The Killing of Emma Gross (23 page)

I lifted the phone's handle from the cradle and waited for the line to connect, the moth flapping at my face. When the operator came on, I asked for the first precinct number on the list. The operator connected me. Eventually a yawning voice answered the phone and I asked the man on the other end to look through his residential records for a Frieda Brandt and to ring back if he found anything. I repeated this process ten times, then I hit the records room down the hall.

An hour later, I'd got six negative phone calls and a big fat
nichts
from the precinct files. Whoever this woman was, she didn't live in Flingern, and never had. No, nor Grafenberg, Unterbilk, Oberbilk, Friedrichstadt, Altstadt or Derendorf either.

The phone rang again and I went to answer it.

'Hello?' I said into the receiver.

'Hi, is that Detective Klein?'

'Yes, Klein here.'

'Hello?'

The line buzzed and crackled and the sound of faint voices filtered through.

'Hello?' I said.

'Hello? Are you there?'

'Yes, can you hear me?'

'Yes, I can hear you. Can you hear me?'

'Yes, fine. Do you have any information for me?'

'Yes,' the other cop said. 'We've got an address for her here in the Flehe district. Fifty-five Uedesheimer Strasse. It's near the park.'

I thanked him and hung up.

Du Pont and the green man loomed large in my mind, and by then I knew I was putting off having to go and release them. Besides, I needed to take Trudi's lead as far as I could. Perhaps the answer to Emma Gross' murder awaited me in Uedesheimer Strasse.

It was too late to rely on public transportation, so I took a cab out to Flehe. The Rhine curled up under this district of the city, giving it a cut-off island feel. The houses we drove past were large, three or four storeys high.

The cab pulled up outside number fifty-five. I paid the driver and opened the front gate as the cab drove off. The gate carried three post boxes, suggesting this house was broken up into flats. Sure enough, there were three buzzers by the door, each one bearing a different name. None of the names was Brandt. Of course, maybe Brandt had been the woman's maiden name. Maybe she'd married. Maybe, maybe, maybe. The cogs of police work are oiled with maybes.

Or so I told myself as I pressed the buzzer for the ground floor flat. I kept my finger on for several seconds. Then I buzzed again. It was one forty-five in the morning. Area like this, no autos about, nobody out walking the streets, it was a safe guess that I was waking the inhabitants.

I waited two minutes then buzzed again. A light came on inside the house. A shape lumbered between the light and the glass panel in the door, then the door opened. A middle aged man stared at me with puffy eyes and mussed brown hair and a paisley patterned dressing gown that was too short for his smooth, hairless legs. He was still tying the belt around his thick middle.

I held up my ID and checked the name on the buzzer.

'Herr Weber?' I said.

He grunted.

'I'm looking for Frieda Brandt.'

'Well she doesn't live here.'

I waited for him to add anything. He didn't.

'She used to live here,' I said. 'She's registered at this address.'

'Oh, right.'

Another shape hovered behind Weber.

'Honey? Who is it?' A woman's voice.

Weber turned back and said, 'Just get on with the coffee, will you?'

'But who is it, Uli?'

'It's the police.'

'What do they want?'

'Yeah, what is all this about anyway?' Weber asked me.

'I told you,' I said, 'Frieda Brandt.'

'What's she done?' Weber said.

'Frieda? Oh, she was nice,' said the female voice.

Weber huffed and threw open the door and gestured for me to come in, so in I went, through the vestibule and into the ground floor apartment. The apartment's wood floors shone. African art and masks hung on the wall, the overall effect one of dark wood and white animal hair. Frau Weber was small and round and had deep wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, though the rest of her face was smooth.

'You're having coffee at this time of the morning?' I asked her.

She nodded while her husband said, 'Well, I'm awake now. I won't be able to sleep again, not for hours. And I've a lot to do tomorrow, so I might as well get started.' He didn't bother to keep the annoyance from his voice.

I nodded at the African artefacts on the walls. 'And what is it you do, Herr Weber?'

'Uli teaches at the university. Don't you, sweetie?'

Weber had pushed past to the kitchen where it sounded as though a coffee pot was bubbling on the stove.

'Lecture, dearest,' Weber called back, 'I lecture at the university, I don't teach. There is a difference.'

Frau Weber rolled her eyes at me, but she was smiling.

'Frau Weber, you knew Frieda Brandt?'

'Oh yes.' She finger-combed her shoulder-length dark hair and rearranged her thick cotton robe. She called out to the kitchen: 'Don't you remember, sweetie? We took the flat from her.' There was a grunt from the kitchen. Frau Weber added. 'She was so helpful, taking us through the rental contract and pointing out what the landlord would and wouldn't do, all that. It was most helpful. Yes, she was nice.'

'Do you have any idea where she moved to?'

'Oh, I'm sorry. She didn't say.'

'How long ago did you move in?'

'About a year and a half. Actually, probably closer to two now I think about it.'

'In 1928?'

'Yes, that's right. After the summer it was. Say September or October.'

'Is there anything else you can tell me about Frau Brandt? Where she worked, perhaps? Whether she worked? Was she married? Did she have any children?'

Frau Weber gave a girlish giggle. Her face crinkled for a brief second before settling down again. 'She certainly wasn't married. I got the feeling she didn't have much time for it, you know, as a way of life. And she didn't talk about children, not the way people do. It's possible, but I didn't see any photographs of her family at all.'

'So she worked?'

The coffee pot sounds had gone and the scent of fresh-brewed coffee hit me. My mouth watered. Weber came through with a cup for his wife and another for himself. He didn't offer me any.

'Yes, she was some kind of nurse wasn't she?' Frau Weber asked her husband who shrugged.

'What kind of nurse, do you remember?' I said. 'Did she work in a hospital, or in a dentist's surgery perhaps?'

She shook her head. 'I'm afraid I don't know that. We really only spoke together over a matter of days, detective.' She paused. 'Did you want some coffee?'

Uli flinched. I was tempted to say yes just for the look on his face.

'No, thank you Frau Weber. You've been most helpful.' I looked at her husband. 'Sorry to disturb.'

'Any time,' he grumbled.

‘By the way,' I said, 'did you rent the flat here through an agency or with the landlord directly?'

'Through an agency,' Uli Weber said.

'You remember which one?'

'Yes thanks.'

Frau Weber gave her husband a playful slap and said, 'It was Bauer and Bauer. It's not far down the road here. They have an office on Achener Strasse, on the square. It's a five minute walk. But we see the landlord from time to time too. He stops by if we have any maintenance trouble.' She disappeared through another door.

'Don't go making a mess in there, you hear?' her husband called out. Then, to me: 'That's my study.'

I nodded. There was a crash. Herr Weber flinched – he was going to get terrible wrinkles before long if he didn't do something about his flinching – and put down his coffee. He bustled into the study after his wife.

A few seconds later Frau Weber emerged clutching a compliments slip with a torn corner and handed the slip to me. The printed address read:
Herr Dornfelder, 12 Bucherweg, Meerbusch
. Meerbusch was a suburban town to the north west of the city on the other side of the Rhine, an area full of charming woodland and exclusive restaurants, as the local estate agents would probably have put it. One of those parasitical moneyed places that skimmed off the sweat of the labour toiling within the city proper, as Du Pont would probably have put it. All a matter of perspective.

'You sure you don't need this?' I said, waving the slip.

'Oh no, you take it detective. Anything to help. We have more anyway.' She beamed at me.

'Where's your local post office, Frau Weber?'

'Oh, gosh. There's one north on the Achener Strasse. Number sixty or thereabouts, I think. It's a kilometre or so away, I know that. Long street, that Achener Strasse.'

'How old was Frau Brandt?'

'Late forties, I would guess. But I'm not that good on people's ages, I'm afraid. She had quite a lot of grey in her hair and she didn't colour it.'

'How tall would you say she was?'

'A little taller than me. Not much.'

'And you're what? One metre fiftyish?'

'One fifty-four.'

'What kind of build did she have?'

Frau Weber chuckled and patted her belly. 'Certainly not like mine. She was thin. Especially in the face. Liked to wear loose clothing though, so it's hard to say for certain. You sure you didn't want any coffee?'

'Well...' I said. Herr Weber came crashing out of his study and gave me the mother of all scowls. He carried two pieces of something made of dark wood, one piece in either hand. The pieces looked like they used to fit together until a minute or two earlier.

I declined the offer and left the house with a grin on my face, a little closer to Frieda Brandt, but not much. This Dornfelder was miles away and if I kept shelling out for taxis I'd be broke before dawn. Dornfelder could wait. The letting agency would, of course, be closed until morning, so they would have to wait. All this hassle for the forwarding address of a woman whose connection to Emma Gross I knew nothing about.

Trudi's hot lead had cooled and I'd run out of excuses. I had to go and check on my captives.

The coal cellar door hung open on one hinge. The other hinge lay in the courtyard and reflected the half-dozen windows whose lights were burning up above me. Beside the glinting hinge lay pieces of latch and clumps of brick dust. Where I was standing remained dark. I waited several long minutes for my heart rate to slow to normal and then I approached the door.

I went down the steps and whispered for Du Pont. No one answered. At the bottom of the steps my eyes adapted to the gloom. The low cloud cover of the past few days had gone. The moon lit part of the way. That was enough to see by. The back stalls of the cellar were empty of anything bar the coal they were supposed to hold. Empty of prisoners for sure.

One of the back wall slats was snapped in two and the scarf and the belt had vanished along with the two men. A scrabbling noise came from behind me. I twirled round, my hand going for the pocket with the Luger in it. But there was nothing to see. No one there. Rats or something, most likely.

I turned back to the slats. There was nothing of use there, certainly no clues as to where they might have gone.

Great, so now I had an angry Commie reporter and a mystery thug with a broken wrist out roaming the streets. Well, Du Pont was a talker. If they'd gone off together, there was no way he hadn't got some information out of the green man. Or so I hoped. Even that slender hope would come to nothing unless I could track down Du Pont.

I returned to the steps, hand on the Luger in my pocket in case of ambush. I trod on something soft. I raised my foot and looked down. I'd stood on Du Pont's flat cap. I squatted and picked it up. It was still damp with Du Pont's saliva. I dropped the cap and wiped my hands on my trousers.

I hated to think what Du Pont might decide to write about me next. I had to find him. I went out to the street and through the alley to the main road where I managed to get hold of a cab after a twenty minute wait.

'
Volksstimme
offices,' I said. And then I tacked on a 'please', because God help you if you upset the cab drivers in this town.

He pulled away without having to ask for the address. Ten minutes later he parked up outside the building. I paid him, swearing that would be the last taxi I shelled out for that night.

The
Volksstimme
offices occupied the first floor of the four-storey building, where the absence of lamp light suggested business was done for the night. Ditto the silence coming from the basement printing presses.
Light spilled onto the pavement through the plate glass window of the bar on the ground floor where, by contrast, the night's business was just getting started.

On the inside of the bar windows the staff had pasted a mock-up of the last edition to go out, blown up to poster size.

KRIPO IGNORE EVIDENCE, INSIST ON GUILT OF STAUSBERG,