The statue suddenly made him think of Margarethe, even though there was no facial resemblance to his late wife. He turned away so the lieutenant wouldn’t notice him struggling to maintain his composure. Margarethe was buried in Ojendorf Cemetery but Stave couldn’t face going to visit her grave with the lieutenant. He said nothing and just quickened his pace.
They arrived in time to see a tired pastor, two coffin bearers, and an open grave. The ground all around was frozen to about a metre below the surface. Stave wondered how they’d managed to dig a hole; with pickaxes rather than spades in all likelihood.
The pastor mumbled a prayer, holding a black bible in hands that were blue with cold. He was in a hurry. Stave couldn’t make out a word he said. He and the lieutenant remained in the background, discreetly glancing around them. There was nobody else to be seen. The pall-bearers dragged the coffin over to the graveside and laid it on two planks. Then they opened it and the body wrapped in a grey cloth tumbled out as if falling through a trap door and hit the earth with a dull thump. In the silence it was frighteningly loud. The two men put the lid back on the re-usable coffin and carried it off. They would need it again; that saved wood too. The pastor nodded to Stave and MacDonald and walked off.
‘We needn’t have bothered,’ the lieutenant murmured, clapping his hands together.
‘It was worth a try,’ Stave said. But his voice was muted.
An Old Man
Saturday, 25 January 1947
Stave was sitting in the twilight in his flat, warming his hands on a cup of steaming ersatz coffee, slowly sipping at the bitter liquid. He should really have been up and out long ago, walking the platforms of the main station from early morning, asking for news of his son.
Karl was their only child. They would have liked more, Margarethe and he, but there had just been the one; the doctors never found out why. Karl would be 19 now, Stave thought to himself. If he was still alive, that was.
He wished they hadn’t argued back then when Karl volunteered for the front. Youthful idealism. Bravery. Or just because he despised his father? He had to try to find him.
But on the other hand, Stave was tired. True, he had got out of bed early enough, out of habit, but he’d rearranged the furniture a bit, and chewed on some dry bread with a bit of thin yoghurt. Breakfast and lunch all together. By now it was already past two o’clock in the afternoon and he still hadn’t left the house. He was afraid he would spend yet another weekend searching in vain for his son, afraid of stopping one shabby figure after another to ask in vain if they might know or have seen him, afraid of the empty looks, the shrugs of indifference.
And then the past week at work had got to him. Nothing. Nothing at all. Nobody had responded to the poster offering a reward, not even the usual crazies who as a rule never missed a chance. It had probably been too cold, even for a nutcase, to go out to the nearest police station. But was it really possible, that a young woman could go missing in the middle of Hamburg without anyone noticing? Even if she had no family, no friends, surely there was a neighbour who would recognise her. Stave knew what it was like in the Hochbunker and the other places where people took refuge. If anyone left, their place was taken immediately, as if they’d never been there. But surely the photograph on the poster would have driven even the most hardened bunker-dweller to go to the police.
Breuer and Ehrlich had left him to it, but the chief inspector knew they expected him to turn something up. But what? He had no idea. He felt at his wits’ end, frozen cold and most of all would have liked to just curl up under the blanket on his bed.
So he was almost relieved when there was a knock at the door. He would have to get up to answer it, whoever it was.
When he opened the door to Ruge, Stave knew he could no longer hide away from the real world. The young beat policemen stood up straight and took a deep breath, but the chief inspector interrupted whatever he was about to say.
‘If you’ve come to report the discovery of another corpse, then come in before you say anything,’ he said quietly. ‘No need to announce it to all and sundry in the stairwell.’
The young man gave an embarrassed smile, entered the narrow hallway and removed his cap. ‘I’m sorry, Chief Inspector, it always seems to happen when I’m on duty. I hope that doesn’t start to make me a suspect.’
‘Don’t count your chickens,’ Stave growled, grabbing his gun, coat, hat and scarf, managing at the same time to offer Ruge a cigarette.
This time he didn’t hesitate and took it with a nod of thanks.
‘Where is it?’
‘Lappenbergs Allee, Eimsbuttel.’
‘That’s way over in the west. Why do I have to attend?’
‘The victim is naked, Chief Inspector. And it looks like he’s been strangled. But this time it’s an old man.’
‘That’s a bit different,’ Stave muttered, pushing open the apartment door. ‘Have Maschke and MacDonald already been informed?’
‘Word’s on the way to them now. Herr Breuer wants them all to turn up at the scene. He’s going to be there too.’
That’ll be fun, Stave thought. By the time they got to the scene, on the far side of the Alster, it would be dark; not exactly the best time of day to carry out a search, not least when the boss is watching.
Within a few minutes they were on their way, once more in the old Mercedes with the clunking engine. Stave stared out of the window, trying to find a connection between the killings: both were naked, both had been strangled. But why a young woman and then an old man? What was the link? He suddenly felt ill. It was just hunger and the stale air in the car, he told himself, but he realised there was something else: the ghost of fear.
It was more then 11 kilometres from Wandsbek to Eimsbuttel. Even though Ruge was pushing the Mercedes to the limit, bouncing over potholes and swerving around huge bomb craters, it still took them nearly half an hour. When they finally stopped, Stave was relieved to open the door and climb out. He took deep breaths to get rid of the feeling of nausea in the pit of his stomach, then looked around; this was another working-class district, heavily bombed in the war. The trees along Lappenbergs Allee had either been burnt to the ground or chopped down for firewood. Behind them had been four-storey sandstone apartment blocks, all now destroyed. The previous summer work gangs had gone round pulling down the remaining walls and facades because they were in danger of collapse. Now the area was a bizarre wasteland of rubble and roofing tiles in piles three, five or even ten metres high, with bits of guttering, tangled wiring and ceiling beams protruding from them. Trampled footpaths led here and there between them. The nearest buildings still standing, as far as Stave could make out, were some 150 yards away.
A jeep screeched to a halt almost immediately behind the Mercedes, so close that for a moment Stave imagined it was going to crash into it. MacDonald climbed out and nodded to them. Better than a military salute, Stave thought.
‘Have you ever seen a murder victim before, Lieutenant?’ Stave asked. He wanted to prepare the man in case he keeled over at the sight.
But MacDonald seemed unflustered. ‘I suppose you could say so: I buried enough bodies during the war. But then again, no, insofar as soldiers obviously see things differently to the way the police do.’
Stave gave a mirthless smile and nodded in the direction of the pool of light created by two generator-powered spotlights set up between the piles of rubble. They could hear the hum of the generator. ‘I guess it’s over there.’