‘I thought she was …’ Hans says when nobody answers. ‘Only then she came to all of a sudden and went off down the hill … like a little machine …’
His voice trails off and he grins sheepishly. Like an idiot. Manfred turns towards me.
‘What do you say, Heinrich? Fancy a bit of fatherhood?’
He steps up to the girl, unties the little ribbon under her chin. Her thick, yellow hair tumbles into his open hand. She rolls her eyes up like a doll.
‘You’ve always wanted a daughter, haven’t you? You’re about the right age for it. And you’ll never get anywhere with my sister …’
The girl stares into space. She is out of her senses, as though in another world. A blow to the head?
Her little hand slips into Manfred’s. Her other hand is clenched. There is something in it.
A striped candy stick. She does not look at her father. Does she even know he is dangling there, his insides dripping?
_ _ _
‘What do you say?’ says Manfred. ‘You’ve always been such a good person, Heinrich. Heart of gold.’
I say nothing. I am enraged.
‘Can’t hear you, Heinrich!’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ I reply. ‘Nothing.’
‘Very well.’
Manfred lets go of the girl’s hand and steps backwards, a single pace.
Now she is alone, in the middle of the room.
Everyone is silent.
Manfred is behind her. She turns round and gazes at us all.
‘We can’t do this,’ says Hans. ‘Not like this …’
Manfred glares at him.
‘Then you take her,’ he says.
‘No, I—’
The girl says something in Belorussian. She begins to unwrap the tight cellophane from her candy stick. Her small fingers struggle. Manfred draws his PPK and steps behind her back. He holds the gun down between his legs, as though to conceal it. He racks the slide to load the chamber. The girl turns and looks up at him.
She puts out her hand with the sweet in it.
He stops mid-movement.
She speaks to him.
‘What?’ he blurts, spit spraying from his mouth. His eyes are bloodshot. He raises the gun. His hand trembles. ‘What? What is it?’
‘She asks …’ says a Hiwi, a tall, dark-haired Belorussian I only notice now, his skin taut across the cheekbones, sockets black and empty, ‘She asks if you would help her with, what is it called … the paper …’
‘What?’
‘That’s what she said,’ the Hiwi says. ‘She can’t get it off.’
Manfred steps forward, snatches the sweet from the girl’s hand, but is unable to remove the wrapper, his pistol in the air. He puts it back in its holster, picks at the cellophane until eventually it comes off. He is furious. He gives the sweet back to her. She takes it and puts it in her mouth.
‘Khotite yvidet tjeloveka …’
‘What now?’ Manfred splutters.
‘She asks if we want to see the man.’
_ _ _
The Hiwi bends down to her. She says her name is Etke. She is six and three quarters. She has been to the market with her father. In Koreletjy. His name is Boris. Where is he? She speaks mechanically. Hans’s little machine. The Hiwi’s translation is a stutter. She walks through the stable, crosses a narrow path and enters a barn with a steeply sloping roof. She leads us through stalls, we come to a halt in front of a large mound of hay.
A grubby foot protrudes, a corner of a trouser leg, a crushed ankle sodden with blood.
Hiwis step past me, they pull away the hay to reveal the man’s head. He is gagged. His side gapes open, a brown slop has seeped from the waist of his trousers.
‘Is it him?’ Manfred shouts from outside.
‘Yes. It’s Steiner.’
_ _ _
Manfred is shaking the girl when I come back out. The Hiwi who was translating shrugs. The girl is crying. I go up to Manfred and put a hand on his arm.
‘Let me question her,’ I say.
‘You?’
He looks at my hand, astonished.
Michael freezes, cigarette lifted to his mouth.
‘You won’t get anything out of her that way. You can see that, surely?’
I take the girl by the hand and beckon to the interpreter. He comes over.
‘Say something to her,’ I tell him.
‘Like what?’ he asks. ‘What should I say?’
‘Anything at all.’
_ _ _
‘Heinrich,’ says Manfred.
He has sat down beside the girl in the back of the commando vehicle. I am standing next to the machine gunner at the front, watching the Hiwis torch the village. We can already hear the rumble of the flames, the frenzied crackling of shingled roofs.
As the driver pulls out onto the gravel track, the first windows shatter.
‘Heinrich,’ Manfred says again.
‘Yes?’
‘I want you to find him.’
‘What do you mean? Find who?’
‘Whoever did this …’
I twist round to look at him, my arm resting on the side of the vehicle, an Efka smoking between my fingers.
‘This is a war, Manfred. Anyone could have done it. There’s a whole Red Army out there, for crying out loud.’
‘Now you’re being silly, Heinrich. A single person did this, one person.’
‘We’re not in Hamburg now, Manfred, this is …’
The girl looks out on the burning village. The blood and grime on her face has begun to flake away. In a few hours, her home will be a smouldering ruin.
‘This is what?’ says Manfred. Then, when I fail to answer: ‘I don’t understand you, Heinrich. I’m doing you a favour.’
‘A favour?’
I inhale the cigarette smoke deep into my lungs, surprised by the bitterness in my voice.
‘That’s right, a favour. Steiner’s killer, if we find him, could be big for us. And you love Hamburg. Law and order, logic, justice. All that stuff.’
‘That stuff?’
‘Yes, that stuff. You can proceed however you like.’
‘Logic, order … Look over there,’ I say with a nod in the direction of Belize. ‘Is that order, justice, logic? Destroying evidence, killing witnesses?’
‘It’s logic of a higher order.’
‘A higher order? Oh, for God’s sake …’
‘You do the logic, I’ll do the higher order.’
He smiles now. There’s a gleam in his eye that I’ve seen
