Reinhardt sidled up against the back wall in the small meeting room, favoring his left leg. The room was packed with plainclothes policemen wrapped in a fug of cigarette smoke. Around the room, men caught his eyes. Most looked away, disinterested, but here, there, those who remembered Reinhardt, who Reinhardt remembered from before the war, looked at one another across the heads and shoulders of their colleagues, and in the lackluster gleam of their eyes, they remembered other times, other days, other places, even if one or two of them nodded civilly enough to him.
Tanneberger was up at the lectern, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He blinked at the room, then down at his papers, and launched into a droning recital of the happenings the day before and overnight, a monotonous litany of really nothing very much at all: a black market ring broken up, prostitutes dragged in, drunks sleeping it off downstairs. Reinhardt listened with half an ear, shifting his weight to ease the pain of his knee, more interested in what was not mentioned. No missing persons. Nothing of relevance from the Soviet sector.
Tanneberger held the rank of police councilor. Ostensibly, he was the Schöneberg division’s chief of detectives, placed here by the Allies in the big police reform of October 1946. Reinhardt remembered Tanneberger vaguely from before the war as some mid-level bureaucrat in Berlin’s police administration, and Reinhardt did not know what Tanneberger had done during the war. The man had been dredged up from somewhere, and his Fragebogen—the denazification document any and all Germans had to complete for any kind of posting in government—must have passed Allied vetting and the subsequent bickering on the Allied Control Council as each of the occupying powers maneuvered their men into position. Ganz, who stood next to Tanneberger, was the one who really ran the detective squad, and Reinhardt could still not figure him out.
Tanneberger invariably deferred to him on anything operational and technical. The two went well enough together, Reinhardt admitted, Ganz never contradicting Tanneberger in public, and Tanneberger rarely overruling the way Ganz kept things moving. They made for one of those schizophrenic instances that seemed to characterize the police, though: both of them in their different ways Nazi-era holdovers, both of them now in higher positions of authority under the Occupation than they had ever attained, or ever would have. Reinhardt had left Berlin’s police before the war to escape the Nazis. He had come back after it to a police force dominated by communists instead, but there were still too many faces he remembered, who seemed to have that ability he had never had. The ability to bend with the wind, to find accommodation with whatever force or power that held sway and serving all with equal excesses of zeal. Or the minimum needed to get through the day, like he used to do, he remembered, and was in danger of doing again. His gaze drifted to Ganz. Ganz had to have some kind of political connection or line, either to the Soviets or to the Americans, but if it was to the latter, Reinhardt had never discovered it and it had never been revealed to him.
On the other hand, Reinhardt’s own American connections were all too painfully obvious.
As if he heard Reinhardt’s thoughts drifting, Ganz looked back at him, and there was a sardonic gleam in his eyes, such that Reinhardt knew straightaway something was wrong.
“Reinhardt!”
He straightened, realizing he had missed something. Tanneberger was looking at him. The whole room was looking at him.
“Reinhardt?”
“Chief.”
“I know you’re usually tucked up in bed at this time, Reinhardt.” A low chuckle ran around the room, like a wave washing over a pebbly shore. “But perhaps you might like to fill us in on your case, seeing as you’re the only one who seems to have had any excitement lately.”
“Yes, sir. I responded . . .”
“Up front, Reinhardt. Up here,” Ganz interrupted.
“Two bodies in a building in the US sector,” Reinhardt said, looking out over the rows of seated officers, at those standing along the back wall, feeling the lodestone weight of Tanneberger and Ganz behind him. He felt nervous, and his tongue stroked the gap in his teeth where the Gestapo had knocked one out. “One found dead at the foot of the stairs, a broken neck sustained in an apparent fall, but the man had been badly injured before then. Upon inspecting the building, I discovered a second body. From what I could tell, this second victim had been asphyxiated. In the apartment, which showed no signs of disturbance, there was a streak of blood on the wall that I suspect was blood from the man found on the stairs. I was told by the building’s supervisor that the apartment’s tenant, the man I found asphyxiated, was named Noell, although I found no identification for him anywhere. The man on the stairs remains unidentified. Forensics is going over the apartment, and Professor Endres will autopsy the bodies.”
“Theories, Reinhardt?” interrupted Ganz, from where he stood to one side.
“Too early to tell. I did have an impression, though . . .”
“Yes?” Ganz’s face was flat.
“Noell’s murder had an air of ritual about it. The way his body was laid out on the floor, with water around his head. I think, although I can’t be sure, but it reminds me of something I have heard or read recently.”
“Ritual?” repeated Weber. His voice was lazy, but the sparkle in his eyes glittered the lie of his apparent disinterest, as did the way they roved left and right, gathering in support. There was a shift in the room, heads coming up, a charge in the air like the expectation of a confrontation.
“Ritual,” Reinhardt said, again. “I think it would be useful to look into other, similar cases.”
“If there are any,” murmured Weber.
“Any leads?”
“Several. Noell’s neighbor works nights. I will go back to question him. As well, Noell was sub-letting the apartment from a Mr. Kessel. We need to find him and question him.”
“Anything else?” asked Tanneberger, eyes down on his papers.
Reinhardt knew he was being goaded, made fun of, but there was no way to avoid it, so he simply continued. “There is a group of children, probably orphans, living in the ruins opposite the building. I managed to talk to them. They said they had seen the unidentified man on several previous occasions over the past several days.”
“And?”
“I suspect this man knew or was meeting with Noell, or was looking for him.”
“Ritual and suppositions,” Weber carped. “‘Suspect’ this and ‘believe’ that.”
“They may also have seen the murderer and gave me a description of what they saw,” said Reinhardt, dreading the next question.
“And?” prodded Ganz.
“All they could tell me was he walked in a strange manner. From the description of the children, it sounds like a man used to using cover, and that he wore what sounds like a Russian quilted jacket.”
There was a silence as each man examined the desirability of a Russian being the prime suspect in these murders.
“A war veteran, surely,” snorted Weber explosively. “An officer, probably, walking with a rod up his backside or with wounds honorably gained in defense of the Fatherland. Veterans and Americans. This is perfect!”
“Have you called social services about those children?” Tanneberger asked suddenly.
“No, sir.”
“Do you intend to?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?” Tanneberger lifted his face from his papers. Next to him, Ganz’s face was expressionless, but Reinhardt knew he would be frustrated at this nit-picking.
“I will mention them in my report, but I believe that they can take care of themselves well enough for now.”
“For now?”
“For the time we need to concentrate on this investigation.”
“I’m surprised, Reinhardt. I did not expect such callousness from you.”
“Maybe he wasn’t so softened up by the Americans as we thought,” Ganz said, taking back the initiative. Most of the men grinned, as they were supposed to, a few more looked uncomfortable.
Tanneberger grinned, a quick twitch of his mouth. “Where are you with the report?”
“It needs to be typed up, and I need Berthold’s and Endres’s findings.”
“Very well. Let me have it as soon as it’s done.”
“Yes, sir. There is one more thing. The unidentified victim seemed to me too well-dressed, too well-fed, and too clean to be a Berliner. Or if he is one, he is very well-connected.”
The room was silent.
“Meaning?”
“There may be an Allied connection, sir.”
The room shifted. Someone groaned.
“Allied?” Tanneberger asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“Who?”
“Americans. Who bloody else with Reinhardt?” Weber muttered.
“Quiet!” Ganz growled. “Reinhardt?”
“I have no idea. As I said, it is an impression.”
“Because he was well-fed?”
“And he was found in the US sector,” offered Ganz, his eyes like two cherries pushed into dough.
“I’m sorry, what’s that you’re saying, Ganz?” asked Reinhardt, stung into a reaction. “Are you saying the people in the US sector are better off than in others? The Soviet sector, for example?”
There was a hiss of laughter, and Ganz reddened, made to say something, but Tanneberger cut him off.
“Enough, the pair of you. The US MPs were called?” Reinhardt nodded. Tanneberger looked at him with his blank face. “And they had nothing to say? No surprise, there. Well, if they saw nothing to worry them, I see nothing for us to worry about. I will let Bliemeister know,” Tanneberger finished, referring to the assistant chief of police of the American sector. He looked at Ganz, and something unspoken passed between them.
Reinhardt hesitated a moment. “One of the children also said he’d seen Poles watching the building. From what I could gather, these Poles may have been searching for war criminals.” The room was very quiet.
“Sterling work, Reinhardt,” Ganz said, “to land us with an investigation possibly involving the Allies.” There was a smattering of laughter. “And, of course, not forgetting your impression this might have happened before. So. Circulate the victims’ information to the other precincts, and make sure the Allied military police command is informed as well. Then get some rest and be back in later. You’re off night shifts until this is cleared up. Some sunlight should do you some good. You look like a bloody corpse.”