Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

When he finally got home he flopped on to the bed, too exhausted even to take off his clothes, too exhausted to be hungry. Too exhausted to think of Margarethe, or their son.

Minus 36 degrees Celsius. The moment Stave walked out of the building the wind hit him in the face like a fist. He pulled his woollen scarf up over his face, and with his left hand in its thick glove rubbed his nose to stop it freezing. The air was so dry every breath hurt.

Before even going to the office Stave hurried down to the Food Ration Card Distribution Centre. Even the name was demeaning. He had to pick up his own coupons for the coming month, then hurry off to the shops to see what he could get with them. Soap would be a result. Each adult was only allowed 250 grams for four weeks. But as it was too cold and heating fuel was too expensive to take a bath or a shower, most of Hamburg’s residents stank like soldiers returning from the front: of sweat, dirt, old clothing and dry skin. Stave hated feeling dirty and both used the soap and took a shower whenever he could, even if he had to stand there shivering. He wouldn’t turn his nose up at coffee either, but there was not much chance of that.

Start your text here…Stave joined the queue outside the distribution centre. It moved quickly. Most food and clothing had only been available on rations since 1939. The Brits simply changed the name of the Reich Ministry for Nutrition and told the officials who worked there to get on with it. And like most officials they took the bureaucratic procedure to extremes. There were currently 67 different food ration coupons in circulation: two for milk, two for flour, one for eggs, three daily-use coupons, 14 entitlement coupons, two coupons for potatoes, 21 coupons for use by different classes of consumers and 22 supplementary coupons. That was not counting the special coupons. If you needed to get your shoes re-heeled, you had to have a shoe repair coupon.

If only I could eat the coupons, at least then I wouldn’t be hungry, Stave thought to himself as he grabbed hold of his grey sheet of perforated paper. He was classed as a normal consumer with no supplementary entitlements. His coupons allowed him to claim 1.7kg of grey bread that tasted of sawdust, seven-eighths of a litre of milk that looked like blue-white dishwater, 2.5kg of turnips (because there were no more potatoes), 15g of a yellowy substance that was supposed to be cheese, 100g fat, 200g sugar, 100g sticky ersatz jam, 125g soya flakes. And that was his lot.

Come to think of it, it was a miracle that more people had not thought of strangling the next person they met in the street and stealing every last stitch from their backs.

Then it was time for the next queue: outside a half bombed-out house with a ground-floor shop, above the door of which someone had scribbled ‘Dairy Goods’ with chalk on the cracked walls. When he finally got to the front the shop owner – surprisingly fat for the times – handed him the miserable slices of cheese on a piece of grubby paper.

‘Milk’s gone already,’ she told him curtly.

‘When’s the next delivery?’ Stave asked wearily.

‘Tomorrow maybe. Or maybe the next day.’

Stave left the shop without saying goodbye. That’s one ration for the birds, he thought to himself. Thank God I don’t have any kids in the house any more. And then he realised what he had almost said and hurried away, as if somebody might have heard him.

When he had done the rest of his errands and taken his scanty haul back home, Stave went to the office. There was no rush; on the last Monday of the month everybody was busy getting their ration entitlements. Erna Berg was the only one there already. Stave wondered if she’d managed to get milk for her kid, but didn’t dare ask.

Inspector Muller had left a note for him. ‘No luck with the symbol on the medallion. Still working on it.’

Stave wondered if he was, or whether he had just chucked the photo of the medallion into the bin.

The post-mortem report was on his desk. There was almost nothing new in Dr Czrisini’s report except that on the left wrist of the corpse he had found traces of fine red lines, like that around the neck, and also that the old man was circumcised.

A few minutes later Maschke and MacDonald came into the office. Maschke’s face was red and there was a thin layer of hoar frost and snow on his overcoat.

‘I went back out to where the body was found yesterday,’ he said. ‘A couple of uniforms had been there at dawn and searched through the rubble, but they didn’t find anything more than we did the night before.’

Stave showed them the report and told them about the red lines around one wrist, and the fact that the man was circumcised.

‘A Jew?’ MacDonald asked.

‘With a medallion around his neck with a cross on it?’ Stave shook his head. ‘Doesn’t seem likely.’

‘I doubt it too,’ Maschke agreed. ‘Over at the vice squad whenever we raid a brothel, we usually have to haul a few punters out of the beds; you wouldn’t believe how many blokes I’ve seen in their birthday suits nor how many of them are circumcised. Good churchgoers and probably even one or two party members.’

‘My thinking is,’ Stave resumed, ‘that the old boy was just walking along Collau Strasse, slowly – he was lame after all. The street is narrow because of all the rubble heaps which spread out across the pavement on to the road. The killer is lying in wait where the footpath between the rubble meets Collau Strasse. He knocks his victim to the ground, slings the wire around the unconscious man’s throat and drags him off the street into the ruins.’

‘A bit like certain species of spiders,’ MacDonald interjected.

Maschke gave him an irritated glance. Stave ignored both of them.

‘So, attacked from behind, felled, dragged off – all of that in just a few seconds. Then amidst the piles of rubble where the killer can be fairly sure that nobody is going to surprise him he has more time to do the deed. He strangles the old man with the piece of wire, then strips him naked, but misses the walking stick, the piece of leather and the medallion.’

‘We didn’t find any tracks on the path to indicate the body being dragged,’ Maschke said.

‘The gravel is frozen solid as if it were covered in concrete; the layer of snow is no thicker than a sheet of newspaper. The body might have been lying there for a day or two. In that time dozens of people could have walked along that path and their footsteps would have erased any drag marks,’ Stave replied.

‘And none of them spotted the corpse?’ MacDonald queried.

‘It was lying in a bomb crater, off to one side. Couldn’t be seen from the path.’

‘If the old boy was really walking along Collau Strasse and was very lame, then that might mean he lived nearby. The lads from the lab did good work and made dozens of copies of the police photo,’ Maschke said. ‘This morning we went out and asked the local residents. It was easy enough as they were all queuing up at the nearby ration card distribution centre. I can’t say we asked each and every local resident, but most of them must have been there and I’m afraid not one of them said they had ever seen the old man. It did ruin the appetite of a few of them, though.’

‘So if he didn’t live there,’ Stave asked, ‘how did he end up there?’

‘Because somebody dumped him there,’ Maschke suggested. ‘Only the killer knows how he got those red marks on his wrist, but maybe he tied him up before killing him. Maybe he even dragged him by the wrist after he was dead. He might have strangled him, stripped him and then secretly dragged him amidst the rubble. Job done.’

‘Don’t forget the stick,’ MacDonald added. ‘Assuming it actually belonged to the victim, that would suggest that the old man got to the spot where we found him of his own accord. Whether he was attacked on Collau Strasse or anywhere else, why would the murderer have taken his stick too and left it lying beside him? Despite robbing him of almost everything else? I reckon he was attacked right there on the footpath, strangled and then stripped, but the murderer simply overlooked the walking stick, otherwise he’d have taken it too. Another hint that the attack took place at night, although that’s hardly surprising in any case.’