Number 198, a yellow apartment building. was the only ruin in Argentinische Allee. A stray British bomb had torn it apart from top to bottom. Moonlight illuminated the ghostly scene, assisted by the headlights of Sergeant Donovan's jeep.
Ashburner made his way through the neighbours who had ventured out into the street, ignoring the curfew. A woman dangled from the steel bars that had emerged from the concrete as it burst apart and now protruded, bizarrely twisted, from the third floor. She was swinging back and forth like a doll, hanging over the abyss below from the belt of her dressing gown. Three German police officers in black-dyed uniforms and two military policemen were crawling on all fours towards the edge of the floor. They got a rope under her arms. One of them lay flat on his stomach and cut the belt. Carefully, they lowered her lifeless body, and it landed at Ashburner's feet. The dressing gown fell open. The blue-black indentations around her neck and her bloodstained sex told their own terrible tale.
'Brutally abused and strangled with a chain like the others; said Donovan, his voice strained. 'What do you think, captain?'
'I think this rules out Otto Ziesel as the murderer. You can let him go, sergeant.' Ashburner cast another glance at the dead woman. Strands of her long blonde hair were sticking to her pale cheeks. A few hours ago, in the cinema, it had been prettily arranged and adorned with a grotesque lilac bow.
The back of the property bordered on a strip of woodland that had been plundered for firewood. It had been named Sprungschanzenweg by the town planning department. although the old ski jump for which it was named had long ago been converted into the Onkel Toms Hiitte toboggan run. Young people zoomed down it on their sleighs in winter. At this time of year, the ground was covered with dry pine needles on which the motorbike tyres left no trace. Its rider knew every inch of the way, even in the dark. He pushed the bike into the garage through the narrow door. Old mattresses and broken furniture barred the way to the front of the garage. Even the Red Army men looting immediately after the war hadn't got this far.
'Is that you, son?' asked a voice on the other side of the piled lumber.
'Yes, Mother.'
'Was she blonde again?'
He didn't reply. He had found the satisfaction he couldn't get in any other way. Now he was calm and relaxed, and he didn't want to talk about it. In silence, he put away his gauntlets, goggles and leather cap.
'They'll find you this time.'
He pulled the torn eiderdown over the bike. 'They won't find me, because I don't exist. Goodnight, Mother.'
He left the garage the same way he had come. In Argentinische Allee he joined the gaping crowd outside Number 198. Two ambulance men carried the dead woman past him on a stretcher. Someone had closed her eyes. Her face wore a peaceful expression which unsettled him. He thought of her distorted face and the rattle in her throat that had brought him to climax.
'I have her found, captain,' said a man beside him, in broken English. He had a dachshund on a lead. 'Her name is Marlene Kaschke.'
CHAPTER SIX
THE TRAIN MOVED slowly through the summer landscape of the Brandenburg Mark, where the ugly scars of war had disappeared under the green of the meadows and the yellow of ripening grain. A burnt-out signalman's hut at Krielow reminded passengers of the recent past — as did the stench of the cattle trucks which not so long ago had been taking prisoners to camps, and had been only superficially cleaned since. Anyone who couldn't find room inside stood out on the footboards. Singing and accordion music drifted back from the single passenger car at the front. Some Red Army soldiers were on their way to their unit at Rathenow.
Klaus Dietrich had managed to find himself a place on the roof next to an elderly man with a rucksack and a briefcase, who moved rather pointedly away from him. 'Did I get too close to you?' the inspector could not refrain from saying.
'Not me, it's my eggs. They'd be an irreplaceable loss if they were cracked.'
It turned out that Dietrich's companion looked after the aviary in the Berlin Zoo. 'Two parrot eggs, a number of other rare eggs from Amazonian birds, all in protective packing in my son's sandwich boxes. I'm hoping to get them to safe keeping with the help of a colleague at Leipzig Zoo. Everything's wrecked at our place. How about you? Off on a foraging expedition?'
A business trip.' Dietrich closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sun. He didn't feel like a lengthy conversation.
Outside Brandenburg station, the twisted tracks of sidings stuck up into the air like steel snakes. Broken glass glittered everywhere in the gravel. The train stopped a little way outside the station itself, and the passengers had to make their way across the tracks to the platform. They helped each other up. The barrier at the end had been repaired, and a railwayman in a dusty blue uniform was collecting tickets. Two men, in hats and leather coats in spite of the heat, were inspecting the arrivals through narrowed eyes, and checking the papers of male passengers.
Dietrich was not spared. 'Got a pass.' It was a command, not a question. The inspector showed his ID and the much-stamped red pass. The man waved to his colleague. They took Dietrich's arms and led him out of the station. Several sympathetic glances accompanied him, but most people looked the other way. They didn't want anything to do with men in hats and leather coats, not now any more than in the past.
A black Tatra limousine was waiting outside. The men squeezed in to right and left of Dietrich on the back seat. They stank of machorka and vodka. A third man, wearing a Mao cap, was at the wheel. After driving for twenty minutes they passed several Russian guards and barbed-wire barriers. A tall gate opened, the car rolled through and stopped. They were in the yard of the Brandenburg penitentiary. The gate closed behind them with a booming echo. Will I ever get out of here? Dietrich wondered with mixed feelings.
A red-brick building. Another guard, with a sub-machine gun. Inside, they went down some stairs and along a corridor with a concrete floor. One of Dietrich's companions opened an iron door. The other pushed him into the bare room, which was illuminated by a single bright light. A fat Russian woman in NCO's uniform sat behind a desk.
'Name?' she barked at him.
'Klaus Dietrich. Inspector in the Criminal Investigation Department in Berlin. I have a visiting permit.' He handed her the red paper.
She put it down on the desk in front of her. 'Undress,' she ordered. Dietrich froze. 'Didn't you hear?' His two guards had positioned themselves by the door, arms folded, obviously ready to help. He knew he had no choice. He had entered the lion's den of his own accord, and now it would be unwise to provoke the lion. With studied indifference, he took his clothes off. He kept on his prosthesis, with its shoe and sock. It was his only support: there was nothing else to hold on to.
The Russian woman rose and waddled towards him. She walked slowly all round him, looking him up and down. Then, just as slowly, she waddled back to her desk. She brought a stamp down on the red paper and gave it to him. 'Get dressed,' she ordered, without giving him another glance. Then he understood: the whole thing was routine; every visitor had to go through it.
He fastened his last trouser button. 'Pleased to have met you,' he said wryly. She took him at his word, and a broad smile appeared on her round face.
An officer with NKVD tags on his collar was waiting for him in a large office on the first floor. 'Lieutenant-Colonel Korsakov,' he introduced himself. 'CID Inspector Dietrich, am I right?' He spoke excellent German. A vodka?'
'Thank you very much, Tovarich Lieutenant-Colonel.' After his treatment in the cellar, this reception was reassuring.
Korsakov filled two glasses, and they tossed them back standing up. Now, please sit down. Tell me, how is he?'