he says. The missing girl, Irma Hanke, he says, is to be found in a large blue-leather trunk in the left-luggage at Zoo Bahnhof. Who's this, I asks, but he'd hung up.'
'Can you describe his voice?'
'I'd say it was an educated sort of voice, sir. And used to giving an order and having it carried out. Rather like an officer.' He shook his large head.
'Couldn't tell you how old, though.'
'Any accent?'
'Just the trace of Bavarian.'
'You sure about that?'
'My late wife was from Nuremberg, sir. I'm sure.'
'And how would you describe his tone? Agitated? Disturbed at all?'
'He didn't sound like a spinner, if that's what you mean, sir. He was as cool as the piss out of a frozen eskimo. As I said, just like an officer.'
'And he asked to speak to the duty sergeant?'
'Those were his actual words, sir.'
'Any background noise? Traffic? Music? That sort of thing?'
'Nothing at all.'
'What did you do then? After the call.'
'I telephoned the operator at the Central Telephone Office on Franz/sische Strasse. She traced the number to a public telephone box outside Bahnhof West Kreuz. I sent a squad car round there to seal it off until a team from 5D could get down there and have it checked out for piano players.'
'Good man. And then you called Deubel?'
'Yes, sir.'
I nodded and started on my second bottle of beer.
'I take it Orpo knows what this is all about?'
'Von der Schulenberg had all the Hauptmanns into the briefing-room at the start of last week. They passed on to us what a lot of the men already suspected. That there was another Gormann on the streets of Berlin. Most of the lads figure that's why you're back on the force. Most of the civils we've got now couldn't detect coal on a slag heap. But that Gormann case. Well, it was a good piece of work.'
'Thanks, Tanker.'
'All the same, sir, it doesn't look like this little Sudeten spinner you're holding could have done it, does it? If you don't mind me saying so.'
'Not unless he had a telephone in his cell, no. Still, we'll see if the left-luggage people at Zoo Bahnhof like the look of him. You never know, he might have had an associate on the outside.'
Tanker nodded. 'That's true enough,' he said. 'Anything is possible in Germany just as long as Hitler shits in the Reich Chancellery.'
Several hours later I was back at Zoo Bahnhof, where Korsch had already distributed photographs of the trunk to the assembled left-luggage staff. They stared and stared, shook their heads and scratched their grizzly chins, and still none of them could remember anyone leaving a blue-leather trunk.
The tallest of them, a man wearing the longest khaki-coloured boiler coat, and who seemed to be in charge of the rest, collected a notebook from under the metal-topped counter and brought it over to me.
'Presumably you record the names and addresses of those leaving luggage with you,' I said to him, without much enthusiasm. As a general rule, killers leaving their victims as left-luggage at railway stations don't normally volunteer their real names and addresses.
The man in the khaki coat, whose bad teeth resembled the blackened ceramic insulators on tram cables, looked at me with quiet confidence and tapped the hard cover of his register with the quick of a fingernail.
'It'll be in here, the one who left your bloody trunk.'
He opened his book, licked a thumb that a dog would have refused, and began to turn the greasy pages.
'On the trunk in your photograph there's a ticket,' he said. 'And on that ticket is a number, same one as what's chalked on the side of the item. And that number will be in this book, alongside a date, a name and an address.' He turned several more pages and then traced down the page with his forefinger.
'Here we are,' he said. 'The trunk was deposited here on Friday, 19 August.'
'Four days after she disappeared,' Korsch said quietly.
The man followed his finger along a line to the facing page. 'Says here that the trunk belongs to a Herr Heydrich, initial R, of Wilhelmstrasse, number 102.'
Korsch snorted with laughter.
'Thank you,' I said to the man. 'You've been most helpful.'
'I don't see what's funny,' grumbled the man as he walked away.
I smiled at Korsch. 'Looks like someone has a sense of humour.'
'Are you going to mention this in the report, sir?' he grinned.
'It's material, isn't it?'
'It's just that the general won't like it.'
'He'll be beside himself, I should think. But you see, our killer isn't the only one who enjoys a good joke.'
Back at the Alex I received a call from the head of what was ostensibly Illmann's department VD1, Forensics. I spoke to an S S-HauptSturmFnhrer Dr Schade, whose tone was predictably obsequious, no doubt in the belief that I had some influence with General Heydrich.
The doctor informed me that a fingerprint team had removed a number of prints from the telephone box at West Kreuz in which the killer had apparently called the Alex. These were now a matter for VC1, the Records Department. As to the trunk and its contents, he had spoken to Kriminalassistent Korsch and would inform him immediately if any fingerprints were discovered there.
I thanked him for his call, and told him that my investigation was to receive top priority, and that everything else would have to take second place.
Within fifteen minutes of this conversation, I received another telephone call, this time from the Gestapo.
'This is SturmbannFnhrer Roth here,' he said. 'Section 4B1. Kommissar Gunther, you are interfering with the progress of a most important investigation.'
'4B1? I don't think I know that department. Are you calling from within the Alex?'
'We are based at Meinekestrasse, investigating Catholic criminals.'
'I'm afraid I know nothing of your department, SturmbannFnhrer. Nor do I wish to. Nevertheless, I cannot see how I can possibly be interfering with one of your investigations.'
'The fact remains that you are. It was you who ordered S S-HauptSturmFnhrer Dr Schade to give your own investigation priority over any other?'
'That's right, I did.'
'Then you, a Kommissar, should know that the Gestapo takes precedence over Kripo where the services of VD1 are required.'
'I know of no such thing. But what great crime has been committed that might require your department to take precedence over a murder investigation? Charging a priest with a fraudulent transubstantiation perhaps? Or trying to pass off the communion wine as the blood of Christ?'
'Your levity is quite out of order, Kommissar,' he said. 'This department is investigating most serious charges of homosexuality among the priesthood.'
'Is that so? Then I shall certainly sleep more soundly in my bed tonight. All the same, my investigation has been given top priority by General Heydrich himself.'
'Knowing the importance that he attaches to apprehending religious enemies of the state, I find that very hard to believe.'
'Then may I suggest that you telephone the Wilhelmstrasse and have the general explain it to you personally.'
'I'll do that. No doubt he will also be greatly disturbed at your failure to appreciate the menace of the third international conspiracy dedicated to the ruin of Germany. Catholicism is no less a threat to Reich security than Bolshevism and World Jewry.'
