He kills with sorrow in his eyes.
Not the other two. One kills out of curiosity. He is not cruel, simply cold. He watches, observes, writes. But the man with the purple birthmark on his neck, a mark in the shape of a rhombus, he is cruel. He wants to kill. I have seen that look before. He wants you to suffer. Then you can die. Only then is he happy.
I do not know their names. They give no names. They are three anonymous murderers. They are not alike. Not even murderers are alike.
Erwin died of pain.
He is no longer living inside me. I felt him die, and with that I also felt myself die.
Tomorrow, if time still exists, I will write about when I died.
20 February 1945
Her voice speaks to me each night. Always the same words: ‘Why do you want to wait for death? Think of Franz, at the very least.’
I thought I had been thinking of Franz. That is my only defence. He came up to my navel. We could talk. I asked him: ‘Do you want us to run, Franz? We’ll have to leave everything behind.’ And he replied: ‘No.’ I listened.
Of course, I am lying. It is pathetic, lying when I have one foot in the grave. I know not why I wrote that. Why did I write that, God?
No. You won’t answer.
Franz replied the way I wanted him to reply. I asked him simply so that he could say ‘No’. How could he have said anything else?
I was the one who wanted to stay. I couldn’t leave Berlin. It was my city, my country, my life.
And so I denied them.
That was when I died.
I promised I would explain today. I promised myself.
They took Magda and Franz away to shoot them. Magda was caught stealing bread from the soldiers’ barracks. They shot them.
And I did not lift a finger. They would have shot me too, had I done so.
I don’t know what kind of peculiar survival instinct that was. I already knew that I was dead. Why did I choose a long, drawn-out, painful death instead of choosing to die reconciled with my family?
Time is falling now. Here, before my eyes. As I write. The black tower and its old timepiece, the brickwork which has stood for hundreds of years – this very moment, it is falling. The church windows clink delicately with the clamour of the bombs, and framed by the ash-grey smoke of this doomed city’s judgement day, a colourful cloud of glass fragments rises.
It could have been beautiful.
21 February 1945
My name has reached the top of the list. Time has fallen. I saw it fall.
The kindest of the three officers came in to tell me. I would have an hour to prepare myself.
Soon, the little bandage will be pressed to my temple. Someone will watch me through their cell window and think that it is glowing like a lantern.
I do not know what I should say. Soon, the pain will hit me at a level I never thought possible.
That is the price of my betrayal.
28
HE HAD TO admit it. He loved this case already. A couple of days had passed, information was flooding in from both Milan and Stockholm, and he was starting to realise that this was no ordinary case.
It certainly wasn’t ordinary. And nor was Commissioner Italo Marconi. There was something about him.
‘A very good friend?’ he asked, fixing his gaze on the man on the other side of the table.
The man on the other side of the table said: ‘That was how he put it. He was very careful to emphasise it.’
Marconi shook his head. His moustache bristled like reeds in a sea breeze.
‘Signor Sadestatt,’ he said eventually, ‘you think I am Marco di Spinelli’s very good friend?’
‘Not at all,’ said Söderstedt. ‘But he wanted me to think you were. Why?’
‘Because he once managed to get me to gang up on another policeman,’ Marconi said with sorrow in his voice. ‘I reported him for being corrupt. I was wrong, but I only found evidence of that once he’d committed suicide.’
‘He likes playing with the police,’ Söderstedt nodded, trying to imagine himself in a similar situation. Arto Söderstedt accusing Paul Hjelm of being corrupt. Paul Hjelm committing suicide. Arto Söderstedt finding out that Paul Hjelm was innocent.
It was impossible.
The situation was so terribly different.
He hoped that would be the case.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, thinking that it sounded pitiful.
‘Me too,’ said Marconi, pulling himself together.
‘So he doesn’t want to play with me any more?’ Söderstedt asked.
‘Doesn’t seem to. He’s refusing to meet you. What is it you think you’ll achieve with a new meeting?’
‘I want to press him a bit more.’
‘You don’t press Marco di Spinelli.’
‘No, you can,’ said Söderstedt, ‘you just can’t let him realise you’re doing it.’
‘I’m not even sure I’ve understood what you think you found out last time? He knew your old Jewish man, Leonard Sheinkman?’
‘I’m fairly sure he came across him sometime during the war. Do we have no idea at all what he was up to back then?’
‘You’ve read his file. His life is well documented – aside from during the war. He was never a member of the Fascist Party, oddly enough. He’s a self-made man from Milan’s poor quarter. He stood out in the convent school he went to and was taken under the wing of a priest who helped him continue his studies. He became a banker early on, and just after the war he took over one of the leading banks in the city. Exactly how and when that previously respectable bank started to be used for criminal activities is still unclear. We’re always looking for evidence, but we never find any. We’re annoyed we can’t find any evidence.’
Arto Söderstedt nodded slowly. Then he said: ‘Was he going to New York?’
‘No,’ said Marconi. ‘He never leaves his palace these days. It’s over a year since he last left.’
‘I thought so,’ said Söderstedt.
He paused for a moment before continuing.
‘I’d like a sketch of Palazzo Riguardo.’
Italo Marconi glanced suspiciously at him.
‘You want a sketch of Palazzo Riguardo?’
‘Yes. Please.’
‘Maybe you can press di Spinelli without him noticing,’ said Marconi, ‘but you can’t deceive me. Are you planning some mischief that might jeopardise my entire investigation?’
‘Absolutely not,’ Söderstedt replied, feeling like a suspect. It was something he was quite used to.
‘So what on earth do you need a drawing of Marco di Spinelli’s palace for?’ the normally so controlled commissioner blurted out. His moustache started to spin like a helicopter’s rotor blade. He got up from his desk and went over to the window. He seemed to calm down. With his back to his Europol colleague, he continued sullenly: ‘I don’t know what you’re up to, Sadestatt, and that annoys me. I’m extremely worried about seeing years of work being ruined as a result of one stupid mistake from you. What were you thinking, going in and revealing confidential information to di Spinelli?’
‘I’ve already tried to explain that,’ Söderstedt said patiently. ‘He already knows it all. What I told him wasn’t news. We know that he knows and we’re telling him that we know that he knows. That unknown killers threw the wolverines’ henchman to the wolverines. That his man was about to set up an organised prostitution ring on behalf of the Ghiottone in Stockholm. That those prostitutes then went missing. He knows all that perfectly well. And he’s already hunting for them. It’s better if he knows that we know that too.’