The Divided City

by Luke McCallin

  “Whatchyouwantnow?” he mumbled, glancing at Reinhardt’s warrant disc.

  “Who did that to you?” Reinhardt asked.

  “Fuckinbulls,” he slurred. His words might have been unclear, but there was nothing wrong with the clarity of his eyes. They glittered back at him with suspicion and distrust.

  “When were they here?”

  The man dropped his head, shook it from side to side. “Couplevehours . . . Couple of hours ago,” he managed.

  “May I come in a moment?”

  He said nothing, simply turned back inside. Reinhardt followed him into the bar, into a stink of beer and cigarettes and a floor that stuck underfoot. A mop leaned out of a bucket of water that steamed feebly, and chairs were stacked on tables. The man retrieved a cigarette from an ashtray on the bar and leaned back against it, waiting for Reinhardt.

  “This is your place?” The man nodded. “Pull me a pint, then.” The man hesitated, then went behind the bar. “Sunday night, were there a couple of Brits in here?”

  The man shrugged as he pumped Reinhardt’s beer. “Youshayso.”

  “You didn’t recognize them? Was there a woman? A prostitute.”

  “Lossafuckingprozzies,” the man said, sucking on his cigarette. His face curled in on itself, in frustration, perhaps.

  “Her name’s Gieb. And speak up, for God’s sake.”

  “You try fuckinspeakin’ with a gob fulla brokenfuckinglass.” He slammed Reinhardt’s pint on the bar top, beer slopping down the glass’s sides. “Like I told the others,” he said, making an exaggerated effort with his words. “Shecamein . . . She came in, she sat down . . . with this one bloke. With this one bloke . . .”

  “They came together?” The barman nodded. “Describe him.”

  The man sighed, taking a pull on his cigarette. “Look, like I told the other fuckin’ bulls, I didn’t get a good look at him. Sat with his back . . . his back to me. Dark-haired. Good coat. Chunky. Biggish, y’know?” he said, puffing out his chest and shoulders. Reinhardt nodded at him to go on. “He kept his hat on and his back to me. The prozzie bought the beers. They talked . . . talked a bit. The bloke was a bit drunk. Got drunker. They talked more. He began shoutin’ . . . Some others told him to shurrup. He got upset. Picked a couple of arguments. Picked on a couple of lads who, you know . . . Likely looking lads,” the barman said, gesturing with his cigarette. “Looked like local thugs. Boys into a bitathisanda . . . and a bit of that,” he finished, wincing at the pain in his mouth. “They took it outside. S’all I know.”

  “Just an average night in Neukölln.” The barman nodded, ruefully. Reinhardt took a sip of his beer. It was flat and tepid. “Anyone else see anything?”

  “People keep their ’eads down at times like that. Y’know?”

  “The prostitute. What did she do? When the trouble started.”

  “Nuffin’. Just sat there, smokin’.”

  “Describe her.”

  The barman sighed. “Blonde. Ratty-lookin’. Like a . . . like a used rug. Man’s got to be desperate to go with a bit of tail like that.”

  “You knew her?” The man nodded. “Where did she live?” The man shrugged. “What about the two men. Did you recognize them? Seen them before?” The barman shook his head. “What time was this?”

  The man shrugged, glancing at his wrists. “No watch. No clock. I was knackered. I think it was early morning. I was thinkin’ of closin’ up. Tha’sall. Look, I’m done in, and I want my bed. You going to pay for that beer?”

  “All right, then. What do you want for it?”

  “Give me a cigarette, and we’ll call it evens.”

  Reinhardt allowed a sardonic glint into his eyes as he took a Lucky from his pocket and laid it on the bar top. “So, a man comes into your bar with a woman you think was a prostitute. You don’t get a good look at him. You don’t know what time it was.”

  “What I said.”

  Reinhardt broke the cigarette in two, rolling one half across the bar top.

  “You ain’t got nuffin’ bigger, ’ave you?” the man sneered.

  “This man seemed drunk. He picked a fight with who you think were a couple of local thugs. They take it outside. That’s it. Did I miss anything?”

  “No,” glowered the barman. “But just be careful the door don’t smack you on your fat ’ead as you leave.”

  13

  Outside Gothaerstrasse, he could tell the other officers had been busy. Policemen lounged up and down the pavement, knots of them clustered in the bare park opposite, many of them smoking, all of them with the eager spring and step of men who were excited, or who had recently come away from something exciting. Gestures were elaborate, voices a little too loud, laughter a little too raucous. Some of the younger detectives laughed and pointed at Reinhardt as he limped past them.

  “Captain Crow! You missed all the fun!”

  Gothaerstrasse was as on edge inside as it was on the street outside. As Reinhardt walked in, a squad of uniformed officers were manhandling a group of suspects toward the cells on the ground floor. A pair of policemen hauled the all-but-dead weight of a suspect, and Reinhardt saw blood blossom across the white tiles, dripping from the man’s head, which hung and wobbled down against his chest. He watched the drops flare across the white tiles, then watched them blurred thin as the man’s feet trailed through them, a signpost or sigil toward or from an unknown place.

  Going upstairs, Reinhardt pushed past a handful of what could only be lawyers arguing loudly with one of the police administration’s legal officers. Policemen clattered up and down, secretaries shouted loudly into telephones, and in the squad room, detectives interrogated surly-looking men who had that air of long-suffering, of abused victimhood, that Reinhardt had learned to recognize as a gangster’s stock-in-trade. A few of them glanced at him as he made his way through the chaos and fug of cigarette smoke to his desk, and one of them was one of the men whose mug shots he had recognized. Fischer. Podolski’s leg breaker. The man’s eyes caught his, one of them shining through a purpling welt of skin around his eye socket, and both of them felt recognition catch and flare before the man looked away, back to his interrogator.

  “You’ve had some luck, then?” Reinhardt said, quietly, to the detective at the desk next to his.

  The man was not one of the younger ones. He was a Nazi-era holdover, a quiet man who kept his head down, a survivor. The man looked up from a book of mug shots, smoke curling up into his eyes from his cigarette. “You could say that. They’ve got that prozzie—Gieb?—upstairs,” he said. “And they think they’ve got a lead on the man she fingered. The one who did the beating on Carlsen.”

  “Got a name for this man?”

  “Stresemann, I think. I’d never heard of him. I’m going through old books now. See if I can find anything.”

  “What’s with the dragnet, then?”

  The detective lifted his head, looking dully across the squad room as he took a long pull on his cigarette before dropping it into a mug of half-drunk coffee, where it hissed briefly. “Usual suspects. Way things are done. Killing two birds with one stone. Settling old scores. Take your pick. I don’t know. Ask someone who gives a shit.”

  “Where’s the woman, did you say?”

  The detective gestured with his head upstairs. “Tanneberger’s offices, I think.”

  Reinhardt tried to concentrate on his notes, bringing his evidence, as well as Endres’s and Berthold’s reports, together. Noell had been an air force pilot, he had been a quiet and courteous man on most occasions, who kept very much to himself, but he could be distant and brusque, even rude, at times. And for a man who kept to himself, he had had quite a few visitors in recent weeks. Two Germans, according to Ochs, the mystery man who had died on the stairs, and the man or men with whom he had celebrated something or other a few days previously. He thought over the barman’s story, tryin
g to piece in where what he said he saw fit the facts as Reinhardt was starting to understand them.

  There was too much noise, too much excitement. He could not work, and he was about to pack it in, make his way home, when there was a sudden silence and he looked up. Coming down the stairs were Weber with Schmidt and Frohnau, and with them was a woman. She was young, with a drawn face in which a pair of huge, darkened eyes glittered out at the squad room. The silence seemed to shrink her down into her coat, into the frayed wisps of its fake fur collar, and Reinhardt was moving before the first of the suspects rose to his feet and stabbed his finger at her.

  “Fucking bitch!” he yelled. “Was it you? Was it you?”

  Walking quickly past him, Reinhardt shoved him back down into his seat, but two other men had lurched to their feet, chairs skidding backward.

  “I’ll fuckin’ find you, you fuckin’ ’hore!” another man screamed.

  “Get her out of here,” Reinhardt shouted at Weber, who seemed frozen on the steps. “Get her out of here!” None of them moved, and Reinhardt bunched his fist into Weber’s jacket and yanked him toward the squad room, where pandemonium had erupted, arms and fists flying, the police interrogators trying to get a hold of the situation. “Sort it out in there. Quickly.” He reached past Schmidt and Frohnau and took hold of Gieb’s arm. “With me, miss. Come with me. Move, Weber!”

  He urged her down the steps, pulling her into the crook of his arm. Past the backs of the detectives as they fanned out into the squad room, he saw Fischer sitting quite still, just watching. He felt how thin she was beneath the coat, how rigidly she held herself against him, but she did nothing to stop him hurrying her down to the lobby. The bones of her face were stark as if they strained against the constraint of her skin.

  “You’ll be all right now,” he said, as he stood her in a sheltered corner of the lobby while a group of riot police ran across it and clattered upstairs. “Cigarette? Have one of these,” he said, offering her a Lucky.

  “Thank you,” she managed, but her hands were trembling too much to light it, and so he did it for her, taking her hand in one of his to steady it. “Thank you,” she said again. She took a pull on the cigarette, a quick peck of her lips, then seemed to let it burn unsmoked. Her lips twitched slightly, her lower lip seeming to rub against her teeth, and she seemed to give little twitches, as if startled by something, but something that only she could hear. She was very pale, as if her heart were rationing her blood.

  “We’ll have you out of here soon,” Reinhardt said, listening to the racket from upstairs, to the shouting and cursing.

  “What?” Her eyes blinked fast. “Oh. Yes. Thank you.” Her eyes drifted away, again, then she pinched them shut, her brow furrowing. She rubbed her fingertips hard against the wrinkled skin of her forehead, then pushed them through her straggle of thin, dirty blonde hair. She blinked, and the light in her eyes seemed to fall back and in, as if her mind had fallen behind the camber of her gaze.

  He looked at her carefully. “This can’t be easy, Mrs. Gieb. It was brave of you to come in.”

  “What?” she said, again. She seemed to remember the cigarette, and took another quick drag. “Yes, well . . .” She yawned, suddenly, a wide gape of her mouth, scrubbing at her hair, curling it back over one ear, and he saw what he thought was a webwork of scars that seamed her scalp.

  “Well, what?” Reinhardt prompted her after a moment.

  “It was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?” She blinked at him, her lower lip rubbing against her teeth. The movement triggered some kind of reflex in him, and he caught himself stroking the gap in his teeth with his tongue, and he clenched his jaw tight. Maybe she noticed something because her eyes seemed to suddenly clear, and she looked at him, actually looked at him. “You all right?”

  Reinhardt managed a smile. “Shouldn’t it be me asking you that?”

  “What d’you mean?” she asked, suspiciously.

  “Nothing. Did you know Carlsen well?”

  “Carlsen?” she managed, her brow furrowing.

  “The man they brought you here to talk about.”

  “The one that was murdered?” Her eyes glittered up from within dark circles. “No, I didn’t know him that well. He was . . .” She yawned, again, hugely, showing gaps in her teeth. Then it was as if her mind tripped, fell sideways.

  “Mrs. Gieb?” he asked, after a moment.

  She blinked. “He was a client. Not even a very regular one. He preferred to talk.”

  “Who is Stresemann?”

  “Who?”

  “The man they’re looking for. The one you described in your statement.”

  “Oh.” Her face firmed up, and she took a long breath. “He’s a pig, is what he is.”

  “How do you know him?”

  She stared at him, and there was a flash in her eyes, deep down, far back. “He was always hanging around me. Wanted to be my pimp.”

  “Who is your pimp?”

  “Don’t have one. Look after myself.”

  “How did the British find you?”

  “Find me?” Reinhardt nodded.

  “Reinhardt!” He turned, seeing Ganz and Weber coming down the stairs, Ganz leaning heavily on the banister as he came down. “What are you doing with her?”

  “She’s fine, Ganz, you’ll be glad to hear. No thanks to that nincompoop, there,” he said, pointing at Weber.

  “Yes, well, we’ll take it from here. I’m sure Detective Weber is grateful for your assistance.”

  Weber said nothing, only reaching past Reinhardt to take Gieb’s shoulder. Reinhardt watched her hunch into herself again, but she moved without protest. From upstairs there came a subdued rumble of voices.

  “That was all rather careless, not to say needless,” Reinhardt said, watching Gieb as she stood by the door, while Weber talked with a pair of uniformed officers. From where it jutted out from between her fingers, the cigarette spiraled smoke up her arm. Ganz said nothing, only breathing quite heavily after coming down the stairs so fast, and Reinhardt was reminded that Ganz was not a young man, far from it. “I hear she gave you a name?”

  “Man called Stresemann. Walter Stresemann. We’ve got a few things on him. Extortion, pimping. Suspected armed robbery. We’re looking into him now.” Ganz looked at him. “Ring any bells with you?”

  “None,” replied Reinhardt. “What’s her story?”

  “Her? Nothing special.”

  “You sure?” Ganz said nothing, just looked at him. “She’s distressed about something. I’d put good money on her being a concentration camp survivor.”

  “Oh?” asked Weber, coming back. “And why’s that?”

  “I think she’s suffering from headaches. She’s got a problem paying attention. She’s missing half her teeth. Her head’s been shaved, repeatedly and harshly. Her coat’s covered in her hair, meaning it’s coming out . . .”

  “Yeah, she’s a bit bloody mangy,” Weber interrupted, grinning.

  “. . . and she doesn’t protest or resist being manhandled. Not even by you.” Weber flushed, his face hardening. “She lets her cigarettes burn down to her fingers, and she doesn’t notice. I saw the scarring on her fingers, and she’s doing it now,” Reinhardt said, pointing at where Gieb stood. He was stung by Weber’s attitude. He knew he was saying too much, maybe even showing off, but he did not care. The Lucky Reinhardt had given her had vanished between her fingers, but he could see where it still smoked. “She’s been doing it a while, judging from the state of her fingers. That’s a dissociative sign, and that’s a complicated word, Weber. More than two syllables.”

  “Oh, sod off, Captain bloody Crow.”

  Ganz was watching Gieb with a new set to his gaze, light glittering on the sweat that sheened his head. “What’s any of that got to do with concentration camp survivors?”

  “Before I was demobilized
from the Feldjaegers, when the Americans still had us, I saw a lot of people released from Dachau. I talked to a lot of doctors who treated them. Those were some of the things they described about the survivors.”

  “So it’s anecdotal, not conclusive. Half of Germany’s malnourished.”

  Reinhardt shrugged, not interested in arguing, but unable to prevent a tug of frustration at what he saw as Ganz’s disinterest. He turned to go back upstairs, then paused. “Back in the day, we used to call what she’s got ‘shell shock.’ She stinks of it. The only time she came alive was when I talked to her about Stresemann. I’d place odds he reminded her of someone. If I’m right about her, you might want to check any records you’ve got for a Stresemann who worked in prison administration, or maybe in a camp. And from her accent, I’m guessing she’s a DP from somewhere east. Where most of the camps were. Who did you send down to that bar to rough the owner up?”

  Ganz blinked. “Weber. And a couple of uniforms.”

  “Reinhardt, are you saying you went yourself?” interjected Weber, almost interrupting Ganz. “What for? You’re not on that case. It’s my case,” said Weber.

  “It was nearby. I was at Noell’s place.”

  “And? Get anything useful?” asked Ganz, ignoring Weber.

  “No.” Ganz raised his eyebrows. “The barman’s evidence is vague enough to fit just about any story. He saw a man, with a woman, and the man caused trouble with some other men. End of story.”

  Weber shook his head. “Well, thank fucking God we’ve got you to set us straight, Reinhardt. Christ knows how we managed without you all these years.”