Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

‘This is it,’ said Maschke, somewhat superfluously.

‘Narrow strangulation marks on the throat,’ Dr Czrisini whispered, ‘the lower right arm has an old scar, about two centimetres long. Teeth complete, no signs of undernourishment, about 1.10 metres tall. I would guess six to eight years old.’

‘Time of death?’ Stave muttered, trying to keep hold of himself.

‘I’ll have a better idea after the autopsy, but she’s been dead at least 12 hours. In this cold she might have lain here even longer.’

‘In this cold,’ muttered Stave. ‘Any signs of abuse? Any other harm?’

‘Not as far as we can see at present. But we’ll soon know more.’

‘And as ever, no means of identification?’

The photographer and crime scene man came up with something in a bag. ‘We found this next to the body. It might have belonged to her, but it might also just have been lying there.’

It was a red braided cord about half the length of a finger. The chief inspector shook his head. ‘What is it?’

‘You obviously don’t have daughters,’ the photographer said with a weak smile. ‘It may have come from a Spencer, a type of traditional short jacket. The sort of thing a girl her age would be likely to wear.’

Stave waved one of the uniforms over. ‘Go the nearest police station and call the head of Department S. He needs to send people out to all the black market areas of the city, immediately, and tell them to take into custody any of them selling a traditional girl’s jacket with red cord braid.’

The officer saluted and clambered off over the rubble.

Stave looked around him. ‘The girl can’t have lived round here. The closest even half-inhabitable buildings are hundreds of metres away.’

‘Which means the killer brought her here,’ Maschke concluded for him.

‘Or the kid was here gathering coal and bumped into our killer,’ MacDonald suggested. ‘She wouldn’t be the only child out doing that, it seems.’

The two detectives gave him a quizzical look. He explained, ‘When the first policemen got here after the body was reported, they grabbed a boy who said he was here looking for coal. No idea whether or not he’d seen the body.’

Stave nodded. ‘Right, well let’s ask the ship’s watchman the usual questions. And then we need to talk to the boy.’

The watchman’s name was Walter Dreimann, 35 years old, thin with a face that suggested he suffered from stomach ulcers. Or maybe he just hadn’t got over the sight of the dead child.

‘You were out looking for coal?’ the chief inspector asked.

‘I was just taking a walk,’ Dreimann replied, in a whiny voice that suggested he was insulted by the idea.

‘Do that often, do you?’

‘Every day. Apart from the last two weeks when I was up in Lubeck visiting my mother. But I already told your colleague that.’

‘But before you went to visit your mother you took a walk along here every day?’ Stave asked, flicking through his notebook.

Dreimann nodded.

‘Right here, in this patch of rubble?’

The watchman replied without thinking about it. ‘It’s part of my usual route.’

‘And when were you last here, before you went off to Lubeck?’

‘Must have been the eighteenth or nineteenth of January.’

‘And the lift shaft was empty that day?’

‘Obviously!’ Dreimann gave him a shocked look. ‘You don’t think I’d have found the body of a dead girl and said nothing!’

‘Did you know the girl?’

‘No.’

‘Are you certain of that? Do you want to take another look at the body?’

Dreimann’s face turned green. ‘I’ve already seen enough.’

Stave forced the ghost of a smile and said, ‘You can go.’

The chief inspector looked around the devastated landscape. The photographer was packing up. Two porters in dark overcoats lifted the thin little frozen body from the lift shaft and laid it on a stretcher. Just like during the war, Stave reflected, particularly in the weeks following each bombing raid when they kept pulling little bodies out of the ruins. But this was supposed to be peacetime, for Christ’s sake.

He flinched. Something glinted on the grimy oil-covered floor of the lift shaft, something that must have been uncovered from the oil by the shoes of one of the porters. Something silver.

‘Dig that out,’ he said to one of the crime scene men, nodding at the object.

A minute later the chief inspector was holding in his hand an oily silver medallion. About the size of a small coin, one side smooth and plain. And on the other a cross and two daggers.

‘Our murderer makes mistakes,’ he thought to himself.

‘People normally wear medallions round their necks,’ MacDonald mused. ‘It would seem that in the case of the last two victims the medallion was ripped off while the murderer was throwing his garrotte around their necks. He took everything from his victims but seems to have missed the little silver medallions.’

‘Or placed them there,’ Maschke suggested, ‘as a sort of visiting card.’

‘Some sort of nutcase, planting clues for us?’ Stave wiped his brow with his right hand. He was tired. He didn’t want to go along with Maschke’s theory, not least because the last thing he wanted to do was to get inside the head of some deranged killer in an attempt to imagine his next moves. But he reminded himself that he was supposed to be a professional. ‘In that case why didn’t we find a medallion next to the first victim?’

‘Maybe the killer is developing his style,’ Maschke replied. ‘Or maybe he did leave a medallion there, and we were just too stupid to find it?’

Another accusation, Stave thought to himself. If you keep on like this, I’ll have you moved to traffic duty, if it’s the last thing I do!

‘I think MacDonald’s suggestion is the more likely,’ he said. ‘At least in that case there would be a link between the old man and the child. The two of them were wearing the same medallion. Maybe they belonged to the same family.’

‘So what about the young woman?’ Czrisini asked.

‘Maybe she was wearing a medallion too but in her case the murderer spotted it and stole it. Or maybe we really were too dim and didn’t find it. I’ll send somebody over to Baustrasse again to search the rubble.’

‘If the medallions were ripped off at the time of the attack,’ MacDonald developed his train of thought, ‘then that means the victims were murdered where we found them, or else the medallions wouldn’t have been next to the bodies.’

‘But if they’ve deliberately been left by the killer,’ Maschke interjected, ‘it means nothing. He might have strangled them anywhere, and afterwards just sought out somewhere in the rubble he could dump the corpses, and leave them with his parting gift.’

‘But he hasn’t left any two bodies in the same place. Each time he has chosen a new lot of ruins,’ Stave said. ‘You were down at the Street Clearance department. Just how many lots of ruins are there to choose from to hide a corpse?’

The vice squad man shrugged: ‘Hundreds, maybe thousands. There are a couple of posh areas like Blankenese that we can exclude – too little bomb damage – and then there are a few areas like the port: badly bombed but cordoned off by the British, where nobody would get in without being noticed. Apart from that, take your pick in what is the greatest ruined cityscape in Europe.’

‘Maybe the killer wants us to find his victims,’ MacDonald suggested. ‘Maybe he’s challenging us? Trying to provoke us?’

Stave waved the idea away. ‘No point in coming to premature conclusions. Wherever the killer might hide the bodies they’re going to be found sooner or later. How’s he going to make a corpse simply disappear? Weight it down with a couple of concrete blocks and throw it into the water? Even out on the Elbe the ice is a couple of metres thick. The Alster and the Fleete are frozen solid. Bury it? The ground is frozen hard as iron. Burn it? There’s next to no petrol and or coal in Hamburg, hardly even any wood. In one respect at least this winter is the policeman’s friend – there’s no way for a killer to simply dispose of his victim.’ Stave stretched. ‘Any more witnesses?’