Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

They reached the end of the Ballindamm, but instead of turning on to the Jungfernstieg and walking further along the Inner Alster, they turned around and went back the way they came. They didn’t discuss it, but they could both see that there were hundreds of people walking along the Jungfernstieg, whereas the Ballindamm, with its abandoned wagons, was less crowded.

The other side of the street was emptier still, so they crossed the Lombardsbrucke Bridge separating the Inner and Outer Alster, which widened to become a lake, the shores lined with reeds. The caster-sugar white of the Atlantic Hotel was reflected in the film of water lying on top of the ice. Most of the houses just beyond the hotel had been bombed but the devastation ended a couple of hundred metres further on. To the north the greenery was sprinkled with villas, smaller than the grand establishments on the Inner Alster, but also more discreet, further back from the water and hidden behind trees and bushes: most of them had been commandeered by the British, who didn’t need to chop down the trees in their own gardens for firewood.

They wander northwards, the sun sinking, its rays warm and golden. Exhausted and somewhat embarrassed, Stave stops. Anna von Veckinhausen now knows everything about him. But he knows next to nothing about her. She’s walked silently at his side, but he feels her silence was well meant.

They stop briefly behind the Atlantic, concealed from the villas and the street by a screen of thin branches, like a ripped curtain. It was getting near the curfew hour, and the few casual strollers who had chosen the same path were disappearing between the houses. The Alster was wide and empty.

‘Sorry for having rattled on like that,’ Stave says. ‘It’s not like me.’

‘Then it’s been my lucky day,’ she replies. ‘I enjoyed listening.’

‘I didn’t know what to say to you.’

‘When a man doesn’t know what to say to a women, he should kiss her.’

Stave thinks he’s misheard. But Anna von Veckinhausen puts both arms round his neck and pulls him towards her.

They ended the day in a flophouse. Somebody had scribbled Hotel Pension Rudolf Prem on a wooden board above the door of the one house still standing between the Atlantic and the villa quarter. They were too hungry for each other’s bodies to make it all the way back to Stave’s apartment. The Nissen hut with internal partitions that were no more than bits of cloth was hardly an option. And they couldn’t afford the Atlantic.

Stave booked a room in the Pension Prem, throwing a few Reichsmarks down on the counter and signing in as Herr and Frau Schmidt, so obviously false that the elderly, half-blind landlord raisesd a sceptical eyebrow, mumbled something incomprehensible, but still handed them the key. The room was on the first floor, small but more or less clean, the interior glowing in the evening sun as if the windows were made of amber. They were in a hurry, slamming the door and locking it. They fell on to the narrow bed, starved of tenderness and intimacy. Only later, when the initial hunger had been satisfied, did they become calmer, gentler, more inquisitive.

At some stage Stave held Anna in his arms, her body shining like alabaster in the moonlight, feeling her pulse, her breath on his chest, her warmth. We’re alive, he thought to himself. We’re alive again.

Stave ran a fingertip gently down the long curve of her back: ‘I still don’t know anything about you.’

She sighed, not so much exasperation as irony in her voice: ‘Are you still on duty, Chief Inspector?’

‘I’m not asking you as a policeman, but as a lover.’

Anna shook her head. ‘Give me time,’ she said, then kissed him. ‘We’ve both lost so much that we’ve almost nothing left to lose. But we have time, we have time enough.’

Stave reflected on her words. As a detective he had never enough time. He was always too late. That’s what the job was all about at the end of the day: something had to have happened before he was called in. Always pressure to make an arrest before it happened again. But did he have to live his whole life as if it were a case?

‘You’re right,’ he whispered to her, and suddenly felt as if a weight had slipped from his shoulders. ‘We have all the time in the world.’

They crept out of the room after midnight, not wanting to be found together in the morning. The old porter was snoring behind the desk. Stave set the room key down quietly, next to the bell, then pushed open the door and they slipped out into the night.

Stave’s police ID meant he didn’t have to worry about the curfew. If a British patrol stopped him he could always say he was on a case. But could he offer Anna the same protection? Or would the British military police arrest her? It would be better not to test it. So he led her down the backstreets towards Eilbek. The moon lent the city a silvery sheen. Suddenly the cracked walls and empty windows took on the aura of ancient ruins. The vast expanses of ruins were transformed into a city of temples and forums, amphitheatres and palaces. The air was mild, but the cold stored in the ground still seeped forth. Stave had draped his overcoat around Anna’s shoulders as they made their way, arms around one another, across narrow footpaths between remains of walls. Stave breathed in her aroma happily.

His son was alive. He had found new love. Winter was over. All of a sudden he felt as if he had been given a new beginning, a colossal, undeserved happiness at having got through it all. A happiness that almost overwhelmed him, that wanted to burst out of his body. He felt like singing and dancing like a lunatic, though in a silent city under curfew that might not be the cleverest thing to do. But the silence on the streets and the sheer exuberance flooding his soul inspired him to do something very different, albeit no less pleasurable. He stopped, pulled Anna towards him, and embraced her in a passionate kiss right there in the middle of the street.

When at last they dragged themselves apart, she smiled at him, surprised, breathless, but didn’t ask him why.

Eventually they reached the Nissen huts, standing there at the crossroads, black like the shells of giant tortoises. They hardly dared breathe as they crossed the last few metres, trying to make no noise. Only a few millimetres of tin separated them from hundreds of eyes and ears. At the door of her hut they kissed farewell. Stave scribbled his address on a page from his notebook and handed it to her.

‘I’ll come round tomorrow,’ Anna whispered. Then she slipped through the door silently and disappeared into the dark interior of the hut. Stave crept away until he was sure he was far enough from the row of barracks that nobody looking out of the windows would pay him any attention. Then he increased his pace and turned into the broad Wandsbek Strasse, almost running. He felt as if he was floating on air. Even his injured leg didn’t hurt any more. Alive, he cried. I’m alive again.

Then, from behind, he felt a thin wire thrown around his neck. And drawn tight.

Stave choked, tried to scream. Struggled for breath, tried to break free and run. To no avail. He was trapped in a fearsome vice that was squeezing tight on his neck. Scenes from the autopsy table flashed before his eyes: a crushed windpipe, reddish-brown line around the thread. He lashed out blindly in panic, his fists flailing in the air, occasionally making contact at best with some cloth behind his back. He’s wearing a thick overcoat, Stave realised. The gun, in the holster underneath his own overcoat. But he had done it up after leaving the Nissen hut colony. He ripped at the buttons, but none of them came free. The choking sensation worsened by the second, his head was pounding as if it would explode, his legs were giving way. He fell to his knees. Any second now and I’m done for, he knew. He gave up trying to pull at the wire around his throat, began to flail behind him with his fists again. By now his attacker had to be standing above him – the perfect position. Stave’s blind thrashing got weaker, more spasmodic.