Luke McCallin: The Man from Berlin

Padelin joined him there. ‘The maid is waiting to be questioned,’ he said, quietly. His German was slow and ponderous.

Reinhardt nodded. ‘I need to have a look at the other body first.’

‘You do that,’ said Padelin, in a tone that implied Hendel was all Reinhardt’s. ‘I will see what she has to say.’

Hendel had been poster-boy good-looking. Chiselled features, blue eyes, blond hair. The works. Looking up at the wall, Reinhardt could see where Hendel’s head had struck it, traced the long smear of blood the body’s sliding fall had left before it came to rest there, shoulders slumped across the skirting board, one ankle crossed beneath the other. Hendel was in uniform, but whoever had shot him had emptied his pockets and removed his rank insignia, hoping, Reinhardt guessed, to delay identification. It would have worked, if one of the Feldgendarmes who responded to the call had not recognised him.

For once, Reinhardt thanked Hendel’s habit of staying out late with the ladies and the number of times the Feldgendarmerie must have fingered him stumbling back to barracks late and drunk. He lifted Hendel’s leg by the boot. As with Vukic, the rigor mortis was almost gone. He could not have died much more than a day ago. Definitely about the same time as her.

Reinhardt walked across the living room and entered a study. To his left, a tall window looked out on the garden. Against one wall was a large, heavy-looking table, the wood worn smooth and rich with age, but he did not pay much attention to it because above it, and arranged haphazardly all over the wall, were photographs in black frames. In most of them, Marija Vukic stared or laughed or pouted out at him with an intensity that made his stomach suddenly clench, remembering how they had talked at that dance. Not for long, mostly about Reinhardt’s time in the first war, but for as long as he had talked she had listened with a particular intensity, blue eyes boring into his.

Marija in flying gear, posing next to the wing of an old biplane. Marija with her hair flying about her face as she looked down from the railing of a ship, an elderly man at her side. Marija swathed in robes and turban on a camel, two Africans either side of her. Marija at a table filled with people, the glare from the flash reflected in the glasses of champagne in front of them. Pictures of Berlin, Paris, Trafalgar Square almost blotted out by a flock of pigeons caught in the moment of lifting off. Places in Africa, in Asia. Pictures of people, Germans, French couples on cafe terraces, families picnicking on lawns, Japanese in traditional dress, Africans, soldiers.

Lots of pictures of soldiers. A man in an old Austrian Imperial Army uniform leaning on a rifle in a trench with his feet in water. A mutilated soldier slumped against a brick wall, outstretched hand holding a begging bowl. A picture of an officer on horseback. Columns of infantry, Germans, with slung rifles, blond hair blowing in the breeze. Reinhardt swallowed in a suddenly dry throat, eyes drawn back and caught by that soldier with his head down, begging. There but for the grace of God , he thought…

From downstairs came the sudden sound of a man shouting. Faint, beneath it, a woman crying. Frowning in distaste, Reinhardt looked away from the begging soldier and found himself staring at a picture of the Fuhrer. Whoever had taken it had shot him through a crowd of uniforms, black sleeves, and swastikas, some with the Ustase armbands, and all the faces were looking one way with expressions of anticipation and delight, but he was looking straight at the camera, away from everyone else, face utterly expressionless. Reinhardt shivered suddenly, turned his head away.

Down the other wall were shelves filled with books and objects, floor to ceiling. Reinhardt cast a cursory eye over them as he walked slowly over to the other door, which was closed. Taking a handkerchief from his pocket, he opened it slowly, pushing the door open onto darkness, a faint suggestion of surfaces and cabinets appearing out of the gloom, and a smell of chemicals that peaked and faded, as if it had just been waiting for the door to be opened. Peering around the door, he found the light switch, flicked it on. It was a darkroom, and it had been ransacked. Photos blanketed the floor, cabinet doors were open, a drawer lay on the floor. Bottles of fluid, brushes, clips, and string stood or lay strewn across work surfaces. A pair of scissors lay in an empty enamel sink.

‘Shit,’ muttered Reinhardt. He took a step into the room, knelt, and looked down at the photos scattered across the floor. Soldiers again, most of them. Modern photos, and recent as well, if he was any judge of uniforms. He brushed aside a photo to reveal one of what looked like Afrika Korps soldiers, men swathed in scarves and dust riding atop tanks in column and, for a moment, he was back there with them under that baking sun. Another one, Marija with goggles drawn down around her throat with a man in uniform, a minaret needling the sky behind them, a swath of sea the backdrop to it all. Frowning, Reinhardt leaned closer, then smiled in admiration. The man was Rommel, peaked cap, leather coat, binoculars and all, just as in the pictures. There were steps behind him, and Claussen came to a stop in the doorway.

‘Sir?’

‘A moment, Sergeant.’ Reinhardt straightened and ran his eyes around the room, over the jumble of pictures and paraphernalia that littered the surfaces. There was a cupboard under the sink with its door ajar, and something metallic glittered back at him. Stepping carefully, he reached out and pulled the door open wider. A couple of film cases, round tins of various sizes, stood haphazardly in a curved rack that was otherwise empty. The tins had been opened, and the beginning of each roll of film had been unwound, then put back. He reached in and took the end of the nearest roll between his fingertips and turned and lifted it to the light. He passed the strand of film through his fingers but it was blank. The rest of the rack, where there was space for a couple of dozen tins, was empty. He nodded to Claussen.

‘The uniforms told us the neighbour might have seen something.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Not really, sir, and I was free with the smokes. Hueber did most of the talking, but they’re being pretty close-lipped. Especially after that big fellow gave them a right beasting before he left.’

‘Yes, I saw that.’

Reinhardt looked around the room again. He doubted he would be back so whatever he needed to take in terms of impressions or conclusions from the murder scene, he needed them now. Taking a deep breath, he turned back into the study, looking down its length, running his eyes over the books in a half dozen languages, objects that looked like they had been collected in a dozen countries.

‘Bloody hell, sir,’ came Claussen’s voice from the darkroom. ‘There’s pictures of her here with about every general in the Wehr shy;macht. Guderian. Hoth. There’s one here with Kesselring. One with Goering…’ Claussen’s voice trailed off into muttered remarks.

Taking his handkerchief from his pocket again, Reinhardt opened the desk drawers one by one but saw no sign of anything that looked like an address book. Straightening, he looked back at the bookcase. On a bottom shelf, next to the door, he spotted a gap, books missing. Squatting, he ran his eyes over them. They were all of differing sizes and textures, but each one was carefully annotated along the spine with dates. He opened one or two at random. They were journals, or diaries. They went back a long way, until 1917, the later years covered by two, even three books. The writing was wide and childish in the earlier ones, closer and neater, denser, in the later ones. Pursing his mouth he stared at where the journals for 1942 and 1943 once were. Looking around, he noticed how much it resembled a man’s room, rather than a woman’s.