Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

And when he wasn’t thinking about Maschke, then his troubled thoughts would revolve around the rubble murderer. What if he was here at the station too, also looking out for someone? What if the murderer came across Stave’s son before he did, found him clambering off a train exhausted and emaciated? A weakened veteran returning from the war would be easy prey. A beat officer would ring Stave up and say, ‘We’ve got another body.’ He would go out to some ruined lot and find the body of a naked young man … approach it and then be horrified to recognise it.

The chief inspector had paced the vast station concourse aimlessly like a caged tiger, unsettled, angry. When the last train had spluttered out of the station in the evening he was exhausted, as always, frozen, disappointed and yet at the same time somehow relieved that nothing had happened. That another weekend had gone by uneventfully.

Suddenly Stave flinched as the phone rang. He grabbed the receiver.

‘Maschke here.’

He heard crackling, swooping sounds, as if his colleague was calling from the North Pole.

‘I’ve been trying to get through to you for an hour. What’s going on? It’s constantly engaged.’

Stave did his best not to allow any sign of relief into his voice.

‘Had a few calls to make,’ he replied. ‘Nothing important. How about you?’

Maschke was calling from Travemunde, cursing the hoteliers as racketeers. Five hundred Reichsmarks per night for a room with a sea view. Breakfast with real coffee, marmalade, a bottle of whisky at night for 800 Reichsmarks.

‘The hotel is full,’ he shouted over the crackling line. ‘It’s just that the clientele has changed.’

‘It sounds like business people on expenses, like it used to be.’ Stave couldn’t resist a tinge of Schadenfreude . Cynical old Maschke who hunted down pimps and hookers but deep down couldn’t stop believing that people were basically good.

Or then again? He remembered the map of France with the SS stamp and the name Hans Herthge.

Should I just call him ‘Herthge’ in the middle of the call and see how he reacts, Stave wondered, but quickly jettisoned the idea. He would have too much to explain if he did. Instead he told Maschke to check out surgeons who had carried out both hernia and ovarian operations. He chose his words carefully, kept it vague, didn’t say expressly that he’d been in Maschke’s office the previous evening, but at least if he should find out from Ehrlich then he would be able to say that he’d mentioned the idea to him on the phone.

His vice squad colleague said nothing for a moment or two. Was he suspicious? Then he answered, ‘Okay, I’ll try that.’

Despite the crackling on the line Stave thought there was a sceptical tone to his voice. ‘Hernias and ovarian operations. So far I’ve covered Hamburg to the Baltic coast. Now I’ll take it as far as the Danish border. Then from the North Sea south. It’ll take days. So far I’ve talked to some 20 surgeons. You wouldn’t believe how many blokes muck about with women’s down-under bits. But nobody admits to dealings with the woman we’re talking about. And I asked every doctor I’ve spoken to if they thought she could have children after an operation like that, and they all said it was highly unlikely.’

‘What about our other victims?’

‘I’ve shown every doctor I’ve visited every damn police photograph of every victim, the old guy, the younger woman, the kid. It would appear that not one of our victims ever went to a doctor. They all seem to have been remarkably healthy. None of them can ever have suffered anything more than a sore throat.’

‘Check in with headquarters every two days, even if you don’t come up with anything. But be thorough. And check out older, retired doctors. I’d prefer you wasted an extra day rather than took an hour too few.’

At least that’s got Maschke out of my hair, he thought as put the receiver down.

By now there was a constant rattle of keys on the typewriter in the outer office. Frau Berg had arrived.

‘How are you?’ Stave asked her, unnecessarily. She looked as if she hadn’t slept for three days.

‘Fine,’ she lied. The clatter of the typewriter got louder.

‘Get me a few more folders for my in-tray. I need to sort the files out.’ Stave was just floating a theory.

But Erna Berg just nodded.

The word ‘files’ didn’t seem to make her nervous. Of all his colleagues she had had the best opportunity to steal the murder files. But she had no obvious motive. She didn’t react at all to the word. It was always possible, of course, that she was just a good actress. But in that case wouldn’t she have done a better job in covering up the business with her husband and MacDonald?

‘Anything else I can do for you?’ she looked up at him.

Stave realised that he had been staring at her, reddened, and shook his head. Then he thought again. ‘Yes, ask MacDonald to come in.’

She managed the faintest of smiles, then said, ‘I’d love to but the lieutenant has disappeared.’

‘Disappeared?’

‘Gone. Vanished without trace. Nobody at his office can tell me where he is. I’ve been ringing regularly, and not just on business. Sometimes he disappears for a few hours, but sometimes for a day or more. And then suddenly James is back again. I have no idea what he’s up to these days. Maybe he has another woman.’

‘I doubt it,’ the chief inspector said, although in reality he didn’t know MacDonald well enough to say anything of the sort.

‘Keep trying.’

‘You don’t have to tell me. I’ll let you know as soon as I get hold of him. ‘

Stave went back into his office. Maschke was out of the way. MacDonald had disappeared. Erna Berg was preoccupied with her own problems. Cuddel Breuer and Ehrlich weren’t on his heels – a weekend without finding a fresh victim had given him breathing space, a stay of execution before they started on at him again.

I’ll go through everything all over again, on my own, thoroughly, he told himself. I shall interview all the most important witnesses once again. ‘Check with the transport department if there’s a car available,’ he told his secretary.

‘For the whole day?’

‘Half a day. Or just an hour or two, if that’s all they can let me have.’

‘Where’s is it to go to?’

‘Out. On the trail of a murderer.’ He didn’t know what else to say.

Half an hour later, Stave screeched the old Mercedes round a tight corner on to the Elbe embankment. He’d wondered for a moment or two if he should have called first to tell them he was coming, but in the end decided against it. If they turned him away from the Warburg Children’s Health Home then he could play it by the book and get MacDonald to help him if necessary, if he showed up again, that was. He wondered for a moment or two why MacDonald had gone missing, and if perhaps Erna Berg’s suspicions were justified.

He had to stop at the gates of the Warburg building. They were locked and there was nobody around. Stave rang the bell. Eventually a teenager appeared on the other side and said, ‘What do you want?’

Stave automatically began to fish in his overcoat pocket for his police ID, then changed his mind and simply gave his name, without mentioning any rank, and added, ‘I need to speak to Madame Dubois.’

The boy disappeared. A minute passed. Then another. The chief inspector began to worry that he’d made a mistake. But eventually the slender figure of the villa’s warden appeared, opened the gate and waved him in.

‘It’s a shame you haven’t found your murderer yet,’ Therese Dubois said.

‘What makes you think I haven’t already arrested him?’

‘If you had, would you be here?’