Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘How did she seem to you?’ Reinhardt looked at the mirror and the couch, remembering the room in the club, and for a moment he imagined Vukic sitting there. Her legs crossed at the ankles as she read a magazine. No, too demure. Too like her mother. Crossed with one leg on her knee, like a man, and she was slumped back in the couch, one hand around a cup of coffee as she laughed and joked.

Jelic shrugged and looked at them with wide eyes. ‘What can I say? She was normal. Happy. Funny. She was looking forward to the weekend. There was a man coming, I think. But she was also very engaged in this film. She wanted it to be right,’ he continued, ‘because they were going to show it in Zagreb, to Pavelic. She kept Branko here so late, I was sure he would miss his train, but she drove him down to the station herself.’

‘This man you just mentioned,’ said Padelin. ‘Did you know who it was?’

Jelic shook his head as he stubbed out his cigarette with short, sharp movements. ‘No.’

‘Nothing at all?’

‘I wasn’t her keeper.’

‘No,’ agreed Padelin. ‘No one is saying you were. But you were close to her. You knew her. And we believe this man may have been the one who killed her.’ Reinhardt blinked at that. They had no reason to think that yet, least of all Padelin. The Sarajevo police already had their suspect, so what was this line of questioning? Just stringing things along? Keeping the nosy German happy?

The technician squashed the butt flat and looked up at them with rebellious eyes. Almost adolescent eyes. Reinhardt had seen that look in the eyes of his son, many times. Padelin seemed to see something too, because he sat up straighter. The sniffling man was gone, replaced by something that looked more like a jilted lover. ‘Look, I didn’t keep track of her men. You know what they say about sailors, right? A girl in every port? That was Marija for you.’

Reinhardt leaned forward. ‘We understand she had a thing for older men.’

Jelic laughed. ‘Yeah. And in uniform if she could get them. The truth was, though, she would fuck anything she took a fancy to that could move its hips fast enough and that wasn’t dead.’

Without saying anything, Padelin rose and calmly struck him a thunderous blow across the ear with the flat of his hand. The slap reverberated around the room, followed by the crash and clatter of Jelic and his stool hitting the floor together. Jelic groaned in pain, his hand to the side of his ear. ‘ Picku materinu! ’ he croaked. He sat up on the floor, his head down between his knees, gasping and swearing in Serbo-Croat. Padelin sat down as if nothing had happened and folded his big hands on the table. Jelic looked up and seemed to remember Reinhardt, and that he had an audience. ‘ Fuck! What the fuck did you do that for?’ he moaned, switching back to German. ‘Did you see that?’ he said to Reinhardt. ‘Did you see what he just did to me?’ Reinhardt nodded. ‘And you’re just going to let him do it?’

Reinhardt raised his eyebrows, more shocked than he wanted to let on. Padelin’s sudden ferocity had awakened a slew of bad memories, of the last months and weeks of his service in Berlin, when that sort of casual violence had become commonplace, accepted. ‘He’s your problem, not mine.’

Jelic sneered. ‘Fucking cops. You’re all the fucking same.’

‘Keep a civil tongue,’ said Padelin, heavily. ‘Or I’ll give you another one to go with it. Sit down.’ The technician picked up his stool and righted it, sitting down a respectful distance from Padelin’s hands. ‘And tell us about Marija Vukic, and what you know about the men she frequented.’

Jelic worked his jaw and winced. He straightened his glasses on his nose, and his hand crawled across the table to his cigarettes. He lit one, all the while keeping Padelin in sight out of the corner of his eyes. His hand shook as he held it. ‘Look, all I know is Marija liked them… mature. And she liked to hurt, and to be hurt. That was her thing.’

‘Masochism, is that what you’re saying?’ said Reinhardt.

‘Right, that’s it,’ Jelic replied, still working his jaw. ‘She was into pain. Watching it. And giving it. She got some sort of kick out of it. Some of the stuff we saw in Russia. And here. Jesus.’ He trailed off, his eyes far away. ‘Look, there was this story, right? I don’t know if it’s true. It was before I joined her crew. But I heard it like this. There was this Serb, rich, good-looking, someone important in Banja Luka. Banja Luka’s a nice enough town. Nice river. Mostly Serbs. Rather, it was a nice town in which a lot of Serbs used to live. Until we came along, right?’ He suddenly giggled. ‘So, this Serb, he was famous before the war for something or other, I don’t know. Music, maybe.’ He took a furious drag on his cigarette, his other hand cupping his cheek. ‘So, he’s got nothing, he’s due for deportation, and she sees him. In a line, or a queue, whatever, and he’s with his family, and she takes a fancy to him, and she tells the Ustase to give him to her. For something like a week, she takes him. Takes care of him, dresses him, feeds him, and she’s fucki -’ He flinched, looking at Padelin. ‘And at the end of the week, they’re in bed, and she cuts his throat, and leaves the body there and walks away.’

There was silence. Reinhardt and Padelin looked at each other, and each knew the other was thinking of that bedroom in Ilidza, and the knife wounds that had killed her. Could it be, wondered Reinhardt? Could it be that Padelin was right, and this was vengeance, pure and simple? ‘Like I said,’ Jelic said with his mouth all stretched out, eyes looking inward, trying to work out where it hurt the most, ‘it’s a story I heard. Might not be true. I never worked up the guts to ask her, even though we’d been through all kinds of hell together. But it’s got enough of the Marija I knew for me to believe it. Angel and demon. Light and dark. Someone who cares for you, and someone who takes away all you have. Shows you the highs, and leaves you in the lows.’ Reinhardt looked at the couch, and imagined Vukic on it, and something began to gnaw at him.

‘Where were you before you came back to film in Bosnia?’ asked Reinhardt.

Jelic got up and went over to a small stove. ‘You want coffee?’ he asked. They both shook their heads, and Jelic continued. ‘Russia, until November last year,’ he said, pouring a cup, then taking a small sip. ‘Then back to North Africa, but that didn’t last long because the Afrika Korps was getting kicked out by the British. That made her cross, as she had designs on Rommel.’ Despite what was gnawing at him, Reinhardt could not suppress the grin he felt at her audacity. Jelic grinned sheepishly as he came back to the table, wrinkling his glasses on his nose. Only Padelin stayed expressionless. ‘She wanted to go back to Russia. Thank Christ that one was turned down. She was angry about that, so we went to Stokerau, in Austria. We interviewed some of the surviving Croat soldiers from Stalingrad, watched the training for the new 369th Division. They’re here now, you know. We filmed some of them up in Visegrad. Some of them remembered Marija from Stokerau. God, they were happy to see her…’

He trailed off, staring at his cigarette, then sniffed and took a deep draw on it. ‘Italy, for a bit, earlier this year,’ Jelic continued, ‘filming the training of this new Croat division that the Italians are putting together. The Legion, they call it. We got back here about three months ago.’

‘Did anything like this story you told happen in Russia? Or anywhere else?’ asked Reinhardt.

‘Not that I know,’ replied Jelic. He seemed subdued now, turned in on himself. He lifted his cup to his mouth, then paused. ‘There were three guys I know of who she was seeing in Russia. One of those affairs was just crazy. But that was pretty much straight-up sex, if what I heard was right.’