Christopher Nuttall: Chosen of the Valkyries

“His penis is missing,” he said, out loud. “They must have taken it.”

Kuls looked pale as he peered through the door. “An Untermensch, perhaps?”

“It’s possible,” Herman agreed. An Untermensch would have nothing to lose, if he attacked a German. Why not mutilate the body? It wasn’t as if he could be killed twice. Hell, Untermenschen were routinely executed for the crime of looking at good Germans. “But where would an Untermensch get the drugs?”

He sighed as he heard the landlady starting to stir. “See what you can get out of her,” he said, as he rose. “Did you get anything from dispatch?”

“Still nothing,” Kuls said. “They may have no one they can spare.”

Herman nodded, shortly. “Get the landlady to her apartment, then see what you can pour into her,” he ordered. “I’ll search this place.”

He closed the door, then turned and took one final look at the body. It was impossible to be sure, but it looked as though the attack had been deeply personal. The murdered man might well have known his killer; the murderer could not have inflicted so much damage without some degree of feeling being involved. Indeed, judging by the body’s position and the way the blood had splattered, it was quite possible he’d been trying to run when the fatal blow had been struck. But there was no way to know.

Nothing appeared to be missing, he decided, as he peered into the kitchen. It looked surprisingly bare, compared to the kitchen at home, but an unmarried man would probably have eaten at work, rather than cook for himself. A bottle of milk and two cartons of juice sat in the fridge; otherwise, the fridge was empty. Herman checked the drawers and found almost nothing, save for a small selection of imported – hence rare and expensive – British teas and coffees. No doubt the murder victim hadn’t liked drinking the cheap coffee served all over the Reich .

I can hardly blame him for that , Herman thought. I don’t like drinking it either .

He smiled to himself as he walked into the bedroom, then frowned. The bed was easily large enough for two people – it was larger than the bed he shared with his wife, at home – but there was no trace of a feminine presence. He opened the drawers, feeling his frown deepen as he noted the complete lack of female clothes and products. A homosexual? The man had been in his late forties, if Herman was any judge. It was staggeringly rare for a man of that age to be unmarried, although it was possible that he’d been married and then lost his wife to an accident. But homosexuality carried a death sentence in the Reich . Even the mere suspicion of homosexuality could be enough to destroy someone’s life.

Herman shook his head slowly as he checked the bathroom. There was nothing, apart from a simple shampoo and a toilet that didn’t look to have been cleaned regularly. No, there was no woman in the apartment: no wife, girlfriend or mistress. Indeed, if there hadn’t been so many male clothes in the drawers, he would have wondered if the apartment wasn’t being used as a covert rendezvous. The upper-class prostitutes – too expensive for the average soldier – often used them for their clients, once their pimps paid out bribes to all and sundry. But it was clear that someone had lived in the apartment…

He turned his attention to the photographs hanging from the walls and scowled, darkly, as he recognised the murder victim. He was wearing an SS uniform – a Standartenfuehrer – in one picture, shaking hands with a man Herman vaguely recognised from a party propaganda broadcast. It took him a moment to recognise the Deputy Führer , a non-entity who had only been given the job because it provided a convenient place to dump him. But he’d clearly been younger then, maybe not even a politician. There was no date on any of the photographs.

He looked up as he heard the door opening. Kuls stepped into the apartment.

“The landlady says her tenant was a schoolmaster,” he said, shortly. He eyed the body darkly, then stepped around it. “Apparently, he taught at the school just down the road.”

“Oh,” Herman said.

He looked back at the body. A schoolmaster? Maybe it was just his flawed memory – he hadn’t been a schoolboy for nearly forty years – but the man didn’t look anything like intimidating enough to be a schoolmaster. They were all kicked out of the SS for extreme violence – or so the schoolboys had joked, as they lined up each day, rain or shine, to enter the building and begin their lessons. He’d believed it too, back then. School might have toughened him up, but he remembered it with little fondness.

“She said he was normally out of the door at the crack of dawn,” Kuls added, darkly. “He was rarely home until late at night, at least until the government fell. Since then, he merely stayed in his room and never left.”

Herman snorted. “Did she happen to know when he had visitors?”

“Apparently, one of the boys would occasionally come and clean the apartment for him,” Kuls said. “But he never had any other visitors.”

“I see,” Herman said. A landlady in Berlin could be relied upon to know everything about her tenants, from where they worked to how often they slept together. They were often the best sources a policeman could hope for. “Did anyone come today?”

“Not as far as she knows,” Kuls said. “But that proves nothing.”

“No,” Herman agreed.

He contemplated the possibilities, one after the other. An SS officer – a Standartenfuehrer – would have been very useful, if he’d reported to the provisional government. It wasn’t as if there weren’t other SS officers helping to rebuild the Reich . But he’d stayed where he was, hiding. A spy? A coward? No, that was unlikely. He’d disliked the SS long before it had arrested his daughter, but he had to admit that SS officers were rarely cowards. They often led their men from the front. And yet, this one had become a schoolmaster. Jokes aside, schools weren’t actually war zones…

But he would probably have impressed the brats , Herman thought, grimly. A man who has marched into the teeth of enemy fire isn’t going to be scared of a naughty teenage boy .

Herman shook his head. The victim had known his killer, he was sure; he’d let him directly into the apartment. Or killers, if there had been more than one. And yet…

He sighed. Normally, a team of experts would tear the dead man’s life apart, looking for the person who’d killed him. A murderer could not be allowed to get away with killing a Standartenfuehrer , even if the Standartenfuehrer had retired. It set a bad example. And yet, with the police force in such disarray, it was unlikely there would be a solid attempt to find the killer. Herman doubted they’d even take the time to dust for fingerprints before dumping the body into a mass grave and handing the apartment back to the landlady.

Unless we find something that leads us straight to the killer , he thought. But what ?

“We search the apartment, thoroughly,” he said. “And if we find nothing, we’ll just have to make arrangements to dispose of the body.”

“Of course,” Kuls said.

Herman shot him a sharp look as they walked back into the kitchen and began to search with practiced efficiency. The landlady would be furious, when she discovered all her drawers dumped on the floor, but there was no help for it. Herman’s instructors – when he’d joined the police – had shown him just how easy it was to conceal something, particularly something small, within a kitchen or bedroom. Taking the whole edifice apart was time-consuming, but it was the only way to be sure there was nothing hiding there.