Luke McCallin - The Man from Berlin

‘Sanctified? Reinhardt, I do not understand you. I don’t understand that word.’

‘Sanctified. Means “accepted”.’ Padelin looked down at his knees, where his hands rested on them. He spread his fingers, then bunched them back up. ‘What I am saying to you is, you have reached this boundary. You may even have gone over it before. Once. Twice. Many times. It does not mean you must always do so. There has to be something to come back to.’

Padelin nodded, then got out of the car. He closed the door and looked down at Reinhardt. ‘What I know is we had someone for Marija Vukic’s murder, and now that person is dead. We have been made to look like fools. You are making us look like fools. I don’t like that and the people I work with will like it less.’ He stepped back from the door, holding Reinhardt’s eyes. ‘You should maybe trust us more. We are your allies, after all. You will, I am sure, be hearing from us soon.’ With that, he was gone.

Reinhardt pushed open the door to his office to find Thallberg sitting slumped in one of his chairs. He had his feet up on the edge of the desk and the chair back on two legs. He jumped to his feet as Reinhardt came in.

‘Where the bloody hell have you been?!’ he snapped.

Reinhardt put the film case on the desk and raised a placating hand as he pulled out his cigarettes and lit one. Thallberg looked hard at him as he inhaled and blew smoke at the ceiling. ‘I was called away,’ he said, finally.

‘Reinhardt, you’re going to have to do a bit better than that.’

Reinhardt held up a hand again. ‘Yes. Yes, just a moment, I need to think some things through.’

‘Think what through? You told me on the telephone you had information for me. You said you’d found “him”. Well? And what’s that?’ said Thallberg, pointing at the film.

‘That’s what I was called away to pick up. It’s a film.’

‘I’m guessing it’s not the latest offering from the Universum studios.’

Reinhardt pulled his chair out and sat down, drawing smoke deep into his lungs before answering. ‘It turns out Vukic liked to sometimes film herself with her lovers. On the night she was murdered, she arranged to have herself filmed. That’s it.’

‘ Christ ,’ breathed Thallberg. Then his eyes narrowed, and he stared accusingly at Reinhardt. ‘How long have you known about this? About her doing this?’

‘Almost from the beginning. She had a sort of studio in her house. It had been ransacked, all the films taken, and then I found a two-way mirror with a camera behind it…’ He stopped as Thallberg held up a hand, shaking his head irritably.

‘Wait, later. Later. Go back a bit. Your telephone call. Who do you think you’ve found?’

‘I’ve found the man Hendel was tailing. And I know who he was reporting to in Berlin.’

‘And?’

Reinhardt drew deeply on his cigarette, thinking of the bottle in its drawer and how much he needed a drink. ‘I found one of Hendel’s files,’ he said, shifting in his chair as he pulled the file out from under his tunic. ‘If you can believe it, he’d put it in the sidecar of a motorbike he and Krause took out to Ilidza. The bike was parked in the Feld shy;gendarmerie station out there. Just sitting in the lot, where the police had dropped it off. You want something to drink?’

Thallberg frowned irritably, staring at the file. ‘Sure.’

Reinhardt filled a cup and handed it to Thallberg, then poured himself a shot and knocked it back. He breathed out slowly, took a drag of his cigarette, and saw Thallberg looking at him with a sardonic glint in his eyes.

‘Well, I wanted one. You certainly needed one.’ Reinhardt flushed, a hot sweep that came suddenly up his neck. He stared back, and then, feeling defiant and ridiculous at the same time, he poured himself another, then corked the bottle.

‘The file?’

‘Here,’ said Reinhardt, tossing it across the desk. Thallberg swept it up and began to read. Reinhardt sipped from his mug, trying to slow the racing of his mind, waiting for the other man to finish. Thallberg looked up, his eyes and face full of a kind of confused blankness, which Reinhardt was sure had been in his own gaze when he had finished the file. Thallberg sighed, then took a long sip of his drink, eyes squinting against the taste.

‘Looks like you needed that,’ observed Reinhardt.

Thallberg puffed out a breath and had at least the good grace to look sheepish. ‘Well, I said I was after something big, but this…’ He puffed out his breath again. ‘This Varnhorst suspects Verhein of being a Jew? Verhein’s a hero, you know. Medals for everything. Everyone’s favourite soldier.’ He frowned, sipping again from his slivovitz. ‘God, I hate this stuff,’ he said, putting the mug back on Reinhardt’s desk, barely touched. ‘Give me a beer every time. If I’m not mistaken, Verhein’s being lined up for a post at Army High Command. The Fuhrer’s apparently mad keen about him.’ He shook his head. ‘Someone like Verhein? A general? A Jew ? You know, a lot of people are going to look like fools if this is true.’ Reinhardt said nothing, only feeling a surge of bitterness in his mouth as Thallberg echoed Padelin’s words to him earlier. ‘Who gave you this?’

‘Her cameraman. We – the police and myself – thought he was in Zagreb. Turns out he was here and he’s been in hiding since that night. With that.’

‘You’ve seen it?’ Reinhardt nodded. ‘Who does it show?’

Reinhardt breathed deeply. ‘It shows her having sex with, and then being beaten by, a certain General Paul Verhein.’

Thallberg put his hands behind his neck, then drew them slowly down and around over his mouth. ‘Christ,’ he said again. ‘ Christ! Wait,’ he said, suddenly. ‘It doesn’t show her being killed? Or show Hendel?’

Reinhardt shook his head, looking at the red tip of his cigarette. ‘The film ends before that.’

‘ Fuck! ’ exploded Thallberg, jumping out of his chair and beginning to pace around the room. ‘So we’ve got an army general caught on film getting his end away with this Croat skirt, then slapping her around. Then nothing. Then two dead bodies, one of them one of my men. Oh, Christ,’ he said, putting his hands in the small of his back and stretching, looking at the ceiling. ‘What a mess.’

‘Has been from the beginning,’ muttered Reinhardt. He followed Thallberg with his eyes as the captain paced around the room.

‘You recognised Verhein? On the film?’

‘I didn’t,’ replied Reinhardt. ‘I’ve never seen Verhein but the man on the film looked like that man in the photograph in the file while Vukic’s cameraman identified him as the man she was seeing in Russia last year.’

Thallberg puffed air out, drawing his fingers back and forth across his lips. He eyed the file where it sat on Reinhardt’s desk. ‘So what do you think?’

‘Honestly, I don’t know.’ He put his elbows on the desk and stubbed out his cigarette. He ground the butt out methodically, taking time to run his mind back over the rush of the day. ‘All right, then. A couple of things. I think you need to see the film, to confirm what I saw, and to possibly identify Verhein. You can identify him, can’t you?’ Thallberg nodded. ‘I’m not convinced Verhein killed Vukic. He may have killed Hendel, though, but the timing is all off.’

‘Why?’

‘She lay on the floor after she was beaten, and she must have been lying there a good ten, fifteen minutes. I don’t think he would’ve hung around. He’d have gone. He was scared. Of her, and of what he’d done.’

‘So what’re you saying?’

‘I’m saying…’ said Reinhardt, slowly, ‘I’m saying he’s a general. And generals don’t usually do things for themselves if they can avoid it.’