The Wolf Children Read online

  There were four tracks in the railway bed, which lay some two metres below street level, like a stream of gravel and steel. He could just make out – vaguely in the morning mist – figures on the embankment: ten maybe twenty boys hunched down, kneeling or just lying there, with sacks in their hands. And big sticks.

  ‘It would be better if they don’t see us,’ Kleensch said.

  ‘I would never have thought that,’ Stave mumbled.

  ‘Take your time.’

  Five minutes passed, ten. Gradually the sun drove the mist away. Just a few seconds more and any one of those kids who glances up here will spot us, the chief inspector thought to himself. The palms of his hands were damp. The he heard a short, sharp whistle. One of the lads on the far left of the embankment sprang to his feet and waved.

  ‘The spotter,’ Kleensch said, his own voice sounding tense. ‘A train's coming.’

  Just a few minutes later Stave indeed heard the panting of a steam locomotive just before it came puffing into sight. It was an old engine, dented with a slanted boiler, pulling behind it a dozen open coal wagons, its wares glistening in the morning sun. In the long curve leading into Dammtor Station the driver had to slow down. At that point the embankment was steep, making it the ideal site for an ambush.

  The boys had ducked down, clinging to the embankment like feral cats, let the locomotive and the first, then the second wagon pass — and then they jumped to their feet, nimble, scrawny figures, running, running, running, sacks in their little hands. Stave didn’t hear a spoken word; all he could hear was the screeching of iron wheels on the rails, the rattling of the wagons, the puffing from the funnel. A sudden leap and the first one of them clung to a wagon, somehow held tight, then climbed up and up until he reached the surface of the open load. Then a second, then a third. Once up top they began shovelling coal into their sacks with their bare hands. Skinny kids with dusty hair and soot-smeared naked arms.

  ‘Some of them imagine themselves as Apaches from a novel by Karl May* The older ones are just professional cat burglars.’

  Stave stared at the train, watching how in just a few minutes most of the boys had grabbed their fill of booty and cast it off the train on to the embankment with a dull thud. Its owner followed, clambering down the side of the freight car until near the iron wheels themselves, then sprang off, rolled along and eventually staggered to his feet and seized his sack, so heavy that he could hardly heave it over his shoulder but had to drag it along behind him. Then the next lad was down, then the next. One of them collapsed near the train under the weight of his load, a skinny little kid who Stave guessed could be no more than ten years old. He’d filled his bag with too much coal and now could hardly shift it. Nobody made a move to help him.

  The last wagon passed. The squeal of the wheels and the drone of the engine faded.

  ‘Careful,’ Kleensch whispered. ‘They’ll all run into the bushes now in case the police show. They’ll spot us and won’t be at all happy. We really ought to go.’

  Stave was watching one boy, the one who’d been first to jump on to the train and pack his sack. ‘I’m going to stay,’ he said, and nodded towards him: ‘I’m going to have a talk to that one.’

  ‘He's the leader of the gang.’

  ‘Let's see if he remembers me,’ Stave said, releasing the safety catch on his pistol.

  The chief inspector crawled through the shrubbery, then ran the last few metres to the Bahndamm and said, ‘Good morning, Jim.’

  The boy jumped, let his sack of coal fall to the ground and a rusty Wehrmacht knife pulled from his belt suddenly appeared in his right hand.

  ‘Wouldn’t be the first time, would it?’ Stave said accusingly. His own right hand had disappeared into his trouser pocket and was now clutching the grip of the F-22. He hoped he wouldn’t have to fire on the boy.

  Three, four others approached, obviously the older members of the group, the younger ones having vanished into the bushes. They were holding builders’ tools or heavy rocks.

  ‘What's all this about, Kommissar?’ their leader, who had pulled himself together by now, spoke up.

  ‘It's Chief Inspector these days.’

  ‘Since when was a few missing sacks of coal a matter for CID?’

  ‘I’m not remotely interested in what you’ve just done and whatever might be in those sacks. I’m interested in something else altogether.’

  ‘You’re not arresting me, then?’

  ‘Certainly not for this messing about on the train. On the other hand, it depends on the answers you give me to a few questions I have.’

  ‘Sounds like a deal I can’t refuse,’ he said, sticking the knife back in his belt. He winked to the others and said, ‘This guy's OK. He and I are old acquaintances.’

  ‘You can go,’ Stave said, reassuringly. Otherwise things were likely to get out of hand. There was in any case no way he was going to be able to interrogate them all in one morning. Better to concentrate on one of them without the others interfering.

  ‘I’ll catch you up,’ the group's leader shouted after them with a skewed smile. Then he turned towards the chief inspector with curiosity rather than fear written all over his face. ‘This is about another murder, isn’t it?’

  ‘You can join our ranks when you get a bit older,’ Stave quipped back. Wilhelm ‘Jim’ Meinke, fourteen years old, unkempt brown hair, front tooth missing on left side. The chief inspector remembered him as he was then. He had been a witness in the ruins murderer case. On that occasion he’d been picked up near the site where one of the bodies had been found: down by Billekanal, at the end of the harbour. Stave recalled that Meinke's parents had both died in the bombing. His father had worked at Blohm & Voss. The boy had said under interrogation that he had often gone with his father and knew his way well around the shipyard.

  Stave showed him the photo of Adolf Winkelmann. ‘Familiar face?’ he asked. Meinke whistled through the gap in his teeth. ‘Somebody really did a job there.’

  ‘I take it that means the answer is yes?’

  ‘Does that make me a suspect?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Always a troublemaker, Adolf, even when he's dead, it seems.’

  ‘You sound grief-stricken.’

  ‘He's not exactly a great loss to Hamburg, or the rest of the world.’

  ‘You’re a fine one to pass a judgement like that.’

  ‘Sounds like it to me. I knew Adolf better than you.’

  ‘Then bring me up to speed. Let's start with you. I thought you hung about round Billekanal and gathered coal here. What are you doing here?’

  ‘It was pure chance you picked me up that time down at Billekanal. I do as much business in coal as Erik Blumenfeld.’

  Blumenfeld was Hamburg's biggest coal merchant and also happened to be a citizens’ representative in the Christian Democratic Party. Kids like Jim Meinke could have ruined either or both businesses for him. If Stave arrested him, he’d have a powerful ally. If he let him go he’d do better not to mention it to his colleagues. ‘So this is where you get most of your supply?’

  The boy shrugged. ‘So, so. When the coppers clamp down here, it's better to hang around the harbour. There's also the advantage that with a coal cargo ship there's no danger of falling under the wheels.’

  ‘Worst that can happen is a bath in the Elbe.’

  ‘It's better than a sawn-off leg.’

  ‘So where did you get to know Adolf Winkelmann?’

  ‘On the train tracks.’

  The chief inspector was surprised. ‘Not down at the harbour? At Blohm & Voss?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘What is this? A Gestapo interrogation? My territory down at the harbour is the Billekanal and round about. That's where the coal boats come in. Inland waterway traffic. I’ve never been further upriver. Not my thing, far too dangerous. Lots of Tommies on guard too. If Adolf was hanging out up there, I know nothing about it.’

  ‘But your f
ather did work at Blohm & Voss?’

  A nod.

  ‘And you often went down there?’

  ‘When my old man was still alive, he used to take me with him sometimes. It was supposed to be forbidden, but the old boy was OK and didn’t worry about stuff like that. Since he's been gone, I haven’t been back. What would there be for me down there?’

  Stave stared at the fourteen-year-old. In the old days, even hardened criminals wouldn’t have answered him so self-confidently ‘OK then, the railway tracks. When did you first see Adolf Winkelmann?’

  ‘Not the foggiest. All of a sudden he was just there.’

  ‘Can’t you be a bit more precise? Last month? Last year?’

  ‘When it was so cold. More and more people kept turning up, old people too, and girls.’

  ‘November or December 1946?’

  ‘I don’t possess a calendar.’

  The chief inspector thought it over. The beginning of the winter of starvation. Most trains had stopped running because of the lack of coal. Boxing matches and other entertainments were cancelled. Not exactly good times for a smuggler with a sideline in selling boxing tickets. And what was it his aunt had said? That sometimes he brought coal back home. That all made sense.

  ‘Did he turn up often?’

  ‘Only now and again. He was an amateur. Not even. Adolf was mainly down by the railway tracks because in winter there were other children there, children who had no business being there.’

  ‘Wolf children?’

  ‘Polak packs. They should have stayed back east with the Ivans. What did they think they were doing here in Hamburg?’

  ‘Surviving, maybe. Names?’ Stave produced his notebook for the first time.

  Meinke shook his head. ‘If I’d known I would have the opportunity to grass one of them up to the cops, I’d have asked for a visiting card. But I have no idea what they were called. They were a nuisance. And when they came to be too much of a nuisance we picked up a few builders’ tools and explained things to them. I think they ply their trade somewhere else these days, but they aren’t here any more.’

  ‘But Adolf Winkelmann wasn’t exactly a wolf child.’

  ‘Everybody knew that. He always acted the big man with his black market stuff. A ciggie here, a ciggie there. If he was such a good businessman, what was he doing hanging around here? We steal coal, but that's a thousand times more honest than going down to the Hansa-platz to smuggle butter in shoe polish boxes or sell old alcoholics industrial alcohol and call it schnapps, until they go blind. Maybe that's why Adolf hung out with the wolf kids, they were the only ones who would be doing with him. I guess he paid them, they can be paid to do anything, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘I get the picture. Did Adolf Winkelmann get beaten up when you drove the wolf kids away from the railway tracks?’

  The boy was silent for a while. ‘You’re not trying to pin something on me, are you, Kommissar?’

  ‘Did you beat him up or not? I’m going to keep asking until I get an answer. If I have to I’ll order up a few hundred police in uniform and close down these tracks until you’ve used up your last lump of coal.’

  Jim Meinke stared up at the sky, then sighed theatrically and spread out his arms. T would have loved to give him a kicking, but I didn’t. Nor did anybody else here. We weren’t fast enough.’

  ‘Fast enough for what?’

  The boy made a dismissive gesture. ‘You’ll find out soon enough. Adolf was an amateur. He only rarely jumped the trains. It's not that easy to do. From the sidelines trains seem big and slow, but get close up and try to jump on to one with a sack in your belt or in your hand. You have to catch the stepping plate and then try to get a handhold. Not easy to do in the summer. A lot harder in the winter, when everything's frozen hard and your hands are as stiff and unfeeling as those of on old schoolteacher. And, in winter, the lumps of coal on the open wagons are frozen together. You can’t exactly fill your sack in a few minutes. You have to pull the lumps apart with your bare hands. And the wind's blowing up there. And then the frozen coal is slippery ...’ His voice faded away.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘One morning, Uwe Oldenburg, one of my lads, lost his balance on one of the wagons. He cried out, then fell off, backwards, not to the side. He fell between the tracks and the next wagon. There wasn’t much of him left by the time the train had passed. The funny thing was that Uwe had been a good climber, never lost his balance before. Just this one stupid day. A day when it so happened there was another boy on the same wagon with him.’

  ‘Adolf Winklemann?’

  ‘Good guess. At first we tried to do the best we could for our pal, but there wasn’t much to be done. Then I looked around to try to talk to Winkelmann. But he’d vanished, hadn’t he? He must have done a runner while we were all down on the tracks with Uwe. That was the last time I saw him. Believe you me, I wouldn’t have minded bumping into this Adolf Winkelmann again.’

  ‘You think he pushed your friend off the train?’

  A shrug. ‘Pushed? Nobody saw him do that. Maybe it was just because he was an amateur. Lost his balance himself, or was bashing away too hard at the frozen coal, and somehow or other bumped into Uwe, and hey ho, end of the show.’

  ‘Might it not just be that Adolf Winkelmann didn’t touch the other boy at all. But when he fell off he knew he’d get the blame. And you’d make him pay for it.’

  ‘One way or the other, he did a runner. That's all I know’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Towards the end of the winter.’

  ‘February? March?’

  ‘Herr Kommissar, I’m pleased enough that I know how old I am. You’re asking me about months and days? It's just not important.’

  ‘It is to me, and it could be to you.’

  ‘So I am a suspect. You’re keeping an eye on me? Well, you won’t be able to hang this on me.’

  ‘Revenge is a good motive.’

  Meinke took a step backwards. ‘No way, I’m no killer. I might have beaten Adolf up, but I didn’t do that.’

  ‘Nobody's saying it was you,’ the chief inspector stressed. ‘But every one of your gang had a motive. Maybe one of them met up with Adolf Winkelmann ... and settled his account.’

  ‘No, none of us would do something like that.’

  ‘That's the second most frequent thing policemen hear. Comes just after “I swear I’m innocent”. You can’t speak for each and every member of your gang.’

  Meinke shook his head. ‘If it had been one of my gang, he would have talked. He wouldn’t just have done away with Adolf Winkelmann like that and not mentioned it to anyone. He’d have mentioned it, if only to get the praise for it. That's not the way it was. And in any case we’ve all forgotten the incident by now. If you hadn’t shown me the photograph, and asked all these questions, I’d never have thought about it. It's not that I’m heartless, just that that wasn’t the only accident. You get used to it and just carry on as before the next day. Put it like this: these things aren’t that important at the end of the day.’

  Stave didn’t know whether to believe Meinke or not. When a suspect was lying, he always tried to portray himself as the best character in some made-up story — not exactly what this boy had just done. On the other hand it might just be a particularly devious lie. Paint a bad picture of yourself so that the cops will believe you, but not bad enough for them to pin the crime on you.

  ‘Where are you living?’

  ‘Still in the basement in Rothenburgsort.’ Meinke gave him the address. The chief inspector wrote it down, the name of a street that was so reduced to rubble and as yet uncleared that you could hardly say it existed any more. He doubted very much if he could ever find Meinke there if he tried to. But he knew about the railway tracks and the inner harbour around Billekanal. Even vagabonds had to live somewhere: he would be able to find him in one place or the other.’

  ‘Thanks for the information,’ he said, adding: ‘You can go now.’
/>   ‘You let him go?’ Kleensch asked when they met up again in the rose garden. The sun was now high in the sky, dust shimmered in the air, dried leaves, blood-red, lay strewn on the path. The first few couples had invaded the park, some walking hand in hand, others keeping an eye out for convenient shrubbery or undergrowth, where they might enjoy a few fumbled passionate moments in private. Stave stopped himself thinking of Anna.

  ‘None of the coal thieves would have come willingly. Remember the huge fights we had last winter when 800 looters set on a few police with sticks and stones.’

  ‘That was in a winter when people were starving. These days there are only a few kids hanging out on the tracks. I assume you’re armed.’

  The chief inspector gave him a wry smile. ‘You’d have a good story if I’d drawn on him. “Policeman Threatens Hamburg Children.” All those good law-abiding families of this city would freeze without these adventurous children.’

  ‘You really think that badly of me?’

  ‘You do your job, just like I do mine.’

  ‘Did you get anywhere?’

  ‘Further than in the last couple of days. I have grounds for suspicion.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as if you’re going to tell me any more.’

  The chief inspector laughed. ‘It's too early for that.’

  ‘Nothing's ever too early for a news desk,’ Kleensch sighed. ‘OK, no news story for now, but when you do have something you let me know before the others. That's the price for me crawling out of bed so early on a Saturday morning.’

  ‘You’ll get your story.’

  He said goodbye to Kleensch and strolled back to the CID headquarters. The heat was suffocating, but on the other hand it was a relief in that the pain in his left foot wasn’t so bad.