‘Good man. And then you called Deubel?’
‘Yes, sir.’
I nodded and started on my second bottle of beer.
‘I take it Orpo knows what this is all about?’
‘Von der Schulenberg had all the Hauptmanns into the briefing-room at the start of last week. They passed on to us what a lot of the men already suspected. That there was another Gormann on the streets of Berlin. Most of the lads figure that’s why you’re back on the force. Most of the civils we’ve got now couldn’t detect coal on a slag heap. But that Gormann case. Well, it was a good piece of work.’
‘Thanks, Tanker.’
‘All the same, sir, it doesn’t look like this little Sudeten spinner you’re holding could have done it, does it? If you don’t mind me saying so.’
‘Not unless he had a telephone in his cell, no. Still, we’ll see if the left-luggage people at Zoo Bahnhof like the look of him. You never know, he might have had an associate on the outside.’
Tanker nodded. ‘That’s true enough,’ he said. ‘Anything is possible in Germany just as long as Hitler shits in the Reich Chancellery.’
Several hours later I was back at Zoo Bahnhof, where Korsch had already distributed photographs of the trunk to the assembled left-luggage staff. They stared and stared, shook their heads and scratched their grizzly chins, and still none of them could remember anyone leaving a blue-leather trunk.
The tallest of them, a man wearing the longest khaki-coloured boiler coat, and who seemed to be in charge of the rest, collected a notebook from under the metal-topped counter and brought it over to me.
‘Presumably you record the names and addresses of those leaving luggage with you,’ I said to him, without much enthusiasm. As a general rule, killers leaving their victims as left-luggage at railway stations don’t normally volunteer their real names and addresses.
The man in the khaki coat, whose bad teeth resembled the blackened ceramic insulators on tram cables, looked at me with quiet confidence and tapped the hard cover of his register with the quick of a fingernail.
‘It’ll be in here, the one who left your bloody trunk.’
He opened his book, licked a thumb that a dog would have refused, and began to turn the greasy pages.
‘On the trunk in your photograph there’s a ticket,’ he said. ‘And on that ticket is a number, same one as what’s chalked on the side of the item. And that number will be in this book, alongside a date, a name and an address.’ He turned several more pages and then traced down the page with his forefinger.
‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘The trunk was deposited here on Friday, 19 August.’
‘Four days after she disappeared,’ Korsch said quietly.
The man followed his finger along a line to the facing page. ‘Says here that the trunk belongs to a Herr Heydrich, initial “R”, of Wilhelmstrasse, number 102.’
Korsch snorted with laughter.
‘Thank you,’ I said to the man. ‘You’ve been most helpful.’
‘I don’t see what’s funny,’ grumbled the man as he walked away.
I smiled at Korsch. ‘Looks like someone has a sense of humour.’
‘Are you going to mention this in the report, sir?’ he grinned.
‘It’s material, isn’t it?’
‘It’s just that the general won’t like it.’
‘He’ll be beside himself, I should think. But you see, our killer isn’t the only one who enjoys a good joke.’
Back at the Alex I received a call from the head of what was ostensibly Illmann’s department — VD1, Forensics. I spoke to an SS-Hauptsturmführer Dr Schade, whose tone was predictably obsequious, no doubt in the belief that I had some influence with General Heydrich.
The doctor informed me that a fingerprint team had removed a number of prints from the telephone box at West Kreuz in which the killer had apparently called the Alex. These were now a matter for VC1, the Records Department. As to the trunk and its contents, he had spoken to Kriminalassistent Korsch and would inform him immediately if any fingerprints were discovered there.
I thanked him for his call, and told him that my investigation was to receive top priority, and that everything else would have to take second place.
Within fifteen minutes of this conversation, I received another telephone call, this time from the Gestapo.
‘This is Sturmbannfuhrer Roth here,’ he said. ‘Section 4B1. Kommissar Gunther, you are interfering with the progress of a most important investigation.’
‘4B1? I don’t think I know that department. Are you calling from within the Alex?’
‘We are based at Meinekestrasse, investigating Catholic criminals.’
‘I’m afraid I know nothing of your department, Sturmbannfuhrer. Nor do I wish to. Nevertheless, I cannot see how I can possibly be interfering with one of your investigations.’
‘The fact remains that you are. It was you who ordered SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Dr Schade to give your own investigation priority over any other?’
‘That’s right, I did.’
‘Then you, a Kommissar, should know that the Gestapo takes precedence over Kripo where the services of VD1 are required.’
‘I know of no such thing. But what great crime has been committed that might require your department to take precedence over a murder investigation? Charging a priest with a fraudulent transubstantiation perhaps? Or trying to pass off the communion wine as the blood of Christ?’
‘Your levity is quite out of order, Kommissar,’ he said. ‘This department is investigating most serious charges of homosexuality among the priesthood.’
‘Is that so? Then I shall certainly sleep more soundly in my bed tonight. All the same, my investigation has been given top priority by General Heydrich himself.’
‘Knowing the importance that he attaches to apprehending religious enemies of the state, I find that very hard to believe.’
‘Then may I suggest that you telephone the Wilhelmstrasse and have the general explain it to you personally.’
‘I’ll do that. No doubt he will also be greatly disturbed at your failure to appreciate the menace of the third international conspiracy dedicated to the ruin of Germany. Catholicism is no less a threat to Reich security than Bolshevism and World Jewry.’
‘You forgot men from outer space,’ I said. ‘Frankly, I don’t give a shit what you tell him. VD1 is part of Kripo, not the Gestapo, and in all matters relating to this investigation Kripo is to take priority in the services of our own department. I have it in writing from the Reichskriminaldirektor, as does Dr Schade. So why don’t you take your so-called case and shove it up your arse. A little more shit in there won’t make much of a difference to the way you smell.’
I slammed the receiver down on to its cradle. There were, after all, a few enjoyable aspects to the job. Not least of these was the opportunity it afforded to piss on the Gestapo’s shoes.
At the identity parade later that same morning, the left-luggage staff failed to identify Gottfried Bautz as the man who had deposited the trunk containing Irma Hanke’s body, and to Deubel’s disgust I signed the order releasing him from custody.
It’s the law that all strangers arriving in Berlin must be reported to a police station by their hotelier or landlord within six days. In this way the Resident Registration Office at the Alex is able to give out the address of anyone resident in Berlin for the price of fifty pfennigs. People imagine that this law must be part of the Nazi Emergency Powers, but in truth it has existed for a while. The Prussian police was always so efficient.
My office was a few doors down from the Registration Office in room 350, which meant that the corridor was always noisy with people, and obliged me to keep my door shut. No doubt this had been one of the reasons why I had been put here, as far away from the offices of the Murder Commission as it was possible to be. I suppose the idea was that my presence should be kept out of the way of other Kripo personnel, for fear that I might contaminate them with some of my more anarchic attitudes to police investigation. Or perhaps they had hoped that my insubordinate spirit might be broken by first being dramatically lowered. Even on a sunny day like this one was, my office had a dismal aspect. The olive-green metal desk had more thread-catching edges than a barbed-wire fence, and had the single virtue of matching the worn linoleum and the dingy curtains, while the walls were a couple of thousand cigarettes’ shade of yellow.