The Murderer in Ruins Read online

  ‘Maybe,’ Stave replied bluntly. He was thinking of the young woman they had found on Baustrasse. ‘Let’s imagine for a moment that we’re dealing with the same killer as in the case earlier in the week. Just supposing, for now, because certain things suggest otherwise; a young woman in one case, an old man in the other. In the first case there was no indication she put up any resistance; in the latter everything points to the victim fighting back. What links them is the thin strangulation mark around the neck.’

  Maschke came over and added, ‘Plus the fact that they were both found amidst the rubble. Naked. In both cases in a former working-class district that had been flattened by bombing. Maybe the killer knows his way around these parts.’

  Stave nodded. ‘Maybe, but one case in the east of the city, the other in the west. They’re more than ten kilometres apart. You think he might have lived for a bit in Eilbek, and also in Eimsbüttel? It’s not impossible. But it’s also possible that he chose these ruined, uninhabited districts because he knows there are unlikely to be any witnesses. It’s also possible that he kills his victims somewhere else altogether and just dumps the bodies in places he’s unlikely to be seen.’

  ‘Don’t the walking stick, button, medallion and leather strap suggest that the man was robbed and murdered here?’ MacDonald asked.

  ‘Sure, they suggest that,’ Stave replied, ‘but they don’t prove it. They might just have been lying here next to the body. These bombed districts are full of bits and pieces of people’s belongings lying all over the place. But you’re right: these objects may well be clues. Perhaps somebody will come forward to identify them. I’ll have photos taken of the medallion. We’ll put Inspector Müller on to it, maybe he can find out what the cross and daggers is all about.’

  ‘And I volunteer,’ Maschke said with a trace of resignation, ‘to go round dozens of white coats, all the dentists we can find that is, to stick the photos under their noses and see if anyone remembers fitting him out with dentures.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Stave, impressed, with a tired smile. ‘Right now I need to talk to the lad who came across the corpse.’

  ‘It’s not a lad, Chief Inspector, it’s a lady. A lady looter to be exact.’

  The uniformed policeman brought over a figure who had all this time been waiting behind one of the heaps of rubble, under guard, apparently, since another policeman Stave had not noticed before was with her. Stave took a good look at her when she came into the circle of light surrounding the body. She was slim, almost as tall as him. She pushed back the hood of a heavy English wool coat, which once upon a time had cost somebody a lot of money, but was now so threadbare it looked as if you could pull it apart with your fingers. Stave saw a thin, almost almond-shaped face, dark eyes, long black hair. Early thirties, he guessed, and would have been well-to-do at some stage. Her hands were not those of a manual labourer.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked her.

  ‘Anna von Veckinhausen.’

  She had a gentle voice, Stave thought to himself. But it was a voice filled with the self-confidence that only comes with having had social status and money from earliest childhood. It sounded like a violin slightly out of tune playing in a grand orchestra, a wrong note, the sound of nervousness. Or fear.

  ‘You found the body?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Stave cleared his throat. He could feel Maschke, MacDonald, the doctor and the uniformed police watching him. This could be tough.

  He decided to take a friendly tone. He introduced himself, took a step to one side, her following him, so as to be a little further from the others.

  ‘Please tell me exactly how it happened,’ he asked her.

  Anna von Veckinhausen hesitated for a minute. Stave waited, thinking to himself, she’s trying to decide what to tell me.

  ‘I was on Collau Strasse and used the path through the ruins as a short cut to get to Lappenbergs Allee.’

  Stave got his notebook out of his pocket, awkwardly, taking time over it, time for the witness to think her story through, but time for him too, time to think what to make of her. She was a looter, according to one of the uniforms. It was hard for the police to judge figures wandering around in the ruins. They might be former inhabitants looking for things they had lost. Or workmen tearing down dangerous walls or gathering valuable metal for the city. Or just passersby taking a shortcut. Or indeed looters, looking for wood, metal, bits of furniture, anything that might be of use. Nearly everyone in Hamburg had ‘sorted out their own way’ of getting hold of the things they might need from time to time. Stave only had to think of the wood he used in his little stove. But if you were caught you went straight to a British tribunal: an English judge, an interpreter, a stenographer, a few cold questions, a quick sentence and then it was on to the next one. Forty cigarettes from Allied stock would get you 21 days behind bars. A worker who took three pigs’ feet thrown away as unusable from a cold store could get 30 days. Looters found rummaging around in the rubble could get between 50 and 60 days.

  He decided not to press the looting charge at the moment. ‘Then what happened?’ he asked.

  The witness gave him a brief smile of relief. Then she looked serious and rubbed her elegant hands together, as if she were washing them with soap. Like a nurse disinfecting her hands, Stave thought. Or perhaps a doctor.

  She hesitated, looking for the right words: ‘I came across the body by accident. I immediately hurried to Lappenbergs Allee and asked my way to the nearest police station.’

  ‘Asked your way?’

  ‘Yes.’ Anna von Veckinhausen stared at him. ‘I asked one person after another until I found someone who could tell me how to get to the nearest police station.’

  Stave still couldn’t get used to the new self-confidence women had these days. A few years ago it would have been unthinkable for a woman – a lady like this in particular – to come across a dead body and react the way she had. In the old days a woman would have screamed or fainted. It was probably because the war had turned women into the family breadwinners; trading on the black market, foraging, manual labour – women could do it all just as well as men. Better even. But they paid a high price, and not just tiredness and exhaustion. Many marriages broke up when the men came back from the war, sometimes after years of absence, to find their wives could get by in this new world of ruins and black markets better than they could. Stave shot a discreet glance again at Anna von Veckinhausen’s hands: she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.

  ‘That would have been Station 22,’ Stave said. ‘If you didn’t know it, I guess that means you don’t live around here.’

  The witness hesitated for a few second. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I live in one of the Nissen huts along the Eilbek canal.’

  Stave made a note of the address. A looter who had decided to check out a new area, he decided. But he said nothing. He found Anna von Veckinhausen imposing, even a little intimidating. Such self-assurance. She came from another world. There was just the trace of an accent in her voice, but where did it come from? Obviously not from Hamburg or the north of the country. Maybe somewhere in the east? ‘So, you found the body, ran down Lappenbergs Allee to the police station. Have you witnesses to that?’

  She gave him a confused look and said nothing.

  ‘The people you asked for directions to the police station – do you know who they were? Did you take a note of their names?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ she said indignantly, but still in a quiet voice. ‘Are you treating me as a suspect?’

  Stave smiled, though he knew that right now the grimace on his face would be taken the wrong way. ‘Just routine,’ he said.

  She threw her head back and looked him in the eye. Challengingly. ‘They were just anonymous figures. Men with hats and their collars turned up, women with headscarves and hats. All of them hurrying along in the cold. I didn’t get any names and couldn’t even tell you what they looked like.’

  Stave made another note in his book. ‘And
what about before, when you found the body? Did you touch it?’

  ‘What sort of questions are you asking me? I come across a naked man’s body, what do you think I might have touched?’

  ‘You knew straight away he was dead?’

  ‘I’ve seen a few corpses lying in the snow, if that’s what you mean. I could tell immediately…’

  Stave didn’t ask when and where she’d seen corpses lying in the snow. ‘Do you know how he died?’

  Anna von Veckinhausen shook her head. ‘No? How did he?’

  The chief inspector ignored her question, just made another note. His fingers had turned to ice. He found it hard to write, the words barely legible. He knew that he was making the witness nervous. But then she should be nervous, he told himself. ‘Did you notice anything else? Anything about the body? Anything lying near it?’

  She shook her head. She’s bitterly cold too, Stave thought.

  ‘And what about immediately before you found it? When you didn’t know what you were about to come across in the ruins? Did you see anything suspicious, anything along the path? A person? A noise?’

  ‘No. Nothing.’

  Quick answer. Too quick. Suddenly Stave was certain there was something she was hiding from him. Should he take her into head office for questioning? Maybe threaten her with a looting charge? He hesitated. His experience was that most of the time witnesses told what they knew. Sometimes you just had to give them a bit of time and they would turn up at the police station and add to their statement. And if it turned out that Anna von Veckinhausen wasn’t one of those he could always interrogate her again. That meant see her again.

  That’s all you need, making a fool of yourself, Stave told himself, immediately banishing the thought. ‘You can go,’ he told her. He gave Anna von Veckinhausen a piece of paper with his office telephone number scribbled on it. ‘If anything else should come to mind, ring me.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, folding the piece of paper carefully and putting it in the pocket of her coat. She suddenly looked drained.

  Once upon a time Stave would have ordered a patrol car to take the witness home. But not nowadays with the shortage of vehicles and fuel rationing. ‘G’bye,’ he said to her. He intended it to be friendly but the way it came out it sounded more like a threat.

  ‘Why did you let her go?’ Maschke asked as they watched Anna von Veckinhausen disappear behind another heap of rubble. He and MacDonald had come over to Stave who had given them a brief rundown of his conversation.

  ‘There’s no reason to suspect her,’ he said defensively.

  ‘She was in the vicinity of the second murder,’ Maschke came back at him, ‘And she lives in the Nissen huts up by the Eilbek canal, not all that far from where the first victim was found.’

  Stave sighed. He had thought of that too, but didn’t want to mention it. ‘In the case of the first murder, she’s just one of thousands living in the area. And today she reported it to the police herself.’

  ‘I can’t say I see her as someone used to strangling people with a garrotte,’ MacDonald interjected.

  ‘I can,’ Maschke said.

  ‘Let’s leave our colleagues here to clear up,’ Stave said wearily. ‘Czrisini will want the corpse. We should go back to headquarters and think this through.’

  ‘Not so fast, gentlemen, give me five minutes.’

  The massive figure in the long dark overcoat, big hat and black leather gloves was Cuddel Breuer. Stave hadn’t seen him arrive.

  ‘Sorry I couldn’t get here earlier,’ their boss said, ‘but I had a meeting with the mayor. Goddamn this cold,’ he muttered, though he didn’t exactly look as if he was freezing.

  ‘I’ll have the spot guarded,’ said Stave, after giving his report. ‘One of the uniformed officers will stay here overnight. I hope he doesn’t freeze to death. Tomorrow when it’s light we’ll do a proper search of the area.’

  The chief nodded, then looked up at the three detectives. ‘So, what do you think? Is it the same killer?’

  It was the question Stave had been dreading. He thought carefully before answering. ‘We will keep all avenues of investigation open,’ he began. ‘There are some indications that it is the same killer – or killers, we haven’t ruled out that possibility. But a few of the clues don’t quite fit the first murder.’

  Breuer said nothing, just stood there looking at him.

  ‘It just isn’t possible that in a city like Hamburg two people can be murdered without anybody missing them,’ Stave said defensively. ‘It would help us if we could find the link between the murderer and his victims.’

  What if there isn’t one?’

  ‘Then it’s going to be difficult,’ he admitted. ‘If we’re really dealing with a killer who chooses his victims at random, then his modus operandi is unpredictable. In the one case he kills a young woman, in the other an old man. One attack in the east of the city, one in the west. In the one case the victim does nothing to defend herself, in the other he has to beat the old man up first.’

  ‘So what do I tell the mayor in the morning?’ Cuddel Breuer could have been inviting Stave to a picnic.

  ‘Ask him not to come to any hasty conclusions. It’s a difficult case. We’re going to need some time.’

  Breuer scratched his head and sighed. ‘I know, I know. But Hamburg is blocked in by the ice. Coal supplies will only last another few days. We have very little food left. People are freezing to death every day. It’s not easy for the mayor to keep control of the city. Time is the one thing he doesn’t have.’

  ‘In that case the most important thing is to maintain public order,’ Stave blurted out.

  Breuer smiled. ‘Indeed. Nobody wants to shout this thing from the rooftops. I shall advise the mayor simply to ignore it. For the moment.’

  He touched the brim of his hat, turned round and was gone.

  ‘Fuck!’ Maschke muttered, as soon as the chief was out of hearing range.

  But he wasn’t fooling Stave. He could sense an undertone in Maschke’s voice, an undertone he didn’t like: Schadenfreude.

  They trundled back to headquarters in MacDonald’s jeep without speaking. The dim yellow light of the headlamps made the building façades and piles of rubble seem like the stage set for an Expressionist silent movie. Stave wouldn’t have been surprised if from the corner of his eye he’d seen the bat shape of Nosferatu perched on some ruin, pointing at him with an outstretched claw-like finger. Pull yourself together, man, he told himself. It wasn’t a vampire he was looking for, but a normal-looking human being with a garrotte or piece of wire in his pocket. Someone who felt no compunction about killing a young woman or an old man.

  At the end of Karoline Strasse a frozen policeman was directing traffic with sharp, abrupt gestures: jeeps, British lorries, two hardy civilians battling their way against the icy wind blowing down the street. MacDonald drove slightly nervously towards him. Then a misfire from the undercarriage caused the policeman to jump. MacDonald, spying his reaction in the rear-view mirror, gave a smile of satisfaction. Three minutes later they had arrived.

  Stave was astonished to find Erna Berg already waiting for them in his office with something resembling tea poured out. He picked up the warm cup gratefully and inhaled the aroma. Nettles, he guessed. But at least it was hot.

  ‘What are you doing in here?’ he asked her.

  ‘Herr Breuer told me there would be work for me today,’ she said. ‘I can take a day off in lieu, sometime when it’s quieter.’

  You’ll be waiting a long time, Stave thought to himself grimly. ‘Okay then,’ he said, when they’d all found seats in his little room. ‘So who exactly are we looking for?’

  ‘Not a sex killer, anyhow,’ MacDonald said.

  ‘Well then, that just leaves some 900,000 possible suspects in Hamburg.’ Stave leant back and stared at the ceiling as if imagining a ‘wanted’ poster materialising.

  ‘Let’s start from the beginning again,’ he said, sounding as if he was
talking to himself rather than to the others. ‘We have no real clues. What possible connection could there be between a young woman in Eilbek and an old man in Eimsbüttel? A lady of the night and her pimp? Our friends from the Reeperbahn don’t recognise the girl so there’s nothing to indicate that that’s the case. What else could link them? Some place they met? Some common history?’

  Nobody said anything. They all knew Stave wanted to answer his own question.

  ‘The black market, obviously,’ he eventually announced.

  It was illegal but omnipresent. Men and women standing around on street corners or in city squares, wandering up and down, faces hidden beneath hats and collars pulled up high. Whispers, gestures. Where else could you get stuff that wasn’t on the ration cards – a radio maybe, a pair of women’s shoes, a pound of butter, homebrewed hooch? In exchange for a wad of 100-Reichsmark notes or some cigarettes. There were raids all the time, but there was nothing to be done about the black market. In the previous year alone the police had confiscated more than 1,000 tons of food, 10,000 litres of wine and 4,800 doses of morphine from army stockpiles, stolen penicillin, even horses and cars.

  For many citizens of Hamburg there was something sleazy, something degrading about it all. Standing around on street corners like a hooker. Getting paid next to nothing for some family heirloom salvaged from the rubble, just a few cigarettes for a valuable antique, but 1,000 Reichsmarks for a couple of pounds of butter. Touts and fences were called ‘crust stealers’, just as their like had been back when the Nazis were in charge. But then again, when your shoes fell apart and you couldn’t find another pair anywhere on the rations, what else was there to do but hang out with the shady street corner characters?

  Everybody in Hamburg ended up on the black market one way or another, rich and poor, old and young. Any piece of merchandise might be swapped for any other; any link between two people was possible, however absurd it might otherwise seem. And there was big money too to be paid for lost treasures or things people simply couldn’t get by without. There were things worth killing for, not least because nobody dealing on the black market would go to the police.