hanged himself.'
'It would seem so,' I said, without much uncertainty. 'But if you don't mind, General Heydrich, I'd like to take a look round the place. On my own. Just to satisfy my curiosity about one or two things.'
'Very well. Don't be too long, will you?'
With Heydrich, Nebe and the police gone from the apartment, I took a closer look at Klaus Hering's body. Apparently he had tied a length of electrical cord to the banister, slipped a noose over his head, and then simply stepped off the stair. But only an inspection of Hering's hands, wrists and neck itself could tell me if that had really been what happened. There was something about the circumstances of his death, something I couldn't quite put my finger on, that I found questionable. Not least was the fact that he had chosen to change his shirt before hanging himself.
I climbed over the banister on to a small shelf that was made by the top of the stairwell's wall, and knelt down. Leaning forward, I had a good view of the suspension point behind Hering's right ear. The level of tightening of the ligature is always higher and more vertical with a hanging than with a case of strangulation. But here there was a second and altogether more horizontal mark just below the noose which seemed to confirm my doubts. Before hanging himself, Klaus Hering had been strangled to death.
I checked that Hering's shirt collar was the same size as the bloodstained shirt I had examined earlier. It was. Then I climbed back over the banister and stepped down a few stairs. Standing on tiptoe I reached up to examine his hands and wrists. Prising the right hand open I saw the dried blood and then a small shiny object, which seemed to be sticking into the palm. I pulled it out of Hering's flesh and laid it carefully on to the flat of my hand. The pin was bent, probably from the pressure of Hering's fist, and although encrusted with blood, the death's-head motif was unmistakable. It was an S S cap badge.
I paused briefly, trying to imagine what might have happened, certain now that Heydrich must have had a hand in it. Back in the garden at the Prinz Albrecht Palais, had he not asked me himself what my answer to his proposition would be if 'the obstacle' that was my obligation to find Bruno's murderer, were 'removed'? And wasn't this as completely removed as it was possible to achieve?
No doubt he had anticipated what my answer would be and had already ordered Hering's murder by the time we went for our stroll.
With these and other thoughts I searched the apartment. I was quick but thorough, lifting mattresses, examining cisterns, rolling back rugs and even leafing through a set of medical textbooks. I managed to find a whole sheet of the old stamps commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Nazis coming to power which had consistently appeared on the blackmail notes to Frau Lange. But of her son's letters to Dr Kindermann there was no sign.
Chapter 6
Friday, 9 September.
It felt strange being back in a case-meeting at the Alex, and even stranger hearing Arthur Nebe refer to me as Kommissar Gunther. Five years had elapsed since the day in June 1933 when, no longer able to tolerate Goering's police purges, I had resigned my rank of Kriminalinspektor in order to become the house detective at the Adlon Hotel. Another few months and they would have probably fired me anyway. If anyone had said then that I'd be back at the Alex as a member of Kripo's upper officer class while a National Socialist government was still in power, I'd have said that he was crazy.
Most of the people seated round the table would almost certainly have expressed the same opinion, if their faces were anything to go by now: Hans Lobbes, the Reichskriminaldirektor's number three and head of Kripo Executive; Count Fritz von der Schulenberg, deputy to Berlin's Police President, and representing the uniformed boys of Orpo. Even the three officers from Kripo, one from Vice and two from the Murder Commission who had been assigned to a new investigating team that was, at my own request, to be a small one, all regarded me with a mixture of fear and loathing. Not that I blamed them much. As far as they were concerned I was Heydrich's spy. In their position I would probably have felt much the same way.
There were two other people in attendance at my invitation, which compounded the atmosphere of distrust. One of these, a woman, was a forensic psychiatrist from the Berlin CharitT Hospital. Frau Marie Kalau vom Hofe was a friend of Arthur Nebe, himself something of a criminologist, and attached officially to police headquarters as a consultant in matters of criminal psychology. The other guest was Hans Illmann, Professor of Forensic Medicine at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, and formerly senior pathologist at the Alex until his cool hostility to Nazism had obliged Nebe to retire him. Even by Nebe's own admission, Illmann was better than any of the pathologists currently working at the Alex, and so at my request he had been invited to take charge of the forensic medical aspects of the case.
A spy, a woman and a political dissident. It needed only the stenographer to stand and sing 'The Red Flag' for my new colleagues to believe that they were the subject of a practical joke.
Nebe finished his long-winded introduction of me and the meeting was in my hands.
I shook my head. 'I hate bureaucracy,' I said. 'I loathe it. But what is required here is a bureaucracy of information. What is relevant will become clear later on. Information is the lifeblood of any criminal investigation, and if that information is contaminated then you poison the whole investigative body. I don't mind if a man's wrong about something. In this game we're nearly always wrong until we're right. But if I find a member of my team knowingly submitting wrong information, it won't be a matter for a disciplinary tribunal.
I'll kill him. That's information you can depend on.
'I'd also like to say this. I don't care who did it. Jew, nigger, pansy, stormtrooper, Hitler Youth Leader, civil servant, motorway construction worker, it's all the same to me. Just as long as he did do it. Which leads me to the subject of Josef Kahn. In case any of you have forgotten, he's the Jew who confessed to the murders of Brigitte Hartmann, Christiana Schulz, and Zarah Lischka. Currently he's a Paragraph Fifty-one in the municipal lunatic asylum at Herzeberge, and one of the purposes of this meeting is to evaluate that confession in the light of the fourth murdered girl, Lotte Winter.
'At this point let me introduce you to Professor Hans Illmann, who has kindly agreed to act as the pathologist in this case. For those of you who don't know him, he's one of the best pathologists in the country, so we're very fortunate to have him working with us.'
Illmann nodded by way of acknowledgement, and carried on with his perfect roll-up. He was a slight man with thin, dark hair, rimless glasses and a small chin beard. He finished licking the paper and poked the roll-up into his mouth, as good as any machine-made cigarette. I marvelled quietly. Medical brilliance counted for nothing beside this kind of subtle dexterity.
'Professor Illmann will take us through his findings after Kriminalassistant Korsch has read the relevant case note.' I nodded at the dark, stocky young man sitting opposite me. There was something artificial about his face, as if it had been made up for him by one of the police artists from Sipo Technical Services, with three definite features and very little else: eyebrows joined in the middle and perched on his overhanging brows like a falcon preparing for flight; a wizard's long, crafty chin; and a small, Fairbanks-style moustache. Korsch cleared his throat and began speaking in a voice that was an octave higher than I was expecting.
'Brigitte Hartmann,' he read. 'Aged fifteen, of German parents. Disappeared 23
May 1938. Body found in a potato sack on an allotment in Siesdorf, 10 June. She lived with her parents on the Britz Housing Estate, south of Neuk/lln, and had walked from her home to catch the U-Bahn at Parchimerallee. She was going to visit her aunt in Reinickdorf. The aunt was supposed to meet her at Holzhauser Strasse station, only Brigitte never arrived. The station master at Parchimer didn't remember her getting on the train, but said that he'd had a night on the beer and probably wouldn't have remembered anyway.' This drew a guffaw from along the table.
'Drunken bastard,' snorted Hans Lobbes.
'This is one of the two girls who have since been buried,' said Illmann quietly.
'I don't think there's anything I can add to the findings of the autopsy there.
You may proceed, Herr Korsch.'
'Christiane Schulz. Aged sixteen, of German parents. Disappeared 8 June 1938.
Body found 2 July, in a tramway tunnel that connects Treptower Park on the righthand bank of the Spree, with the village of Stralau on the other. Half way along the tunnel there's a maintenance point, little more than a recessed archway. That's where the trackman found her body, wrapped in an old tarpaulin.
'Apparently the girl was a singer and often took part in the BdM, the League of German Girls, evening radio programme. On the night of her disappearance she had attended the Funkturm Studios on Masuren-Strasse, and
