Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

Maschke thought about it for a moment, then nodded. ‘Okay, but what do we do next?’

‘If we’re writing to all the CID departments in the former Reich, then we should ask them for information about any suspicious inheritance claims. Meanwhile in Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein we should talk to all the registry offices, cemetery administrators and funeral parlours: ask them if anyone matching the descriptions of any of our four victims matches someone reported dead, even under unsuspicious circumstances? Did all the funerals reported actually take place?’

The vice squad man stared at him in astonishment.

‘Maybe somebody kills his wife, reports her death to the registrar, and arranges her funeral. He gets his inheritance, but he doesn’t actually go ahead with the funeral, because he’s afraid somebody will notice the strangulation marks. So he dumps the body in the rubble and doesn’t bother with a funeral. No official will bother to find out if the funeral referred to on the death certificate actually took place. Certainly not the way things are at present. And an undertaker isn’t necessarily going to run to the registrar or police because a funeral is cancelled. He’ll just think the client got a cheaper offer.’

‘I wouldn’t want to be your rich uncle,’ Maschke mumbled.

‘We’ve got two big jobs to do,’ Stave said. ‘We’ve got to put together the letter to go out to all the CID offices, registrars and so forth. That means we’re going to need dozens of copies of the photos, maybe even hundreds. Frau Berg can deal with that.’

He noticed MacDonald wince at her name. But nobody said anything.

‘And we need to send a letter to all the surgeons who’ve carried out ovarian operations in the last ten years, with photographs of the older woman, both head and abdomen. We need to pay a visit in person to every doctor in a 200-kilometre radius of Hamburg. That will be quicker. You can do that, Maschke.’

‘My lucky day,’ the vice squad man said, though he didn’t seem too unhappy with the task. ‘As long as you don’t ask me to attend another autopsy, I’m your man.’

He’s glad to be out of here, Stave reckoned. Out of the firing line if the rubble murderer causes us any more grief. Maschke had no idea that for all that he seemed to be giving him a task that might be better for his career prospects, the chief inspector had his own reasons.

Stave got to his feet. ‘To work.’

Stave hung back a few moments after his men had left the office before going out into the anteroom. Maybe MacDonald and Frau Berg would be grateful for a couple of minutes on their own. But when he finally opened the door, his secretary was sitting behind her desk alone. He told her what her needed her do, and she took a note, though her hand was shaking.

It had got to a point where he could no longer pretend not to have noticed anything. ‘Is there something wrong?’ he asked. A second too late, he realised how intimate that sounded. ‘You of course don’t have to tell me anything,’ he added quickly, realising that that sounded even more awkward.

Erna Berg made a brave effort at a smile, then collapsed in tears. Stave stood there next to her, embarrassed as he watched the tears roll down her cheeks behind hands covering her eyes, ending in a puddle on the desk. He took out his handkerchief to wipe her face, but then decided that would be even more embarrassingly intimate, and instead just used it to wipe the desk. For what seemed like an eternity he stood there agonising, not knowing what to do, terrified that at any moment somebody would open the door and come in.

Eventually his secretary calmed down, took the handkerchief from his hand and wiped her eyes, sniffling.

‘I can hardly give this back to you like this,’ she mumbled, putting it in her pocket. ‘I’ll wash it and iron it and bring it back tomorrow.’

‘Keep it,’ Stave said.

‘One thing less to worry about. I’m sorry for making a scene.’

‘Take the rest of the day off.’

She glanced up at him in horror. ‘Right now I’m better off here than at home.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m sure you’ve got wind of…’

‘MacDonald?’

‘James – Lieutenant MacDonald warned me that you were on to us.’

‘You haven’t done anything for me to be on to.’

‘Thanks for the well-meant lie, but Herr MacDonald and I have become close over the past few weeks.’

‘It’s not a crime.’

‘If you’re a married woman, expecting a child and suddenly your husband turns up, now of all times, it’s pretty close.’

Stave sat down on the visitor’s chair in front of the desk. ‘Turbulent times,’ he mumbled.

‘The thing is, I thought I was a widow. My husband was reported missing. No news, nothing to indicate he was still alive. You know how it is.’ She blushed fiercely and turned her eyes to the floor. ‘Then Lieutenant MacDonald arrives in your office. We talked together. We are both lonely, single, one thing led to another. It was never part of the plan that I would get pregnant so quickly. But we want the child. We’ve been dreaming of a future together. Including my son. Herr MacDonald wants to adopt him. We want to move to England, at some stage. To get away from all the rubble here.’ She put her hands to her eyes. ‘And then, two days ago, there’s a knock on the door. I thought it was James. I was surprised, I opened the door and – there’s my husband, standing there. A pale shadow of his former self. With just one leg. And that look in his eyes, lost, helpless and yet at the same time somehow brutal.’

She burst into tears again. Stave waited until she had recovered, relieved that she wasn’t looking at him. His whole body was wracked with anger and envy. Envy that the husband she thought lost forever had returned, while there was still no trace of his son. And anger that she wasn’t even pleased by the fact.

‘Does your husband have any idea about your…’ he tried to find a suitable word, but couldn’t and ended up using the rather lame, ‘…little difficulty?’

She shook her head. ‘For the time being James and I are not seeing one another outside work. It’s been a shock for him too. But I can’t keep my condition a secret forever. It’s not as if I can pretend it’s my husband’s baby. I can’t. You understand that.’

Stave understood only too well. A man who had left one of his legs somewhere in Russia and had returned to his young wife. A wife who looks at him with horror when he knocks on her door. A wife who pulls away from him in bed at night as if he had the plague. He wondered if even his little son didn’t dare go near the man with the disability?

‘What are you going to do?’

She pulled herself together all of a sudden, forced a smile. ‘First of all, I’m going to deal with all these letters, Chief Inspector.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Stave said, getting to his feet. ‘Obviously it’s none of my business.’

Stave stood looking at the city map with the four red tacks. Three in the east, one in the west. The three crime scenes east of the Alster were barely 15 minutes’ walk apart. But from there to Lappenbergs Allee was at least an hour on foot.

That means the killer had access to a car or a truck.

Stave thought about what that meant. It meant that the killer had to be one of the very few Germans who were allowed to drive. Or that he was British. On the other hand, motor vehicles were anything but inconspicuous. And none of the places where the bodies had been found were directly accessible by a vehicle – which meant that the bodies would have to be carried from the vehicle on the street to the spot where they were found. Hardly possible for that not to be noticed during the day. And at night, a vehicle of any sort would have been all the more noticeable because the British hardly ever drove at night and it was expressly forbidden for Germans.