Berlin: A Novel

'Her murderer?' The inspector opened the door to what had once been the living room. Less than a couple of paces lay between him and the drop to the street. 'Let's find out if the other tenants know anything.'

Franke knocked on the door of the second-floor apartment with a nameplate saying 'Miihlberger'. A man in a casual jacket opened it. A black dachshund was yapping between his check slippers. ' CID. Sergeant Franke. This is Inspector Dietrich.'

'You're lucky to find me home. I'm off work sick. I work for the Yanks.'

'We'd like to ask you a few questions, Herr Muhlberger.'

'Sure. I mean, I found her.'

'Can you tell us when that was?'

Around ten-fifteen. That's when I take Lehmann here walkies. Only a step or so outside the house because of the bloody curfew. Lehmann likes to do his business on that sandy strip where they're going to build the second carriageway some time. As I was standing there, I could see something pale dangling level with the third floor.'

Franke was sceptical. 'In spite of the dark?'

'I have a strong torch and a few batteries. I was works security guard for Leuna during the war. Only been back a few weeks.'

And you heard a motorcycle start up nearby, I expect,' said Dietrich casually.

'That's right. It moved away pretty quick. An NSU 300. I'd know that chugging exhaust in my sleep. Had a bike like that myself once. Hey, how'd you know, inspector?'

A guess. Go on, Herr Muhlberger.'

'Well, so I shone the beam of the torch up and saw her hanging there. Very sad, sure, but no great loss. Cheap little tart, she was.'

A woman in a headscarf and apron was coming up the stairs. 'That's what he says because she wouldn't have anything to do with him. Brauer, first floor,' she introduced herself. 'She was a good girl, she was, just wanted to be left alone. Who knows what she'd been through.'

'Did she have many men visitors?' asked Franke.

Frau Brauer shook her head. 'Hardly at all.'

'Except the bloke that did her in,' Muhlberger said. 'Fellow with a dimple in his chin.'

Inspector Dietrich pricked up his ears. 'You saw him?'

You bet your life. Just before ten, it was. Come on in, gents. Not you, Frau Brauer.' Frau Brauer moved away with an injured air. The police officers followed Muhlberger into his apartment, as Lehmann growled with hostility. 'Where was I? Yes, right, so just before ten I hear someone coming down from the third floor. I open my door. After all, you want to know who's hanging around the place in these difficult times. Had a candle in his hand. Probably helped himself to it up there so's not to fall down the stairs. I saw the dimple in his chin quite clearly.'

The sergeant was not satisfied. 'Can you describe him in more detail?'

'Had a dyed uniform jacket on.'

A German one?'

'Nope, it wasn't German.'

Franke took a framed photograph off the sideboard. It showed a younger Mi hlberger astride a motorcycle, his booted feet braced in the sand to left and right of it. He was wearing gauntlets, and had pushed his protective goggles high up on his leather helmet, just like his companion. Both their faces were stained with dust.

'My mate Kalkfurth and me,' said Miihlberger proudly. After a crosscountry in the Grunewald before the war. We were in the NSKK, the National Socialist Motorcycle Corps. We did some pretty good cross-country runs in those days. It wasn't all bad back then.'

The sergeant put the photo back in its place. 'What happened to your mate?'

'Kurt? Killed during the march into Poland, right at the start of the war.'

'This man in the dyed uniform jacket with the dimple in his chin — would you recognize him?' Dietrich returned to the subject.

'Should think so.'

'Thank you, Herr Muhlberger. We'll ask you to come to the police station and make a formal statement.'

'That's OK, inspector. I guess you'll get him soon.'

'I guess so,' replied Franke, giving him a sharp look.

'Chief Superintendent Schluter knows of six more murders before the war which match ours to a T,' Dietrich said when they were back in the car.

'You mean this Marlene Kaschke is the tenth?' asked the detective sergeant, incredulous.

'Looks like it, Franke. According to Schluter, the murders stopped when the war began.'

And now the war's over they're happening again. That suggests a man back from the army, sir.'

'It does, doesn't it? Someone who lived here before the war, and knows his way around the Onkel Toms Hutte quarter very well.'

'Muhlberger. He was away all through the war, he's only been back a couple of weeks. He could have hidden his motorbike somewhere. And he has a job with the Americans, too.'

Dietrich shook his head. 'That doesn't necessarily make him the murderer. But he's our only witness. I know from Captain Ashburner that there's a card index of all the Germans employed by the Yanks, with their photos. We'll look through it with Muhlberger. Who knows, this man with the dimple in his chin may be there.'

A heap of something was smouldering in the garden behind the terraced house. Ben looked at it with dire foreboding.

'Looks as if someone didn't know what to do with all his old Nazi junk and dumped it in our shed,' said his grandfather, confirming his fears. A complete Party uniform with all the bits and bobs. Take the poker, boy, and keep pushing the stuff into the flames.' Dr Hellbich went back to the house.

Ben poked about among the remnants, downcast. There was no hope of saving anything but the dagger of honour. He smuggled that upstairs under his shirt, and freshened up the steel blade and leather sheath with Sidol and shoe polish. Then he polished the swastika on the hilt with an old sock.

The gullible Clarence P Brubaker was in transports of delight. A truly historic artefact!'

'The Fuhrer himself gave it to him.'

'I just must meet him,' the hopeful aspirant to the Pulitzer Prize urged.

'The Fuhrer?'

'The man with the dagger. Hitler's right-hand man, didn't you say? When can I meet him?'

'He wants five cartons of Chesterfields for his dagger.'

Brubaker agreed at once. 'Five cartons of Chesterfields, OK. You take them to him and tell him he'll get another ten from me in person. He can pick the time and the place. That's a fair offer, right?'

'I'll tell him. But I can't promise anything. He's very cautious.'

Mr Brubaker found an army bag made of olive-green sacking, which comfortably held the five cartons of cigarettes along with a pack of a hundred pieces of chewing gum as a reward for Ben. This payment for such a sensational underground story seemed well worth it to Hackensack's star reporter. 'You can keep the bag,' he said.

You don't have an empty potato sack, do you?'

'I don't think so, but look around in the cellar if you like.' Brubaker had long since given up wondering about the peculiar things that Germans wanted.

There was no potato sack in the cellar, just a mountain of dirty washing going mouldy. A horde of Red Army soldiers had dragged the building's washerwoman away from her boiler and into the garden, where thirty men raped her before the thirty-first killed her. That had been four months earlier. Ben pulled a large pillowcase out of the heap and took it upstairs with him. Only a fool would carry an olive-green bag, easily identifiable as the property of the US Army.

'Don't forget to mention the ten cartons of Chesterfields,' Brubaker told him.

Ben boldly followed this up. 'Fifteen would be better.'

'Fifteen it is.'

Satisfied, Ben fetched himself a bottle of Coke from the fridge, put the pillowcase with the bag inside it over his shoulder, and marched straight off to Rodel the master tailor, who noted down credit for five cartons of Chesterfields on the suiting with his tailor's chalk. He added credit of a few hundred marks for the bag, chewing gum and pillowcase too.