Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

‘What happened on the thirteenth of January?’

‘I don’t know exactly. The night before we were late going to bed. My husband has always been an early riser; he’s never needed much sleep. He got up at his normal time; I remember that even though I was still half asleep. Then I fell back into a deep sleep and when I woke up it was about 10 a.m. and he was gone.’

‘Gone?’

Frau Hellinger blushed slightly. ‘My husband and I have been married for 30 years, we know each other very well – he often gets up before me, but he never ever leaves the house without saying goodbye. And if he’s going to visit a customer instead of the office, he always tells me.’

‘But on this occasion the house was empty when you got up?’

‘Yes, he had just gone.’

‘Had he taken anything with him? Money, for example?’

Now she was blushing deeply. ‘Not as far as I know. We don’t keep a lot of cash in the house. And no, there are no valuable items missing. At least none that weren’t missing beforehand, if you know what I mean.’

Stave glanced at the bare patches on the walls and nodded, then glanced down at his notebook to read the notes he had made at the Search Office.

‘You stated that he was wearing his winter coat. Navy-blue wool, hat, gloves and scarf.’

‘That was what was missing from the cloakroom. That was what he normally wore in winter.’

‘And his briefcase was missing too.’

‘He took it with him to work every morning.’

‘What did he keep in it?’

Frau Hellinger shrugged her shoulders. ‘Documents, I imagine. I never looked.’

‘Diagrams? Contracts?’

‘I really have no idea.’

Stave wondered if someone involved in the production of trigonometric calculators and complex timepieces had call to use thin lengths of wire. Wire loops. ‘Was the house door locked that morning, when you noticed your husband was missing?’

Frau Hellinger looked surprised. ‘It was closed, but not locked.’

‘Thank you,’ said Stave and closed his notebook.

‘There’s something else.’

He looked up.

She hesitated, taking a deep breath. ‘When I started looking around I found a screwed-up piece of paper on the floor in the cloakroom where his overcoat normally hung. I didn’t notice it at first; I thought it was just something the cleaning lady had missed. But later, when my husband was nowhere to be found and I began to look for clues as to what had happened, I picked it up.’

She opened the drawer of a commode and took out a piece of paper the size of a hand. Squared paper, torn down one side, clearly hastily torn out of a notebook, Stave reckoned. The sort of notebook used by engineers or technicians for doing calculations or drawing sketches.

He took it from her and examined it. The innumerable creases like a net across the hatched page showed how scrunched up it had been. One side was blank, on the other, a single word, scrawled in pencil, in English: ‘Bottleneck.’

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘I can’t speak any English but a friend translated it for me.’

‘The neck of a bottle.’

‘It was obviously thrown aside in haste, but it is definitely my husband’s writing. What on earth does it mean?’

‘I’m wondering that myself,’ Stave said.

The chief inspector took his leave, slowly and in a hurry at the same time. It would have been nice to stay a little longer. Every fibre of his being had enjoyed the warmth inside the villa, the opportunity to take his coat off, sit down and drink some hot tea. He would have liked to close his eyes, fall asleep. On the other hand, he was intrigued by this new discovery. He needed to talk it over with his4 colleagues, exchange ideas, test the plausibility of crazy theories.

He walked quickly, limping, but not even noticing it. Bottleneck. Bottle. Neck. Coincidence. What could it mean? Is Hellinger the killer? But why leave the note? Why an English word? Or was the industry boss just the killer’s accomplice? Or maybe a witness?

All of a sudden Stave stopped. If Hellinger wanted to disappear that morning, would he have dropped the note by accident? Unlikely. But if, as his wife believed, he had scribbled the word in haste, crumpled the note up and dropped it when he was putting his coat on, surely that meant he only had a few moments? And that he wasn’t alone? So who had been with Hellinger in the villa that morning? And did the magnate go willingly with whoever it was? Or was he abducted? That was what his wife seemed to believe. But who would want to abduct him?

By the time he got to his office Stave was still lost in thought. He sat down at his desk and looked again at the piece of paper that he had managed to persuade Frau Hellinger to give him, though she had been reluctant to do so. Perhaps she thought it might be the last link she would have with her husband, the chief inspector reflected. She might well be right.

‘Drum up MacDonald and Maschke for me,’ he shouted to his secretary through the closed door.

He caught the smell of cold tobacco before the door even opened. Maschke came in. A few minutes later MacDonald also arrived.

He gave both men a quick summary of what he had been up to. Maschke thought long and hard and then nodded appreciatively. MacDonald just stared at him attentively. Stave returned the look.

‘Bottleneck,’ he said at last. ‘That’s what’s on the piece of paper. Just that.’ He showed it to him.

The lieutenant looked pale. ‘What could it mean?’ he whispered.

The chief inspector held up his hands. ‘It means you’re going to have to ask around amongst your colleagues again. It might have something to do with our murderer. Then again maybe not, but in any case the disappearance of Hellinger is odd. And this is the only lead we have. An English lead.’

MacDonald let his head drop so that they could no longer see his face. Difficult to make out what it meant, Stave thought to himself. Was he ashamed because the clue pointed to one of his compatriots? Or was it anger at a German policeman accusing an Englishman?

MacDonald looked up, his face expressing agreement. ‘You’re right, Chief Inspector. An English lead. I’ll get on to it.’

The Briton was just getting to his feet when there was a knock on the door. It was Erna Berg, who gave him a quick smile before turning to Stave.

‘There’s a lady here who wants to speak to you.’

‘Who is it?’

‘An Anna von Veckinhausen. She says you know her.’

Stave ignored the curious glances from MacDonald and Maschke and nodded goodbye to them. The vice squad man squeezed past the dark-haired woman outside without saying a word. MacDonald was more polite, waited for her to come in, greeted her and then closed the door behind him.

At last, thought Stave. He indicated the chair on the other side of his desk. Involuntarily he glanced at her hands and noticed a bare patch on the ring finger of her right hand. A missing wedding ring? Divorced? Widowed? Or was it nothing to do with a ring at all? Maybe it was a healed wound made by a loop of wire she’d been holding in her hands? I’m getting paranoid, the inspector realised.

Her almond-shaped eyes were watching him carefully. Maybe she regrets having come here, Stave wondered. He let her take her time.

Anna von Veckinhausen sat down on the chair opposite him, her right arm folded diagonally across her chest, her hand on her left shoulder. The same defensive pose. Then she forced a smile.

‘You know why I’m here.’

‘I have my suspicions.’

‘I didn’t tell you everything.’

‘When I first questioned you, you told me you took the path through the rubble to get from Collau Strasse to Lappenbergs Allee. The second time you told me you had been going along Lappenbergs Allee and took the path to get to Collau Strasse, the opposite of what you said the first time.’