The Superintendent spoke up: “There’s no need for that sort of language, Inspector. Clearly, a mistake has been made—”
“A mistake?” said van Acker, amazed at the man’s audacity. “What you have here, Monsieur, is nothing less than criminal. Men don’t simply trade places, and, I might be wrong here”—his words were laced with ridicule—“but who do you imagine would have volunteered for that role? I don’t think Mr. Wouters knew anyone who was eager to step in for a few weeks while he took the air. Do you?”
Everyone in the room remained silent. For a moment, van Acker looked at Fichte; he then turned away and began to shake his head. It was clear that he was more than a little embarrassed to have had a Berlin detective inspector witnessing this scene. Had Fichte been a bit more poised in his newfound position, he might have known what to say; instead, he stood there like everyone else.
Van Acker switched gears. For Fichte’s benefit—though probably more out of spite—he spoke in German: “I want a photograph taken of this man; I want every entry log you have for the past five months—who came, who went; I want guard rotations, doctor rotations—any rotation that had to do with our friend Wouters. And anything that might have happened out of the ordinary. The smallest thing. A misconnected telephone call. You have the records. I want to know about them.”
No one moved. Van Acker glanced sharply at the Superintendent, and the man realized he had no choice. He nodded to his colleagues, and the other men started for the door.
Fichte waited until most of the men were out in the hall before turning to van Acker. “The Kriminal-Kommissar would have done the exact same thing,” said Fichte. Realizing he might just have given the game away, Fichte quickly added, “Nikolai, I mean. Hoffner. You work the same way.”
For the first time in nearly three hours, van Acker’s jaw slackened. There might even have been the hint of a grin in his eyes. “You’re not a detective inspector, are you, Herr Fichte?”
Surprisingly, Fichte’s answer was no less forthright. “Not yet, Monsieur Le Chef Inspecteur. No.”
Van Acker’s grin grew. “Well, at least you’ve put me in good company.”
Hoffner reached across the desk for his cup, and checked the clock. He had corralled little Sascha for a second posting to the wire room almost three hours ago, but there was still no word from Fichte. Hoffner took a sip of the coffee, careful not to drip any of it onto the pages that were spread out in front of him.
He had stopped on this particular letter about an hour ago, when the word “relationship” had jumped out at him. The language was as dramatic as ever, but it was a different Luxemburg that Hoffner heard, now having discovered her secret within the shelves.
. . . I know you don’t get much pleasure out of our relationship, what with my scenes that wreck your nerves, my tears, with all these trivia, even my doubts about your love. . . . It’s too painful to think that I invaded your pure, proud, lonely life with my female whims, my unevenness, my helplessness. And what for, damn it, what for? My God, why do I keep harping on it? It is over. . . .
Her despair was not so much for the solitude to come, as for her own fallibility: she felt no remorse, only a relief in the affair’s dissolution. Once again, Hoffner felt a certain kinship with this Rosa, and that, he knew, was dangerous. Victims needed to remain victims. The only mind Hoffner wanted to find his way into was that of the man who had wielded the knife.
Focusing on the page itself, Hoffner traced the imprints of the razorlike creases. The letter—sent to Leo Jogiches in the summer of 1897—had been read over and over, folded and unfolded a hundred times since then, and with an almost pious precision. Rosa’s fear that Jogiches might have laughed at its absurdity, or at its woman’s insecurity, had been completely unfounded. Not only had Jogiches held on to it, he had kept it with him at all times: in a billfold, from what Hoffner could tell. There was an unrefined, crushed leather residue on the sheets—the kind found only on the inside pockets of a man’s wallet—from years of safekeeping. K was evidently well-enough connected to have pried the letter loose from Jogiches’s grip.
Half an hour ago, Hoffner had discovered its companion piece—a second letter to Jogiches with identical creases and residue—written three years earlier, also kept in the billfold, and equally desperate. This time, however, a different kind of frustration dominated:
. . . Totally exhausted by the never-ending Cause, I sat down to catch my breath, I looked back and realized I don’t have a home anywhere. I neither exist nor live as myself. . . . It’s boring, draining. Why should everyone pester me when I give it all I can? It’s a burden—every letter, from you or anyone else, always the same—this issue, that pamphlet, this article or that. Even that I wouldn’t mind if besides, despite it, there was a human being behind it, a soul, an individual. . . . Have you no ideas? No books? No impressions? Nothing to share with me?! . . . Unlike you, I have impressions and ideas all the time, the “Cause” notwithstanding. . . . Now I’d like to ask you the following questions: 1. Is it right to say that in 1848 the French people fought mainly for general elections? 2. Did the Chicago demonstration take place in 1886 or 1887? 3. How many rubles to a dollar? 4. Did the strikes of the gas workers and longshoremen in England break out in 1889 and was it for an eight-hour day? . . . Read my letter carefully, and answer all questions.
Hoffner wondered if Jogiches had kept the letter as a reminder to himself to be diligent in his humanity, or simply because he had enjoyed the adorable shift in tone at its end. Hoffner was guessing it had been a bit of both.
And yet, however charming Rosa’s caprice might have been, it was the care that Jogiches had taken with the letters that told Hoffner the most about his victim. From what he could gather, the romance between the two had come to a bitter end sometime in 1907: there had been accusations of infidelity and threats of violence from him; Luxemburg had purchased a revolver, and had been forced to produce it during one of their more heated arguments. And through it all, Jogiches had continued to subsidize her—her rent, her paper, her ink. Hoffner was not sure which of the two lovers had been the moth and which the flame—he doubted they had known themselves—but it was clear that this had been a relationship incapable of permanent fracture. In fact, Hoffner was learning just how crucial a figure Jogiches had been during the revolution, even if his name had never once appeared alongside Luxemburg’s, Liebknecht’s, or Levi’s. Jogiches had always been the man behind the scenes, the silent partner.
Hoffner stopped scanning the page. Was he missing the obvious? Had he just uncovered his K, he wondered.
The telephone rang and he picked it up as he jotted down a note to look into Herr Jogiches’s past a bit more closely. “Yes,” he said.
“You’re in for a busy night, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar.” It was the duty sergeant from the front desk.
“And why is that?” Hoffner continued to write.
“A Schutzi corporal just found another one of your bodies. Markings and all.” Everyone, evidently, was now aware of the case.
Hoffner was on his feet and reaching for his coat when he asked, “Where?”
“Senefelderplatz,” said the man. “In the subway excavations.”
Only once in the courtyard did Hoffner remember Sascha and the wire room. He quickly stopped by the duty desk and asked the Sergeant to get a note to the boy: should anything come in, he was to bring it up to the site. The man understood. Hoffner also told him to telephone the porter at his own building in Kreuzberg; a direct call to Martha at this hour would only frighten her. Still, she liked to know when he would be late. No reason. Just that he would be late.
Hoffner decided to walk. It took him less than twenty minutes to make his way to the square; this time, however, Wouters’s pattern eluded him. These were not the wide avenues around the Unter den Linden; here the streets and alleys were too narrow, and the turns too clipped and sporadic, to give Hoffner the precision and line that he needed to enter the design. Even the people and cabs wer
e too few to bring the buildings to life. Hoffner knew better than to expect anything from this part of town. He was skirting the edge of Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin’s underbelly, a place of stifled quiet after dark. If nothing else, the pattern demanded movement, and there was none to be found here.
More than that, Wouters and his pattern were no longer abstractions. Hoffner had no need to conjure them, and that made them somehow less his own.
He turned in to the empty square and followed the echo of a barking dog across the cobblestones and over to the site. A glowing red ember, perhaps two meters wide, stared like an angry sun from a poster painted onto the brick of one of the building walls. It was an advertisement for men’s shirts. The cigarette drooped from a mouth that was beyond the reach of the lamplight. A sharp chin in profile balanced the dark blue of the starched collar, and yet, even cut off at the lips, the Henzeiger Mann remained the picture of elegance. According to the print, he was also now stain-resistant.
A lone Schutzi patrolman had leashed the dog to a lamppost and was doing all he could to calm the animal with his boot. The mutt was big, and his white teeth glistened in the light each time he chopped his head forward in another snarl. The patrolman was young and having his fun as he slapped at the dog’s head before each quick kick to the gut. The dog, however, seemed undeterred by the taunting: his eyes peered menacingly at the darkened entry to the excavations as ribbons of hot steam poured from his nostrils. Hoffner approached and pulled out his badge.
“Enjoying yourself, patrolman?” he said, the reprimand clear enough in his tone.
At once the boy stood upright. The sight of Hoffner’s badge produced a wonderful blend of confusion and embarrassment. “Herr Detective,” he said. “No. I’m just—” He offered the only excuse he had. “He’s got to be put down. He’s had the taste of blood.” The patrolman actually seemed to believe his own justification. “It’s in his eyes, Herr Detective,” he added. “Nothing we can do. Just waiting for the wagon, that’s all.” The growling continued unabated.
Hoffner might have conceded the point: the dog’s eyes had, in fact, glazed over. That, however, did not make this patrolman any less contemptible. Hoffner said, “The dog found the body?”
The question caused a moment’s confusion. Evidently the boy had never been included on an investigation. Hoffner guessed that he was the halfwit who was always told to stand outside, or wait downstairs, or sit in the hall so as to keep any interested passersby at bay. Tonight he had been given the dog. Even that had overtaxed his resources.
“Yes, Herr Detective,” he finally said. “About an hour ago. Someone heard the howling. They called my sergeant. He’s—”
Hoffner cut him off. “And they’re down in the site?” The patrolman nodded. Hoffner waited for more, then pressed, “Is there a ladder, a ramp?”
Instantly the patrolman understood. “Oh yes,” he said eagerly. “This way, Herr Detective.” He led Hoffner across a series of wooden planks and through the entryway. Lamps along the scaffolding lit their way down and into the pit. At the base of the ramp, the patrolman pointed to the top of a ladder another ten meters on, which disappeared into the depths of the excavation.
“So, a ramp and a ladder,” said Hoffner with mock enthusiasm. The patrolman stared for a moment and then nodded slowly. “Never mind,” said Hoffner. He was about to head for the opening when he said, “And no more business with the dog. We’re clear on that?” The patrolman nodded sheepishly. “Good. Now get back to your post.”
The patrolman was already up the ramp and gone by the time Hoffner reached the ladder. Bending over for the first rung, Hoffner heard a movement off to his side, and immediately spun toward it, as a figure emerged from the darkness.
It took him a moment to recognize little Franz. The boy had been leaning up against a mound of cleared earth. “I thought it was you, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar,” Franz said as he approached.
Hoffner stood there, waiting for his heart to slow. He stepped away from the ladder. “You startled me, Franz.”
The boy looked genuinely surprised. “Did I? Then I wish I’d brought a towel for you.”
Hoffner remembered this morning’s episode at the washbasin. “Fair enough.” He noticed how threadbare the boy’s coat had become, and how exposed his little neck was without a scarf. Franz, however, was showing no signs of the cold. Tough little man, thought Hoffner. “What are you doing here, Franz?”
“What you told me, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar. Following Herr Kvatsch.”
Hoffner understood at once. He peered over at the ladder, then back at the boy. “When did he get here?”
“About fifteen minutes ago.”
“He received a telephone call?”
Franz had grown accustomed to the accuracy of Hoffner’s guesses. “Yes, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar.”
“Where?”
“Reese’s Restaurant.”
“With anyone?”
“No, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar.”
Hoffner nodded. Kvatsch’s star was rising: he was being permitted a firsthand account this time round. Someone wanted the story on the front page, not the fourth. That, however, was not the boy’s concern. “So,” said Hoffner, switching gears as he pulled out his cigarettes. “Any interesting names on the list?” He lit one up and watched as Franz stared eagerly at the ember. The boy continued to gaze as Hoffner exhaled a wide plume of smoke. “All right,” said Hoffner reluctantly. He reached into his pocket and offered one to Franz. The boy took two. “You’d do better to get yourself a scarf, Franz,” said Hoffner as he watched the boy slip the extra one into his pocket. Franz nodded curtly, then placed the cigarette in his mouth. He waited while Hoffner lit it.
“Kriminal-Bezirkssekretr Groener,” said Franz. “Over lunch.” Smoke streamed from his small nose. “They were together maybe five minutes. I couldn’t get close enough to hear what they were saying.”
A little obvious, thought Hoffner, but why not? The question remained, Was Groener clever enough to have had a reason to leak the story? Spite hardly seemed a sufficient motive. Hoffner said, “The next time they meet, you come and get me. All right?” The boy nodded. “Good. Now get yourself back to the Alex. You can leave the list on my desk.” Hoffner would have liked to have had Franz wait around and trail after Kvatsch for the rest of the night, but the boy had been out in the cold long enough for one day. Then again, from the way Franz was working the cigarette, Hoffner might just have been underestimating him; Fichte could have taken lessons. “And stay at the Alex,” Hoffner added with a bit more grit. “No slipping out tonight, all right?” For a moment Franz looked as if he might play the innocent; instead, he nodded.
Hoffner walked back with him until they were halfway up the ramp. He had a sudden impulse to pat the boy on the shoulder, but the gesture seemed wrong. Luckily, Franz gave him no time to consider it; with a strangely knowing nod, the boy darted up the remaining few meters and out through the entryway.
Hoffner watched him go. The patrolman was busy elsewhere and took no notice; the dog kept his gaze on the site. Its barking, however, had become hoarser. Hoffner could almost hear a desperation in its throaty growls, as if the dog knew that the measure of its time was spent the moment its last salvo came to an end: it was holding on for as long as it could. Hoffner continued to watch as Franz—once more a ten-year-old boy—crept up to within a few meters of the dog and let go with a howl of his own. The dog responded with a sudden and renewed vigor; Franz howled again and raced off. The patrolman spun around and shouted after Franz, but the boy was already lost to the shadows. The dog, however, had regained full pitch. Franz had given him new life. Hoffner turned and headed back into the pit.
The climb down was shorter than he expected. The Rosenthaler Platz site had been a good twenty meters deep; here it was, at best, ten to twelve, which made the air less thick, though the smell of decaying flesh was no less present. It was also a less complex layout than before. There were no spokes or distant caverns to navigate
, just a long tunnel, dimly lit by a series of string lights hung from above. Various air pumps with ventilation hoses sat silent along the dirt floor, but it was clear that this station was still under construction: the wood slats along the walls were freshly cut, the steel beams still had a shine to them, and the piles of shovels and picks were placed for easy retrieval. From the cigarette butts strewn about, Hoffner was guessing that a crew had been here as recently as yesterday afternoon, maybe even this morning. The supply lines were back up and running.
A sudden flash of light drew his attention to the far end of the tunnel. He began to make his way toward it as the din of conversation grew more distinct.
“. . . completely in the buff,” came a voice. “I’m telling you. And she wasn’t shy, either.”
The men laughed. One of them caught sight of Hoffner and his expression hardened at once.
“Gentlemen,” said Hoffner as he drew up with his badge held at eye level. “Quite a little gathering.” There were four of them: a Schutzi sergeant, his patrolman lackey, a man with a camera, and, of course, Herr “Detective” Kvatsch. They were standing to the side of a woman’s dead body. Hoffner returned the badge to his coat pocket. “I see we’ve already started in on the group photos.”
There was a stiffness to the quartet now that Hoffner had arrived. The sergeant was unsure how to respond. He went with what he knew best. “We found her about an hour ago, Herr Kriminal-Kommissar—”
“Yes,” Hoffner cut in. “Your man upstairs filled me in on the details.” It was clear from the sergeant’s expression that the man upstairs had been told to give more than just the details when the Kripo arrived: a little warning would have been nice. Another botched job from the halfwit, Hoffner imagined. “How fortunate that our friends from the BZ arrived so quickly to keep you company.”
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