Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘Reinhardt,’ he said, a sense of finality obvious in his voice. ‘I am available. But I think my investigation will be ending soon. I am confident we have a suspect for Vukic’s murder.’

‘Fine,’ sighed Reinhardt. He looked away a moment, then back. ‘One thing you might consider, however, is finding out how many places in Sarajevo could possibly develop a film like the one that might have been shot at Vukic’s place.’ Padelin stared back at him, expressionlessly. ‘Not many, I would think. Might be worth your while checking up on them.’

‘What about where we just met Jelic?’

‘Exactly,’ said Reinhardt, taken aback that Padelin had given it any thought at all.

Padelin stepped back, shrugging into his jacket and pulling the knot up on his tie, and nodded goodbye. Reinhardt watched him walk up the steps into the building and saw the way the two policemen on duty straightened as he approached, saluting him, one going so far as to shake his hand. They smiled at each other as they resumed their hipshot stance and slouch against the wall, knowing looks, a thumb jerked in the direction Padelin had taken.

Reinhardt stared at them and then at the white-knuckled grip he had on the wheel. He forced his hands to relax, to unclench, and then continued back to HQ, where he parked and walked up to his office, trying not to think about the bottle of slivovitz – the local plum brandy – he knew was in the bottom drawer. Looking at his in tray, he sifted through the usual correspondence, his mind elsewhere. He sat in his chair, the leather squeaking as he settled himself, his hand going to his knee. Glancing up, he stared at the map of Bosnia that hung on his wall, his eyes wandering from Sarajevo, east to Gorazde, then south, down to Foca, Kalinovik, Tjentiste, imagining the forces gathering there for the upcoming operation.

‘Your case,’ he muttered. ‘ Your case.’ In his mind, he saw those two policemen again, the respect they had shown Padelin. Their new hero. They must have someone, he thought. Someone who had confessed. Vukic’s killer, who they would parade. Hendel’s killer, well… Maybe they would pin that one on the poor bastard as well. Otherwise, they would just leave Hendel to the Germans. He felt a cold sweat break out over him at the thought of what that must mean, at what must have been going on in the cells under police headquarters, while he wandered back and forth across Sarajevo. Padelin had to know, must , that whoever they had did not do it.

Reinhardt jerked away from the desk, away from the drawer with that bottle. He knew he was prevaricating, shying away from the discomfort he had felt about the way Padelin had behaved. God only knew, he thought to himself as he stared at the map’s contour lines and rubbed the ridges of his scarred knee, he had seen and heard and read of enough horror in his four years back under the colours to last him a lifetime. It was not that, he knew. Padelin was a policeman. Policemen, he still believed, should not act that way. Policemen, he still wanted to believe, despite all he had seen over the past few years, could be better than the system and the laws they served.

He had clung to that belief as long as he could, until the time, that one and only time, he had raised his fist to a suspect. That moment when the temptation, the pressure to conform, to be just like all the others again became too strong to resist. That one time, down in the cells under Alexanderplatz, knowing he could wipe away the sneer of that criminal with his fists, the goading from the other policemen to do it, do it , and he had. Then how he had run through Berlin’s darkened streets, hammering on Meissner’s door. Cowering in the corner of the colonel’s drawing room with a bottle clutched to his chest as Meissner watched him from beside the fire, and the decision was made. The flight back to the army. Back to his first home.

‘Gregor,’ the colonel asked. ‘Are you sure you want this?’ The question went right through Reinhardt. That memory came to him again, of Kowel, and how Meissner’s calm words reminded Reinhardt he was not the only man who was scared, turning a terrified and lonely young man into just a terrified one. Reinhardt had bound his life to Meissner’s that day, the boy-man finding in the colonel a father like he might have wished for, and in the soldiers of his regiment the brothers. In memory of that day, Reinhardt had never lied to him. And he would not now.

‘I am afraid. Of letting you down. But more than that. I am afraid I have lost whatever faith I might once have had that the work I was doing served for anything.’

‘Will you go back in?’ Meissner asked, finally.

‘I’ll do it for you, sir. For nothing else.’

Meissner sighed softly, then nodded, the fire playing across his white hair. ‘Thank you.’

Reinhardt uncurled from his corner, putting the bottle down. ‘Will that be all for now, sir?’

Meissner nodded. ‘For now. We will talk later.’

As Reinhardt opened the front door, Meissner’s hand came up gently on the wood and stopped him. Reinhardt looked down at his old colonel, now a senior member of the Foreign Ministry. There was a faint expression in Meissner’s eyes, a glint hidden in their grey depths. ‘You know, Gregor,’ he said, softly, ‘it is not such a bad thing. Joining the Party. They do not ask for much.’

Always this came back to haunt him. The Party. The bloody Party. ‘Why did you do it, sir? Join it?’

The expression in Meissner’s eyes never changed. ‘I thought it was the best way for them to leave me alone to do my job. Why did you not do the same?’

Reinhardt’s throat was dry as a bone, and he pressed his fingers tight against themselves, the pressure painful on his ring finger. God, he needed a cigarette. ‘I suppose… I thought I could do mine without them.’ He stopped, frightened he might have gone too far. ‘I was right, for a while, no?’ Meissner said nothing. ‘But really, it was because of Carolin. She never had any time for them. You knew her. Social Democrat till… till the day she died. And… and because of her cousin.’ He smiled wryly, made what was even to him a pathetic attempt to lighten an atmosphere gone suddenly heavy. ‘I am just glad you never asked me to. I don’t know what I would have done, torn between the two of you.’

The faintest nod. ‘And if I asked now?’

Reinhardt knew he could never refuse this man anything. ‘Please. Do not.’

‘She is gone, now.’

‘But I like to think the best of her will stay with me. I could never forgive myself for doing it. Even if… even if I knew she probably could.’

Meissner’s hand fluttered down, away from the door. He stepped away. ‘Go now, Gregor.’

There was a knock at the door. Reinhardt snapped around from the map, his mind flailing for a moment, caught between the here in his austere office and the there, Meissner’s study and the crackle of a fire burning low as he closed the door on one life and opened a door on another. Claussen stood in the doorway. He cleared his throat and offered him a handwritten sheet of paper. ‘Units taking part in Schwarz,’ he said.

‘Very good,’ said Reinhardt. He scanned the list of units. ‘Where did you get this?’

‘From Vogts, downstairs in dispatch. If you want names to go with the units, I suppose you’ll have to see someone in Abteilung III H.’

‘Hmm,’ murmured Reinhardt. He put the handwritten list on his desk and placed his hands to either side, leaning over it. 369th (Croat) Infantry Division. 1st Mountain Division. 7th SS Prinz Eugen, recalling his run-in with Stolic last night. 118th and 121st Jager Divisions. ‘Speaking of paper, here,’ said Reinhardt, taking Padelin’s pathology report on Vukic from his pocket. ‘Can you get that to Hueber, or someone else who speaks Serbo-Croat? I want a verbal translation as soon as possible.’