That’s all you need, making a fool of yourself, Stave told himself, immediately banishing the thought. ‘You can go,’ he told her. He gave Anna von Veckinhausen a piece of paper with his office telephone number scribbled on it. ‘If anything else should come to mind, ring me.’
‘Thanks,’ she said, folding the piece of paper carefully and putting it in the pocket of her coat. She suddenly looked drained.
Once upon a time Stave would have ordered a patrol car to take the witness home. But not nowadays with the shortage of vehicles and fuel rationing. ‘G’bye,’ he said to her. He intended it to be friendly but the way it came out it sounded more like a threat.
‘Why did you let her go?’ Maschke asked as they watched Anna von Veckinhausen disappear behind another heap of rubble. He and MacDonald had come over to Stave who had given them a brief rundown of his conversation.
‘There’s no reason to suspect her,’ he said defensively.
‘She was in the vicinity of the second murder,’ Maschke came back at him, ‘And she lives in the Nissen huts up by the Eilbek canal, not all that far from where the first victim was found.’
Stave sighed. He had thought of that too, but didn’t want to mention it. ‘In the case of the first murder, she’s just one of thousands living in the area. And today she reported it to the police herself.’
‘I can’t say I see her as someone used to strangling people with a garrotte,’ MacDonald interjected.
‘I can,’ Maschke said.
‘Let’s leave our colleagues here to clear up,’ Stave said wearily. ‘Czrisini will want the corpse. We should go back to headquarters and think this through.’
‘Not so fast, gentlemen, give me five minutes.’
The massive figure in the long dark overcoat, big hat and black leather gloves was Cuddel Breuer. Stave hadn’t seen him arrive.
‘Sorry I couldn’t get here earlier,’ their boss said, ‘but I had a meeting with the mayor. Goddamn this cold,’ he muttered, though he didn’t exactly look as if he was freezing.
‘I’ll have the spot guarded,’ said Stave, after giving his report. ‘One of the uniformed officers will stay here overnight. I hope he doesn’t freeze to death. Tomorrow when it’s light we’ll do a proper search of the area.’
The chief nodded, then looked up at the three detectives. ‘So, what do you think? Is it the same killer?’
It was the question Stave had been dreading. He thought carefully before answering. ‘We will keep all avenues of investigation open,’ he began. ‘There are some indications that it is the same killer – or killers, we haven’t ruled out that possibility. But a few of the clues don’t quite fit the first murder.’
Breuer said nothing, just stood there looking at him.
‘It just isn’t possible that in a city like Hamburg two people can be murdered without anybody missing them,’ Stave said defensively. ‘It would help us if we could find the link between the murderer and his victims.’
What if there isn’t one?’
‘Then it’s going to be difficult,’ he admitted. ‘If we’re really dealing with a killer who chooses his victims at random, then his modus operandi is unpredictable. In the one case he kills a young woman, in the other an old man. One attack in the east of the city, one in the west. In the one case the victim does nothing to defend herself, in the other he has to beat the old man up first.’
‘So what do I tell the mayor in the morning?’ Cuddel Breuer could have been inviting Stave to a picnic.
‘Ask him not to come to any hasty conclusions. It’s a difficult case. We’re going to need some time.’
Breuer scratched his head and sighed. ‘I know, I know. But Hamburg is blocked in by the ice. Coal supplies will only last another few days. We have very little food left. People are freezing to death every day. It’s not easy for the mayor to keep control of the city. Time is the one thing he doesn’t have.’
‘In that case the most important thing is to maintain public order,’ Stave blurted out.
Breuer smiled. ‘Indeed. Nobody wants to shout this thing from the rooftops. I shall advise the mayor simply to ignore it. For the moment.’
He touched the brim of his hat, turned round and was gone.
‘Fuck!’ Maschke muttered, as soon as the chief was out of hearing range.
But he wasn’t fooling Stave. He could sense an undertone in Maschke’s voice, an undertone he didn’t like: Schadenfreude.
They trundled back to headquarters in MacDonald’s jeep without speaking. The dim yellow light of the headlamps made the building facades and piles of rubble seem like the stage set for an Expressionist silent movie. Stave wouldn’t have been surprised if from the corner of his eye he’d seen the bat shape of Nosferatu perched on some ruin, pointing at him with an outstretched claw-like finger. Pull yourself together, man, he told himself. It wasn’t a vampire he was looking for, but a normal-looking human being with a garrotte or piece of wire in his pocket. Someone who felt no compunction about killing a young woman or an old man.
At the end of Karoline Strasse a frozen policeman was directing traffic with sharp, abrupt gestures: jeeps, British lorries, two hardy civilians battling their way against the icy wind blowing down the street. MacDonald drove slightly nervously towards him. Then a misfire from the undercarriage caused the policeman to jump. MacDonald, spying his reaction in the rear-view mirror, gave a smile of satisfaction. Three minutes later they had arrived.
Stave was astonished to find Erna Berg already waiting for them in his office with something resembling tea poured out. He picked up the warm cup gratefully and inhaled the aroma. Nettles, he guessed. But at least it was hot.
‘What are you doing in here?’ he asked her.
‘Herr Breuer told me there would be work for me today,’ she said. ‘I can take a day off in lieu, sometime when it’s quieter.’
You’ll be waiting a long time, Stave thought to himself grimly. ‘Okay then,’ he said, when they’d all found seats in his little room. ‘So who exactly are we looking for?’
‘Not a sex killer, anyhow,’ MacDonald said.
‘Well then, that just leaves some 900,000 possible suspects in Hamburg.’ Stave leant back and stared at the ceiling as if imagining a ‘wanted’ poster materialising.
‘Let’s start from the beginning again,’ he said, sounding as if he was talking to himself rather than to the others. ‘We have no real clues. What possible connection could there be between a young woman in Eilbek and an old man in Eimsbuttel? A lady of the night and her pimp? Our friends from the Reeperbahn don’t recognise the girl so there’s nothing to indicate that that’s the case. What else could link them? Some place they met? Some common history?’
Nobody said anything. They all knew Stave wanted to answer his own question.
‘The black market, obviously,’ he eventually announced.
It was illegal but omnipresent. Men and women standing around on street corners or in city squares, wandering up and down, faces hidden beneath hats and collars pulled up high. Whispers, gestures. Where else could you get stuff that wasn’t on the ration cards – a radio maybe, a pair of women’s shoes, a pound of butter, homebrewed hooch? In exchange for a wad of 100-Reichsmark notes or some cigarettes. There were raids all the time, but there was nothing to be done about the black market. In the previous year alone the police had confiscated more than 1,000 tons of food, 10,000 litres of wine and 4,800 doses of morphine from army stockpiles, stolen penicillin, even horses and cars.
For many citizens of Hamburg there was something sleazy, something degrading about it all. Standing around on street corners like a hooker. Getting paid next to nothing for some family heirloom salvaged from the rubble, just a few cigarettes for a valuable antique, but 1,000 Reichsmarks for a couple of pounds of butter. Touts and fences were called ‘crust stealers’, just as their like had been back when the Nazis were in charge. But then again, when your shoes fell apart and you couldn’t find another pair anywhere on the rations, what else was there to do but hang out with the shady street corner characters?