Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

‘It would be hard to get from northern Germany to South America. Even if he has comrades to help him.’

‘The only port anywhere close from which ships leave for South America is Hamburg. But the ice is melting. In a week or two steamers will be sailing again.’

‘You think he might hide around here that long?’

‘He knows his way around the ruins. He’s proved that. And now that the weather’s getting warmer, he’ll find it easier to get by.’

‘Maybe he’s shacked up with some whore or pimp. He knows that world well enough.’

‘Or maybe with a former comrade. There’re enough SS men still walking around free.’

‘I hate putting up “wanted” posters,’ the chief inspector said, getting up from his chair. ‘It would make waves if people found out the police were after one of their own. On the other hand, I’d rather see Herthge’s picture up on a wall than that of another strangled child.’

As Stave left, Ehrlich got up and shook his hand, a gesture he realised the prosecutor had previously avoided.

‘We should go for a meal together occasionally,’ Ehrlich said. Stave left his office and walked silently back to the CID headquarters. When he entered his office, it looked somehow smaller and quieter than it used to, but also cleaner.

On his desk was a large, light-coloured envelope. From the Red Cross.

Stave stared at the envelope, overcome all of a sudden. It took an enormous effort for him to walk the last two steps to his desk, stretch out and take the envelope in his hands. He ripped it open, his hands trembling. Inside was another envelope, much smaller, grey and rough, as if made from cheap toilet paper. It was addressed to him, care of Hamburg CID. In his son’s handwriting.

Stave collapsed into his seat, stared out of the window, then back at the envelope. Karl was alive. And yet he felt a frisson of angst: what might he have written?

Eventually he summoned the courage to open this envelope too, slowly and carefully, as if it was a precious treasure. Inside was a small sheet of paper, not even the size of a page in an exercise book, ripped along the bottom, as if it had been torn from a larger sheet. The letters in pale blue pencil were barely legible, but the handwriting was unmistakable from all that homework, which Stave had once corrected so that the teacher wouldn’t find any mistakes in it.

Father,

This scrap of paper is all I have, so this will have to be brief. I am fine, under the circumstances. I was taken prisoner in Berlin. A Soviet court sentenced me, why, I have no idea, to ten years in Vorkuta, but perhaps they’ll reduce that. I’m still young. We help one another out here as best we can. Siberia is very cold, but the winter will be over in a month or two. I hope to be back in our apartment in Hamburg soon. Then we can talk about everything.

Karl

Stave laid it down carefully on his desk, though for a moment he had almost scrunched it up, even though it was so precious. He was disappointed, and at the same time ashamed of himself for being so. Nothing about life in the camp or about what his life had been like over the past two years. No personal message. It’s your own damn self-pity at work again, he told himself. Read it again, carefully. Karl had only a scrap of paper. Were you expecting him to write a novel? And every word he wrote would be read by a Soviet censor out there in Vorkuta. Karl, your proud, so sensitive, lone wolf of a boy would not want some Soviet political officer reading anything personal. Maybe there was a message for him from his son in that cold factual language.

He read the letter again, and there it was: ‘ I hope to be back in our Hamburg apartment soon.’

‘Our apartment.’

That one word our – didn’t that reflect a togetherness of father and son? Didn’t it show that Karl wanted to come back? That this was still his home? Home, what did that mean if not togetherness, trust and, hopefully, love?

Stave could have cried if he hadn’t feared that some colleague might burst in and find him slumped in tears on his desk. This was the first step of Karl’s return. Nothing more, but nothing less. And Karl had a thousand steps at least to take. I have to handle this carefully, he told himself.

He left the building and walked the few hundred metres to the Hansaplatz. We’re not about to carry out a raid today, he thought, and hopefully nobody will recognise me from the last time.

‘Siberia is very cold ,’ Karl had written. Wasn’t it possible to send parcels via the Red Cross? Stave would take the cigarettes he had saved up and the few Reichsmarks notes that he always carried with him for fear of burglars and visit the black market. What could he get? A coat, scarf, hat? Shoes, good heavy winter shoes or boots. Whatever.

The chief inspector pulled up the collar of his coat, even though the air wasn’t cold. That way the collar and hat pulled down over his eyes would conceal his face, he hoped. Then he joined the throng of the shuffling figures wandering this way and that on the square. He stopped for a few minutes, displaying his wares from inside his overcoat, and whispering, ‘Winter shoes, size 42, winter shoes.’

‘Over here,’ a careworn, elderly woman strolling nearby hissed. She looked vaguely familiar. She was probably arrested in the raid, he thought, but luckily he hadn’t interviewed her himself. Hopefully she won’t recognise me, he thought, but she gave him a shy smile. She probably thought she wouldn’t be able to get rid of winter shoes, now that it’s getting warm again.

She walks a bit faster and he follows her to the edge of the square. In the shadows of a house doorway she pulls out an old shopping bag with a pair of brown men’s shoes in it. Thick soles, sturdy leather. They would do for winter shoes, even though the leather was scarred and the soles worn.

‘Barely worn,’ the woman lies.

‘How much?’ Stave asks, hoping they’re the right size.

‘500 Reichsmarks,’ she replies.

Cheeky, especially now that the winter’s over, he thinks.

‘Done,’ he says. What else can he do?

Furtive glances, two hasty movements, and the deal’s done.

The woman disappears without a second glance.

‘Was it a good deal?’

Stave spins round, shocked, desperately trying to think up an excuse in case it’s one of his colleagues. But then he catches his breath.

Anna von Veckinhausen.

Stave feels himself redden.

Everything that enters his mind sounds stupid, so he stands there trying to think of something to say.

She comes over to him and nods at the pair of shoes. ‘If I were you, I’d hide those under my coat, or else every policeman within 500 metres will arrest you. But if there’s a raid, it’s no good. Just drop them and play dumb.’

‘I’ve had the experience,’ he replies, quickly hiding his purchase.

‘For you? Winter is finally over.’

‘For my son. In Siberia. It’s still cold there.’

The smile fades from Anna von Veckinhausen’s face. ‘He’s a Soviet prisoner.’ Not a question, a statement. ‘That must be tough for you as a father.’

‘To be honest, not really,’ the chief inspector replies. ‘Up until four weeks ago, I had no idea whether or not my son was still alive. In that respect the fact he is in a camp in Siberia is relatively good news.’

‘What has happened to us, when something like that is good news?’ she whispers. Then she takes his arm and says, ‘Walk with me for a bit.’

Confused, Stave nods, stiffer than normal, feeling as awkward as some 14-year-old. Anna’s hand is on his lower arm. Just the cloth and pullover wool keeping skin from skin. He hasn’t been this close to a woman in ages.