The Man from Berlin Page 14

  But it wasn’t enough just to watch. This was elaborate. Why waste it? He turned in the room, looking for he knew not what, and came back to the two mirrors, and the blood on the light switch, and the two lights. This was like a set. A film set. She was a filmmaker. He walked slowly back towards the door and stopped, looking at the light switch. He pushed the top button, and the lights at the foot of the bed came on. He pushed the second, and lights in the roof came on. He frowned, not knowing what he had expected, but not that. Nothing that simple. He stood in front of the mirror, looking past his reflection, trying to look inside it. He took the mirror’s frame in his two hands and pulled it. Nothing. He pushed, each side, shook it. Nothing.

  He tried harder. The mirror did not move, seemingly bolted to the wall. He stepped back, and knocked the wall, stopped. Stared. He hit the wall again, harder, as he looked at Padelin. The wall boomed hollowly under his hand.

  ‘There’s a room behind here,’ Reinhardt said. His eyes ran over the wall, stepped back. There was no entrance he could see, nowhere he could work out where one might be. Back and forth went his eyes, and then he looked down, imagining the space beneath him, and took off back downstairs.

  The kitchen was gloomy, cool, like it seemed to be holding its breath. Reinhardt paused again and focused on that cupboard he remembered from his first time. The one with the big double doors, padlocked shut. He took the lock in his hands. It was a big, old-fashioned lock, a round hole in it for a key. He rattled the ring, and the shackle came loose from the lock. He froze, stared at it, then turned the lock in his hands and slipped the shackle through the ring. The padlock sat heavy in his hand, and he realised as he pushed the shackle down into the lock, then pulled it out again, that it would not work without a key. Someone had tried to put it back on the door but without the key it would not lock shut and so they had left it, made it seem nothing had happened. He pulled the doors open, looking into a deep space that was all but empty save for a ladder standing against one wall, an old broom, and a few boxes. Nothing else.

  Reinhardt’s mouth twisted as he stepped back. He had been so sure… He frowned, looked closer. The ladder was not standing against the wall. It was too upright. It was fixed to the wall. He looked up, seeing where it vanished into the ceiling. He reached up with his fingers and pulled at what looked like a latch, and the ceiling swung down, suddenly, releasing a wash of light that etched out the inside of the cupboard. He ducked, took the weight on his hands, then manoeuvred it past his head, looking up. The ladder continued up into the light. He exchanged a quick glance with Padelin, then began pulling himself up.

  The ladder passed through a flimsy ceiling, into a space braced by a crisscross of beams, then up into a small room, bare of any furnishing, only one thing in it. The floorboards creaked softly under his weight as he crossed over to a tall rectangle of light and looked out into Marija Vukić’s bedroom. There was creaking from the ladder as Padelin began to haul himself up. His head poked up, and then his shoulders heaved up and around, and the two of them stood squeezed into the small space, Padelin swearing quietly under his breath.

  Reinhardt felt a lurch in his stomach, like one feels at the edge of a great height. A camera stood on a tripod, mounted in front of the mirror, its lens like a wet, black eye. He swallowed in a dry throat and reached out to open the film case, but it was empty.

  12

  Reinhardt thought about the ransacked darkroom as he stared at the camera. He thought about Anna, who thought the Feld­gendarmerie were looking for pictures. Not pictures. Film. A film, he thought, glancing over at the bed, that probably showed Vukić’s murderer. Whoever killed Vukić must have found out about this, or what she liked to do, and taken everything she had, just in case. He thought about the disassembled camera in the studio at Jelić’s apartment, the chemical smell of the place.

  ‘I need to get back to headquarters,’ said Padelin. ‘Can you drive me back?’

  ‘Christ, Padelin!’ exclaimed Reinhardt. Padelin’s eyes went flat. ‘This is important! Whatever happened here on Saturday night, it was probably filmed. And someone’s got it. We need to search this place again. Question the maid. The gardener. The handyman, if there was one.’

  The muscles in the sides of Padelin’s jaw clenched, once. ‘I need to get back,’ he grated, ‘and report this.’

  Reinhardt clenched his jaw as well, then sighed and nodded. ‘Very well.’ Taking a last look around, he followed Padelin down the ladder and back out of the house to the kübelwagen. Padelin balled and rolled his fist again, flexing it back and forth. Reinhardt gestured at Padelin’s hand. ‘You all right there?’

  ‘Fine,’ replied the detective as he got into the car. ‘I couldn’t punch him. Jelić. My fists hurt too much already.’

  Reinhardt said nothing during the drive back into town. The day was sweltering hot, and the heat was only slightly alleviated by the wind of the kübelwagen’s speed. He pulled up outside police headquarters, where Padelin got out. Two policemen on duty outside the entrance stopped talking to look curiously over at them.

  ‘Padelin,’ said Reinhardt. The detective turned to face him. Reinhardt felt a weight in his chest. A weight of words, and feelings, about how people like them, people with authority, should behave. But he knew he would get nowhere with them, and so he tamped down hard on them, pushing and squeezing those words and feelings down. ‘I am going to try to speak with Major Gord. You recall, the soldier that Mrs Vukić mentioned she thought knew her daughter.’ Padelin nodded. ‘Are you interested in accompanying me to that interview?’

  ‘Reinhardt,’ he said, a sense of finality obvious in his voice. ‘I am available. But I think my investigation will be ending soon. I am confident we have a suspect for Vukić’s murder.’

  ‘Fine,’ sighed Reinhardt. He looked away a moment, then back. ‘One thing you might consider, however, is finding out how many places in Sarajevo could possibly develop a film like the one that might have been shot at Vukić’s place.’ Padelin stared back at him, expressionlessly. ‘Not many, I would think. Might be worth your while checking up on them.’

  ‘What about where we just met Jelić?’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Reinhardt, taken aback that Padelin had given it any thought at all.

  Padelin stepped back, shrugging into his jacket and pulling the knot up on his tie, and nodded goodbye. Reinhardt watched him walk up the steps into the building and saw the way the two policemen on duty straightened as he approached, saluting him, one going so far as to shake his hand. They smiled at each other as they resumed their hipshot stance and slouch against the wall, knowing looks, a thumb jerked in the direction Padelin had taken.

  Reinhardt stared at them and then at the white-knuckled grip he had on the wheel. He forced his hands to relax, to unclench, and then continued back to HQ, where he parked and walked up to his office, trying not to think about the bottle of slivovitz – the local plum brandy – he knew was in the bottom drawer. Looking at his in tray, he sifted through the usual correspondence, his mind elsewhere. He sat in his chair, the leather squeaking as he settled himself, his hand going to his knee. Glancing up, he stared at the map of Bosnia that hung on his wall, his eyes wandering from Sarajevo, east to Goražde, then south, down to Foča, Kalinovik, Tjentište, imagining the forces gathering there for the upcoming operation.

  ‘Your case,’ he muttered. ‘Your case.’ In his mind, he saw those two policemen again, the respect they had shown Padelin. Their new hero. They must have someone, he thought. Someone who had confessed. Vukić’s killer, who they would parade. Hendel’s killer, well… Maybe they would pin that one on the poor bastard as well. Otherwise, they would just leave Hendel to the Germans. He felt a cold sweat break out over him at the thought of what that must mean, at what must have been going on in the cells under police headquarters, while he wandered back and forth across Sarajevo. Padelin had to know, must, that whoever they had did not do it.r />
  Reinhardt jerked away from the desk, away from the drawer with that bottle. He knew he was prevaricating, shying away from the discomfort he had felt about the way Padelin had behaved. God only knew, he thought to himself as he stared at the map’s contour lines and rubbed the ridges of his scarred knee, he had seen and heard and read of enough horror in his four years back under the colours to last him a lifetime. It was not that, he knew. Padelin was a policeman. Policemen, he still believed, should not act that way. Policemen, he still wanted to believe, despite all he had seen over the past few years, could be better than the system and the laws they served.

  He had clung to that belief as long as he could, until the time, that one and only time, he had raised his fist to a suspect. That moment when the temptation, the pressure to conform, to be just like all the others again became too strong to resist. That one time, down in the cells under Alexanderplatz, knowing he could wipe away the sneer of that criminal with his fists, the goading from the other policemen to do it, do it, and he had. Then how he had run through Berlin’s darkened streets, hammering on Meissner’s door. Cowering in the corner of the colonel’s drawing room with a bottle clutched to his chest as Meissner watched him from beside the fire, and the decision was made. The flight back to the army. Back to his first home.

  ‘Gregor,’ the colonel asked. ‘Are you sure you want this?’ The question went right through Reinhardt. That memory came to him again, of Kowel, and how Meissner’s calm words reminded Reinhardt he was not the only man who was scared, turning a terrified and lonely young man into just a terrified one. Reinhardt had bound his life to Meissner’s that day, the boy-man finding in the colonel a father like he might have wished for, and in the soldiers of his regiment the brothers. In memory of that day, Reinhardt had never lied to him. And he would not now.

  ‘I am afraid. Of letting you down. But more than that. I am afraid I have lost whatever faith I might once have had that the work I was doing served for anything.’

  ‘Will you go back in?’ Meissner asked, finally.

  ‘I’ll do it for you, sir. For nothing else.’

  Meissner sighed softly, then nodded, the fire playing across his white hair. ‘Thank you.’

  Reinhardt uncurled from his corner, putting the bottle down. ‘Will that be all for now, sir?’

  Meissner nodded. ‘For now. We will talk later.’

  As Reinhardt opened the front door, Meissner’s hand came up gently on the wood and stopped him. Reinhardt looked down at his old colonel, now a senior member of the Foreign Ministry. There was a faint expression in Meissner’s eyes, a glint hidden in their grey depths. ‘You know, Gregor,’ he said, softly, ‘it is not such a bad thing. Joining the Party. They do not ask for much.’

  Always this came back to haunt him. The Party. The bloody Party. ‘Why did you do it, sir? Join it?’

  The expression in Meissner’s eyes never changed. ‘I thought it was the best way for them to leave me alone to do my job. Why did you not do the same?’

  Reinhardt’s throat was dry as a bone, and he pressed his fingers tight against themselves, the pressure painful on his ring finger. God, he needed a cigarette. ‘I suppose… I thought I could do mine without them.’ He stopped, frightened he might have gone too far. ‘I was right, for a while, no?’ Meissner said nothing. ‘But really, it was because of Carolin. She never had any time for them. You knew her. Social Democrat till… till the day she died. And… and because of her cousin.’ He smiled wryly, made what was even to him a pathetic attempt to lighten an atmosphere gone suddenly heavy. ‘I am just glad you never asked me to. I don’t know what I would have done, torn between the two of you.’

  The faintest nod. ‘And if I asked now?’

  Reinhardt knew he could never refuse this man anything. ‘Please. Do not.’

  ‘She is gone, now.’

  ‘But I like to think the best of her will stay with me. I could never forgive myself for doing it. Even if… even if I knew she probably could.’

  Meissner’s hand fluttered down, away from the door. He stepped away. ‘Go now, Gregor.’

  There was a knock at the door. Reinhardt snapped around from the map, his mind flailing for a moment, caught between the here in his austere office and the there, Meissner’s study and the crackle of a fire burning low as he closed the door on one life and opened a door on another. Claussen stood in the doorway. He cleared his throat and offered him a handwritten sheet of paper. ‘Units taking part in Schwarz,’ he said.

  ‘Very good,’ said Reinhardt. He scanned the list of units. ‘Where did you get this?’

  ‘From Vogts, downstairs in dispatch. If you want names to go with the units, I suppose you’ll have to see someone in Abteilung III H.’

  ‘Hmm,’ murmured Reinhardt. He put the handwritten list on his desk and placed his hands to either side, leaning over it. 369th (Croat) Infantry Division. 1st Mountain Division. 7th SS Prinz Eugen, recalling his run-in with Stolić last night. 118th and 121st Jäger Divisions. ‘Speaking of paper, here,’ said Reinhardt, taking Padelin’s pathology report on Vukić from his pocket. ‘Can you get that to Hueber, or someone else who speaks Serbo-Croat? I want a verbal translation as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Claussen, slipping the report into a pocket.

  ‘What about that appointment with Gord?’

  Claussen shook his head. ‘Gord’s not here. I left you a message.’ He flipped through some of the papers on the table. ‘Here. Gord and the whole Propaganda Company are in Foča, covering Schwarz from there. Have been since 3rd May.’

  Reinhardt remembered that with Brauer, sometimes they would start talking about a case. Just talking, ideas moving back and forth, and sometimes the investigation would take off or move in another direction. ‘The Croats have someone. Someone’s confessed, or is about to.’ He felt, all of a sudden, that he had crossed a line, letting Claussen take the place Brauer once occupied. Still did, even though he was a continent away.

  ‘A put-up job?’ asked Claussen, quietly.

  ‘I’m sure of it. There’s tank-sized gaps in the Croat investigation, but they’re not interested in investigating. And they’re certainly not interested in investigating Hendel’s death, or his involvement in all this.’ He paused, chewing softly on his lower lip.

  ‘So?’ prompted Claussen, after a moment.

  ‘So, I’m wondering whether our command will be happy with the suspect the Croats present, or whether I should keep investigating.’

  ‘You think this suspect can carry the weight of two murders?’

  ‘I’m sure he could if we requested it,’ Reinhardt replied, quietly.

  The two of them looked at each other a moment. It was Claussen who shook his head. ‘Kruger works in III H. You should go and see him with that list. He’ll sort you out for commanding officers and whatever else you’ll need.’

  And just like that, it was over. Any hesitation Reinhardt had was gone, swept away by Claussen’s simple directness. It was like a weight lifted, a weight Reinhardt had not known was there. ‘No time like the present, I suppose,’ he said, nodding to himself.

  Reinhardt walked slowly downstairs, down a corridor of squeaking floorboards and a wall with peeling green paint, until he found the offices of Abteilung III, responsible for the security of the Abwehr and the armed forces. III H was the subsection charged with army security, and Lieutenant Kruger, who ran it, was a genial chap, expansive of girth and appetite. Reinhardt found him peering over his glasses at a file, a single, dim bulb the only illumination in his gloomy office. All four walls were covered in shelves with files with coded numbers up their spines.

  ‘Captain,’ said the lieutenant, standing and pulling off his pince-nez. ‘What can I do for you, sir?’

  ‘I need your expertise, Kruger,’ replied Reinhardt. ‘I need some names to go with some units. These,’ he said, placing Claussen�
��s list on the desk.

  Kruger flipped the list around to read it, raising his eyebrows and lowering his mouth at the corners as he placed the pince-nez back on his nose. ‘Pretty easy,’ he said, walking to a row of files. ‘What do you need this for?’ he asked, over his shoulder.

  ‘Oh, just updating my files,’ replied Reinhardt. ‘In advance of Schwarz.’

  ‘Right,’ said Kruger. He pulled a file out and flipped it open to a cover sheet that bore a list of typed names, all of which save for the last were crossed out. ‘Here you go. 369th Infantry Division. Lieutenant General Fritz Neidholt commanding.’

  ‘The same for the others, please?’

  Kruger went through the list one by one, adding a commanding officer next to a unit that Reinhardt jotted down into his book. 1st Mountain, Lieutenant General Walter Stettner Ritter von Grabenhofen. 7th SS Prinz Eugen, Obergruppenführer Arthur Phleps, handing over command to Brigadeführer Karl Reichsritter von Oberkamp on 15th May. 118th Jäger Division, Lieutenant General Josef Kübler. 121st Jäger Division, Lieutenant General Paul Verhein commanding.

  Reinhardt knew that no self-respecting general would be without his staff officers, and he would have liked to be able to note them down as well. They probably would also have been accompanied to the conference by their intelligence officers, and likely by some of their senior regimental and battalion commanders, but that was asking for too much. This was a good start, but before he went any further he would have to know whether this really was an avenue worth pursuing. ­Reinhardt stared at his list as Kruger looked over his shoulder. What he really needed was to cross-reference this with service history, to find out who among them had served in Russia.

  Kruger snorted. ‘Good luck with that. I don’t have that in­formation.’

  Reinhardt froze. He had not realised he had spoken out loud. ‘Who might?’ asked Reinhardt, trying to keep his voice normal.

  ‘Paymaster might.’