Everybody in Hamburg ended up on the black market one way or another, rich and poor, old and young. Any piece of merchandise might be swapped for any other; any link between two people was possible, however absurd it might otherwise seem. And there was big money too to be paid for lost treasures or things people simply couldn’t get by without. There were things worth killing for, not least because nobody dealing on the black market would go to the police.
‘It might well be something to do with the black market,’ MacDonald agreed.
‘Every damn crime in Hamburg is something to do with the black market,’ Maschke retorted. ‘But we have nothing else to go on. Maybe they were both looters, and one became competition for the other vying for the best patch of rubble to loot. It could be as simple as that.’
Stave nodded. ‘It’s a possibility. But there are others. We have hundreds of missing person cases in town. It would seem that not one of them corresponds to the young woman, and we won’t know about the old man until tomorrow at the earliest. Perhaps we’ll find some sort of common factor amongst the missing person cases.’
MacDonald raised an eyebrow. He obviously wasn’t following Stave’s line of thought. ‘What sort of common factor?’ he asked.
The chief inspector shrugged. ‘I’ve no idea. Maybe we’ll find out that lots of young women have gone missing recently. Or lots of old men. Or that one of our missing person cases was related to a young woman and an old man. What do I know?’
‘Sounds like a pretty vague line of inquiry to me,’ the lieutenant said.
Stave paid him no attention, but he knew he was right. ‘And then there are the DPs, people with no roots here,’ he added. ‘People with nothing more to lose. People who remain unidentified even to the Allied command, people whose movements go unchecked because nobody is interested in them or their business. Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that nobody from Hamburg recognised the picture on the poster?’
‘But we put the posters up in the DP camps,’ Maschke said. ‘People there live cheek by jowl. Somebody would have recognised the victim. And even if none of the DPs wanted to speak up, either because they are afraid or don’t trust the German authorities, a British overseer would surely have recognised her.’
Maschke hauled himself to his feet and began pacing up and down. He’s not happy, Stave thought to himself, probably because he’s realised we haven’t a single decent lead, and the only thing we can be relatively certain of is that sex isn’t involved. That means the investigation might have no need of someone from vice and we’ll send him back to his pimps, Stave reckoned, almost feeling sorry for Maschke.
‘Right then,’ he said aloud, just for the sake of it, ‘let’s admit we don’t really have a clue, literally, for now at least. Therefore we should take every theory seriously, no matter now vague. I’ll organise a major raid on the black market dealers. This coming Monday. We’ll grab a few dealers off the streets and see what we come up with – maybe a rucksack with one strap missing. Or another medallion with a cross and two daggers. Or a spare truss.’
The other two laughed.
‘You, Lieutenant, will look through the missing persons files. Maybe you’ll find some sort of pattern. Don’t be afraid to come forward with anything that strikes you, no matter how improbable it might seem. You never know. And you, Maschke, go round the dentists. And check in with the Street Clearance and Rebuilding Department up at Heiligengeistfeld; the people there are in charge of everything concerned with clearing the rubble and getting rebuilding under way. If anybody’s heard about turf wars amongst the looters, it’ll be the rubble boys.’
I may not like you, but I’m keeping you on board, Stave thought inwardly. Maschke gave a smile of relief.
‘Good idea,’ the vice squad man said.
Maschke and MacDonald left the room. Stave nodded to his secretary before closing the door after them and said apologetically, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to need you in a minute.’
He sat down behind his desk. Time for the bloody paperwork. He opened a new file, for the second murder, and wrote out by hand the details of the corpse’s discovery, then the text for a new poster asking for information. And finally the autopsy request.
When he finally got to his feet to take the pile of papers out to his secretary, he stopped dead in the doorway. MacDonald was still there, chatting away to Erna Berg. They both fell silent mid-sentence at the sight of him, red with embarrassment, just like a pair of teenagers. This could be entertaining, Stave thought. But at the same time he felt something not unlike a pang of jealousy. Only a pinprick, not a dagger plunged into his heart. But even so. Absurd, he told himself.
Stave handed his secretary the documents to be typed up, grabbed his hat and coat, muttered a few meaningless phrases and left the room. The minute he closed the door behind him he could hear the conversation resume, as if someone had dropped a record player needle back in the same spinning groove in the vinyl.
It was Saturday evening. Once upon a time he would have been on his way home with Margarethe and the boy after a paddle steamer trip up the Alster or a long walk along the banks of the Elbe. They would have sent Karl off to bed – knowing perfectly well that as soon as his parents had left the room he would have turned the light back on and immersed himself in some crime novel. Then Margarethe and he would have gone out, to a restaurant maybe, or the cinema. And then later…
What a load of sentimental nonsense, Stave told himself. I must be getting old. Or I’ve got maudlin from seeing too many dead bodies of late. He wandered around town at random, through Rotherbaum and Harvestehude, districts that had hardly been scratched, pleasant urban villas, peaceful and calm. There were some streets where you wouldn’t even have believed there had ever been a war – that was, if you ignored the British jeeps parked in the driveways. The driveways of villas that had been commandeered.
Still, the thought suddenly struck him that the rich had it good. Then he told himself there was no point in replacing one daft line of thought with another.
He must have been wandering about like that for half an hour or so before he found himself on Hoheluft Chaussee with his back to the partly demolished elevated railway station, though there had been no trains running for months now.
Stave shivered. The Hoheluft Chausee was a four-lane dual carriageway but the buildings on either side were not particularly striking. Stave picked up speed along the pavement. He had a goal now. The Capitol. It was a cinema he and Margarethe used to go to. It had survived undamaged and had re-opened. There was no electricity for the elevated railway, but there was for the cinema. People had to prioritise.
He almost ran the 300 metres from the stop to the Capitol. There was no neon lighting, just a poster he could hardly make out in the dark. But the cashier’s office was lit up. He bought a ticket and went in without even asking what film was showing. Who cares; all that mattered was that inside he could warm up. And kill time.
First up was The World in Film: the weekly news, pictures from Moscow and London. Stave let them wash over him. A British warship in some port or other, India maybe, Stalin in uniform. Stave was gradually thawing out. Suddenly, right at the end, there were images of children, nameless unidentified refugee children who had been picked up in Hamburg. The authorities put their photos on the screen in the hope of getting in touch with their parents or other relatives. Four different unidentified children every day. What must it be like to nip into some cinema and suddenly find a photo up on the big screen of your own child, a child you’d maybe long ago given up for dead? A chill ran down Stave’s spine. And at the same time he found himself absurdly wishing Karl might appear on the screen.