The Divided City

by Luke McCallin

  Noell’s soldbuch had indicated he had finished the war a captain.

  But the uniform at his apartment had been a colonel’s.

  A colonel with polio.

  Reinhardt looked at the stars, wondering how he could have missed that, and then realized something else. None of the men murdered, with the exception of Stucker, had been living at their prewar addresses. Noell even seemed to have vanished from circulation. No identity, no ration cards. Nothing.

  So how was the killer finding them? What linked them together?

  He went back inside to look over his lists a last time, resting his head on his crossed arms in a vain effort to pull the tension from his shoulders and neck, the smell of paper still strong in his nose and on his skin.

  —

  He dreamed of a stone. A small stone, like a pebble. It began to roll downhill. Other pebbles, other stones, joined it, until it was a slide, an avalanche, down a pitted and crazed slope. The stones tumbled and rolled into a lake, like a tarn, a dark expanse of water that gave no reflection. In they tumbled, stone after stone, a frantic rush, and the water swallowed them all, only ripples fanning out across the surface, until the last stone fell in. The surface of the water humped and bulged, and something heaved itself up into the air, a golem of stones, water streaming from it, from the titan length of its grotesque limbs as it flailed for balance. It turned its head, its eyes like boulders, and they searched blindly across the darkness, across the crazed and pitted slope, searched, until the weight of their gaze fell upon the dreamer . . .

  —

  It was the pounding at the door that woke him, not the dream. He stumbled sleep-heavy up from the table, seeing up on the landing the wavering light of a candle, and seeing Mrs. Meissner in a white nightdress with her hair unbound and running silver about her shoulders. He waved her back to bed and opened the door, blinking out into the thinning night at a patrolman, and beyond him the dark lines of a car.

  “Inspector Reinhardt? I’ve been ordered to fetch you, sir. There’s been another murder.”

  29

  THURSDAY

  “So, what’s your plan for this investigation, Reinhardt?” Weber asked, a facetious edge to his voice. “To wait until a body turns up in every building in Berlin?”

  The hotel was the Am Zoo, a good establishment on the Kurfürstendamm in the British sector. It was something of a miracle it was actually open, but Allied bombing and the Soviet assault had only damaged but not destroyed it. The hotel staff had finally opened the guest’s room—a man called Jürgen from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, created just last year by the British—after he had failed to keep an appointment and they went to the room to check on him. Jürgen, who Reinhardt now knew as one of IV./JG56’s pilots, was laid out on his bed, dressed in a dark suit. Reinhardt knew with Weber here, he need not worry about Ganz or Tanneberger bestirring themselves to actually be at a crime scene, let alone one so early in the morning, but his mind was at once too fugged to care, and too focused on what he saw in front of him.

  From the look of the body, Jürgen had not been dead long. Certainly not more than a day or so, that was clear, meaning the killer was still killing, still moving around the city. The ex-pilot lay on his bed, faceup and, unlike the other bodies, his arms were still tied to the head of the bed by lengths of rope, and the skin was raw and livid from where, it seemed, he had struggled against his attacker. A dark tie curled across the white of Jürgen’s shirtfront, and his head and shoulders were covered in a dusting of grit. Sand, Reinhardt was sure, forced down the man’s mouth. Jürgen’s shirtfront was unbuttoned, and he carefully separated it to reveal a massive bruise across his chest.

  “The same killer?” Weber asked. Reinhardt nodded. Weber pursed his lips, nodding his head, as if it affirmed something for him, but when Reinhardt glanced at him from the corner of his eye, the young detective was chewing his lip, his attention focused on something elsewhere, and there was a trace of amusement in the angle of his mouth. Probably picturing Reinhardt in Margraff’s office explaining the city’s rising body count, he imagined, not liking the self-pity that tinged his thoughts. Taking a deep breath, Reinhardt gently prised open Jürgen’s jaw, a trickle of wet sand flickering from the corner of the body’s mouth. Reinhardt opened Jürgen’s mouth wider, saw within the packed outline of sand. Bruising around Jürgen’s mouth and nose indicated the killer had clamped his nose and mouth shut as the man asphyxiated.

  “May I see his documents, please?”

  Weber handed over an identity card from Cologne, in the British Occupation Zone. Jürgen’s face stared up blandly from the card, older by nearly ten years from the photograph in his soldbuch that Reinhardt had seen hours earlier.

  “What else did you find?” Reinhardt directed his question at Weber, and at an elderly uniformed officer, a lieutenant, who stood by the door, a shambles of a man in an unkempt uniform who looked like he wished he was elsewhere.

  “It’s not that easy, Reinhardt. You don’t expect us to do your job for you now, do you?” Weber snapped. He glared proprietarily around the room, nodding to himself. “They just called me ’cos I’m on the fucking graveyard shift, thanks to you.” Weber bit each word as if he were chewing it before uttering it, glaring at Reinhardt as if the other officer were not there.

  “Misplaced anger is a characteristic of youth, Weber,” Reinhardt said, his eyes suddenly seeing nothing but his son, “but it’s still misplaced anger. You can stay. There’s work enough for both of us.”

  Weber’s mouth worked, his cheeks stained red with his anger. “Do your own work, Reinhardt. Ganz will want you to report to him before midmorning,” he cast over his shoulder as he left.

  Reinhardt and the uniformed officer exchanged a blank gaze, then the officer shook his head. “Look, I don’t have much for you. My lads were called when the hotel opened the door. They called us. We came, took a look, and called Kripo. Your man Weber showed up, took a look for himself, unbuttoned the body’s shirt, and then called you.”

  “Have you talked to the hotel management?”

  “The manager’s downstairs waiting.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  The officer gave a tired nod. “Rooms either side are unoccupied. The one opposite, the guest said he saw Jürgen two days ago. At breakfast. And he remembers him on Sunday morning looking somewhat the worse for wear.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning he looked like he’d been out on the town,” the officer said, flicking a couple of pages in a notebook back and forth. “The receptionist, or concierge, or whatever they call them in fancy places like this. The man on the front desk. He thinks he might’ve talked with our killer. They’re all downstairs.”

  “Anyone know where he was between Sunday morning and now?”

  “The front desk saw him Monday. But they left him alone until last night. There was a note,” said the officer, handing over a slip of paper embossed with the hotel’s emblem, and upon which someone penned a message in an elegant handwritten script. “That was under the door. He’d written—someone had written—that he was feeling indisposed, and asked not to be disturbed until further notice.”

  “Convenient . . .” Reinhardt muttered. And simple. And clever.

  Alone, he noted the key in the lock, and that the door and doorjamb were undamaged. The killer was not forcing his way in. On a low table by a cupboard, a suitcase was folded open, and there were papers spread across a desk. A fountain pen, its cap half-off, lay at an angle atop them as if it had been laid down only momentarily. Like at Zuleger’s, Reinhardt thought, Jürgen had been disturbed, or stopped in what he was doing.

  A knock at the door. Faint. Unobtrusive. Perhaps a voice. A reassuring tone. He opened it . . .

  The cupboard held clothes, an overcoat, another dark suit, two shirts and ties, changes of socks and underwear. All of good quality. French labels. In the bott
om of the cupboard was a large, square suitcase, of the kind a doctor might use. Reinhardt went to pull it out and frowned at its weight, heaving it back and onto the floor and hearing the dull clank of metal from inside. He opened the suitcase, folding open the top flaps. With his gloved hand, he fingered through the contents. Metal samples, technical journals, and what looked like a variety of correspondence in a cardboard folder. Flipping open the folder, he paused, frowned, fingered through the sheets of correspondence. Letters exchanged between Jürgen and a factory owner about the possibilities of entering into business together.

  The factory was Vollmer Altmettal.

  Von Vollmer’s factory.

  Reinhardt went back through Jürgen’s identification, fingering the pockets of his suit, his wallet, the clothes in the cupboard, the suitcase, the wastepaper basket, the small bathroom. He ran his eyes over and around the room. Jürgen’s tie made a curlicue across the white of the shirt. He frowned at it, back at the cupboard, his arms parting coats and suits, and pulling out a dark jacket with a satin lapel. A dinner jacket, with a bow tie folded into a pocket.

  He looked around the room. It was a good room, in a good hotel. Clean. Comfortable. Jürgen’s clothes were good quality. A traveling businessman. With a dinner jacket. He was here for something more than selling metal. Reinhardt pulled out his notebook, unfolding from within it the invitation he had found at Zuleger’s apartment, the address belonging to a Mrs. Frankewitz at whose home a party was to have been held, the address the Grunewald police had said was abandoned, and wondered that there was none of the literature Reinhardt had found at the other locations, at Noell’s and Zuleger’s. No manifestos, no lists of grievances.

  When he was finished in the room, he found the hotel’s manager downstairs, along with the concierge. The manager was a fussy-looking man who seemed more worried about the hotel’s reputation than the fact that a man had been murdered in one of its rooms. But the concierge seemed a more grounded man, who had seen a lot of people come and go in front of him, leaving him unfazed by human nature. The manager fielded most of the questions, painting a picture of an unobtrusive guest in a hotel that prided itself on being able to offer more than the basics to those who stayed with them. The guest who had seen Jürgen at breakfast could add no more information than what he had told the police earlier, that on Sunday morning Jürgen had looked like a man who had hit the bottle in a big way the night before.

  “There were no disturbances?” Reinhardt asked. “No arguments? Did he have visitors? Did he seem distracted?” A no to everything. “Any women?”

  “Detective!” gushed the manager. “This is a respectable establishment.”

  “I’ve no doubt, sir. When did he arrive?”

  “Friday last, sir,” the concierge answered, consulting the hotel’s register. “By train from Cologne.”

  “How long was he to stay?”

  “He was booked to leave Friday. A week’s stay.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Monday afternoon, sir. He had appointments in town that day. The maid cleaned his room. I recall him returning to the hotel and going up to his room. At around four o’clock in the afternoon.”

  “The maid found this . . . ?” Reinhardt asked, raising the card.

  “On Tuesday morning, sir, as she was doing her normal rounds. She left Mr. Jürgen in peace, as requested.”

  “Tell me again why the hotel opened the door last night.”

  “We became concerned for him, that he might have fallen very ill, so we opened the door.”

  “You told the sergeant you might have seen someone?” Reinhardt asked the concierge.

  “Yes, sir. It was on the Monday evening. Mr. Jürgen had returned to the hotel, and a man came asking for him.”

  “Describe him, please.”

  “Very . . . unremarkable, sir,” was all the concierge managed. “Very normal. Well-spoken. Polite. Not at all pushy. He wore a hat and coat. He had spectacles with thick frames. He was clean-shaven. He asked simply if he could leave a letter for Mr. Jurgen. He said he did not want to disturb him.”

  “He was German?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How do you know?”

  The concierge stared at him, then shrugged with his lips. “His accent. It was Berlin. Upper class. He seemed like a man who had seen better days. His clothes were prewar quality.”

  “Do you have that letter?”

  The concierge took down a long envelope from a row of little pigeonholes that stretched behind the front desk. It was bright red paper. Reinhardt held it by the corners, flexed it from side to side, then tossed it on the counter. The concierge and the manager frowned at it, then him.

  “What is the meaning of it, Inspector?” the manager asked.

  “I presume you don’t give out guest’s room numbers to strangers? That was the killer’s way to see in which room Jurgen was staying. The envelope’s empty. He would have marked into which pigeonhole the concierge put it. He would have watched, either from the street,” he turned, pointing at the windows, “or seen it when he came back later. He probably waited until your concierge went off duty so his replacement would not recognize him.” The two men looked at each other wordlessly. “By any chance, on Saturday, did Jurgen have an appointment?”

  “Yes, sir. A gala function, I believe, judging by what I overheard and the way in which he was dressed. Dinner jacket and tie.”

  “Any idea where he was going?”

  “Yes, sir. We ordered him a taxi. I have the address,” the concierge said. He looked pale as he flipped through a ledger, and then pointed out an entry. “One does not forget addresses in that part of town very easily.”

  That same address. Mrs. Frankewitz.

  30

  The destination had stuck in the staff’s mind, as it should have. Grunewald was still a good part of Berlin. It always would be, Reinhardt knew, no matter what happened to the city, no matter what its new masters made of it.

  Out on the city’s western edge, Grunewald was one of Berlin’s more aristocratic suburbs, a part of the city that seemed to have escaped the worst of the fighting and bombing. The streets were clear and wide, the greenery was not shredded or splintered and, where they stood, trees still showed their age. Even denuded of their spring colors, they still seemed to spread themselves like benedictions over the wide avenues. The tangled tracery of their branches was like ironwork against the dull sheen of the sky as the taxi the hotel had been good enough to procure for Reinhardt drifted along the streets. It was a veritable antique, all upright angles and wheels that looked barely thick enough to support its own weight. With its battered coachwork showing the wear and tear of life on Berlin’s streets, it coasted to a stop in a reek of charcoal like a piece of flotsam that had washed up on a pristine shore, the driver craning his head out of his window to check the address.

  “This is it, mate,” he said, laying an arm across his seat as he twisted around to look at Reinhardt. His eyes gave a quick flicker up and down, from Reinhardt’s dusty shoes, the frayed edge of his coat, the shine of his trousers at his knees. “You sure this is the one you want?”

  “Sure,” said Reinhardt, fishing in his pocket for the fare.

  “Want me to wait?”

  “Have a bit more faith,” Reinhardt muttered.

  “As you say, mate,” the driver said, taking his fare. “You’re the one that fits here like a fist in the eye.”

  The neighborhood was like a vestige of prewar times, Reinhardt thought, standing on the street in the quiet after the taxi had gone, belching smoke from the boiler bolted underneath it. It was like something that should have seemed out of place in this postwar Berlin. Clean. Wide streets. White walls, although the war had still made itself felt here. Trees had scars of white flecked across their bark, holes had been chewed in bushes, walls had been chipped of stone
and plasterwork, but compared to elsewhere—to Mitte, to Schoneburg, to Neukölln—it was as if nothing had ever happened here. He looked around, listening to the quiet, and could not help but think about what these walls hid.

  They had always hidden power, he knew. And he knew that, far from the beer halls and the streets and the raucous blare of the workmen’s meetinghouses, these white walls and manicured lawns and gabled roofs had done as much—if not more—to engender and incubate support for Nazism. It was behind such walls and under such roofs that those lived, who thought they could control and channel the energies of a man like Hitler and a movement like the Nazis. And still did. He looked at the well-kept houses, at a governess in a strict black dress pushing a baby pram, and thought about the people who still lived here, people who had done nothing to stop the rise of the Nazis, who had in fact profited from it, and who now seemed to be profiting from the rubble of the war.

  Reinhardt stood in front of a gate of wrought iron in a wall of old red bricks. The wall was taller than he was, the top frilled with ravels of bare ivy waiting for its spring greenery. The gate was heavy iron, rust sitting in the curls and curves of its decorative work, and the hinges looked swollen shut, but there was a new padlock on the gate holding together a short piece of bright metal chain. Through the bars of the gate, Reinhardt could see the house at the end of a gravel-strewn carriage circle, in the middle of which stood a dry ornamental fountain. The house itself was elegant enough, but the windows were all dark, and grass and weeds grew tall along the base of its walls.