Berlin: A Novel (11 page)

'Dead? Karin's not dead. We have a date tomorrow, see, it's at seven, we're meeting by the guard on the main gate in Uncle Tom's.' Morgan spoke fast, as if trying to convince himself.

Donovan shook him. 'She's dead. And you know why? Because someone murdered her. In the most brutal way. Who was it, Morgan? Who killed Karin?'

The young soldier was weeping soundlessly. 'Go easy, sergeant,' Ashburner told him. 'That's all, Morgan,' he said mildly. The GI jumped up and stood to attention. He saluted, tears running down his face, stiffly did an about-turn, and left. John Ashburner leaned back again, thoughtfully. 'He seemed genuinely shocked.'

'Or else he's putting on a cold-blooded act for us.'

'You think he killed her?'

'It's possible, sir. I checked his alibi. Morgan was on guard duty in McNair Barracks from 21 hours to 3 hours on Tuesday. Alone, by the back fence of the motor pool. He could easily have borrowed a car, and he'd have been back in plenty of time before the guard changed.'

'The question is whether he really did it. And why.'

'I see it this way, sir: she won't let him touch her. First he's disappointed, then he's furious, finally he starts to hate her. If he can't have her, then no one else will.'

With all due respect to your home-grown psychology, Mike - that lad's probably as innocent as you or I.'

'Maybe, captain. And anyway, one Fraulein more or less, what's the difference? They all sleep around, and not just with our boys. Why wouldn't it have been a German?'

'Why not, indeed?' Ashburner agreed. 'Draw up a short report detailing Morgan's alibi and send it to that German inspector. And then we've done our bit. Let the German police figure it out.'

'Will do, sir.'

The captain rose to his feet. 'Don't know when I'll be back. You mind the shop here meanwhile.' He turned to go.

'Sir.' Sergeant Donovan indicated the white helmet and the holster with the heavy Magnum on the coat rack, but Ashburner shook his head and took his garrison cap instead.

Ben met Heidi Rodel as he was coming out of the U-Bahn. Heidi was sixteen. She wore sandals with home-made wedge heels and a blouse that her father had made her from the parachute of an English airman who had been shot down. Her breasts swelled gently under the silk. Ben kind of liked to look at them. Touching would have been even better, but presumably that was off limits. Though you couldn't ever be sure what was or wasn't off limits, not with girls.

She threw back her dark-brown hair with a brief toss of her head. 'The Yanks have opened a German youth club in Bruckstrasse. You can do handicrafts and painting there, and have debates, and they give you chocolate bars too.'

Someone in Washington had decreed that particular emphasis should be placed on bringing the joyful message of freedom and democracy to the young people of conquered Germany who had suffered under the Nazi regime. And since the US Army was on the spot already, and was successfully Americanizing those quick learners the Germans with chewing gum. instant coffee and Bing Crosby - even if the first of those items was French, the second Swiss and the third of Irish origin - it fell to them to organize the matter.

There were plenty of requisitioned villas in excellent locations. Games, tools, musical instruments, anything else that might lure the youngsters in - the US Army, better equipped than any other outfit in the world, had all these things in abundance. Hence the rise of German Youth Activities, or GYA, with each branch of the service competing to set up the best GYA Club.

'Why don't we go along together?' Ben saw an opportunity.

'I already have a date with Gert Schlomm. He's started a drama group at the club, and I get to play the leading role.'

Ben couldn't compete with the leading role in a drama group, at least not until he outdid Gert Schlomm's lederhosen with his own made-to-measure suit in Prince of Wales check. 'Well, I may look in sometime,' he said, negotiating a tactical retreat. Although I'm pretty busy right now.'

Pastor Steffen had come up with a New Testament, exactly the India paper edition that Ben needed. He happily climbed the narrow stairs to the attic room. Ralf finished school an hour earlier and had gone round to his friend Hajo Konig in Onkel-Tom-Strasse, so the coast was clear.

Ben took the razor blade and the empty packet of Lucky Strikes from the desk drawer. The Yanks usually just tore off a piece of the silver foil to get at their cigarettes, so the outer packet and the seal remained intact, which was the case with this one. Using the blunt side of his penknife, he carefully levered up the bottom of the packet where it was stuck together and removed the silver paper without changing its shape. He put it back in the wrapping the other way up, pushing it up to the level of the seal.

Carefully, he placed the packet on the table. From the top, it looked virginal again. He opened the New Testament at the Gospel According to St Luke, and cut rectangles the size of the cigarette packet from the paper, going through no more than ten pages at a time.

Now he had to fill the packet to the right strength and elasticity, round off the long sides around the cigarettes it would appear to contain, and close it with a little glue. Ben weighed his successful piece of work in his hand, satisfied. When his brother came clumping upstairs, he put it in his pocket.

Ralf was two years younger than Ben. He had an angelic face, but it was deceptive. 'We're going up to the woods at Krumme Lanke tomorrow. Want to come?'

'What for?' Ben asked cautiously.

'Hajo knows a hollow in the ground where people go to screw.'

Ben decided to postpone putting his cigarette packet on the market until the day after tomorrow. 'OK,' he said magnanimously.

Jutta Weber rubbed dozens of veal schnitzels with garlic, seasoned them with salt and pepper and dusted them with flour, then dipped each in beaten egg and tossed it in breadcrumbs.

'Garlic, that's a good idea,' Mess Sergeant Jack Panelli said with approval, putting the breadcrumb-coated schnitzels in hot oil. They hissed violently.

A real Wiener schnitzel should be fried in lard,' she told the chef.

'What, and have Major Davison thump me round the head with his Torah?' Major Davidson was the garrison rabbi; there were many soldiers of the Jewish faith here. Jack Panelli grinned. Now me, I'm a good Catholic, so you're welcome to make me a real Wiener schnitzel after the kitchen closes. That was a brilliant idea I had, taking you off dishwashing and putting you on the stove. Did I ever tell you you're a damn good cook?'

'Thanks for the compliment, Jack. My parents run a bar and cafe in Kopenick. They used to serve good home cooking there, and I often helped Mother in the kitchen.'

Jutta went on with her work. The soldiers came flocking into Club 48 for lunch. Last orders were around one-thirty. Then came the dishwashing, and next preparations for dinner. which took all afternoon. She automatically looked at her watch. but since the beginning of May it had been on the wrist of a pockmarked little Russian who hadn't raped her only because he'd failed to get an erection.

Sergeant Panelli noticed her glance. 'It's five o'clock.'

'Five o'clock . . .' Diana Gerold had said that when it was time for Jutta to make tea - Ceylon Orange Pekoe, a thing of the distant past the final year of the war, although now and then she got some from a woman she knew at the Swiss Embassy. Back then, they would sit in the back room of the bookshop in the shopping street, listening to the U-Bahn trains going in and out, while Frau Gerold talked about the new books she had read. There were fewer and fewer of them. Sometimes Jutta thought about Jochen, who was dead.

Jochen ... A melancholy feeling came over her, but soon changed to busi ness-like determination. She'd go and fetch him home. This was her evening off. A good opportunity.

As seven approached she took off her white overall, and slipped on the threadbare jacket that had once been part of an elegant tailored suit. She wore it now with a light, pale-blue summer dress that set off her slender brown legs prettily. She cycled the few minutes to Onkel Toms Hiitte, and showed her pass to the sentry at the barrier. As a German employee of the US Army she had access to the prohibited area.

In the early thirties, a large real-estate company had built a rectangular housing project of two-storey, cast concrete apartments around the U-Bahn station. Schlieffenstrasse formed one of the two long sides of the rectangle. When completed, it was thought too small for the Kaiser's Field Marshal Schlieffen, so it was renamed for a comparatively unknown general called Wilski. She and Jochen had had the two-roomed, ground-floor apartment on the right. Number 47 Wilskistrasse. Today the whole block had been requisitioned.

Her name was still beside the bell: WEBER. She rang it. The automatic door opener buzzed. A tall, lanky American in shorts and T shirt appeared at the door of the apartment. 'Hey, it's you,' he exclaimed, with pleasure. 'I'm John Ashburner. remember me?' Without his martial helmet and gun, he looked much more attractive than he had on their first, nocturnal meeting.

'Of course I remember you. captain. I'm Jutta Weber.'

'You came to see me?'

'Well, I didn't know you lived here. This used to be our apartment.'

'Sorry, not my fault. I hope you've found good accommodation somewhere else?'

'The housing department has given me a little room in Onkel-TomStrasse.'

'So what can I do for you?'

'I'd like to have the photo of my husband with his pupils. If it's still here I'd like to take it with me.'

'Come on in.'

The picture hung on the left beside the door to the balcony. a group photo in front of the Kaiser Wilhelm Tower in the Grunewald. 'The 1939 class outing. It was his last.'

'He was a schoolteacher?'

'Yes. There in the middle, that's him. He never came back from Poland. And that was Didi, one of his pupils.' She was about to add something, but decided against it.

Ashburner took the photograph down from the wall. 'I don't have any right to dispose of requisitioned property, but I'm sure the quartermaster won't mind. Cigarette?'

'No thanks, I don't smoke.'

'Would you like a couple of packets all the same?'

'Why?' she asked coldly.

'Because you're a pretty young woman.' He didn't hide his admiration.

'I told you, I don't smoke. And if that's meant as payment in advance for sex, then a couple of packets isn't enough.'

'Oh, don't be silly. I like you, that doesn't mean I'm about to rape you. I thought we might talk a little, that's all. How about a coffee?' Jutta hesitated. 'This building has six apartments. Most of the tenants are at home at this time of day, so you could easily call for help or jump out of the window. We're on the ground floor here, remember?'

She laughed because he kept such a straight face. 'Right, a coffee, then. And forgive my reaction. We Germans are over-sensitive these days, it's not easy to get on with us. We're full of self-pity. What did you want to talk to me about?'

'Oh, you and your life. I know almost nothing about the Germans.'

While he was boiling water in the kitchen Jutta looked around. The dining table was still there, and Jochen's armchair by the window. The rest was a motley collection of furniture confiscated from elsewhere. The picture over the sideboard showed a younger John Ashburner and an averagely pretty young woman.

'My wife Ethel. We've been married ten years.' The captain put a tray on the table bearing hot water, cups and a can of condensed milk. There were brown tinfoil one-cup sachets of Nescafe on a plate. 'Take two, that'll make it stronger,' he advised, but Jutta was happy with one. The condensed milk was thick and sweet, so there was no need for sugar. Her host opened an olive-coloured ration tin of biscuits. The lid came off with a sharp crack.

'What do you do?'

'I'm a bookseller. What about you? Have you always been a policeman?'

'Yes, but I'd rather have opened a little restaurant.' He had a dreamy look in his eyes. 'Red check tablecloths, candles in wine bottles on the table. Do you know, I inherited my great-great-grandma's cookbook she came from Breslau. Tweak the recipes a bit and they'd be sensational today. The real old-fashioned stuff. People like that kind of thing.'