Fatherland

He breathed warmth on to his hands and reached into the inside pocket of his overcoat. He pulled out a small tin case, which he opened, and two white cards. The cigarette smoke tasted bitter in his mouth. He grasped the corpse’s left wrist- so cold; it never ceased to shock him — and prised open the fingers. Carefully, he pressed each tip on to the pad of black ink in the tin. Then he put the tin down, picked up one of the cards, and pressed each finger on to that. When he was satisfied, he repeated the process on the old man’s right hand. The attendant watched him, fascinated.

The smears of black on the white hands looked shocking; a desecration.

“Clean him up,” said March.

THE headquarters of the Reich Kripo are in Werderscher Markt, but the actual hardware of police business — the forensic laboratories, criminal records, armoury, workshops, detention cells — are in the Berlin Police Praesidium building in Alexander Platz. It was to this sprawling Prussian fortress, opposite the busiest U-bahn station in the city, that March went next. It took him fifteen minutes, walking briskly. “You want what?”

The voice, edged high with incredulity, belonged to Otto Koth, deputy head of the fingerprint section.

“Priority,” repeated March. He took another draw on his cigarette. He knew Koth well. Two years ago they had trapped a gang of armed robbers who had killed a policeman in Lankwitz. Koth had got a promotion on the strength of it. “I know you’ve got a backlog from here to the Fuhrer’s hundredth birthday. I know you’ve got the Sipo on your back for terrorists and God knows what. But do this for me.”

Koth leaned back in his chair. In the bookcase behind him, March could see Artur Nebe’s book on criminology, published thirty years ago, but still the standard text. Nebe had been head of the Kripo since 1933. “Let me see what you’ve got,” said Koth. March handed over the cards. Koth glanced at them, nodding.

“Male,” said March. “About sixty. Dead for a day.”

“I know how he feels.” Koth took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “All right. They’ll go to the top of the pile.”

“How long?”

“Should have an answer by morning.” Koth put his glasses back on. “What I don’t understand is how you know this man, whoever he was, had a criminal record.”

March did not know, but he was not going to hand Koth an excuse to wriggle out of his promise. “Trust me,” he said.

MARCH arrived back at his flat at eleven. The ancient cage lift was out of order. The stairs, with their threadbare brown carpet, smelled of other people’s old meals, of boiled cabbage and burned meat. As he passed the second floor he could hear the young couple who lived beneath him quarrelling.

“How can you say that?”

“You’ve done nothing! Nothing!”

A door slammed. A baby cried. Elsewhere, someone turned up the volume of their radio in response. The symphony of apartment life. This had been a fashionable block, once. Now, like many of its tenants, it had fallen on harder times. He continued on up to the next floor and let himself in.

The rooms were cold, the heating having failed to come on, as usual. He had five: a sitting room, with a good high ceiling, looking out on to Ansbacher Strasse; a bedroom with an iron bedstead; a small bathroom and an even smaller kitchen; a spare room was filled with salvage from his marriage, still packed in boxes five years later. Home. It was bigger than the forty-four square metres which was the standard size of a Volkswohnung — a People’s Flat — but not much.

Before March had moved in it had been occupied by the widow of a Luftwaffe general. She had lived in it since the war and had let it go to ruin. On his second weekend, redecorating the bedroom, he had stripped off the mildewed wallpaper and found tucked behind it a photograph, folded up very small. A sepia portrait, all misty browns and creams, dated 1929, taken by a Berlin studio. A family stood before a painted backdrop of trees and fields. A dark-haired woman gazed at a baby in her arms. Her husband stood proud behind her, his hand resting on her shoulder. Next to him, a little boy. He had kept it on the mantelpiece ever since.

The boy was Pili’s age, would be March’s age today.

Who were these people? What had happened to the child? For years he had wondered, but hesitated — he always had plenty at the Markt to stretch his mind, without finding fresh mysteries to unravel. Then, just before last Christmas, for no reason he could properly define — a vague and growing uneasiness that happened to coincide with his birthday, no more than that — he had started to seek an answer.