it. For the moment.’
He touched the brim of his hat, turned round and was gone.
‘Fuck!’ Maschke muttered, as soon as the chief was out of hearing range.
But he wasn’t fooling Stave. He could sense an undertone in Maschke’s voice, an undertone he didn’t like: Schadenfreude.
T hey trundled back to headquarters in MacDonald’s jeep without speaking. The dim yellow light of the headlamps made the building façades and piles of rubble seem like the stage set for an Expressionist silent movie. Stave wouldn’t have been surprised if from the corner of his eye he’d seen the bat shape of Nosferatu perched on some ruin, pointing at him with an outstretched claw-like finger. Pull yourself together, man, he told himself. It wasn’t a vampire hewas looking for, but a normal-looking human being with a garrotte or piece of wire in his pocket. Someone who felt no compunction about killing a young woman or an old man.
At the end of Karoline Strasse a frozen policeman was directing traffic with sharp, abrupt gestures: jeeps, British lorries, two hardy civilians battling their way against the icy wind blowing down the street. MacDonald drove slightly nervously towards him. Then a misfire from the undercarriage caused the policeman to jump. MacDonald, spying his reaction in the rear-view mirror, gave a smile of satisfaction. Three minutes later they had arrived.
Stave was astonished to find Erna Berg already waiting for them in his office with something resembling tea poured out. He picked up the warm cup gratefully and inhaled the aroma. Nettles, he guessed. But at least it was hot.
‘What are you doing in here?’ he asked her.
‘Herr Breuer told me there would be work for me today,’ she said. ‘I can take a day off in lieu, sometime when it’s quieter.’
You’ll be waiting a long time, Stave thought to himself grimly. ‘Okay then,’ he said, when they’d all found seats in his little room. ‘So who exactly are we looking for?’
‘Not a sex killer, anyhow,’ MacDonald said.
‘Well then, that just leaves some 900,000 possible suspects in Hamburg.’ Stave leant back and stared at the ceiling as if imagining a ‘wanted’ poster materialising.
‘Let’s start from the beginning again,’ he said, sounding as if he was talking to himself rather than to the others. ‘We have no real clues. What possible connection could there be between a young woman in Eilbek and an old man in Eimsbüttel? A lady of the night and her pimp? Our friends from the Reeperbahn don’t recognise the girl so there’s nothing to indicate that that’s the case. What else could link them? Some place they met? Some common history?’
Nobody said anything. They all knew Stave wanted to answer his own question.
‘The black market, obviously,’ he eventually announced.
It was illegal but omnipresent. Men and women standing around on street corners or in city squares, wandering up and down, faces hidden beneath hats and collars pulled up high. Whispers, gestures. Where else could you get stuff that wasn’t on the ration cards – a radio maybe, a pair of women’s shoes, a pound of butter, homebrewed hooch? In exchange for a wad of 100-Reichsmark notes or some cigarettes. There were raids all the time, but there was nothing to be done about the black market. In the previous year alone the police had confiscated more than 1,000 tons of food, 10,000 litres of wine and 4,800 doses of morphine from army stockpiles, stolen penicillin, even horses and cars.
For many citizens of Hamburg there was something sleazy, something degrading about it all. Standing around on street corners like a hooker. Getting paid next to nothing for some family heirloom salvaged from the rubble, just a few cigarettes for a valuable antique, but 1,000 Reichsmarks for a couple of pounds of butter. Touts and fences were called ‘crust stealers’, just as their like had been back when the Nazis were in charge. But then again, when your shoes fell
He touched the brim of his hat, turned round and was gone.
‘Fuck!’ Maschke muttered, as soon as the chief was out of hearing range.
But he wasn’t fooling Stave. He could sense an undertone in Maschke’s voice, an undertone he didn’t like: Schadenfreude.
T hey trundled back to headquarters in MacDonald’s jeep without speaking. The dim yellow light of the headlamps made the building façades and piles of rubble seem like the stage set for an Expressionist silent movie. Stave wouldn’t have been surprised if from the corner of his eye he’d seen the bat shape of Nosferatu perched on some ruin, pointing at him with an outstretched claw-like finger. Pull yourself together, man, he told himself. It wasn’t a vampire hewas looking for, but a normal-looking human being with a garrotte or piece of wire in his pocket. Someone who felt no compunction about killing a young woman or an old man.
At the end of Karoline Strasse a frozen policeman was directing traffic with sharp, abrupt gestures: jeeps, British lorries, two hardy civilians battling their way against the icy wind blowing down the street. MacDonald drove slightly nervously towards him. Then a misfire from the undercarriage caused the policeman to jump. MacDonald, spying his reaction in the rear-view mirror, gave a smile of satisfaction. Three minutes later they had arrived.
Stave was astonished to find Erna Berg already waiting for them in his office with something resembling tea poured out. He picked up the warm cup gratefully and inhaled the aroma. Nettles, he guessed. But at least it was hot.
‘What are you doing in here?’ he asked her.
‘Herr Breuer told me there would be work for me today,’ she said. ‘I can take a day off in lieu, sometime when it’s quieter.’
You’ll be waiting a long time, Stave thought to himself grimly. ‘Okay then,’ he said, when they’d all found seats in his little room. ‘So who exactly are we looking for?’
‘Not a sex killer, anyhow,’ MacDonald said.
‘Well then, that just leaves some 900,000 possible suspects in Hamburg.’ Stave leant back and stared at the ceiling as if imagining a ‘wanted’ poster materialising.
‘Let’s start from the beginning again,’ he said, sounding as if he was talking to himself rather than to the others. ‘We have no real clues. What possible connection could there be between a young woman in Eilbek and an old man in Eimsbüttel? A lady of the night and her pimp? Our friends from the Reeperbahn don’t recognise the girl so there’s nothing to indicate that that’s the case. What else could link them? Some place they met? Some common history?’
Nobody said anything. They all knew Stave wanted to answer his own question.
‘The black market, obviously,’ he eventually announced.
It was illegal but omnipresent. Men and women standing around on street corners or in city squares, wandering up and down, faces hidden beneath hats and collars pulled up high. Whispers, gestures. Where else could you get stuff that wasn’t on the ration cards – a radio maybe, a pair of women’s shoes, a pound of butter, homebrewed hooch? In exchange for a wad of 100-Reichsmark notes or some cigarettes. There were raids all the time, but there was nothing to be done about the black market. In the previous year alone the police had confiscated more than 1,000 tons of food, 10,000 litres of wine and 4,800 doses of morphine from army stockpiles, stolen penicillin, even horses and cars.
For many citizens of Hamburg there was something sleazy, something degrading about it all. Standing around on street corners like a hooker. Getting paid next to nothing for some family heirloom salvaged from the rubble, just a few cigarettes for a valuable antique, but 1,000 Reichsmarks for a couple of pounds of butter. Touts and fences were called ‘crust stealers’, just as their like had been back when the Nazis were in charge. But then again, when your shoes fell
Similar Books
