Berlin: A Novel

'You'll have to tell me who you mean first.'

'Why, Gennat, of course. Detective Superintendent Ernst Gennat. Fatso Gennat, that's what your bunch used to call him. A great police officer. Inventor of the flying squad for murder cases. We adopted that idea ourselves, it was very successful.' It turned out that Korsakov was a detective superintendent with the Moscow CID, and an admirer of its Berlin counterpart.

'He retired quite a while ago. I think to somewhere in the Rhineland,' Dietrich improvised. 'I'm afraid I don't know any more details.'

'Well, give him my regards if he ever comes to Berlin. Another vodka?'

'No, thank you. You know why I'm here, and I'll need a clear head for that.'

'Chief Superintendent Schluter. Another Berlin CID man. Pity about him. He's waiting next door.' Korsakov opened the door to the next room. 'Please go in. Knock when you've finished.'

The room was empty except for a chair and table, and a stout wooden armchair in front of it. Straps on the arms and legs of this chair left no one in any doubt of the methods of interrogation employed here. The man at the barred window wore a mended drill suit which was the same dirty grey as his thin face.

'I'm Wilhelm Schluter. Don't suppose you want to shake hands with me.'

'Klaus Dietrich. Acting head of the Zehlendorf CID. I'm not your judge.' The inspector offered his hand.

Schluter gratefully took it. 'My successor, are you? What do you want from me, Herr Dietrich?'

'Your help. It's about the murder of a woman back in 1936. You were leading the inquiries at the time, and the files have disappeared. I'd be very glad to know all the details.'

'Why?'

'Three women have been tortured and murdered on our patch.'

Ah. Vaginally abused with a sharp object, strangled with a chain. All of them fair-haired and blue-eyed.'

Klaus Dietrich swallowed. 'How do you know?'

Schluter was pacing up and down. Finally he stopped right in front of Dietrich. 'It wasn't just one murder. There were six of them, between 1936 and 1939.'

'Six?' Dietrich was appalled.

'What the FBI calls a serial killer. At the time I read everything I could about similar cases in the USA, to get more information. That series of murders in Milwaukee, for instance. The murderer tied his victims to a tree and throttled them with his bare hands before raping them. Eighteen redhaired girls and women.'

'Six murders at Onkel Toms Hiitte, all following the same pattern?'

'Only the first was made public. When the second woman was killed, it was clear we were dealing with the same murderer, and that he was fixated on a certain type. The following cases confirmed it. Himmler commandeered the files and put his own people in charge. He ordered secrecy. A manic sex murderer didn't fit the picture of the healthy German nation. He forbade us to say anything more about it.'

And you obeyed his orders?'

'I went on working on the case on my own initiative. It was a challenge to any true investigator, and those Bavarian amateurs in the Gestapo weren't getting anywhere.'

'The murders were all similar?'

'Particularly in the way the murderer played cat and mouse with me. He knew I was after him, and he accepted the challenge.' Schluter laughed soundlessly. 'Case number three. Gerlinde Unger. Probationary teacher at the Zinnowald School. That was in the winter of '38. He buried her in a sandbox at the Onkel Tom U-Bahn station, leaving her face showing. She looked like a Madonna. I found her after he left a clue in my car, a bag of sand. Gritting sand for the roads was mixed with red salt at the time, so I knew where to look.'

'But you still didn't catch him.'

'I was hot on his heels. I hoped the tools he used would lead me to him. But the murders suddenly stopped at the beginning of the war.'

'Because the murderer was called up,' said Dietrich, excited. 'He was away right through the war. Now he's back, and killing again.'

Schluter stopped pacing, and pointed to the sturdy chair with its leather straps. 'They've stopped torturing me. They've got all I know out of me.'

'What advice would you give me, Herr Schluter?'

'Carry on where I left off. Look for the tools he uses, like I said.'

'The chain?'

Schluter did not reply. He was gazing into the distance. 'They'll shoot me soon now. A bullet in the back of the neck at close quarters. It's quick. My men and I did it thousands of times in the Ukraine. Goodbye. I wish you and our country a better future than the one we thought we must murder for.'

Klaus Dietrich hammered on the door. Lieutenant-Colonel Korsakov let him out. A serial killer, how interesting. I wish I could work with you in Berlin.' He had listened to the entire conversation.

Six hours in the sidings at Potsdam because of endless Russian military transports and two laborious inspections by Saxon railway police officers made the journey back to Berlin as bad as the journey out. They passed through Zehlendorf West station at snail's pace, which meant that Klaus Dietrich was able to jump out on the platform and land unharmed. From there it was only a few paces to the police station.

Another woman murdered, inspector.' Franke received him with this depressing news. And we're not a step further forward.'

Dietrich's reaction was matter-of-fact and professional. 'What do we know?'

'The murder was committed around ten yesterday evening, at 198 Argentinische Allee. The victim lived there. Name of Marlene Kaschke. Same type: blonde, blue eyes, worked for the Americans. Usherette in the Onkel Tom cinema. Strangled with a chain like the others. And the autopsy findings match the others too.'

'I'd like to see the scene of the crime. Is the car heated up? We can leave in five minutes.' Klaus Dietrich went to the men's room, where he pulled his trouser leg up above his knee. Groaning, he took off his prosthesis, then hopped over to the wash basin, ran it full and dipped in his reddened stump. The cold water felt wonderful. He dried the scar tissue with his handkerchief and sprinkled powder in the hollow depression at the top of the artificial leg. He always carried a small can of it with him.

The car was ready. Franke stepped on the accelerator, making the Opel cough indignantly. 'The toggle chain.' Dietrich reflected out loud. 'What does that tell us?'

'Nothing much,' said Franke, shrugging. 'You can get a thing like that in any pet shop, if they've opened again. It's what they call a throttle collar, meant for large dogs. If Fido pulls on the leash too hard it tightens round his neck. No, sir, we won't get far that way.'

Ten minutes later they were standing in front of the wrecked facade of Number 198. 'She was hanging from the third floor up there,' the sergeant told him. A tenant in the building found her, man named MUhlberger. As far as we can tell, the murderer pushed the dead woman over the edge. The belt of her dressing-gown got caught in those twisted steel bars, that's what stopped her falling.'

'Or else he was deliberately putting her on show up there,' said the inspector. 'He has a sense of the macabre. Think of the dead girl inside the roll of barbed wire, and that other poor woman in the garbage container.'

They climbed up to the third floor in the intact part of the building. 'Our colleagues have sealed off the apartment.' Franke tore away the official seal, which still bore the eagle and swastika.

A pot of geraniums, used glasses, plates and an empty bottle of champagne stood on the table in the bedroom. Three candles burnt down to their stubs were a reminder of yesterday evening's power cut. Klaus Dietrich looked at the poorly executed picture of a rutting stag in an autumnal landscape that was hanging over the chest of drawers, shaking his head. An order lay on it, under the picture. 'Cross of the French Legion d'Honneur. I wonder what junk dealer she got that from?'

Franke helped himself to a single prune wrapped in bacon which lay on one of the plates, and followed it up with a few peanuts. 'She had a visitor.' He pointed to the rumpled bedclothes.