Pierre Frei - Berlin - A Novel

In bed, she felt remorse. He hadn't been sober, and he was blind and helpless. She ought not to have hit him. Later, she heard cries of pleasure from his room. Frau Konig's anxiety about her son was obviously kept well within bounds.

On the way to the bathroom in the morning she met Herr Konig. 'You mustn't upset the captain,' he told her reproachfully. 'Just think of all the poor man's been through.'

BEN AND RALF kept their heads bent at breakfast, but the doomsday blast they were expecting never materialized. Their father's calm approach hurt far more. All three of you are to blame,' Klaus Dietrich told them in matter-of-fact tones. 'But Hajo is the one who has to pay for it. All his life. When you two have long forgotten about it, he'll still be going around with one hand. Think about that. Now, off you go to school.'

Relieved, the boys raced off over the veranda. Aren't you coming?' Ralf asked. Ben silently shook his head, and went to hide his school bag under the empty potato sacks in the shed. There was time enough for Latin, English and geography tomorrow. The Potsdamer Platz was on his schedule for today.

'You ought to give Ben a little help with his maths. He's having difficulty with logarithms.' Inge told her husband.

As soon as I get time,' Klaus Dietrich promised her, and glanced at his father-in-law, who was sitting at the breakfast table looking glum.

'We'll have this ghastly ersatz coffee coming out of our ears,' Dr Hellbich complained. But the real reason for his gloom was not the coffee but yesterday's meeting of the Berlin Social Democrat party committee. 'They're seriously thinking of letting former Communists join the SPD, on the grounds that they're anti-Fascists too. Murderers, that's what they are: just as bad as the Nazis, I said, and I successfully opposed the motion. Luckily my friends and I are in the majority. But for how much longer, that's the question? You have to look at it pragmatically, some snotty-nosed youngster told us. The fellow knows nothing about Social Democracy before '33, and he wasn't in the underground movement like us either.'

'You were never in the underground,' Klaus Dietrich pointed out. 'They made you retire early, that's all, complete with your own home and your rose beds.'

Inge signalled to her husband not to continue. She was worried about her father's blood pressure. Hellbich did not explode, but mounted a counterattack instead. 'So how's your work going? No progress. eh? Or have you caught that serial killer yet? Well, don't let it bother you. Your predecessor before the war wasn't any more successful.'

Dietrich pricked up his ears. 'What do you mean? What happened before the war?'

With an expression of distaste, Hellbich took another sip of the brown brew. 'Oh, it was in '36. The Olympic Games had just begun. I can still see her: Annie, young, pretty, blonde, blue eyes. She was a waitress in Brumm's Bakery and Cake Shop opposite the U-Bahn station. I used to get our breakfast rolls there. Found dead in the front garden one morning. Oddly enough, the newspapers didn't publish the story. It was kept under wraps. I happened to know a police officer, though, and he told me the details. What the murderer did before he strangled her was unspeakable.'

As if electrified, Klaus Dietrich shot to his feet — and fell to the floor with a cry of pain. 'This damn prosthesis,' he groaned.

Inge helped him up. 'Lie down for a little. We'll take the thing off.'

'No time. I must go straight to the station.' But his wife insisted on quarter of an hour's rest for the nerves in his stump to recover a little. Then Dietrich cycled off.

'Franke, we need details.' Dietrich removed the bicycle clips from his trouser legs and put them in the middle drawer of his desk. 'Did the pre-war murderer ride a motorbike? Exactly how did he torture his victim? What was that girl Annie strangled with?'

The sergeant shrugged apologetically. 'Sorry, sir, can't help you. I was with the regular police in Schoneberg before the war. Maybe someone at the station there will know.'

'Then let's go.'

They heated up the Opel. The gears crunched and the transmission howled, but Franke got the vehicle from the CID office to the police station ten minutes' drive away without mishap. Most of the windows in the police station had cardboard filling the panes, but they were wide open in the summer heat. The paving stones in front of the building had been taken up and the space turned into a small potato patch.

Two police officers with grey, hungry faces climbed over the potato plants and set out on afternoon patrol. On orders from the city commandant, their green uniforms had been dyed black, with the result that they were now an ugly, dark and dirty hue, particularly the fabric of their caps. They carried wooden truncheons at their belts. They'd been required to hand in their Parabellum 0.8s with the leather holsters.

'Hey, if it isn't the CID cops,' the man on duty, an old superintendent, greeted the visitors. 'What can we ordinary plods do for you gentlemen?'

'Tell us where to find the pre-war files. Unless someone's been warming his feet with them,' said Franke, going along with the officer's tone.

'It's all there, gents. We lose the odd war now and then, we never lose the files. Herr Ewald will take you down.'

Herr Ewald was a little man with the face of a sparrow, wearing sleeve protectors. 'Got an interesting case?' he asked hopefully as they climbed down the basement steps.

'Depends how you look at it,' growled Franke, looking with distaste at the flooded basement floor. A couple of dead rats were bobbing about in the stinking water. Planks had been laid on bricks between the shelves of files.

'The drains are a total mess. A Russian mortar on the last day of the war,' Ewald apologized. 'What are you looking for?'

'Everything you have on the murder of a woman in 1936. As far as we know, the case was never solved. The victim was found strangled in the front garden of Brumm's Bakery, opposite the Onkel Tom U-Bahn station.' Dietrich told him.

Ewald disappeared among the shelves of files. The planks creaked. Water slopped back and forth in a blocked drain with an unpleasant slurping sound. After a few minutes he reappeared, looking gloomy. 'No murdered woman, case solved or not. Only a manslaughter. The killer confessed. I looked at 1935 and 1937 too, but I didn't find anything.'

'It was in August '36, during the Olympic Games. My father-in-law remembers the exact time. He knew the victim slightly, a young waitress.' Dietrich insisted.

'Could the files have been lost?' asked Franke.

'Nothing gets lost here,' Ewald told him.

'Just take another look, would you?' asked Dietrich patiently. 'It's important.'

Herr Ewald dived in among the shelves again. This time they heard him clicking his tongue and talking to himself under his breath. Fifteen minutes went by before his sparrow-like face appeared. 'I was looking in alphabetical order first, no result, like I said. Now I've been through all the files in chronological order for the whole of 1936. They begin with File 36/1/1/111 B, that's year, month, consecutive number, and the Roman three at the end is for theft, and B is for the sub-category pickpocketing.'

'What indicates murder?' Franke interrupted him.

'I A. But like I said, all we had in Zehlendorf in 1936 was a manslaughter, that's I B. There's a gap in August, though. The file with consecutive number 122 is missing, which is odd, because if a file's been lent out there's usually a card index entry in its place, giving the name and department of whoever's borrowed it. And there isn't one here.'

'Can you establish the date of that file?'

Yet again Ewald did a tightrope act across the planks to the shelves. This time he came straight back. 'The files just before and just afterwards were dated the third and the seventh of August respectively, if that's any help.'