Freilinger’s hands went still again, his eyes narrowing. ‘Now that is interesting,’ he said quietly.
Pausing a moment to swallow, Reinhardt reviewed the last things he had to say. He knew he needed to be convincing to Freilinger, as he could feel any control he had over this investigation slipping away. ‘Jelić told us Vukić had an affair while she was in the USSR with a senior army officer sometime in September last year. It was apparently rather tempestuous, and ended quite badly, and Vukić bore some kind of grudge. Jelić told me the officer in question recently transferred here, and he and Vukić had met, or were planning to. According to Jelić, Vukić did not play the role of jilted lover very well and it would not have surprised him if she planned some sort of revenge.’
‘A revenge that went wrong, and someone may have the proof of it…’ Freilinger grunted, looking away from Reinhardt for a moment.
‘At the moment, it’s all I have to go on.’
‘In any case,’ Freilinger sighed, looking back at him, ‘it is all somewhat irrelevant now. I received a call from Major Becker. The Sarajevo police have their suspect. He has admitted to killing Vukić. Becker tells me we can almost certainly pin Hendel’s murder on him, too.’
Reinhardt leaned forward in his chair, shaking his head. ‘Sir, whoever the Sarajevo police are putting forward is a scapegoat. The police are running a purely political investigation and are pretending there is no link between Vukić and Hendel.’
‘Well, you may be right, but after today’s little show in the mess and with Schwarz about to kick off, I don’t think anyone’s going to care. Do you?’ Reinhardt stayed mute, if only because he did not dare speak around the swell of frustration in his chest and the feeling of helplessness that threatened to overwhelm him. ‘We are invited tomorrow morning to police headquarters. There’s to be some sort of official gathering at which they’ll present their findings and suspect. You will go. And then I expect we will be told to bring our investigation to an end.’
Reinhardt looked back at Freilinger, wanting to protest, to keep him away from that mockery, but the steely look in the major’s eyes kept him quiet. As if assuring himself of Reinhardt’s quiescence, Freilinger leaned across to the side of his desk and pushed two blue folders towards him. ‘Feldgendarmerie traffic records. As we requested.’ Reinhardt put the folders in his lap, resisting the temptation to consider them as useless now.
Freilinger stood and walked over to his window, clasping his hands behind his back. The sun was much lower now. From where Reinhardt was sitting Freilinger seemed outlined in light, his close cap of grey hair shining almost silver, but the rest of him just a dim suggestion of back and arms and legs. ‘It’s not over, Reinhardt,’ he said, finally. Reinhardt had to strain to hear him. ‘I have not received orders yet to end this. So keep at it, but whatever you’re doing, get it done soon, one way or the other. When Schwarz starts, no one will care about a dead lieutenant. But they will care about a captain getting in the way and asking questions.’
He turned back to face him. ‘I will look into recent transfers of senior army officers. You think of general’s rank? This year?’ Freilinger scribbled a note, then fastened his gaze on Reinhardt. ‘You know this is the beginning of the deep water? If you’re not already in it, you soon will be if you keep this up.’ Reinhardt nodded as Freilinger straightened up. ‘I can protect you so far and no further. Very well, then. Dismissed.’
16
Reinhardt managed to control himself on the walk back downstairs to his office, but once there he shut the door and then let his frustration boil out. He flung the Feldgendarmerie files at the wall and slammed his fists up against his map, keeping his teeth clenched hard against the scream raging in the pit of his belly. Putting his head on the wall, he rolled his forehead from side to side, pressing it hard, breathing deep and ragged.
When his head began to hurt more than he could bear, he turned and slumped against the wall, sitting with his legs splayed out in front of him. He looked at his desk, wanting that bottle in the drawer, but put his head back, staring at the wiring and the light fitting in the ceiling. He scrubbed his hand through his hair, then jerked it down as his fingers stole treacherously to his temple and the memory of the bruise left by his pistol. He flinched from the sudden acrid tang of smoke, knowing he was only imagining it, but it was enough to pull him back.
He thought of Freilinger’s last words, about protecting him so far and no further. Was there another meaning there that he had not caught? Something Freilinger had wanted to say but could not? He let his hands drop to the floor, and they brushed up against the Feldgendarmerie files. He looked down where the paper had spilled out, and he sniffed and hauled himself up and onto his haunches and began picking everything up. He tossed the files onto his desk and looked at them. If what Reinhardt suspected about Becker was true, if there was anything that would have been of use to him in those records, then he would probably have had it removed.
But still. Standing in front of his desk, he leafed through the pages. There were only a couple of sheets per file, one file for Saturday and the second for Sunday, and it was, as far as he could tell, fairly anodyne. Going through them, he found no trace of Hendel. No report of a motorcycle going either way. He took the Sarajevo police traffic records for the same period, intending to compare them, but he realised his heart was not in it and put it to one side. Trying to do this now, in the state he was in, he would miss something. Overlook something. What he wanted to do, and where he needed to be, was over in police headquarters.
Once he realised that, he straightened and went down outside. He walked past his car, past the sentry, and into the narrow street that led to Kvaternik. He needed to walk. Needed the time to think, or he would arrive and do something stupid, or ridiculous. He walked fast, feeling his knee twinge, down the street as it curved gently, following the channel of the Miljačka to his left. It was early evening. A curfew had been announced that morning, and it would be coming into effect in an hour or so. People were strolling quite briskly along the street: couples, families, mostly walking away from Baščaršija behind him, back to their homes. He felt their eyes, their whispers, feeling it run off him, for once, leaving him uncaring. Perhaps because of the uniform, perhaps because of the expression that might have been on his face, perhaps both, they parted in front of him. Or rather, he thought, as he strode through the orange light, with the sun low in the sky in front of him, it was he who stayed still and life that parted around him, like a branch poking up above the water in a river. A branch, twisted and ragged, the ends split and splayed like fingers, he thought, with that sense of macabre self-consciousness that had saved him in the past, usually from himself.
He arrived with his head no clearer than when he had set out, and the frustration that simmered in his gut had spread all through him. At police headquarters, he ignored the guards who made a half step towards him and he stopped inside, looking left and right. There was a big set of double doors in front of him, two doors to his left, and a flight of stairs leading upward on his right. There was a receptionist’s booth under the angle of the staircase, with a policeman behind the counter, looking back at him.
‘I want to see Inspector Padelin.’ The policeman gestured with his arms, a shrug as if to say he did not understand. ‘Padelin,’ repeated Reinhardt, slowly. ‘Padelin. Your new hero.’
The policeman’s face lit up with a smile. ‘Da, da, Inspektor Padelin.’ His smile became something of a grimace. ‘Žao mi je, neće biti moguće da ga vidi.’ He shook his head. ‘Nije dostupno.’
‘I don’t understand a bloody word you’re saying,’ grated Reinhardt. ‘I want to speak to Inspector Padelin. Now!’ He raised his voice on the last word, and the policeman took a step back, those arms coming up again to placate, or to ward off. He said something again, slowly, painfully, as one does to a foreigner. Reinhardt’s face twisted. He felt it go out of his control for a mo
ment. Horrified at himself, he lurched back from the counter, into the middle of the foyer. He smelled smoke, again, that damned memory of smoke.
‘Padelin!’ he shouted. ‘Padelin! Get down here and talk to me!’ The policeman was calling something, coming out from behind the counter. ‘Padelin,’ he shouted again.
He went over to one of the doors on the left and pulled the handle. It was locked. He felt a hand on his shoulder. Unthinking, he reached up, squeezing the fingers and pushing them up and back. He heard a yelp, saw one of the policemen from outside. He shoved him back, seeing the man’s face go red with anger. Reinhardt ignored him, pulling on the handle of the second door, but it was locked as well. He heard voices behind him, the clatter of feet on the steps.
‘PADELIN!’ he bellowed.
‘Captain Reinhardt.’
He turned at the quiet voice, his last shout echoing up into silence. Dr Begović stood there, looking very small and rumpled, a brimmed hat in one hand and a bag in the other. His eyes were large behind his thick glasses. Two policemen stood behind him. He took one step towards Reinhardt. ‘Captain. Please. This is not helping anyone.’
Reinhardt found he was breathing heavily. ‘No?’ he managed. ‘What the hell would you know?’
Begović took another small step. ‘I might know a great deal, Captain, of what goes on in this building, and who it goes on to.’ He shifted his arm, ever so slightly, the one carrying the doctor’s bag. Reinhardt’s eyes were drawn to the movement, then back up to Begović’s face. It was carefully blank, calm, and Reinhardt felt abruptly and completely a fool, but no less angry. The anger just felt more focused.
‘You should come away, Captain. You can do no good here.’
‘I want to see Padelin,’ said Reinhardt. He felt foolish saying it in front of the doctor but could not see any way around it.
‘He isn’t here,’ said Begović, simply. ‘No one here can help you.’
‘Padelin,’ Reinhardt repeated. ‘I need to see him. He has the wrong man, you see.’
Begović stared back at him. ‘The wrong man?’
‘The wrong man for the Vukić killing. Whoever he has, he couldn’t have done it.’
Begović’s mouth moved, as if he wanted to say something. The two of them stared at each other for what seemed like a long moment, and then Reinhardt felt the rage begin to drain away. The anger stayed, and he held it tight, hoping it would keep him focused, but he nodded to Begović and stepped away from the door. The doctor turned, ushering him towards the exit. The two policemen followed him out into the dusk, looking at him warily. Reinhardt walked down the steps slowly, feeling drained, empty.
‘I did warn you, did I not?’ Reinhardt jumped, startled. He had been so lost in his thoughts he had forgotten the doctor, standing quietly just a few feet away. ‘About these people?’
‘Who is he? The man they’ve got?’ asked Reinhardt.
‘There are two of them. One is a waiter. The other is his uncle. Both Serbs, although the waiter is half Croat.’ Reinhardt shook a cigarette into his hand, offering one to Begović. He lit his, finding his hand shaking. He let the match go out, clenching his fist hard for a moment, before lighting another one for the doctor. Its flame pitched Begović’s pasty pale face into sharp relief and woke answering glints in his thick spectacles. The match flickered out, and they were plunged back into that peculiar deep gloom dusk sometimes brought on.
‘What have they really done?’ asked Reinhardt around a deep lungful of smoke. He felt more than saw Begović look at him, the pause as the doctor obviously wondered how much to tell him.
‘The uncle is a member of the Communist Party. His name is Milan Topalović. They say he’s one of the Partisans’ contacts in the city. The police have had their eye on him for a while. What is it you policemen often say? “Motive and opportunity”? Unfortunately for him, Topalović lives in Ilijaš, not far from Ilidža. They’ve witnesses – including that old Austrian woman, Frau Hofler – who said they saw him, several times, near Vukić’s house. So he had the opportunity, apparently. And he’s a Serb, allegedly a Partisan, and Vukić hated both, so that’s motive. Apparently. The waiter’s just a boy really. They used him to get to Topalović. He’s his only relative. They said if Topalović confesses to the Vukić killing, they’ll let the boy go.’
Reinhardt finished his cigarette and tossed the butt into the road. ‘Thank you, Doctor. I wish you a pleasant evening.’ There was a foul taste in the back of this throat, and he wanted to be away from there.
‘Wait,’ said Begović, coming after him. ‘You’re walking? You didn’t bring a car?’ Reinhardt shook his head. What little light there was ran up and down the frames of Begović’s glasses as he turned his head from side to side. ‘It’s not safe for you to walk alone. Not even here. I will come with you. I’m going your way in any case.’
Reinhardt smiled, somewhat bemused that this little man thought to protect him. Then he tensed as a shape suddenly loomed out of the shadows. The man exchanged a few words with Begović in Serbo-Croat. Reinhardt could not see him well, only the gleam of his eyes above the shape of his beard as he listened to the doctor. He nodded, reluctantly, it seemed, and stepped away. Begović smiled as he answered Reinhardt’s unspoken question. ‘That’s Goran. You saw him yesterday. My driver cum assistant cum handyman. He doesn’t like me walking about after dark.’
‘Your friend is right, Doctor. It will be curfew any minute now. You should not be out.’
Begović patted his jacket pocket. ‘I have a doctor’s permit.’
Reinhardt inclined his head courteously, putting his heels together. ‘In that case, it would be my pleasure, Doctor.’
The two of them walked in silence down to the end of the street, then left on Kvaternik. There was some street lighting here, shining creamy from lamps atop wrought-iron posts that stood along the quai, on the side nearest the river. Without speaking, the two of them crossed over and proceeded down towards Baščaršija, following the little pools of light winding down the road and around the corner. The shrunken river trickled quietly past them. There was something calming about walking. It was something Reinhardt seldom was able to do anymore, and the doctor was a strangely comforting presence. He was obviously fairly well known as he tipped his hat several times to people he passed as they hurried to get off the street before curfew, stopping once to talk to a woman with a little boy. He tickled the boy under the chin as he said goodbye, but the child only had eyes for Reinhardt. Big, wide eyes over a solemn mouth, the sort of face that expected the worst from people like him. Reinhardt looked away, suppressing a shiver of memory.
As the boy and his mother left, Begović caught Reinhardt looking at him. He gave a little smile, then let his eyes slip, looking over Reinhardt’s shoulder at the opposite bank. He took a couple of steps over to the parapet that ran along the pavement. ‘You know, I was born just across there. In Ćumurija.’ He looked down at the water. ‘We used to play down there. I can remember the Austrians building this, it was called Appelquai in those days. Very exciting. All that machinery. We used to play on the building site all the time; it drove the workers crazy. They would thrash us if they caught us, but it never stopped us.’ He gestured with his head across the river. ‘It used to flood all along and over there, quite regularly. I remember once, we were washed out of the house. It was the most exciting day of my life.’ He smiled at the reminiscence.
‘That’s a nice memory,’ said Reinhardt, more out of politeness than anything else. He hesitated a moment, wondering if he should be polite and offer a memory of his own, but he had nothing like that to offer. His childhood had been happy enough, but austere in its way; school, the church, duty, holidays once a year at Wismar on the Baltic.
‘Then the Austrians strengthened the other bank too, and it never flooded again. This place’ – he gestured down at the river – ‘became too dangerous to play in.
Because of the new banks, the waters would rise too fast and too quickly.’ Begović looked up, then around and behind him. ‘This city and water have always gone together, you know. There’s the valley, and the Miljačka. There’s the Željeznica, and the Bosna. The water flows through in the way it wants. Sometimes gently. Sometimes not. Like life. The Ottomans understood that, I think. All the Austrians could do was dam it, and channel it. Make it work for them and call it progress. Which,’ he sighed, ‘I suppose it was, in a way.’
They carried on walking up to the Emperor’s Bridge, which led back over the Miljačka to the barracks, where they stopped. Reinhardt waved away a pair of policemen on foot patrol. He looked up at the night sky. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘there are times I hate this place. The mountains. The streets. They seem to hem you in. You move and move and never get anywhere. Whichever way you turn, there’s always a wall.’
Begović looked up as well. ‘Walls have doors, Captain. And windows. Have you been to Travnik? No?’ He smiled, running his eyes up and along the roll of Trebević against the night. ‘Now there is a town squeezed in between its mountains. I can see how you might think that of Sarajevo, Captain, but I don’t see walls, or confinement. My city is a flower. A rose, in the shelter of her mountains.’ He looked up at Reinhardt. ‘This is my city, Captain. Mine. And she is beautiful.’
Reinhardt offered his hand, and Begović took it after a moment. For some reason, Reinhardt was absurdly grateful that the doctor had not looked around to see if anyone might be looking before shaking the hand of a German soldier. ‘Thank you, Doctor,’ he said. ‘For your help, back there. I do apologise for my behaviour.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ replied Begović. He paused. ‘If it can help, I can tell you Topalović will not suffer much more. It will soon be over for him. For them both.’
The Man from Berlin Page 18