The Catcher of Halensee by David J Oldman

The Catcher of Halensee by David J Oldman

Author:David J Oldman [Oldman, David J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Media
Published: 2020-01-29T22:00:00+00:00


23

Mitzi had already left. I looked for a note in reply to the one I had left her but found only mine, screwed up and dumped in the waste paper basket. The water was running so I wallowed in the tub for an hour before dressing and pouring myself a schnapps. Glass in hand, I put my feet up in the living room. I didn’t suppose Mitzi had got up much before noon; I felt as though I had put in a full day.

Maybe if we’d hadn’t taken so much exercise first thing I would have felt fresher. Despite my intention when I’d left that morning, the thought of traipsing back into town and killing time at the club until Mitzi got off didn’t seem as attractive as an early night.

There was always the chance that Gretchen wouldn’t deliver my message. And even if she did and Fischer was quicker responding than I expected, he would leave a message with Marthe and Mitzi would tell me when she got home. If worse came to worst and he wanted to meet straight away, I’d just have to stir myself and get up early.

I poured myself a second glass of schnapps, lit one of Kurt’s cigarettes and mulled over what Heinie Möser had told me. If he was right and Kittel now worked in the Russian sector despite having been a policeman for the Nazis, I guessed he had gone back to his communist sympathies and that the comrades were overlooking the time he had spent working under the Nazis. Not that any of it helped me much. Like the Allied sectors, there was no shortage of suburban police stations in the Russian sector, or in the Soviet Zone come to that if he no longer worked out of a Berlin station. The new Russian sector HQ was on Keibelstraße and the logical thing to do was walk in and ask for Kittel by name. But logic often served up more than the answer you wanted.

I finished my schnapps and decided to take a walk along the lake shore before turning in. Not so much for the exercise but rather to take a look at the back of the house, specifically at Frau Ernst’s apartment.

According to Mitzi, our portiersfrau had once lived with a man. Although I’d never seen evidence of one, Frau Ernst seemed so evasive whenever I asked about the owner, Neumann, that I couldn’t discount the possibility that he was the man she had lived with and that he was still around, keeping out of sight. It wasn’t only the Allies but the Russians as well who hadn’t stopped looking for those Nazis on the wanted list who had gone missing. It was entirely possible that many of them were still hiding in Berlin.

After all, from what Tuchmann had told me, many Jews had managed to survive in plain sight, those Tauchers or U-boats as he called them. So why not Nazi war criminals?

The windows to Frau Ernst apartment were closed, as were the drapes.



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