The Murderer in Ruins Read Online Free Page A

Ask them all if they noticed anything near where the body was found. Anything, no matter how trivial. And don’t ask them just about the past 24 hours; ask about the last few days. It’s possible the body was lying there a while. If anybody refuses to talk, put pressureon them. A lot of these bunker people don’t like talking to anyone, let alone the police.’
    Ruge grinned, clicked his heels and put his right hand on his truncheon. Stave noticed, but didn’t say anything. He was far too weary to start playing nursemaid to overzealous uniformed coppers.
     
    S tave knocked on the wooden boards of the first of the ‘apartments’ that in reality were more like rabbit hutches. No reply. He pulled aside a dirty piece of cloth hung there to cover the entrance. Inside was a Wehrmacht stretcher that served as a bed, supported by two wooden fruit boxes; dirty clothing lay on the floor and on the wall was a school leaving certificate, the paper yellow and torn. On a sheet on the stretcher lay an emaciated young man, snoring. Stave shook his shoulder. The boy groaned and turned to face the wall, without opening his eyes. He stank of home-made hooch, obviously drunk. Stave gave him a punch on the shoulder but he didn’t react. Just grunted. There was no point.
    He tried the next hutch. Empty. Then the next. He rapped on the bare board.
    ‘If you’re looking for somewhere to kip, try next door,’ a hoarse voice cried out. ‘There’s nobody in there any more. But don’t let the warden catch you, and don’t make any noise.’
    ‘Police, crime squad,’ Stave replied, and pulled aside an old heavy overcoat that covered the door. It was an oilskin, probably a sailor’s.
    Against the wall opposite stood a pair of rusty bunk beds without mattresses. On the lower bed was a rumpled blanket and an old rucksack obviously used as a pillow. The bed above was missing the metal webbing a mattress would normally lie on. Instead there were a couple of boards set across the frame as a sort of shelf, with an old seaman’s duffel bag stuffed so full that at any moment Stave thought the board it lay on would give way and empty its contents on to the bed below. In front of the bunks stood an ancient armchair, ripped fabric of an indeterminate colour, the back covered in soot. Obviously looted from some bombed house.
    On the armchair squatted a man whom Stave initially would have put at around 70 years old. Then he took a closer look and changed his mind: maybe 50. Iron-grey hair, unwashed for weeks. Greasy strands that reached down to his shoulders. A white halo of dandruff on his shoulders, like snow against his thick, navy-blue, woollen sailor’s jumper. Dark trousers and heavy, iron-heeled working boots. A man who once must have been big and strong. His muscles, still impressive, could be seen beneath his slack wrinkled skin. He had blue eyes, bushy eyebrows and a scar as wide as a finger that ran from the left corner of his mouth across his cheek as far as his neck behind one ear. Despite the cold his sleeves were rolled up, revealing blue tattoos on his forearms: an anchor, a naked woman, a word that Stave couldn’t read. A seaman run aground, the chief inspector thought. He put one hand on the grip of his gun while he pulled out his police ID with the other.
    ‘Anton Thuman,’ the man said, without getting up. There was nowhere else to sit, except on the lower bunk bed, which Stave did not fancy. So he stayed standing as he told the man that the naked body of a woman had been found nearby.
    ‘What’s that got to do with me?’ Thuman interrupted him before he could finish.
    ‘Were you out on Baustrasse during the past couple of days? Or near Landwehr Station? Did you see anything suspicious?’
    ‘I hardly ever go out. Too cold. I’m sort of hibernating here in this bunker. As soon as the port is open and the English let proper ships come in again, I’m out of here. Until then I’m just squatting in this dump trying to move