‘I caught that bastard, Bergemann. He’s finished, done for! Gone!’
Hans was finally able to look up. Gruber was almost dancing in triumph.
‘How’d you do it, Sergeant?’
Gruber didn’t want to admit to Bergemann he had gotten lucky. ‘I just nailed that asshole,’ he said with a grin. ‘Last night.’
‘Geismeier?’ Bergemann said again, just because he couldn’t come up with anything else to say.
Other than Gruber, Bergemann was the only detective in the office who had known Willi. But the younger detectives had all heard of him and his reckless exploits. They listened in astonishment as Gruber told how he had wrestled Geismeier off his stupid bike, cracked his head against the pavement, not once but twice, punched the bastard hard in the ribs again and again to quiet him down, once and for all.
Geismeier was pretty groggy when they loaded him into the car for the drive to the station. Every time he seemed about to get a little frisky, Gruber let him have it again. ‘He’s not such a tough guy,’ said Gruber, holding up his massive fists. They were bruised and raw. ‘He didn’t get in one good punch. Not one.’
Gruber could hardly wait to report to Captain Wendt. Detective Sergeant Hermann Gruber, and nobody else, had singlehandedly brought Willi Geismeier’s reign of insurrection and mischief to an end. There would be a medal for sure. If there wasn’t a promotion in it for him, he didn’t know what it would take.
Bergemann didn’t say anything more. Willi was in Dachau now. Bergemann had to go about his business with extreme caution as though nothing were different. Gruber had always been a little suspicious of him. If anyone was ever able to make the connection between him and Willi, it would mean the end. The slightest misstep could mean Dachau for him too. And that wouldn’t do Willi or Lola or anyone else any good.
Over the next few days, Bergemann set about notifying people of Willi’s arrest and imprisonment. Some of them already knew. The police grapevine was buzzing, so Benno Horvath, who still had police contacts, had already heard. Benno notified Edvin Lindstrom, the Swede, but Edvin had also heard already. Bergemann let Frau Schimmel know, but even she had already worked it out somehow. Willi was right about her: she had connections only she knew about and an uncanny understanding of what was going on almost before it happened. And Lola was already in hiding somewhere. Bergemann didn’t know where, and it was best that way.
Sofia Bergemann could see that Hans was troubled. But she didn’t ask him why. He got upset if she asked too many questions about what he was up to, what he called his ‘work,’ by which he didn’t only mean his job as a policeman. Willi Geismeier had been outside the law for some time, and she knew Hans still had some sort of relationship with him. But she didn’t know anything about it – for her own good, is what Hans said.
The first few times Sofia had met Willi – that had been years ago now – she had found him arrogant and aloof. He seemed to almost make a point of avoiding her. She eventually came to realize his aloofness was a necessary precaution, for him and for her. Then once, after she thought she understood him, he had showed up right before Christmas with a big box for the boys. It was a wooden train set that had been his as a boy. Willi had sat down on the floor and helped them set it up. It had bridges and tunnels, a station with a stationmaster and semaphore signal. It took more than an hour and Willi had lost himself in the task.
From little things Hans said, she knew Willi lived dangerously. And Hans himself did things that, if discovered, could place her and the boys in danger. So she had learned never to ask. That’s how it was now. If you didn’t accept the fact that someone close to you – a husband, a colleague, a friend – might end up in prison, you were living in a fools’ paradise.
Keeping your head down, walking the straight and narrow, was no longer enough to keep you safe. And Bergemann was in the difficult position of investigating a very high-profile case whose clues – those gathered by Willi and a few additional clues Bergemann had uncovered on his own – led straight to the door of the Gestapo.
Bergemann’s earliest, tentative inquiries in that regard had been met with stony resistance. But eventually Captain Wendt had authorized an interview with the Gestapo official responsible for police relations. Bergemann sat waiting in a sparsely furnished office in Briennerstraße. It was his first time in the building, and he was struck by the empty silence of the place. His footsteps had echoed down the empty hallway. The venetian blinds had been lowered in the office where he waited, but were open just enough so that he could see the iron bars over the windows and the traffic beyond them moving by in all innocence.
The door opened and a short, chubby, middle-aged man came into the room. He wore a gray suit and tie. His round head was bald with a well-trimmed fringe of mouse-colored hair. His prominent nose held his small, rimless eyeglasses away from his face, so that when he looked at you over his glasses, which he often did, you saw his eyes both on his face and refracted in his glasses. It looks like he’s got four eyes, thought Bergemann, like he’s seeing twice as much. His handshake was firmer than Bergemann had expected.
‘Herr Braun,’ he said by way of introduction, and gestured for Bergemann to take a seat. ‘I understand you are investigating the serial killer,’ he said. ‘A terrible case. Terrible.’
‘That’s right,’ said
