People were afraid to leave their homes. They started reporting false sightings of the killer, even though no one had any idea what he looked like. And because denunciation had become popular in Germany, people began denouncing one another. The man next door was acting suspiciously, or the likely killer was lurking at the train station. The police were running in circles chasing down endless stories like these.
That the police, with all their resources and control, had been unable to solve the case and bring an end to this reign of terror was no mystery. The German police and security establishment, from the lowliest patrolman all the way up through Heinrich Himmler himself, was now completely politicized. Genuine communication among different (and often rival) departments about ongoing crime – about anything, in fact – had all but ceased. Prevailing politics made even the most basic communication dangerous to careers great and small. What passed for communication consisted entirely of administrative orders and political directives up and down the chain of command. And there was also the fear, widespread in official circles, that the killer might be one of their own.
Bergemann had repeatedly warned Willi that getting too interested in any police investigation, particularly this one, would be foolhardy for him. He reminded him that Sergeant Gruber was now obsessed with catching him, and this obsession was to be taken seriously. Willi was in serious danger even without taking into account Heinz Schleiffer’s imaginings about Karl Juncker or the fact that his reports on Juncker had finally gotten the attention of the SS. Bergemann gestured around the bicycle workshop where he and Willi stood. ‘You have the perfect cover, Willi. Karl Juncker is a certified bicycle repairman. Don’t jeopardize it.’
The trouble was bicycle work was not in Willi’s blood. Fixing a bicycle, while it had its satisfactions – tuning a machine to run smoothly depended on a delicate touch and meticulous sensitivity to the machine – it had none of the allure of detective work.
Bergemann tried again. ‘You’re still on the SS list of enemies of the Reich. If the police and the SS make common cause, if they somehow stop interfering with one another and getting in each other’s way, you’ll end up in Dachau.’
‘I’m sorry, Hans. This case in particular is important to me,’ said Willi.
‘Important?’ Bergemann was annoyed. He was trying to keep Willi safe, and Willi seemed to be going out of his way to make his task even more difficult and dangerous than it already was. ‘Why? What makes it so important to you?’
Willi reminded Bergemann why he was in Munich in the first place: Lola had been savagely attacked.
‘What?’ said Bergemann. ‘You’re not saying that every violent attack on women is this one guy?’
‘No, I’m not saying that.’ Still, Lola worked at the Mahogany Room six days a week starting at three in the afternoon. And depending on how busy they were, she sometimes didn’t get out of there until two in the morning. At that hour most buses and streetcars had stopped running, and she had to walk more than half an hour through dimly lit and sparsely peopled streets to get home. And now there was a killer prowling those same streets. Lola was frightened and so was he.
‘Tell her to get another job,’ said Bergemann. He knew, even as he said it, that it was a ridiculous thing to say.
Willi just gave him a look. ‘Let me show you something,’ he said, and pulled a city map from the drawer beneath his workbench and spread it out between them. There was a lamp above them on a pulley, and he drew it down so that it illuminated the map.
Bergemann shook his head in exasperation. ‘I shouldn’t have told you about it,’ he said, as though he might have been able to keep Willi from finding out. ‘I knew you wouldn’t be able to let it alone.’
Willi ignored Bergemann’s frustration. ‘Look here, Hans. I was trying to find a way home for Lola so she wouldn’t have to walk. Only a few buses and streetcars run all night. These here.’ He slid his finger across the map in various directions.
‘So this has nothing to do with the killer?’ said Bergemann.
‘None of the streetcars go in her direction,’ said Willi. ‘Then I noticed this.’ He pointed out small circles he had drawn here and there.
‘What are these?’ said Bergemann.
‘They mark where the women were attacked or where their bodies were found.’
Bergemann sighed, but Willi went on. ‘Here’s Gabriella Mancini,’ he said, ‘and over here, Erna Raczynski.’
Bergemann cast one last angry look in Willi’s direction, then turned back to the map. It took him a minute before he saw what Willi had seen. ‘They’re all near streetcar stops,’ said Bergemann. ‘Erna Raczynski was coming home from seeing her mother. She had just gotten off the streetcar. So, do you think all the women got off a streetcar right before they were killed?’
‘We can’t know that for sure. But it’s possible, maybe even likely,’ said Willi. ‘They might also have been going to or waiting for a streetcar. But, if you think about it, it seems more likely they’d gotten off, that the killer was on the streetcar with them and followed them off.’
‘Why more likely?’ said Bergemann.
‘Because the killer staking out different streetcar stops around the city, picking out a woman and then killing her there makes no sense. Unless these women all fit together somehow, unless they were all connected to the killer in some way. But this feels way more random than that.’
‘Did he know them?’ said Bergemann. ‘Erna Raczynski thought he might have said her name.’
‘But you said neither she nor her husband knew the man. I think she might be mistaken about hearing her name. Erna sounds like many other sounds.’
‘I had the
