March glanced at his son. Pili was transfixed, his little dagger clutched tightly in his hand like a crucifix.
THE coach dropped them back at its pick-up point outside the Berlin-Gotenland railway station. It was after five as they descended from the bus, and the last vestiges of natural light were fading. The day was giving up on itself in disgust.
The entrance to the station was disgorging people — soldiers with kitbags walking with girlfriends and wives, foreign workers with cardboard suitcases and shabby bundles tied with string, settlers emerging after two days’ travelling from the Steppes, staring in shock at the lights and the crowds. Uniforms were everywhere. Dark blue, green, brown, black, grey, khaki. It was like a factory at the end of a shift. There was a factory sound of shunting metal and shrill whistles, and a factory smell of heat and oil, stale air and steel-dust. Exclamation marks clamoured from the walls. “Be vigilant at all times!” “Attention! Report suspicious packages at once!” “Terrorist alert!”
From here, trains as high as houses, with a gauge of four metres, left for the outposts of the German Empire — for Gotenland (formerly the Crimea) and Theoderichshafen (formerly Sevastopol); for the Generalkommissariat of Taurida and its capital, Melitopol; for Volhynia-Podolia, Zhitomir, Kiev, Nikolaev, Dnepropetrovsk, Karkov, Rostov, Saratov … It was the terminus of a new world. Announcements of arrivals and departures punctuated the “Coriolan Overture” on the public address system. March tried to take Pili’s hand as they wove through the crowd, but the boy shook him away.
It took fifteen minutes to retrieve the car from the underground car park, and another fifteen to get clear of the clogged streets around the station. They drove in silence. It was not until they were almost back at Lichtenrade that Pili suddenly blurted out: “You’re an asocial, aren’t you?”
It was such an odd word to hear on the lips of a ten-year-old, and so carefully pronounced, that March almost laughed out loud. An asociaclass="underline" one step down from traitor in the Party’s lexicon of crime. A non-contributor to Winter Relief. A non-joiner of the endless National Socialist associations. The NS Skung Federation. The Association of NS Ramblers. The Greater German NS-Motoring Club. The NS Criminal Police Officers Society. He had even one afternoon come across a parade in the Lustgarten organised by the NS-League of Wearers of the Life-Saving Medal.
“That’s nonsense.”
“Uncle Erich says it’s true.”
Erich Helfferich. So he had become “Uncle” Erich now, had he? A zealot of the worst sort, a full-time bureaucrat at the Party’s Berlin headquarters. An officious, bespectacled scout master… March felt his hands tightening on the steering wheel. Helfferich had started seeing Klara a year ago.
“He says you don’t give the Fuhrer-salute and you make jokes about the Party.”
“And how does he know all this?”
“He says there’s a file on you at Party Headquarters and it’s only a matter of time before you’re picked up.” The boy was almost in tears with the shame of it. “I think he’s right.”
“Pili!”
They were drawing up outside the house.
“I hate you.” This was delivered in a calm, flat voice. He got out of the car. March opened his door, ran round and followed him up the path. He could hear a dog barking inside the house.
Pili!” he shouted once more.
The door opened. Klara stood there in the uniform of the NS-Frauenschaft. Lurking behind her, March glimpsed the brown-clad figure of Helfrerich. The dog, a young German shepherd, came running out and leapt up at Pili, who pushed his way past his mother and disappeared into the house. March wanted to follow him, but Klara blocked his path.
“Leave the boy alone. Get out of here. Leave us all alone.”
She caught the dog and dragged it back by its collar. The door slammed on its yelping.
LATER, as he drove back towards the centre of Berlin, March kept thinking about that dog. It was the only living creature in the house, he realised, which was not wearing a uniform.
Had he not felt so miserable, he would have laughed.
FOUR
That a pig of a day,” said Max Jaeger. It was i seven-thirty in the evening and he was pulling on his coat in Werderscher Markt. “No possessions handed in; no clothing. I’ve gone back on the missing list to Thursday. Nothing. So that’s more than twenty-four hours since estimated time of death and not a soul has missed him. You sure he’s not just some derelict?”
March gave a brief shake of the head. “Too well-fed. And derelicts don’t own swimming trunks. As a rule.”
“To cap it all,” Max took a last puff on his cigar and stubbed it out, “I’ve got to go to a Party meeting tonight. "The German Mother: Warrior of the Volk on the Home Front".”
Like all Kripo investigators, including March, Jaeger had the SS rank of Sturmbannfuhrer. Unlike March, he had joined the Party the previous year. Not that March blamed him. You had to be a Party member to gain promotion.
“Is Hannelore going?”
“Hannelore? Holder of the Honour Cross of the German Mother, Bronze Class? Naturally she’s going.” Max looked at his watch. “Just time for a beer. What do you say?”
“Not tonight, thanks. I’ll walk down with you.”
They parted on the steps of the Kripo building. With a wave, Jaeger turned left towards the bar in Ob-wall Strasse, while March turned right, towards the river. He walked quickly. The rain had stopped, but the air was still damp and misty. The pre-war street lights gleamed on the black pavement. From the Spree came the low note of a foghorn, muffled by the buildings.
He turned a corner and walked alongside the river, enjoying the sensation of the cold night air against his face.
A barge was chugging upstream, a single light at its prow, a cauldron of dark water boiling at its stern. Apart from that, there was silence. There were no cars here; no people. The city might have vaporised in the darkness. He left the river with reluctance, crossing Spittel Markt to Seydel Strasse. A few minutes later he entered the Berlin city morgue.
Doctor Eisler had gone home. No surprise there. “I love you,” breathed a woman’s voice in the deserted reception, “and I want to bear your children.” An attendant in a stained white tunic reluctantly turned away from his portable television and checked March’s ID. He made a note in his register, picked up a bunch of keys, and gestured to the detective to follow him. Behind them, the theme tune of the Reichsrundfunk’s nightly soap opera began to play.
Swing doors led on to a corridor identical to a dozen back in Werderscher Markt. Somewhere, thought March, there must be a Reichsdirektor for green linoleum. He followed the attendant into an elevator. The metal grille closed with a crash and they descended into the basement.
At the entrance to the storeroom, beneath a No Smoking sign, they both lit cigarettes — two professionals taking the same precaution, not against the smell of the bodies (the room was refrigerated: there was no stink of corruption) but to blot out the stinging fumes of the disinfectant.
“You want the old fellow? Came in just after eight?”
“Right,” said March.
The attendant pulled a large handle and swung open the heavy door. There was a whoosh of cold air as they stepped inside. Harsh neon strips lit a floor of white tiles, slightly sloping on either side down to a narrow gutter in the centre. Heavy metal drawers like filing cabinets were set into the walls. The attendant took a clipboard from a hook by the light-switch and walked along them, checking the numbers.
“This one.”
He tucked the clipboard under his arm and gave the drawer a hard tug. It slid open. March stepped over and pulled back the white sheet.
“You can go now, if you like,” he said, without looking round. “I’ll call when I’ve finished.” “Not allowed. Regulations.”