface. He turned it up, looking down the shiny roundel of its muzzle. His finger slid across the bruise at his temple, then gently beneath his nose, smelling Anna’s scent. He reached for his glass. And then his mind went suddenly blank, and he saw it – the motorcycle and sidecar, parked in front of Vukic’s. Two men. Hendel and Krause. God, what a fool he’d been.

He looked down at his hands. He saw himself as if from far away, with the eyes of the man he used to be, and he did not like what he saw. Pistol and glass. His two faithful companions. This macabre ritual. With a stir of self-loathing, he put them both away, kicking off his boots, throwing an arm over his face. It was enough for today. Tomorrow would bring as much, if not more.

TUESDAY

As arranged with Padelin, Reinhardt arrived in front of police headquarters at nine o’clock the next morning. For once, he had slept well, and it was only the rumble of heavy convoy traffic down the Appelquai that had finally dragged him from bed. The receptionist at police headquarters called up to Padelin and indicated to Reinhardt that he should wait. Reinhardt pantomimed waiting outside, and the clerk nodded vigorously that he had understood. He bought a couple of newspapers from a kiosk and found a little patch of sunlight and scanned the headlines and some of the text.

Vukic’s murder had made the front page of all of them. The Novi Beher had a big picture of her meeting Pavelic, the leader of the Croats. He could not make out whether a suspect had been named, although he saw Putkovic’s and Padelin’s names. After a while, he folded the papers, lit a cigarette, and waited, thinking back to the morning briefing at HQ. The Feldgendarmerie had reported that the police had been shaking the city down all night, cars showing up here with suspects for interrogation. Reinhardt knew from experience it was hard to find anyone with a dragnet like that, and it was more a case of rounding up the usual suspects and putting on a good show before the senior official that Padelin had mentioned arrived from Zagreb.

The doors to police HQ opened, and a policeman stepped out, holding the door for a woman dressed in black. She came slowly down the steps and fitted a hat to her head, placing it carefully over her ash-blond hair, and he recognised her as Vukic’s mother, whom they had interviewed yesterday. Reinhardt straightened as he watched her walk slowly away, something in her bearing, in the way she seemed to be holding herself up and together, demanding that he stand in the best way he could. She did not see him, her eyes somewhere very far ahead. He watched her, her shoulders braced as if she walked into a high wind, one only she could feel, until she turned a corner and was gone, but his eyes stayed fixed on the point where she had been.

When he got home from the hospital the day Carolin died, Friedrich was there. The day had unspooled itself in shreds, the light wavering, people moving like marionettes, as in those old silent films. Somewhere distant he seemed to hear the sound of a piano, like the one they played in the cinema when he was a boy. A scratchy reel of notes just out of rhythm, and that tinny soundtrack to the mess his life had become had eventually led him home.

Reinhardt saw the bags on the floor of the hallway as he opened the door, and the soldier, tall and slim in his grey uniform. His son looked at him, looked him up and down. Reinhardt flushed, twisting his hat in his hands, feeling like a supplicant. In his own home.

‘You’ve been drinking,’ was all Friedrich said.

He had not. Not that day, but Friedrich would not believe that, so he said nothing, only shrugged out of his coat. Another soldier walked out of Friedrich’s room, a bag in his hand. Hans Kalter. A year older than Friedrich and the model his son followed. A corporal already, Reinhardt saw. Kalter said nothing, watching with the confident air of a man who knows the outcome of a particular fight. Reinhardt hung up his hat and coat and walked past Friedrich into the kitchen, shying away from that coldness he always seemed to feel around him. He felt Friedrich looking at him as he shifted slowly around the room, lighting the gas for water to boil.

‘Nothing to say, Father? Nothing about the uniform? Didn’t you say never to come back here wearing it?’ Playing to the gallery, and sure enough, Kalter straightened, seemed to swell with indignation.

‘What are you doing here, Friedrich?’ Reinhardt asked, finally.

‘I’m picking up the last of my things. What does it look like?’

‘That’s what it looks like,’ Reinhardt agreed, quietly. He spooned tea into a small pot. Blue china. The one Carolin always used. He almost never drank tea. He felt Friedrich watching him. He had seen it too. Their eyes met. Something sparked deep behind their flat sheen, behind the blank facade his son seemed to hold up for his father.

‘Where is she?’

‘She died last night. Early this morning, in fact,’ he finished, as the kettle began to whistle. He poured the water slowly, as she used to, hearing it purr softly over the leaves, watching it rise up the inside of the pot, watching the steam curl up and out. ‘Would you like some tea?’

Friedrich was white. ‘When were you going to tell me? Were you just going to leave me to guess?’