The Ashes of Berlin E-Book

Luke McCallin

• Herausgeber: No Exit Press
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Serie: A Gregor Reinhardt Novel
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 671

Beschreibung

Ashes of Berlin is shortlisted for the CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger World War II is over, and former German intelligence officer Captain Gregor Reinhardt has returned to Berlin. He's about to find that the bloodshed has not ended - and that for some, death is better than defeat. When a man is found slain in a broken-down tenement, Reinhardt embarks on a gruesome investigation. It seems a serial killer is on the loose, and matters only escalate when it's discovered that one of the victims was the brother of a Nazi scientist. Reinhardt's search for the truth takes him across the divided city and soon embroils him in a plot involving the Western Allies and the Soviets. He soon realises that this investigation could cost him everything as he pursues a killer who believes that all wrongs must be avenged... 'An insightful and provocative page-turner...A riveting read hard to put down.'Mature Times 'A gritty thriller...Luke McCallin's third, and finest, novel...Reinhardt is a terrific creation.'The Times 'historical thrillers don't come any better than The Ashes of Berlin.'Barry Forshaw,Financial Times

Leseprobe

THE ASHES OF BERLIN

World War II is over, and former German intelligence officer Captain Gregor Reinhardt has returned to Berlin. He’s about to find that the bloodshed has not ended – and that for some, death is better than defeat.

A year after Germany’s defeat, Reinhardt has been hired back onto Berlin’s civilian police force. The city is divided between the victorious allied powers, but tensions are growing, and the police are riven by internal rivalries as factions within it jockey for power and influence with Berlin’s new masters.

When a man is found slain in a broken-down tenement, Reinhardt embarks on a gruesome investigation. It seems a serial killer is on the loose, and matters only escalate when it’s discovered that one of the victims was the brother of a Nazi scientist.

Reinhardt’s search for the truth takes him across the divided city and soon embroils him in a plot involving the Western Allies and the Soviets. And as he comes under the scrutiny of a group of Germans who want to continue the war – and faces an unwanted reminder from his own past – Reinhardt realises that this investigation could cost him everything as he pursues a killer who believes that all wrongs must be avenged…

About the Author

Luke McCallin was born in Oxford, grew up in Africa, went to school around the world and has worked with the UN as a humanitarian relief worker and peacekeeper. His experiences have driven his writing, in which he explores what happens to normal people put under abnormal pressures. He lives with his wife and two children in an old farmhouse in France. He has a MA in political science, speaks French, Spanish, and a little Russian. The Man from Berlin was published in 2014, and The Pale House was published in 2015 by No Exit Press.

Praise for Luke McCallin

The Ashes of Berlin

‘An engrossing mystery… his best yet’ – Publishers Weekly

‘Tough, gritty and atmospheric – a new Luke McCallin novel is a cause for celebration’ – William Ryan, author of The Constant Soldier

The Man from Berlin

‘An extraordinarily nuanced and compelling narrative’ – New York Journal of Books

‘a good, fast-paced, engaging read full of surprises as well as a more serious meditation on war, loyalty and the complexities of the former Yugoslavia itself’ – We Love This Book

‘a gripping and atmospheric thriller… a thoroughly involving and worthwhile read’ – Crime Time

‘I’m reminded of Martin Cruz Smith in the way I was transported to a completely different time and culture and then fully immersed in it. An amazing first novel’ – Alex Grecian, author of The Devil’s Workshop

‘From page one, Luke McCallin draws the reader into a fascinating world of mystery, intrigue, and betrayal’ – Charles Salzberg, author of Swann’s Lake of Despair

‘Set in 1943 Sarajevo, McCallin’s well-wrought debut… highlights the complexities of trying to be an honest cop under a vicious, corrupt regime… Intelligent diversion for WWII crime fans’ – Publishers Weekly

‘Reinhardt’s character is compelling, as complex and conflicted as the powers that surround him… I look forward to the next Gregor Reinhardt mystery’ – Historical Novel Society

The Pale House

‘Very well written and wonderfully descriptive’ – Mystery People

‘the tale creates… a complex, exceptional character in action’ – Crime Review UK

‘[A] well-executed sequel… Readers who can’t wait for Philip Kerr’s next Bernie Gunther novel will find much to like’ – Publishers Weekly

‘A multilayered tale of war, political upheaval, and fragile hope’ – Kirkus Reviews

‘A very engaging thriller series. Reinhardt is both tough and thoughtful, and it’s impossible not to get drawn into his emotional depths and root for him. The cast is full of sympathetic characters, the worst of villains, innocents, and everyone in between. The setting is engaging, the characters complicated, and the plot inspired’ – Historical Novel Society

‘A very compelling murder mystery that takes place in a seldom talked-about country during WWII, and Mr McCallin paints a vivid picture of Sarajevo, of the people, and [of] the dire conditions everyone had to endure’ – Fresh Fiction

To my wife, Barbara, and my children, Liliane and Julien

Acknowledgments

This one was a difficult one…

Many people helped me through the writing of this novel, with insights and support, with food and good cheer, or with just being there. My deepest thanks and affection to my family, above all, for living through the good times (there were a few, right?!) and the bad times (plenty of those!) as I wrestled with the plot and the writing and a rewarding but demanding full-time job.

Thanks to those who read the drafts and offered comments and advice. To my wife, Barbara, my parents, John and Margaret, and my sisters, Cassie and Amy. Thanks as well to friends and colleagues, in particular to Number One Fan (aka Marina Throne-Holst), Ben Negus, Séverine Rey, and Marina Konovalova, whose insights and comments into Russian and Soviet thinking were invaluable. Franz Boettcher helped out enormously with research on Berlin’s locations and infrastructure, and with German history, idioms, and culture. My cousin, Dominic Barrett, helped out with Russian drinking customs! Ion Mills at my British publishers, No Exit Press, was a reliable font of wisdom, good cheer, and culinary destinations in London. Thanks as always to Ryan and Tamara at Geneva Fitness for keeping the bar high; many’s the time I literally worked out frustrations with plot and character! A shout-out to the ‘dawn patrol’ as well (you know who you are!). Lastly, I want in particular to acknowledge the contribution of Chelsea Starling, my friend and website designer extraordinaire, who insisted that Reinhardt had to have something to live for, that his life could not be all wrack and ruin. She was right.

My thanks to my editors, Tom Colgan and Amanda Ng, and to my agent, Peter Rubie, for keeping things on an even keel.

Dramatis Personae

Main Characters

Reinhardt, Gregor – Kripo detective, assigned to Schöneberg; a former officer in the German Army

Bliemeister, Bruno – Assistant Chief of Police in the American Sector

Bochmann, Heinrich – Former executive officer of III./NJG64 (formerly IV./JG56)

Brauer, Rudolph – Former policeman; Reinhardt’s best friend and former partner in Kripo

Carlsen – British agent, found murdered

Collingridge, David – American official in the US Occupation authorities

De Massigny, Armand – French lieutenant and archivist, working in the WASt

Endres – Professor of pathology at the Charité hospital complex

Ganz, Hugo – Veteran Kripo detective in Schöneberg; a man of few loyalties

Gareis – Former pilot in IV./JG56

Gieb – A prostitute

Haber – Former air force researcher and scientist

Jürgen – Former pilot in IV./JG56

Kausch – Former SS Sturmbannführer (major); a man with a past to hide

Lassen – Kripo detective in Hamburg

Leyser, Marius – Former Brandenburger (German commando)

Dr Lütjens – Former air force researcher and scientist

Margraff, Paul – Berlin’s police president (chief of police), a German soldier captured at Stalingrad and now a Soviet collaborator

Markworth, James – British official in the UK Occupation authorities

Meissner, Hilde – Widow of Tomas Meissner, Reinhardt’s former mentor

Neumann, Walter – Chief of police in Schöneberg

Noell, Andreas – Former pilot in IV./JG56

Noell, Theodor – Former air force researcher and scientist

Ochs – Superintendent of Noell’s building

Reinhardt, Friedrich – Reinhardt’s son, a former Soviet prisoner of war

Semrau – German official working in the WASt

Skokov – Major in the Soviet MGB (state security)

Stresemann – Allegedly Gieb’s pimp

Stucker – Former pilot in IV./JG56

Tanneberger, Karl – Chief of detectives in Schöneberg

Uthmann – Tenant in Noell’s building

Von Vollmer, Claus – Former commanding officer of III./NJG64 (formerly IV./JG56), now a businessman

Weber – Kripo detective; a surly young man with an unknown past, often seen with detectives Frohnau and Schmidt

Whelan, Harry – British official in the Allied Control Council

Zuleger – Former pilot in IV./JG56

Other Characters

(Elsewhere or Deceased Prior to This Story)

Albrecht, Fenski, Hauck, Meurer, Osterkamp, Prellberg, and Thurner – Former pilots in IV./JG56

Vukić, Suzana – A Yugoslav partisan

Organisations and Locations

Allied Control Council – The military-occupation governing body of the Allied Occupation Zones in Germany, comprised of representatives from the US, USSR, UK, and France, located in the Kammergericht building in the US Sector in Berlin

Berlin Document Center – Central repository of documents relating to the Nazi Party and Nazism, instrumental in the formulation of war crimes investigations and proceedings. Located in Zehlendorf in the US Sector

WASt – Wehrmacht Information Office for War Losses and PoWs: the central repository for information on German servicemen, as well as German and Allied prisoners of war. Located in Reinickendorf in the French Sector

Part One

How Happy the Dead

1

BERLIN, EARLY 1947

MONDAY

Reinhardt had come to prefer the nights.

The nights were when things felt cleaner, clearer. The nights were when his city could sometimes resemble something more than the shattered ruin it was. The nights were when he did not have to look down at the dust and grit that floured his shoes and trousers, the innards of his city turned out and spread wide for all to see. It was the days when Berlin emerged scarred and scorched into the light, when its people arose to chase their shadows through the day, wending their way from who knew where to who knew what beneath frowning escarpments of ruin and rubble which humped up and away in staggered mounds of wreckage, and through which the roads seemed to wind like the dried-out bottoms of riverbeds.

It was very early on a Monday morning when the call came in, a body in a stairwell in an apartment building in the American Sector of Berlin, down in Neukölln. These were bad hours by anyone’s reckoning, the hours no one wanted, the hours married men were curled up asleep with their wives, the single men with their girls, when even drunks found a corner to sleep it off. They were the hours those on the chief’s blacklist worked. They were the hours they gave the probationers – those too new to the force to manoeuvre themselves a better shift – or those too old but who had nowhere to go.

Reinhardt knew he was closer to the second category than to the first. But however those hours were counted by others, he considered them his best, when it was quiet and he could have the squad room all but to himself, or else wander the darkened streets and avenues, winding his way past the avalanche slides of brick and debris, learning the new architecture the war had gouged across Berlin’s façades. He and his city were strangers to each other, he knew. They had moved on in different ways, and these night hours – these witching hours, when he would sometimes chase the moon across the city’s jagged skyline, spying it through the rents and fissures deep within buildings, watching the play of light and shadow in places it should never have been seen – were what he needed to rediscover it, what it was, and what had become of it.

All this, though, was in the back of his mind as the ambulance followed the dull glow of its headlights down a road swept clear along its middle, pocked and pitted with shell craters and tears in its surface, a suggestion of looming ruin to either side. He spotted the building up ahead, the fitful yellow beams of flashlights wobbling yolk-like in its entrance and casting the shadows of people up the walls and out into the street. He climbed stiffly out of the ambulance, switching on his own flashlight as he turned up the channel cleared between the rubble. He paused. He swung the flashlight at the entrance of a ruined building across the road. Hidden in the shadows, a pack of children watched with glittering eyes, vanishing from view when he held the light on them a moment longer.

An officer in his archaic uniform, complete with brass-fronted grey shako, watched as Reinhardt knocked the dust from his shoes in the building’s entry, pocketing his flashlight.

‘There we were about to send for the American MPs, but it looks like the Yanks have shown up anyway,’ the young officer quipped.

‘Which police station are you from?’

‘Reuterstrasse,’ said the policeman, his face clenching in suspicion.

‘I’ll speak to whoever’s in charge here,’ said Reinhardt, holding the younger officer’s eyes as he took his hat off.

The officer’s face darkened, but he cocked his head inside. ‘Sergeant. Sergeant!’

A second officer pushed his way out of a crowd of people milling in the entrance. Reinhardt thought he recognised him, a man well into middle age, tall, lanky, with old-fashioned sideburns – although if it was him, the man used to be a lot heftier and bulkier.

‘Cavalry’s here, Sarge,’ the young officer said. Reinhardt ignored him as the older officer threw his colleague a reproachful look.

‘Good morning, sir,’ he said. ‘What Officer Diechle means, sir, is we was about to call the Amis, I mean, the American Military Police. We didn’t know if anyone was coming out from Kripo at this hour.’

‘Well, some of us detectives are up and about,’ Reinhardt said, smiling, his voice soft. ‘Inspector Reinhardt, Schöneberg Kripo Division.’

‘Yes, sir. No offence at our surprise in seeing you, sir.’

‘And why’s that?’

‘Because they don’t usually stir themselves for what seem like accidents or open-and-shut cases,’ said Diechle. ‘’Specially not at this hour.’

‘Who says it was either of those?’

‘He was drunk, he fell down the stairs,’ Diechle snorted. ‘That’s all it is.’

‘Show me what you’ve found. Sergeant Frunze, isn’t it?’ Reinhardt suddenly remembered the man’s name, feeling it slip onto his tongue from out of nowhere, it seemed. Something in the man’s appearance, those old-fashioned side-burns, the accent triggering a memory of a line of struggling, sweating policemen trying to hold apart a seething mass of Nazis and Communists, and Frunze reeling away with blood sheeting his cheeks but a brown-shirted thug caught under his arm, the lout’s face turning red inside the policeman’s armlock as Frunze calmly recited the man’s rights to him.

‘That it is, sir. Frunze. Very glad to see you remember, sir,’ he said, ignoring the way his younger colleague rolled his eyes. ‘This way, sir.’

‘Last time I saw you, you were up in one of the Tiergarten stations.’

‘Time’s moved on a bit, sir. You go where they send you these days,’ Frunze replied, a quick glance at Reinhardt. He could not tell what the glance might have meant, but an experienced officer like Frunze, especially one his age, ought not to be running a night shift in a place like Neukölln. It had always been a rough neighbourhood. Left-wing, working class, where the cops had never been welcome, and Reinhardt did not think things had changed much as Frunze led him through the small crowd of people to the bottom of the stairs, over to where the body of a man lay, face up. The light in the entrance was a shifting mix of flashlights, candles, and lanterns held by the policemen and by the cluster of people – men, women, and children – to the side of the stairs. It made for a confusing play of shadows, but there was light enough for Reinhardt to see that the man’s nose and mouth were a puffed and bruised welter of blood that fanned the bottom of his face and jaw and had soaked into the clothes on his left shoulder. There were scratches and lesions on his face, on his scalp, and on his hands, the skin of his knuckles stripped raw. Reinhardt’s eyes were drawn back to the injuries around the nose and mouth, the wounds framed by black and blue discolourations that indicated he had received them some time before dying. If he got those falling down the stairs, Reinhardt thought, he would have lain here a good long time before dying and there was no pooling of blood, so far as he could see.

‘Has forensics arrived, yet?’

‘No, sir.’

‘It should be Berthold coming. I called him before I left. Any identification on the body?’

‘None, sir.’

‘Keys? Money?’

‘Nothing, sir.’

Reinhardt pulled on a thin pair of old leather gloves, then reached under the man’s neck, lifting it gently. The head did not quite follow, slipping from side to side.

‘Broken neck, sir?’ asked Frunze.

‘It would seem so. Anyone find a bottle?’

‘No, sir,’ Frunze sighed. ‘But the man does smell of booze. I reckon he spilled a bit down the front of his clothes. But much as Diechle would like this to be open and shut, I’ve a feeling it’s not.’

‘No. Probably not. Who found him, Sergeant?’ he asked, gently moving and pinching his way down the man’s arms, feeling the heft to the limbs.

‘The building’s superintendent. Or, what passes for one these days, sir. Here.’ Frunze indicated an elderly man in a threadbare dressing gown with a tangled rosette of iron-grey hair running around his head from ear to ear, a scarf bunched tight around his neck. ‘Name’s Ochs.’

‘Mr Ochs,’ Reinhardt addressed him as he knelt, his left knee stretching painfully as he did. ‘Tell me what you heard and saw,’ he said as he ran his fingers down the man’s clothes, reaching carefully under the collar of the overcoat. Some men, black marketers and criminals in particular, had been known to sew razor blades under the lapels, but there was nothing. Reinhardt felt the fabric of the man’s coat, his shirt, the tie knotted loosely beneath his chin.

‘Yes, sir. Well, it would have been about two o’clock in the morning. I heard a man calling for help, then I heard a terrible thumping. There was another cry, I think as the poor soul hit the bottom, then nothing. I came out of my rooms, just there,’ he said, pointing at a door ajar next to the entrance, ‘and found him.’

Reinhardt shone his flashlight at the stairs, the light glistening back from something wet about halfway up.

‘Have you seen him before?’ Ochs shook his head. ‘You’re sure? He’s not a tenant? Not a displaced person the municipality’s moved in recently?’ Ochs shook his head to all of it.

‘He’s no DP, sir,’ said Frunze. When Reinhardt encouraged him to go on, Frunze pointed at the man’s coat, at his shoes. ‘Look at that quality. You don’t find that in Berlin these days. If he’s a DP, he’s a well-off one.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ said Reinhardt, watching Diechle out of the corner of his eye as the younger officer followed their discussion. The man was no displaced person, Reinhardt was sure. His clothes were too good, his fingernails too clean, his hair had been cut recently, and quite well. He had been well-fed, the weight of his limbs and the texture of his skin testament to that. ‘These other people,’ he said to Ochs. ‘The building’s tenants?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Any of them hear or notice anything?’ he asked both Ochs and Frunze.

‘Nothing, sir,’ answered the sergeant. ‘One or two of them said they were awakened by the noise of the man falling. One of them says she thinks she might have seen him before, though.’

‘Bring her, please,’ he said to Frunze. ‘Is everyone living in the building here, Ochs?’

‘Not everyone, sir. There’s some who work nights, and one person’s away travelling.’

Frunze came forward escorting a woman carrying a young child, two more children in her wake. ‘Madam,’ said Reinhardt. ‘You told the police you might have seen this man?’

‘I think so. Once or twice. The last time maybe two days ago, each time on the stairs.’

‘Did you say anything to each other?’

‘Only a greeting. Nothing else.’

‘Did you notice anything about him?’

‘Like what?’

‘Anything. Was he in a hurry? Did he seem worried?’

‘Nothing. We just passed each other.’

‘Thank you, madam. We’ll have you all back to bed soon,’ Reinhardt said, a small smile for the little boy with a tousled head of hair. ‘Have you had a look around upstairs, Sergeant?’

‘Not really, sir. We didn’t want to mess anything up for the detectives.’

‘Very well. We’ll have a look now. Ochs, you come with me, please. Diechle, please tell the ambulance men to wait for Berthold before moving this body. And Diechle? There’s some children outside, probably living homeless across the street. See if you can persuade one or two of them to talk to us. And Diechle,’ he insisted, as the young officer’s face darkened again. ‘No rough stuff. Just ask them.’

Sweeping his flashlight from side to side across each step, Reinhardt started upstairs. He passed the first smears of blood he had seen from the bottom, about halfway up. At the top of the first flight, where the stairs turned tightly around and continued up, there was another spattering on the floor, a streak on the banister, as if a man had stood there, catching his breath, perhaps calling for help, swaying back and forth through his pain. Up to the first floor, his feet crunching in the dust and clots of plaster and rubble that salted the stairs, more stains, more smudges on the wood of the banister. There were two doors on the first-floor landing, and Ochs confirmed the tenants – the woman Reinhardt had talked to with her three young children, and an elderly couple – were downstairs.

Feeling like Hansel following the bread crumbs, Reinhardt continued upstairs to the second floor, the building’s smell growing around him, a smell of people too closely packed together, of damp washing and bad food. At the second-floor landing, Ochs told him the tenants – a widow and another family – were also downstairs.

‘All the ladies are on the first two floors. As for the third, the building’s in a bit of a state, still. It’s not been fully repaired, you’ll see.’

On the third floor, the building took on a different register, the walls a labyrinthine scrawl of cracks and rents from the damage it had suffered, and the strains it must still be under. The corners of the stairs and landings were rounded with dust and plaster swept and pushed to the sides. A draught swirled down from somewhere up above. Only one apartment on the third floor was inhabited – a man away travelling – the other was boarded shut, war damage rendering the apartment uninhabitable, according to Ochs. The same was true of the two apartments above it, the little superintendent said, puffing behind Reinhardt with his dressing gown bunched in one fist to hold it clear of his slippered feet.

As the damage became worse, the building seemed to become malodorous, dark, a listening dark, a dark that seemed to shuffle quietly back away from him as if cautious, as if the structure was sensitive to the harm men had wrought upon it. On the fourth floor, Ochs pointed to an apartment that was locked up, where the tenant – Mr Uthmann – worked nights on the railways. There was one floor remaining, and Reinhardt paused at the landing, looking at the door that stood ajar, moving slightly back and forth in the draught.

‘Who lives there?’

Ochs caught his breath leaning on the banister. ‘Mr Noell,’ he managed. ‘He lives alone.’

‘He’s not downstairs?’ asked Reinhardt, being careful to hide his own breathing. It was very short, and he felt dizzy with the effort of climbing the stairs.

‘No. He is out sometimes. I didn’t…’ Ochs puffed, ‘didn’t think his absence downstairs anything out of the ordinary.’

‘And the body downstairs is not this Noell?’

‘No.’

Reinhardt shone his flashlight across the floor, tracking its beam through the fallen plaster and rubble, not knowing if the scuffed pattern showed the tracks of anyone having passed through it all. ‘Well, let’s see if he knew your Mr Noell.’

Reinhardt drew his police baton, flicking it out to its full extension. With the lead ball at the tip, he pushed the door open. The first thing his light illuminated inside was a streak of blood on the wall, from about head height and down. He saw a light switch and turned it on, watching the room’s only bulb come fitfully to life.

One of the windows had glass in its frame, the other a mix of wood and cardboard, most of it from CARE packages, the aid parcels sent over from the United States, through which the wind slipped its insistent way. There was a sofa and an armchair that had seen better days. On a table made from a packing crate stood a bottle and one glass.

Reinhardt walked carefully through into the second room, past a small kitchen area, little more than an alcove with a sink and a hot plate, and into a bedroom with a bed with a pile of blankets and pillows on it pushed up against the far wall next to a lopsided wooden cupboard with a cracked mirror on one of its doors.

There was a body on the floor. Arms and legs spread wide, face turned slackly to the ceiling.

‘Oh yes,’ said Ochs, as he peered over Reinhardt’s shoulder. ‘That’s Mr Noell.’

2

Reinhardt collapsed his baton, ordering Frunze to send for the MPs, given two bodies had been found in their sector, and to wait for Berthold downstairs. Ochs waited quietly in the little hallway, the old man seemingly unperturbed, and why not, Reinhardt thought as he stepped carefully into the bedroom. Ochs had probably seen plenty of deaths, many worse than this, if he had been living in Berlin these past few years.

‘What exactly is it you do, Mr Ochs?’ Reinhardt asked, as unbuttoning his overcoat and kneeling by Noell’s body, he checked for a pulse.

‘I used to be a building superintendent, until my place got destroyed in a bombing raid. I could fix a pipe, change wiring, collect mail, bit of this, bit of that. So they put me in downstairs and asked me to keep an eye on the place.’

‘When was that?’

‘The municipality moved me in here in, oh, June ’45. Right after the war.’

‘The Russians put you here?’

‘Well. Yes. But I’m not an informer! Not like those, those people in the Russian Sector. Those wardens. Or whatever you call them. Spying on their neighbours and all that and reporting it to the police.’

‘I never thought it, Mr Ochs,’ Reinhardt replied.

‘And nor should you. You should see my place. I could sneeze across it. If that’s what informing gets you, I’d hardly think it worth the effort,’ Ochs subsided sulkily.

Noell’s body was cold, but not quite the tombstone cold of the long dead. He had been murdered in the last few hours, for sure. He was dressed in trousers, a shirt, and a woollen cardigan, a pair of worn slippers on his feet. Reinhardt squirmed around the body on his haunches, and as he did so, his knee dipped into something wet. He ran a finger across the floor, noting the rippled line it left, and inspected his glove for what looked like water. It lay around Noell’s head and shoulders. He looked up at the roof, to see if perhaps it had cracked, perhaps a pipe had leaked and it had come from the ceiling, but saw nothing.

He moved the body slightly onto its side, seeing the purplish dappling of hypostasis under the neck, and that the neck was not broken. He lowered the body back, began checking the limbs. Noell had been a very slight man, made almost certainly slighter by the short rations most Berliners lived on these days.

None of the limbs seemed broken. There was no wound evident, no blood. The only thing Reinhardt could find wrong was a mottled bruising around Noell’s mouth and nose. He looked at it, cocking his head to the side. On impulse, being careful not to touch the skin, he lowered his right hand over Noell’s mouth, fingers to one side of his nose, thumb to the other. He paused, considering, as the place his hand would have come down on seemed to match the mottling. While he was dying, Noell’s mouth had clenched tight shut, and Reinhardt drew back, preferring to leave it for the autopsy.

Reinhardt did not want to disturb the body any more than he had to. He pushed himself to his feet, his knee a tight knot of pain as he did so.

‘What did Noell do?’

‘I don’t think he did anything,’ Ochs answered stiffly, his pride still hurt. ‘At least, nothing I ever saw.’

‘His mail?’

‘Hardly anything.’

‘How long had he been here?’

Ochs hesitated. ‘About, oh, six months. Yes. Six months.’

Reinhardt stared at him. Building superintendents, or concierges, call them what you will, they invariably knew everything about their tenants comings and goings. Ochs coloured under Reinhardt’s gaze, his hands tightening in the pockets of his dressing gown.

‘That’s to say, he’s not actually here. If you see what I mean.’

‘I don’t.’

‘He’s subletting. From another man. The two of them were friends during the war, or something like that, and when this other man left…’

‘This man’s name?’ Reinhardt interrupted.

‘Yes, of course. It’s a “K” something. Kassel. Kessel! It’s downstairs, I’ll get it for you. So when this man left, he asked if we could arrange for his old comrade to move in, as a favour. Keeping his name on the lease.’

‘A favour,’ said Reinhardt. ‘With a touch of remuneration.’

Ochs nodded. ‘It’s hard for people to get a place. You must know that. Doubly hard for them.’

‘Them?’

‘War veterans.’

‘Noell was a veteran?’

‘Yes. Ex-air force, I believe.’

A noise at the door announced Diechle, with the news that Berthold had arrived and was examining the body downstairs. The officer had a bruise on the side of his face, and a trail of blood down the angle of his jaw. Reinhardt refrained from mentioning it, only thanking him and telling him to let Frunze know he could start escorting people back into their apartments, family by family, but for them to steer clear of any of the evidence on the stairs. Ochs made to leave as well, but Reinhardt motioned him to stay put.

He opened the cupboard, seeing a few pairs of trousers and shirts, and a couple of jackets on hangers, all of them well-worn. Socks and underwear. One pair of shoes. The only item of note was an old air force jacket. The jacket had no decorations, except a pair of colonel’s epaulettes in the pockets. There was nothing else in the bedroom apart from the bed. No shelves, no table, no books. It was a bare room, almost ascetic, and Reinhardt was struck, suddenly, by how ritualistic Noell’s body seemed, spread-eagled in the middle of the floor.

‘So you’ve been here just about two years, Mr Ochs. How well do you know the tenants?’

‘Well enough.’

‘Noell?’

Ochs thought a moment, his mouth moving against his teeth. ‘He kept to himself, mostly. He was civil enough, but I know of one or two times he had an argument with the man downstairs about noise, or something like that. And once I saw him on the stairs, and he barely gave me the time of day. Just brushed right past me. Head in the clouds, or something like that, I thought.’

Reinhardt moved past Ochs back to the living room. It was a different place from the bedroom. It felt lived-in for one thing, which, Reinhardt supposed, was normal for a place like a living room. But there was something else: an ordered disorder, with books and newspapers, clothes draped over the back of a ladder-back chair. His eyes were drawn again to the bottle and glass on the table. Some kind of schnapps, he sniffed. The glass was full, and he took note of that incongruous touch in this room where at least one man had been killed, and yet what had happened had not disturbed that liquid.

‘Head in the clouds, you say? Fitting, for a pilot.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Ochs, a weak chuckle at Reinhardt’s weak attempt at humour.

‘Friends?’

‘I never saw any. That is, until the other day. He received a letter that seemed to cheer him up immensely. This would have been about, oh, a week ago. Two or three days ago, someone came to visit him. I don’t know who it was, but the two of them had quite the party up here until the early evening, then they left together, all dressed up. Or as dressed up as they could manage, I suppose.’

‘This was when?’

‘Saturday evening. He came back somewhat the worse for wear on Sunday morning. That was the last time I saw him, poor man.’

There was a heavy tramping on the stairs, the timbre of foreign voices, and a pair of American military policemen breasted into the room, followed by a female interpreter, a narrow lady of middle age. They were big, blocky men, filling the room with their size and their apparent disinterest and disdain for where they found themselves. Reinhardt answered their questions through the interpreter, who kept her head down. Although he found he could follow just about all they said, he made no sign he understood English, wanting them gone as soon as possible, insisting gently through the interpreter that there was no overt Allied connection to the deaths, no evidence of black marketeering, no sign of fraternisation.

The MPs seemed only too happy to agree, muttering back and forth between themselves, banter concerning the goings-on in their unit, the uselessness of being called out to such scenes, and their anticipation of getting off duty. The only question Reinhardt asked of them was if they recognised the body downstairs, to which he got a grunted negative from one of the MPs, translated as a polite and apologetic no by the interpreter. They photographed Noell’s body, took Reinhardt’s details, pronounced themselves satisfied this was an affair the German authorities could handle, but to make damn sure they were informed if it turned out there was Allied involvement, and were gone, a veritable backwash of collapsed, displaced air following them out, the interpreter scudding in their wake.

Reinhardt sighed in relief, echoed by Ochs, who had been all but plastered against the wall as the MPs had filled just about all the space. He scanned the rooms quickly, satisfied the Americans had not disturbed anything, and resumed his careful search of the apartment. He went back to the impression he had had, that this room felt lived in where the other did not. The clothes drew his eyes, draped over the back of a chair. There was a cupboard next door, so why were they here…?

‘Noell lived here alone? You’re sure?’ Ochs nodded, a yawn pulling his mouth down. ‘Very well, Mr Ochs. Thank you for your help. You may go, but please give the name of the man who has the lease on this apartment to the sergeant downstairs.’

Alone in the rooms, the only sounds a faint whisper of voices from the lower floors, Reinhardt leant against a wall. His knee ached, terribly. It was getting worse, he knew. All the walking he was doing around Berlin, the cold and damp, the lack of food, was making the knee feel as bad as it did twenty years ago.

When he had caught his breath, he closed the door. It shut quietly, the door fitting quite well to its frame. He pulled it, pushed on it, shaking the door, but it stayed shut. He opened it again, bending to the lock, running his fingers up the door frame, inside and out. There was a key in the lock, and a bolt drawn back and open. There was no sign of damage, no sign of a forced entry.

From downstairs, Reinhardt heard the distinctive bull bellow of Berthold’s voice berating someone for something, and let a grin flash across his face. There was no sign of a struggle in the apartment either. Noell’s body bore no defensive wounds that he could see, and neither had the man downstairs, although he would have to check with Berthold about that. Nothing in this room looked disturbed or out of place. Nothing broken, or overturned. It was not that big a room. If two men had been assaulted in here, there ought to have been some sign of it, unless the assault had been of devastating speed and surprise, Reinhardt thought, as he went into the kitchen.

The cupboards were bare, or might as well have been. A collection of mismatched plates, cups, glasses, and cutlery, a battered frying pan and an even more battered army cook pot, all of it probably salvaged from some wrecked building, or given out at municipal shelters. There was a half-empty sack of coffee, a bottle of oil that glistened greasily, and an empty cardboard CARE package. A couple of bottles of schnapps that had a homemade feel to them – these few things were all the kitchen contained.

It was clean, though, Reinhardt noticed. A couple of plates were stacked upside down by the sink, together with a glass; a cloth hung from the single tap. The surfaces were clean and dry, although the sink was pearled with water. There was a dustbin under the counter. Reinhardt hooked it out, peering inside at the inevitable slew of potato peelings that made up the staple diet of any German lucky enough to afford vegetables these days. Beneath the peelings was Friday’s newspaper. He flicked out his baton, lifting the paper out to have a look through, in case Noell had made any notations, perhaps in the help-wanted section. That said, he thought to himself, poking the baton farther down into the rubbish, most of the content of the papers these days was either want ads or obituaries, unless you read one of the Allied publications, which were full of upbeat stories about the benefits of Occupation policies or pieces about Nazis and the harm they had done.

His stirring of the rubbish pulled up several thin sheets of paper covered in typing with handwritten notes jotted into the margin. The papers were stained by being in the dustbin, but there was enough of the writing intact that Reinhardt could read most of it. He straightened, his knee a tight knot of pain as he did so.

3

‘Reinhardt? You in here?’

‘Through here,’ Reinhardt called back, hearing Berthold’s heavy footsteps and the gravelly base of his muttering.

‘Reinhardt, goddamn it, was it you let those damn Amis foul up my crime scene? That stripling of an officer downstairs says you’ve been letting Americans tramp around up here. Say it’s not true.’

‘I’ve been doing my best to save it for you, Berthold. Nice to see you, at last.’

‘Well, thank Christ for you, Reinhardt.’ Berthold was all curves, a dense, rotund man with thin hair plastered by sweat to his cannonball of a skull. ‘If only all our brethren, in what passes for a police force these days, were as discerning as your good self.’

‘Flattery, Berthold, will get you nowhere other than out of bed at three in the morning. Seen the one downstairs?’

‘Broken neck for sure, but he was pretty badly beaten up before that. Blows to the mouth and nose, one to the throat, one almighty blow to the sternum. We’ll hand him over to the Professor for full autopsy, but the fall down the stairs was the least of his problems I’d say, the poor bugger. That blood on the wall his?’

‘Probably, but you tell me.’

Berthold swung his bulk back the way he had come. For all his bluster, Berthold was one of the more competent forensic technicians on the force, a remnant from the pre-Nazi days brought back out of premature retirement to provide some much-needed technical skills to Berlin’s police. Twelve years of Nazism and six of war had seen Berlin’s police, once one of the world’s most advanced forces, regress to levels Reinhardt had seen in the Balkans. Men like Berthold knew what needed doing but struggled to do it with the means left them.

Reinhardt watched the balloon-like curve of Berthold’s back as he hunched over the blood on the wall, taking a sample for analysis. He unfolded himself upright, his cannonball head searching for Reinhardt, in his hand a big camera, a veritable prewar antique. Reinhardt backed out of the way as Berthold took a rapid series of photographs of the living room, then squirmed away as Berthold did the same for the kitchen, and then the bedroom.

‘What have you got up here, then?’ he asked when he was done, packing the camera away.

‘Firstly, no forced entry as far as I can tell,’ said Reinhardt. ‘In here, no sign of a struggle. Bottle and glass, there, maybe some prints. Try the door handle as well, please. Kitchen is clean. I found some papers in the rubbish. I didn’t touch them,’ he said holding up his baton as Berthold made to open the cavern of his mouth in protest.

‘I’ll start in the bedroom then,’ said Berthold, lugging his case through.

Reinhardt backed into the kitchen, drawn back to the papers. The sheets were of poor quality, with ink that had run and stained, and they were hard to read. One page seemed to be a statement of grievances of a group that Reinhardt could not make out, of their untenable situation, reference to the loss of all worth, pride, and benefits, with benefits underlined twice. The second was something of a manifesto, or a call for action. There was a heading on the paper in block capitals – RITTERFELD ASSOCIATION. It was the more damaged of the two, creased, spotted and, he realised, bending low over it, someone had spilled alcohol on it. He poked his baton back into the dustbin, searching for more of the same, but came up with nothing.

‘Berthold, I’m going to start looking through the living room. I’ve got gloves,’ he said, cutting off Berthold’s inevitable protest. He heard the forensics technician subside into a series of tectonic rumbles, muttering under his breath, and Reinhardt grinned again. He began fingering through the piles of books and papers in the apartment. Most of the newspapers were old, stacked next to a cast iron stove as fuel or kindling, most likely. The books were old, too, and the collection was eclectic. Prewar novels, a few histories, a couple of treatises on philosophy, travel guides, children’s stories, and a photo album.

Reinhardt’s eyes narrowed as he opened it, finding pictures in some of which Noell was recognisable. The wartime Noell had been a bigger, healthier-looking specimen than the one lying in the bedroom. There were photographs of him in what appeared to be bars in Paris, several taken in front of various aircraft, Noell standing grinning with a hand or elbow placed proprietorially on the wing or rim of a cockpit, Noell standing arm in arm with other pilots. Reinhardt put the album to one side, and continued searching the room. He looked under the chairs, ran his fingers down the back of the sofa, and found wadded against the wall as if kicked or thrown there, a crumpled piece of paper. Fishing it out and unfolding it, he found it was another photograph. Another one of Noell, glancing up at whoever had taken the picture, this time in a dress uniform, with another man, both of them stooped over something. Reinhardt could not make out what. Something in some kind of water-filled tank, wrapped in fabric of some sort, wires and tubes attached to it.

He added it to the photo album, although Reinhardt was fairly sure it did not belong there, and continued his search, looking now for what was clearly missing. There was no identification of any kind, and that was a mystery. He went through the clothes, finding nothing. He went into the bedroom and searched through the clothing hanging up, finding nothing again. Noell had been a veteran, so there had to be some kind of identification, at the least a Wehrpass, the document all soldiers received upon demobilisation, and he had clearly been eating, so he had to have been getting rations from somewhere, and if he had been getting them, he had to have had identification.

There was nothing in the apartment, though, at least nothing he could find. At the end, he stood in the doorway, taking a last look, brushing his hat against his leg. The unforced door, the undisturbed living room, the ascetic lines of the bedroom… what had happened to the man who had lived here, and what linked that to the other man downstairs?

‘Berthold, I’m finished here,’ said Reinhardt. The ambulance men were waiting impatiently on the landing. Berthold grunted back at him from where he was brushing down surfaces. ‘Can we have the Professor look at the bodies?’

‘Yes. That’s what I said earlier.’

‘Let the ambulance men take the body away when you’re ready then. When will your report be finished?’

‘Later today if you leave me alone.’

‘Consider it done. There’s a photo album and some sheets of paper in the kitchen, please take care of those.’

‘Right,’ Berthold grunted, again, eyes comical behind the bottle as he dusted it down for prints.

‘And let me know if you find any ID. I haven’t found anything.’

‘Right.’

‘And I think Gestapo Müller’s hiding under the sofa.’

‘Very funny, Reinhardt.’

‘Just checking you were listening,’ said Reinhardt cheerily. He paused on the landing, looking up. The fifth floor was uninhabitable, Ochs had said, but he had a quick look, anyway. It was as Ochs had said, though. The top floor was a ruin, the roof sagging in places, patched and braced, and the two apartments were empty husks flecked with animal tracks and droppings, and an ammoniac reek of urine smothering the smells of damp and dust.

Downstairs, Frunze was waiting with the canvassing report. All the building’s tenants were listed and accounted for. Apart from the widow, no one had ever seen the man found dead on the stairs. All of them confirmed Ochs’s description of Noell as a quiet and courteous man, but two of them reported that he could at times be surprisingly gruff and distant, passing them on the stairs in the hallway without a word. No one, it seemed, had ever been up to Noell’s apartment, and he had never been a guest in any of theirs. The family on the second floor had also mentioned that he had cheered up somewhat in the last few weeks, but did not know why.

‘Not much is it, Sergeant?’ mused Reinhardt. He took a packet of Lucky Strikes from his pocket and offered one to Frunz, who accepted with a smile. Reinhardt struck a match and lit both of them up, pinching out the match and putting it back in the box. ‘Mr Noell. Quiet and courteous, although sometimes rude. Ex-air force. Quite well read. Altogether, something of a mystery man. And he pales in comparison to Mr X, who ended up at the bottom of the stairs.’

‘Indeed, sir,’ murmured Frunze, as he took a long pull on his Lucky, then stubbed it out, saving the rest for later. ‘There is this as well,’ he said, handing over a slip of paper with a name – Mr Kessel. ‘The man from whom Noell was subletting, Mr Ochs said to give it to you.’

‘Thank you, Sergeant. This Mr Uthmann, the one who lives below Noell. Ochs reported he had had something of a confrontation with Noell on more than one occasion. He might be worth talking to.’

‘Leave a message, with Ochs, sir?’

‘Yes.

‘There’s children living across the street in that ruin.’ Frunze nodded. ‘I’m going to see if I can talk to them. They may have seen something.’

‘Diechle tried already, sir.’

‘Yes, I saw that. Where is he?’

Diechle was outside on the building’s steps. He straightened as Reinhardt came out. ‘What happened, then?’ asked Reinhardt, pointing his cigarette at Diechle’s face.

‘The little fuckers threw rocks at me.’

‘For talking to them?’

‘I thought I could catch one of them.’

‘That was clever.’

‘I thought it would be better.’

‘I told you to talk to them. That was all,’ Reinhardt sighed. He screwed out his cigarette on the wall, leaving the butt on the remnants of the balustrade at the building’s entrance, where he knew someone would find and take it. He switched on his flashlight and crossed the street, picking his way carefully into the slew of debris. No one had cleared a path here, and the building in front of him was a checkerboard of holes and spaces that gaped dark and wide, as if they were mouths sucking down the night itself. By the fissure that passed for an entrance, Reinhardt stopped and shook some cigarettes from a packet into his hand. He placed them carefully on a stone with a flat surface, and then stepped well back, leaving his light shining on them, and lowered himself carefully onto the rubble.

‘I just want to talk to you,’ he called, quietly. ‘Just talk.’

There was no answer, no sound, but he could feel he was being watched. He let a few moments pass, then called again.

‘The cigarettes are for you. They’re good. They’re Luckies. The real thing.’

He waited a while longer. Although there were far less of them now, gangs of children still haunted some of the ruins, especially those swaths that had been condemned as uninhabitable, impossible to reconstruct.

‘There’s three of them. Think of what you can trade for them.’

A grating of rubble, the softest hiss of sound. Something moved in the darkness of the entrance.

‘What d’you want, bull?’ a girl’s voice.

‘Just talk.’

‘S’never just talk with you bulls.’

‘It is with me.’

‘You always try to take us away.’

‘I won’t, don’t worry.’

‘Turn the light off.’

Reinhardt was plunged into darkness. He felt a moment of apprehension as the rubble seemed to come alive with sounds, small sounds, the whisper of little feet, a low snatch of words. Children they were, and he always wished more could be done for them – even if most of them wanted nothing to do with people like him and this new world and, really, who could blame them for that – but they could be menacing on their own ground, very dangerous if they felt themselves provoked or threatened. He could just make out the shape of something that flitted out of the night, and his cigarettes were gone.

‘All right, bull, so talk.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘What’s it matter?’

‘Nothing. It’s nice to know who I’m talking to. My name’s Gregor.’

There was silence. ‘I’m Leena.’

‘You know about what’s happened across the street, Leena?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you see anything? See anyone?’

‘Like what?’

‘Anything or anyone strange.’

‘Strange?’

‘People coming or going. People you’ve never seen before. The sounds of argument. People fighting.’

Reinhardt waited, hearing the children whispering.

‘Sometimes Poles’d come and watch.’

‘Poles? How do you know?’ Reinhardt asked the night.

‘Poles kicked us out of our house in Breslau.’ It sounded like a young boy. ‘Poles took my mother and my sister. Poles put me on a train. I know Polish.’

‘You’re saying Polish men came to watch the building?’

‘Been a while since they was here. Weeks. They would watch. I heard ’em talking. They were looking for soldiers. From the war. Soldiers that done bad things to ’em.’

‘I saw a man I ain’t never seen before.’ A new voice, another boy.

‘When did you see him?’

‘I don’t know that, bull. I ain’t got no watch.’

‘S’about midnight,’ interrupted the girl. ‘The moon was just over the middle of the street.’

‘Right. So this man come out of the building,’ the boy continued. ‘He were all dressed up in his coat like the Ivans wear. And a hat. I never got a good look at him.’

‘What did this man look like? Was he big, this man?’ Reinhardt asked to the darkness.

‘He weren’t big, but he… he moved all funny. That’s why I spotted him.’ More whispering, and the voice came back, feeling aggrieved over something. ‘He moved funny,’ the boy insisted.

‘Funny how?’ Reinhardt asked, quietly.

‘Like he was part of the night.’

‘Only thing funny here’s your brain,’ a child laughed. A rude name was called, and there was a furious scrabble of feet and cursing, until the girl’s voice cut across the noise.

‘There’s something might interest you, bull, ’side from men who move funny. The last couple of days, s’been a man coming here. First time he came, he watched the building from in here, but he never saw us. About three times he’s come. We saw him go in and out. He never stayed long. We saw him go in tonight, but he hasn’t come out, yet.’

‘Thank you. Is there anything else?’

‘That’s not enough?’ came the belligerent reply.

Reinhardt stood up, asking one more question of his hidden audience, receiving a curt reply. He made his way back across the street, his feet scraping and turning on the detritus. The ambulance men were bringing Noell down and loading him into an ambulance with white sides that glimmered with all the dents and bangs the vehicle had ever had. They protested at Reinhardt’s request, finally acquiescing and putting the stretcher with Noell on the ground, and heaving out the other body. They stood there with the stretcher between them as Reinhardt shone his flashlight on the man’s face for a slow count of ten.

He stood in the quiet street, waiting, until a voice came out of the dark.

‘That was him,’ said the girl. ‘The one who came before.’

‘Thank you, Leena,’ said Reinhardt. He shook a few more Luckies from his pack. ‘You come and find me at the Schöneberg station if you remember anything more. On Gothaerstrasse. You ask for Inspector Reinhardt. Or if you need anything.’

‘We don’t need nothing, bull,’ came the whisper from out of the night. Reinhardt left the cigarettes on a stone, walking back into the building and not turning at the patter of feet across broken stone.

4

Dawn was breaking across Berlin, the city’s wrecked skyline marching torturously across a deepening wash of sky, and Reinhardt felt the tickle of unease he always felt at seeing Berlin by day as the ambulance dropped him off at the Schöneberg police station on Gothaerstrasse, before it continued on to the morgue up in Mitte, in the Soviet Sector. The station was a Wilhelmine-era building, rectangularly rigid. Reinhardt thought of it as a monstrous pile of stone that had come through the war more or less unscathed because it was too obtuse to be damaged. Along with the even more spectacularly proportioned Magistrates’ Court opposite, the two buildings towered over the ruins around them. Some people might have found their permanence somehow reassuring, throwbacks to a calmer, more certain era. Reinhardt found them oppressive, purveyors of a false sense of certainty and continuity.

The morning shift was starting to trickle in, but it was still fairly quiet, quiet enough for Reinhardt to start writing up his report with an hour to go before roll call. He kept his head down, and his focus on his papers as he felt the squad room fill up, surprising himself by how far he had got with his notes and how focused he had been when someone jostled him on the shoulder.

‘Oh, sorry. Didn’t see you there,’ said the man who had bumped into him. The man looked down, feigning astonishment. ‘Reinhardt? Look, boys, look who it is!’ Three detectives, younger men, were standing or sitting around him.

‘Bugger me, it’s Reinhardt!’

‘The Captain!’

‘Captain Crow!’

‘He liiiives!’

The detectives were men Reinhardt hardly knew and barely cared to. They were new men, mostly, men brought in by the Soviets in the months following their conquest of the city, when they did as they wished. By their accents, none of them were from Berlin, and Reinhardt could not tell where the Soviets had found them, nor what any of them had done during the war. They were old enough to have been called up towards the end, and so they were old enough to have faced the Red Army in combat. Most Germans who had, had either been killed, captured, or escaped somehow. So far as Reinhardt could tell, officers like these contributed very little in actual police work, and half of them were barely literate.

To Reinhardt’s mind, they were all placemen, put into the police by the Soviets, therefore considered reliable, therefore Communist in outlook, if not in belief. They made a strange complement to the holdovers from the Nazis, or even the pre-Nazi period, men from heretofore antagonistic systems, between them making for a schizophrenic atmosphere. On top of that, the Western Allies, when they arrived in Berlin in July 1945, had not done much to curtail the implicit Soviet influence in the police in their sectors. One might even have said they had made it worse, leaving the Soviet placemen where they were and adding a fair sprinkling of their own.

Reinhardt knew that because he was one of them.

‘What on earth are you doing here, Reinhardt?’ one of them asked sardonically, the one who had jostled him. His name was Weber. He was a tall, raw-boned young man, all sharp angles and heavy joints, his skin stretched tight around the curves and hollows of his head, all topped off with a shock of poorly cut blond hair that made him look much younger than Reinhardt suspected he was.

‘Working,’ said Reinhardt levelly, putting his head back down to his notes. ‘Why, what are you doing here?’

There was a chorus of oohs and aahs from the man’s friends, a flurry of elbows poking into ribs as they settled themselves in for a bit of fun.

Weber’s jaw tightened. ‘Working on what?’

‘A murder investigation.’

‘A real investigation. Dammit, boys, what did I say?’ Weber’s eyes glittered. ‘Reinhardt always has all the luck.’

‘That’s because there must be Americans involved. Right, Captain?’ asked another officer, his eyes wide with a feigned interest. His name was Schmidt, Reinhardt thought.

‘Not yet, no,’ he answered.

‘Shame. All your friends must have gone home by now, I would have thought.’

‘Back across the ocean. To New York, or Chicago,’ one of them gushed. His name was Frohnau. The two of them – Schmidt and Frohnau – were Weber’s shadows. ‘They don’t stay long, do they? Still, you must have made some new ones.’

‘As you say,’ Reinhardt said equably, feeling the heat rising in his blood at this baiting. It never got any easier to bear, however much he tried to let nothing show.

‘Listen to him. “As you say.” Is that how you all talked when you were bloody officers? Fighting the good fight?’ Weber’s jaw was clenched as he stared at Reinhardt.

‘You lot playing nicely, I hope?’