‘You know yourself what was left of the body. There weren’t many clues, but there were two: the soles of the shoes, first of all. Dr Czrisini pointed out the scratches on the leather soles to me. A sign that in his death throes the man had been moving. Which from my point of view suggests he wasn’t killed by collapsing rubble or the shock wave from an explosion. That would have been too quick. And then there's the wound to his head.’
Kienle whistled through his teeth appreciatively. ‘I’m beginning to see where you’re coming from.’
The photographer kept his word and within an hour delivered half a dozen still-damp prints. ‘I’ve used my last sheets of photo paper on these,’ he said, ‘and worked to expose the finest detail in the darkroom.’
‘This ought to do,’ Stave muttered. Schramm's walking stick. Kienle's task had been to photograph the banker's walking stick in the wicker basket in the hallway – in particular its heavy silver handle. L-shaped. Now he held in his hands black-and-white pictures of the handle from every angle, and the ruler next to it. The photos were a bit grainy and the relief on the silver ever so slightly blurred.
‘I had neither a flash nor a tripod,’ the photographer said apologetically.
‘You can make out the shape well enough. And with the ruler next to it you can work out the size to the nearest millimetre. That will do.’
‘Do you want to smuggle the photos into Dönnecke's files?’ Kienle asked. ‘Or do you plan to go straight to the public prosecutor?’
The chief inspector rubbed his temples. ‘These aren’t evidence. They’re just drawing plans, for an artist.’
He shook the photographer's hand in farewell. ‘Don’t say a word to anybody, least of all Dönnecke,’ he stressed. Then he sat down by the telephone and called MacDonald.
‘Want to come with me to the most derelict hovel in Hamburg?’
‘As draughty as a castle in the Scottish Highlands? I wouldn’t have thought that was possible.’
‘I need you to pay for something for me.’
‘Already blown all your new money? You wouldn’t be the first from what I hear.’
‘I don’t need you to pay with Deutschmarks or English pounds. I need you to use your good connections.’
‘Who do you want to annoy now?’
‘If it works: a respectable fellow citizen. If it doesn’t work, then it’ll be me. And one way or the other a few American officials.’
‘We’re going to annoy Americans? I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.’
The Jeep bounced in and out of potholes as they headed for St Pauli. Stave told the lieutenant where they were heading and what they would do when they got there. Then he looked to one side: there were still crowds of people staring into shop window displays. A motorcycle and sidecar with a dozen shiny polished pots in it. Two men pushing a bicycle with a rolled-up carpet fixed to the frame.
‘It certainly looks as if the currency reform is working,’ MacDonald said with a smile.
‘The hangover is yet to hit,’ said Stave, ‘at the latest when the next pay packet comes in.’
‘People get hangovers when they drink too much whiskey. But that doesn’t stop them drinking.’
‘I need to find a new job. Department S has become redundant.’
‘Just like cavalry. But the cavalry officers found new jobs. What will you do?’
‘I shall have to go and see Cuddel Breuer first of all: see what he wants to do with me. It may also depend on how I do with this case. It's likely to be the last for Department S.’
‘You’ll go down in the annals of crime history.’
He turned into Lerchenstrasse. ‘Are you sure someone won’t steal my Jeep here?’ the lieutenant asked, looking distrustfully at the ruined, dilapidated houses and the gutted cavity of the Schiller Theatre.
‘I would be fairly certain someone would make off with it after dark. But not now. Too many witnesses.’ Stave nodded at a few refugee women who were using the interval between rain showers to hang piles of washing on lines outside the theatre.
‘Let's get a move on then.’
‘There's more than one reason to get a move on. Don’t breathe deeply when you go through this door.’
Paul Michel opened the door when they knocked, wiping green paint from his hands with a dirty rag. ‘You again,’ he said resignedly. ‘You promised never to bother me again.’ Then he glanced nervously at the lieutenant. ‘And now you’ve enlisted help from the Allies. I can’t escape you.’
‘I’ve got a job for you,’ Stave replied, pushing the door open again. A stench of faeces and decay wafted over them. ‘It's particularly bad today,’ said Michel, apologetically.
‘It smells a bit like the school kitchen when I was young,’ MacDonald said nonchalantly, and walked into the dismal apartment as if he were at home.
‘I’m not a grass,’ Michel muttered as he hunkered down at the kitchen table with them. ‘I’m not up for that.’ He rapped his prosthetic leg.
‘I want to hire you as an artist.’
‘And the Führer used to paint postcards for you. Don’t give me fairy tales.’
Stave laid out on the table the photos Kienle had taken little more than an hour earlier. ‘I want you to make me as close a copy as you can of this walking stick handle,’ he explained, watching the artist closely. ‘Last time I was here you said you could do something like that.’
Michel examined the photos. ‘Is it silver? I don’t have any silver,’ he answered cautiously.
‘The material doesn’t matter. It's only the shape that matters. I want a copy that's exactly the same shape and size. As far as I’m concerned you can carve it out of wood. Can you do that?’
‘Clay would be better. Easier to shape. But I need to get hold of some. And then I’ll need to fire it in a friend's oven.’
‘Can you have it done by the end of the week?’
Michel took the photos in his hands, which were shaking slightly. Hopefully from excitement, Stave thought to himself. The one-legged man studied the photos carefully, then shrugged. ‘I did very different things at the UFA studios, and I’m a bit out of practice. But it should work.’ He licked his lips. ‘Depending on whether the pay is good enough.’
At that MacDonald gave him a beaming smile.
‘I’ll get you and your family an American visa,’ he said.
When they were back out in the open air, the lieutenant stroked the wet bonnet of the Jeep. ‘Glad it's still here. God, it must have been like that in there during the last war. When there was a gas attack in the trenches. My legs are shaking. I wouldn’t have been able to make it back on foot.’
‘I did warn you,’ Stave growled.
‘Why did you have to be so generous? The man was so poor he’d have done it for a couple of pounds. Or a few Deutschmarks. Why a visa for America?’
‘Because he’ll be a lot happier in Hollywood than here.’
‘Are you intending to send every police grass to Douglas Fairbanks?’
‘That handle is an important piece of evidence in a murder case.’
‘I see. You no longer work there but you still want to meddle in a colleague's business.’
‘Which is something I’d rather remained in the dark. If Paul Michel is in Hollywood then he won’t bump into that colleague and say anything he shouldn’t.’
‘When I’m transferred you’ll have one less friend in Hamburg,’ MacDonald said, looking seriously worried.
Stave gave him a thankful smile. ‘This case is important,’ he explained. ‘I’ll be more cautious in future, I promise.’
‘You sound like a man with a mission.’
‘I was there when a murder victim was found. I have an idea who the murderer is. Nobody else seems interested, except for Public Prosecutor Ehrlich. Shouldn’t I at least try to get the perpetrator convicted? Present the public prosecutor with evidence to charge him?’
‘With a copy of a walking stick handle?’
‘With a copy of a wal
king stick handle, a bit of luck and one or two semi-official investigations.’
‘I had imagined German policemen differently.’
‘I hope I’m not letting you down.’
‘On the contrary, old boy!’ MacDonald laughed and turned the key in the ignition. ‘I’ll drop you off at headquarters. Then I have an appointment with an American liaison officer.’
A little later Stave was sitting opposite the public prosecutor in his uncomfortable visitor's seat. Ehrlich was staring at him through spectacles as thick as magnifying glasses. ‘It's not enough,’ he said unhappily.
The chief inspector sighed. He had just told him that he had traced one of the art works in the Reimershof more or less definitively back to Schramm.
‘It's not a crime,’ the prosecutor continued. ‘Schramm denies having owned the bronze bust. Maybe because he acquired it from the film studio — or should we say the propaganda ministry — under dubious circumstances, and he finds it embarrassing. But even if you can link it to him, so what...? The banker rescued a work of art that would otherwise have been melted down by Goebbels’ henchmen. No judge is going to pass sentence on him for that. File the case away. The objects found in the Reimershof will become public property and given to a gallery. Not the worst thing that can happen to an artist's work.’
‘It is the worst thing that can happen to a policeman's. Rolf Rosenthal's body was also found among the same ruins. An art buyer. A Jew.’
‘Most Jews are dead these days.’
‘And most of their murderers are still at large. But Rosenthal wasn’t burned to ashes in a camp. We have his body. We have clues and we have a suspect.’
‘You have a suspect, Stave, but you’re the only one in CID who does. And you’re not officially working on this case. We just have our own little private agreement. And the prosecutor's office has nothing that would justify pressing charges. Where is the evidence? Your colleague has none, and nor do you.’
‘Dönnecke doesn’t want to produce any evidence because he doesn’t want the case to come to court. Because if a dead employee of Dr Schramm becomes the object of a trial, then Schramm himself will become a centre of attention. And if Schramm becomes the subject of an investigation then things could become difficult for Dönnecke too.’
Ehrlich pulled out a large handkerchief and began exhaustively polishing his glasses. ‘And what about you? Do you have any evidence?’
‘Sort of. Or I will have in a few days.’
‘Sort of? I’d make a laughing stock of myself if I based charges on “sort of” evidence.’
‘I can’t dismiss that possibility.’
‘You’ve told me better stories in the past. I’ll take a look at your supposed evidence and make up my mind then.’
Ehrlich accompanied him to the office door. ‘By the way how's Frau von Veckinhausen,’ he asked.
‘She's very well,’ Stave answered swiftly, and hoped the blood wasn’t rushing into his face.
‘Have you seen her in recent days?’
‘Frau von Veckinhausen and I are very close.’
‘I understand.’ Ehrlich reached out a hand. ‘Give her my best wishes.’
He left the office early as he had nothing much to do but wait until Michel had finished his work. He took a detour on his way to Berne via the allotment gardens, just to see if Karl might be there. Stave was lucky — his son opened the door to him and invited him into his shed. There were shelves on each wall. Books.
‘Have your spent all your money already?’ he found himself saying. Karl laughed. ‘Now you sound like a real father should. I handed over a few new mark notes to a bookseller. But most of them I got in exchange for a few cartons of allotment gold.’
‘A good deal. The shops are full of tobacco and cigarettes again. Before long your leaves won’t be worth the effort.’
‘I’ve got other work. The university is keeping me busy.’
Stave took down a book with a dark cover: Ronald Syme's The Roman Revolution. He leafed through the first few pages: Oxford, 1939.
Karl smiled. ‘Caesar and Augustus. The standard text on the end of the republic and the rise of a dictatorship in ancient Rome. Unavailable in Germany for years.’
‘Books by English authors weren’t exactly in tune with the Zeitgeist.’
‘Least of all ones that came out a week after the war began.’
‘Is your English good enough to read it?’
‘I’m learning. It's one of the advantages of living in the British occupation zone.’
Stave put the book back on the shelf. In doing so he noticed between the books a couple of yellowing sheets of paper, with writing in pencil. And in handwriting he recognised; his own. It was the letter that he had written to Karl the previous year, in the midst of a complicated murder case: about the ‘brown years’ and Karl's membership of the Hitler Youth. About his own job in the police. About Stave's hopes that things would at long last get better. His son had never mentioned the letter.
‘I always meant to reply to you,’ Karl said, embarrassed, and took the letter from him. ‘It's not easy to put it all down on paper.’
‘If we can talk to one another, then we don’t need to write,’ Stave replied. All of a sudden he was overwhelmed by a feeling of total relaxation, the sort of relaxation you only felt when you’ve finally completed something really important
That evening he chained up his bicycle in front of the theatre. He had imagined himself feeling out of place with his old bike among women in evening dress and men in black tie, Mercedes and Opel limousines. But in fact he was almost alone.
Stave stared around in amazement, then spotted Anna. He hurried over and kissed her. She was wearing a dress the colour of Bordeaux wine with a light bright-coloured summer raincoat. Her hair, loose, her scent.
‘You look magnificent,’ he whispered.
‘We’ll attract attention in the theatre,’ she replied, smiling.
‘Has the play been cancelled?’ The Devil's General by Carl Zuckmayer. Ever since its German premiere in November 1947, it had been booked out. Stave had been pleased to get any tickets at all, even those costing three Deutschmarks, a small fortune.
‘It's the new money,’ Anna said. ‘Nobody wants to spend a mark on art – not that it's worth something once again. Frying pans are more important, shoes, coffee.’
Indeed there were barely two dozen people in the sumptuous auditorium. Stave glanced around in embarrassment. He found it somehow wrong that actors had to take the stage in front of such a tiny audience. ‘If people won’t spend a Deutschmark on the theatre, then they won’t pay even a pfennig for antiques,’ he conjectured during the interval.
‘Are you worried my business won’t make any money now? There's always a market for antiques. They’re more durable than acting. But I’ll have to change my trade, even so.’
‘In what way?’
‘Wait and see,’ she replied and kissed him.
Later he took her home, sitting side saddle on the old bike's luggage rack, her hair fluttering in the wind, her arms around his hips. An open-top British Jeep overtook them and the two soldiers wolf-whistled and shouted something merrily at them. Stave felt as if he were eighteen again and in love for the first time.
As he braked into Röperstrasse she jumped nimbly off the bike. ‘You’re staying,’ she exclaimed. A statement, not a question.
The only light was that from the old wooden-cased radio that Anna turned on. The ‘barcarolle’ from the Tales of Hoffmann opera. They undressed, whispering to one another as Offenbach's bright and cheerful music wafted through the room, the soft yellow light falling on their bodies.
‘What if the neighbours hear us?’ Stave said.
Anna just smiled at him tenderly and turned up the radio.
Later the two lay together on the narrow bed, naked and happily exhausted. Stave no longer feared falling asleep by her side and being woken by nightmares. It hadn’t happened the night before, maybe it would nev
er happen again. And if memories did come back to taint his dreams, he would explain to his beloved. He felt himself sliding into the soft twilight of half-sleep when the operatic melodies that had soothed them for more than two hours were interrupted by the sharp voice of a man announcing important news. Just like the old days.
Turn the box off, said Anna, her eyes already closed. Stave had just reached the radio when his fogged brain realised what was being announced. The Soviets had blockaded Berlin, closed all the roads, railway lines and canals: there was no gas, electricity or coal reaching the western part of the city, the American, British and French occupation zones.
‘What was it they were saying?’ Anna mumbled when he lay down next to her again.
‘Nothing important,’ he whispered reassuringly and put his arms around her.
Murder weapon
Thursday, 24 June 1948
Stave would never have believed the Department S floor could have been quieter than it had been over the past two weeks. But now it really was as dead as could be, until Paul Michel walked down the corridor leading towards his office. Stave had been waiting impatiently for this moment for the last 72 hours, looking at the clock again and again, feeling like a caged animal. At last. The one-legged artist sat down, staring around him in amazement but saying nothing. He was carrying an old cardboard box in a string shopping bag slung around his neck. The knuckles on his hands gripping his crutch had gone white.
‘Relax,’ the chief inspector said, opening the door of his office for him. ‘You’re here to do me a favour, not to be interrogated.’
‘That's not what it feels like.’
‘Show me your work.’
His guest sat down on a chair and set the box carefully on the desk. ‘Even though the clay has been formed it's still fragile,’ he explained, taking out the bundle of old newspaper inside. ‘I don’t want it to break now.’ He unwrapped the newspaper and eventually produced a brown object as large as a hand.
‘Perfect,’ Stave mumbled in amazement, taking up the object carefully in his right hand: a copy of the silver handle of Schramm's walking stick. He laid Kienle's photos on the desk next to it: the same shape, the same pattern as on the handle, reworked in the finest relief.
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