Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘You remember that fire, in Ilijas, on Sunday?’ Padelin asked. ‘You saw the entry of the fire engines in the traffic records I showed you yesterday morning. These are from that fire. They are film cases.’

Reinhardt’s eyes widened. ‘You’re sure?’

Padelin shrugged. ‘Sure as we can be. The fire brigade found them at the fire. It was a big fire. Very hard to control. I am told film burns very intensely.’

‘I think I remember hearing about that,’ Reinhardt said, quietly. He put the piece of metal back on the desk, thinking. ‘Where was the fire?’

‘In the forest, near an abandoned farm.’

Reinhardt pursed his lips. ‘Last night,’ he said, after a moment, ‘I talked with one of our doctors. He said he treated a couple of soldiers for burns…’ He trailed off, glancing at Padelin. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think these are the films from Vukic’s house. Whoever took them destroyed them.’

Reinhardt nodded again. ‘Becker. The Feldgendarme I was just talking to? He is looking for a reported deserter, called Peter Krause. A lieutenant. I think he thinks Krause has a film. The one’ – he gestured at the metal pieces – ‘these people are looking for, and perhaps thought they had. Almost certainly the one from that camera we found.’

‘Why would he think this Krause has this film?’

Reinhardt hesitated. There was only so much he could tell Padelin about the GFP. ‘It’s complicated,’ he said, finally. ‘Hendel was Abwehr. Apparently, he worked with Krause from time to time.’ It sounded weak to Reinhardt, but Padelin seemed to accept it. ‘So, where does this leave you?’

‘Leave me?’ repeated Padelin, frowning at Reinhardt.

‘Your culprit is dead. Where does that leave your investigation?’

‘Oh,’ said Padelin. He began stacking the pieces of metal. ‘Well, he confessed before dying. We’ll see if that’s enough for Zagreb. I think it will be.’

‘Padelin,’ insisted Reinhardt. ‘You know, you must, that that man did not have anything to do with Vukic’s death.’

Padelin paused in what he was doing and straightened up. Again, Reinhardt felt that sensation of something heavy bearing down on him, and again felt that irrational twitch that he had to look up into Padelin’s eyes. ‘I don’t know why this is so hard for you to understand, Reinhardt,’ said Padelin. ‘You were a policeman once, under the Nazis. You should know, better than me.’ He went back to what he was doing. ‘The man was a Serb. A Communist. People like him will commit crimes, just like Gypsies and Jews. Frau Hofler identified him from photos we showed her. If he did not kill her, he did something else. Besides,’ he continued, ‘we know he was a senior Partisan. So, at a… how do you say… at a minimum? We have given the Partisans a loss. Who knows? Maybe he was Senka. The Shadow.’

It took a moment for Reinhardt to realise Padelin had actually tried to be funny. He stared back at the detective, remembering that conversation with Begovic outside Vukic’s house. The doctor calmly smoking his cigarette, sitting contentedly on his rock. ‘And the nephew?’

Padelin narrowed his eyes at Reinhardt’s tone, then shrugged. ‘Nothing, I think. He will be set free.’

‘So what becomes of our investigation?’ he asked. He pointed at the film casings. ‘This proves there was more to the murder, no? Someone was trying to cover something up, here.’

Padelin frowned. It seemed to Reinhardt it was the frown of a man trying to be patient with a child, trying to explain something obvious and evident. ‘My part is over, I think,’ he replied. His frown deepened. ‘Yours too. Was that not what you were talking about with Major Becker?’

‘No. Are you telling me Becker has received instructions on this case?’

Padelin shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Putkovic may have talked with him. I know the police are talking with your army at higher levels.’

Higher levels, thought Reinhardt. That could mean anything, and anyone. He gave a long, slow sigh, then nodded. ‘Very well,’ he said. He offered his hand, which Padelin shook after a moment, his frown deepening even further. Reinhardt turned and left, feeling the air thicken with confusion behind him. He walked back down the corridors, down into the foyer, past the press of men still waiting for shy;answers, and outside. The air was hot already, heavy with a weight of stone and concrete, but it was fresh and clean after the stale atmosphere inside.

He slumped into the car, staring down at the pedals, his mind empty. After the momentary high of finding out the police had lost their suspect, he could feel himself sliding back into the depression that had seized him since last night. Padelin’s complacency, Becker’s assurance of knowledge that Reinhardt did not have… He raised his head, tracked his eyes along the spartan lines of the Austrian facades without really seeing them. He had no idea what to do now, so he started the engine and began driving.

On purpose, he swung the car left and right more or less at random, taking streets he rarely, if ever, took. The few shops he passed were mostly shut, and the inhabitants of this city had long perfected ways of looking at people like him without seeming to, or avoiding him altogether. People stared ahead, bent their heads closer together in conversation, found the most interesting things in half-empty shop windows, hugged walls, pulled children closer. Like last night on Kvaternik, he thought of water. As if he moved through water, a bow wave of apprehension moving ahead of him, altering behaviour and trajectories, all of it swirling and washing back and forth in his wake, emotions and intentions coming back together.

There were noticeably fewer troops in the city. The endless convoys were gone, off down to the east and south, and a large part of the city’s garrison had followed them. Of the soldiers who were left, most were from the Croatian Army, many of them Bosnian Muslim conscripts, incongruous in their German Army pattern uniforms with black fez on their heads. The hats were supposedly a cultural exception. Reinhardt thought they looked like extras in some children’s matinee production.

His feet felt like blocks of lead as he climbed the stairs to his office. The day was barely begun and he wanted it over in a way he had not felt for a long time, but there was a note on his desk requesting him to report to Freilinger soonest. He flipped his cap onto a chair and sat on the edge of the desk. As always, in these moments when his mind seemed to drift, he looked without really seeing at the big map of Sarajevo on his wall. East to west, all the way from Hrasnica, on the long, winding road down through Jablanica to Mostar and on to the sea, to Lapisnica and its old Ottoman footbridge where the mountains pinched off the city. North and south of the city were hills and mountains, where he had rarely been. Green rolling country to the north, hills folded and rucked like a bed that had been slept in, but to the south they bulked high, swelling into the great stone bulwarks of the south and east.

It was down there, hidden in fastnesses of stone and wood, moving freely as they wished, that the Partisans had their bases. And it was down there, clustering along the few roads and around the few towns and villages, that the Germans and their allies had mustered their forces. Almost, Reinhardt wished he were with them. This war had, for him, been one of paper and shadows. The war he had known, the first war, had been one of sludge and clay, a blasted horizon slashed and barbed by wire, and the sky at times so full of iron and steel it seemed there could be room for nothing else. But he had sometimes found an honesty in warfare he had found nowhere else. A comfort in the company of men exposed to the same dangers, running the same risks. It was better, sometimes, to face open danger than skulk through the shadows like this.