The Wolf Children Read online

  ‘Do you want to lie down on the sofa?’ Stave asked, struggling not to slur his words.

  ‘My Jeep knows the way home,’ the lieutenant replied, taking two turns to grab hold of his cap.

  Later Stave lay in bed with a heavy head, the shabby walls of his room dancing before his eyes, but if he closed them he just felt dizzier. All it needs now is for you to throw up all over the place, he told himself.

  At some stage, when he had halfway drifted off, he was suddenly awakened by the scraping noise of a key in the lock. A squeak, creaking floorboards. Then a bumping noise and a barely suppressed curse. Stave must have forgotten to move the kitchen chair out of the way. He sighed with relief. Karl was home again. He was tempted to jump up and ask him where he’d been all this time, just to see him again. But when he tried to sit up he got dizzy again. Should he really stagger out of his room in this state, stinking of brandy?

  He fell back on the pillow. Next door in the little room he could hear the clunking of the chest of drawers: the top one always stuck. Then the gentle creaking of the bed. Stave closed his eyes, happy at least that he could hear Karl back home.

  At the Grave

  Tuesday, 10 June 1947

  Stave and his son sat together silently opposite one another over breakfast. Stave idly stirred his grey ersatz coffee, his stomach turning even at the smell of the roasted acorns, his head aching as if his brain was being punctured by a thousand needles. Karl didn’t look much better. The CID man wondered what he had been up to the night before but repressed the urge to ask. Silence, blistering heat, bright sunlight that stung the retinas. The only sound the tinkling of the lead spoon in Karl's coffee cup as he stirred it in endless circles.

  Eventually Stave couldn’t take it any longer. For the sake of something to say, he came out with ‘Should we go and visit Mama?’

  ‘Still living next door, is she?’ Faked surprise, his old ironic wit. Stave was almost relieved that at least the war hadn’t blunted it. ‘Go and visit her grave, I meant,’ he said.

  ‘Is she still out at Öjendorf Cemetery?’

  The chief inspector gave him a puzzled look: ‘Where else would Mama be?’

  He shrugged. ‘People might have used it to plant potatoes like on the lawn in front of the university.’

  ‘You were at the university?’ A sudden spark of hope, suddenly he was wide awake. Don’t push him, he warned himself.

  Karl didn’t bother to answer. ‘This afternoon,’ he said instead. ‘We could go do the grave this afternoon, if you can get the time off.’

  Stave would have liked to talk about the university and Karl's plans for the future. A new start in life. Who knew, maybe in that case he too could fulfil his own dreams. Anna. But better to be patient. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Will you wait in the apartment for me?’

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  When he reached his outer office the chief inspector was annoyed to find it empty. Was Erna Berg not feeling well? Was it that time yet? Or was she absent because of the impending court case?

  One of his colleagues knocked on the door. ‘We all need to go down to the landing stages in the harbour.’

  ‘All of us?’

  ‘It's an order from Cuddel Breuer. We’re to take weapons along.’

  All I needed, thought Stave. On the way he asked around among his colleagues: British Engineer Corps had marched into Blohm & Voss that morning. They were going to blow up the cranes and gantries. News had got about town and now more and more people had gathered down by the banks of the Elbe, staring across the river.

  Cuddel Breuer assigned a group of men to Stave when they got there and told him to mingle with the crowds on the Baumwall elevated railway station. The station was rammed and the chief inspector thought the steel beams that supported it might buckle under their weight.

  Men, women, children. The station was more than ten metres above the harbour promenade and had an open view over the Elbe and the huge dockyard belonging to Blohm & Voss. Nobody said a word. There were no protest placards, no clubs being wielded, nobody making provocative speeches. Nonetheless Stave could feel the tension: everywhere there were bitter faces, angry whispers. You could almost hear the suppressed anger crackling in the air.

  The view across the river was still remarkable. The cranes and gantries stood like giant spiders hanging above the dockyard, gaps in their rows, of course, because some had fallen victim to the bombing raids. Tiny figures could be seen along the docks through the haze hanging over the Elbe but nobody could make out if they were workers or in British uniforms. A British patrol boat was coasting slowly up and down the river, the Union Jack hanging limply from its mast. Stave noticed there were none of the usual cross-Elbe ferries on the water, that there were not the usual waves dancing in the sun. The water was as grey and smooth as a tablecloth. They must have closed the river, he guessed.

  An hour they waited. He was hot. Salt had formed a crust along the cardboard stiffener inside his hat. His shoulder ached from the weight of carrying a gun while remaining relaxed. Ever more people were pushing their way up the stairs to the station. Should he pull out his police ID card and order people back? He tried to glance questioningly at his colleagues, but he could only see two of them and they were as hemmed in as he was. One of them ignored him, the other merely shook his head ever so slightly. Not a good idea to reveal ourselves to be police right now.

  All of a sudden there was a huge collective groan, as if thousands of people had taken a deep breath at the same time and held it, a sigh like a giant wave. On the other side of the Elbe, for a tiny surreal splinter of a second, a cloud of black smoke hung over the docks. Then the sound followed it. The loud boom of explosions and then a strange squealing noise. Steel, Stave thought to himself, steel cranes. The mighty constructions shook, wobbled and began to fall, slowly at first, then ever faster, to one side, finally crashing down and vanishing in grey and brown clouds, dust and dirt and a new thunder. When at last the pall had faded, the cranes and gantries were no longer to be seen.

  ‘They collapsed on to that brand new U-boat,’ one man in working clothes cried out. ‘They got rid of two birds with one stone.’

  ‘They ought to be ashamed of themselves,’ one woman replied. ‘The war's over, isn’t it.’

  Stave looked around. Everywhere he saw angry faces, lots of men shaking their fists. If this gets any worse there is going to be a mob looking for a target to exact their vengeance on. The only question was what that might be. Then he spotted Cuddel Breuer, shaking his head, but unflappable as always, ploughing his way through the crowd and down the steps. An honest citizen, horrified, but going home now. Two or three figures followed him at first, then a few more. Stave nodded to his colleague discreetly. The man tipped his hat back and also headed for the exit. A few more followed him. There were murmurs of protest, curses, widespread disgust, but nobody was staying put. Within ten minutes the platform was empty. Within half an hour there was nobody on the riverbank but casual strollers. Only above Blohm & Voss was there still a big angry cloud of dust.

  Cuddel Breuer gathered his men together at the landing stages and said, ‘Good work, men, we got the crowd to break up without anyone even noticing we were there.’

  ‘It went well this time,’ one officer interjected.

  Breuer brushed his hand across his head. ‘There's something brewing over at Blohm & Voss. We’re going to be holding our breath for a while yet. Right now we can go back to our normal jobs,’ he said, rubbing his hand. When he turned around Stave noticed that his boss's shirt was soaked with sweat from his shoulder to his waist.

  An hour later the chief inspector was sitting at his desk with the files from his murder case spread out across it. The photos of the dead boy, the photos from the autopsy report, his own notes. Which was the best lead? The forced labourers at Blohm & Voss? Seemed unlikely. There was nothing pointing in that direction except for MacDonald's note. The smugglers and dealers on the black market? He had no suspects, no
motive, and no link to the scene of the crime. The coal thieves? He had a motive and a suspect, but still no connection to Blohm & Voss. But it was the best he had. It went against the grain in him to arrest a suspect who was little more than a child. But then the victim too had been little more than a child. In the end he decided to ask Public Prosecutor Ehrlich to issue an arrest warrant for Wilhelm Meinke.

  Maybe it wasn’t him. Stave had his doubts, but with the kid behind bars it might jerk his memory and get more out of him. Also I’ve got something to show if Cuddel Breuer asks. Or one of the British. And the sooner I can pull down the curtain on this case, the more time I have for Karl and Anna, an inner voice whispered, even though he knew how dangerous such a temptation could be.

  ‘The public prosecutor has gone out for a walk,’ he was told a few minutes later by a grey-faced clerk who clearly found the news irritating to pass on. Stave too was amazed not to find Ehrlich in his office. ‘Not much work then?’

  The clerk turned a shade paler. ‘On the contrary, we have lots of cases. The trial tomorrow ...’

  ‘I was only joking,’ Stave interrupted him. ‘Did Herr Ehrlich say in which direction he was heading?’

  The young man was almost mortified with shame: ‘Planten un Blomen,’ he managed to blurt out.

  ‘Not exactly a brothel,’ Stave muttered and nodded goodbye. It was only a few hundred metres from the prosecutor's office to the park. It had to be a coincidence that Ehrlich would take time off today of all days, and of all places choose Planten un Blomen for his walk. It just might be that the Herr Public Prosecutor is following my footsteps on one or another of my leads, Stave considered. Doing his own investigation into the coal stealers? But why would he? Doesn’t he trust me?

  He paid the thirty pfennig entrance fee — in coins that were effectively worthless – and wandered down the pathways. Visitors sitting in the shade of the trees, women in colourful dresses that had somehow survived the nights of bombing, men in linen suits, children working hard at getting paper kites to fly although in the motionless air they kept falling to earth like dead birds. There was a smell of dried earth from the lawns that had been used to grow potatoes, where the pale green plant tops were wilting in the heat. It's not exactly going to be a remarkable harvest, Stave suspected. For a brief second he wondered how the uniformed police protected farmers’ fields in autumn. They must have to deploy hundreds of men, just for a few spuds.

  He had to go as far as the rose garden before he came across Ehrlich. The public prosecutor was wandering between the rose bushes, stopping from time to time, to pick a leaf or inhale the scent of a red or yellow bloom. He was in the middle of an animated conversation, more enthusiastic than Stave had ever seen him before. No wonder, given the beautiful woman at his side – Anna.

  Quickly, Stave moved behind a bush, a thousand questions running through his mind. It was just a harmless stroll in the park, after all. But both of them were talking quietly, seriously, making gestures with their hands. The conversation couldn’t have made him more jealous if Anna had kissed the man. Don’t make a fool of yourself, he thought. This is the hypercorrect public prosecutor out with Anna, who makes a living by sneaking through the ruins stealing lost artworks. On the other hand, was it any less absurd than her hanging out with a chief inspector of police?

  Stave couldn’t just sit there behind a bush like some moral watchdog. He moved away, taking care to choose pathways where he was unlikely to be spotted from a distance. When he got back to the entrance he took a deep breath. What on earth was Anna doing with Ehrlich? Or had the public prosecutor asked her to come and see him?

  He waited for half an hour, hidden in the ruins of the park-keeper's cottage, until he saw Anna and Ehrlich shake hands, very formally, and say goodbye. Nonetheless, the CID man waited until the public prosecutor was out of sight. It would be absurd now to go to him to request an arrest warrant as if nothing had happened. He wasn’t a good enough actor to carry it off without giving himself away. Should he just let Anna go too? He came out of hiding and walked after her. She didn’t notice him until he was almost alongside her.

  Anna breathed in sharply as if someone had struck her in the face. ‘Have you been spying on me?’ she asked, speeding up her pace.

  She looked immensely cross, Stave thought to himself, and immensely beautiful. ‘I had to speak to Ehrlich,’ he said, more brusquely than he had intended. ‘But apparently there was a queue.’

  She stopped dead and stared at him. ‘I will talk to whoever I want to, whenever I want to and wherever I want to. You have your life, I have mine.’

  ‘What were you talking about?’

  ‘You just can’t give up, can you, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘It's an addiction that goes with the job.’

  ‘And you’re always doing your job, aren’t you? At least we have that in common.’

  ‘You were talking to Ehrlich about art?’ Stave asked suspiciously.

  ‘I got to know him in the restaurant,’ she reminded him. ‘The three of us were talking about art.’

  ‘The two of you, you mean.’

  ‘It would appear that subsequently the public prosecutor made some ...’ she looked for the right word, then shrugged and said, ‘enquiries. About me.’

  ‘Enquiries?’ The chief inspector was concerned that Ehrlich might know how things stood between him and Anna.

  ‘To be more precise, about how I earn a living.’

  ‘Did he threaten to have you arrested?’

  Anna laughed in surprise and shook her head. ‘Ehrlich is a most charming man.’

  ‘A charming man who's sent more men to the executioner than any other public prosecutor in the British zone.’

  ‘Men who deserved it, I feel certain.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Don’t be so sarcastic. We were just talking about art, his mostly. He wanted my help.’

  ‘He wants you to find artworks for him?’

  ‘He wants his own back. At least the masterpieces from his collection.’

  Gradually the chief inspector began to see the light. ‘He wants you to be an informer, in case some of his pieces turn up on the black market for stolen art?’

  ‘Art that in the brown years was stolen from the Jews who had owned it. Ehrlich's own collection was plundered.’

  ‘I saw a picture from it,’ Stave said.

  ‘Since 1945 we don’t call it “unworthy art” any more. The museums are bringing back pieces they hid, galleries are putting on exhibitions.’

  ‘Like the Junge Galerie, where they had that exhibition by some British major a few weeks ago?’

  ‘William Gear, an Expressionist. I was at the preview. Ehrlich wasn’t there, he had a trial to prepare for. But he came along later. He noticed how many people were pouring in, and the prices on the frames. That's when he realised that what had been stolen from him could be sold today. For a lot of money.’

  ‘But not legally, because legally they still belong to him.’

  ‘And who would dare try to sell off art belonging to Hamburg's most dreaded public prosecutor? It would have to be under the counter.’

  ‘The black market, smugglers, British officers.’

  ‘That was why Ehrlich wanted to talk to me. He's given me a list of his missing artworks. A very impressive list. I’m to keep an eye out for him, to see if any of them turn up. Anywhere, in anybody's possession. He's sure his pieces are still in Germany, maybe still here in Hamburg.’

  ‘And what do you get in return?’

  She glared at him. ‘It's always good to have a public prosecutor as a friend. You of all people should know that,’ she whispered, turning sharply on her heel.

  The chief inspector walked off as if in a stupor. There was no way he could go to Ehrlich now, to persuade him to issue an arrest warrant for young Meinke. Would Anna tell the public prosecutor that he had been watching the two of them? That wouldn’t make working with Ehrlich any easier, let alone his own private life. T
hat was if he still had anything worth calling a private life after the conversation he’d just had.

  When he finally got back to Ahrensburger Strasse he found a long line of men, women and children with tin cans, buckets, glass bottles and battered Wehrmacht canteens in their hands queuing up at a water pump in the street. They were inhabitants of the upper-story apartments where there was already no more water to be had from the taps. Calcium deposits, somebody had told him, had blocked up the filters in the main water works. Who would have thought that the good people of Hamburg would one day be longing for rain, he thought to himself sympathetically as he passed the long line of people standing there apathetically in the hot sun, too exhausted even for the usual chitchat. Three teenagers were hanging around the pump offering to wield the heavy pump handle for them. More than a few in the queue were indeed sufficiently exhausted to throw the kids a few coins for doing them the service. Clever lads, thought Stave. He made a note of their faces; he didn’t doubt he’d come across them more often down Ahrensburger Strasse.

  It was only when he turned the key in the lock of his apartment that he realised he hadn’t got any flowers.

  ‘You’re on time,’ said Karl. He sounded surprised.

  Stave was about to make a sarcastic remark of his own in return, but just managed to stop himself in time. He was tired from the long walk, and exhausted from the stress of his conversation with Anna. He would have liked nothing more than to lie down for a quarter of an hour, massage his damn ankle and think things over. Instead, rather too loudly, he said, ‘It's a long walk to the cemetery. We shouldn’t hang about.’

  ‘Haven’t had a good walk in ages,’ his son replied, yet more sarcasm in his voice. Stave couldn’t avoid noticing Karl glancing at his crippled leg, just briefly. He couldn’t tell if it was a look of scorn or sympathy.