were right it opens up vistas infinitely more horrific than the murder itself…'
`It was the same bastard – the Frankfurt maniac.'
Kuhlmann made the statement as he walked with Tweed and Newman past the crooked gate towers towards the station the following morning. He had caught them leaving the Jensen on their way to Travemunde.
`How do you know for certain?' Newman asked, shielding his eyes against the glare of the sun.
`Two things. The Frankfurt pathologist's report came in over the teletype. The local pathologist checked his own findings against it. We were up all night while he did his job on that Swedish girl. His report checks with the one from Frankfurt.
It looks like the same weapon was used to carve her up.' `What kind of weapon?' Tweed asked.
`Wrong word, really. Comes to the same thing. A chef's knife is the opinion of both pathologists. The kind of knife you find in any reasonably well-equipped housewife's kitchen.'
`Not much help,' Tweed suggested.
`No bloody help at all.'
No one said anything more until they were entering the booking hall. Tweed went to the window to buy the tickets to Travemunde, leaving the other two outside a bookshop.
`What do you expect to find at Travemunde?' Kuhlmann asked.
`I'll know when I see it. This second murder is a complication we hadn't expected..
`Fourth murder,' Kuhlmann corrected. 'The Dutch girl in Frankfurt. Ian Fergusson in Hamburg. Followed by Ziggy Palewska. Now this Swedish victim. The body count is rising, Newman.'
`Reminds me of East Anglia, the area round the Wash,' Tweed said, looking out of the window.
They had left Lubeck and its suburbs behind and the local train was passing through open country. Newman looked up from a newspaper reporting the Swedish girl's murder.
`Does it? In what way?'
`Look at those long green banks beyond those fields. They are just like the dykes at the edge of the Wash. The locals in East Anglia actually call them 'banks'. And these flat fields below the railway line. Again, just like the Wash countryside.'
The train stopped and Tweed hurried out on to a high platform elevated above the surrounding countryside. Newman followed, closed the door, looked around and then called out to Tweed who was half-way towards the exit. They were the only passengers to alight and the train was moving again.
`Hey! This isn't the right stop..
A huge platform sign carried the legend Skandinavienkai. Scandinavian Quay. He had to walk fast to catch up with Tweed who was descending a flight of steps to a main highway below. To the east Newman gazed at a complex of docks beyond a large staging area.
By the wharf-side was moored a large white passenger liner, and close to that a huge car ferry. The rear maw was open – reminding him of Puttgarden – and a great queue of vehicles was lined up waiting to drive aboard. Private cars, campers, big trucks.
`That's the liner waiting to leave for Sweden,' Tweed informed Newman. 'You can see from the name on the hull… `Why get off at this stop?'
They were walking along a wide pavement by the side of the main highway. The verge was lined with a dense wall of trees which blotted out the view to the docks. Shrubberies of wild roses grew at the edge of the verge and it was very quiet under the sun beating down on them.
`It's only a short walk into town,' Tweed said, his legs moving like pistons, his body leant forward. Tweed in full cry, Newman told himself. Weeks of doing very little and then some development would electrify him. 'I checked it on the map before we started out,' he went on. 'The next stop is Travemunde Hafen. The harbour area. Beyond that is Travemunde Strand, people tanning themselves on the beach and all that nonsense. Burning themselves red, unable to sleep for nights. What they call having a good holiday. Approaching the town this way, I can get the feel of the place. Look, we're close now…'
The single spire of a church speared the azure sky. Beyond it other buildings began to appear. They, were leaving the dock area behind. Tweed was dressed in his new tropical drill slacks, his safari jacket.
`Hoping we meet Diana?' Newman joshed him.
`These clothes will help me merge into the background. You must admit I look as though I'm on holiday..
`Tweed, you could never look as though you were on holiday.'
`If anyone asks what I do I'll say insurance. Just so you know.'
`An executive of the General and Cumbria Assurance Co – your dummy outfit back at Park Crescent?'
`Only if I have to. This must be Travemunde.'
Standing well back from the waterfront was a row of old double-storey buildings. The usual assortment of cafes, restaurants and souvenir shops. Holidaymakers, mostly German, drifted along in the aimless way of men and women not sure what to do next. Many of the buildings had the steep gables characteristic in that part of the world.
`Let's cross the road when we can,' said Tweed. 'You can do your reporter act, get people talking..
`While you listen…'
`And watch.'
The waterfront was a tangle of masts, a variety of vessels were moored to the bollards, jammed in hull to hull. Yachts, pleasure craft, the odd expensive-looking power cruiser looming above the small fry. At a nearby marina landing stages projected out into the channel between Travemunde and a forested shore a. short distance away. Tweed pointed at the forest.
`And that will be Priwall Island.'
`I know. I came here once to interview Dr Berlin…'
`And the small car ferry takes no more than a few minutes to cross from here to Priwall…' Tweed hardly seemed to hear a word. Newman said. He was like a dog which has picked up the scent. `… When you leave the ferry you walk straight into the Mecklenburger-strasse. There are houses – including Berlin's mansion – on the right. They face the forest laced with a network of paths – the forest where that poor Swedish girl was found almost at the edge of the water. What was her name? Helena Andersen. That: was it. They say the murderer must have been disturbed. He was going to throw her into the channel – there was a trail of blood where he'd dragged her through the undergrowth.'
`How do you know all this?' Newman enquired. 'You couldn't pick that detail up from a map…'
He was watching a sleek white liner approaching from the Baltic. It cruised through the channel where there didn't seem to be room, blanking out the island briefly, but it made safe passage and sailed on towards the docks.
'A combination of listening to Diana,' Tweed said. 'Asking the odd question. Then linking up what she said with the map. Let's explore the marina so you can do your stuff.'
`And you seem to' know a lot more about the Helena Andersen killing,' Newman probed as they strolled through the crowds towards the marina.
`Kuhlmann phoned me while I was shaving before breakfast. He called from the local police station here. He'd been over every inch of the ground himself early this morning. Otto never sleeps as far as I can see. Here we are. After you…'
`Thanks a bundle.'
Newman surveyed the marina, the various craft moored hull to hull. You could step from one craft to another. He walked down a landing stage towards a large sloop, a sixty-footer, he estimated. A slim woman in her sixties sat in a captain's chair, a pair of rimless glasses perched on her nose as she sat reading a hardback. Gone With the Wind. This was probably a good place to start. She looked up as Newman approached, removed the glasses and laid the book in her lap.
Slim, she had dark hair, thick and silky, cut short, and aristocratic features. A handsome woman, there was a cynical twist to her mouth, an air of competence, increased when she spoke in an upper crust accent.
`Robert Newman? I am right? Recognize you from pictures in the papers. Welcome aboard. Take a pew. Your friend can come, too. Come to hear all the gory details? So you can write up a really lurid story? Blood on Priwall Island. There, I've given you your headline…'
`I might use it.' Newman settled himself in a canvas chair while Tweed lowered himself gingerly into its twin
