The Man from Berlin Read Online Free PDF Page A

do,’ said Reinhardt. ‘Are you nearly finished?’ he asked Begović.
    â€˜Yes. Why do you think it’s not the woman’s?’ asked Begović.
    Reinhardt pointed at the glass on the table. ‘She lived here. Stands to reason she’d use the side of the bed nearest the bathroom.’
    Begović nodded, his mouth making an O. ‘Well, I’m all done, unless you gentlemen need something else?’
    Reinhardt looked at Padelin questioningly. The big detective shook his head. ‘Wait downstairs, please, Doctor.’
    â€˜Shall we have a look in the bathroom?’ asked Reinhardt, as the doctor left. He dropped his cigarette stub into his little tin and pocketed it, letting Padelin go first, watching. The detective walked right in, standing in the middle of the room. Reinhardt paused in the doorway. It was lavishly equipped, with a huge white bath, gold taps, an ornate showerhead. Tiles in a repeating blue-and-gold motif ran around the room at waist height, and a mirror in a mosaic frame that looked Spanish hung over the sink. Toothbrush, toothpaste, French cosmetics on the white enamel sink. Towels and brushes on a set of tall wrought-iron shelves, from which hung a black silk dressing gown. And luxury of luxuries, a toilet with a shiny wooden seat.
    Casting an eye around the room, Reinhardt spotted the blood marks on the wall on either side of the toilet, and a bloody towel wadded up and thrown into a corner. Large as the room was, Padelin filled the space with his bulk, watching Reinhardt with those dead, catlike eyes. Reinhardt peered into the toilet, but it was empty. Blood marks on either side of the sink, as if someone with blood on their hands had leaned on it for balance or support. He stared around the room once more, trying to imagine what had happened and what he might be missing. Putting his tongue between his teeth, he sighed, turned and walked out, back into the bedroom.
    Padelin joined him there. ‘The maid is waiting to be questioned,’ he said, quietly. His German was slow and ponderous.
    Reinhardt nodded. ‘I need to have a look at the other body first.’
    â€˜You do that,’ said Padelin, in a tone that implied Hendel was all Reinhardt’s. ‘I will see what she has tosay.’

3
    H endel had been poster-boy good-looking. Chiselled features, blue eyes, blond hair. The works. Looking up at the wall, Reinhardt could see where Hendel’s head had struck it, traced the long smear of blood the body’s sliding fall had left before it came to rest there, shoulders slumped across the skirting board, one ankle crossed beneath the other. Hendel was in uniform, but whoever had shot him had emptied his pockets and removed his rank insignia, hoping, Reinhardt guessed, to delay identification. It would have worked, if one of the Feldgendarmes who responded to the call had not recognisedhim.
    For once, Reinhardt thanked Hendel’s habit of staying out late with the ladies and the number of times the Feldgendarmerie must have fingered him stumbling back to barracks late and drunk. He lifted Hendel’s leg by the boot. As with Vukić, the rigor mortis was almost gone. He could not have died much more than a day ago. Definitely about the same time asher.
    Reinhardt walked across the living room and entered a study. To his left, a tall window looked out on the garden. Against one wall was a large, heavy-looking table, the wood worn smooth and rich with age, but he did not pay much attention to it because above it, and arranged haphazardly all over the wall, were photographs in black frames. In most of them, Marija Vukić stared or laughed or pouted out at him with an intensity that made his stomach suddenly clench, remembering how they had talked at that dance. Not for long, mostly about Reinhardt’s time in the first war, but for as long as he had talked she had listened with a particular intensity, blue eyes boring intohis.
    Marija