Pierre Frei - Berlin - A Novel

They watched a movie featuring Gary Cooper, Rita Hayworth and a mail coach. Gary Cooper said 'Yep' and'Is that so, ma'am?', Rita Hayworth showed as much of her beautiful legs as the prudish US censor allowed, and there was gunfire from the mail coach. Bags of popcorn rustled. While the fiery Rita clicked her castanets for the laid-back Gary, John Ashburner hesitantly felt for Jutta's hand, but his fingers landed on her thigh. He was about to withdraw them in alarm, but Jutta gently held them where they were. She enjoyed his touch, anticipating what was to come, and found she could hardly wait for the end of the film.

At last the hero, nobly giving up the heroine, strode away into the sunset behind the corral. The curtain closed, the lights came up. Everyone flocked out. Jutta took John's arm.

'How about dinner at the Harnack House?' he suggested.

'Oh, no thank you, John, I've eaten too much popcorn. I need fresh air now.'

'Let's drive down to the lake, then.' She squealed with pleasure as they bumped through the wood, over sticks and stones. He only just missed a shell crater before the way led so fast down the steep slope to the moonlit Krumme Lanke that it took your breath away. It was nothing to the jeep, which had seen service in a dozen theatres of war.

'That was terrific.' She put her arms around his neck. 'Come into the water.' She jumped out of the jeep and stripped off. Ashburner turned off the headlights. Slowly, she waded into the water up to her knees and then turned. She wanted him to see her.

The moonlight caressed her body. She bent forward, scooped up water and threw it over her breasts. It ran down over her belly and hung like a glittering network in her blonde bush. Her body was singing with excitement. Hesitantly, he took his uniform off and followed her in. They embraced. kissed and sank into the shallow water that had retained the warmth of the sun, unerringly finding their way to each other. Under his thrusting movements she rose, rejoicing, to an unstoppable orgasm. Pleasure carried them both away, and if Ashburner had been capable of thinking at all he might have compared this passionate love-making, with amazement, to the lukewarm encounters of his marriage.

They remained intertwined until desire took hold of them again. Jutta rolled him over so that she could sit on top of him. Delighted, he enjoyed the way she passionately rode him, uttering rhythmical cries. Another couple were making love noisily on the bank nearby. It did not inhibit but stimulated them — accomplices in love.

He took her home and kissed her lovingly. 'See you tomorrow.' A sense of happiness, something she hadn't known for a long time, came over her.

The report came over the jeep radio as Ashburner was parking it outside his apartment. 'Shit,' was his first reaction. Then he shouted into the microphone, 'I'm on my way!'

Number 198, a yellow apartment building. was the only ruin in Argentinische Allee. A stray British bomb had torn it apart from top to bottom. Moonlight illuminated the ghostly scene, assisted by the headlights of Sergeant Donovan's jeep.

Ashburner made his way through the neighbours who had ventured out into the street, ignoring the curfew. A woman dangled from the steel bars that had emerged from the concrete as it burst apart and now protruded, bizarrely twisted, from the third floor. She was swinging back and forth like a doll, hanging over the abyss below from the belt of her dressing gown. Three German police officers in black-dyed uniforms and two military policemen were crawling on all fours towards the edge of the floor. They got a rope under her arms. One of them lay flat on his stomach and cut the belt. Carefully, they lowered her lifeless body, and it landed at Ashburner's feet. The dressing gown fell open. The blue-black indentations around her neck and her bloodstained sex told their own terrible tale.

'Brutally abused and strangled with a chain like the others; said Donovan, his voice strained. 'What do you think, captain?'

'I think this rules out Otto Ziesel as the murderer. You can let him go, sergeant.' Ashburner cast another glance at the dead woman. Strands of her long blonde hair were sticking to her pale cheeks. A few hours ago, in the cinema, it had been prettily arranged and adorned with a grotesque lilac bow.

The back of the property bordered on a strip of woodland that had been plundered for firewood. It had been named Sprungschanzenweg by the town planning department. although the old ski jump for which it was named had long ago been converted into the Onkel Toms Hiitte toboggan run. Young people zoomed down it on their sleighs in winter. At this time of year, the ground was covered with dry pine needles on which the motorbike tyres left no trace. Its rider knew every inch of the way, even in the dark. He pushed the bike into the garage through the narrow door. Old mattresses and broken furniture barred the way to the front of the garage. Even the Red Army men looting immediately after the war hadn't got this far.

'Is that you, son?' asked a voice on the other side of the piled lumber.

'Yes, Mother.'

'Was she blonde again?'

He didn't reply. He had found the satisfaction he couldn't get in any other way. Now he was calm and relaxed, and he didn't want to talk about it. In silence, he put away his gauntlets, goggles and leather cap.

'They'll find you this time.'

He pulled the torn eiderdown over the bike. 'They won't find me, because I don't exist. Goodnight, Mother.'

He left the garage the same way he had come. In Argentinische Allee he joined the gaping crowd outside Number 198. Two ambulance men carried the dead woman past him on a stretcher. Someone had closed her eyes. Her face wore a peaceful expression which unsettled him. He thought of her distorted face and the rattle in her throat that had brought him to climax.

'I have her found, captain,' said a man beside him, in broken English. He had a dachshund on a lead. 'Her name is Marlene Kaschke.'

THE TRAIN MOVED slowly through the summer landscape of the Brandenburg Mark, where the ugly scars of war had disappeared under the green of the meadows and the yellow of ripening grain. A burnt-out signalman's hut at Krielow reminded passengers of the recent past — as did the stench of the cattle trucks which not so long ago had been taking prisoners to camps, and had been only superficially cleaned since. Anyone who couldn't find room inside stood out on the footboards. Singing and accordion music drifted back from the single passenger car at the front. Some Red Army soldiers were on their way to their unit at Rathenow.

Klaus Dietrich had managed to find himself a place on the roof next to an elderly man with a rucksack and a briefcase, who moved rather pointedly away from him. 'Did I get too close to you?' the inspector could not refrain from saying.

'Not me, it's my eggs. They'd be an irreplaceable loss if they were cracked.'

It turned out that Dietrich's companion looked after the aviary in the Berlin Zoo. 'Two parrot eggs, a number of other rare eggs from Amazonian birds, all in protective packing in my son's sandwich boxes. I'm hoping to get them to safe keeping with the help of a colleague at Leipzig Zoo. Everything's wrecked at our place. How about you? Off on a foraging expedition?'

A business trip.' Dietrich closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sun. He didn't feel like a lengthy conversation.

Outside Brandenburg station, the twisted tracks of sidings stuck up into the air like steel snakes. Broken glass glittered everywhere in the gravel. The train stopped a little way outside the station itself, and the passengers had to make their way across the tracks to the platform. They helped each other up. The barrier at the end had been repaired, and a railwayman in a dusty blue uniform was collecting tickets. Two men, in hats and leather coats in spite of the heat, were inspecting the arrivals through narrowed eyes, and checking the papers of male passengers.