From
Onkel Toms Hütte, Berlin (Death in Berlin) by Pierre Frei

[Opening pages of ONKEL TOMS HÜTTE, BERLIN, by Pierre Frei, pp. 7-–24]

CHAPTER ONE

The boy never took his eyes off the soldier. The American removed the last Lucky Strike from its packet and carelessly tossed the empty wrappings away on the tracks. He lit the cigarette and waited for the U-Bahn train now coming in from Krumme Lanke station to stop. If the Yank was going just one station up the line to Oskar-Helene-Heim, then he would throw the half-smoked cigarette away there after getting out, it would fly through the air in a wide arc, and the boy could retrieve it.

A dozen cigarette butts of that length, the burnt end neatly trimmed away with a razor-blade, would earn him forty marks. But if the Yank was going to travel further the prospects weren’t so good, because then he would probably tread out that coveted cigarette end on the floor of the car or chuck it out of the window, which was open in the summer weather. Yanks were entirely indifferent to such things.

With equal indifference, the US Army quartermaster had fenced in a square mile around Onkel Toms Hütte U-Bahn station with barbed wire, leaving only one narrow passage for access by German passengers. The streets on both the longer sides of the station were off limits too, and had become a shopping centre for the soldiers billeted in the requisitioned apartment buildings around it.

Decades before, the landlord of a pub to which people resorted on excursions to the nearby Grunewald had called his establishment after Harriet Beecher Stowe’s affecting novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the Berlin Transport Company adopted the name for its new U-Bahn station built in late 1929. ‘Uncle Tom’ quickly became a standard concept among the American occupying forces in the year 1945.

The U-Bahn train stopped. The Yank boarded it, cigarette in the corner of his mouth, leaning casually on one of the upright poles. Another passenger followed him in and closed the door. The railwayman in the middle of the platform raised his signal disc. The guard at the front of the train knocked on the window of the driver’s cab to pass the message on, and swung himself up into the car as it started moving.

The boy watched the train leave. He had decided against the cigarette end. As soon as the stationmaster with the signal disc turned his back, he jumped down on the tracks to salvage the empty cigarette packet.

The stationmaster’s head appeared above him. “What d’you think you’re doing down there?” he asked brusquely.

“Looking for cigarette ends.”

“Found any?” The man was thinking of his own empty pipe.

“No cigarette ends. Only a dead woman.” The boy pointed casually to something beside the tracks.

The stationmaster sat on the edge of the platform, put his disc down on it and lowered himself, grunting. Two slender legs in torn, pale nylon stockings protruded from one of the side bays through which, if you bent double, you could reach the cables below the platform. The feet were shod in brown pumps with white leather inserts and high heels, currently the latest fashion in the USA. The white inserts showed dark red splashes of blood.

“She’s American. Go get the Yanks.” The man clambered back up on the platform and hurried off to his cubby-hole, where he took the receiver of the phone off its rest and wound it up. “Krumme Lanke? The Onkel Tom stationmaster here. There’s a dead woman under Platform One. Don’t let any more trains through from your end. Message over.”

The boy’s name was Benjamin, but everyone called him Ben. He was a lad of fifteen, dark blond, and showed no visible trace of the events of the last few months: the British and American bombing, the chaos of the final days of the war, the havoc when the Red Army marched in. He had simply filed these experiences away in his head to make room for new impressions. New impressions included Glenn Miller, chewing gum, Hershey chocolate bars and automobiles a mile long, first and foremost the Buick Eight, closely followed by the De Soto, the Dodge and the Chevrolet. New impressions included brightly coloured ties, narrow ankle-length trouser legs, Old Spice and Pepsi Cola. All these items arrived overnight when the Russians vacated half Berlin, in line with the agreement between the Allies, and Western troops moved into the ruined capital.

Ben climbed the broad flight of steps to the ticket windows and walked away down the barbed-wire passage and into the dusty summer heat, which instantly made him thirsty. In his mind he decided on a cold sparkling drink, woodruff flavour. When you took the top off there was a promising pop, and the fizz rose into the air like a djinn from its bottle. But there wasn’t any woodruff-flavour sparkling drink, just the dusty heat and a lingering aroma of DDT insecticide and spearmint chewing gum. Everything even smelled different now the Yanks were here.

Ben strolled slowly over to the guard on duty at the entrance to the prohibited area. Haste would have suggested dismay. “Dead woman on the U-Bahn,” he said casually.

“Okay, buddy. It better be true.” The man on duty reached for the phone.

The call came from the Military Police. Inspector Klaus Dietrich took it. “Thanks, yes, we’re on our way.” He hung up and called, “The car, Franke.”

“Just heating up. It’ll take a good half hour.” Detective Sergeant Franke pointed through the window at an old Opel by the roadside. It had a kind of sawn-off bathroom geyser fitted at the back, into which a policeman was feeding scraps of wood. Only when they were smouldering hard enough would they generate wood gas to drive the engine. There was no gasoline available for the Berlin Zehlendorf CID.

“We’ll take the bikes,” Dietrich decided. He was a tall man of forty-five with prematurely grey hair, and prominent cheekbones as a result of living on starvation rations. His double-breasted suit, the only one Inge had managed to retrieve from their bombed-out apartment on the Kaiserdamm, now hung too loose on him. He dragged his left leg slightly. The prosthesis, fitted at the auxiliary military hospital in the Zinnowaldschule where he spent the end of the war, chafed in hot weather. His wound had saved him from imprisonment, and he was able to go home in May. Inge and the boys were living with her parents in Riemeister Strasse, quite close. Inge’s father Dr Bruno Hellbich had passed the Hitler years in compulsory retirement but otherwise unharmed. Now he was back in his old position as a Social Democrat district councillor at Zehlendorf Town Hall, and he had been able to get his son-in-law a job as a police inspector. The Zehlendorf CID department needed someone to run it temporarily, and Klaus Dietrich’s pre-war job as deputy managing director of a security services firm, together with the fact that he carried no political luggage, made up for the loss of his left leg below the knee and his lack of criminological training. In any case, he had soon found out that a sound knowledge of human nature was perfectly adequate for dealing with black marketeers, thieves and housebreakers.

It took them fifteen minutes to reach the U-Bahn station, where their police passes got them through the crowd now gathering.

“Oh shit, my old man,” muttered Ben, making off.

An American officer was standing on the tracks with a military policeman and the stationmaster. They had laid the dead woman down on her back. She was blonde, with a beautiful face and regular features. Her blue eyes stared into space. Strangulation marks suffused with blood were notched in her delicate neck. Klaus Dietrich pointed to her nylon stockings, her nearly new pumps, and her fashionable, pale summer dress. “An American,” he said, gloomily. “If a German did this there’ll be trouble.”

Sergeant Franke scratched his head. “I feel as if I’d seen her face before.”

The officer straightened up. “Which of you guys is in charge here?”

Klaus Dietrich introduced them. “Inspector Dietrich and Sergeant Franke, Zehlendorf CID.”

“Captain Ashburner, Military Police.” The American was tall and slim, with smooth fair hair. His alert, intelligent gaze rested on the German. He introduced his companion: “This is Sergeant Donovan.” The sergeant was a stocky man with broad, powerful shoulders and a crew cut.

Dietrich raised the dead woman’s left arm. The glass of her watch was shattered; the hands stood at eleven forty-two. “Probably the time of death,” he commented, and beckoned the stationmaster over. “Who was on duty here yesterday evening, about quarter to eleven?”

“Me, of course,” said the man in injured tones. “Until the last train, that’s at 22.48 hours, and then again from six in the morning. They hardly give us time for a wink of sleep.”

“Were there many passengers waiting for the last train?”

“A couple of Yanks with their girls, two or three Germans.”

“Was the dead woman among them?”

“Maybe, maybe not. I had to clear the 22.34 to Krumme Lanke for departure. You don’t look at the passengers separately. Nobody kind of sprang to my eye. Only that weird nutcase with goggles and a leather cap. Like a sky-pilot off on a tobogganing trip, I thought, if you catch my drift.”

“Goggles and a leather cap?”

“Well, kind of motorcycling gear, I’d say. But I didn’t really look close. The lights at the far end of the platform have been a write-off for weeks.”

“So he was standing in semi-darkness.”

“The only one who was, now you mention it. The other passengers were waiting where the lights still work.”

“Did you see him get in?”

“Nope. I have to give the guard the signal to leave up at the front of the train. ‘Scuse me, here’s the eleven-ten.”

“Hey, Kraut, take a look.” The MP sergeant handed Dietrich a shoulder-bag. “Not an American, one of yours. Karin Rembach, aged 25. Works in our dry cleaning shop over there.” He pointed to the shopping centre on the far side of the fence. “I guess her boyfriend bought her the shoes and nylons in the PX. Man called Dennis Morgan, stationed in Lichterfelde with the Signal Corps.”

Klaus Dietrich opened the bag. An identity card for a German employee of the US Army, together with a note bearing the soldier’s name and his barracks address, showed where the sergeant had gathered his information. “I’d like to ask this Morgan some questions.”

“A Kraut wants to interrogate an American? Don’t you know who won the war?” barked the sergeant.

“I know the war’s over and murder’s a crime again,” replied Klaus Dietrich peaceably.

For a moment it looked as if the beefy Donovan was about to take a swing at him, but the captain intervened. “I’ll question Morgan and send you the statement. In return, you can let me have the results of the autopsy. A Medical Corps ambulance will take her wherever you like. Goodbye, Inspector.”

Sergeant Franke watched the Americans leave. “Not very friendly, that bunch.”

“Privilege of the victors. Franke, what do you think about the man in the goggles?”

“Either a nutcase, like the stationmaster says, or someone who doesn’t want to be recognized. Inspector, why do they keep calling us Krauts?”

Klaus Dietrich laughed. “Our transatlantic liberators believe we Germans live entirely on sauerkraut.”

“With pork knuckle and pea purée.” There was a sudden note of nostalgia in the detective sergeant’s voice. A siren came closer and died away. Two GIs with Red Cross armbands carried a stretcher down the steps. The morgue in Berlin Mitte had been bombed out and was in the Soviet sector anyway, so Klaus Dietrich had the corpse taken to the nearby Waldfrieden hospital, where his friend Walter Möbius was medical superintendent.

“I’ll do the autopsy later,” said Dr Möbius. “I have to operate on the living while daylight lasts, and then go on until they cut off the electricity at nine. If you really want to watch, we’ll have the power back at three in the morning.”

A young man clad in the best pre-war Prince of Wales check suiting nonchalantly lit an extra-length Pall Mall outside the U-Bahn station. Ben looked enviously at the thick crepe soles of his suede shoes. He knew the man slightly. Hendrijk Claasen was a Dutchman and a black marketeer. Only a black marketeer could afford such a sharp suit. Ben wanted a glen check suit and shoes with crepe soles too. He imagined himself appearing before Heidi Rödel in his made-to-measure outfit, on soles a centimetre thick. Then it would be curtains for Gert Schlomm in his silly short lederhosen.

The boy walked home from the station, glad to have avoided his father. Papa would have asked questions. In this case, he would have wanted to know how come Ben was finding dead women on the U-Bahn instead of being at school. Papa had a quietly sarcastic manner of hitting the vulnerable spot.

Not that Ben had anything against school in itself, only its regularity. The chaos of the recent past had brought with it not only fear and terror but adventure and freedom too, and he found it difficult to get used to an ordered existence again.

He made for the back of the house, went into the shed at the end of the garden, and fished his school bag out from under a couple of empty potato sacks. His grandmother was weeding near the veranda. She had dug up the lawn months ago to plant tobacco. The District Councillor was a heavy smoker; she dried the leaves on the stove for him, which made a horrible smell all over the house, but that was the lesser of two evils. Hellbich was unbearable when his body was craving nicotine in vain.

“There’s a special margarine ration at Frau Kalkfurth’s. Ralf’s down there queuing already. Go and take over from him, Ben – your mother will relieve you later. She’s gone to the cobbler’s. With luck he can repair your brother’s sandals again – the poor boy’s going around in gym shoes full of holes.”

“Okay.” Ben climbed the steep stairs to the attic room that he shared with Ralf, and tossed the school bag on his bed. Before going downstairs again he put the empty cigarette packet away with the razor blade in the table drawer. He’d work on it later.

There was no one in the kitchen. He pulled out the left-hand drawer of the kitchen dresser, reached into it, pushed the bolt down and opened the locked cupboard door from the inside. This was where Inge Dietrich kept the family’s bread rations: two slices of dry bread each in the morning and again at lunchtime. They ate a hot meal in the evening.

Ben hacked himself off an extra-thick slice and clamped it between his teeth, returned the loaf to the dresser, closed the door and bolted it again. Then he closed the drawer again and went off to take his little brother’s place in the queue. On the way he ate his looted slice of bread in bites as small as possible. That way you prolonged the pleasure.

Frau Kalkfurth’s shop had once been the living room of a terraced house in the street known as Am Hegewinkel, “Game Preserve Corner”. Other nearby streets of brightly painted houses were called Hochsitzweg, Lappjagen and Auerhahnbalz, suggesting ideas of hides, hunting and capercaillies. A local mayor who was a keen huntsman had given them these names at some time in the past. The garage built on to the back of the house was used to store goods. It had once held the family car, for the Kalkfurths had owned a big butcher’s shop in east Berlin. The butcher’s shop had long been in ruins, and the car, an Adler, was only a memory.

The widow Kalkfurth, having worked in a similar line before the war, was granted the valuable permit to run a grocery store after the fall of Berlin. Her former trainee butcher Heinz Winkelmann stood behind the improvised counter, while she herself managed the little business from her wheelchair, sticking her customers’ ration coupons on large sheets of newspaper in the evenings. Someone from the rationing authority collected them once a week. She lived alone in the Am Hegewinkel house: discreet gifts of butter, smoked sausage and streaky bacon to the people in the housing department kept her from having homeless people billeted on her.

The queue outside the shop was grey and endless. Many of the women were in old pairs of men’s trousers and wore headscarves. There were no hairdressing salons these days. Ralf was quite far at the back, brushing a broken-off twig back and forth in zigzags over the pavement, while Frau Kalkfurth’s tabby kitten tried to catch it. The game came to a sudden end when a dachshund at the very end of the line broke away and attacked the kitten, which shot off into the garage.

Ralf grabbed the yapping dog’s collar and hauled it back to its owner. “Can’t you keep your dog in order?” he asked in penetrating tones.

“None of your impertinence, young man. Sit, Lehmann!” The man took the dog’s lead.

Ralf went into the garage. Old vegetable crates and broken furniture towered up in an impenetrable wall at the back of it. “Mutzi, Mutzi,” he called to the kitten. A plaintive mew replied from the far side of the lumber. There was no way through. Or was there? The mouldering doors of the wardrobe in front of him were hanging off their hinges, and the back of it was smashed. The boy wriggled through. The little cat was crouching on a shabby eiderdown in the dim light. “Come on, Mutzi. That silly dachshund’s back on its lead.” He picked up the frightened animal, which had dug its claws into the eiderdown so hard that the quilt came up with it, revealing the saddle of a motorbike underneath. Carefully, the boy freed the kitten’s claws and put the eiderdown back in place. Then he scrambled back into daylight with his protégé.

“There you are,” Ben greeted him reproachfully. “Where’s your place in the queue?”

“Behind that woman with the green headscarf.” Ralf let the kitten go and strolled away. Reluctantly, Ben took his slot in the queue. He hated standing in line.

He cut the waiting short by imagining a man in a white jacket with a steaming pan full of sausages slung on a tray in front of him, like that time on the banks of the Wannsee. He had been very small then, and it was before the war. He could almost hear the squelch as the man squirted mustard on to the paper plate from a squeezy bottle. It made a delightfully rude noise.

His mother arrived around six. Gritscher the master cobbler had repaired Ralf’s sandals for the umpteenth time. “A real miracle-worker,” she told the woman next to her. “Off you go and do your homework,” she added, turning to her son. “And take your brother with you.”

“What’ll it be, Frau Dietrich?” Winkelmann beamed over the counter, looking healthy and well fed. He had direct access to all good things.

“150 grams of powdered egg, a loaf and the extra margarine ration. Can you let me have the powdered egg as an advance on next week’s rations?”

“I’ll have to ask the boss about that. Come here a moment, will you, Frau Kalkfurth?” he called into the back room.

Martha Kalkfurth had dark hair with strands of grey in it, and a smooth, round, ageless face with a double chin. She sat heavily in her wheelchair, steering it skilfully past sacks of dried potatoes and cartons full of bags of ersatz coffee.

“Can Frau Dietrich have 150 grams of powdered egg in advance?”

“Please, Frau Kalkfurth, it’s only until Monday when the new ration cards begin.”

Martha Kalkfurth shook her head. “No special favours from me, even if your husband is with the police.” She turned the wheelchair and went back into the room behind the shop.

Ben found his brother outside the Yanks’ ice-cream parlour. One of the soldiers was leaning down to hand him a large portion of ice-cream. Ralf was usually a successful beggar; few could resist his angelic face. The two boys scooped up the chocolate and vanilla ice on their way home, using the wafers that came with it. Life was okay.

The soft strains of Starlight Melody drifted out of Club 48, along with the tempting aroma of grilled steaks, arousing impossible longings in the Germans hurrying by. The US Engineers had put the building together from prefabricated parts in three days, and within a week it was completely fitted out with a kitchen, cocktail bar, tables and dance floor.

The commandant of the American sector of Berlin, a two-star general from Boston, had handed over the club to the private soldiers and NCOs and danced the first dance with his wife before withdrawing, with relief, to the nearby Harnackhaus, where the commissioned officers and upper ranks of civilians drank their dry martinis.

Jutta Weber worked in the kitchen of the Forty-Eight. A pretty blonde aged thirty, she peeled potatoes, washed dishes, and heaved around the heavy pots and pans in which Mess Sergeant Jack Panelli and his cooks concocted hearty dishes of no particular sophistication from their canned and frozen supplies.

At nearly eleven she set off for home. Her bicycle light faintly illuminated her way back along Argentinische Allee. The buildings were in darkness; there was no electricity in this part of town until three in the morning. Next came Steglitz. The coal shortage and the state of the turbines in the city power stations, half of them destroyed in air raids, made power rationing essential. A pedestrian out late emerged from the darkness. Jutta rang the bicycle bell on her handlebars. It made a shrill sound, but he kept coming straight on. She swerved, caught the edge of the pavement with her front wheel and lost her balance. For a moment she lay there in the road, helpless. Headlights approached, lighting up the face above her for the fraction of a second. The lenses of a large pair of goggles flashed. Then the face disappeared into the darkness again.

An open jeep stopped. The driver jumped out. “Everything okay?” He helped her to her feet, and she recognized a captain’s insignia and the Military Police armband. He was very tall, about one metre ninety, she estimated.

“Everything okay,” she assured him. “I’m on my way home. I work at the Forty-Eight.” She showed the identity card that allowed her, as a German employee of the army, to be out going home after curfew. Somewhere nearby the engine of a motorbike started up. The sound rapidly receded.

“Your light’s not very strong. Easy to miss seeing an obstacle.” Obviously he hadn’t noticed the man with the goggles. “I’ll take you home.”

“There’s really no need,” she protested, but he had already lifted her bike into the back of the jeep, and she had no alternative but to get in.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Straight ahead, then right into Onkel Tom Strasse.”

He started the engine. She looked at him sideways, but there wasn’t much of his face to be seen under his helmet in the darkness. “Are you always so late going home?” He had a calm, masculine voice that inspired trust. A bit like Jochen, she thought sadly.

“I never finish before eleven, except Wednesdays. I get off at seven then.”

“You want to be very careful at night. You never know who may be prowling around in the dark.” He turned into Onkel Tom Strasse. Number 133 was one of the two-storey apartment buildings on the right, painted in bright colours in the twenties by an architect with gaudy tastes. He helped her out of the jeep and lifted her bike down.

“Thanks, Captain. You were a great help.”

“It was a pleasure, ma’am.” He touched his hand to his white helmet.

Nice American, she thought. She opened the front door of the building, locked it from the inside, and took her bike down to the cellar, where she secured it with a chain and padlock. Then she went quietly upstairs. The little dynamo lamp hummed as she switched it on.

The top apartment on the left had fallen vacant when the Red Army marched in and its tenant, a National Socialist local group leader, shot his wife and himself. It had three rooms. The Königs and their twelve-year-old son Hans-Joachim lived in one, Jutta had the room next to theirs, and the Housing Department had given the room opposite to Jürgen Brandenburg, just released from POW camp, a small, dark-haired man in his late twenties wearing blue Luftwaffe fabric.

The door of the Königs’ room was open. “Come on in, Frau Weber, sit down, this is just getting interesting,” cried Herr König, in high spirits. He poured potato schnapps. “From my brother’s secret still. He has an allotment garden in Steglitz. Like a little drink?”

“No, thank you, Herr König.”

“Well, where were we, Captain?”

Brandenburg’s dark glasses for the blind reflected the candlelight. Hands tilted at an angle, he was demonstrating one of his countless fights in the air. “So the Englishman comes down from the clouds. A two-engine Mosquito. Dangerous craft, that, with three guns on board. I swerve aside. He dives down past me, it takes him a moment to regain height. I wait for him to climb past me, then I rake his underside. Ratatatat – boing – bull’s-eye! He’s flying round me in a thousand pieces. My twenty-fifth victory in the air. I got the Knight’s Cross for it – presented by him personally.”

“Bravo!” Herr König was quite beside himself. “The Knight’s Cross. Think of that, Frau Weber.”

Jutta’s reaction was cool. “I’d rather think how it’s all over now, and he is frying in hell instead of handing out gongs. Haven’t you men had enough of such rot with your murderous games of cowboys and Indians?”

Brandenburg leaped to his feet. “I’m not taking that about rot!”

“Then don’t talk it, okay? Goodnight, everyone.” In her room she lit a candle and took it into the bathroom to clean her teeth. The strong-tasting American dentifrice concealed the horrible chlorine flavour of the tapwater. As she fell asleep she saw Jochen in her mind’s eye. He had been killed at the very beginning of the war. The men’s voices next door rose in excitement. She wondered, bitterly: will it never end?

The motorcyclist was disappointed and angry. He had been watching his victim for days before deciding she was worthy. Carefully, indeed lovingly, he had chosen her from among a number of blonde, blue-eyed candidates. Not everyone passed the test.

He had been so close to her, and then the jeep ruined everything. Who knew how long he’d have to wait for another opportunity?

He took every precaution, but he had nothing to fear at this time of night. Unseen, he put the bike back in its hiding-place, where he also kept the goggles, gauntlets and leather helmet. The rest of his route was hidden in darkness. It was not far to his home.

He went straight to bed, put out the light and waited patiently for the dream. The dream was always the same: he sank deep into the chosen one’s blue eyes, stroked her long blonde hair, kissed her beautiful full lips as she willingly opened them to him. She sighed as he penetrated her. He was a wonderful lover, with strength and stamina. But when he woke up he was an awkward fool again, a clown who had no idea how to approach a girl.

It had been like that with Annie. Annie, blonde and blue-eyed, who worked in Brumm’s Bakery and Cake-Shop opposite the U-Bahn station. He spent endless Sunday afternoons sitting in the front garden of the café, where she served him, ordering countless cups of coffee and pieces of cake, following every move she made with his eyes. He financed his excessively generous tips from the cash-desk of the family business. She said, “Thank you very much, sir,” nicely, and bobbed a little curtsey. He didn’t realize that she was laughing at him.

He gave her flowers and chocolate and a pair of silk stockings, but she just laughed. “You’re out of your league, sonny boy!” His pink, youthful face belied his age; he was twenty-five. But the diamond ring from his mother’s jewel box changed things. She put it on her finger and said, “Come up and see me tomorrow evening.” She had an attic room above the cake-shop.

He arrived from work on his motorbike late that Monday. He was still wearing his butcher’s overall. She was ready, waiting for him. Her naked body shone pale in the light of the big candle beside the bed. He stood there with arms hanging down, not daring to touch her; he didn’t know where to look. She helped him out of his overall. Something clinked. “What’s that, then?” Embarrassed, he showed her the cattle chain that he had left in his pocket by mistake.

Quick-fingered, she undressed him. When she saw his tiny member she spluttered with laughter. All the same, she tried hard. But it was no good, he was too tense. Shrugging her shoulders, she abandoned the attempt. “Come back when you’ve grown up, little sissy!” she mocked him, dressing herself.

He didn’t want to hurt her, let alone inflict any injury. He only wanted her to be his. That was the deal. He grabbed hold of her. She resisted and kicked out at him, like a calf resisting slaughter. He reached for the chain that had always tamed recalcitrant calves. Her resistance was soon over. He pulled her panties down and took her by force. The candle in its holder was the substitute for his manhood. He took her stertorous breathing to be the sound of orgasm. An overwhelming climax shook him as he rooted about in her, letting her go only when she stopped moving.

No one saw him carry her out into the front garden in the dark and sit her at one of the tables, her dress pulled up to show her bloodstained sex. He wanted people to know he had possessed her. As for the ring, he removed it from her finger.

It had been like that the first time, and it was the same whenever his craving grew too much for him and there was only one way to satisfy it: with a young, blonde, blue-eyed woman and a cattle chain.

Three in the morning. The basement smelled of formalin and decomposition. Thankfully, Klaus Dietrich let the nurse put a mask over his mouth and nose. The body lay on the marble slab, a well-grown young woman with slender limbs.

Walter Möbius had been a medical officer with the Afrika Corps. “We had refrigeration problems there too. Your Karin must be buried as soon as possible.”

“My Karin! Heavens, what do you think that sounds like? I never knew her. But I’d like to know how and when she died.”

“Last night, around eleven o’clock. Strangled with a chain about the thickness of your finger. Here, you can see the impressions its links left in her neck. But that’s not all.” The doctor pointed to the young woman’s genitals. Her blonde pubic hair was clotted with blood. He picked up a speculum and gently opened the dead woman’s thighs. The inspector tactfully turned away. “The brute,” said Möbius, after a brief examination. “Some sharp object. Forcibly inserted and then moved vigorously back and forth.”

“A chain with a clog to lock it in place,” said the inspector, thinking out loud. “Using a chain like that, he could throttle her with one hand while he used the other to …”. He stopped. “Around eleven at night? Probably just before the last train left at 22.48. The platform was almost empty and half the lights weren’t working. The murderer would have been waiting in the shadows. The throttle chain would have stifled her screams of pain. And when he’d finished with her he pushed the body down on the tracks, jumped after it, hauled the corpse out of sight into the bay under the edge of the platform, clambered up again and waited for the last train, cool as a cucumber. It could have been like that.”

The doctor put the speculum in a dish. “Nurse Dagmar undressed the body. She wasn’t wearing any panties. Does anyone know anything about her?”

“Sergeant Franke thinks he’s seen her face somewhere before, but he can’t remember exactly where.”

“I’m going to open up the body now. Want to stay and watch?”

“No thanks. I can’t promise not to keel over. One of our men will come and pick your autopsy report up later.”

Dr Möbius looked at the beautiful corpse with pity. “I wonder who this Karin Rembach was?” He picked up his scalpel.

[The next section, pp. 25–71, traces Karin’s story up to her murder. As a country girl of seventeen she becomes stage-struck when a theatrical company visits the area. She makes friends with its members, and herself ends up a film star for the famous UFA film studios, using the stage name of Verena van Bergen. This explains why Sergeant Franke thinks he knows her face – he has seen her featuring in glamorous movies. After the war, a denazification tribunal bans Karin herself from practising her profession for three years – although unwittingly, she had betrayed the unpatriotic sentiments of a fellow actress and friend. She therefore takes a job with the American forces.

The action then returns to the investigation by Klaus Dietrich and Captain Ashburner, with whom Jutta Weber gradually becomes involved. It is Jutta who finds the next body: Helga Lohmann, aged 35, also working for the Americans. The next section tells her story. The following pages are from the first part of it.]

[pp. 90–108]

Helga

The building was on the outskirts of the Uncle Tom area, in Sophie-Charlotte-Strasse: six spacious apartments occupying the ground floor and the two floors above. Helga Lohmann had inherited it from her parents when they died on a skiing vacation, buried under an avalanche. The Lohmanns lived in the ground-floor apartment on the right, where Reinhard Lohmann also had his tax adviser’s office. Down in the cellar he had set up a small-bore rifle shooting range for his Sturmabteilung group. Once a week the sound of shots echoed through the apartment building. The attitude of its inhabitants to these Brownshirts, family men who were no longer as slim as they used to be, was one of amused tolerance.

“Your husband doesn’t mind, I hope?” Helga asked her tenant, pretty black-haired Frau Salomon from the second floor, one Wednesday evening in the entrance hall. She now discovered, from his wife, that Leo Salomon was a good shot himself. He often used to go hunting with his late father, and he had applied to join the Brownshirts’ rifle squad.

“All our big boys like to play with guns, don’t they?” said Helga cheerfully.

“They turned him down,” Frau Salomon confided. “We’re Jewish, you see.”

“Such nonsense,” said Helga firmly. “I mean, you both go to church at Easter and Christmas, just like us, and you give to the Führer’s Winter Aid fund. I’ll have a word with my husband.”

“They’re nice people, and they pay their rent on time. Herr Salomon’s not a novice either. I mean, he often went hunting with his father,” said Helga to her husband at supper.

Reinhard Lohmann carefully put three slices of sausage on his bread and butter. He was a powerful man of thirty-six, with thinning hair and moles on his forearms. He had married Helga, a nurse ten years his junior, in 1930. Until then Helga Rinke had worked on the children’s ward of the Charité hospital, where she became pregnant by a young doctor. Lohmann knew about that, but her ownership of the apartment building and the rental income it brought in promised security. He was not a particularly successful tax adviser.

“No, not Salomon, can’t be done.” He put a fourth slice of sausage on his bread, where there was really no room left for it. It hung over the edge.

“Why not? You could do with another good marksman for the next regional match, you said so yourself.”

“Yourself – yourself,” babbled little Karl, bringing his spoon down vigorously on his semolina, which his mother had decorated with swirls from a jug of raspberry syrup.

Karl was six. He had been born after the Lohmanns married, and Reinhard Lohmann had unhesitatingly acknowledged him as his son. That was before the baby showed signs of mongolism: a large round head, slanting eyes, small, podgy, deep-set ears, a flat nose and a thick tongue. After that Lohmann avoided being seen with the boy in public.

To Helga, her son was the most normal child in the world. She simply ignored stares or tactless remarks, and there were not many of those anyway in her small world between the U-Bahn station and the Riemeister Eck, because people had long ago become used to the child’s looks, and they liked his blonde young mother.

“Why not?” Helga repeated, mopping a few splashes of semolina off the waxcloth table cover beside Karl’s plate. “Eat properly,” she told her son.

“I did try to recruit Salomon,” Lohmann defended himself. “But there was a query from higher up – was I crazy, trying to sneak a Yid into our ranks?”

“You mustn’t call him that – he’s a good German citizen. You should have a word with your school friend Olbrich.”

Günther Olbrich and Reinhard Lohmann had both volunteered for the army in the last year of the Great War, while they were still at school. They never got as far as the front, but were soon sent home to take their school-leaving exams. Olbrich studied law and became a legal adviser to the National Socialist party. After Hitler came to power the Party leadership appointed him head of the legal department in the administrative region of the Berlin Gauleitung. He had excellent connections with senior Party members, and was even once invited to the Obersalzberg as a guest.

Lohmann joined the Party as soon as the Nazis won their electoral victory, hoping for professional advantages which somehow never came his way. With his friend’s help, he made it to deputy Sturmführer in “that comic band of warriors,” as Helga called the SA, but such a position was hardly a profitable career.

He changed the subject. “Günther’s given us two tickets for the Olympic Games. We could get the car out on Saturday.” Helga had inherited the Brennabor at the same time as her parents’ apartment building, but she got behind the wheel only when Reinhard insisted. He himself couldn’t drive.

Helga was radiant. “Oh yes, let’s take a picnic. We can leave Karl with the Salomons. He’d be happy, wouldn’t you, Karl? You like little Ruth.”

“Little Ruth,” the boy echoed her. His eyes shone.

They drove out to the Reich Sports Stadium on Saturday morning. Beautiful weather contributed to the festive mood. Everyone seemed happy and carefree. Several swastika banners fluttered in the summer breeze, but the flags of the guest countries were in the majority, and the scene was dominated by the elegantly clad ladies of Berlin rather than by brown uniforms.

The newly built stadium was an impressive piece of architecture. “This really shows the world what we can do!” said Helga enthusiastically, focussing her grandmother’s opera glasses on the Government grandstand. She saw the Führer, in good spirits and wearing his white uniform jacket, and Göring gesticulating with animation, his round face gleaming in the sun. She could identify Hess, the deputy Party leader, by his thick eyebrows. The other Nazi grandees were unknown to her.

She looked down at the arena. “That American, Jesse Owens – doesn’t he look fabulous? Such a lovely brown. Wow, they’re off! See how fast he runs! Yes, yes, yeeees! He won!” She jumped up in delight.

“If our colonies hadn’t been stolen from us it’d be a German black winning the medals now,” muttered Lohmann in annoyance.

Helga opened the picnic basket. “Like a sausage sandwich and a beer? The bottles should still be cold. I wrapped them in the Morgenpost down in the cellar.”

“Do we get a beer too?” Günther Olbrich’s voice. He introduced his companion. “This is Ulla Seitz.” The young woman with the dark bob beside him greeted them with some reserve. “Have we missed much?”

“The hundred metres,” said Lohmann, pouring the beer. “You’re late.”

“Couldn’t make it any earlier,” explained his friend. “The final fitting at my tailor’s. White tie and tails are compulsory at the Staatsoper tonight. The Reich Government is giving a reception for the Games. The King of Bulgaria and the Crown Prince of Italy will be there – think of that!”

“What colour is your evening dress?” Helga asked Ulla Seitz with interest. The question earned her a nasty look and the sharp answer, “I’m not invited.”

“You could have been a bit more tactful,” her husband reprimanded her when they were home. “Ulla Seitz is Olbrich’s secretary and his mistress.” They were sitting listening to the latest results of the Games on the radio. Helga had fetched her son from the Salomons on the top floor, and he was nestling close to her, listening open-mouthed to the words he didn’t understand coming out of the bakelite box. Now and then he gurgled happily. Automatically, she wiped the saliva from his lips.

Lohmann was making pencil notes. “If this goes on we’ll have more gold medals than the Americans.” Karl moved away from his mother to clamber up on his father’s lap, but Lohmann pushed him away. “Time to go to sleep,” he said brusquely.

“If only you could love him,” Helga sighed later in bed.

On 10 May 1940 German troops marched into Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, Winston Churchill became the new British Prime Minister, and the German authorities in occupied Poland sent the first prisoners to a new camp called Auschwitz. The war was nine months old, and it was Karl’s tenth birthday.

In the morning, mother and son went to the shopping street near Onkel Toms Hütte U-Bahn station. Helga was making for Frau Gerold’s bookshop. She sometimes went there to borrow a book from its lending library section.

“I think I have something for you – you like historical novels, don’t you?” The bookseller’s assistant took a large tome off the shelves. “Try this – The Queen’s Physician. The story of Dr Johannes Angelus Weiss, physician to Queen Christine of Prussia, Frederick the Great’s wife. Very exciting, lots of love interest.”

“Yes, thanks, I’ll borrow it.” Helga smiled shyly. “We’ve been meeting in here for years, haven’t we? And I don’t even know your name.”

“Jutta Weber. And you’re Frau Lohmann, aren’t you? Your name’s in the card index. You can keep the book for three weeks without any extra charge because it’s so long. And what do you like to read?” Jutta Weber stroked the boy’s misshapen head. She had known him since he was in his pram and was used to the way he looked.

“It’s Karl’s birthday, so I brought him to choose something for himself.”

“Happy birthday, Karl.”

Karl gurgled, and stuck the Walt Disney version of The Three Little Pigs under his arm.

They had a birthday party in the afternoon. Helga made coffee, and milky cocoa for Karl. She lit the ten candles round the birthday cake, and Karl enthusiastically blew them out. “Again!” he demanded. Helga humoured him and lit them again.

“And now for some shooting.” Reinhard Lohmann had bought his son a simple airgun. They took it down to the cellar. After a little instruction Karl, shrieking with delight, handled the gun with unexpected skill. He had been making a certain amount of progress since he started at special school. The lead projectiles were shaped like tiny hourglasses and struck the tin target with a dry click. Lohmann took the airgun and immediately hit the bull’s-eye, but Karl scored an eight. There was more unspoken sympathy between father and son than ever before.

“Come on up, you two!” Helga was waiting impatiently. “Now for Mama’s present.” She took Karl into the bedroom, and ten minutes later they reappeared, Karl in black shorts and a brown shirt, with a belt, shoulder-straps and a cravat. It was a uniform copied from the Boy Scouts, and was worn by the Hitler Youth boys aged ten to fourteen, when you became a member of the Jungvolk and were known affectionately as a Pimpf, a “little squirt”. Karl looked grotesque.

At first Lohmann was speechless. Then he managed to utter a strangulated, “Out of the question.”

“What’s out of the question?” asked Helga defiantly. “They all join the Jungvolk at ten. I want our son to join in and be a Pimpf like everyone else.”

“Join in!” agreed Karl eagerly, grimacing because he couldn’t control his facial muscles. “Pimpf,” he added.

“Think of his condition,” said Lohmann, trying again.

“He’s strong and healthy. Come on, Karl, let’s blow those candles out again. And on Monday we’ll go and register you with the Jungvolk.”

Lohmann silently disappeared into his office. When Helga went to ring her sister, she heard his voice on the other phone. “…got up as a Pimpf, would you believe it? That little monster will have everyone laughing at us.”

“No, no, of course that won’t do,” his old school friend Günther Olbrich agreed. “We’ll find some solution, don’t you worry.”

She quietly put the phone down. He will be a Pimpf, she thought defiantly.

On Saturday Helga Lohmann visited her sister, who was in her ninth month of pregnancy. She stayed overnight and went home on Sunday afternoon. Reinhard was waiting for her. He had Günther Olbrich with him.

“Dr Olbrich, how nice! I’ll make coffee. Would you like a piece of birthday cake? Where’s Karl?”

“That’s what we want to talk to you about.” Olbrich cleared his throat. “You see, your husband has volunteered for an officers’ training course. After taking it he’ll be commissioned and go to the front as a lieutenant, so he decided that Karl would be better off in a Home than in a single-parent family.”

“Lieutenant Lohmann – that sounds fabulous!” Helga rejoiced. “You’ll look really dashing in an officer’s uniform! And you don’t have to worry about me and our boy.” Then the import of Olbrich’s remarks began to dawn on her. “You surely haven’t … I mean, Karl isn’t …?”

“He’s been in the Home since yesterday. Believe me, it’s for the best,” murmured Lohmann.

“What kind of Home? I’m going to fetch him back at once.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible without his father’s permission,” Olbrich put in. “And in view of the medical records his father has made a sensible decision.”

“He’s not Karl’s father!” she screamed. “He’s a useless failure living on my money. Show your friend the accounts, Reinhard, show him how little you earn. Decision? What kind of decision? Since when have you made the decisions?”

Lohmann rose to his feet. “We must go now. Günther’s driving me to Döberitz. After the course I’ll be home on short leave. We can talk it over then.” He picked up his suitcase. He had planned it all down to the last detail, and now he was running away to avoid argument.

“You coward!” she shouted after him. “Where’s my son?” Her cries echoed through the stairway of the building until her voice grew fainter, and at last all she could do was weep inconsolably.

The Salomons were taken away on Monday, in an open truck with some twenty people already crowded together on its load surface. Herr Salomon had put his arms protectively around his wife and child. He wore the Iron Cross First Class on his jacket, and his face was set like stone. Frau Salomon had lowered her eyes as if she felt ashamed. Little Ruth waved. Helga waved back, indifferent. Only a few days ago she would have protested vehemently against such injustice, she would have said she’d write to the Führer about it. Now all her thoughts were for her son who had been taken away from her.

She sat down again and dialled the next number in the phone book. An impersonal female voice answered, listened briefly, and then said what Helga had already heard a dozen times that morning: they had no ten-year-old called Karl Lohmann in that establishment.

“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” she murmured, and looked up the District Court. The District Court passed her on to the Family Court, where they listened to her patiently and put her through to the judge dealing with such matters. He said, in reserved tones, “When the father of the child has consulted a senior Party authority, and that authority has approved his decision, then our new guidelines are that this replaces all other legal decisions affecting the child’s commitment and admission to an institution.”

“You mean that as his mother I don’t have any say?”

“You’d better talk to your husband, Frau Lohmann. Try to persuade him to change his mind. Bear in mind, above all, that he can tell you where your son is. Then at least you can visit.”

That was it! She’d speak to Reinhard. He would cave in at once without his friend Olbrich’s support. An hour later she was on the suburban train to Döberitz, where she made her way to the officers’ training course.

“Lady called Helga Lohmann,” the guard on duty at the camp gates announced by phone. “Wants to see Reinhard Lohmann, a cadet on the training course.”

Soldiers dressed in heavy cotton drill were doing pointless exercises among the huts, with an NCO shouting at them. Was Reinhard there? She couldn’t make out the faces. A young officer hurried up to her. “I’m Lieutenant Hartlieb. Please come this way. Colonel Marquardt is in his office.”

The colonel was a grey-haired man in his fifties. “We didn’t expect you quite so soon, Frau Lohmann.”

“You were expecting me?” Helga didn’t understand.

“Didn’t our despatch rider reach you?” The colonel seemed baffled for a moment. “Well, never mind. My deepest sympathy, dear lady. A dreadful accident, and on the very first day of the course.”

An exploding gun barrel had shot away half of Officer Cadet Reinhard Lohmann’s head during target practice.

“They sent us rifles taken from the Poles for training purposes. Poor quality arms. Your husband would have made a good officer. Of course we’ll give him a military funeral. Again, let me express my condolences. If there’s anything else I can do for you …?”

Helga shook her head in silence. Relieved, the colonel escorted her out.

On the way home she sat alone at the very back of the train. She imagined Reinhard’s face before her, young and laughing, the way he was when she first met him. But the grief would not come. Her only thought was: now he can’t tell me where Karl is.

One person could tell her, though. Helga Lohmann hoped to see him at Reinhard’s funeral, but Reinhard’s old school friend preferred to send a large wreath and a note of condolence on hand-made deckle-edged paper. He had Party business in Munich, he said by way of excuse on an accompanying note. On the day of his return she went straight to see him.

National Socialist Legal Adviser Dr Günther Olbrich was in the Berlin Gauleitung offices in Hermann-Göring-Strasse. Helga gave her name to the doorman, and was sent to a first-floor waiting room furnished with comfortably upholstered chairs.

When the door of the adjoining office finally opened half an hour later, she leaped hopefully to her feet. It was Olbrich’s secretary. She had lost weight, and there was a hard set to her mouth. He’s dumped her, thought Helga.

“It’s Fräulein Seitz, isn’t it? Helga Lohmann – we met at the Olympics, remember? Goodness me, that’s nearly five years ago. How are you?”

The secretary’s manner remained cool. “My condolences. I know Dr Olbrich has already sent you his. He asks you to forgive him – he can’t spare any time at the moment.”

“Never mind. I can wait.”

“As you like.” A cold glance, and Ulla Seitz disappeared into the office next door.

Endless waiting. She played mind games. Was the peasant in the oil painting behind her sowing seed with his right hand and putting his left foot forward, as she thought? She turned to check. He wasn’t sowing seed at all but scything wheat. Remembering what pictures showed, a game she often played with Karl. Their old GP Dr Weiland had recommended it. “Good memory practice for the boy.”

She could see Karl before her, hands over his eyes, guessing the contents of the reproduction of Rembrandt’s Man in the Golden Helmet over the sideboard. “He’s got – got a green hat with a feather in it, ’n there’s a – a sparrow sittin’ on it, ’n the sparrow – the sparrow got a chocky in its beak.”

“Really?” she used to ask in mock amazement. Usually he laughed and laughed because he had led her up the garden path so successfully. She couldn’t help smiling. Then reality came over her again like a cold shower. They’d taken her Karl away from her.

Her watch showed five o’clock. Had she dozed off? Had Dr Olbrich called for her meanwhile? Hesitantly, she opened the door of the office. Ulla Seitz was putting on lipstick in front of the mirror. “The office is closed.”

“Dr Olbrich?”

“Gone home. He’s had a very stressful day. Come back tomorrow.”

She was there just before nine next morning and intercepted him at the entrance. He stopped for a moment. “Frau Lohmann, what a terrible accident. I really am so sorry.”

“Please tell me where my son is.”

“I’m in a hurry. The Gauleiter’s expecting me. Get my secretary to make you an appointment.” And he got into the lift.

She went slowly upstairs. Ulla Seitz was just pouring tea. “Would you like a cup?”

“No, thank you. I’m supposed to ask you to make me an appointment. I don’t need any appointment. I want Dr Olbrich to be good enough to tell you where they’ve taken my son, and then I want you to tell me. I have to find him. He’s so helpless without me.”

“I don’t know that I can help you.” Yesterday’s chilly tone was back in her voice.

Helga had bent her head. She said, quietly: “It grows inside you, you see, and you’re so happy when it begins to kick in the womb. You just can’t wait for it to arrive. And at last there it is. Your own baby. The most beautiful baby in the world, even if he isn’t the same as the others. You love your child, you’d do anything in the world and more for him. He needs you, just as you need him, but they take him away from you.” She raised her head and sought the secretary’s eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like when everything’s suddenly so empty.”

Ulla Seitz was not evasive this time. “Empty,” she repeated bitterly. “So empty.” She paused for a moment, and then went on. “He made me have an abortion. Surely I must understand that a man in his position couldn’t have a pregnant secretary. Oh yes, I understood. Most of all I understood that he wanted someone younger. She’s eighteen and works on the switchboard. A pretty, naive little thing. In return I keep my position of trust, with a good salary and pension rights. Your son is in Klein Moorbach hospital. It’s a private mental hospital with a department for children who don’t fit in with today’s ideas. Be careful. You won’t get anywhere as a mother wanting her child back. One wrong step and you’ll never see your son again.”

“Thank you.” Helga reached for her hand, but Ulla Seitz drew back, and spoke in a deliberately loud voice. “Dr Olbrich is a very busy man. Please don’t trouble to come here any more. I suggest you write to him.” Olbrich had entered the room.

Klein Moorbach was a remote hamlet on the outskirts of the Spreewald. Helga had brought her old bicycle on the train with her. She cycled along minor roads. Bright green birch trees, larks in the blue sky, flowery meadows – and on the path through the fields a tractor noisily spreading its stink of diesel. She took no notice of this springtime idyll. As camouflage, she had brought her easel and painting things with her. Helga had a moderate talent for water colours.

She went into the Klein Moorbach village pub. Fanfares on the radio were preparing listeners for a momentous announcement: France had surrendered. The men sitting the tables raised their heads. “Whole damn thing’ll soon be over, then,” said one of them.

A smell of vegetables freshly cooked in butter and fried meat came from the kitchen. “Meat loaf,” the plump landlady told the new arrival. “You’ll need to let me have meat coupons, fifty grams’ worth.”

“Hey, Frieda, don’t you mean bread coupons?” called an agricultural labourer from the bar. The men laughed. Helga laughed with them.

“You lot don’t have to count up those darn snippets of paper,” returned the landlady equably. “You can have vegetables and mashed potato here off the ration,” she added, to Helga. “Like a beer?”

“No, thank you. A seltzer water, please,” said Helga.

“On holiday?”

“My day off. I thought I’d do a little landscape painting. Anywhere specially pretty around here?”

“There’s Moorbach on the edge of the forest,” one of the farmers at the next table suggested. “Only it’s not safe right now. Some nutcase broke out of the loony bin.”

“Loony bin?”

“Klein Moorbach Mental Hospital, they call it. Easier to get in than out again. They call you crazy these days if you so much as squint. But that chap really is a danger.”

The door was opened, and a moustached police sergeant in a green uniform marched in.. “Hey, Erwin, got him yet?” someone asked.

The police sergeant took of his cap and sat down. “One of the task force shot him. Trying to do a bunk in a boat. Bullet through the head at a hundred metres. If they’d chopped his head off right away we’d have been spared the expense. But no, they put the likes of him in a padded cell instead. He abused and killed a dozen boys, I hear.”

Helga was horrified. “But there are children in the hospital too.”

The sergeant cast her a suspicious glance. “How d’you know that?”

Helga corrected herself at once. “I mean, it would be so irresponsible to put a brute like that in with children! High time the Party did something about it.”

“Let’s have a beer, Frieda,” called the sergeant. He didn’t want to know about the Party.

After her meal Helga set out, leaving her bike at the pub. It would not have been much use anyway. Waterways threaded the densely forested landscape, but there was always a tree trunk or a footbridge somewhere to help you across them. After going half a kilometre she reached a wall twice the height of a man, and made her way along it to the entrance. A notice on the railings of the gateway announced:

KLEIN MOORBACH HOSPITAL

RACIAL HYGIENE BRANCH RESEARCH INSTITUTE

The battlements of an ugly late nineteenth-century building rose menacingly beyond the gate. The hospital had originally been the country house of some family of the minor aristocracy. A man with a peaked cap came out of the porter’s lodge with a German shepherd dog on a leash and began going his rounds. The gravel of the forecourt crunched under his boots.

Helga closed her eyes and sent her thoughts flying to the yellow brick building. Mama is here, Karl, she thought. She felt his warmth, as always when he clung to her for protection. He was a good boy, not at all difficult. But he was twice as helpless as his contemporaries, and thus far, far more vulnerable.

She set up her easel under a tree so that she had the place in front of her. “Mama will get you out of there,” she said firmly.

Back home, she took up residence in Reinhard’s old office and embarked on a pitched battle with the authorities. She made phone calls which generally got no further than some underling’s office. She sent letters enclosing a report from their old GP Dr Weiland on the harmless nature of Karl’s condition. “…Care by his mother at home is all that is required. There is no need for hospitalization.”

Some of her petitions and appeals were even acknowledged, weeks later. The reply was always negative. “… Must therefore inform you … not the department responsible … have read your letter … we suggest you apply to … your complaint is not upheld … With German greetings, signed …”

Month followed month in this way. New theatres of war opened up. The German army marched from victory to victory. Helga took no notice. She racked her brains during the sleepless nights. Where there’s a will there’s a way – the old saying kept hammering inside her head. But there seemed to be no way at all to Karl.

She left the apartment only for the most essential purposes. Most of the time she sat there apathetically, waiting in vain for letters and phone calls that never came.

“This can’t go on,” said her sister Monika on one of her rare visits. “Doing nothing like this doesn’t suit you at all.”

“What’s the alternative, then?” asked Helga hopelessly.

“Well, at least don’t sit around like an old lady. Do something!”

And one Monday, Helga Lohmann pulled herself together and went to her old place of employment in Louisenstrasse. She had made an appointment to see the matron. The red brick building of the famous hospital to which King Frederick William I of Prussia gave the name of the Charité in 1727, intending it for the free medical treatment of the poor, basked cheerfully in the sun.

It was less cheerful inside. Young men in striped dressing-gowns thronged the corridors. One-legged cripples on crutches, legless men in wheelchairs, a blond giant with burns on his face and bandaged stumps for hands – the human debris of victorious battles.

A squad of white coats hurried past. “Eugen!” she involuntarily exclaimed.

The tall, grey-haired man leading them stopped. “Helga!”

“Your rounds, Professor,” someone reminded him.

“In a minute.” He took her hand. “At twelve in my office – that’s in Neurosurgery. I’m so pleased to see you.” The smile on his sun-tanned face was radiant.

Her interview with the matron was brief and positive. “Oh yes, we certainly need nursing staff everywhere. A week’s refresher course, and I can use you as a fully qualified nurse. I can’t promise it will be in the children’s ward, but will you come all the same?”

“Oh yes, Matron, I’d be glad to.”

“Good – go down to the personnel department, then, and they’ll see to the paperwork. I’ll ring and let them know you’re coming.”

“In half an hour’s time, if that’s all right. I want to look in on a friend in Neurosurgery for a few moments first.”

Helga was received by a middle-aged secretary. “The professor’s expecting you.” Professor Eugen Klemm was head of the Neurosurgical department at the Charité.

“Helga …” He simply took her in his arms. “I can’t tell you how good it is to see you. How many years has it been? No, don’t tell me, it’ll make me seem even older. Unlike you. You haven’t changed a bit.”

“Flatterer!” Warmth flooded through her, and an unassuaged longing. She drew away from him. “You’re a great man now, aren’t you? What about your private life? Married? Children?”

“Married eight years ago, a daughter aged seven, a son aged five. And you?”

“Married for ten years, widowed a year ago, one son. Our son, Eugen.”

It was a few seconds before he took it in. “Why didn’t you tell me? It would have changed everything.”

“We had a few blissful weeks together. We never planned anything more. A rising junior doctor and a little probationer nurse – it couldn’t have worked out. You wouldn’t be what you are now. And by the way, my husband acknowledged the baby even before he was born, and I had money of my own too, so I didn’t need any help.”

“As simple as that?” There was a touch of disappointment in his words.

“No, Eugen, it wasn’t simple. Karl’s eleven now. He’s a dear boy.” She hesitated, and then came out with it. “They’ve taken him away from me. He’s mongoloid, he doesn’t fit in with today’s ideas of society. They’ve put him in Klein Moorbach. He won’t survive there without me. Help us, Eugen.”

Her revelation obviously hit him hard, but he remained calm and objective. “Klein Moorbach is a private clinic. Its medical superintendent Dr Ralf Urban is an outstanding psychiatrist and neurologist. An expert on severe mental disturbances.”

‘Karl’s not mad,” she said earnestly. “Just slower to develop than other children.”

“I know,” he soothed her. “But, well, it’s seen differently in some quarters. Klein Moorbach is a branch of the Racial Hygiene Research Institute.”

“Yes – what exactly does that mean?”

“I’d rather not go into more detail. Listen, Helga, I know Urban. I can ask him to take you on as a nurse in the children’s section. I’ll think of some plausible reason. You’d have to use your maiden name. In no circumstances must it emerge that you’re Karl’s mother.”

“How do you think I can help that? He’ll rush at me shouting ‘Mama!’”

“You must prevent it somehow. I can’t help you there.”

“And then?”

“You’re a good nurse, you get on well with children. Make yourself indispensable. Stay in Klein Moorbach – with our son. I don’t know how long it will be – a year, two years? But some day these horrors will be over – the Party, the Brownshirts ...”

“Eugen, you mustn’t talk like that. Of course some of the things that happen aren’t right – like with my tenants the Salomons. The Führer doesn’t know everything that goes on. But he’ll make sure it turns out well in the end.”

“Is that what you really believe?” he asked, pityingly.

An oversight in the personnel department worked to Helga’s advantage. “Heil Hitler,” the man at the registration desk greeted her. He wore a Party badge. “Matron rang through. Let’s see. It was in 1929 you left? We really should still have your file. Yes, here we are: Nurse Helga Rinke from Zehlendorf, correct? We won’t need a certificate of Aryan origin, given your blonde German looks. Have any of your particulars changed? Surname, address?” Helga said no, and two days later went to the hospital to collect an identity card with a photograph, made out in her maiden name.

The summons from Klein Moorbach took a little longer. Eugen Klemm had to invent a story for his colleague Dr Urban. “Helga Rinke is an outstanding paediatric nurse. She would certainly be useful to you at Klein Moorbach. Young and very pretty. We know each other a little – privately, if you see what I mean. Unfortunately she’s been getting rather possessive about it. I wouldn’t like my wife to be involved. In fact I’d be grateful for your help, Dr Urban, if you understand me.”

Urban did understand him. One grey Tuesday in November, Helga was standing outside the wrought iron doors of Klein Moorbach Hospital …

[Helga infiltrates herself into the mental hospital and manages to deal with the rest of the staff, and Dr Urban too – he proves to be a sexual masochist longing to meet a dominant woman, and although she is disgusted she plays along with him. She solves the question of Karl’s reaction by telling all the children in the ward to call her “Mama”. It is a horrific eye-opener to discover what the regime is planning for handicapped children. She finds allies among local people who do not like the Nazi regime, and they help her to get Karl away and then provide mother and son with shelter. After a while Karl dies, but it is a natural death in freedom. Helga goes back to Berlin, and after the war gets a job from the German-American Employment Office as housekeeper to an American colonel with a dipsomaniac wife. She meets Professor Klemm again; his wife and children have died in an air raid. He’s going to America, and she will go too – but then the murderer catches up with her.

The next victim to fit the serial killer’s physical ideal is a well-educated, cosmopolitan, multilingual Prussian aristocrat working in the diplomatic service, Henriette von Aichborn, known as Detta, whose pre-war romance with a British counterpart ends tragically. Detta too is working for the Americans after the war when the murderer gets to her.

Next is the Berlin prostitute Marlene – whose post-war path has crossed Detta’s now and then, although they come from opposite sides of the tracks. Marlene, a victim of child abuse as a girl and then exploited by her pimp, lover and ultimately husband, a man who rises rapidly up through the Nazi hierarchy, develops ideas of her own. She ultimately breaks away and joins the French Resistance. In post-war Berlin she is happily reunited with the one man who truly loved her, but then she too is murdered.

Meanwhile Dietrich and Ashburner are still investigating. They are becoming friendly with each other and getting closer to the solution all the time. Ashburner’s relationship with Jutta is going places. His wife Ethel arrives from the States to say she has another man and wants a friendly divorce. At the same time Dietrich’s son young Ben is earnestly pursuing his black market career, aiming to pay for his wonderful suit and captivate Heidi Rödel the tailor’s daughter.]

The following passages are from the final chapters of the book, in which the murders are solved.

[pp. 446–450]

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Crimean orange crop was particularly good this year. Consequently, the manager of the Red Sun kolkhoz arranged a celebration in honour of the victorious Red Army, and after delivering a stirring speech, which was followed by some rousing songs from a choir of Young Pioneers from Odessa, he sent a cart full of the deliciously aromatic fruits on its way “to our brave sons in the conquered capital of the Fascist enemy”. His carefully calculated move was noticed by the Party press and inflated out of all proportion. Soon the word was that a dozen goods trucks of oranges were on their way to the West – a welcome alibi for the manager, who then sold the lion’s share of the harvest on the black market at a hundred times its proper price.

The single cart of citrus fruit did in fact reach Berlin. By that time half the oranges were rotten. The Soviet city commandant had the other, edible half distributed to soldiers with families. Two crates ended up in the hands of Cultural Officer Lieutenant Colonel Talin. He had no family, but was very fond indeed of a young blond soloist dancer called Heinzotto Druschke, to whom he gave one of the crates.

Druschke had survived the Hitler era in the bed of a high-ranking SS officer, a fact which had preserved him from the concentration camps. “Pure self-defence. The man had shocking bad breath,” he drawled to friends after the liberation of the city. As a victim of Nazi persecution he was privileged to get an apartment on Eschershauser Weg in Zehlendorf, where he exchanged the oranges with his neighbour Frau Molch for two bottles of cherry brandy. The sweet, sticky alcohol was intended to help him pull young boys.

The crate of oranges, along with two smoked hams, ten hundredweight of coal briquettes, three hundredweight of potatoes, five litres of cooking oil, and two kilos each of pearl barley, dried peas and haricot beans were the price paid for Frau Hermine Hellbich’s Persian lamb coat. “I have my good thick wool coat,” she explained apologetically. “The boys need something hot and nourishing in winter, and it won’t do the rest of the family any harm either.” She even acquired six packets of Stella brand cigarettes for the District Councillor too.

She put five of the oranges in a bag. “Take that to your father at the police station,” she told her grandson Ralf. “The vitamins will do him good.”

Ralf hurried off. Perhaps there’d be a criminal in handcuffs to be seen at the police station. But Papa was just sitting at his desk. He took the oranges with pleasure. “What a nice surprise. Have one yourself, Ralf. And sit quiet in the corner until we’re finished. Would you like one?” The inspector offered the bag to Sergeant Franke. “So what else is new?”

“Orders from the top brass, no raid like we planned on those black marketeers at Schlachtensee station. Seems they’re displaced persons and we can’t touch them. Riffraff, if you ask me, Inspector.”

“Looks as if our hands are tied there. So let’s keep concentrating on the search for our man.” Klaus Dietrich put a segment of orange in his mouth, pressing it against his palate with his tongue until the cells burst. The deliciously refreshing juice ran down his throat. “Another one, Franke?”

“Thanks very much. I’ll take it home to my wife.” Franke tied the precious fruit up in his handkerchief. “Take my word for it, guv’nor, when we find that motorbike we’ll find the murderer too.”

“I admire your perspicacity. So can you also tell us where to look for the motorbike?”

“In Frau Kalkfurth’s garage,” said a voice from the corner.

Klaus Dietrich was startled. “What did you say?”

Ralf accurately flicked an orange pip into the waste-paper basket. “Her cat was sitting on that old eiderdown. It was covering up the motorbike.”

“When was this?”

“Couple of days ago.”

Franke was sceptical. “So the bike was just standing around in the garage where anyone could see it?”

“You have to get past a whole lot of old junk first, and it’s pretty dark in there,” Ralf told him.

“Is there any other way into the garage?” his father asked.

“Yes, a door out the back,” Ralf remembered.

“Come here.” Klaus Dietrich put his hands on his son’s shoulders. “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

“Didn’t know you were looking for it. Did someone nick it?”

“Listen, son. What we’ve been discussing here is strictly secret. Police business. You’re not to say a word about it to anyone else. Even Mama or Ben.”

Ralf’s chest swelled with pride as he walked home. He was in on strictly secret police business!

Franke was convinced. “So the Kalkfurth son wasn’t killed in Poland at all. He survived the war and now he’s killing again. His mother’s hiding him and the motorbike. Why don’t we put the lady through the wringer? A few hours in the cells will soften her up. We can find some excuse.”

“Take it easy, Sergeant. If there’s anything in what you say we’d be giving him advance warning. And we have no evidence.”

“He’s alive and he’s killing, I feel it in my guts,” insisted Franke. “What do you suggest, guv’nor?”

“We keep a watch on the garage. If our suspicions are right, he’ll come out some time or other with the motorbike to go hunting again.”

Franke was sceptical. “And we chug along behind in our wood-gas racing car?”

The inspector picked up the phone. “Hello, Captain Ashburner. Dietrich here. I think we’re on the trail.” He briefly passed on Ralf’s information, concluding, “We’re going to watch the garage. The problem is, if something happens how do we follow the motorbike? Our mobile stove does fifty kilometres an hour at the most. Of course, if we had a jeep …”

“You can dismiss that idea from your mind, Inspector. The Military Police isn’t a car hire firm. And since by now it’s clear you’re after a German killer, and he’s thoughtful enough not to murder any American girls, I have strict instructions to confine myself to an advisory function.” Ashburner looked at the silver-framed photograph on his desk. “All the same, it’s possible I might be able to help you. I’ll call you back tomorrow. Goodbye.”

The captain straightened the photograph; the cleaning lady had knocked it out of place while she was dusting. The picture showed Jutta and himself arm in arm outside the door of the Wilskistrasse building. They had taken it with the delayed action shutter release, much to Jutta’s amusement, because he looked so funny racing back from the camera on his long legs to stand there beside her. To him, it was more than just a snapshot. It was a public statement of his love. Even Sergeant Donovan, not noted for his sensitivity, refrained from any comment.

Colonel Harold Miles Tucker was less tactful. The city commandant’s adjutant clicked his tongue. “Pretty blonde Fräulein. Nice little morsel for the Uncle Tom killer, don’t you think?”

“Keep your tasteless comments to yourself, Tucker.”

“Only a joke. D’you know what I hold against that damn murderer most, Captain? Killing our Helga. Myra’s back on the gin bottle now.”

“The German police have picked up a fresh trail.”

“General Abbott will be glad to hear it. But that’s not the reason why I came to see you …”

[pp. 461–469]

Inspector Dietrich had told several of the local officers to keep watch on Frau Kalkfurth’s garage round the clock. No luck. “Killers like our man have a sixth sense,” said Franke gloomily.

“More likely he goes through a macabre compulsive cycle.” Klaus Dietrich had been reading several works of criminal psychology on comparable cases. “He’ll be back when the mood takes him again.”

Vollmer put his head round the door. “Captain Ashburner, guv’nor.”

“Come in, Captain. How are you?”

“Fine, thanks.” Ashburner put a small, gleaming metallic box down on the desk. It was about the size of a matchbox. “Know what that is?”

“No idea.”

“Come on, I’ll show you.”

There were two jeeps parked out in the road. Corporal Miller was sitting in the front vehicle smoking his pipe. Ashburner bent down and fixed the box under Miller’s jeep. “A magnet. Sticks like glue. Okay, Corporal, drive on.” Miller stepped on the gas. Ashburner strolled over to his own jeep. “Get in, Inspector. Here, take this.” He handed Dietrich a canvas bag.

“Would you tell me what’s going on?”

“Open it.” Ashburner drove off.

The bag contained a rectangular grey item the size of a cigar box, with switches and buttons, rather like a radio. “A radar device?”

“Not a bad shot, Inspector. Throw the left-hand switch and turn the middle button to the right.” Loud beeping was heard, and soon became weaker. “That’s the little transmitter under Miller’s jeep. The corporal’s driving faster than us. The signal gets weaker as the distance increases. So let’s step on it a bit.” Ashburner accelerated. The beeping tone grew louder, and then suddenly softer again. Ashburner braked. They reversed a little way and turned into the side street they had just passed. The beeping was more and more insistent. They stopped. Miller’s jeep was waiting for them, concealed in the entrance to a building. Ashburner bent down and fished the little box out from under the corporal’s vehicle.

“Amazing.” Dietrich was enthusiastic.

“A loan from our Office of Strategic Services. They’re already working on a smaller version, one you can stick under a suspect’s shoe.”

“No one’s going to believe this.”

“And it’s no one’s business to know about it either. My role as an adviser doesn’t stretch to helping out the German police with electronic toys.” The captain put the little transmitter in the bag with the receiver. “There’s a pair of headphones in there too. You put them on and throw the right-hand switch. Okay, I’ll take you back to the station.”

“There’s no need. A little walk will do me good.”

“Well, good luck, Inspector.”

Dietrich took the bag by its shoulder-strap and got out. Ashburner, shaking his head, watched him go: a thin, prematurely grey-haired man in a suit too big for him, dragging his left leg slightly.

“And he thinks he’s going to catch a killer,” said Corporal Miller, putting his superior officer’s thoughts into words.

“I want to get into the garage and look at that motorbike unobserved. Any ideas?”

“Diversionary tactics,” suggested Vollmer, and immediately came up with some.

“Excellent,” the inspector praised him. “Tomorrow morning here at eight-thirty, then.”

At nine they were at Am Hegewinkel. Vollmer went knocking on doors, making out that he was an inspector from the power station going round to make sure no one was tapping into electricity illegally. Dietrich and Franke, meanwhile, were round behind the buildings collecting any odd bits of wood lying around. The inspector wore an old parka and a greasy sailor cap. Franke had got himself up in a sweater full of holes and was pulling a small handcart along. They were slowly approaching the site of the Kalkfurth property.

“Get to the back of the line,” said the queuing women crossly as Vollmer pushed past them into the shop.

“Berlin Electricity.” Vollmer showed an official-looking piece of paper. “Show me all the power points you have in the place,” he told the well-fed Winkelmann, who was serving hungry customers.

“You go with him. I’ll take over here.” Martha Kalkfurth steered her wheelchair round behind the counter. “Well, what’ll it be, Frau Krüger?”

Dietrich looked at his watch and nodded to Franke. The gate in the fence was no obstacle. A few steps and they were at the back door of the garage. Franke took a bunch of skeleton keys out of his pocket. Minutes later he had cracked the simple lock.

The light inside was dim. Two metres ahead of them lumber towered up to the ceiling, barring the way to the front of the garage. On the right, a garden hose hung on the wall, and a lawn mower was propped against it. On the left you could just make out the shape of a motorbike under a shabby old eiderdown. The inspector raised the quilt. A 1936 NSU 300 came into view. The tank proved to be half full, and several damp leaves clinging to the front tyre showed that the bike had recently been out.

Dietrich bent down, as if checking the number plate, and fixed the little metal box under the back mudguard. It was his own personal weapon in his duel with the murderer, and there was no need for the others to know about it.

“What did I say, guv?” said the sergeant triumphantly when they were outside.

Dietrich grinned. “You said you’d help to deliver any wood we collected to my home. Which is just around the corner.”

Vollmer was back in the police station soon after them. “Great long line of customers outside the shop, Frau Kalkfurth and her assistant Winkelmann inside,” he reported. “I made out I was examining every power point from the cellar to the attic, and I took a good look around the place. There’s no sign at all that anyone is living in that house except for Frau Kalkfurth, or that anyone’s been hiding there.”

As usual he waited for nightfall. Night was his hunting ground. He went into the garage around ten and switched on his torch, took the quilt off the motorbike and stopped short. Something was different. The top of the fuel tank! He always screwed it on so that the maker’s logo was vertical. Now it was over to one side. It didn’t take him a minute to find the little metal box under the back mudguard. Wondering what to do, he turned it back and forth, fitted it experimentally to the lawn mower, took it off again and thought. Grinning, he put it in his pocket. He got the message. He did up the chinstrap of the leather helmet and put his goggles on.

“They’re on your trail, boy,” said a voice through the lumber.

He laughed dryly. “The inspector’s thought up something special. He thinks I don’t know.”

“They’ll find you wherever you hide. I can’t help you now. Times have changed. Leave your motorbike here, boy, and get out before they chop your head off. Though that might be best of both of us.”

“Mother, you’re going too far,” he said indignantly.

Klaus Dietrich slung the bag with the receiver around him and cycled out into the dark, a strange-looking figure. The headphones gave him an owlish look. This was the third night, and his wife Inge was wondering anxiously how long his exhausted and undernourished frame could keep it up.

His route took him first to Am Hegewinkel, where on the last two nights a steady beeping tone had told him that the motorbike was in the garage. Tonight there was no beep. The killer was on the prowl.

Her father’s self-righteous monologues and her mother’s constant complaints got on Jutta’s nerves. She set off for home two days earlier than she had planned. It took her forever to get from Köpenick to Berlin Mitte. The total collapse of the capital was just four months in the past, and the transport system still left much to be desired. But from Wittenbergplatz the U-Bahn was running normally. The line was hardly damaged at all in the western suburbs.

On the way she thought about John. She felt shameless, delicious desire for him. She imagined taking him by surprise, and went damp. The elderly man opposite her gave her a little wink, as if he guessed her thoughts.

She reached Onkel Toms Hütte on the last train, hurried up the steps and left the station down the narrow alley lined with barbed wire that the Americans had left for Germans to use. At the barrier, she showed the guard her pass. Full of happy anticipation, she entered the brightly lit prohibited zone. The music of Benny Goodman was swinging from a window somewhere, accompanied by laughing voices. She pressed the bottom bell outside Number 47 Wilskistrasse.

What seemed like endless seconds of waiting heightened her excitement. She thought she could already feel his firm body and her own tongue between his lips. At last the door opened. She had the words “John, darling” on the tip of her tongue. But the woman in the doorway got in first. “John, darling,” she called over her shoulder.

She instantly knew the identity of this woman in the housecoat standing in front of her, hair rather tousled, a glass in her hand, and she knew that she had come to claim her property. Like a wounded deer, Jutta turned and ran.

John Ashburner came out of the bathroom. Ethel was amused. “Rather impulsive, your young lady.”

“I’m going after her,” he said firmly.

The inspector turned into Argentinische Allee. His stump hurt every time he pushed the pedals down. The bicycle rattled quietly. Candlelight was flickering in a few windows as if it were Christmas already. But it was October, with the electricity off, and there was a murderer cruising through the warm, starlit night somewhere. He listened to the headphones as if expecting them to answer his question.

He went through the week’s events in his mind. Where had he been? What had he been doing? Captain Ashburner had shown him the beeping transmitter. He had been to Mr Chalford’s office, with the witness Mühlberger, to ask about the card index of employees. He had searched the garage hiding place in secret, and tampered with the motorbike. He had been on cycle patrol for the last three nights. Somewhere and at some time during the past week, an idea had occurred to him. He had filed it away in his subconscious, and now it was lying there and refused to be dredged up to the surface.

A faint beeping chirped in the headphones and soon grew stronger. Dietrich braked, laid his bicycle flat on the pavement, and ducked down behind a switchbox beside the road. The motorbike roared past not two metres from him, the rider’s goggles reflecting the clear night sky.

Getting on his bicycle, Dietrich followed the fading beep, which showed him that the motorbike was moving away. He had no chance on his old pushbike. But to his surprise, a minute later the signal grew stronger again, swelling to a fortissimo. His adversary must be very close.

He stopped, looked all round – and saw the small box with the metallic gleam. It was sticking to the lamppost in front of him. His enemy had tricked him.

Something came rushing toward him with concentrated force from the nearby main road. The NSU 300! A dull thud flung him to the ground. His enemy swerved around and returned to the attack. Dietrich rolled aside, but not fast enough. There was an ugly crunch, as if all his bones were breaking. The motorbike raced away.

He lay there helpless. Suddenly revelation struck him like a thousand-volt electric shock. There it was, the connection he had desperately been trying to make for days on end. He tried to get up. He failed. The tyres of the heavy motorbike had crushed his prosthesis, and now it was hanging at a bizarre angle from the stump. Turning up his trouser leg, he unstrapped it.

A jeep was approaching, its searchlight sweeping the pavement. Dietrich raised an arm and waved, but just before the jeep reached him the searchlight switched to the other side of the road. His calls were drowned out by the sound of the engine. The hell with it, I have to get to my feet somehow, he thought. To my foot, he corrected himself sardonically.

He turned over and crawled on hands and knees to the street light where his bicycle was lying. It was barely three metres, but it seemed like miles. He hauled himself up by the lamppost. Only at the third attempt did he succeed in picking up his bike. Grasping the handlebars with both hands, he put his half leg over the middle bar and got himself into the saddle. He pushed off with his sound foot. For a few seconds he thought he would tip over, but he soon found out how to keep his balance. Pushing down the pedal, he brought it up again with his instep. It worked better than expected. He got up some speed. There was no time to lose. He hoped the guard would let him telephone the American prohibited zone. And then he had an appointment with the killer.

Benny Goodman and the laughing voices mocked her, and the bright glow of the floodlights burned Jutta’s eyes. She pulled herself together. She mustn’t let go. She wasn’t going to give the other woman the satisfaction.

There was no electricity the other side of the barrier. She strode energetically on. She was furious with herself and with John. He’d lied to her. A nice little adventure to see him through until Ethel arrived, that was what he wanted, and silly goose that she was, she’d served it up to him on a silver salver.

She stopped and breathed deeply. The night air did her good. She remembered all that lay behind her. The nights of air raids. The Red Army hordes. The unspeakable humiliations. And here she was getting upset over an American to whom, after all, she had given herself willingly! “Let’s forget it!” she heard Jochen saying. It was what he’d said after their first marital tiff, which led to a delightful reconciliation in bed. She smiled.

A sound brought her back to reality. Jutta turned. A figure emerged from the darkness, arms raised. A chain came around her neck, clinking. Breathing hard, her attacker tugged at her dress. She was gasping like a landed fish. Her hands clutched empty air. The chain cut off her breath. Violet squiggles danced before her eyes. In the last few seconds before death by strangulation you see your whole life pass before your eyes again, she thought, now where did I read that?

[And pp. 470–533 tell the story of Jutta’s life for the last ten years: her marriage to Jochen, the Nazi regime, the war, the entry of the Red Army into Berlin – she is raped – her survival until now. But she is luckier than the four other women.]

[pp. 534–535]

CHAPTER NINE [opening]

Headlights cut through the darkness. With a grunt of annoyance, the killer dropped his victim and disappeared into the night. John Ashburner jumped out of the jeep. He knelt down beside Jutta, loosened the cattle chain and put the back of his hand to her carotid artery, desperately seeking her pulse. A motorbike started up nearby.

“I was a long way away,” she murmured, her eyes closed.

“You’re back now,” he said, overjoyed. Very carefully, he picked her up and carried her to the jeep.

Dr Möbius examined the purple strangulation marks on her neck. “They won’t leave any trace,” he assured her. “You were lucky. Thirty seconds longer and you’d be on the autopsy slab like the others. I’m going to keep you in until tomorrow. Your blood pressure is right down – not surprising, with the shock you had. Nurse Dagmar will get you into bed.”

The lanky figure of John Ashburner was standing in the background. He had taken her straight to the nearby Waldfrieden hospital, and spent an anxious half hour waiting until he was called into the examination room. “Can I talk to her, doctor?”

“Two minutes.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” said Jutta defensively as he sat down on the side of the bed. “You can talk to your wife.”

“Ethel? Sure. About our divorce. That’s why she’s here. She wants to marry this Jesse Rawlins. She thinks you’re very nice, by the way. Maybe a bit too impulsive.”

“Like this?” she said joyfully. She flung her arms around his neck and kissed him.

Nurse Dagmar appeared in the doorway. “Could you get your car to shut up? It’s yelling its head off, disturbing the other patients.”

“See you tomorrow, darling. Good night, nurse.”

Ashburner hurried out to his jeep. Sergeant Donovan’s voice was echoing from the loudspeaker. “Call in, boss, for God’s sake! It’s bloody urgent.”

He was disappointed. She’d granted him nothing but a brief rattle in the throat, and then she withdrew before he could possess her. Spoilsport, he thought, feeling injured. He leaned his motorbike up against the kerb somewhere and patted the tank as if it were a horse’s flank. It had helped him to get that persistent inspector out of the way. Now it was no more use to him. Footsteps dragging, he went home. In the kitchen, with deliberation, he peeled himself an apple and bit into it. “Too sour,” he muttered disapprovingly.

Glass splintered. Suddenly the large pane in the French window leading from the kitchen to the garden was shattered. Bewildered, he saw the inspector clambering clumsily through the window frame. Klaus Dietrich had broken a piece of wood out of the fence somewhere, and was now propping himself up on it.

“I should have seen it days ago. Your secretary handed it to me on a plate, never suspecting, and I didn’t notice. ‘The boss marked the other four with a cross too,’ she said. The other four cards in the card index, making five in all, right? And with that cross on the fifth card you were anticipating Jutta Weber’s death. Only the killer could know she’d be the next victim.”

[At this point the murderer pulls a knife and his double identity is revealed; we have known almost all along, of course, that he is Martha Kalkfurth’s son, but he is someone else as well. Ashburner and Donovan arrive just in time to help Dietrich overpower him, and the mystery of the serial killer is solved. The Dietrich family celebrate with Ashburner and Jutta, who are to be married. The book ends on a tragi-comic note with the outcome of the tale of young Ben Dietrich and his rather inept black market operations in order to buy his sharp suit and have it off with the tailor’s daughter Heidi Rödel.]