Bacheran went to the Western Police headquarters early to hear what Inspector Muschan had to say about his questioning at the Eastern Police precinct. Once there he did his best to listen impartially and didn’t let on that he knew Muschan and even knew of his affair.
The date was January 7, 1950 and since it was a Saturday everyone was hoping to be done by noon.
“As for myself, I never doubted that Mrs Kusian was the angel that her patients said she was.”
“Yea…yea…, our well known policeman’s instinct,” Menzel grumbled.
“And of course Mr. Muschan came here on his own initiative to inform us as to what happened to Mrs. Kusian and tell us that she had been arrested in the Eastern sector,” Bacheran added.
“So, what now?” a member of the Chief of Police’s team asked.
Menzel didn’t need to think about it. “We get in touch with our colleagues in the East and then we go and examine the room on Kantstrasse together. Let’s say at 11 AM. The scene of the crime boys can bring their tool box.” He smiled and switched to politics: “The other side has Elisabeth Kusian and we have the crime scene, or at least we almost certainly do. We should be able to come together.”
Phone calls were exchanged, permission to go ahead was sought from higher up – and they all managed in the end to meet at the appointed time in Elisabeth Kusian’s lodgings. The Eastern side had sent Inspector Steffen and Helga Leupahn, the Western police department was represented by Inspector Menzel and the technicians from Homicide. With them came Bacheran, feeling more like a supporter than a participant. He somehow enjoyed the scene. It was better than the theater. “E. Kusian – Cold Angel” was playing. Part tragedy, part comedy. What was grotesque about it was that he had to pretend that he couldn’t stand Miss. Leupahn; as to the two old hounds of Berlin Kripo, they behaved as if the other one wasn’t in the room. That wasn’t surprising, of course, since Steffen was a red front fighter and a veteran of the Spanish war whereas Menzel, a CDU man, had been a Lieutenant in Hitler’s Wehrmacht and had voted for the NSDAP with nationalistic fervor, although he had not been a party member.
Without a word, they set to work. The result was plain to see: they found a wooden suitcase that had evidently been used to transport parts of the bodies, a kitchen knife that had probably been used to cut up both victims’ corpses: it showed traces of blood under the magnifying glass, and finally, a rubber glove with a few pubic hairs. Menzel went through the closets and picked out two men’s shirts and a pair of white socks that were far too big for a woman. The Homicide technicians were able to detect some blood on the woolen blankets, on a backpack, on the sleeper sofa and in the gaps between the floor boards.
But possibly the most important find was made by Helga. “Here, behind the closet: a clothes line!” As she pulled out the line, a piece of it, about a meter and a half in length, fell to the floor.
“That’s what she used to throttle her victims.”
“All we need now is Elisabeth Kusian’s confession of guilt,” Bacheran said.
“We’ll do our best,” Steffen growled as he started to gather the clothes that seemed to belong to the crime victim, Hermann Seidelmann, to take them away.
“Just a minute, Inspector!” Menzel grabbed them back. “These belong to us.”
“Then why don’t you come to Volks Police Headquarters and stick them under the nose of the suspect yourself,” Steffen snapped back.
It was more an injunction than a question and Menzel immediately got on his high horse. “I don’t have to take any orders from you. Also, allow me to remind you that we are in the Western sector here.”
“Of course.” Steffen smirked. “Crimes such as these are almost unthinkable in the Democratic sector.”
“There are many other unthinkable things happening in your sector,” Menzel shot back. “Soviet concentration camps on German soil for instance and the deportation of thousands of innocent people to Siberia. Stalin is a serial killer too, and whoever worships Stalin is…”
“Let’s go,” Steffen said and he pulled Helga by the arm.
Bacheran rolled his eyes and looked up to the ceiling in despair. Menzel was right of course but, still, he could have used more diplomacy or stuck to technocratic language; anything would have been better than this.
After the delegation from the East had left, Menzel and Bacheran were invited into the good room by the owner: she offered them a cup of tea.
“This whole thing is so awful!” Mrs. Stöhr broke out in tears. “Here I was sitting with my mother on the sofa listening to the radio… while someone was being murdered next door. But I swear to you, Inspector, we didn’t hear anything. I wouldn’t want you to think that we… My mother is deaf so we have to turn the volume all the way up on the radio.”
“For God’s sake, Mrs. Stöhr, you are under no suspicion whatsoever.” Bacheran tried to calm her down, he patted her on the sleeve of her silk blouse, like a son.
“And Mrs. Kusian was an angel to me… in her nurse’s uniform. But no one can see inside a person’s heart.”
“That’s true.”
Menzel now thought he should justify his outburst to Bacheran. “I’m really not a cold warrior but… Dieter Friede was a good friend of mine.”
“Who is he?” Bacheran asked.
“One of the five thousand people in Berlin who have vanished since the end of the war: they were jailed or kidnapped by the East. Dieter was a journalist with Abend, he was lured to the Eastern sector on November 2, 1947 and never came back. According to ADN, the Eastern news organization, he was convicted by the Soviets of spying for the United States and Great Britain. Moscow denied it all. Now you know why not even ten horses could drag me over to the East. They must hand over Kusian to us, I will under no circumstance go to Alex to examine her.”
Bernhard reflected that the Kusian case was hopelessly entangled. Seidelmann’s body, the GDR showman, lay in a morgue in the West while the body of Dorothea Merten, a citizen of West-Berlin, was being kept in a morgue in the East. Even stranger, Nurse Elisabeth Kusian, who was closely suspected of the double murder was being held in the East although she was from West Berlin and had killed in the Western sector. To top it all off, Homicide West was sitting on the evidence that was urgently needed in the East to convict Kusian.
“What do we do now?” he asked Norbert Menzel.
“We show Seidelmann’s brother the clothes we found in Kusian’s room. We question all her woman friends and acquaintances to find out what she may have given away and to whom; same thing with her husband. And we visit all the dry cleaners in her neighborhood to see if she brought them anything.”
Bernhard was a little surprised. “Do you really think she didn’t immediately throw everything in the garbage? If I murdered you, I would have to be incredibly stupid to take your things to a second hand dealer … or to have them cleaned first.”
“Well, yes, but women like Kusian were brought up never to throw anything away. For them, scraping and saving is a way of life, they’ve always had too little money and too many debts, the ‘shit of a pfennig’ as we say in Berlin. For them, wasting anything is a mortal sin. They would rather risk a life sentence than throw away a suit, a hat or a pretty blouse. No… they prefer to bring it to the second hand shop and make some hay out of it.”
“But that would be completely irrational. “ Bacheran couldn’t imagine such a way of seeing things.
“And what would you call killing Mrs. Merten in your bedroom when other people knew she was there?”
“You’re right: her mind must have been completely clouded.”
“Killers like her think that they’re more clever than everyone else put together and that they’ll never be found out. If they didn’t believe that they might be able to stop themselves.”
They talked as they were going down the stairs, then they walked to Zoo station. After this bout of psychological speculation they had to get down to the nitty-gritty of police work. Many police officers were dispatched and by the evening of January 7, Kripo West had impounded all of Seidelmann’s and Merten’s clothing.
“Should I bring all this to the Eastern sector?” Bacheran asked, hoping to see Helga again too.
Menzel tapped his finger to his temple: “Are you out of your…?!” No, the comrades on the other side can find out for themselves how to proceed. The sooner they hit a wall, the better for us: then they’ll deliver Kusian to us. Plus there are rumors: Seidelmann may have been doing more than just changing money in Berlin…” He gave Bacheran a meaningful look and said no more.
In those days in Berlin, agents from the East and the West hired each other: everything was possible.