The Divided City

by Luke McCallin

  “Man’s got to come back to somewhere, hasn’t he?” muttered the sergeant, half to himself as well.

  “He told me he had family here,” the superintendent said. “A wife. But I think she died in the winter of ’45, ’46. He didn’t talk about her much. Their old place in Treptow had been destroyed during the war, and when she died, wherever they were living, the city authorities must have considered it too big for one man. He can’t have been priority for housing. He was a veteran, and he wasn’t injured. So they moved him out and put him up there, in that garret. But he was a fairly upbeat fellow. Never let things get him down, except the death of his wife. He’d get all maudlin about that. And he found work, at last, a few months ago.”

  “The detective said you and he would drink sometimes.” The superintendent nodded. “Did he talk about the war? Did you hear the same things from Zuleger?”

  “That and more.” The superintendent’s mouth worked. “Look, Zuleger, he was a good enough bloke. He took care of people. Helped out. But we differed on all that wartime stuff. Far as I can tell, and far as I’m concerned, there was an officer clique who helped Hitler take power, who maintained him there, and who then lost the bloody war. Zuleger was emblematic of that clique, obsessed with the wrongs done him and the rights he was owed. He was a good enough bloke, but he wasn’t half-obsessed with how bad he thought he had it.”

  The superintendent nodded to himself as he finished, folding his arms across his chest as if to hold himself back from more. It sounded trite, somehow formulaic. It sounded like some of the propaganda you would hear the Soviets expostulating, that filled the pages of the East Berlin press. Like most propaganda, there was enough truth in it to make its messages stick, but Reinhardt knew there was more than just enough truth in it. The widow nodded vigorously at what the superintendent said, the former sergeant a bit less so, but both were keen to assure Reinhardt they had nothing to do with his death, and no idea who might have done it. Reinhardt heard them out, then left, glad that none of the other detectives were there to offer any pithy remarks about the officer class.

  And then whatever it was that had clicked inside clicked again, and became clear. Hobbling. K.v.h. The old army joke. Can convincingly hobble. Noell had had polio. He had had it as a child. So how did he ever pass the fitness requirements to join the armed forces, let alone as a pilot, and rise to the rank of colonel . . . ?

  15

  Mrs. Dommes found him as he trudged wearily up the stairs, and he followed her to the archives where two other secretaries sat exhausted on boxes, their faces sheened with a veneer of dust.

  “We think we found something, Inspector,” Dommes said proudly, although from the veiled glances the younger secretaries gave her, and from the impeccable lines of her gray hair, Dommes had had little to do with it. “Greta, please tell the inspector what you found.”

  One of the secretaries held out a newspaper, folded open to an article. The paper was from Hamburg, from January of that year, and described the death of a man a few days previously, a death that had baffled police. The case was being referred to, as Reinhardt saw with some excitement, as that of “The Man Who Drowned on Dry Land.”

  “Hope that’s what you need. ’Cos it took forever to find it.”

  “Greta,” snapped Dommes. “Your manners, young lady.”

  Reinhardt scanned the article quickly, before looking up at the secretaries. “Was there anything else? Anything similar?”

  “Nothing we could find,” said the other one. “These here are follow-on articles, from the same paper. The last one’s from February.” She handed over a pile of maybe a dozen newspapers.

  “Very good,” Reinhardt breathed. “Very good. Ladies, you have my thanks for all your work. Let me assure you, it was not wasted. If you would allow me,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “I should like to offer you a little something for your efforts, on me.”

  “Tush, Inspector! No need for that. They were just doing their jobs. Ladies, you heard the inspector. Such courtesy is rare enough in these days.”

  “Yes, Mrs. Dommes,” they both said, rising to their feet.

  “Mrs. Dommes. Perhaps I might ask another favor, if I might escort you to your office?”

  He allowed Dommes to precede him out before slipping a few Occupation marks onto one of the boxes by the door, as well as a few Luckies, giving the two secretaries an outrageously exaggerated wink and miming lifting a glass as he left, and seeing the quick flashes of their smiles.

  “Now, Mrs. Dommes,” he said, as they walked to her office. “I note in these articles that there is an inspector in the Hamburg police who was leading this investigation, an Inspector Lassen. Do you think your services might try to track him down and arrange a telephone call with him? Perhaps as early as tomorrow morning?”

  “Oh, I should think so, Inspector,” Dommes said severely, already considering the challenges of trying to place a telephone call across occupied Germany, and probably dismissing most of them. “For tomorrow morning, at nine o’clock?”

  “Perfect, Mrs. Dommes. Perfect.”

  Upstairs, Reinhardt added the materials he had found in Zuleger’s apartment to the papers and emerging report on Noell’s murder. He leafed through the pile and, as the widow and the veteran had indicated, it was made up mostly of all sorts of literature on the situation of Germany’s veterans, but one particular paper caught his eye. It resembled the one he had found at Noell’s. He spread them out side by side. They were the same, although Zuleger’s was in far better condition, Noell’s having been found in the waste bin. “RITTERFELD ASSOCIATION” headed both pages, and he could see from Zuleger’s that it was an agenda, or something similar to one, with a number of items laid out. “The situation of our veterans” was followed by “Legal status in the various occupation zones,” “Pride in the uniform,” “Lessons from captivity,” “The value of solidarity,” and other similar items. Wherever it was and whatever it was, there was neither location nor date.

  For the rest of it, there were newspaper articles and clippings, photographs, op-ed columns, obituaries, letters to editors, classified advertisements, all outlining in various details the plight of individual veterans and their families. Many of the obituaries were for suicides, even if the word itself was never used, the implication being that these men had no longer been able to bear their lives. Although, thought Reinhardt with more than a touch of cynicism, that may have had as much to do with what they had done during the war as with what they had been reduced to after it.

  The last item he found was an invitation to an event, some sort of gathering on Saturday. That would have made it a day after the estimated time of Zuleger’s death, which he and Berthold had estimated at three days ago, based on the state of the body and the last time anyone had seen him. Endres would give them a more exact time, but not before tomorrow. If they were right, the event would have been around the right time for Noell, who witnesses said had gone out in good spirits, and returned in even better in the early hours of the following morning, on Sunday, and who had been murdered sometime that day.

  The invitation was to somewhere in Grunewald, and the invitee was a Mrs. Frankewitz. A lady, probably, some kind of matron or dowager, if he was any judge of the type of people still living there in what was—or what used to be, he corrected himself, sardonically—a very well-heeled part of town, an oasis of sylvan calm and tranquillity. Not quite the sort of address one would expect a man who lived in a place such as Zuleger’s to have, or to be invited to.

  He put a call through to one of the police stations in Grunewald, to the one he thought closest to the address he had found at Zuleger’s. While he waited to be connected to the duty officer, he took a closer look at Zuleger’s Wehrpass. An air force officer, as the building’s witnesses had said. A Lieutenant. In a fighter squadron designated IV./JG56. He frowned at the numbers, before digging Noell’s file out of his desk, and
flipping open the photo album. To the group photograph, the one of pilots posing in front of a regimental shield, and to another, a photograph of Noell in front of the tail of an aircraft.

  The same designation.

  IV./JG56.

  He dug through the other photos, finding the group shot, but he could not spot Zuleger. He might have been staring back at Reinhardt, but the faces would not coalesce for him.

  The Grunewald station’s duty officer’s voice distracted him a moment. He gave the man Mrs. Frankewitz’s address and asked for a patrol to be sent to check it tomorrow morning. The duty officer’s voice was terse and no-nonsense as he acknowledged the request, and Reinhardt hung up, distracted, thinking of Zuleger’s uniform, glancing at the pamphlets, wondering if it had all been for some kind of event. Possible, but unlikely, he thought almost straightaway. The wearing of uniforms was forbidden. If there had been any gathering at which uniforms had been worn, it would have been one hell of a risk. In any of Berlin’s occupied sectors. No, he thought, the uniform was probably some form of reminiscence.

  It was late, the daylight flushed from the sky, and Reinhardt was exhausted. His leg ached fiercely, and he found he was light-headed with hunger. With his head on his hands as he closed his eyes a moment, he realized he had had nothing to eat since leaving the house. He put Zuleger’s papers aside, and flipped through the newspapers the secretaries had found, selecting the one with the article that seemed most comprehensive, and folded it into the pocket of his coat. Flipping his hat onto his head, he headed downstairs and out into the evening chill in search of something to eat. As he pushed through the doors he fancied he heard someone calling his name back upstairs, but he ignored it, too interested in finding food, and finding it in one of the little beer halls that catered to the police trade in the roads around and behind Gothaerstrasse.

  He followed two uniformed officers down a couple of steps into a darkened restaurant, the air damp and fugged with cigarette smoke and the smell of beer, bare brick walls glossed with condensation, and tables made from a variety of flat wooden surfaces, most of which seemed to have been doors. It was all but empty, though, which suited Reinhardt just fine as he pulled out a tall stool at a table near a window. He hung his coat over the back of a chair, and put his cigarettes, matches, and his baton on the table.

  “Hey there, darling,” one of the uniformed officers greeted the waitress with a lazy reach of his arm. “I’m so hungry I could eat a rat.”

  “You’ve come to the right place, then,” the waitress shot back. The two policemen guffawed, and even Reinhardt’s mouth twitched. “There’s potato soup and black bread,” she said to all three of them.

  “A couple of beers to go with it,” the officers said. They glanced at Reinhardt a moment, then turned away, leaving him alone, and Reinhardt put them out of his mind, smoking and waiting until his soup and beer came, and then unfolding the newspaper, and the mystery of a man who had drowned on dry land. The body of Emil Haber had been found at his house on the fifth of January, dead in his living room. The body bore the signs of having been beaten, and police were baffled at considerable traces of water in Haber’s lungs. Haber was described as a valued member of the community, a pharmacist, and there was only a small mention of his wartime service as—and Reinhardt paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth—an air force researcher.

  “Hey, darling,” the same officer called, “I think there’s a cockroach in my soup.”

  “So, what do you want,” the barman called back, “a funeral?”

  Reinhardt stayed in the beer hall after he had finished his soup, smoking another cigarette slowly and nursing his beer. He looked out through the moisture on the window at the darkened lines of the city, looking without seeing at the dart and rush of droplets as they pearled down the glass, and he was looking through it . . .

  —

  . . . through the glass of a train compartment as it idled at a platform in a small Belgian town. Outside, out on the edges of the night, the pitch of the sky bent and fractured to a rhythm that jumped and flickered and danced across the horizon. The compartment was dense with the breath and stench of men cast where exhaustion had discarded them, but he watched that far-off bombardment, mesmerized. They had warned him about the Western Front, and he watched as if the welds to a world beyond had warped, jagged fissures that offered staccato glimpses into furnace brightness, like the pulse of creation. Like the fires of a new world, lying just beyond this one.

  —

  The sound of the door opening behind him did not make him move, but the sight of the barman momentarily stopping what he was doing caught his attention, and he turned to look over his shoulder to see Fischer standing in the doorway.

  “Them coppers messed up my place, roughed up my wife, had me down the cells half the day. What for?”

  “I don’t know, Fischer. I told you.” A quick glance showed him the other police officers were gone. The bar was empty.

  “No trouble, gents,” the barman called. “If it’s trouble you want, take it outside, now.”

  Neither of them paid him any attention.

  “Embarrassing my wife. Smacking me around. Making me out to be some murderer.”

  “I told them you weren’t a killer. Are you going to prove me wrong now?”

  “I’ll just have to do your legs,” Fischer said, as he pulled an iron bar out of his coat, “just like the old days, seeing as you brought them back and all.” Reinhardt jerked his chair in front of him, and flicked his baton out. Fischer smiled. “Been a long time since I seen one of them. Be sure you know how to use it, now.”

  The door opened again, and Markworth stepped inside.

  “A problem, Reinhardt?” he asked. In English. He looked very calm, eyes firmly on Fischer.

  “No problem,” answered Reinhardt, in the same language, surprised his voice was steady. “Mr. Fischer here was just leaving,” he said, switching back to German.

  “I fucking wasn’t,” Fischer growled, but he had backed away.

  “Yes, you are,” smiled Markworth, stepping aside from the door, his left leg dragging. “Out. Otherwise it’ll get nasty in here. I think you’re in enough trouble as it is without adding assaulting an Allied officer to your list of woes.”

  “You cozying up to the Allies, now, Reinhardt?” Fischer snarled, but Reinhardt knew it was just bluster.

  “Take your friends where you can find them, I say,” quipped Markworth, a steady glint in his eyes as he stared at Fischer.

  “Another time, Reinhardt,” Fischer said, as he angled himself past Markworth, then out into the dark. The Englishman peered out into the night a moment before coming back inside and closing the door.

  “Well, well . . . playing rough, are we?” he asked, a little smile on his face.

  “What are you doing here?” Reinhardt asked, collapsing his baton.

  “Following you. What is that you’ve got there?”

  “An old police baton. Why are you following me?”

  “To talk.” The compact man stepped slowly into the bar, his eyes scanning left and right as he limped over to Reinhardt’s table. “About Carlsen’s investigation. I called you back at the station as you were leaving, but I don’t think you heard me. They told me this was the only place likely to be open, so here I am. Lucky for you, eh? May I see it? The baton?”

  “Why do you want to talk to me about Carlsen’s investigation?”

  “Because I’ve the funniest notion you’re the only one in Gothaerstrasse, in fact in this whole bloody excuse for a police force, with a brain.” Markworth flicked the baton out, slashed it through the air, watching its bend and flex. “Would you like another drink?”

  “No, thank you. Who says I’m the best brain?”

  “Would you like a proper drink?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  “Come on! Come and have a molle.
I know somewhere not too far away where they still brew a good one. Almost prewar quality, if you can believe it.”

  “Another time.”

  “All right.” Markworth gave him back the baton, raised his hands in acquiescence, the light slick on the scars on his right hand. “Just talk to me then.”

  “I can’t. I don’t know much about Carlsen’s investigation, because I’m not on it,” he said, to Markworth’s raised eyebrows.

  “Their best brain, and you’re not on the main inquiry?” Markworth’s face had flattened, though his voice was still light. “What are you on?”

  “I’m on Noell’s. Who says I’m the best brain?” Reinhardt asked, again.

  “Noell? They’ve got you on Noell?”

  “Someone has to be. Who have you been talking to, Mr. Markworth?”

  “Well, yes, but . . .” Markworth tailed off, the light of his eyes very dark. “Talking to? Collingridge,” he said, distantly and dismissively.

  “If that’s all, I should get going.” Reinhardt gathered up his things, shrugged back into his coat.

  “Yes. Yes, of course,” said Markworth, coming back to life. “I’ll walk with you part of the way. If you don’t mind. Maybe your friend will show up again.”

  Out in the dark and the chill, there was almost no light, just enough from the moon to pull the street’s cobbles from the dark, and the sound of their footsteps seemed to fall away. Reinhardt looked around but it was hard to see very far. Fischer could have been feet away, or streets away, it was impossible to tell, and for a moment he felt absurdly comforted by Markworth’s presence. The man exuded calm, a kind of rocklike stability, like some of the men Reinhardt had known in the Feldjäegers. Even his limp seemed inconsequential.

  “So you know nothing about the Carlsen investigation?” Markworth asked.

  “I know they found the prostitute, and questioned her. And they’ve been bringing suspects in all day.”

  “Any closer to finding the man she described?”