Shadow and Light Read online

  A young man in a bow tie and plain shirt was waiting in front of a line of entrance doors. He was conspicuous for his lack of movement among the others of his breed, darting about with their clipboards and papers and tidy vitality. The boy began to jog over the moment he saw Hoffner pull in between two Daimlers.

  “Herr Chief Inspector,” he said. Hoffner stepped out of the car. “Eggermann, Rudi Eggermann. Everyone calls me Rudi.” The boy had been trained on how to present himself. “We have the Herr Direktor waiting upstairs for you.”

  Hoffner’s suit drew several glances as he and the boy made their way up toward the main entrance. Stylish for 1923, it seemed to match the color of the brick.

  “Very impressive,” Hoffner said as he peered up at the building and its myriad doors. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket.

  “Yes. Thank you, Herr Chief Inspector.”

  Hoffner nodded vaguely in the direction of the doors as he lit up. “How do you know which one?”

  Confusion cut across the boy’s face. “Which one what, Herr Chief Inspector?”

  “Which one to use. The doors. Where they go.”

  “Oh.” The boy nodded eagerly. “How do we know. Of course. Actually, it’s not all that difficult—”

  “I’m joking with you, Herr Rudi.” Hoffner let out a long stream of smoke. “You managed to pick me out among the Mercedes and Daimlers. I’m assuming you know your way around.”

  Inside, the foyer housed a small office, a row of telephone booths, and a single wide corridor that led deeper into the building. Halfway down the hall, the boy was forced to slow for a train of women who looked as if they had each come second to the winner of a Marie Antoinette dress-up contest. Each held a fashion magazine or cheap little novel in her grasp as they all shuttled down the hall and into a large room where an entire legion of French aristocrats were either sitting or reading or dozing. A dice game among a few comtes and peasants had drawn a crowd in a corner. Nice to see the Weimar democratic spirit alive and well, thought Hoffner.

  He followed the boy into a waiting elevator, and they headed up.

  THE PENTHOUSE FLOOR was an open-air atrium, with a carpeted balcony that extended around all four sides in pristine white. Hoffner peered over the edge to the little chessboard of activity eight stories down as he followed the boy past the offices and dressing suites reserved for Ufa’s executives and major stars.

  The design was really quite ingenious, the whole thing subdivided by movable bricked-in walls so that the big films and little ones could all be shot at the same time. Great sand deserts butted up against French palaces, a section of Friedrichstrasse seemed to end on a mountaintop, and the most curious was a casino that looked on the verge of an elephant stampede. Hovering above it all were the tall cranes with cameras and lights attached, distant figures perched on poles or hanging from wires. The rising chatter would have been deafening if not for the glass dome that extended across the atrium from the floor below. Up in the heavens, however, all was serene. Hoffner wondered if the designers realized how clever they had been to choose Babelsberg for their tower.

  “My younger boy is very interested in all of this,” Hoffner said as he continued to gaze over.

  “It’s an exciting industry, Herr Chief Inspector.” Hoffner wondered if young Rudi carried the brochure with him at all times. “May I ask how old?”

  “Third year, Friedrichs-Werdersches Gymnasium.” A great torrent of water was now making its way down the mountain. “A fencer. Sixteen.”

  “You should have him get in touch with us. We could find something for him—running scripts, filing film. On the weekends, of course.”

  “No,” Hoffner said easily as he watched the water disappear as quickly as it had come. “This isn’t the sort of place for a boy of sixteen.”

  There was an awkward nod before Rudi motioned to the corner office. “Here we are,” he said, rather too relieved.

  Hoffner looked up to see a heavyset man standing outside the door. His suit was a recent purchase, though he had yet to learn how to wear it. The man nodded with an unwarranted familiarity as Hoffner approached.

  “Hoffner, Kern,” Kern said, ignoring Rudi entirely. “You’re free to do whatever it is you do, Eggermann. We’ll be taking it from here.”

  Hoffner waited a moment, then turned to his young guide. “You’ve been very kind, Herr Rudi. Please inform your studio security man I won’t be needing him.” And without so much as a nod, Hoffner took hold of the handle and started in.

  Kern’s thick hand quickly held the door in place. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Kripo?”

  Again Hoffner waited before turning. “Well, I could waste my time on your notebook full of scribblings or your ideas about when and how all this happened. Or you could tell me how you chose to make private security your calling, the freedom and glamour and so forth, when we both know there are three, more likely four, failed Kripo entrance examinations in your not-too-distinguished past. I was hoping to save you all of that in front of Herr Rudi here, but it seems that’s not meant to be. My guess is that the two or three very powerful men inside this office are waiting to tell me just exactly what they think I need to know without any help from you. So thank you for standing guard until I arrived, but I think we’re done.” Hoffner pointed to Kern’s shirt. “And you might want to take care of that. Jam tart can leave a stain.”

  Hoffner knew it was poor form to enjoy the look on Kern’s face as much as he did, but then they had brought him all the way out here on a Monday morning for what was probably nothing more than another aimless tryst gone wrong, all of which would be conveniently brushed aside by some well-placed cash or favors for men too far above him at the Alex for any of it to trickle down his way. He would still have to go through the paperwork for the extra petrol allotment when he got back. Kern seemed the appropriate repository for such frustrations.

  Kern, his suit even more apish, continued to hold the door: it was impressive to see that much rage contained. He seemed on the verge of saying something, when instead, he took a quick, defiant glance at Eggermann and then headed down the hall. Loud enough for Hoffner to hear, he muttered “Ass,” then disappeared through the stairwell door.

  Hoffner had hoped to see a bit of victory in Rudi’s face, but the boy simply stared uncomfortably. He was out of his depth. Shame. Evidently out here they were trained to cede ground. Hoffner nodded again and stepped inside the office.

  He found himself in a quite lovely and quite empty anteroom: sofa, two chairs, and a secretary’s desk with a large Ufa emblem emblazoned on the front. Everything was bright, too bright, from the pale yellow color of the walls, to the beige carpet, to the white satin pillows lazing along the armrests. Jannings and Nielsen once again dominated the walls, while various film magazines stretched across a low Chinoise coffee table. The final touch was a potted palm tree in the corner. Hoffner wondered if it was possible to appear more ludicrous: there was a desperation to it that cried out, “Look at us, America! We make films, too!”

  He stepped over to a second door, knocked, and pushed through.

  The larger office, by contrast, was stark to the point of sterility. A long, flat desk stared out from the one corner that seemed to defy the light streaming in from the wall-to-wall window. A designer’s metal chair stood sentry behind. The only nods to comfort were two low, overstuffed chairs in front of the window, but then they were denied the remarkable view of the Grunwald and beyond. One man stood staring out. Another sat in one of the chairs. The third, and oldest, was making his way across to Hoffner.

  “Ah, Herr Chief Inspector. Hoffner, is it?” He extended his hand. He was in a perfectly cut gray suit. “You’ve dispensed with Herr Kern, I see. My congratulations.”

  This was the new affectation. Weimar had brought democracy and prosperity and nude dancing and cocaine and the handshake. The clipped nod was a thing of the past. He took the man’s hand. “Nikolai Hoffner. Yes, mein Herr.”

  “
Joachim Ritter. Counsel for the studio. We finally sent Kern out. Bit of an oaf, wouldn’t you say?” Hoffner said nothing. Ritter turned to the man in the chair, who was clutching a tall glass of whiskey. “This is one of our screenwriters, Paul Metzner. Still a bit shaken up. He’s the one who found the body.”

  “I’m fine, really,” Metzner said as he placed the whiskey on the desk. “Anything I can help with.”

  The third man now turned from the window. “And this is Herr Major Alexander Grau,” Ritter continued as Grau stepped over. “The studio’s director.”

  Grau was tall, slim, and, even without the title, undeniably Prussian. He looked much younger than Hoffner would have imagined for the head of Europe’s largest studio—midforties at most—but with none of the self-conscious arrogance that comes with early success. Grau was a man certain of his place and unimpressed by his own power. In the wrong hands, it was a dangerous combination.

  “Herr Chief Inspector.” Grau was not a man for handshakes. He offered a clipped nod. “I can’t say we have much to tell you.”

  “Just a few questions, then, mein Herr.” Hoffner pulled a notebook from his coat pocket. “When did you find the body, Herr Metzner?”

  Ritter answered: “Eight-thirty this morning. They had a meeting to discuss a script.”

  Hoffner asked, “And this meeting was planned well in advance?”

  Ritter continued: “A day or two. It’s the usual course. Thyssen was producing the film.”

  “He’s produced several of my scripts,” Metzner piped in from his chair. The glance from Ritter made it clear that Metzner had been told to sit quietly. Grau looked almost indifferent.

  Hoffner jotted down a few lines to make it look official. “Was there a secretary outside when you arrived, Herr Metzner?”

  “Yes,” Ritter answered. “She heard and saw nothing. We have her in an office down the hall. She was feeling a bit faint.”

  “Anyone else?”

  Ritter looked momentarily puzzled.

  “Anyone else waiting in the room with her?” Hoffner clarified. “Others who would have had appointments—I’ll need to speak with them as well.”

  “Oh, I see. Yes.” Ritter glanced over at Grau, who nodded. “We can have that arranged.”

  “Good.” Hoffner dispensed with the usual questions of pressure and lovers and gambling. Ritter would have chosen one, an offhand remark, a lowering of the eyes, poor old Thyssen; Grau would simply have looked inconvenienced by it all: it was pointless to play out the charade. Instead, Hoffner placed the notebook in his pocket and said, “So, the body, meine Herren?” Ritter began to move toward the private bathroom, but Hoffner stopped him. “If Herr Metzner could show me how he found it, mein Herr. Procedure. You understand.”

  “Of course.” Ritter turned to Metzner. “Paul?”

  Metzner stood, but Grau interrupted: “Unfortunately, I have a meeting, Herr Chief Inspector. Is there anything else you need from me?”

  So much easier, thought Hoffner, when things were made this transparent: Grau was here simply to make sure Hoffner understood the hierarchy in play.

  “Not at all, Herr Direktor. Thank you for your time.” Hoffner extended his hand and enjoyed the slight tightening in Grau’s cheeks.

  Grau took it and said, “Herr Chief Inspector. Gentlemen.”

  He was gone by the time Metzner drew up to Hoffner’s side. “I’ve written several murder films myself,” Metzner said.

  “Really?” Hoffner walked with him across the room. “And here I thought this was a suicide.”

  “Herr Metzner is very enthusiastic,” Ritter cut in. “We pay him for his imagination.”

  Metzner pushed open the door to the bathroom and waited for Hoffner to move past him. Instead, Hoffner stopped. “Were any of your detectives ever the hero, Herr Metzner?”

  Metzner needed a moment. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Then I doubt you’ll be of much use to me,” Hoffner said, and stepped through.

  The room was almost half the size of the office, its floor in black-and-white marble, the wallpaper a deep maroon. Just in case the walk from the desk had been too taxing, there was a divan at the side of a pedestal sink, both in reach of a telephone that sat atop an iron-and-glass side table. The toilet, as far as Hoffner could tell, required its own little cabin, which was at the far end and up a few steps: the image of the mysterious blue liquid fixed in his mind before Hoffner turned to the centerpiece of the room. It was a long steel massage table that stood directly across from a sunken bathtub. And it was there, in the tub, that Hoffner found Herr Thyssen.

  The water had gone pinkish, with strings of deep red floating throughout. Thyssen’s head was resting against a porthole window, his eyes staring out unmoving. He was young and fit, and had rough calluses at the tips of his fingers. The hand with the Browning revolver rose awkwardly over the edge; in such cases, more often than not, the recoil from the shot caused the elbow bone to snap against the porcelain. Thyssen had been lucky. His arm had flown free. The single bullet hole was just below his left nipple.

  “And this is the way you found him?” Hoffner crouched down and placed two fingers on the chest: the flesh was hard, like cold rubber. The water was ice-cold.

  “Exactly,” said Metzner, peering over as best he could. “Nothing’s been touched.”

  Hoffner glanced over at the towel rack. Everything was perfectly in place. He looked for a robe. There was none. “Looks standard enough,” he said, even if he didn’t believe a word of it. The body angle and water temperature were wrong. And the blood made no sense. There was something else, but Hoffner couldn’t quite place it.

  He stood and reached for a towel.

  “That’s all you’re going to do?” said Metzner, almost disappointed.

  “Is there something else you want me to do?”

  “Well—you hardly touched the body.”

  “Oh, the body.” Hoffner nodded. “You want me to look for marks or gashes or fingerprints. That sort of thing.”

  “Well—yes. Isn’t that part of the procedure?”

  Again Hoffner nodded. “I’ll leave that to your film detectives.” He finished with the towel. Ritter was standing in the doorway. “You said there were people for me to see. Why don’t we do that.”

  AGAINST HIS PROTESTATIONS, Metzner was sent down to his office, while Hoffner called into the Alex for someone to come out and pick up the body.

  “You’re sure it’s absolutely necessary?” Ritter spoke casually as the two men made their way to an office at the far side of the atrium. “You can’t just let us have the family make the arrangements?”

  “Standard procedure,” Hoffner lied. “We need an examination, an official record.” He wanted someone to take a look at the late Herr Thyssen. “The family will have him by the end of the week.”

  Ritter knew not to press it. “You Kripo men usually come in twos,” he said.

  “You’ve had a lot of experience with us, then, mein Herr?”

  “It’s a film studio, Herr Chief Inspector. There’s always someone’s hand to hold.”

  “Or pull from a tub.”

  “That, too.”

  Hoffner found the man surprisingly likable. “I had a tendency to lose mine.”

  “Your hands?”

  “My partners.”

  “Ah.” They reached the door, and Ritter stopped. “I’ve started with any staff who might have had even passing contact with Thyssen in the last twenty-four hours. Script runners, copyists, that sort of thing. You understand I can’t pull executives out of meetings at a moment’s notice. I could set up a few interviews for you back in town. At our Potsdamer offices, tomorrow morning, say.”

  “That would be fine.”

  “Good. Not that I think any of them would have much to tell you.”

  “The Herr Major mentioned that, yes.”

  “Even so, we want the studio to be as helpful as we can. I suspect we can have all this sorted out in the next day o
r two. After all, suicide’s no crime.”

  Lawyers brought pressure to bear in such delicate ways, thought Hoffner.

  Ritter reached for the handle, but for some reason stopped himself. “Hoffner,” he said, as if the name had suddenly taken on new meaning. He turned. “Of course. The ‘chisel murders.’ Grizzly stuff after the war, wasn’t it?”

  This was a badge Hoffner reluctantly carried. “A long time ago. Yes.”

  “All those women killed. And Feld, or Filder? Your young partner, always in the papers.”

  “Fichte,” Hoffner corrected.

  “That’s right. You couldn’t open one without seeing his face. You know, we thought about making a film. He was rather charismatic. Too gruesome, though, even for us. Might work now, though.”

  “It might,” Hoffner said blandly.

  “No doubt your Fichte’s a Kriminaldirektor by now.”

  “No doubt.”

  Fichte had been dead for eight years. As had Martha. As had Sascha, all but for the dying.

  It was odd to think of Sascha now, easier not to. At least the dead remained as they were, with no questions to be answered. Fichte’s death had been unfortunate but no real surprise: his kind of ambition always fell prey to the corrupt. That the boy had been unable to see how deep the corruption ran at the Alex was hardly tragic, more a lesson in misguided arrogance. Hoffner’s last image of him—lying on a slab, his lungs filled with poison—was enough to give Fichte’s death its meaning, and why look beyond that?

  For Martha there had been no hope of meaning. She had been killed for Hoffner’s own arrogance—and naïveté and stupidity and recklessness—and any thought of understanding it, or seeing beyond it, was pointless. He had let them murder his wife. To ask why—to waken the dead—would have required a self-damning too exhausting to bear.

  Only the very young had the resilience to sustain that kind of loathing. His son Sascha had been sixteen at the time. Hoffner hadn’t seen him since.

  “Winter of ’20?” said Ritter.

  “Nineteen,” corrected Hoffner. “It was during the revolution.”