Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘And here?’ demanded Padelin. Jelic shook his head. ‘And you? Did you… ?’ Padelin trailed off. Reinhardt looked at the table, trying to work out what was bothering him. Why was he thinking of mirrors?

Jelic shook his head. ‘Not that I didn’t want to.’

‘What were the names of the men she was seeing in Russia?’ asked Padelin.

‘One was an SS general, but he was killed. The other two…’ He sighed. ‘I can’t remember. There was one of them, though. Christ, half the division could hear them having sex. That one ended badly, apparently. That’s all she’d say about it, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they’d picked up where they left off.’

Reinhardt and Padelin sat up, Jelic cowering back from the big detective. ‘What do you mean?’ demanded Reinhardt. Mirrors. Why was he thinking of mirrors ? Vukic in front of mirrors. At the club. Here. Her bedroom.

‘Yeah, yeah. One of those guys she was seeing in Russia. I heard he was here. Heard his name, something like that, don’t know, about a month ago, and asked her wasn’t that one of her… one of her men.’ His eyes glazed over a bit, as he focused inward, then back out at them. ‘You know, she had the strangest look when I mentioned it. She said she knew he was coming. She knew he was coming, and she had it all planned out.

‘Something happened between them, in Russia. I don’t know what it was, she never talked about it. I’m pretty sure it was some kind of argument. Maybe a lovers’ quarrel. Maybe he’d had enough of her, told her to get lost. That was something no man did to Marija. She’d never let them get away with it.’ He looked between them. ‘Hey, I mean, emotionally. Never let them get away with it emotionally . She’d find some way to get back at them.’

‘Mr Jelic, do you think you’d be able to identify this general if I found a picture of him?’ said Reinhardt.

The man pursed his lips. ‘Look,’ he hesitated, ‘I don’t know he was a general…’

‘There’s a good chance, correct? From what you’ve told us about her, and about what she liked?’ said Reinhardt. Jelic shrugged, and nodded. ‘We’ll arrange it, then.’ He pulled out a notebook. ‘Give me the dates you were in Russia, please, when Vukic was seeing this man.’

Jelic swallowed and squirmed on his stool. ‘Look. Sir. I really don’t want anything to do with this. I mean, come on. Look at me. I don’t want to get mixed up in stories like this. I wouldn’t last a second.’

Reinhardt said nothing, just held his gaze as Padelin glowered next to him. Jelic’s eyes narrowed and twitched, and he sighed out. ‘Errr… it was last year. Hang on. I think I’ve got the dates somewhere.’ He went over to a desk and, opening a drawer, pulled out what looked like a journal. Reaching out for it, Reinhardt was disappointed to see it was some kind of ledger, not one of the missing diaries.

Padelin peered over his shoulder, and turned a few pages with a thick finger. ‘It’s… how do you say?’ He looked at Jelic.

‘Accounts,’ said Jelic. ‘It’s an accounts book. A ledger.’

Reinhardt flipped it around and handed it back to Jelic. ‘The dates, please.’

Jelic lit another cigarette as he leaned over the book. ‘Russia, shy;Russia…’ he muttered as he turned pages. ‘Here. We arrived 4th August, 1942. Left…’ He turned a page, then another. ‘Left on 6th November.’

Reinhardt jotted it down. ‘You have locations in there?’

Jelic puffed his cheeks and breathed out heavily, and coughed. ‘Some. Hotels usually. Let’s see. We flew in to Kharkov from Stokerau, stayed there a few days. Hotel Chichikov. Christ, what a dump that place was. Then out to the front, to join up with the 369th Division around… Selivanova. Back to Kharkov… then Glazkov with the division. The boys were refitting. Ah, yeah,’ he said, looking up. ‘Pavelic made a trip out to visit the troops.’ He grinned. ‘Yeah, that was a good evening. Medal parade in the afternoon, then dinner with the officers. That German general, what’s his name? The one in Stalingrad… Paulus?’ Reinhardt nodded, transfixed. ‘Paulus. He joined us. First good food we’d had in a while, but Christ, you should have seen the way they were all over Marija. She had ’em wrapped around her finger. Pavelic, he was…’ He looked up, as a man might look up expecting clear skies and instead the horizon was draped in thunderclouds. Jelic took a look at Padelin’s face and went back to the book.

‘That was the 24th September, and the end of the good times. The 369th went into Stalingrad a few days later. We hung around. Marija wanted to get into the city to do some filming, but the closest we got was the airfield at Pitomnik, and that was close enough.’ He looked up at Reinhardt. ‘We could hear the guns during the day, and during the night it burned. You could see it from miles away. You’ve got to feel sorry for the poor bastards who were in there. You know they say all the Croat boys are dead.’

Padelin snarled something at Jelic in Serbo-Croat, and Jelic snapped back, the detective’s earlier violence towards him forgotten. Whatever it was he said, Padelin folded his hands on the table and just stared at him with those heavy eyes. ‘I know what I saw,’ Jelic said, quietly, staring back, and switching back to German. ‘And I know what I’ve heard. None of them are coming back,’ he finished, looking back down at the book. Reinhardt looked at him and swallowed in a dry throat, thinking of Jelic’s description of the city where his son had vanished.

‘Listen,’ said Jelic, turning pages and then looking up. ‘Do you need anything else from me?’

Reinhardt nodded. ‘Do you know when Vukic met up with this officer in Russia?’

‘Yeah, sometime in late August, early September. We left the 369th in Glazkov, and joined up with some Germans as they advanced towards Stalingrad. We were in Voroshilovgrad on 28th August. The Hotel Donbass. I’m pretty sure that she had met up with him by then, but I can’t be sure. Rostov in early September. Then back to Glazkov, like I said.’

‘When did they break up, Vukic and this officer, you remember that?’

Jelic shook his head. ‘I really don’t.’ He stared at the pages. ‘It was after we spent the first couple of weeks with the 369th. After Rostov, but before Pitomnik. So, sometime in September. Mid-September. She actually took off with him and his men for a few days while Branko and I stayed in the hotel. But the actual dates… I’m sorry, I really can’t remember. Branko will probably remember better than me. He’s usually good at dates. I’m hopeless.’

‘Very well,’ said Reinhardt, tapping his notebook with his pencil. ‘Padelin? You have anything else?’

‘Yes,’ he nodded. ‘Jelic, you can come down to headquarters. We have some suspects in custody you can look at. Let us know if you ever saw them together with Miss Vukic.’ Jelic nodded again, although it looked like the last thing he wanted to do. ‘And I want an address for Branko… ?’

‘Branko Tomic,’ finished Jelic. He scribbled a name and a Zagreb address on a piece of paper. ‘I’ve no idea if he knows what’s happened. Poor guy. He’s been with her for years.’

‘You’ve been most helpful, Mr Jelic,’ said Padelin, with ponderous finality. ‘I will be in touch to arrange a time to come to headquarters. No, don’t get up.’ He raised a hand. ‘We’ll see ourselves out. And put some ice on that jaw, or it will swell up.’

They left him in his studio, hunched over, watching them with feverish little eyes through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Downstairs, Padelin turned to Reinhardt. ‘Did you get anything useful out of that?’ His tone made it clear he had not.