Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

The fact that there was no new victim was on the one hand a good thing, but it could also mean that there was no opportunity for the killer to make a mistake. The murders could be at an end because he was afraid that a victim might fight back successfully, or that somebody would spot him in the act. Or that somebody in Hamburg would come forth to identify the victims. It might mean it was all over, without a proper ending.

Now that the thaw had set in, it would eventually rain. And rain would soak the posters on the streets and wash the photos to the ground, along with Stave’s urgent pleas for help. There was no way he would get permission to print new ones, to worry people again.

What was he to do with these four cases? The paperwork was spread across his desk; he’d carried out every search imaginable, questioned every witness he could find, followed every lead. Maybe, at some stage, chance would come to his assistance. Maybe the killer would get drunk in some bar and give himself away; it had happened before. Maybe some newcomer to Hamburg would find one of the few posters to survive the winter and call in to say, ‘I know who that is.’

But what if they didn’t? Then the rubble murderer would get away with it, Stave was forced to admit. And I’ll spend the rest of my life thinking about it, he thought. And I’ll never stop asking myself: what might you have missed?

Feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to do any good, he told himself, carefully collecting the folders and putting them back in the filing cabinet. He got up from his chair and strode towards the door, another file under his arm: the personnel file on Lothar Maschke that MacDonald had procured for him. And another couple of interesting documents. It was time to go and talk to Ehrlich.

But as he walked down the corridor, he kept thinking to himself, what might I have missed? Missed? Down the staircase with the irritating pattern on the steps. Missed? Through the entrance hallway, past the little bronze elephant. Missed? Past the Mercedes outside in the street. Missed? Walking to Ehrlich’s office. Missed? The sculpture of a woman. Ehrlich. Woman. Ehrlich.

‘What an idiot I am!’ he suddenly shouted aloud.

And he began running.

Stave ran all the way back to the office. Damn his leg. He was running so fast that he stumbled. By the time he was back outside the grandiose building he was coughing for breath. The Mercedes was still standing there. The key was in the ignition. Stave pulled the door open, jumped into the driver’s seat and sped off with the engine howling. To hell with traffic rules.

There were bicycles everywhere and people out walking, soaking up the sun. The chief inspector swore, parped the horn, held the steering wheel tight as he roared round the bends.

The answer had been lying on his desk for a month, but not in the files he had so worried about, but in his own notebook. And I didn’t see it. He could have thumped himself in the face. I just hope the witness is still alive, he suddenly thought. I just hope she isn’t one of those who froze to death over the course of this long winter.

Yvonne Delluc.

He had made a note of the name. Then struck it out. She was one of the survivors of Oradour. And he had seen the name before, in Maschke’s card index. The card index in which the vice squad man had noted all the names of his ladies of the night and their pimps. He could see it in his mind’s eye now as clearly as if he had just crept into his colleague’s office an hour ago.

‘Yvonne Delluc. Has family here.’

A Frenchwoman. And a survivor of Oradour. An earring from a Parisian jeweller. Stave had no idea what else she might have lost along the banks of the Elbe. But it was no wonder nobody had come forward to identify her. Not one of her neighbours. Not one of the British. None of the DPs – who were in any case former forced labour workers or former concentration camp inmates, whereas the survivors of Oradour were normal French citizens from the provinces. Nobody had dragged them to Hamburg.

‘Has family here,’ the note Maschke/Herthge had made. Somehow or other the Oradour survivor had bumped into the only surviving Oradour killer, and he had taken a note of her name. And the fact that she had other family here.

Could Yvonne Delluc have been the young woman? Or the older woman? Or even the child? Stave would find out. Maybe.

He put his foot down, the engine roared, the tyres squealed as he turned yet another bend.

How would he have come across Yvonne Delluc? By chance, when he had been looking for witnesses along the Reeperbahn, one of the hookers had mentioned that one of the vice squad men seemed a bit over-keen – to the extent that he accused ordinary harmless women of being prostitutes. Could that have been how he came across Yvonne Delluc? An elegant woman, not someone worn and haggard, a woman with a French name. Lots of prostitutes used French names, but in this case it happened to be her real name. Maschke might have thought he was checking out a whore and suddenly realised he was dealing with one of the witnesses of the massacre he had taken part in. At which point he kills her. And then, just to be sure, wipes out the rest of her family.

Then he volunteers to join the investigation, just to keep tabs on it. So that he can do what he has to if suspicion points to him: plant false evidence or at least know in advance when it was time to disappear.

‘One Peter, One Peter, please call in.’

The voice over the radio caused Stave to flinch. Keeping his eyes on the road he thumped the radio furiously until it stopped.

The brakes screeched and the vehicle came to a shuddering halt. Stave leapt out of the car. There before him was the dark sinister bulk of the Eilbek bunker.

The chief inspector threw open the steel door and climbed the stairs to the first inhabited floor, dashing past the wooden partitions. The air was clammier than it had been on his first visit two months ago, warmer now, but mouldy and stuffy. The same ripped oilskin jackets hung at the entrance.

Stave sighed with relief: it meant Anton Thuman was still alive. He stomped into the man’s little cubicle. The old seaman sprang to his feet and had put up his fists before recognising him.

‘There are more polite ways of announcing one’s presence, Herr Commissar,’ he shouted at him, keeping his fists up.

The chief inspector managed, just, to control his anger. What angst he might have been spared if this man had just spoken up. One of the first witnesses he had spoken to, the day after they had discovered the first body! The young woman. He had mentioned a French family in the next cubicle who had been taken away by a policeman the day before. A policeman!

Stave reached into his jacket. Thuman’s eyes opened wide.

‘Don’t shoot!’ he called out.

The chief inspector ignored his pleas, and instead pulled out the photographs of the victims. Thuman, obviously relieved, put down his fists. Stave handed the photos to him, his hand shaking with anger.

‘The people who lived next door,’ the old seaman said indifferently. ‘The French.’

The chief inspector closed his eyes for a moment. ‘Why did you not report this to the police ages ago?’ he said, trying hard to keep calm.

‘Why should I have?’

‘Did you not see the posters all over the city?’ Stave asked, incredulously.

Thuman stared with empty eyes at the partition wall. ‘I hardly ever leave here. And if I do, I don’t look at stuff like that. In any case, I can’t read. Never learned to. Never needed to.’

Stave leant back against the wooden planks and ran his hand over his eyes.

‘Do you know what the family next door were called?’

‘We were never introduced.’