Bernhard Bacheran was sitting at his desk waiting for the work day to end. The State Attorney’s administrative offices on Fehrbelliner Strasse were quiet. Many of his colleagues, men and women had been given two days’ vacation between the New Year and the following weekend or had called in sick. The first Thursday of the year was dark, light broke out rarely in the gloom and the rest of the time a light snow drizzled down. The temperature was just below zero Celsius and even at night it was not terribly cold. That was a good thing because even though this was the first winter after the blockade wood and coal remained in short supply. Bacheran was bored. He reopened the folder where he kept all the material regarding the Seidelmann case. The search for the perpetrator was going nowhere. Three weeks before, on December 16, they had hoped to nail the murderer but they had not come any closer to doing so: not with the money changer Rudolf Doberschütz nor with beautiful Dorothea Stetzsch, ‘Thea The Whip’. Thanks to their attorneys, both had been able to celebrate Christmas at home.
Bernhard closed the folder. Reading the file a third time would not give him any new insights. So he decided to go to the toilet. Sitting inside, he noticed there was no toilet paper. Instead there was a Telegraf on the dispenser. Bacheran read the date: January 5, 1950. Today’s paper. Even though the temperature was barely above 10 degrees Celsius, he sat there a while. He loved reading the paper in the toilet, a habit he must have inherited from his father. “He never could hide his proletarian origins.” Oh well… Bacheran browsed the headlines: Conny Rux run-in... What was that about? The famous boxing champion had been riding in car that rammed into the police Superintendent’s car on Sonnenallee, corner of Erkstrasse in Neukölln. She jumps from the fifth floor... 35 year old widow, Karoline K. from Wilmersdorf, jumped from the fifth floor window of the building where she lived, at 7, Jenau Strasse, in an attempt at suicide. Opium dealers at the exchange booth... 37 year old amputee Paul L. from Ölsnitz in Voigtland had been apprehended as he attempted to sell 25 grams of opium at the corner of Schlossstrasse and Schildhornstrasse: he said the opium came from old Wehrmacht supplies. Corpse found in ruins of a house... Bacheran started, he could not believe his eyes. He carefully read every word: Yesterday afternoon, children playing in the rubble at the corner of Memhardstrasse and Prenzlauerstrasse uncovered parts of a corpse, that of a woman between the ages of 35 and 40. The limbs and the head were separated from the trunk which was itself wrapped in underwear. The investigation showed that the body parts had been brought to the location separately. The crime itself had been committed eight to ten days ago. The Eastern sector police posted a missing persons inquiry: the woman is 1m60 to 1m 65 tall, strong, brown eyes, hair dyed a reddish brown. She has a brown lentil sized birthmark above the navel. Blue woolen underpants, size 44, brand name AKA Moth Free with I.G. DDT found nearby.
Bacheran forgot why he had gone to the toilet, jumped up and hastily pulled up his pants. He felt terribly angry at Helga Leupahn. They were a pair now and yet she didn’t think it necessary to inform him. But he calmed down just as fast: Come on, you’re being unfair, who says this corpse has anything to do with Seidelmannn…? All right … but still… The key word “rubble” had triggered the connection and his love for corny jokes: ‘Uncovered’ in the rubble… He hurried back to his office to call Helga. As he reached for the receiver he noticed that someone had left a telegram on his desk. He picked it up and read it. It was from Homicide East. They were informing him of the discovery of the corpse near Alexanderplatz. It was signed Helga Leupahn.
He was immediately relieved. She probably had not been able to send the telegram any earlier. He had to talk to her. But there were not that many telephone lines between the two sectors and, surprising as it may seem, he had to try eleven times before he finally reached her.
“Finally… But you’re not the dismembered woman from Alex.”
“Stop that, don’t make fun of such things!”
“I only thought that since…” He thought she was such a square when she took things so seriously, so he tried to fight back with more black humor. “I only thought, because of the blue panties… Yours too are moth proof. My sweet little moth, you.”
“This is an office line,” she warned him.
“Okay, as our Neukölln occupation forces say: has the well known modus operandi been used in this case?”
“The corpse in Alex was dismembered in the same professional manner as the one in Schillerstrasse, just like Seidelmann’s.”
“But this time the victim is without a doubt a woman?” He insisted.
She showed him she could use cabaret humor. “We weren’t altogether sure. Can you tell me how to make sure…? Maybe it’s not the same over on your side, in the Western sector.”
He made a loud kissing sound. “You’re a darling. I love you when you’re like that. But let’s try and figure out what this means for the Seidelmann case… First, that there is probably no connection to Seidelmann.”
She disagreed. “Why do you say that? We still don’t know whether Seidelmann and the dead woman are not in some way connected. First we have to identify her.”
“And you haven’t as yet?”
“No.”
“You really haven’t or am I not allowed to know?”
“We haven’t. No one has brought any useful information. And among the women listed as missing here, in the Democratic sector, no one matches her description.”
It made him angry that she should use the term “Democratic” for the Eastern sector but he refrained from saying it should be called the “autocratic” or the “totalitarian” sector. “Then I’ll inquire at the Missing Persons’ Bureau here or I’ll ask someone to do it.”
“That would suggest itself if the same perpetrator is at work and he uses the same modus operandi: killing in the Western sector and disposing of the body parts in the Eastern sector.”
“If it’s the same perpetrator…” Bacheran repeated. “If. But isn’t it the case that usually serial killers kill only women – like the Berlin S-Bahn killer Paul Orgozow for instance – or only young men- say like Haarmann in Hannover?”
“There always are exceptions to the rule.”
“But everything seems to indicate that we are not dealing with a sex killer. It looks more like robbery and murder, like murder for money…”
“If both Seidelmann and the woman from Alex are involved in some kind of network then they could have been killed in an attempt to cover up. We have to be very careful what we conjecture.”
“Or else it’s a madman who enjoys cutting people up.”
“We’ll see. Well, we have to end it there.”
“I hope you don’t mean end our relationship, only our conversation.”
“I have to go home, I don’t feel so…”
“Being a man, I can’t really empathize, still, I hope you have a good rest.”
“Talk to you soon!” Helga hung up immediately. ‘Short and painful’ as she always said.
Bacheran kissed the black telephone receiver before he set it down. Then he called Herbert Menzel and informed him of the telegram from the eastern sector and of his conversation with the police over there.
“Do I go to the Missing Persons’ Bureau by myself, or are you coming?”
“Please go by yourself, tonight is bowling night.”
“Okay.” Bacheran couldn’t help using “okay”. Oh well, it wouldn’t be so bad if West Berlin did become the 49th or 50th state of the USA one day, as some people kept hoping.
It took him a while to find the phone number for the Missing Persons’ Bureau but when he finally did he called immediately. The description of the woman in the telegram differed slightly from the one given by the newspaper so Bacheran built a composite picture from both sources in order to make the search as easy as possible.
“Yes, that could be a certain Dorothea Merten, aka Doris. She’s been missing since the evening of December 26, 1949. Lives in Spandau. She was on her way to her sister’s in Weissensee, in the Eastern sector to celebrate the second day of Christmas. She never got there.”
“Can you give me the name and address of the sister so we can go and talk to her?”
“Yes, please wait…” The information was not straightforward. “Ilse Breitenstein, somewhere in Weissensee, Rennbahnstrasse…”
“No phone?”
“No. not at home. But I have the telephone number of her place of work, the Treptow/Elsenstrasse streetcar yard. She’s a streetcar driver.”
Bacheran thanked and called immediately. Why put off what you can do today. That saying had been impressed on him so much that it had become a reflex.
“Yes, Mrs. Breitenstein… She’s not here right now she’s working the number 3 line.”
“The 3…? Then she should be passing by us on Fehrbelliner Platz…?
“Yup, unless she derails…”
“Could you tell me at what time she will pass by us on her next round?”
“You sure want to know a lot!”
“Her sister has probably been murdered and we need your help to catch the murderer.”
“That’s something else. I need some time to figure it out. Give me your number, I’ll call you back.”
The employee from BVB did as she had promised and, at 6:33 sharp, Bacheran was standing at the streetcar stop. It came up, and there was indeed a woman sitting in the driver’s seat. He got on, stood by the driver’s corner and waited until the bell rang. He hesitated a little to talk to the woman, she looked like she was the type that would be played by Grete Weise, Fita Benkhoff or Adele Sandrock in the movies, with a face like a bulldog and a sharp tongue; also, above the windshield, there was a sign that said “Do not talk to the driver” in large letters. After three stops he finally took a chance and introduced himself.
“Forgive me for talking to you but it’s an urgent matter. My name is Bernhard Bacheran, I’m with the Berlin State Attorney’s office, and right now I’m working with Homicide.”
Ilse Breitenstein turned the handle so hard it looked as if she were initiating an emergency stop. “I read it in the papers… The dead woman from Alex… and I thought: God, that could be Doris.”
“Is that because of the description that was given, the woman’s appearance, or…? Or for another reason?”
“She’s been so depressed these days.”
“She didn’t say why?”
“I didn’t ask because I thought it was because of Rudi again. Rudi is her husband. They want to get a divorce but they live in the same apartment. And because Rudi is a butcher by profession.”
Bacheran could see how it all fit. The husband’s profession and the sister saying that Dorothea had been so sad these days. Obviously, the husband had murdered Seidelmann – and she had found out. She was afraid that he would want to kill her now to silence her. Bacheran thanked the driver and expressed his sympathy. Then he asked her for the address in Spandau: it was 5 Pickelsdorferstrasse. He got off the streetcar at Hermannplatz, looked for a phone booth and called inspector Menzel even though he knew the inspector was going bowling. Naturally Menzel was not too happy about the extra hours of work but he understood that under the circumstances he had to show up in Spandau.
“I’ll see to it that we get a staff car. The best would be for you to take the U-Bahn to Ruhleben and wait there at the station. I’ll collect you there. Let’s say in 40 minutes.
It worked out perfectly but when they got to the apartment on Pickelsdorferstrasse, the front door was already locked. There were no buzzers in those days.
“Which of us is able to climb a façade?” Bacheran asked.
“You of course,” Menzel laughed. “You’re younger and you’re on your way up in the world.”
“Right.” Bacheran was still something of a kid: he walked to the gutter pipe and made as if he were going to climb it. He got as high as a meter from the ground and jumped back down and said he preferred to wait until a tenant came. “Even if we have to stay til midnight.”
They were saved much earlier than that: someone came down the stairs on his way out. A strong man, about fifty years of age, of heavy build.
Bacheran called to him: “Excuse me sir, could you let us in, we wish to speak to someone, a Mr. Merten. Does he live here?”
“He’s standing in front of you. Did anything happen to my wife?”
“Are you the one who declared her missing – or did someone else?” Menzel asked him.
“I’m the one. But why are you here…? Is this already an interrogation?” Rudi Merten looked like he was gearing for a fight.
Instinctively, Bacheran took a step back and hastened to tell him who they were in the hope of calming the man down. “And since the murdered woman whose body was found at Alexanderplatz, properly cut up in a way only a butcher would be capable of, is in all probability your wife, I wouldn’t do anything rash if I were you.”
Rudi Merten gave him such a dirty look, it was clear he was having a hard time controlling himself. “Am I already being arrested?”
“No,” Menzel answered. “But we would like to speak to you and have a look at your apartment.”
They went up. Merten opened the door and let them in. He maintained a heavy silence. Bacheran had a strange feeling he couldn’t define: He felt as if he were defiling the place as well as the dead woman. Let the dead rest in peace… he also felt something like the awe one feels inside a temple. Even if this was a home like any other. Dark furniture bought at the beginning of the Nazi years, dark wallpaper, imitation Persian rugs. Everything looked a little dusty, the chairs and the sofa were worn. The only thing out of the ordinary was the typewriter on the desk in the living room. There was a sheet of paper in it. Somebody, probably Mrs. Merten herself had typed a few lines. Bacheran walked over to read them: it was a poem. As long as you’re alive/ The end is a new beginning. / As long as you strive/ There is… Evidently, it was hard to find a word that rhymed and still made some kind of sense.
He turned to Rudolf Merten. “Your wife wanted to be a writer, a poet?”
“Yes and since she caught that bug, I’m not good enough for her anymore, she dreams of higher things.”
Menzel examined the apartment but did not touch anything. “Tell me, Mr. Merten… You had become so estranged from your wife that you didn’t celebrate Christmas together?”
“No, what do you think…?! On Christmas Eve she went to her sister’s and she wanted to be back in Spandau for the second day of Christmas.”
“But she wasn’t back?”
“No. That’s why I reported her missing. On the third day of Christmas.”
“She could have stayed at her sister’s…,” Menzel suggested.
“But she wasn’t there. I phoned Ilse at the rail yard.”
Bacheran thought that was a little surprising. “Why worry so much about your wife when you would have liked to get rid of her?” He suspected that the reason why he had gone to the Missing Persons’ Bureau so fast was that he wanted to forestall any suspicion. Everyone would say: If he was the killer, he would have kept quiet, if…
But Merten wasn’t flustered. “She’s still my wife. And as long as we are still married, well…you can hope that you’ll get back together. I didn’t want a divorce.”
Menzel was the kind of man who liked love triangles and he immediately suggested: “You say you didn’t want a divorce, Mr. Merten, but surely you had a lady friend…?”
“Yes, a brunette.”
“Can we know her name?”
“I don’t know it myself.”
“You must have talked to each other somehow?”
“I call her ‘my angel’ and things like that. Her husband is a big shot, a politician. She told me. But he was in the hospital during the Christmas holiday.”
“And you met here in your apartment?”
“Yes. My wife wasn’t here.”
“And where did you first meet your ‘angel’?”
“At Anhalter station, by the booths. A friend of mine sells soap there. I was helping him out before Christmas.”
“I thought you worked for Siemens.”
“I called in sick.”
Bacheran followed the exchange attentively. It sounded a bit too much like a movie plot: Merten and the brunette kill the lady with the typewriter because they want to be free to love each other. But it was worth investigating the scenario. Menzel seemed to think so too: his eyes kept returning to the floor boards. And the fact that he had a sudden urge to go to the toilet could only mean that he wanted to go and check for blood there.
Bacheran took over. “Let’s be serious: if the dead woman from Alex really is your wife, then I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. The story about that girl friend of yours whose name you don’t know, go tell that to someone who believes in fairy tales.” He realized he had once again used a turn of phrase that his father used when speaking to ‘simple’ people.
Menzel returned from the toilet and Bacheran could tell from his face that he had found nothing. But that didn’t mean anything. They could have cut up Dorothea Merten’s body somewhere else entirely. Or they could have cleaned up so thoroughly that you couldn’t see anything without a magnifying glass or a microscope. Was Menzel going to take Merten into temporary custody? Yes, he was.
“I must ask you to come with us Mr. Merten. The coroner will decide what happens next.”