Fatherland

With a sigh of irritation, Eisler daintily stepped forward, removing the glove from one hand. The corpse’s leg ended at the bottom of the calf. Still holding the umbrella, Eisler bent stiffly and ran his fingers around the stump.

“A propeller?” asked March. He had seen bodies dragged out of busy waterways — from the Tegler See and the Spree in Berlin, from the Alster in Hamburg — which looked as if butchers had been at them.

“No.” Eisler withdrew his hand. “An old amputation. Rather well done in fact.” He pressed hard on the chest with his fist. Muddy water gushed from the mouth and bubbled out of the nostrils. “Rigor mortis fairly advanced. Dead twelve hours. Maybe less.” He pulled his glove back on.

A diesel engine rattled somewhere through the trees behind them.

“The ambulance,” said Ratka. They take their time.”

March gestured to Spiedel. Take another picture.”

Looking down at the corpse, March lit a cigarette. Then he squatted on his haunches and stared into the single open eye. He stayed that way a long while. The camera flashed again. The swan reared up, flapped her wings, and turned towards the centre of the lake in search of food.

TWO

Kripo headquarters lie on the other side of Berlin, a twenty-five-minute drive from the Havel. March needed a statement from Jost, and offered to drop him back at his barracks to change, but Jost said no: he would sooner make his statement quickly. So once the body had been stowed aboard the ambulance and dispatched to the morgue, they set off in March’s little four-door Volkswagen through the rush-hour traffic.

It was one of those dismal Berlin mornings, when the famous Berliner-luft seems not so much bracing as merely raw, the moisture stinging the face and hands like a thousand frozen needles. On the Potsdamer Chaussee, the spray from the wheels of the passing cars forced the few pedestrians close to the sides of the buildings. Watching them through the rain-flecked window, March imagined a city of blind men, feeling their way to work.

It was all so normal. Later, that was what would strike him most. It was like having an accident: before it, nothing out of the ordinary; then, the moment; and after it, a world that was changed forever. For there was nothing more routine than a body fished out of the Havel. It happened twice a month — derelicts and failed businessmen, reckless kids and lovelorn teenagers; accidents and suicides and murders; the desperate, the foolish, the sad.

The telephone had rung in his apartment in Ansbacher Strasse shortly after six-fifteen. The call had not woken him. He had been lying in the semi-darkness with his eyes open, listening to the rain. For the past few months he had slept badly.

“March? We’ve got a report of a body in the Havel.” It was Krause, the Kripo’s Night Duty Officer. “Go and take a look, there’s a good fellow.”

March had said he was not interested.

“Your interest or lack of it is beside the point.”

“I am not interested,” said March, “because I am not on duty. I was on duty last week, and the week before.” And the week before that, he might have added. This is my day off. Look again at your list.”

There had been a pause at the other end, then Krause had come back on the line, grudgingly apologetic. “You are in luck, March. I was looking at last week’s rota. You can go back to sleep. Or…” He had sniggered: “Or whatever else it was you were doing.”

A gust of wind had slashed rain against the window, rattling the pane.

There was a standard procedure when a body was discovered: a pathologist, a police photographer and an investigator had to attend the scene at once. The investigators worked off a rota kept at Kripo headquarters in Werderscher Markt.

“Who is on today, as a matter of interest?”

“Max Jaeger.”

Jaeger. March shared an office with Jaeger. He had looked at his alarm clock and thought of the little house in Pankow where Max lived with his wife and four daughters: during the week, breakfast was just about the only time he saw them. March, on the other hand, was divorced and lived alone. He had set aside the afternoon to spend with his son. But the long hours of the morning stretched ahead, a blank. The way he felt it would be good to have something routine to distract him.

“Oh, leave him in peace,” he had said. “I’m awake. I’ll take it.”

That had been nearly two hours ago. March glanced at his passenger in the rear-view mirror. Jost had been silent ever since they left the Havel. He sat stiffly in the back seat, staring at the grey buildings slipping by.

At the Brandenburg Gate, a policeman on a motorcycle flagged them to a halt.

In the middle of Pariser Platz, an SA band in sodden brown uniforms wheeled and stamped in the puddles. i Through the closed windows of the Volkswagen came the muffled thump of drums and trumpets, pounding out an old Party marching song. Several dozen people had gathered outside the Academy of Arts to watch them, shoulders hunched against the rain.