The Forger

by Cay Rademacher

  ‘Veronika,’ Stave replied every bit as loud, and turned the door handle.

  A few minutes later he was standing in an identical corridor a few metres lower down. The CID allocated floors to departments according to their status. Homicide was right at the top. Department S was only one storey below, because from 1945 onwards the black market had become a leading priority. The chief inspector looked around: there was nobody in the corridor, the office doors were all ajar, he could hear no clicking of typewriters. It looked as if this floor was about to be taken over by another department.

  He went up to the only door behind which he could hear a voice. Someone on the telephone. He knocked and went in.

  A colleague who must have been somewhat corpulent before the war set down the heavy black receiver with a resigned gesture. Wilhelm Bahr was head of Department S – the depredations of recent years had melted his fat away and his old skin now hung from his cheeks and neck like torn sails on a still sea. The last time Stave had worked with him was in organising a raid in the case of the murderer in the ruins. Back then he had been happy and energetic, now he looked at his visitor wearily. A man afraid he had lost.

  ‘I’m your new colleague,’ Stave said, holding out his hand.

  ‘You must be crazy. I’ve just been talking to Cuddel Breuer.’ Bahr tapped the telephone, but still shook his hand.

  ‘Even you think this department is done for?’

  ‘No, we’ll expand and thrive, but nobody in his building believes that.’

  ‘Well at least there are now two of us,’ the chief inspector replied.

  Bahr shook his head incredulously and handed him a pile of paperwork. ‘Read that.’

  Stave lifted the first page, lined, apparently ripped out of a school exercise book, written on in black ink and in an uneven hand: ‘I hereby declare that the transport worker Kröger, 102 on Kiel Strasse, has stored a big load of oats in his yard. Some of it has already been eaten by vermin. But with need so great why is this? The car Herr Kröger owns is private but he uses it as a taxi and gets fuel for it. Now he moves wood brought to his yard for building timber a few hundred metres further on as firewood.’

  ‘What is it this poet is trying to get across to us?’ Stave muttered.

  ‘That he failed his German lessons.’ Bahr tapped the pile of papers dismissively. ‘Whistleblowers! We get stuff like that in here every day. We used to ignore most of it and concentrate on the big fish. Now we investigate this shit. My colleague, we work a standard 56-hour week here, with no overtime payment like in Homicide, but I can promise you one thing, it can be a tough 56 hours.’

  ‘Can I find an office for myself or will you allocate me one?’

  ‘Take next door. It has a nice view out on to Karl-Muck-Platz, gets the sun, the window closes properly. That's important if we’re still here next winter. But you don’t get a secretary of your own.’

  ‘I’ll get used to that.’

  ‘One more thing: do you want to spend the day settling in to the office, or do you want to take on a case straight away?’

  ‘A corrupt oats transporter on Kiel Strasse?’

  ‘No. Artworks hidden in the ruins. Might be the work of a fence, might even date back to before the war. No other department is interested so it's ended up with Department S.’

  ‘Sounds more interesting than spending the day “settling in”. I can take my time over that. Not that it’ll be a lot of work.’ The chief inspector nodded at his briefcase.

  ‘Good. Off you go then: the Reimershof accounting house on Reimersbrücke. The uniformed police are already there. I’ll order a car for you. It would appear there's another case to be dealt with there, one a colleague from Homicide is already working on. But it has nothing to do with our case.’

  ‘Which colleague?’

  ‘Chief Inspector Dönnecke.’

  ‘Fucking shit.’

  ‘I did warn you: we’re not on the winning side.’

  The dark grey blanket of cloud lay so low in the sky it looked as if it could fall on to the ruins at any moment. A fine drizzle swirled in the wind, a precursor of heavier gusts. Stave pulled his coat collar up high, even though he only had a few metres to dash from the head office to the patrol car parked on the square. The radio patrol car – nicknamed ‘radiwagon’ — was an angular Mercedes Benz, previously used by the Wehrmacht as an ambulance, now used by his colleague from police station 66 on Lübeck Strasse to patrol the streets of Hamburg. The chief inspector wondered how it was that Bahr could get hold of this vehicle in particular. Maybe he had worked at that police station. He nodded to the elderly uniformed policeman behind the wheel.

  ‘To the Reimershof...’

  ‘I already know. Watch out for the passenger door, it can spring open sometimes while we’re driving.’

  Am I just imagining this, the CID man wondered. I’ve only just left Homicide, but already the guys in uniform treat me with less respect.

  It wasn’t far. Stave would happily have walked, despite the foul weather, but he didn’t want to turn down a favour Bahr was doing for him on his first day on the job. The old Mercedes rumbled along Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse past the ruins on the bridge by the city hall: the exterior wall of a building had been blown out. On the way past the chief inspector glanced into the remnants of an exposed office on the first floor where the showers of rain were drawing strange patterns on the sodden wallpaper. It seemed almost like a grimace. In between two collapsed walls an organ grinder was turning his handle. The CID man wondered who would bother to waste a coin in weather like this in such a desolate part of town. On Rödingsmarkt they drove under the grey stilts that held up the overhead railway, the only stop between Baumwall and the ruins where he had been shot. Don’t think about it, Stave told himself.

  He could soon see the Nikolaikirche, or what was left of the church. Its narrow, neo-Gothic tower had soared above Hamburg for as long as he could remember. At one time it had even been the tallest church tower in the world. Now it stood there like a rotten tooth, still almost a hundred metres high, but torn on both sides as if someone had taken out two of its four walls with a hammer and chisel. The interior staircase was exposed and the remains of a huge set of bells glistened in the rain. Three, maybe four, black-scarred remnants of the nave walls still stood, with battered pillars, steel window frames and rosettes, missing the glass that had been melted by the firestorm.

  The old uniformed officer drove around the church ruins. The Reimersbrücke bridge went over the Nikolaifleet river directly behind it. It was ebb tide. Cracked bulkheads and oak beams sunk down into the soft ground generations ago to support the houses stuck up out of slimy brown water barely half a metre deep.

  ‘I’m not sure the bridge will support the vehicle's weight. I’m going to park just before it,’ the driver said, standing hard on the brake.

  Stave muttered a few words of thanks.

  ‘Should I wait for you, Chief Inspector?’ The CID man was about to shake his head, seeing as however long it took here, he could easily walk the few hundred metres back. But then it occurred to him that among the ruins of the office blocks on either side of the little river there wasn’t going to be a telephone and it would be useful to have a radio, in case he had to call in specialists.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he replied.

  The policeman nodded, obviously relieved. It was fine by him if he could just doze in the Mercedes.

  Two of the uniformed police on the spot had closed off the Reimersbrücke bridge and the street beyond — not that it was necessary given that there was hardly a passer-by to be seen. Stave flashed his yellow CID pass.

  ‘Ludwig Ramdohr,’ one of the policemen said, introducing himself and saluting. ‘It was the Trümmerfrauen, the women clearing the rubble, who discovered the whole heap. They were working on the remnants when a gust of wind blew down a whole wall. They were very lucky not to have been crushed to death. When the dust died down, they found a skeleton. And a work of art.’r />
  ‘One of our colleagues is dealing with the skeleton. I’m interested in the work of art. What sort of work?’

  An indifferent shrug of the shoulders. ‘Modern stuff.’

  Stave thought of Anna, who earned her money by unearthing antiques and works of art from the ruins to hive them off to the English and black marketeers. ‘Can you be more precise? A painting? A statue?’ His voice was sharper than it needed to be.

  ‘A statue, I suppose you could call it. As far as I’m concerned it doesn’t look any prettier than the skeleton next to it. Not something I would want in my living room.’ Sergeant Major Ramdohr rubbed the badge on his uniformed chest: a little metal clasp with the word ‘Hamburg’ at the top, then the city crest below and his four-figure identification number. He was doing it subconsciously until he noticed Stave watching his right hand.

  ‘I can’t get used to this English invention,’ Ramdohr apologised.

  ‘It shines well enough though.’

  ‘Unlike the work of art. That needed a good polishing. I’ll take you to it.’

  The Reimershof was the first office block on the left after the bridge, or rather what was left of it. Originally an eight-storey building, plastered white once upon a time. The two equally damaged buildings on either side were made of brick. The chief inspector surmised that the white plaster had been intended to show that this was a more modern building. Built in the twenties maybe, he reckoned, not that it mattered now. There were brown and yellow damp patches in the white plaster and each window was surrounded by red rust. And above it all was open sky. The roof had gone. Direct hit, Stave thought to himself. A firebomb in the attic, and nobody had ventured out in the hail of bombs to extinguish the flames. Fire had consumed the attic, then spread to the floor below until the whole building – and anything it had contained – collapsed in an avalanche of stone and wood. There were hundreds of houses like this in Hamburg with their exterior walls almost intact, without glass in the windows, without roofs, their interiors a heap of rubble.

  In the entrance, where the charred remains of a heavy oak door still hung at an angle, Ansgar Kienle, the police photographer, nodded to him. ‘I’m dealing with the corpse first, Chief Inspector,’ he said apologetically. ‘Then I’ll deal with your case.’ Stave glanced at him, a jolly, freckled face looking at him from under a tent-like rain cape. He was holding the cape's waxed cloth out over his expensive pre-war Leica, the sole camera in the possession of Hamburg CID.

  ‘That stuff isn’t going to rust away on me,’ Stave replied, thinking, he already knows I’m no longer with Homicide. Word gets around fast. ‘Very well,’ he added. ‘But I’m going to take a look at the scene anyway. I’ll be careful not to trample over any traces.’

  ‘That's what they all say,’ Kienle sighed, tinkering with his Leica.

  ‘Where are the Trümmerfrauen?’

  ‘Behind the Reimershof,’ Ramdohr replied. ‘After the wall came down and they found the corpse, they didn’t want to hang around in here any longer. You can interview them after...’ He hesitated.

  ‘After the Homicide colleagues have finished.’

  The interior of the Reimershof was surreally quiet. Heaps of rubble between the walls, some of them no higher than his hip, but others three, four metres high. A mountain of broken bricks, blackened beams, tangled cables and shattered tiles. Grass was growing over some of the flatter areas and in the midst of the ruins there was already a tall birch tree growing as high as where the second storey floor must once have been. There was no level ground; with every step he took something crunched beneath his feet and sometimes he sent stones rolling down slopes. Thanks to the outer walls protecting him from the wind, the drizzle came straight down, making the rubble glisten, and Stave felt as if it was raining harder here than outside.

  On the side that looked away from the Reimersbrücke there was a huge gap. A section of the wall about five metres across had fallen in.

  ‘Luckily the Trümmerfrauen were standing on the outside,’ Ramdohr told him. He had automatically lowered his voice.

  The chief inspector nodded and moved closer. A vaulted roof that must previously have been concealed by the rubble had been smashed through by the weight of the falling bricks. The cellar, the CID man assumed. In a spot that must once have been a storage room but now looked like a ditch that stones had fallen into from every side, stood several police in uniform and a plainclothes colleague Stave didn’t recognise. He nodded at them but didn’t go over to join them. He could make out the body — a skeletal corpse, with remnants of clothing on bones and leathery skin, the death grin of a skull. Not just been here since yesterday, he reckoned. Then he shook his head. Not your business.

  The sergeant major led him to an indentation on the edge of the collapsed cellar, little more than a dent in the rubble.

  ‘This is your case, Chief Inspector.’

  At first Stave couldn’t make out anything at all. But then as he went down into the dip he stopped in shock for a moment, because he had almost trodden on a face. A head, half buried under the pulverised remnants of bricks turned by the rain into a gravelly paste. The chief inspector carefully brushed the dirt aside. The head of a woman, life-size, made of reddish brown metal. Bronze, the CID man assumed, not that he was an expert. In most places the metal was covered with verdigris or a scabby white layer, almost like something woven. Even so he could make out some of the features: big eyes, the nose slightly bent to the left, a smiling mouth. One part of the neck had been broken off, but otherwise the bust was relatively unharmed. Modern art indeed, even if he had never seen this sculpture before. It would have been great if Anna were here. And not just because of the artwork. Stave shook his head, annoyed with himself. This is your first case in this field, don’t get distracted.

  ‘The Trümmerfrauen certainly wouldn’t have reported this thing,’ Ramdohr mumbled from the edge of the dip. ‘They’d have wrapped it up under their aprons and taken it to a scrap-metal dealer. It was only the skeleton over there that made them act as they did. They were scared and rang us up.’

  ‘Nor is it the only treasure in this heap of rubble,’ the uniformed policeman said dismissively, nodding towards an area several metres away from the bronze.

  Stave went over and whistled in appreciation. ‘You obviously have an expert's eye,’ he said, only half sarcastically.

  Three fragments of a figure, a woman perhaps, although the nose had been broken off, the cheeks were scarred and the fragments of the torso looked more like a rough block so that he couldn’t properly decide its gender. At first Stave thought he might be looking at some statue of an Egyptian god, its shape was so archaic. Light grey stone, he thought to himself, but it was only when he lifted the first fragment that he realised how familiar the material was: ‘This is concrete,’ he muttered. What sort of artist would work in concrete? It definitely had to be modern.

  Systematically he began to work his way through the rubble. On two occasions he thought he had found something but it turned out to be only the silvery glistening end pieces of a British firebomb. These narrow weapons, as long as an arm, looked harmless, almost like over-large fireworks. They had been dropped in their thousands out of the planes, coming through the roofs and setting off phosphorous fires in the warehouses, yellow and red flames like flickering flowers blooming in the city night. The heavy metal end pieces of the bombs were to be found stuck in the asphalt of the streets the morning after an attack and would be hauled out by the children who had survived.

  After half an hour, during which the sodden uniformed man gave him ever more morose looks, Stave found something at the edge of the depression in the ground: the bottom half of a man's head cast in black glazed ceramic. The nose, eyes and hair were missing, the broken edges sharp. It reminded him of a shattered skull he had had to deal with in one of his first cases as a detective. But no matter how hard he looked he couldn’t find the upper part, or even fragments of it. Instead he just came across a few coins, one or
two mark pieces, Reichsmarks from the thirties, their top side melted. The night of the firestorm, he thought.

  ‘The artworks weren’t in the cellar,’ he eventually told Ramdohr, as he struggled to climb out of the ditch. ‘If everything had collapsed on top of them they’d be a lot worse damaged.’ He nodded at the coins. ‘These must have been kept upstairs, either in the attic or one of the upper storeys, where a firebomb had burst. But the other objects weren’t in the same place. The bronze hasn’t melted, and the concrete isn’t blackened. They must have been one or two storeys lower. The fire upstairs, and maybe also explosive bombs, damaged the office building to the extent that eventually all the floors collapsed right down into the cellar and brought these with them.’

  ‘Like a pile of plates falling out of your hands,’ Ramdohr replied. ‘Bang, bang, bang, the plates hit the ground one after another, and then you’ve got a right mess.’

  ‘You’re speaking from experience?’

  ‘My wife complains constantly I have two left hands.’

  It was a good job that the ordinary beat policemen didn’t carry guns, Stave thought to himself. ‘The Reimershof was hit in the summer of 1943,’ he said. ‘This art therefore must date from then or the previous few years.’ Not a hiding place for a fence or a black marketeer, who regularly made hiding places in the ruins. But not in ruins like this, and not goods like this, the detective thought. That meant that if it had nothing to do with the black market it wasn’t a case for Department S. But if the black market collapsed, what else did they have to do?

  ‘Doesn’t look very valuable if you ask me,’ the sergeant major said dismissively.

  ‘In that case I won’t ask you.’ Stave was thinking of Anna and the bundles of Reichsmarks she had got for some of the things she found in the ruins; and Public Prosecutor Ehrlich who would have paid any price to get back the art collection stolen from him by the Nazis. ‘It just might be that we could make someone unexpectedly happy,’ he mumbled. ‘We just need to find out who rented rooms in the Reimershof in 1943.’