A Thousand Devils (Max Heller, Dresden Detective Book 2)

by Frank Goldammer

  Heller didn’t like putting so much pressure on the man, but he had to. “Two kids there are severely ill. They’re already getting delirious. They might have died already.”

  The pastor squinted. He was battling himself, searching for words. He wiped his eyes, embarrassed. “I’m trying to help. I take them all I can. I give them what I can spare.”

  “Shouldn’t you be making sure the children end up in a safer place with proper care?”

  “You don’t think I’ve tried? It’s impossible. Jörg, their leader, won’t allow it. He watches after them like they’re his own children. Though, believe me, they’re not doing much worse out there than here in the city.” Beger had to fight back his tears again, and Heller couldn’t blame him. He could only imagine all the misery the young pastor saw each day.

  “But they’re sick and undernourished, full of bugs and lice. They’re literally being eaten alive.”

  “What do you know?” Beger barked. “Talk is cheap. No one wants them. No one has any compassion, not even for the littlest ones. People hit them, even shoot at them. They’re alone. Don’t you understand? Alone and abandoned. It breaks my heart seeing them like this. The youngest ones have forgotten they even had a mother and father. Some don’t even know their own names . . .” The pastor’s voice broke. His face was ashen, his worry digging deep creases into his otherwise boyish face. He took a deep breath and tried to regain control.

  “But there are homes,” Heller tried in a calmer tone.

  Beger snorted and hissed a cynical laugh. “You know what these homes are? They’re little more than child prisons. There’s no love there. None at all. As if they were criminals, as if they had any choice about their fate.”

  “But aren’t there Christian . . .” Heller saw the pastor’s look and stopped himself. He wasn’t exactly providing much insight. “This Jörg, he seems very dangerous.”

  Beger leaned against the door to stretch his back, frowning from the pain. “He knows no rules. He’s an orphan, and fending for himself is all he’s ever known.”

  “Do you think he’s capable of murder?”

  Beger hesitated again, gazing up at the ceiling as if hoping to find help there. “He’s dangerous because he’s so naïve, because he’d like to be her protector. Because he was raised to be a Nazi through and through. But he doesn’t know any better. None of them know any better.”

  “He loves Fanny, am I right? Do you know if Fanny knew Gutmann, or if she ever prostituted herself for him? Do you know who fathered the child?”

  Beger pushed off from the door. His face hardened. “Fanny told me you were looking to question them. Whatever else Jörg might have done, he does protect the children, and he looks after her. I don’t want to know what would happen to him if the Russians caught him. And even less what would happen to those children.”

  The pastor moved to leave, but he had locked the door and first had to fiddle awkwardly with the key, which didn’t want to turn, so he used his other hand to help.

  Heller placed a foot against the door. “I don’t want to tell anyone about the children. I don’t want to hand them over to the Russians. I don’t even want to know where they are. I only want Fanny and the baby. We will care for them, my wife and I. The girl needs to see a doctor. She has the clap, and she gave it to her child.”

  Beger yanked on the door handle in anger, but Heller was stronger.

  “No,” Beger said. “You can’t demand that of me. I don’t trust you. And Jörg wouldn’t allow it anyway. You should be glad he even let you live.”

  “I’m coming back tomorrow, at six in the morning. So we can go together. I’ll bring something to eat. I do mean well. You need to trust me.”

  Beger yanked on the door again, and Heller let him pass.

  “I’m not doing it. I won’t!”

  Heller passed back through the open door into the nave of the church. The front pews were empty. The old woman from earlier had just left, the large main entrance door now closing.

  “Early tomorrow morning. I’ll be here, and I’m coming alone,” Heller told Beger again gently. The pastor withdrew into his room without a word and locked the door, and Heller strode quickly out of the church.

  The snowfall had let up. Heller stood on Martin Luther Platz, looked around, and spotted the old woman, who was just about to turn onto the next cross street. He looked at his watch and sighed. An unbearable hunger nagged at him. In his pocket was the bread, spread with liverwurst, wrapped in wax paper. But he wanted to save it for as long as he could. Hands in his overcoat pockets, he walked down the steps at the front of the church, following the old woman. She walked while leaning slightly on a cane, her overcoat practically reaching the ground. He didn’t hurry to catch up. Once he’d reached her, he glanced at her from the side, acting surprised.

  “Frau Dähne?”

  “Herr Oberkommissar,” she said.

  “May I escort you home, on account of the weather?”

  “You’d take the trouble of going all that way? That’s quite nice of you.”

  Heller offered an arm, and the old lady took it.

  “You know Pastor Beger well?” Heller asked. “Didn’t he join the parish after the war?”

  “No, he was already here in ’44, when Pastor Kühnel died.”

  “He’s still young. He never got called up?”

  “No, he wasn’t fit for service, something to do with his back.”

  Frau Dähne seemed willing to talk.

  “He hands out food every Sunday,” Heller said. “I wonder where he gets it.”

  “Alms from good Christians and people who’d like to be.”

  “You mean people who wish to clear their conscience?”

  “Yes. So many try to buy their way to salvation. At any rate, he’s always up to something, our good pastor. A fine man. He only needs to learn to handle his emotions better. He doesn’t deal with the suffering of others very well. And that’s something one should be able to do if one hopes to comfort others, don’t you think?”

  Heller didn’t reply. Genuine compassion always seemed better than false comfort.

  They walked along in silence until Louisenstrasse. Then Heller got back to it.

  “Are you getting along all right, all alone in the ruins?”

  “I can’t complain,” Frau Dähne replied.

  Heller took a long deep breath and tensed inside. “Does Fanny visit often?” he asked and felt her arm, still linked with his, put up a little resistance.

  “I give her something to eat when I can,” Frau Dähne said in a low voice.

  “Does she visit regularly?”

  “She comes and goes when she wants. Poor child. She’s an orphan.”

  They had turned up Kamenzer Strasse.

  “And Josef Gutmann, you know him?”

  Again it seemed as if the old woman faltered, though she might have only slipped a little on the icy sidewalk.

  “Everyone in the neighborhood knows him, at least since his bar was destroyed.”

  “Is it possible that Friedel Schlüter had contact with him?”

  “Contact? You mean because Gutmann ratted on them?”

  That startled Heller. “Ratted on them—you mean denounced them as Nazis?”

  “Isn’t that what they say? That Gutmann joined the Communist Party right after the Russians marched in, then promptly denounced the Schlüters as Nazis.”

  “But everyone had to know they were Nazis. After all, their printing company had become a big business, growing fat from the war economy, using lots of forced labor.”

  Frau Dähne stopped and looked up at Heller. “Knowing that is one thing. Betraying it to the Russians is another. It’s possible that was his way of gaining entry into the Communist Party. Right after the Russians came he was running around wearing a red armband with Antifa on it.”

  Heller stared at the little old lady, thinking things over. What she was telling him threw a whole new light on the attack on Gutmann’s bar
. Could Friedel be more than simply a misguided young man, far more dangerous than assumed? Yet why that ridiculous spelling mistake on the leaflet? Could someone be manipulating events?

  “Let’s keep going,” Heller said. “Is it true that the one-handed man, Franz Swoboda, used to come and go from your house?”

  Frau Dähne sighed. “After he returned from the war, he was assigned a room at my home. He soon found a new place to stay, though. After the air raids, he visited me now and then and helped me repair the damage. But I haven’t seen him for a long time.”

  Heller kept silent, waiting for the old woman to tell him more. They had reached the intersection of Kamenzer Strasse and Nordstrasse. It wasn’t much farther now.

  “Would you have anything against my taking a look inside your home?”

  “Inside what’s left of it,” Frau Dähne corrected him. “What are you hoping to find?”

  Heller didn’t answer. Nordstrasse rose a little. It was slippery, and Frau Dähne held his arm tightly while sliding around.

  “Tell me, what do you want from the pastor?” she asked.

  Heller considered what he should reveal, despite suspecting that she already knew far more than she was letting on.

  “My wife would like to take in Fanny and the baby. The pastor’s refusing to make it happen. He’s afraid of betraying the group.”

  “I can take care of it.”

  “What?” Heller stopped and stared at her in astonishment.

  “I can persuade Fanny that it’s best for her and the baby,” Frau Dähne stated with utmost confidence. “I know where she’s staying at this time of day.”

  “Then tell me!”

  Frau Dähne shook her head. “No, I’ll go alone. Now. You can take a look at my house in the meantime.”

  “And she trusts you?”

  Frau Dähne grimaced, then nodded. “I think so.”

  “You can go first. I’ll follow you at a safe distance.”

  “You sure are an awfully stubborn man! Do what you need to, but if Fanny notices that you’re following me, she’ll disappear.”

  “How about we take our chances?” Heller said.

  “Very well, but we’ll have to go back the same way.”

  They continued walking together, back down Kamenzer along Alaun Park. Then Heller gave Frau Dähne a head start. He waited until she had reached the intersection at Bischofsweg, then followed her at a proper distance. A blaring horn made him start. He looked up and saw Oldenbusch in the black Ford. The car was swerving along the snow-covered cobblestones, its nearly treadless tires offering no grip on the slippery surface. Heller jumped to the side to play it safe. Oldenbusch braked and slid the car sideways up against the sidewalk. He then leaned over and pushed the passenger door open.

  “Max, finally!”

  “What’s wrong? You’re driving like a madman. Can it wait?”

  “It can’t!” Oldenbusch shouted and shot off as soon as Heller climbed into the car.

  “You been looking for me long?”

  “A few minutes now. I was making a second round on the off chance I’d find you. Gutmann’s dead in his bar, hanged. Suicide, looks like.”

  “Looks like?” Heller said.

  Oldenbusch nodded.

  “Stop next to that old woman real quick, Werner.”

  “Is that the Dähne woman?”

  “Frau Dähne, yes.”

  Heller rolled down the window. “Frau Dähne, I need to go. It’s urgent. When you find Fanny, tell her to wait for me at the edge of Dresden Heath, at Waldschlösschen. She knows where. At five o’clock!”

  February 10, 1947: Early Afternoon

  Oldenbusch parked the car a little way up Alaunstrasse, near the courtyard entrance where they had carried out the dead girl.

  “Didn’t you post any men?” Heller asked warily, seeing no policemen.

  “Two of them. Made it inconspicuous so we don’t have another crowd this time.”

  Heller nodded and climbed out. “So who found him?” he asked across the roof of the car.

  “The back door to the bar was left open. And old man from the neighborhood noticed; we got his personal details. He repeatedly called inside to no answer. So he went and grabbed a patrol cop. That’s who found Gutmann.”

  Heller and Oldenbusch used the street entrance to reach the back courtyard. They made their way along the rear of the buildings to the Schwarzer Peter. A policeman was waiting there at the door and saluted.

  “Nothing further to report,” he announced.

  “You found him?” Heller asked. “Did you touch anything?”

  “The light switch, Herr Oberkommissar, but with a glove on. I checked the body for vital signs, but he was already cold. All I touched was his wrist.”

  Heller nodded, entered the bar, and found himself inside that narrow hallway again, the one leading to Gutmann’s storeroom, his office, and the disguised door to the stairway. Heller kept right and then left until he was standing in the main bar area, where a slight reek of urine hung in the air. Oldenbusch followed. Two bare bulbs burned dimly above the bar; Heller was surprised that Gutmann had been able to get those lights working again in the three days since the attack. They bathed Gutmann’s massive corpse, dressed in dark pants and a white shirt, in a sickly yellow light. Heller, who could only see the dead man’s back, had Oldenbusch hand him a flashlight so he could shine light on the floor around the body. He spotted a row of damp spots, likely from the snow that had melted off the policeman’s boots. Below Gutmann’s sock-clad feet, a tipped-over chair lay in a larger puddle. The insides of Gutmann’s pant legs were dark with moisture. His arms dangled limply, his palms facing out and his fingers stretched in odd angles.

  Heller directed the flashlight to the ceiling. The thin rope Gutmann hung from had been thrown around one of the partially scorched beams. The other length stretched down to the radiator below the window and was threaded through the ribs and crudely tied off. This was all doable for one person, Heller reckoned.

  He made a wide arc around the hanged man, pulled a table over, and climbed atop it to get a closer look at the noose around Gutmann’s neck. It was knotted amateurishly, not a hangman’s knot. Only now did he take a moment to look Gutmann over.

  The rope had dug deep into his neck. Dark red bruises and scratch marks showed how hard Gutmann must have tried to slip his fingers under the rope, struggling in vain not to die. The dead man’s stiff face reflected all the torture that being suffocated must have inflicted on him. His eyes bulged, his mouth was contorted, and his swollen tongue stuck out. It must have been a slow death. Heller knew that many strangulation victims lost consciousness because their carotid artery had been squeezed flat. In Gutmann’s case, though, the noose had obviously strangled only his throat. He must have fought for minutes on end before finally losing strength. One last spasm had then made his limbs jut out.

  Heller climbed back down from the table and shined the light on the tips of Gutmann’s fingers. They were chafed, with broken fingernails.

  Oldenbusch couldn’t stand the quiet any longer. “To save himself, he would’ve had to pull himself up to the beam, hang on to it, and undo the noose. That certainly doesn’t look very likely considering this thin rope and his body size. Me, I can barely manage a pull-up.”

  “Doesn’t the fact that he struggled not to choke to death point to evidence of murder? It’s also possible that he first meant to kill himself, then changed his mind.” Heller said this knowing that Oldenbusch, being his assistant, wouldn’t choose the easy answer.

  “No, I think—”

  Heller raised a hand. He first needed to gain his own impression. He carefully observed the corpse using the flashlight’s beam.

  “Is there a suicide note?” he asked as he gave his full attention to the cuffs of Gutmann’s sleeves.

  “There is, written by typewriter. Should I read it to you?”

  “By typewriter? He has a typewriter?”

  Oldenbusch nodded.
“In his office. I’ve already taken a look. There’s a high likelihood the typing comes from that machine—the small r is damaged; it makes a hole in the paper when struck. There are fingerprints on the keys. I’m assuming Gutmann only typed with two fingers, so a comparison shouldn’t take long. The paper came from his desk too.”

  Heller listened without taking his eyes off the sleeves. On the fabric of both he discovered fine fibers that could have come from the rough hemp rope. He knelt and searched the floor around the chair and the puddle of urine for more fibers—and found what he needed.

  “Just like I thought, Werner: someone tied him up, hanged him, then severed his restraints.”

  Oldenbusch came closer. “But wouldn’t he have resisted? Why didn’t he scream?”

  Heller looked around again. At a table across from the body, one chair wasn’t in the same position as the others. Heller sat down there without moving the chair. Had the murderer sat here watching Gutmann struggle as he died? Heller sat a few more seconds, then climbed back onto the table to inspect Gutmann up close. He shined light on Gutmann’s mouth, looking for fibers or any clue that the bar owner had been gagged. But he couldn’t find anything. Acting on impulse, he started searching the dead man’s upper arms and shoulders. He carefully touched the body, rotated it very gently, then held it in place. He finally found what he was looking for.

  “You overlooked this,” Heller said, waving Oldenbusch over, and shined the flashlight on a tiny red spot on Gutmann’s upper sleeve.

  “Let’s take him down,” he ordered.

  Oldenbusch sighed.

  Heller climbed off the table. He placed a chair close to the dead man and immediately climbed up on that.

  “Hold him tight by the stomach; I’ll grab him under the arms and cut through the rope. Then we’ll lay him on top of the bar. Do we have a knife?”

  Oldenbusch got a knife, handed it to Heller, and grabbed the corpse around the torso. He let out a slight groan from the weight. Sliding his right arm under Gutmann’s armpit, Heller leaned his head to the side to avoid getting the dead man’s hair in his face, then sliced through the rope. The body slumped down. Oldenbusch wheezed from the strain but held on tight. Together they maneuvered the corpse over to the bar. Oldenbusch snorted and blew air out his cheeks, then had to take a seat.