Pierre Frei - Berlin - A Novel

Another woman murdered, inspector.' Franke received him with this depressing news. And we're not a step further forward.'

Dietrich's reaction was matter-of-fact and professional. 'What do we know?'

'The murder was committed around ten yesterday evening, at 198 Argentinische Allee. The victim lived there. Name of Marlene Kaschke. Same type: blonde, blue eyes, worked for the Americans. Usherette in the Onkel Tom cinema. Strangled with a chain like the others. And the autopsy findings match the others too.'

'I'd like to see the scene of the crime. Is the car heated up? We can leave in five minutes.' Klaus Dietrich went to the men's room, where he pulled his trouser leg up above his knee. Groaning, he took off his prosthesis, then hopped over to the wash basin, ran it full and dipped in his reddened stump. The cold water felt wonderful. He dried the scar tissue with his handkerchief and sprinkled powder in the hollow depression at the top of the artificial leg. He always carried a small can of it with him.

The car was ready. Franke stepped on the accelerator, making the Opel cough indignantly. 'The toggle chain.' Dietrich reflected out loud. 'What does that tell us?'

'Nothing much,' said Franke, shrugging. 'You can get a thing like that in any pet shop, if they've opened again. It's what they call a throttle collar, meant for large dogs. If Fido pulls on the leash too hard it tightens round his neck. No, sir, we won't get far that way.'

Ten minutes later they were standing in front of the wrecked facade of Number 198. 'She was hanging from the third floor up there,' the sergeant told him. A tenant in the building found her, man named MUhlberger. As far as we can tell, the murderer pushed the dead woman over the edge. The belt of her dressing-gown got caught in those twisted steel bars, that's what stopped her falling.'

'Or else he was deliberately putting her on show up there,' said the inspector. 'He has a sense of the macabre. Think of the dead girl inside the roll of barbed wire, and that other poor woman in the garbage container.'

They climbed up to the third floor in the intact part of the building. 'Our colleagues have sealed off the apartment.' Franke tore away the official seal, which still bore the eagle and swastika.

A pot of geraniums, used glasses, plates and an empty bottle of champagne stood on the table in the bedroom. Three candles burnt down to their stubs were a reminder of yesterday evening's power cut. Klaus Dietrich looked at the poorly executed picture of a rutting stag in an autumnal landscape that was hanging over the chest of drawers, shaking his head. An order lay on it, under the picture. 'Cross of the French Legion d'Honneur. I wonder what junk dealer she got that from?'

Franke helped himself to a single prune wrapped in bacon which lay on one of the plates, and followed it up with a few peanuts. 'She had a visitor.' He pointed to the rumpled bedclothes.

'Her murderer?' The inspector opened the door to what had once been the living room. Less than a couple of paces lay between him and the drop to the street. 'Let's find out if the other tenants know anything.'

Franke knocked on the door of the second-floor apartment with a nameplate saying 'Miihlberger'. A man in a casual jacket opened it. A black dachshund was yapping between his check slippers. ' CID. Sergeant Franke. This is Inspector Dietrich.'

'You're lucky to find me home. I'm off work sick. I work for the Yanks.'

'We'd like to ask you a few questions, Herr Muhlberger.'

'Sure. I mean, I found her.'

'Can you tell us when that was?'

Around ten-fifteen. That's when I take Lehmann here walkies. Only a step or so outside the house because of the bloody curfew. Lehmann likes to do his business on that sandy strip where they're going to build the second carriageway some time. As I was standing there, I could see something pale dangling level with the third floor.'

Franke was sceptical. 'In spite of the dark?'

'I have a strong torch and a few batteries. I was works security guard for Leuna during the war. Only been back a few weeks.'

And you heard a motorcycle start up nearby, I expect,' said Dietrich casually.

'That's right. It moved away pretty quick. An NSU 300. I'd know that chugging exhaust in my sleep. Had a bike like that myself once. Hey, how'd you know, inspector?'

A guess. Go on, Herr Muhlberger.'

'Well, so I shone the beam of the torch up and saw her hanging there. Very sad, sure, but no great loss. Cheap little tart, she was.'

A woman in a headscarf and apron was coming up the stairs. 'That's what he says because she wouldn't have anything to do with him. Brauer, first floor,' she introduced herself. 'She was a good girl, she was, just wanted to be left alone. Who knows what she'd been through.'

'Did she have many men visitors?' asked Franke.

Frau Brauer shook her head. 'Hardly at all.'

'Except the bloke that did her in,' Muhlberger said. 'Fellow with a dimple in his chin.'

Inspector Dietrich pricked up his ears. 'You saw him?'

You bet your life. Just before ten, it was. Come on in, gents. Not you, Frau Brauer.' Frau Brauer moved away with an injured air. The police officers followed Muhlberger into his apartment, as Lehmann growled with hostility. 'Where was I? Yes, right, so just before ten I hear someone coming down from the third floor. I open my door. After all, you want to know who's hanging around the place in these difficult times. Had a candle in his hand. Probably helped himself to it up there so's not to fall down the stairs. I saw the dimple in his chin quite clearly.'

The sergeant was not satisfied. 'Can you describe him in more detail?'

'Had a dyed uniform jacket on.'

A German one?'

'Nope, it wasn't German.'

Franke took a framed photograph off the sideboard. It showed a younger Mi hlberger astride a motorcycle, his booted feet braced in the sand to left and right of it. He was wearing gauntlets, and had pushed his protective goggles high up on his leather helmet, just like his companion. Both their faces were stained with dust.

'My mate Kalkfurth and me,' said Miihlberger proudly. After a crosscountry in the Grunewald before the war. We were in the NSKK, the National Socialist Motorcycle Corps. We did some pretty good cross-country runs in those days. It wasn't all bad back then.'

The sergeant put the photo back in its place. 'What happened to your mate?'

'Kurt? Killed during the march into Poland, right at the start of the war.'

'This man in the dyed uniform jacket with the dimple in his chin — would you recognize him?' Dietrich returned to the subject.

'Should think so.'

'Thank you, Herr Muhlberger. We'll ask you to come to the police station and make a formal statement.'

'That's OK, inspector. I guess you'll get him soon.'

'I guess so,' replied Franke, giving him a sharp look.

'Chief Superintendent Schluter knows of six more murders before the war which match ours to a T,' Dietrich said when they were back in the car.

'You mean this Marlene Kaschke is the tenth?' asked the detective sergeant, incredulous.

'Looks like it, Franke. According to Schluter, the murders stopped when the war began.'

And now the war's over they're happening again. That suggests a man back from the army, sir.'

'It does, doesn't it? Someone who lived here before the war, and knows his way around the Onkel Toms Hutte quarter very well.'

'Muhlberger. He was away all through the war, he's only been back a couple of weeks. He could have hidden his motorbike somewhere. And he has a job with the Americans, too.'

Dietrich shook his head. 'That doesn't necessarily make him the murderer. But he's our only witness. I know from Captain Ashburner that there's a card index of all the Germans employed by the Yanks, with their photos. We'll look through it with Muhlberger. Who knows, this man with the dimple in his chin may be there.'