Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘I’ll go in and find Freilinger,’ said Reinhardt to Claussen. ‘Take Hueber and see if you can find the chief uniform in charge here, or the unit that responded first. See what they know.’

‘Sir,’ said Claussen. ‘On me, Corporal.’ Reinhardt walked over to the gate in the wrought-iron fence that surrounded the house. Built in the Austrian Imperial style, it had cream-coloured walls and two floors above the ground floor. A garage was built on one side of the house, its doors open and a white sports car just inside. A motorbike and sidecar with German Army plates was parked against the wall to the right of the front door, where a policeman stood guard. He was clearly unsure whether to let him in or not, so Reinhardt fixed him with his eyes and nodded to him as he went past and into the house, ignoring him but with his back suddenly tensed, as if for a blow.

Forcing himself to unwind, he stood for a moment with the light breaking to either side of his shadow. The hallway was dim after the clear day outside and he gave his eyes a moment to adjust, removing his cap as he did so. A staircase curved upstairs at the end of the hall, and doors opened off the hallway to the left and right. Framed photographs hung on the walls. From somewhere towards the back of the house, he heard the clink of china and a woman crying.

The wooden stairs creaked solidly under his weight as he went up towards the sound of voices. He breathed deep just before he reached the top and felt it, a gag that pinched the back of his throat as he caught the smell of putrefaction. Breathing slowly, Reinhardt tucked his cap under his arm and walked up the last few stairs.

The stairway opened into a living room, sumptuously furnished, a sofa and armchairs in warm brown leather gathered under a chandelier of washed blue glass. There was a low coffee table, with a bottle of French brandy and two tumblers, atop an Oriental-looking carpet. Two doors led off from the room, to the left and right. Directly in front, cabinets and tables in dark wood lined the walls beneath and between tall windows, and a clock kept soft time on the marble mantelpiece below a huge mirror in a worked gold frame. A portrait photograph of a man in a black uniform stood next to the clock, with a black band running laterally across the bottom right corner.

More Oriental carpets were laid out in other parts of the room, some of them rumpled, stained with the alcohol that had run from the bottles smashed across the floor from where they had fallen out of the drinks cabinet, itself lying facedown in shards of glass. A lamp on the floor, pokers strewn around the fireplace. One of the leather chairs askew, out of line with the others. And everywhere, lingering underneath it all, incongruous in this setting of refined luxury, was the smell of death.

Hendel’s body lay just to the right of the stairs, against the wall, with its torso slumped partly upright. A spray of blood and something darker had dribbled and dried down the wall above his head. He had been shot just below the nose, and from the burn marks around the wound the gun had been placed against his skin. Reinhardt’s right hand began to rise again of its own volition towards his temple and to the mark his own pistol had made there, but he covered it with a move to adjust the tuck of his cap under his other arm.

There was another smear of blood on the wall next to the door to the left. Freilinger was standing by that door with a big man in a dark but ill-fitting suit, both of them looking into the room beyond, which seemed to be brightly lit. Freilinger turned and saw Reinhardt standing by the hallway door. The major’s bullet head of close grey hair almost glowed in the strong light. As Freilinger’s eyes met his, Reinhardt suppressed a flinch at the sudden smell of smoke, there and gone just as fast. Swallowing, and looking left and right, Reinhardt walked across the living room, the parquet squeaking under his steps. His feet crunched on glass. Looking down, he saw a crescent of broken bottle with a Hennessy label, gold on black, like a piece of flotsam on the parquet floor.

Freilinger and the other man stepped away from the door, motioning Reinhardt over to the fireplace between the two tall windows. Glancing left, Reinhardt looked into a bedroom, saw part of a huge four-poster bed hung with silk, dark wood floors. He turned back to the two men, came to attention.

‘Reinhardt reporting as ordered, Major.’

‘This is Chief Inspector Putkovic, of the Sarajevo police. We have a problem, Reinhardt,’ said Freilinger, getting straight to the point as always. Freilinger had always maintained some distance between himself and Reinhardt, despite the common connection they had in Meissner, going back to the first war. ‘A double homicide, and one of the victims an army officer. Not only that, but an officer in military intelligence.’ He spoke quietly, his voice underlaid by a low, hoarse rasp, the legacy of a British gas attack in the first war. Speaking was painful for him. ‘This causes some jurisdictional problems, as you can well imagine, but I think the inspector and I have been able to come to a suitable arrangement.’

The inspector in question did not look like he felt a suitable arrangement had been reached at all. The man was big, in the way so many men in the Balkans seemed to be. Lots of fat on large bones. A taut paunch sagged over his belt, and his fists were like hams, the knuckles indented in the flesh. A porcine face, flat eyes that looked like anvils. He smelled of sweat and alcohol. ‘There is no need for German involvement. My men can handle this.’ His German was good, although heavily accented. He spoke to Freilinger, but his eyes bored into Reinhardt. ‘We are professionals.’

‘Quite frankly, I don’t care, and I’m getting tired of saying it,’ rasped Freilinger. Putkovic’s face went florid with his anger. ‘There are agreements and protocols for this sort of thing. I don’t care who the dead girl is. A German officer is dead. The two seem to me quite obviously to be linked together, however much you might not want them to be. You’ll work with Captain Reinhardt, who, I will remind you, has nearly twenty years as a detective in the Berlin Kriminalpolizei. Homicide and organised crime.’ He paused for breath but raised a hand to forestall the next protest from the Croat. ‘You will extend him every courtesy required. If you still wish to debate this, tell your commander to take it up with the general. Otherwise, we’re done.’

Putkovic’s jaws clenched. He stuck out his jaw, nodded, and then started for the stairs, clattering down them and hollering something to someone on the way out. Freilinger breathed out, shaking his head and putting his hand on the mantel of the fireplace. ‘God, what a bore.’ He looked up at Reinhardt. Freilinger was a small man, wiry, with piercing blue eyes. His skin was leathery and creased from a lifetime of soldiering. ‘This is no picnic I’ve landed you in, Reinhardt.’

‘No, sir.’

‘What do you have going at the moment?’

‘Third round of interrogations of the Partisan officers captured after Operation Weiss.’

‘Still?’

‘It’s the way I work, sir,’ wishing, as always, he did not sound so defensive about it.

Freilinger stared down at the carpet. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Hand them over to the camp authorities.’

‘Sir, I’m not finished with them.’

‘You are now. You won’t have time for them anyway.’ Freilinger lifted his eyes, flicked them around the room. ‘The reason I want you on this is Hendel was one of ours, and we keep this investigation close. I’m having Weninger and Maier go over his files, see if anything pops out that would link him to the dead girl.’ He paused as he took a small tin of French mints from his pocket, which he swore were the only thing that helped his throat, and popped one in his mouth. It was, as far as Reinhardt knew, the only habit or vice he had. ‘The dead girl is Marija Vukic.’ Reinhardt’s eyes widened. ‘You’ve heard of her?’