Cay Rademacher - The Murderer in Ruins

They had got as far as Heiligengeistfeld, a vast, filthy square with no shelter from the freezing winds. Two giant bunkers stood out against the sky, massive heaps like temples of some ancient, extinct and dark religion. A makeshift sign indicated that the ground floor of the bunker housed the editorial of ‘Northwest Magazines’. On the other bunker was another sign, only slightly larger, which read, ‘Scala’. Underneath was the current programme: 1001 Women. The bunker now housed a revue theatre, boasting a thousand seats and skimpily dressed girls in fantasy costumes made out of coloured cellophane. Stave found an establishment of the sort in a place like this particularly perverse. At the moment, however, it was totally deserted.

Even Hamburg’s amusement mile was a ghost town at present. The light was fading but nobody had electricity for neon signs. Several of the bars and clubs had been bombed: the Panoptikum, the Volksoper and the Cafe Menke all lay in ruins. Barkeepers had set up shacks made of planks of wood and salvaged tiles amidst the rubble, tawdry dens in which men who still hadn’t had enough of shooting could practice their skills firing crossbows at wooden targets. But nobody was out to try their luck right at this moment.

There were, however, a lot of people about; men, women, children, washed-out coats strolling about apparently aimlessly on the street at the corner of Reeperbahn and Hamburger Berg, wandering around in circles, looking up at the sky. Black marketeers. As the three investigators approached, the crowd drifted away from them, as if they carried the plague. Stave cursed under his breath: it’s that bloody British uniform. On his own he could have wandered around unnoticed. But under the circumstances he could only watch as bottles of schnapps or cartons of cigarettes disappeared beneath coats while women and children turned their backs and a few lads disappeared down the alleyways. The only ones who actually came up to them were two young girls, about 18, Stave reckoned, not even proper adults. Blond, polecat furs around their necks, easy smiles, only a few dozen metres away, coming straight towards them.

The chief inspector walked a few paces down the Reeperbahn, more out of sorts than ever. The David police station had survived unscathed, to the annoyance of Hamburg pimps. The Zillertal had survived the hail of bombs, as had a few other establishments, Onkel Hugos Speisrestaurant, the Alcazar and a few dozen metres further towards Talstrasse, the Kamsing, Hamburg’s only Chinese restaurant, which even these days offered fiery soups and exotically spiced rice, though from God knows what ingredients. But the thought of the Kamsing made Stave feel hungry. He made a decision.

‘There’s no point in this,’ he told the other two. ‘The streetwalkers will come up and talk to us, but everybody else clears off.’

‘Better than the other way round,’ MacDonald said, smiling at the two girls.

I’m going to lose it with him here in broad daylight, if I don’t take care, Stave thought.

‘We’ll split up,’ he ordered. ‘Lieutenant, you and I will go into the local establishments and quiz the clientele. Maschke, you stay out on the street and question the girls and their pimps. We’ll meet up in two hours in the David police station.’

At least that way he was getting the British officer out of the limelight. He was fed up with everybody staring at them. MacDonald would stick out just as much in the bars and strip clubs, but nobody can do a runner quite so easily there. Maschke could question the girls and pimps more inconspicuously by himself. It also meant he would have to spend a couple of hours freezing outside while Stave and the Englishman could at least warm themselves up, going round the bars and clubs. Stave smiled to himself for the first time in hours.

They nodded farewell to Maschke, then turned to walk away, before the two blondes got to them. One of the girls gave them a disappointed look, the other seemed as if she wanted to shout something a lot less friendly at them. But then both opened their eyes wide.

‘Bonjour mesdemoiselles,’ Maschke purred. ‘Vous avez la bonne chance de trouver un vrai cavalier.’

Stave realised the girl had recognised him as being from the vice squad. Too late, darling. And he wondered on the side where his colleague had learnt to speak such good French. He watched as Maschke pulled out his police ID and shoved it under the girls’ noses. The he dragged MacDonald over to the door of the Zillertal and pushed it open.

The air was stale with the sour aroma of old, cold tobacco, cheap schnapps and cabbage soup. Most of the tables were empty. At one four old men with red faces sat with water glasses containing some clear liquid. Two tired-looking girls at the next table were pretending not to hear the suggestive comments being made towards them, preferring to warm their skinny hands on steaming enamel bowls of cabbage soup. There were two young men at a table to the rear of the room, in expensive overcoats – from before the war certainly – and good shoes. They were smoking American cigarettes and glanced briefly at Stave and MacDonald, then turned away, whispering to one another. Black marketeers.

The landlord was at the bar. He wasn’t old yet, but he had been fat once and now the skin of his cheeks sagged in folds. He quickly removed a few unmarked bottles from the counter, and hid them in a flash. The sale and distribution of alcohol was strictly regulated, but everybody knew that the barkeepers of St Pauli offered smuggled or home-made schnapps as ‘mineral water’.

Not my problem, Stave told himself, and went up to the landlord, who was looking even paler than he had done when they came in.

He pulled out his ID, then held the photo of the dead girl in front of his face: ‘Ever seen her before?’

The man looked at him, then at the ID, and then MacDonald, as if he hoped the latter might save him. But the Brit was no longer smiling; he was staring back at the man coldly, Stave realised. Like a hangman, he thought to himself, and suddenly wondered if it wasn’t just because of MacDonald’s good German that he had been delegated to the investigation. Perhaps he had other skills. Eventually the landlord gave up hoping and turned his concentration to the photo, looking slightly ill, then shook his head.

‘Don’t know her. Who is she?’

‘Thank you,’ Stave said, turning away.

‘Let’s ask the lads with the cigarettes,’ he whispered to MacDonald. ‘But keep an eye on the two ladies supping away at their soup. We don’t want them to do a runner on us.’

‘What if they go to the ladies’?’

‘You go with them.’

Stave had reached the table at the back of the room. The two black marketeers still had their backs to him, even though they had obviously noticed him long ago.

Stave pulled up a chair without asking them and sat down. MacDonald stayed standing a few steps behind him.

Eventually the chief inspector looked the two lads in the eyes: they were clean-shaven, well fed, with hard eyes and sarcastic smiles on their faces. Lads barely 20 years old, but they had already seen everything thanks to the war. Murderous brats. Stave had to suppress the urge to arrest them then and there. Instead he just pulled out, as before, his ID and the photo, showing both to the pair of them.

‘Do you know this young lady?’ he asked politely.

For a second or two, the pair were so taken aback that the grins fell from their faces. They expected different questions from a policeman: about cigarettes, money, medicines; the usual interrogation faced by black marketeers. Stave watched them visibly relax.

‘No,’ the taller one said, adding, ‘sorry.’

His companion took a few seconds longer, but he too then shook his head. ‘Not one of the girls on the Reeperbahn, that’s for sure, Chief Inspector.’