“Mr. Uthmann?”
The man nodded, and for someone who worked nights and was awakened abruptly, he was civil enough, inviting Reinhardt inside. The apartment was dark and smelled heavy.
“You want to talk about Noell?” Uthmann asked, his mouth turning thickly around his teeth as he worked the sleep out of them. “I don’t know what I can add, really. I didn’t know him that well. Knew him by sight, enough to say ‘hello.’”
“Did you ever hear anything from upstairs?”
“You know I work on the trains, right? I’m a track engineer. I mean, when I come home, I sleep, and I’m a heavy sleeper. Not much gets through to me. But when I was up and about, I’d never hear much, if anything from upstairs. The other night, though, before leaving for work, I heard a fair bit of noise. Sounded like he had company, for once, and I heard him coming home the next day.” That chimed with what others had said, Reinhardt knew, that Noell had had a guest, gone out, and come home early the next morning.
“I hear that you had an argument with Noell on one occasion?”
Uthmann frowned, then nodded. “The kettle,” he said, gesturing vaguely into the apartment. “When I come home from work, I like to heat water for washing, and then I boil some for tea. The kettle sometimes whistles before I’m finished cleaning up. The whistle never usually bothered Noell, except once or twice, when he would come downstairs furious, hammering on the door for the noise to stop. He did it just the other day, after the party upstairs.”
“Maybe, he had a hangover, and the noise was disturbing to him.”
Uthmann nodded, mouth turning around itself, and he yawned, hugely. “In any case,” he observed, “when Noell was angry, he was a changed man. Quite different to his usual self.” Reinhardt indicated for him to go on. “That’s it, really. He was just . . . changed. Sort of, I don’t know. He must have been in a bad way after that party,” Uthmann finished, a small smile on his face.
Reinhardt left him to go back to sleep. Pausing on the landing, he thought a moment, then walked down to the next floor, deciding to canvas the building. He interrupted the ends of meals, doors opening to the flatulent reek of boiling potatoes or cabbage. He saw residual fear at his knocks, too many memories of men in dark coats. He was sent packing in some cases, in others received cordially, in one place even invited in for a drink by a man who looked like he never stopped drinking, and who ventured onto dangerous ground when he began waxing lyrical about the Führer, and how much he had loved the German people and how the German people had let him down. This, as the man sprawled slack-eyed on a sofa with only two legs, and pulled out from under some cushions a portrait of the Führer, his eyes misting over and his words blubbering around whatever emotions moved him.
No one, anywhere in the building, was able to add anything more to what Reinhardt already knew. His last stop was the superintendent’s apartment. Ochs answered his knocking eventually. Curled behind his door, he blinked out at Reinhardt until recognition filled his eyes after a confused moment.
“Inspector,” he said. “Back again?”
“Anyone been up in Noell’s apartment?”
“What? No one.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I don’t know. Not that I saw. But that said, I do remember something, now. About a month ago, maybe a little more, Noell received two visitors. They were both men, and both German, and one of them had a military bearing, sort of ‘senior officer’ type.”
“How would you know what a ‘senior officer’ type looks like?”
“I was in the first war, Inspector. You remember those sorts of things. The man looked down his nose at me, ordered the other one around, who called him ‘sir.’”
“Who was it came to see you earlier today?”
“What? Oh. Just a couple of old friends.”
“Do you remember anything about that man Noell was subletting from?” Ochs blinked at him. “Kessel?”
“Oh. Yes,” shrugged Ochs, leaning against his doorjamb and breathing heavily. “Sorry. Nothing. Don’t think I ever met the man.”
“The children, living across the street, they say the man found dead on the stairs had come here several times. You’re sure you never saw him?”
“I’m sure, Inspector.”
“They said they saw Poles, as well.”
“Poles? I wouldn’t put too much faith in what those ‘children’ have to say. Pack of lying and thieving little rats; I wish someone would get rid of them. Can’t you do something about them, Inspector?”
Reinhardt looked for the orphans, but their building was empty, no trace of them. He hesitated, intending to make his way back to Gothaerstrasse, but instead he made his way to the bar where Carlsen had supposedly run into trouble. His steps were hesitant, in part because of the stiffness of his knee, but he knew it was more because of the discomfort he felt at all the light and noise. He walked past crowds of people waiting for the irregular public transportation, past a demonstration—mostly women—outside the head offices of the former Nazi welfare organization, past a gang of “rubble women” leaning on their shovels and hammers to rest and who wolf whistled as he limped past, some of them so covered in brick dust and grime, they resembled statues more than women. Their efforts and their good humor gave him a little lift, and he tipped his hat to them, receiving a flurry of invitations and suggestions in return, one of them flipping up the tails of her gray coat at him in a sweep of dust, before turning her attentions on a man wheeling a little handcart in a zigzag line through the debris-strewn road. Reinhardt smiled as he walked on, but it faded as he thought of what they went through every day.
It was not just the labor, backbreaking as it was. It was not just the risks they took—thankfully, now, the more prosaic risks that came with working in and around damaged buildings, rather than the predatory needs of Soviet soldiers in the initial months of occupation. It was what they found too often down in the rubble. Not a day went by that they still did not unearth bodies—the young and the old, alone, in pairs, sometimes whole families, sometimes whole buildings. Up in Mitte, they were still finding dozens upon dozens of bodies in cellars that had served as air raid shelters and which had been caved in or blocked after the heavy American air raids in February 1945. What these women went through on a day clearing rubble, and then went through with a night of taking care of their families, he had little idea, but they had all the respect he could muster.
He found the bar near the Thielen Bridge, which spanned the gray drift of the Landwehr Canal, little more than a stone’s throw from the angle of the American and Soviet sectors at Lohmüllenplatz. The bar was in the basement of a building that bore its battle scars in scrawls of blackened stonework, and he would have walked past it but for the police handbill on the door, stating that the establishment was closed until further notice. No one answered his knocking, and he was about to leave when he heard someone coughing inside. The door jerked fitfully open to his identification as a police officer, and he stared into the gloom at a man in his middle years, a huge bruise purpling his left eye and another swelling up the side of his mouth.
“Whatchyouwantnow?” he mumbled, glancing at Reinhardt’s warrant disc.
“Who did that to you?” Reinhardt asked.
“Fuckinbulls,” he slurred. His words might have been unclear, but there was nothing wrong with the clarity of his eyes. They glittered back at him with suspicion and distrust.
“When were they here?”
The man dropped his head, shook it from side to side. “Couplevehours . . . Couple of hours ago,” he managed.
“May I come in a moment?”
He said nothing, simply turned back inside. Reinhardt followed him into the bar, into a stink of beer and cigarettes and a floor that stuck underfoot. A mop leaned out of a bucket of water that steamed feebly, and chairs were stacked on tables. The man retrieved a cigarette from an ashtray on the bar and leaned back against it, waiting for Reinhardt.
“This is your place?” The man nodded. “Pull me a pint, then.” The man hesitated, then went behind the bar. “Sunday night, were there a couple of Brits in here?”
The man shrugged as he pumped Reinhardt’s beer. “Youshayso.”
“You didn’t recognize them? Was there a woman? A prostitute.”
“Lossafuckingprozzies,” the man said, sucking on his cigarette. His face curled in on itself, in frustration, perhaps.
“Her name’s Gieb. And speak up, for God’s sake.”
“You try fuckinspeakin’ with a gob fulla brokenfuckinglass.” He slammed Reinhardt’s pint on the bar top, beer slopping down the glass’s sides. “Like I told the others,” he said, making an exaggerated effort with his words. “Shecamein . . . She came in, she sat down . . . with this one bloke. With this one bloke . . .”
“They came together?” The barman nodded. “Describe him.”
The man sighed, taking a pull on his cigarette. “Look, like I told the other fuckin’ bulls, I didn’t get a good look at him. Sat with his back . . . his back to me. Dark-haired. Good coat. Chunky. Biggish, y’know?” he said, puffing out his chest and shoulders. Reinhardt nodded at him to go on. “He kept his hat on and his back to me. The prozzie bought the beers. They talked . . . talked a bit. The bloke was a bit drunk. Got drunker. They talked more. He began shoutin’ . . . Some others told him to shurrup. He got upset. Picked a couple of arguments. Picked on a couple of lads who, you know . . . Likely looking lads,” the barman said, gesturing with his cigarette. “Looked like local thugs. Boys into a bitathisanda . . . and a bit of that,” he finished, wincing at the pain in his mouth. “They took it outside. S’all I know.”
“Just an average night in Neukölln.” The barman nodded, ruefully. Reinhardt took a sip of his beer. It was flat and tepid. “Anyone else see anything?”
“People keep their ’eads down at times like that. Y’know?”
“The prostitute. What did she do? When the trouble started.”
“Nuffin’. Just sat there, smokin’.”
“Describe her.”
The barman sighed. “Blonde. Ratty-lookin’. Like a . . . like a used rug. Man’s got to be desperate to go with a bit of tail like that.”
“You knew her?” The man nodded. “Where did she live?” The man shrugged. “What about the two men. Did you recognize them? Seen them before?” The barman shook his head. “What time was this?”
The man shrugged, glancing at his wrists. “No watch. No clock. I was knackered. I think it was early morning. I was thinkin’ of closin’ up. Tha’sall. Look, I’m done in, and I want my bed. You going to pay for that beer?”
“All right, then. What do you want for it?”
“Give me a cigarette, and we’ll call it evens.”
Reinhardt allowed a sardonic glint into his eyes as he took a Lucky from his pocket and laid it on the bar top. “So, a man comes into your bar with a woman you think was a prostitute. You don’t get a good look at him. You don’t know what time it was.”
“What I said.”
Reinhardt broke the cigarette in two, rolling one half across the bar top.
“You ain’t got nuffin’ bigger, ’ave you?” the man sneered.
“This man seemed drunk. He picked a fight with who you think were a couple of local thugs. They take it outside. That’s it. Did I miss anything?”
“No,” glowered the barman. “But just be careful the door don’t smack you on your fat ’ead as you leave.”