‘No.’
‘Stop the vehicle,’ he says, leaning forward and placing a hand on the driver’s shoulder. ‘Clear off for a minute. You too,’ he says with a nod to the machine gunner when the man fails to react.
The young Schütze pulls in to the side and both men climb out.
‘Heinrich,’ says Manfred. ‘Do you seriously think you have a say in the matter?’
‘Like with the Feigl case, you mean?’ I stare out at the two men who stand waiting a short distance away. One of them searches his pockets, the other offers him a cigarette.
‘Who the hell is Feigl?’
‘The man with the wood-shaving birds, Kindler’s Jew. It was Breker who shot him. But who cares? Another SS pantomime, a bloody …’
I realise I’ve gone too far.
‘Say that again?’ says Manfred. ‘What are you getting at?’
‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Nothing. I’m sorry … I apologise, for God’s sake!’
He smiles and places his hand on Etke’s head.
‘Good,’ he says. ‘So. When you find him, when we’ve got him, I’m going to kill him. And Heinrich …’
‘What?’
‘Don’t get sentimental about the girl.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’
The girl
Police headquarters, Lida.
The girl is seated on a chair in my office. She holds her hands in her lap and looks down at them. Her dress is sticky and bloodied. My adjutant, Wäspli, comes in with a fresh glass of cordial. There was fear in his eyes when he saw her fifteen minutes ago, but he came back with a little paper parasol that he put in her drink like a cocktail. After that he went away. An interpreter from Manfred’s unit just arrived, a stocky incarnation of Volksdeutsch, who extends his hand towards me and introduces himself. I nod a curt greeting and go over to the girl, squat down in front of her and ask the interpreter to translate:
‘Etke … that’s your name, isn’t it?’
She looks away as she answers.
‘What did she say?’
‘She says she wants to go home …’
‘Tell her she can’t just yet … tell her that.’
The interpreter says some words in Belorussian, modulating his voice.
‘She says she wants to go home to her mother now …’
She begins to cry.
‘Hello!’ I raise my voice. ‘Listen. Little girl.’
The interpreter shakes her, she bites his hand, he recoils, I grip his fist as he draws back his arm, then after a brief tussle he shouts and I shove him away.
‘Get out of here,’ I yell at him.
_ _ _
My house in Suwalska Street.
It’s boiling hot. The girl is seated on my sofa in the spacious drawing room facing the street. She swings her legs. Masja, my housekeeper, has washed her, she is clean and sweet-smelling. She must know something, but is she aware of it?
I am sitting by the window, my Efkas on the windowsill.
My Masja comes in, curtsies, though I have expressly forbidden her to curtsy, and sits down next to the girl. She smoothes the child’s dress, and pecks her on the cheek.
The girl begins to sing a song, her voice wavering and frail.
What the hell am I supposed to do?
I go over to the bureau, open a drawer and find a notepad and pen.
‘Translate for me, Masja,’ I say, and sit down in a chair in front of them.
The girl fidgets with a little ribbon of her dress, then looks up at me and says something.
‘She says …’ Masja has difficulty finding the words. ‘She asks, where is my father? Do you know?’
‘Yes,’ I reply, standing up again. I go over to the window, pull a cigarette out of the packet, light up and survey the dusty street. ‘Yes, I do.’
_ _ _
Later that afternoon, the mortuary in the basement of Manfred’s hospital.
Further down the corridor is Manfred’s secret room with the iron bed.
Weber has a camera with him.
Manfred and I are standing slightly back from the autopsy slab, he with his arms folded, while I lean against the tiled wall. A young SS-Schütze stands self-consciously over by the door. The pathologist, Dr Weiss, an SS physician Manfred has had flown in from the infirmary at Vibetsk, nods to the two Hiwis, who lift Steiner onto the terrazzo slab. They salute awkwardly and leave.
Weber takes a photograph.
Manfred has seeds in his hands, and asks if I want some.
I don’t.
‘Have you got a statement for me from the girl?’ he asks.
‘No. Not yet.’
The limbs of the Obergruppenführer are stiff, his jaw is dislocated, dentures gone, only blackened stumps remain in the lower jaw. His upper body is bare, his shoes and socks have been removed.
There are three entrance wounds in the chest, ringed with black residue.
The arms are locked at the elbow joints, right hand clasped. Incipient rigor mortis.
There is a brown discoloration at the crotch of his unbuttoned uniform trousers.
Manfred spits out the streaked hull of a sunflower seed.
‘When, then?’ he says.
‘Give me a couple of days.’
‘A couple of days?’
The Obergruppenführer’s feet are old and gnarled, but the toenails neatly clipped and filed.
On the toe tag someone has written 1–233 in ink. The name will not be released until the propaganda department has concocted a death more heroic.
‘If you want reliable information,’ I whisper, ‘then, yes.’
‘Let’s see what he’s got in his hand first, shall we?’ Weiss cuts in.
We nod. Weiss braces his legs, then grips the clasped hand, bending at the waist as he puts his strength into it, prising the fingers open.
‘Empty,’ he says. ‘Nothing at all.’
The flash illuminates the room as Weber takes another photograph. Weiss glares at him.
His brow is moist with perspiration.
‘Let us begin,’ he says with a nod to the young Schütze, and the boy, his face a smatter of freckles and fiery red lips, notes down in shorthand: ‘Deceased has three entrance wounds at the thorax, all sufficient to cause death …’
Weiss leans forward and smells the
