Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

‘I understand,’ Stave coughed, and put out the cigarette he had only half smoked, something noted with amazement by Maschke who had long since smoked his down to his fingertips. ‘We don’t have a lot to go on,’ he acknowledged, ‘just some very basics.’ He was reassured to see that the British officer was sitting up straight in his chair, paying keen attention. Maschke on the other hand just sat staring at the glowing tip of Stave’s cigarette lying in the ashtray. He knows what’s coming, Stave guessed.

‘Well-kempt appearance, clean hands with no marks, good skin, well enough fed – our victim is hardly working class, and I also doubt if she’s arrived with some column of refugees from the east over the past few weeks. Nor do I think she’s a DP. Their bodies usually bear traces of their previous…’ Once again he found himself looking for the right word. ‘…difficulties.’

‘Difficulties?’ MacDonald queried.

Stave sighed. There was no point beating about the bush. Not in a team of investigators, least of all when they were investigating a murder like this.

‘No tattooed concentration camp number,’ he explained. ‘Apart from the scar from her operation, our victim bears no signs of having been beaten, kicked or severely undernourished. Obviously it’s possible she could be Polish or Ukrainian brought into the Reich to work. Maybe she was allocated to some farmer somewhere in Schleswig-Holstein or Lower Saxony or to some factory. And then, come 1945, she decided it was better to remain here as a DP than to go back to a home in the hands of Uncle Joe Stalin. But as we’ve noted, her hands are not those of a worker.’

‘The daughter of some well-to-do household,’ MacDonald speculated. All of a sudden it seemed the officer was enjoying the investigation, Stave thought to himself.

‘Possibly. But daughters who’ve disappeared from well-to-do households tend to be reported as missing fairly soon. Of course, it’s perfectly possible that someone will report her missing in the next few hours. But if we don’t receive such a report by tonight, then at least we won’t have to make a painful trip out to some villa in Blankenese.’

‘So who could the victim be?’

‘A “nightingale of the street”,’ Maschke suggested, having finally given up his anguished concentration on Stave’s smouldering cigarette.

‘I’m afraid that’s not an expression I know from my German lessons,’ MacDonald admitted.

Maschke laughed out loud. ‘A hooker. A whore. A woman of easy virtue. A pros-ti-tute. That’s why I’m part of the team, isn’t it?’

Stave nodded. He was coming to understand why so many officers didn’t like Maschke. ‘She could be taken for one, superficially,’ the chief inspector reluctantly admitted. ‘The circumstances of death too; there are certainly grounds enough to take Maschke’s usual customers to task.’

‘Sorry, what does that mean?’

‘It means we’re off to the Reeperbahn,’ Stave said, with a sour smile.

MacDonald gave a gleeful grin. ‘My colleagues down at the Officers’ Club won’t believe I got to do that in an official capacity.’

‘Always worth winning a war,’ Maschke said under his breath. Softly enough that Stave wasn’t sure the Brit had understood him.

‘I have to warn you, Lieutenant, that the gentlemen on the Reeperbahn won’t exactly be delighted to see us. And, I’m afraid, nor will the ladies.’

Then he called his secretary in. ‘We need copies of the photograph. Just the victim’s head, enough to be recognisable. And not too grisly, if possible.’

‘How many?’ Erna Berg asked, looking at the British officer rather than Stave.

So much for my authority, Stave said to himself. ‘A dozen for Inspector Muller of uniform. He should get a few officers together to send round the hospitals and stick the photo under the nose of every surgeon they can find. The vitamin had an appendectomy and maybe one of the gentlemen will recall performing the operation. Then one more copy for the print works. We need 1,000 posters,’ he hesitated for a second, then changed his mind and said, ‘no, make it just 500. I’ll do the words later. Tell the relevant people on the beat police that we’ll need their men to put up posters the day after tomorrow. And I’ll need a further three copies for these two gentlemen and myself.’

‘Consider it done, boss,’ Erna Berg said and hurried out.

MacDonald watched her go and then, when he saw Stave was looking at him, made a show of looking all around the room. ‘Nice place you’ve got here,’ he said.

Stave gave him a long smile. Then he took a stub of pencil and a sheet of paper from his desk drawer and said, ‘Right, I’m going to write the wording for the poster. We’ll meet up outside the main entrance in half an hour. To take a stroll down the Reeperbahn.’

Exactly 29 minutes later Stave was standing in the entrance hall by the huge doors. He was hungry and cold, and there were a thousand things he would rather do than question a load of pimps and whores.

MacDonald was already waiting for him. Much to Stave’s annoyance, Maschke came running down the steps two minutes late, his coat flapping behind him. He wondered what his colleague from the vice squad had been doing for the past half hour.

When they got outside, MacDonald turned to Stave and in astonishment asked, ‘But where’s your car?’

‘Petrol is rationed for the police too, Lieutenant. We usually go on foot or take the tram. It’s only a stroll from here to the Reeperbahn.’

‘If I’d known, we could have used my jeep,’ MacDonald said, clicking his tongue in sympathy.

‘Oh yes? We’d have driven down the Reeperbahn from whorehouse to whorehouse in a British jeep,’ Maschke grunted, ‘with every British patrol saluting us.’

Stave shook his head in annoyance. Then he handed each of them a photograph of the victim, still reeking of chemicals.

‘Let’s go.’

He pulled up his coat collar. It was now early afternoon and he hadn’t had anything to eat since his miserable little breakfast. An icy wind was still whistling through the ruins. Stave felt like he was being beaten up by it. MacDonald on the other hand, in his pressed uniform and rosy pink cheeks, looked as if was going out for a pleasant afternoon stroll – which, Stave supposed, he probably was. Maschke had his second English cigarette clamped between his lips and walked a few paces behind, as if he wasn’t with them.

On the dirty wall of an apartment building were yellow posters, some as big as blankets. ‘Military Government – Germany/Law No. 15’ Stave read as they walked past. Bilingual proclamations of the occupation. As a matter of routine, Stave scanned them. There was nothing new. Posters like these, a few handwritten notes, chalk scribbles on bare wall. These are the newspapers we’ve earned for ourselves, Stave thought. The actual local press appeared just once or twice a week, a few thin sheets; there wasn’t enough paper for more. He’d heard that a German radio station was going to be allowed to start up in the coming weeks. The newsreels in the cinemas depended on film supplied by the British or the Americans.

How else could you reach ordinary citizens other than by putting things up on walls? The military government stuck their proclamations all over buildings or on the few Plakatsaule advertising columns that had survived: new rations, curfew extensions, new laws – no German could say he hadn’t known And the Germans themselves, out of necessity, copied their new masters: posted notices up on the brick walls seeking information about missing relatives, swap offers, looking for accommodation. And we police join in, Stave thought, with our photos of criminals and murder victims on our ‘wanted’ posters.