Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

Reinhardt drummed his fingers on the kubelwagen ’s windshield and nodded. ‘I did,’ he said, distantly. ‘Look, something he said is gnawing at me. Going around and around in my head,’ he explained, seeing Padelin’s look of incomprehension. ‘Something about mirrors.’

‘Mirrors?’ grunted Padelin. He looked at Reinhardt, then away.

‘I want to go back to the house in Ilidza for another look. Do you want to come?’

‘You don’t know what you’re looking for?’ demanded Padelin.

‘Maybe nothing. Maybe something. But I need to see.’

‘Very well,’ he replied. ‘I will come. It will be better if I do, in any case. We’re supposed to be working together, yes?’

The road out to Ilidza was relatively empty of military traffic, and Reinhardt was able to drive fast all the way. Padelin sat quietly next to him, flexing his wrists and fists over and over again. They pulled up outside Vukic’s and surprised the police guard who was dozing along the shady side of the house, next to the motorcycle and sidecar. The man blanched at the look on Padelin’s face and fumbled the keys to the door, eventually getting it open and almost dropping his rifle as he stood aside and saluted them in. Reinhardt took the stairs quickly up to the second floor, through the living room and into the bedroom.

The curtains had been drawn open, the two lights at the foot of the bed were turned off, and the bed had been stripped. Otherwise nothing had changed. The head of the bed was still covered in blood, and it had soaked into the mattress. Reinhardt walked to the bedside table and looked back. He could see himself standing in the other mirror. A glance up, and he saw that the roof of the four-poster was also a mirror. Padelin watched him from the doorway.

Mirrors. She liked to watch, he thought. She liked to watch others. She liked to watch herself. He looked back and forth between the two mirrors, the one by the door and the one at the headboard. The blood on the light switch at the entrance caught his eye again. The mirrors. It was all a setup, he thought. Set up so that she could see. So that whoever was with her could see.

But it wasn’t enough just to watch. This was elaborate. Why waste it? He turned in the room, looking for he knew not what, and came back to the two mirrors, and the blood on the light switch, and the two lights. This was like a set. A film set. She was a filmmaker. He walked slowly back towards the door and stopped, looking at the light switch. He pushed the top button, and the lights at the foot of the bed came on. He pushed the second, and lights in the roof came on. He frowned, not knowing what he had expected, but not that. Nothing that simple. He stood in front of the mirror, looking past his reflection, trying to look inside it. He took the mirror’s frame in his two hands and pulled it. Nothing. He pushed, each side, shook it. Nothing.

He tried harder. The mirror did not move, seemingly bolted to the wall. He stepped back, and knocked the wall, stopped. Stared. He hit the wall again, harder, as he looked at Padelin. The wall boomed hollowly under his hand.

‘There’s a room behind here,’ Reinhardt said. His eyes ran over the wall, stepped back. There was no entrance he could see, nowhere he could work out where one might be. Back and forth went his eyes, and then he looked down, imagining the space beneath him, and took off back downstairs.

The kitchen was gloomy, cool, like it seemed to be holding its breath. Reinhardt paused again and focused on that cupboard he remembered from his first time. The one with the big double doors, padlocked shut. He took the lock in his hands. It was a big, old-fashioned lock, a round hole in it for a key. He rattled the ring, and the shackle came loose from the lock. He froze, stared at it, then turned the lock in his hands and slipped the shackle through the ring. The padlock sat heavy in his hand, and he realised as he pushed the shackle down into the lock, then pulled it out again, that it would not work without a key. Someone had tried to put it back on the door but without the key it would not lock shut and so they had left it, made it seem nothing had happened. He pulled the doors open, looking into a deep space that was all but empty save for a ladder standing against one wall, an old broom, and a few boxes. Nothing else.

Reinhardt’s mouth twisted as he stepped back. He had been so sure… He frowned, looked closer. The ladder was not standing against the wall. It was too upright. It was fixed to the wall. He looked up, seeing where it vanished into the ceiling. He reached up with his fingers and pulled at what looked like a latch, and the ceiling swung down, suddenly, releasing a wash of light that etched out the inside of the cupboard. He ducked, took the weight on his hands, then manoeuvred it past his head, looking up. The ladder continued up into the light. He exchanged a quick glance with Padelin, then began pulling himself up.

The ladder passed through a flimsy ceiling, into a space braced by a crisscross of beams, then up into a small room, bare of any furnishing, only one thing in it. The floorboards creaked softly under his weight as he crossed over to a tall rectangle of light and looked out into Marija Vukic’s bedroom. There was creaking from the ladder as Padelin began to haul himself up. His head poked up, and then his shoulders heaved up and around, and the two of them stood squeezed into the small space, Padelin swearing quietly under his breath.

Reinhardt felt a lurch in his stomach, like one feels at the edge of a great height. A camera stood on a tripod, mounted in front of the mirror, its lens like a wet, black eye. He swallowed in a dry throat and reached out to open the film case, but it was empty.

Reinhardt thought about the ransacked darkroom as he stared at the camera. He thought about Anna, who thought the Feld shy;gendarmerie were looking for pictures. Not pictures. Film. A film, he thought, glancing over at the bed, that probably showed Vukic’s murderer. Whoever killed Vukic must have found out about this, or what she liked to do, and taken everything she had, just in case. He thought about the disassembled camera in the studio at Jelic’s apartment, the chemical smell of the place.

‘I need to get back to headquarters,’ said Padelin. ‘Can you drive me back?’

‘ Christ , Padelin!’ exclaimed Reinhardt. Padelin’s eyes went flat. ‘This is important ! Whatever happened here on Saturday night, it was probably filmed. And someone’s got it. We need to search this place again. Question the maid. The gardener. The handyman, if there was one.’

The muscles in the sides of Padelin’s jaw clenched, once. ‘I need to get back,’ he grated, ‘and report this.’

Reinhardt clenched his jaw as well, then sighed and nodded. ‘Very well.’ Taking a last look around, he followed Padelin down the ladder and back out of the house to the kubelwagen . Padelin balled and rolled his fist again, flexing it back and forth. Reinhardt gestured at Padelin’s hand. ‘You all right there?’

‘Fine,’ replied the detective as he got into the car. ‘I couldn’t punch him. Jelic. My fists hurt too much already.’

Reinhardt said nothing during the drive back into town. The day was sweltering hot, and the heat was only slightly alleviated by the wind of the kubelwagen ’s speed. He pulled up outside police headquarters, where Padelin got out. Two policemen on duty outside the entrance stopped talking to look curiously over at them.

‘Padelin,’ said Reinhardt. The detective turned to face him. Reinhardt felt a weight in his chest. A weight of words, and feelings, about how people like them, people with authority, should behave. But he knew he would get nowhere with them, and so he tamped down hard on them, pushing and squeezing those words and feelings down. ‘I am going to try to speak with Major Gord. You recall, the soldier that Mrs Vukic mentioned she thought knew her daughter.’ Padelin nodded. ‘Are you interested in accompanying me to that interview?’