The Forger

by Cay Rademacher

  The CID man turned away. He was looking for Toni Weber, the artist with his particular speciality. He had brought the index file with him and from time to time compared the face of a man in the crowd with the photographs. No match. He looked around to see if he could find any forged banknotes or ration cards. In vain.

  His only surprise was when he was standing near a worker selling bottles of a yellow liquid he claimed was cooking oil, and he almost bumped into Kurt Flasch, his neighbour in Ahrensburger Strasse. He was always bumping into neighbours or even work colleagues on the black market. And it was always an awkward situation, a bit like two acquaintances running into one another in a brothel.

  ‘I thought you had enough to do in the Landeszentralbank,’ Stave whispered in amazement.

  ‘And I hardly expected to see a chief inspector dealing on the black market,’ Flasch replied in a similarly low voice.

  ‘Is the load from the lorries safely stowed away?’

  ‘Keep your voice down, Chief Inspector!’ Flasch glanced around nervously, even though Stave had whispered. ‘The load is where it ought to be. I honestly can’t say any more, not even to you. They’re all going crazy here.’

  ‘And they’re dealing in five- and ten-pfennig notes that nobody has seen before.’

  Flasch seemed to relax a little. ‘Ah, that's why you’re here? Me too, as it happens. The bank chairman sent me and a couple of my colleagues out. He heard the rumours...’

  ‘You’re supposed to find out if a few notes escaped from the crates and found their way to Goldbekplatz?’

  ‘I really can’t tell you what is in the crates. But we are here to look for banknotes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nothing. Seems to have been a false alarm.’

  ‘I’m afraid not.’ The chief inspector pulled the two notes from his wallet and held them under Flasch's nose.

  He went pale. ‘Those are obvious forgeries,’ he stammered.

  ‘Well at least that's something,’ the CID man said, putting the notes away again. ‘How many of your colleagues from the bank are out here? Who knows about all this?’

  Flasch shrugged his shoulders. ‘About twenty at most.’

  Stave wiped raindrops from his forehead, took a look around and wondered how many people had heard of the forged notes, and how many had seen them. He reckoned there were at lease two hundred people on Goldbekplatz. Twenty of them were from the bank, a couple more from CID, God knows how many English. Enough to spread the news throughout the city that these strange notes were forgeries. If that got about fast enough then they would be taken for what they were: scraps of paper. In which case nobody would try to sell these pfennig notes any more and confidence in the new currency wouldn’t be dented. At least, that was what he hoped.

  ‘Tell your boss,’ he whispered to Flasch, ‘that there are laughable forgeries being passed around on Goldbekplatz. Tell your colleagues too. The more people who know about these fake notes, the fewer will fall for them.’

  ‘And you will find the forger?’

  ‘That's my job.’

  Flasch looked relieved. ‘That’ll make the bank chairman happy.’

  ‘Maybe I should splash out on a bottle of cooking oil,’ the chief inspector said, a bit more loudly.

  His neighbour shook his head gently. ‘The most you could do with that is to use it on your bicycle,’ he replied, his voice still low. ‘That's torpedo oil, from the U-boat wharf at Blohm and Voss. Bone oil with chemicals added to keep it liquid at any temperature. Put that in your frying pan and you won’t be able to move your legs after you’ve eaten. Or you’ll have problems up top,’ he tapped his forehead.

  ‘Thanks for the advice,’ Stave murmured, making a mental note to set one of his colleagues in Department S on to the ‘cooking oil’ seller. That was if he could find someone in headquarters willing to take on such a task.

  As it happened there was an officer back at HQ waiting to speak to him — Constable Ruge. ‘My colleagues here are going to be amazed to find a uniformed policeman hanging around my office.’

  ‘What colleagues?’

  ‘Fair point. But the fact you’re here means there's a new case. What is it?’

  ‘It's your case, Chief Inspector,’ Ruge told him excitedly. For a moment the CID man was astounded that news of the fake currency notes had already got through to the ordinary uniformed police. ‘The artworks in the ruins,’ Ruge continued, not noticing that Stave had breathed a sigh of relief. ‘I found out who had been renting the rooms in the Reimershof back in 1943.’

  ‘Was that part of your work in the constabulary? How did you even find about it?’

  ‘There were a few of us uniformed police there, at the Reimershof, Chief Inspector. We quite often find dead bodies in the ruins, but we don’t often come across treasure.’

  ‘It wasn’t treasure, just works of art.’

  ‘That's what I mean. There was talk about that, but also about...’ Ruge searched for the right word, ‘...your change of direction,’ he added rather lamely.

  ‘Your colleagues are all gossiping like fishwives just because I no longer work for Homicide?’

  ‘You could put it like that.’

  ‘So why were you asking questions about the tenants in the Reimershof without being asked to? It's my case.’

  The constable coughed. ‘I want to move over to CID, Chief Inspector. And seeing as it's summer and there's not much going on streetwise, I thought I might make a few preliminary enquiries.’ Ruge took a piece of paper from the pocket of his uniform and carefully unfolded it. ‘I tracked down the former tenant,’ he explained. ‘And then I pulled up the list of active businesses there in 1943. The top two floors were taken up by a river boat chandler's. Nearly all the other floors below were occupied by a coffee import-export firm, except for the ground floor which was occupied by a banker.’

  ‘The top two floors were destroyed by the firebomb. The artworks weren’t there. From 1939 on, business had been bad for the coffee import-export firm.’ The chief inspector recalled that right from the beginning of the war coffee had been rationed.

  ‘In any case we couldn’t ask any questions of the owner. He died in the famine winter of 46—47,’ Ruge went on.

  ‘That left the ground floor. Was there a bank branch there?’ The chief inspector suddenly saw himself having to send out a hundred uniformed police to secure the ruins against looters if that got around.

  ‘No. It was just a banker who had rented the rooms, not an actual bank.’

  ‘Privately?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘From the autumn of 1937.’

  ‘Right in the middle of the “brown years”. And in the ruins we come across works of art that would certainly not have fitted the Nazis’ taste. Sounds too good to be an accident.’

  Ruge smiled proudly. ‘The tenant is still alive. Dr Alfred Schramm. Lives at Fährstrasse 80, in Uhlenhorst.’

  Stave nodded respectfully. ‘Nice part of town. Right next to the area around the Alster commandeered by the English. It would appear Dr Schramm came out of the war well.’

  ‘His private bank has reopened.’

  ‘That means the English cleared him. He came through the denazification process untouched, or else he wouldn’t have got a licence.’

  ‘From what the landlord of the Reimershof told me, it would appear Schramm had more to fear from the Nazis than from the English.’

  ‘He can’t have been a Jew though, or his bank would have been taken over and Aryanised.’

  ‘He's from an old Hamburg banking family. It would seem he just didn’t like the brownshirts.’

  The chief inspector ran a hand thoughtfully across his mouth. ‘A respectable man,’ he muttered.

  ‘And possibly an art connoisseur,’ Ruge added.

  ‘Possibly someone who valued precisely those works of art that the Führer and club-foot Goebbels dismissed. Someone willing to hide away artworks to stop them fallin
g into the hands of the propaganda ministry henchmen. Who kept them in an inconspicuous room in an office building, and might well be glad to get back a few that survived.’

  ‘Should we drive over to Fährstrasse?’

  Stave glanced at his watch. ‘I have to talk to the public prosecutor about the case first. Dr Ehrlich often works late, but I don’t want to push my luck. We’ll visit the banker tomorrow, you and I.’

  The constable clicked his heels and turned to leave.

  ‘Ruge? Did anyone else ask questions of the Reimershof landlord?’

  ‘Such as who?’

  ‘Anyone from Homicide? Maybe Dönnecke himself?’

  ‘Nobody, Chief Inspector. The landlord didn’t even know that a body had been found in the remains of his building.’

  ‘You didn’t by any chance ask him about the body?’

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Even for the short walk to the public prosecutor's office, Stave had to throw on his raincoat. There’ll be moss growing on my hat soon, he told himself gloomily. The grey summer sapped the will to live, even the simplest courtesies eroded by the perpetual rain. Murderous weather. At least that's no longer my problem, he thought.

  Dr Albert Ehrlich took a long hard look at him over the hornrimmed frames of his spectacles. ‘You’ve got thinner, Chief Inspector. Thinner than you were.’ The public prosecutor rubbed his right hand over his own stomach, which hung over his belt. ‘A good bourgeois belly is the mark of a well-to-do man. English pastries are getting me back to the shape I was in before the war.’

  ‘Thanks at least for not starting by asking me about my change of job.’

  ‘You should write your answer to that one down on a piece of cardboard and have it ready when necessary. It’ll save your vocal cords. So, why did you get fed up with murderers? We made a good team.’

  ‘I hope we still are. Or do you now specialise exclusively in murderers and Nazis?’

  ‘The latter are a sub-group of the former, rather a large sub-group. Indeed I rather leave the fences and black marketeers to the summary courts run by my English colleagues.’

  ‘I have two cases,’ Stave said. ‘One of them is of interest to the English, our mutual “patrons”, shall we say. The other one is of interest to you.’

  ‘Personally?’

  ‘It has to do with art.’

  Ehrlich spun round in his chair to look at the lithograph by Ernst Barlach on his wall. Der Totentanz – the Dance of the Dead. One of the few pieces of his expressionist art collection plundered by the Nazis that he had got back. ‘Maybe a bit of a change would do me good. Tell me about it.’

  But Stave told him first about the curious notes that had cropped up on the black market at Goldbekplatz, and showed him the examples. Ehrlich just glanced at them and shook his head. ‘I can understand why our mutual friend MacDonald is worried. Green-yellow five-pfennig notes – not just cheeky, it's pathetic. Even the most minimally self-respecting forger turns out tens or hundreds. It's almost ridiculing the efforts of the occupying forces.’

  ‘You think somebody's having a laugh at the British by distributing grotesque money? Sabotage of sorts?’

  ‘What else? A single cigarette costs several Reichsmarks on the black market. Why would anyone take the trouble to create pfennig notes? What does he think these notes can buy? A few strands of tobacco?’

  ‘Somebody is taking the effort to print those and undergoing the risk of getting caught just to discomfort the English?’

  ‘It's worked with MacDonald anyway. You too.’ Ehrlich raised his hands in a gesture of acceptance. ‘If you catch him, I’ll take the case and find charges to bring against him.’

  ‘That will make the lieutenant happy – and his superiors.’

  ‘I’m doing you and him the favour, primarily because I want to deal with the other case.’

  The chief inspector gave a thin smile and showed him some of Kienle's photos. ‘These works of art were found by some Trümmerfrauen working on the bombed Reimershof.’

  ‘Near the skeleton Dönnecke is hanging on to? I heard about that.’

  Ehrlich leaned over to study the black-and-white photographs with eyes that looked as big as an owl's behind his thick glasses. Kienle's images were sharp, but the photos were small, to save on the paper and chemicals.

  ‘They don’t belong to you, by any chance?’ Stave tried to be as jokey as possible, although deep down he was hoping that Ehrlich would tell him something about Anna's attempts to track down his stolen pictures. But the man opposite him just shook his head.

  ‘Unfortunately not,’ he mumbled, ‘though they would have fitted in well in my collection. I don’t recognise the pieces, even though they do seem vaguely familiar. As if I’ve seen them somewhere, not the original but either a sketch in a catalogue, or maybe a photo. They look like expressionist sculpture. Not absolute top quality, but solid middle-of-the-road stuff, if you know what I mean. The sort of things a museum might buy but wouldn’t put at the heart of a display.’

  ‘The sort of things a visitor would notice walking past on their way to see a masterpiece?’

  ‘Exactly. The sort of sculptures a collector on a civil servant's salary might buy.’

  ‘And a banker?’

  Ehrlich looked up in surprise. ‘Any banker worthy of the name earns enough to buy the very best. If he's an expressionist fan he’d buy something by the Blauer Reiter movement or Die Brücke. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Does the name Alfred Schramm mean anything to you?’

  ‘Privately, yes, professionally no. A Hamburg banker and patron of art and artists, very open to new things. If you’re interested in art, particularly modern tendencies, the world is very open. I know Schramm is a collector and that he also supports one or two artists financially. I haven’t actually come across him, either in museums or galleries, or in court. He has an immaculate reputation.’

  ‘Not a Nazi then? Not even one with his sheet washed clean, a “Persil paper”?’

  ‘He always considered the brownshirts to be common as muck. My information is only second hand of course.’

  Stave, who knew Ehrlich had close relations with British officers from the time he was forced to spend in exile in England, nodded understandingly.

  ‘But,’ the public prosecutor continued, ‘Schramm detested Hitler's henchmen as if he’d been vaccinated against them, long before 1933. A fourth-generation banker, conservative, nationalist even up to a point, cultivated and socially aware.’

  ‘Arrogant?’

  ‘Sometimes a trace of arrogance can save someone from making the worst mistakes. Schramm had a lot of influence in Hamburg, had the best overseas business contacts and was at least as “Aryan” as any SS-Standartenführer. After 1933 obviously his business didn’t do as well as it had done before, but the Nazis didn’t dare lay a hand on him. There were, however, rumours that the Gestapo had taken an interest in him and had files on him. But whatever existed had disappeared. Those gentlemen did a thorough spring-cleaning in early 1945, before the English tanks rolled in. But right up to the end of the war Schramm remained a respectable money man. And now he is once again. Even more so than before.’

  ‘A man I shouldn’t make an enemy of during my investigations?’

  ‘What could Schramm have had to do with the things found in the Reimershof?’

  ‘Schramm had rented a floor in the Reimershof. Privately, not for his bank. It is possible, although we can’t prove it, that he used it to store the artworks.’

  ‘In which case he’ll be happy, and be your friend rather than your enemy.’

  ‘It's just that there's something wrong with the story. If Schramm continued to collect art even after ‘33, then why wouldn’t he hide it in his home. He owns a villa on the Alster. The ideal place to hide things in a vault or even just an inconspicuous cupboard. Why would he instead store them on one floor of a relatively small office building, where he had a lot less
room? Where as a tenant he wouldn’t be able to build a safe into the walls? And on top of that in an area that was regularly bombed by the British and Americans?’

  ‘Perhaps precisely that made it the perfect hiding place? Who would think of looking there?’

  ‘Yes, that is possible. But when a hiding place is discovered, the person who used it is rarely pleased. That's why I’m checking up in advance on Herr Dr Schramm's influence.’

  ‘It sounds as if I might be interested in this case too. If it even is a case, that is. Up to now all you have are a couple of damaged artworks found among the ruins. That sounds more like a matter for someone working in the “lost and found” office rather than CID.’

  ‘I’ll know more tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe even this evening.’ Ehrlich laughed mischievously. ‘You’re not a great lover of modern art, Chief Inspector?’

  ‘In that respect, I’m still back in the nineteenth century.’

  ‘Then perhaps you could do with a bit of help. This evening the auctioneer Herbert Nattenheimer is holding a sale of old and modern art as well as sought-after antiquities in the Winterhude Fährhaus. You’ll see more on display there than in any museum. And would-be buyers who adore stuff like that. You’ll also see what sort of prices they fetch.’

  ‘The city is in ruins, people manage to survive from day to day on one thousand calories — and somebody's holding an auction of fine art?’

  ‘It happens regularly, Chief Inspector. Nattenheimer's auctions are a social event and a lot more entertaining than many variety shows. This is your new hunting ground, Chief Inspector. The hammer falls at 8 p.m.’

  ‘I’m dressed too shabbily.’

  ‘You don’t have to join in the bidding. Just join the crowd of spectators. You won’t stand out. Nattenheimer always draws the crowds.’

  ‘Will I see you there?’

  The public prosecutor tapped a file. ‘Unfortunately I have an appointment in court early tomorrow morning. But I will have eyes and ears in Winterhude. Should any piece from my stolen collection turn up, I will be informed straight away. Frau von Veckinhausen is still doing research on my behalf.’