Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

‘He’s also careful, methodical. He waits until he knows more about Yvonne Delluc’s circumstances, then he strikes, mercilessly, eliminating all the evidence. He murders Yvonne Delluc somewhere in the city and hides her body in the ruins. How he got her body there I still don’t know. Then he lies in wait for the old man and when he finds him, murders him on the spot. Maybe he found out he always took the same route. Then finally, on some pretext or other, he lures the other woman and child out of the bunker. They probably have no idea what’s going on, they weren’t in Oradour. Once they’re out of the Eilbek bunker, he kills them and dumps their bodies. It’s not impossible that he got hold of a police vehicle and used it to transport them to near where we later found them, and then dumped them in the ruins when the moment was right.

‘What did he have to worry about? Yvonne Delluc and her family had only been living in the bunker for a few weeks. Bunker folk don’t bother much with their neighbours. There’s a good chance nobody in the bunker would remember them. And there didn’t seem to be anybody else here in Hamburg who knew them. The little girl didn’t go to school, which is why all our efforts to pursue that line of enquiry led nowhere. They weren’t entitled to ration cards. There was no doctor here who had ever treated any of them, nor anywhere else in the former Reich. We should have been looking in France, but how could we have known that?

‘As soon as we found the first body, Herthge/Maschke volunteered to join the investigation, so that he could keep an eye on things. He knew we would find the other victims and that it would make waves. What he didn’t know was that in his haste to strip and loot his victims he had overlooked a couple of things. Nor did he know that there was another Oradour survivor living in Hamburg, one who would finally put me on his tail.’

‘Does Herthge still have no idea, or does he suspect you’re on to him?’

‘Unfortunately,’ Stave said, ‘I’ve sent Maschke, alias Herthge, off on his travels, on the rubble murderer case. He’s supposed to be going round the whole of northern Germany talking to doctors to find a lead. I only learned of his double identity after he was already on the road. Up until some four weeks or so ago, he had been calling the office intermittently. But not since then.’

‘Have you sent out word to other police stations?’ Ehrlich asked.

‘Discreetly. Make it seem we’re looking for Maschke because we’re worried something’s happened to him. Not that we want to arrest him.’

‘Time to change that. Send out an arrest warrant for him.’

Ehrlich sat back in his chair, looking happily at the detective.

‘You have had him under suspicion for some time?’ Stave said.

The public prosecutor smiled. ‘You think that was why I wanted to pay a visit to his office? Indeed, there had been hints: reports from other SS members who – faced with the gallows or a life sentence – were willing to grass on their former comrades. In circumstances like that, you can do yourself a bit of good. And there were always rumours when someone or other had gone under cover and taken a new identity. Maschke’s name came up, and when I realised he was a policeman, my ears pricked up. But there was no SS man of this name in any of the files. I guessed, therefore, that Lothar Maschke had to be a false identity and that he had served in the SS under another name. I had no idea what that name might have been, nor in which unit he might have served. I can hardly wait to ask Herthge himself these questions. In court. I am deeply indebted to you.’

‘Then perhaps you can do me two favours,’ Stave replied.

The public prosecutor raised an eyebrow. ‘What might they be?’

‘First of all, call Cuddel Breuer and explain to him why I borrowed the Mercedes.’

‘Borrowed,’ Erhlich repeated, with a laugh. ‘I would be willing to bet the Head of CID has never heard the public prosecutor use that word as a euphemism for car theft. My pleasure. And the second favour?’

‘I want to know who the other victims were. It might not make any difference. When you’re dead, you’re dead. But I feel somehow better if there are names. Then at least their names survive.’

‘I agree,’ said Ehrlich.

A brief telephone call later and Ehrlich gave Stave a reassuring wink.

‘Your boss just wants to know if you got any dents in his Mercedes. But he’s very pleased with our news. He reckons that wrapping up the rubble murderer case is a good end to the winter.’

His next conversation took a lot longer. The public prosecutor spoke French fluently, albeit with a thick accent, Stave noted. He kept nodding, making notes, raised an eyebrow in surprise at one point. He’s not liking what he’s hearing, the chief inspector noted. I hope there are no problems. Not now.

Eventually Ehrlich put the phone down.

‘The Dellucs were Jewish,’ he said.

‘I already know that.’

‘Many members of the family were deported. The others went into hiding, three in Paris and one in Oradour.’

‘Yvonne Delluc.’

‘The grandfather of the family, Rene Delluc, had friends who stood by him, even in hard times. He went into hiding in Paris. He had a son and a daughter. The son was deported, but his daughter, Georgette, went into hiding with him.’

‘The older woman, the one who had had the operation.’

Ehrlich nodded. ‘She was the aunt of the little girl, Sarah. And also of Yvonne. Sarah and Yvonne were sisters, the daughters of the son who had been deported.’

‘What brought them to Hamburg?’

‘The desire to make it to Palestine, my French colleague assumes, although he has no proof. But there are hints. Apparently the Dellucs had been trying to get to the Holy Land since 1945, but as you know the British won’t let any Jews in.’

Stave remembered that Therese Dubois had said the same thing. ‘That’s why they were trying to leave via the British zone of occupation, because the controls on ships leaving for Palestine are less strict here.’

‘The port was badly damaged. Even the British are pleased when freighters are halfway able to load or unload. It’s vital for the occupation zone. So who’s checking all the paperwork? Who really checks whether a cargo shop that has just delivered a load of wheat is really bound for Cyprus next? Or might be heading for a port just that little bit further east? It’s a long way round to get to the Holy Land, but after all that the Jews have been through over the past few years, it’s a risk worth taking. There are more and more people being smuggled on board ships bound for Palestine. DPs and Jews who arrived after 1945.’

‘Like the Dellucs.’

‘Yes. Their misfortune was that they arrived too late. They disappeared from France around November 1946, but by then the Elbe had begun to freeze over. We were running short of coal. No further ships were departing. They sat tight, waiting for the thaw when they could be on the move again. They had no idea that they would be stuck here for weeks. And certainly no idea that they would run into one of the Oradour murderers.’

‘Where do you think Herthge might be?’

Ehrlich raised his hands. ‘Somehow or other he seems to have got wind that we’re on his trail. He might not know for sure, but is being cautious, and when you sent him off round northern Germany, he took the opportunity to disappear. He wasn’t going to get as good a chance again.

‘Once we issue the warrant for his arrest, we obviously have to send an officer round to see his mother. But I doubt very much he’d be stupid enough to hide there. Maybe he’s already on the way to South America: Argentina, Chile, Paraguay. It’s no longer a secret that there are Nazi colonies out there.’