The Wolf Children

by Cay Rademacher

  Then on Sunday evening MacDonald burst into his office and invited him to a jazz concert. Stave got the impression that Erna Berg somehow knew he would be spending the entire weekend in the office, rather than at home with his son. She had probably been worrying about him, and had asked her lover to take her boss with them. Stave wasn’t very keen on jazz and didn’t fancy playing gooseberry to the two of them, but he couldn’t think of a polite way to turn down the invitation. In any case the lieutenant's good humour was just a front to cover up his nervousness. Just three more days. But he was too polite himself to ask Stave if he had made any progress.

  So they set off in MacDonald's Jeep to a festival in Moorweide. The lieutenant for once was not in uniform. It was the first time Stave had seen him in civilian dress, a light English summer suit with a hat to match. Better dressed than one of the black market dealers, Stave thought without a shred of envy.

  It was hard to estimate how many people were packed into the festival tent. A thousand, maybe two? Mostly young and German, dressed in their best clothes. But there were also a few British officers and Americans who had possibly come from Bremen or Berlin, or maybe even had come up from the American occupation zone in the south for such a special occasion. The CID man found himself thinking of Walter Kümmel.

  He was standing towards the edge of the smoky tent, hot and muggy beneath the canvas, the smell of sweat and black market perfume in the air. Gene Hammers and his trio were in full swing: screeching saxophones and trumpets, the thumping of drums and bass. Stave was staring at the musicians, sweating and dancing around in apparent ecstasy. Some of them were black. Apart from the odd occasion down at the docks and in some of the propaganda films in the old Nazi newsreels, Stave had never seen a black person before. Then a singer came on; she was wearing a white dress, her lips painted bright red, with black hair and a smoky, sensuous voice. She looked vaguely familiar and then he realised with astonishment that she was German, not American: Margot Hielscher. He’d seen her in films. Before 1945. Now she had become a passionate jazz singer. All the men were staring wide-eyed at her, and the Americans were shouting things that Stave thought it was just as well his poor English meant he didn’t understand.

  Stave wasn’t going to dance; in fact, he would have crept out of the tent as inconspicuously as he could if it wouldn’t have been impolite towards MacDonald and Erna Berg who were jigging about in the crowd, despite her baby bump. Jazz was loud, provocative, alien, very American to Stave who preferred classical music even if it did make his colleagues, who were all Zarah Leander fans, laugh at him. He felt left out in these new times.

  However, the next morning heading down the Ahrensburger Strasse he no longer felt alien: he was doing what he did best, following a lead. He hurried past the station, along Klosterwall, past Deichtorplatz, then turned right: the Chile House.

  The spectacular, ten-storey office building stood like a great redbrick cliff, considered ultra-modern when it was built back in the 1920s. Now it looked like something from the future, brought back in a time machine to the rubble of 1947: triangular and totally undamaged, alone amid a sea of flame-scarred, windowless buildings with their upper storeys blown in. The Chile House was one of the most expensive office addresses in the city.

  Stave passed the corner where ‘Chilehaus A’ was written in large metal letters over the entrance. He flicked through the notes he had made the last time he had visited Greta Boesel. The thin visiting card the boxing promoter had given him fell out. Walter Kümmel's office was in Building B, on the second floor. Stave went through the massive entrance into the inner courtyard. It was a vast space, but felt rather gloomy and depressing because of the high walls on each side that shut out the sunlight. On the other hand, for the same reason, it was a bit cooler. Stave gratefully wiped his sweat-soaked collar with his right hand. The courtyard was home to a café and a tobacco shop.

  The door to Building B was open and dozens of men carrying briefcases were hurrying in with that Monday-morning expression of busy employees on their faces. Polished stone tablets on either side of the entrance displayed the names of the tenants, as if they were ancient inscriptions, designed to be there for thousands of years. The chief inspector took them in at a glance: ‘Slomann. F.W & Co. Sales Office Chlorodont — 1’ and above it: ‘Hanseatic Boxing. W. Kümmel — 2.’

  The internal stairwell had polished panels on the walls like smooth birch veneer; in a window niche on the landing were dark wooden chairs like those you might find in a confessional booth. From the landing upwards the stairwell was white tiles, as if one were going up into a swimming pool.

  On the second floor Stave came to a reddish-brown wooden door with no bell. He knocked, but the door was so big he couldn’t hear if there was any response on the other side. He tried the handle. The door was unlocked and he walked into an anteroom the size of a large wardrobe, with a tiny desk, a chair and an open, untidy filing cabinet. It didn’t exactly look like it was a regular place of work. A summer jacket was hanging on rail, behind it a door with opaque glass, beyond which he could hear the voice of someone talking on a telephone. The voice of Walter Kümmel.

  The chief inspector knocked on the door, then walked in without waiting for a reply. Kümmel was sitting on a huge desk of dark teak wood, a pen in one hand, the telephone receiver in the other, his feet up on an office chair. He was writing in a notebook as he spoke; Stave had the impression it was numbers, but he didn’t have time to get a better look. Kümmel looked up in surprise, quickly ended his call, put the phone down and closed his notebook.

  ‘You surprised me!’ the boxing promoter said, standing up and holding out his hand.

  ‘I thought your fiancée might have said I wanted to talk to you,’ he said, shaking Kümmel's scarred hand.

  ‘I thought you would call first.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have been much use, would it? I wouldn’t have got through. Who were you talking to?’

  ‘It was a business call,’ Kümmel said, watching him carefully with his grey eyes. His Roman nose that had at some stage been broken was very tanned, the CID man noticed: Walter Kümmel had been outdoors a lot recently. You didn’t get a tanned nose like that from sitting in a truck. On the wall behind the boxing promoter was a framed poster: ‘Hein ten Hoff versus Walter Neusel, Summer 1946, Germany's First Professional Heavyweight Bout Since the War.’ A lot of Stave's colleagues still talked about it. Stave could remember it too. It was what made ten Hoff famous. Next to the poster a pair of boxing gloves hanging from a nail, dark brown leather, worn and torn on the knuckles.

  ‘Those are mine,’ Kümmel said, having noticed the direction of Stave's glance.

  ‘A sentimental streak?’

  ‘My only one. What can I do for you?’

  ‘How was your trip?’

  Kümmel looked surprised for a moment, then nodded. ‘You haven’t come here to discuss the state of the roads in the different occupation zones.’

  Stave decided on a full frontal attack. ‘Did you know that Adolf Winkelmann was involved in smuggling?’

  Kümmel laughed. ‘So that's where the boy got his cigarettes? Sit down.’ He himself sat down on the chair he had had his feet on. The chief inspector was more than a little disappointed to see how relaxed he seemed.

  ‘The boy was acting as a courier for illegal goods between the port and the station. And at some stage in his last few weeks he began taking some very different merchandise down to the docks.’

  ‘To the docks? That's quite a long way from our apartment.’

  ‘Yes, it must have been worth his while.’

  ‘So what was it he was smuggling?’

  ‘That's what I’d like you to tell me.’

  Kümmel shrugged. ‘He wasn’t hiding anything at our place, I can tell you that. Unless,’ he was thinking to himself, ‘it was something very small. So small that neither Greta nor I ever came across it. But you didn’t find anything either, did you, when you searched his room?’

&nb
sp; Stave suddenly cursed under his breath, remembering that they didn’t search either the cellar or the other rooms in the apartment. If Kümmel had really been involved in the smuggling business then he would have long since got rid of anything he had been hiding there. Should he mention the tapes? Or the pills? He glanced around the office as casually as possible. He could see no tubes of pills. And certainly no tape recorder. If there’d been a tape recorder or any tapes lying around this little room they would have been very obvious. But pills? That was different. There could have been hundreds in Kümmel's desk drawers. There could hardly be a better hiding place for illegal wares than Hamburg's most expensive business address, located exactly halfway between the station and the port. But the chief inspector didn’t have a search warrant. He decided not to mention exactly what he thought was being smuggled. It wouldn’t do any harm to keep Kümmel guessing as to what he knew.

  ‘Could Adolf have diverted some of his aunt's deliveries to his own ends?’

  ‘My fiancée's trucks carry sugar, lard, wood, wool – bulky, heavy goods but not so big and bulky that it would be more economic to transport them by train or canal boat. Hardly the sort of stuff I would try to smuggle.’

  ‘What would you smuggle?’

  A sharp glance from those grey eyes. ‘It's not my line of business. From time to time I help out my fiancée. But all her business is completely above board. One of her drivers was ill on Friday. Measles! In a grown-up man! But, normally, dealing with my boxers keeps me busy.’

  ‘But even a top promoter like you doesn’t have a bout every week?’

  Kümmel gave a broad laugh. ‘I only need to stage one a year. At that first bout, ten Hoff versus Neusel, there were 30,000 in the audience. The return match is taking place on the seventeenth of October, at the HSV football stadium on Rothenbaum Chaussee. I’ve got 40,000 tickets. Sold out weeks ago.’

  ‘Who's going to win?’

  ‘Ten Hoff. He's young, 1.94 metres, 194 pounds. Walter Neusel is a brave old warhorse, but he's forty years old. The only way he can win is if he lands a lucky punch.’

  ‘Would that be bad for your business?’

  ‘They’re both under contract to me.’

  ‘So you win either way?’

  ‘I always win.’ Kümmel stretched out his arms. ‘This is the house of winners. Whether you’re selling car tyres or boxing matches, the only thing that matters is to get the product to the customer.’

  ‘And that's how you end up in an office next to a toothpaste merchant.’

  Once again Kümmel shot him a sharp, suspicious look. The sort of look one boxer gives another at the beginning of a round, Stave thought to himself.

  ‘You never know. I might have different neighbours soon.’

  ‘Is the toothpaste man moving out?’

  ‘Make all the jokes you want. I’m the one who's moving out. To New York.’

  ‘The Americans are giving you a visa?’

  ‘They’re going to carry me on high over the pond. I’m organising the sensation of the year: Max Schmeling's comeback.’

  If I laugh, he's going to hit me, Stave thought. Better to stay polite. ‘I thought Schmeling was older than Neusel?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. He's famous. He still has a reputation in America. Remember those two fights against Joe Louis.’

  ‘That was back before the war. If someone like Neusel at forty hasn’t a chance against a newcomer like ten Hoff, how is Schmeling going to stand up against some American?’

  ‘He won’t,’ Kümmel laughed, ‘he's just my entry ticket. One bout over there and I’m in business in America. I have connections already: promoters in Boston and New York. Radio stations from the East Coast to California. A couple of American reporters were just here. A photographer from Life. Even a US Army general. He saw Schmeling in New York in 1938 and was desperate to get his autograph. I sorted it for him. Now I have a friend in the US headquarters.’

  Stave wondered if the man had mentioned the general as a threat. ‘When is the fight?’

  ‘Spring or summer 1948. First of all Max Schmeling will fight here. We’ll get about 10,000 spectators, half of all tickets reserved for British or American officers, to give them something to write home about. He’ll fight Walter Neusel. Nothing can go wrong. He’ll win easily and be on the next steamship to America.’

  ‘I can see there's a lot to be made,’ Stave said cautiously.

  ‘Not as much as back in 1936 or 1938. The Americans will only give Schmeling and me half what they’ll pocket for the fight. But half of a whole lot is still a whole lot, especially when it's all in dollars. I’m already a millionaire several times over, but in Reichsmarks.’ He laughed. ‘That's probably enough to buy a few packets of cigarettes. Apart from that, a nice house? Either bombed out or requisitioned by the English. A nice car? Nobody's making cars in Germany any more.’

  ‘You could always invest your money, put it in the bank.’

  ‘Yes, other people have thought of that in the past. Then you get a world war, crazy inflation, then another world war, then the black market and your money's down the toilet. Now there are still brave souls taking their money and putting it in the bank, while the Russians stand on the Elbe loading their rifles!’ He shook his head, staring out of the window. But Stave had the idea he was laughing at him behind his back. ‘No,’ Kümmel said, ‘there are winners and there are losers. That goes for countries too. Germany is a loser country. You just have to go outside and look up at the façades: nothing behind them but air and sky. America is a winner country. It's about time we recognised that and acted accordingly.’

  ‘Maybe I can apply for a job as a sheriff,’ Stave mumbled, getting to his feet. ‘Thanks for your information and the tip!’

  The chief inspector walked out into the open air, squinting at the bright sunlight reflected from a tilted window right into his eyes. The air in the internal courtyard of the Chile House was as fetid as in a coal mine. He headed slowly in the direction of Karl Muck Platz. Why would someone like Kümmel who was about to make the leap of a lifetime to America risk it all by getting involved in smuggling? And yet Tattoo-Willy had named him as one of the biggest godfathers in the whole smuggling scene down at the port. What was Kümmel dealing in? Medicine? But the promoter had just told him he couldn’t care less about Reichsmarks or cigarettes. Was somebody paying him in dollars so he could afford the trip with Schmeling? That would mean he was smuggling stuff out of Germany, not into Germany? But recording tape would only bring in a few dollars at most, if that. So what could it be?

  Back in CID headquarters Stave was still struggling with the feeling he had missed something. He had seen something in the Chile House that had set off an alarm bell somewhere in his brain, but he couldn’t think what it was. I’m too preoccupied with other things, he told himself, and it's becoming a problem. He closed his eyes and tried to go over again in his mind everything he had seen down at the Chile House. The board by the entrance with the boxing promoter's name. The tiny, empty anteroom. The door to the real office. Stave walking through it. Kümmel quickly ending his telephone call. Who had be been talking to? Was there a single word that Stave had overheard and was now running through his head? The telephone ...

  ‘What an idiot!’ he said aloud. The heat, it has to be this damned heat. Kümmel had been on the telephone when he burst into his office — with the telephone in his right hand. The pen, with which he had been making notes, had been in his left hand. Kümmel was left-handed.

  Should he go straight to Ehrlich? Then, with the help of the public prosecutor, to a judge for an arrest warrant? Or at the very least a search warrant for the apartment in Fuhlsbüttel Strasse and the office in the Chile House. But what proof did he have? A statement from a tattoo artist on the Reeperbahn and the fact that Kümmel was left-handed. The prosecutor would laugh at him. Stave didn’t even have a motive.

  Once again he stormed into Cuddel Breuer's office. If only the boss would give him all three murder
cases, then he could get a few more people working for him. If he had a few more officers, he could put one of them on to Kümmel, have him followed if necessary. MacDonald would get him permission for that. Then he could see what sort of business the boxing promoter was up to the rest of his time. And he might stumble across something that would explain the murder: a motive.

  ‘Forget it, Stave,’ Breuer said even after he had explained where his investigation had led him.

  ‘Walter Kümmel is probably a smuggler.’

  ‘That does not make him a murderer.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘No buts, keep your theories to yourself. I don’t want to hear this getting around. Neither here in the office, nor among the British.’

  ‘What have the British got to do with it?’

  Breuer held up his hands. ‘Occupation troops get bored, they always have done. The Tommies are there in this bombed-out city and don’t know what to do, how to spend their time. Bored soldiers are dangerous soldiers, unhappy, unpredictable. Governor Berry does not want that and nor does Mayor Brauer. And nor do I.’

  ‘And the British like their sport!’ Stave added, resignedly.

  ‘At last the penny drops. Good boxing matches are a good way of passing the time. Before I arrest the only man in Germany who puts on these matches for the Tommies I am going to need good evidence. More than just Tattoo-Willy. And more than just a man using his left hand to write. And even if you do manage to convince me and the British, at best that makes Kümmel a suspect for the murder of Adolf Winkelmann, but not that of Wilhelm Meinke or Hildegard Hüllmann.’

  The CID chief dragged his bulky body over to the window and began to use a sheet of paper as a fan. ‘This heat is making people crazy,’ he snorted. And crazy people have stupid ideas.’