by Pierre Frei
'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.'
CHAPTER SIX
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.
Dietrich was not spared. 'Got a pass.' It was a command, not a question. The inspector showed his ID and the much-stamped red pass. The man waved to his colleague. They took Dietrich's arms and led him out of the station. Several sympathetic glances accompanied him, but most people looked the other way. They didn't want anything to do with men in hats and leather coats, not now any more than in the past.
A black Tatra limousine was waiting outside. The men squeezed in to right and left of Dietrich on the back seat. They stank of machorka and vodka. A third man, wearing a Mao cap, was at the wheel. After driving for twenty minutes they passed several Russian guards and barbed-wire barriers. A tall gate opened, the car rolled through and stopped. They were in the yard of the Brandenburg penitentiary. The gate closed behind them with a booming echo. Will I ever get out of here? Dietrich wondered with mixed feelings.
A red-brick building. Another guard, with a sub-machine gun. Inside, they went down some stairs and along a corridor with a concrete floor. One of Dietrich's companions opened an iron door. The other pushed him into the bare room, which was illuminated by a single bright light. A fat Russian woman in NCO's uniform sat behind a desk.
/> 'Name?' she barked at him.
'Klaus Dietrich. Inspector in the Criminal Investigation Department in Berlin. I have a visiting permit.' He handed her the red paper.
She put it down on the desk in front of her. 'Undress,' she ordered. Dietrich froze. 'Didn't you hear?' His two guards had positioned themselves by the door, arms folded, obviously ready to help. He knew he had no choice. He had entered the lion's den of his own accord, and now it would be unwise to provoke the lion. With studied indifference, he took his clothes off. He kept on his prosthesis, with its shoe and sock. It was his only support: there was nothing else to hold on to.
The Russian woman rose and waddled towards him. She walked slowly all round him, looking him up and down. Then, just as slowly, she waddled back to her desk. She brought a stamp down on the red paper and gave it to him. 'Get dressed,' she ordered, without giving him another glance. Then he understood: the whole thing was routine; every visitor had to go through it.
He fastened his last trouser button. 'Pleased to have met you,' he said wryly. She took him at his word, and a broad smile appeared on her round face.
An officer with NKVD tags on his collar was waiting for him in a large office on the first floor. 'Lieutenant-Colonel Korsakov,' he introduced himself. 'CID Inspector Dietrich, am I right?' He spoke excellent German. A vodka?'
'Thank you very much, Tovarich Lieutenant-Colonel.' After his treatment in the cellar, this reception was reassuring.
Korsakov filled two glasses, and they tossed them back standing up. Now, please sit down. Tell me, how is he?'
'You'll have to tell me who you mean first.'
'Why, Gennat, of course. Detective Superintendent Ernst Gennat. Fatso Gennat, that's what your bunch used to call him. A great police officer. Inventor of the flying squad for murder cases. We adopted that idea ourselves, it was very successful.' It turned out that Korsakov was a detective superintendent with the Moscow CID, and an admirer of its Berlin counterpart.
'He retired quite a while ago. I think to somewhere in the Rhineland,' Dietrich improvised. 'I'm afraid I don't know any more details.'
'Well, give him my regards if he ever comes to Berlin. Another vodka?'
'No, thank you. You know why I'm here, and I'll need a clear head for that.'
'Chief Superintendent Schluter. Another Berlin CID man. Pity about him. He's waiting next door.' Korsakov opened the door to the next room. 'Please go in. Knock when you've finished.'
The room was empty except for a chair and table, and a stout wooden armchair in front of it. Straps on the arms and legs of this chair left no one in any doubt of the methods of interrogation employed here. The man at the barred window wore a mended drill suit which was the same dirty grey as his thin face.
'I'm Wilhelm Schluter. Don't suppose you want to shake hands with me.'
'Klaus Dietrich. Acting head of the Zehlendorf CID. I'm not your judge.' The inspector offered his hand.
Schluter gratefully took it. 'My successor, are you? What do you want from me, Herr Dietrich?'
'Your help. It's about the murder of a woman back in 1936. You were leading the inquiries at the time, and the files have disappeared. I'd be very glad to know all the details.'
'Why?'
'Three women have been tortured and murdered on our patch.'
Ah. Vaginally abused with a sharp object, strangled with a chain. All of them fair-haired and blue-eyed.'
Klaus Dietrich swallowed. 'How do you know?'
Schluter was pacing up and down. Finally he stopped right in front of Dietrich. 'It wasn't just one murder. There were six of them, between 1936 and 1939.'
'Six?' Dietrich was appalled.
'What the FBI calls a serial killer. At the time I read everything I could about similar cases in the USA, to get more information. That series of murders in Milwaukee, for instance. The murderer tied his victims to a tree and throttled them with his bare hands before raping them. Eighteen redhaired girls and women.'
'Six murders at Onkel Toms Hiitte, all following the same pattern?'
'Only the first was made public. When the second woman was killed, it was clear we were dealing with the same murderer, and that he was fixated on a certain type. The following cases confirmed it. Himmler commandeered the files and put his own people in charge. He ordered secrecy. A manic sex murderer didn't fit the picture of the healthy German nation. He forbade us to say anything more about it.'
And you obeyed his orders?'
'I went on working on the case on my own initiative. It was a challenge to any true investigator, and those Bavarian amateurs in the Gestapo weren't getting anywhere.'
'The murders were all similar?'
'Particularly in the way the murderer played cat and mouse with me. He knew I was after him, and he accepted the challenge.' Schluter laughed soundlessly. 'Case number three. Gerlinde Unger. Probationary teacher at the Zinnowald School. That was in the winter of '38. He buried her in a sandbox at the Onkel Tom U-Bahn station, leaving her face showing. She looked like a Madonna. I found her after he left a clue in my car, a bag of sand. Gritting sand for the roads was mixed with red salt at the time, so I knew where to look.'
'But you still didn't catch him.'
'I was hot on his heels. I hoped the tools he used would lead me to him. But the murders suddenly stopped at the beginning of the war.'
'Because the murderer was called up,' said Dietrich, excited. 'He was away right through the war. Now he's back, and killing again.'
Schluter stopped pacing, and pointed to the sturdy chair with its leather straps. 'They've stopped torturing me. They've got all I know out of me.'
'What advice would you give me, Herr Schluter?'
'Carry on where I left off. Look for the tools he uses, like I said.'
'The chain?'
Schluter did not reply. He was gazing into the distance. 'They'll shoot me soon now. A bullet in the back of the neck at close quarters. It's quick. My men and I did it thousands of times in the Ukraine. Goodbye. I wish you and our country a better future than the one we thought we must murder for.'
Klaus Dietrich hammered on the door. Lieutenant-Colonel Korsakov let him out. A serial killer, how interesting. I wish I could work with you in Berlin.' He had listened to the entire conversation.
Six hours in the sidings at Potsdam because of endless Russian military transports and two laborious inspections by Saxon railway police officers made the journey back to Berlin as bad as the journey out. They passed through Zehlendorf West station at snail's pace, which meant that Klaus Dietrich was able to jump out on the platform and land unharmed. From there it was only a few paces to the police station.
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.'