The Murderer in Ruins

by Cay Rademacher

  Stave sat and stared at the thin files he had placed carefully next to one another on his desk. Three investigation files. Three murder cases. Three single sheets of paper and a few photos. Could it be that the solution to the case lay in these sparse files? Could he have overlooked something?

  It was exactly midday when his door flew open, and Maschke charged in.

  ‘Ever heard of knocking first?’ Stave asked.

  ‘We have a new murder,’ the vice squad man blurted.

  ‘This time, I’ll drive,’ Stave told him in no uncertain terms two minutes later as they climbed into the old Mercedes. ‘What’s the story?’

  ‘We have a fresh corpse.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘A man in a cellar, in Borgfelde, behind the Berliner Tor station. Just been found. It was reported to the local police station around 11.30.’

  ‘In the east of the city again.’

  ‘And another heavily bombed area.’

  Stave put his foot down, racing down to the Alster and along the Jungfernstieg, pushing the old eight-cylinder as hard as it would go, and blaring his horn when a man in a Wehrmacht greatcoat didn’t get out of the way quickly enough. Maschke’s knuckles were white as he hung on for dear life to the passenger door handle.

  ‘Don’t worry, the police won’t stop us,’ the chief inspector assured him.

  Four bodies: two men, one woman and one little girl. Three of the corpses found in the east of the city, this latest approximately halfway between where the body of the first, the young woman, had been found and where the girl had been found near the canal. Was there a pattern emerging?

  ‘52 Anckelmann Strasse,’ Maschke only just managed to tell him.

  Stave took the corner into Glockengiesserwall, the Mercedes swerving wildly when one rear wheel hit a roof tile frozen to the road, but he got it back under control.

  ‘A bit icy in patches,’ Maschke gasped.

  ‘I’m beginning to enjoy myself.’

  Past the main station, then through St Georg. Black marketeers stared in their wake. When they reached Borgfelder Strasse, Stave put his foot down again. Half a kilometre, dead straight. Nobody around. Then two sharp right turns, and with a screech of brakes he brought the car to a halt.

  ‘One dead body a day is more than enough,’ Maschke muttered as he opened his door.

  Stave climbed out too, leaning briefly against the vehicle’s dented hood. The engine was ticking as it cooled down. For a few moments, Stave held his hands on the hood, enjoying the warmth as it flowed into his veins like a hot liquid.

  ‘That feels good, doesn’t it?’

  ‘I’m quite hot enough,’ Maschke answered drily.

  The chief inspector looked around; behind them stood the steel supports for the elevated railway, every sixth or seventh twisted and bent, empty façades of burnt-out apartment blocks, four or five storeys high, bombed-out office buildings, half-demolished warehouses. The cobbled street had been partly cleared, but there wasn’t a habitable building for at least 300 metres in any direction.

  A pattern, Stave thought to himself, I’m starting to see a pattern.

  A uniformed policeman emerged from between two half-height walls to their right, waved and came over. He was extremely young, little more than a kid. Stave had never seen him before. He gave them an almost military salute, looking as if he was about to stand to attention.

  ‘As you were,’ Stave said, introducing himself and Maschke. The lad had probably fought in the Wehrmacht. There were one or two habits he needed to lose. ‘Where is the man?’

  ‘It’s a woman, Chief Inspector.’

  Stave stared at the young policeman, embarrassing him.

  ‘Two men found the body. In an unlit cellar. They ran out in panic and reported it to us. They thought it was a male corpse, but they obviously didn’t look close enough. It’s a woman.’

  Stave was taken aback for a minute. Two women, an old man, a little girl – did that fit a pattern any better?

  The uniform led the way. ‘The building at 52 Anckelmann Strasse is completely in ruins,’ he explained. ‘We could get to the cellar by going through the ruins, but it’s easier this way.’

  He led Stave and Maschke some 50 metres along the street to a neighbouring building, which had only partly collapsed. A reinforced archway there led to several partly collapsed internal yards, through which they made their way back in the other direction.

  Stave stopped outside the remains of a commercial storeroom. ‘The Hanseatic Mica Import Company’ was written in faded black letters against a red background. Someone was clambering though the ruins of number 52 Anckelmann Strasse. Dr Czrisini. The two detectives acknowledged the pathologist; the uniformed policeman nodded towards an entrance to a cellar.

  ‘Watch the steps,’ he warned them. ‘They’re loose.’

  ‘No door,’ Stave remarked as they walked down the fragile steps. Not much light. He took out his notebook and wrote down a description of the external aspect of the scene. The uniform fiddled with an old torch until finally it produced a weak yellow beam of light. A few other people appeared at the foot of the stairs. Stave could only make out their dirty shoes and the hems of long overcoats. He stared as if into a dark cave.

  A room with a cement floor, a few fallen roof tiles, plaster fallen from the walls, a second room, dark because no light from the stairwell reached it. Plaster dust here too, but no rubble, no furniture.

  Just a corpse.

  Aged about 35, Stave reckoned, maybe a little younger. She was lying on the ground, naked. Frozen to the cement. There were blue-red blood settlement marks all over her body. Her mouth was slightly open, as were her eyes, her right hand on the floor, the left over her navel, fingers bent slightly. Without saying a word, Stave took the torch from the young policeman and shone it directly on the victim. The policeman looked as if he were about to be sick.

  ‘You can wait outside,’ the chief inspector told him.

  Dr Czrisini took a large flashlight out of his doctor’s bag. It was brighter. He touched the woman’s face with a gloved hand. ‘Thin, long face. Well nourished though,’ he muttered. ‘Dark brown eyelashes, dyed, plucked eyebrows. Possibly remnants of face powder on her cheeks. Medium-blond hair, probably bleached. Ear lobes pierced. Nothing in the left ear. In the right…’ he hesitated, then felt with his hand round the back of the head, pulled at her hair a bit. ‘…right earring came loose, but caught in her hair.’ The pathologist handed Stave an earring.

  The chief inspector looked at it closely, a pearl on a gold hanger. ‘Unusual shape,’ he mumbled. ‘The gold worked into the shape of a starfish with the pearl in the middle.’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything about that,’ Czrisini replied. ‘Jewellery isn’t exactly my specialty.’

  The pathologist raised the corpse’s eyelids. ‘Grey-blue eyes.’ Then he pulled her jaw open and shone the light into her mouth. ‘Upper plate with two false teeth: the right inner incisor and the first right molar, and on the right two gold-filled molars.’

  He began to examine her from the head down. ‘Frozen solid. Rigor mortis not evident. Strangulation marks on the throat, reddish brown, two centimetres wide at the front and to the left. To the right and rear, three to five millimetres. Well looked-after fingernails, with red nail polish, the tips finished with a nail pencil. Pale bands on her left wrist and ring finger. Presumably traces of a watch and ring. Long surgical scar, some 14 centimetres long, from her navel to pubic mound. Probably from an abdominal operation. Well healed. Scar tissue.’

  ‘No evidence in the dust on the cellar floor of the body having been dragged,’ Stave added. ‘No dirt on the body. Highly unlikely that she was killed here.’

  ‘She was killed somewhere else and brought here post mortem,’ Maschke said. ‘To hide the body.’

  ‘Maybe perhaps to undress and rob her without being disturbed,’ the chief inspector added. ‘One way or another, the killer must have come down those loose steps and
left her here, carrying a torch at the same time.’

  ‘Obviously a strong man,’ the pathologist said.

  ‘But was it planned beforehand?’ Maschke interjected. ‘Did he know about this cellar and decide in advance this would be a good place to hide the body? Or did he just look for the nearest hiding place after the murder and come across this place by chance?’

  ‘He would have needed a torch.’ Stave scratched his head. ‘That suggests it was pre-planned. Unless of course he always carries one. Or else he knows the area so well that he could find his way to this cellar in the dark.’

  ‘I’m wondering where she came from,’ the pathologist mused.

  ‘She was obviously well-to-do, possibly rich,’ Stave said. ‘Gold teeth, gold earrings, a watch, a ring, nail polish. Can’t remember when I last saw a woman with a manicure.’

  ‘The nail polish is too expensive, too modest and too well-applied for a lady of the night,’ Maschke added. ‘This was a proper lady.’

  ‘And she almost certainly didn’t live behind the station in Borgfelde,’ Stave remarked, almost cheerfully. ‘Winterhude maybe? Or Blankenese? Definitely a better part of town than here. Somewhere that survived undamaged. A neighbourhood that’s still intact, which means somebody must know her.’

  Czrisini pointed to her left ring finger then to her abdomen. ‘Probably married too. In which case there’s a husband. But with a scar like that, I doubt she’d have had children. On the other hand this could help the investigation. Operations like that are a lot less common than appendectomies or dental work. There has to be a surgeon or gynaecologist who remembers carrying it out.’

  ‘Can we estimate a time of death?’

  ‘Not here and now. I’ll thaw the body out back at the institute. We’ll know more once we’ve cut her open. I expect the brain will have started to rot.’

  Stave’s sudden moment of euphoria evaporated. ‘So you think the body may have been here for some time?’

  The pathologist nodded. ‘For more than a day or two at least.’

  It’s unbelievable, Stave thought. A rich woman, with a husband, neighbours; if this woman was murdered days ago then surely somebody would have missed her by now. But he couldn’t remember a single report over the past week or so that would fit the victim. I need a breath of fresh air, he thought.

  ‘We’d better talk to the men who found her,’ Stave said. ‘Dr Czrisini, your people can take the corpse as soon as the photographer has done his work.’

  August Hoffmann and his workman Heinrich Scharfenort were scrap metal dealers, both pale-faced and around Stave’s age.

  ‘You found the victim?’ The chief inspector had deliberately chosen a neutral expression.

  Even so Hoffmann gave him a guilty look. ‘We really thought it was a man. I’ve only just heard that it’s a woman down there.’

  ‘The main thing is that you reported it,’ Stave replied. ‘Tell me what happened.’

  The workman glanced at the ground, leaving his boss to answer.

  ‘We were looking for baking trays.’

  ‘Baking trays?’

  ‘Up until ’43 there used to be a major bakery here. I recently found a huge baking tray in the rubble. By chance,’ he was quick to add, ‘I thought to myself there might be some more lying around. So Herr Scharfenort and I came round today to…’

  He hesitated.

  The chief inspector nodded understandingly. ‘Find more metal,’ he finished the sentence. ‘That’s why you were down in the cellar.’

  ‘Exactly. The ground level ruins have all been stripped long ago. We brought carbide lamps to illuminate the cellars.’

  ‘And you took those down with you?’

  The scrap metal man nodded, looking as if he wanted to go behind a wall and throw up, but in the end he managed to pull himself together.

  ‘We came down the steps and lit up the first room, then the second. All of a sudden I spotted a naked foot.’

  ‘What about you?’ Stave turned to the workman.

  He glanced up and said, ‘I was behind the boss. I didn’t see anything. Herr Hoffmann called out, “There’s a body.” And we got out of there.’

  ‘Anything else unusual strike you?’

  ‘That was unusual enough.’

  ‘You didn’t see anybody?’

  Both of them shook their heads.

  ‘Were you here over the previous few days? You said you’d found a baking tray here.’

  ‘Three days ago I took a shortcut I’d not taken before. That was when I spotted it in a partly blocked cellar entrance, and then I got the idea to bring the carbide lamps. Apart from that I’ve never been here before.’

  ‘Do you know if there’s anyone here regularly? Somebody else who might take the same shortcut.’

  Once again they shook their heads.

  Stave nodded and dismissed the pair of them.

  ‘Anything new?’

  Stave was standing in front of his boss. Cuddel Breuer wasn’t looking at him. He was staring at a sniffer dog wandering, half frozen and unenthusiastically, around the rubble. ‘He can’t find a scent,’ he remarked.

  Stave ditched the formalities too. ‘Dr Czrisini reckons the body had been here for several days. Doesn’t look like this was the scene of the crime.’

  Breuer nodded silently, then dug deep into his broad overcoat and pulled out a big flashlight, and still without saying a word went down the steps into the cellar.

  He doesn’t trust me any more, Stave thought.

  A few minutes later, Breuer came out again. ‘You’ve got one damn difficult case on your hands, Stave. Come and see me when you’re done here.’ He turned around and left without saying goodbye.

  At least you didn’t find any more than I did, Stave said to himself, sombrely.

  As Breuer turned round a remnant of wall twice the height of a man, he nearly collided with a figure stumbling through the ruins: Kleensch from Die Zeit.

  ‘Looks like everything’s about to hit the fan today,’ Stave muttered. He dithered for a second. Should he just ignore the reporter? Dismiss him? But then he would nose around, ask questions. Cause trouble. Better to take things in hand. Stave went up to the reporter, shook his hand and led him down into the cellar.

  ‘A new rubble murderer victim,’ the journalist said, looking at the body in the yellowish light of the torch. Calmly.

  He’s already thinking about the article he’s going to write, Stave realised. He told Kleensch everything they knew and indicated the clues that suggested the victim had been well-to-do.

  ‘Nowadays it seems nobody notices when the rich go missing, just like the poor. That really is democracy,’ Kleensch quipped.

  ‘You’re not going to write that?’

  He smiled. ‘I don’t think my publisher would like to see that in print. And the British wouldn’t like it either. I prefer to hold on to my job. Cigarette?’

  ‘Please don’t smoke at the crime scene,’ the chief inspector replied, shaking his head at the same time. He waved a hand back towards the door.

  ‘Nobody would want to read that,’ he said when they were back outside, in a half-hearted attempt to stop the man writing his story.

  Kleensch gave him a wry smile. ‘I’m afraid you’re wrong there, Chief Inspector. People enjoy reading murder stories. Horrible stories. The problem is nobody heeds the moral of the story. So I shall leave out the philosophical bit and concentrate on the details. If you know what I mean.’

  Stave nodded in resignation. ‘You do your job and I’ll do mine.’

  ‘People are going to be afraid even if I were to promise you to be economical with the truth. The rubble murderer is becoming a personification of evil, a bogeyman. It’s as if he’s given this vile cold a human face, even if nobody knows what it looks like. It could be anyone. Every figure walking along the street behind me, every shadow in the ruins, every taciturn new neighbour. People are starting to suspect one another. We could end up with more accusations than
we had under Hitler. But there’s not much to do about it. People are going to give you hell, I’m afraid. But sooner or later you’ll catch the villain responsible. And then you’ll be a hero.’

  ‘I appreciate your optimism.’

  ‘It’s necessary. Especially in the face of death.’ Kleensch doffed his hat and stumbled away.

  At least he didn’t talk to anybody else, Stave reflected. It wouldn’t have been good news if he’d started annoying Breuer with his questions, or Stave would have had to explain himself.

  A while later Stave drove back to the office in the Mercedes, alone. Maschke had declined a lift under the flimsiest of excuses – he preferred to walk to keep fit. Driving along Jungfernstieg the chief inspector suddenly stepped on the brakes. The car spluttered to a halt in a few metres. This is my opportunity, Stave thought.

  For the past few days, despairing over his lack of leads, Stave had considered involving a psychologist, and had asked around as to who the best in Hamburg were. But then he had put the idea to one side. Partly because he was embarrassed about the idea; nobody much in the murder squad had high regard for psychologists. Partly because he was ashamed that doing so would show his colleagues how little confidence he had: going to a shrink. Who knows, maybe he should put himself on the couch.

  Not on your life.

  But here he was, purely by chance, on his own and as it happened one of Hamburg’s best-known psychologists had his practice right here, on the Jungfernstieg. Professor Walter Bürger-Prinz.

  Stave walked down the almost pristine, elegant street that led gradually to the glittering ice of the Alster on his right. To his left stood the colonnaded façades of the grand buildings that had survived the firestorms intact. Once again the chief inspector was overcome by a sense of rage at the injustice. Why had all this pomp and grandeur, based on greed and inequality, survived?

  He pulled himself together. It was hardly a psychologist’s fault that the British had preferred to wipe out the working-class districts rather than the grand boulevards.