‘I’m cold,’ he whispered.
‘Hell’s a cold place,’ Stave said, then got to his feet, turned around and left.
A few hundred metres away, in an almost undamaged apartment block, lights glimmered behind boarded-up windows – candles, low-wattage light bulbs. Some of the windows were open. There was the sound of voices and gramophone music. Chief Inspector Frank Stave took one last look at the cellar where Herthge lay dying. He stood there for a long time, looking at the ruins, which in the merciful moonlight looked almost majestic. Then, in the shadow of a scarred and fractured wall, he limped away.
Notes
1. The ‘One Peter’ call reflects the Hamburg slang ‘Peterwagen’ for a police car. It remains in common use to this day, but is believed to have originated with the British occupation as a mispronunciation of ‘patrol car’, although there are some who believe it to have come from the Blue Peter naval flag, signalling ‘All on Board’.
2. Then and now one of Hamburg’s major shipbuilding and aircraft companies.
3. Galicia had been part of the Austro-Hungarian empire before 1918, when it was given to newly independent Poland. It was seized by the USSR in 1939 and made part of the Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Many of its people initially welcomed German armies in 1941. In 1945 it was reintegrated into Ukraine, which became independent in 1990. Galicia’s capital was called Lemberg under the Austrians, Lwow under the Poles, Lvov in Soviet days and Lviv by the Ukrainians today.
4. The Wilhelm Gustloff was built in 1937 as a cruise liner for the Nazi party’s labour organisation and used for holidays for workers and civil servants until 1939, when it was requisitioned by the Kriegsmarine to become naval accommodation. In October 1945 it was seconded to the evacuation of civilians fleeing the Russian invasion of East Prussia. Torpedoed by a Russian submarine, the overcrowded vessel sank within 40 minutes, unable to use most of its lifeboats because of frozen davits. German vessels managed to rescue 1,252 of those on board but the vast majority, 9,343, including some 5,000 children, perished in unseasonably icy waters with temperatures down to minus 18°C, the greatest loss of life in maritime history.
Afterword
There really was a ‘rubble murderer’ who claimed four victims in Hamburg in the terrible, cold winter of 1946–7. That was the name he was given at the time, a name that struck fear in people’s minds. But who he really was remains a mystery.
This thriller is based on the original case. I have done my best to depict the bombed-out city as accurately as possible, from the food rationing to the radio play that was broadcast on the newly founded North West German Radio (NWDR). A few of the figures who feature in this book really existed, such as Mayor Max Brauer and CID chief ‘Cuddel’ Breuer – whose nickname was spelled by some contemporary writers as ‘Kuddel’. In the case of the others I have allowed myself considerable artistic licence. There really was a police officer called Frank Stave, but my protagonist has nothing to do with this historical individual. Most of the other characters are invented, and any similarities with people alive at that time are pure chance.
The murders were played out just as described here: the details of the victims, the places where their bodies were found and many other details are based on the investigations carried out by the police and the pathologist’s reports. The wording on the posters erected is authentic as is much of the other data from the autopsies. On the other hand I have inserted a few other, small but consequential, details to help Chief Inspector Frank Stave track down the killer – sadly only in this book.
In reality there were no such clues. The police tried long and hard over several years to solve the case, but never found anything that might help them identify the killer or reveal his motive. The series of killings ended, as abruptly as it began, with the fourth murder. All I can do is speculate as to the reason.
What remains even more shocking is that the detectives never identified the victims. Despite all the efforts, which I have described here – the posters and photographs put up, not just around the city of Hamburg but in all of occupied Germany – not one person ever came forward to identify the old man, either of the two women or the little girl. Whether or not they were related, whether there was any relationship at all between them and why they were marked out to die, remains to this day unknown.
In my research for this book I worked my way through mountains of literature, newspaper articles, letters and other documents. Particular thanks are due to Dr Ortwin Pelc from the Museum of Hamburg, Uwe Hanse from the city’s police museum and Wolfgang Kopitsch, previously at the regional police academy in Hamburg, now council leader in the North Hamburg district, all of whom gave me important advice and information about the city at the time. Dr Uwe Heldt of Mohrbooks and Angela Tsakiris of DuMont did a critical read-through of the manuscript. My most sincere thanks to all of them – and of course to my wife Françoise, and our children Julie and Anouk for their tolerance during many long, often late, hours spent at my computer.
About the Author
CAY RADEMACHER was born in 1965 and studied Anglo-American history, ancient history and philosophy in Cologne and Washington. He has been an editor at Geo since 1999, and was instrumental in setting up renowned history magazine Geo-Epoche. The Murderer in Ruins is the first novel in the Inspector Stave series; Arcadia Books will publish parts 2 and 3 (The Trafficker and The Forger) in 2016 and 2017. He now lives in France with his wife and children, where his new crime series is set.
PETER MILLAR is an award-winning British journalist, author and translator, and has been a correspondent for Reuters, the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph. He has written a number of books, including All Gone to Look for America and 1989: The Berlin Wall, My Part in Its Downfall. He has also translated, from German, Corinne Hofmann’s best-selling White Masai series of memoirs and Martin Suter’s A Deal with the Devil.
Copyright
Arcadia Books Ltd
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First published in the United Kingdom 2015
This Ebook edition published in 2015
Originally published as Der Trümmermörder by Dumont Buchverlag, 2011
Copyright © Cay Rademacher, 2011
English translation copyright © Peter Miller, 2015
Cay Rademacher has asserted his moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut, which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
ISBN 978–1–910050–75–0
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