‘I told you. I never went over the fence.’

  And so it went on … and on … and on: the same questions, the same denials, again and again, round and round. Soon I felt almost as exhausted and bored as Ogorzow: I’d been up even longer than him, after all. Finally Lüdtke said: ‘You went over the fence so that you could go and kill innocent women, smash them over the head, isn’t that right?’

  That was the first time Lüdtke had mentioned the murders, and it produced the first, fractional, weakening in Ogorzow’s resolve.

  His voice went up in pitch from a grumpy mumble to a resentful whine: ‘What do you mean, smash them over the head? What are you talking about?’

  ‘You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about all the women you killed. After you’d jumped over the fence. Because that’s what you did, isn’t it? You skived off in the middle of your shift, got over the fence and went looking for a woman to kill.’

  ‘No, that’s not what happened at all. I didn’t kill nobody.’

  ‘But you did go over the fence. So what really happened?’

  ‘You got a cigarette?’ Ogorzow asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Lüdtke took out his gunmetal case. The fancy French cigarettes had all gone long ago. Now he was smoking the same blend of weeds and sawdust as everyone else. He handed Ogorzow a cigarette and lit it for him. Then he waited until Ogorzow had had a couple of puffs before he said: ‘So, what really happened when you went over the fence?’

  Interrogation is like a game of poker. Sometimes the person on the other side of the table keeps their intentions as well hidden as their cards. But then there are times when, for all their efforts, they cannot help but reveal themselves. This was one of those. Ogorzow said nothing, but his face betrayed the calculations he was making as he tried to come up with a story good enough to satisfy our curiosity without causing him serious trouble.

  ‘I saw a woman, that’s true, but I didn’t do her no harm,’ he said. ‘What happened, right, was every day I used to hang the temporary signal lights out on the track. There’s houses next to it and there was this woman in one of them, proper tasty she looked and all. She used to hang out her washing most days, right about the time I went by. I reckon she did it deliberately, you know: “I’m here if you want me.” We gets to talking over the fence and she says her husband’s away at the Front, in the army. So I says: “You must get lonely, all alone in that house, without a man around the place.” And she laughs, all flirty like, and, well, that’s how it started.’

  ‘How what started?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘You began a sexual relationship.’

  Ogorzow possessed a certain animal cunning, there was no doubt about that. But he was fundamentally very stupid. And one of the signs of his stupidity was his misguided belief that he was actually a very clever, shrewd individual who could run rings round thick-headed policemen. ‘Ohh,’ he said, adopting an exaggerated, mincing tone, ‘“You began a sexual relationship” … Yeah, I nailed her, if that’s what you mean. And she was begging me for it, and all.’

  ‘So what was her name, this woman who was begging for it?’

  A look of alarm crossed Ogorzow’s face. ‘I don’t want to tell you that. I mean, if her man finds out he’ll kill me.’

  Lüdtke smiled affably. ‘Ogorzow, listen to me, and pay attention now. You really don’t want to be worrying about the odd angry husband here or there. Think about it. You’re sitting in Alex. We’re very reasonable men here. We play by the rules. But all I have to do is stick you in a car and send you off to Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse and once my Gestapo colleagues have taken care of you for a couple of days … well, you know how it is down there.’

  There wasn’t a man, woman or child in Germany who wasn’t all too aware of the tortures – real or imagined – that the Gestapo could inflict. Ogorzow was no exception. For the first time he was genuinely scared.

  ‘She’s called Kluge,’ he said. ‘Frau Elise Kluge.’

  ‘There, you see? That wasn’t so difficult. And now you can go back to your cell.’

  Ogorzow was led away. When he was out of sight and earshot, Lüdtke leaned against a wall, his eyes closed, as if exhausted by what had actually been a relatively short interrogation. He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly then reached for a cigarette of his own.

  ‘He did it, I’m sure he did. I’d bet everything I’ve got on it,’ he said, an unlit cigarette in his mouth, speaking as much to himself as to me. ‘But we don’t have him and he knows it.’ He lit up and drew the smoke deep into his lungs. ‘I need a confession. God knows how we’re going to get it though.’

  I waited for a moment while Lüdtke smoked some more, still deep in thought. Then I asked him, ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Find this Kluge woman. See if his story checks out. And see if you can get any dates off her. Maybe they’ll match some of the crimes. Though, come to think of it, we’ll be no better off if they do. His defence will just be that he couldn’t have killed this or that woman if he was screwing another woman at the same time.’

  Lüdtke threw his cigarette end on to the interview room floor and stamped on it two or three times, not so much extinguishing as pulverizing it. ‘I hate this damn case,’ he muttered, and stalked out, not bothering to see if I was following. After we’d gone another ten metres down the corridor he stopped dead so suddenly that I almost bumped into him.

  ‘And get on to the forensics people. Tell them I need something, anything, that ties Ogorzow to the killings. If they start bleating they need time, remind them that we don’t have time. I won’t be able to hold Ogorzow unless I can find proper, concrete, reliable evidence against him. So they’d better get it to me. Now!’

  I asked Biene to get me an address for a Frau Elise Kluge, living near Rummelsburg station, then went down to the forensic science department to pass on the first part of Lüdtke’s message. The men in the white coats reacted precisely as he’d anticipated, so then I gave them the second part, making it perfectly plain that they would be held to account if we had to let this serial killer back on to the streets. By the time I got back to the squad room Biene had an address for me.

  The simplest way to describe Elise Kluge was that she was the sort of woman who would think that Paul Ogorzow, a low-level railway worker with an unimpressive physique, lifeless oyster eyes, a broken nose and a sullen pout, was an attractive proposition for an extramarital affair. She admitted that she’d been seeing him and, after a little more persuasion on my part, that she’d been sleeping with him too. She could say that they’d been at it for several months, but she couldn’t be specific about dates: ‘I don’t exactly keep a lover’s diary, if you know what I mean.’

  So Ogorzow’s story checked out. For the rest of the day, Lüdtke had us all running around that same Rummelsburg–Friedrichsfelde–Karlshorst corner of Berlin, trying to get him something he could use in his next interrogation.

  There wasn’t much. I went to Rummelsburg and interviewed the stationmaster again. He repeated his assurances that Ogorzow had been an exemplary worker. But then, in a moment of vanity, he let slip that he was on very good terms with one of the senior managers at the Reichsbahn and had been kept fully up to date with all the police operations. I asked if he’d passed any of this information on to Paul Ogorzow, and the stationmaster naturally denied it, but I was certain now that that was the means by which the killer had stayed ahead of all our plans.

  A butcher called Schumann had another interesting story to tell me, albeit one with no value as evidence. Schumann’s shop was at 25 Dorotheastrasse, right next door to Ogorzow’s apartment building. Schumann had been putting up a police poster asking for information about the S-Bahn murderer when Ogorzow had walked by.

  ‘Maybe he lives next door,’ Schumann had said, light-heartedly.

  Ogorzow had laughed. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he replied.

  24

  By mid-morning on 13 July more than twenty-four hours had passed since Ogorzow had last been interrogated and we were still no nearer unearthing any evidence to incriminate him. Then one of the forensics boys called. They’d found blood on Ogorzow’s S-Bahn uniform: a microscopic amount on the sleeve of his jackets and enough on the crotch of the trousers to be visible to the human eye. ‘There’s not enough to tell the blood-type,’ he said. ‘But it’s definitely human.’

  The news hit the murder squad like a dose of smelling salts. Men who were depressed, exhausted and devoid of all energy suddenly sprang to life. Lüdtke had Ogorzow summoned from his cell and questioned him once again.

  Naturally, Ogorzow had a story to explain it all away. He’d had sex with his wife just a few days before he’d been arrested. ‘I reckon the blood came from her,’ Ogorzow said. ‘She was on the rag, know what I mean?’

  We got back to work again. The first news was not good. When asked about her husband’s claims, Gertrude Ogorzow confirmed that they had indeed made love when she was menstruating. Frau Kluge, on the other hand, said that she didn’t believe a word of it. ‘Paul hates it when it’s that time of the month. He says it disgusts him. Scares him, more like, if you ask me.’

  Forensics took another look at the trousers. There was no way of telling whether the blood came from Frau Ogorzow or not, they said, but the pattern was not consistent with the description Ogorzow had given. The type of contact he’d described would lead to a smear of blood, but the pattern on his trousers was more of a spatter. That was much more consistent with blood spurting or splashing from a wound.

  ‘A wound like a blow to the skull with a blunt object?’ Lüdtke asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said the man from forensics, ‘exactly like that.’

  I was sent to question Gertrude Ogorzow yet again. This time she admitted that there was no truth to her husband’s story. They hadn’t had sex in the way he’d claimed. I got the feeling her faith in him was starting to crack. He must have told her so many stories over the years, given so many explanations for his strange moods and late-night absences. Perhaps she’d assumed that he was having an affair. If he was a good provider and treated her well, that was something she might forgive. Rape and murder were another story. As I left her I wondered just how well he really had treated her. Whatever the friends and neighbours might say, no outsiders ever really knew what went on in a marriage. I found it hard to believe that a man who could brutalize women the way that Ogorzow did would be sweetness and light with his wife.

  By now there was no one in the murder squad who doubted that Lüdtke had got the right man. After work the talk in the late-night bar was all about the old man’s incredible instinct for sniffing out killers, no matter how unlikely they seemed.

  ‘You wouldn’t think Ogorzow had it in him, to look at him,’ Baum said. ‘He’s such a scrawny little creep. I reckon a decent-size woman is probably stronger than he is.’

  And then it came to me, the common denominator that linked all the women he’d attacked: women of different ages, classes and professions, who seemed to have so little in common. ‘That’s it!’ I exclaimed. ‘The victims – they’re all small!’

  ‘You sure?’ Richter asked. ‘I don’t remember that.’

  ‘That’s because you weren’t looking for it, none of us were. But trust me. Those files are engraved into my brain. All his victims are a metre fifty-five or less. I’m sure of it.’

  I went back to Alex, got out the victims’ files and looked up all their heights. Sure enough, they were all, without exception, petite. Lüdtke had gone home for the night, but first thing next morning I informed him of my discovery. To my disappointment he didn’t seem as excited as me. ‘It’s interesting,’ he said. ‘Once we’ve got him to confess, it’s a handy piece of information to throw at him. Maybe it will help explain why he does it. But right now, there are other avenues I want to explore with Herr Ogorzow.’

  It would soon become apparent that the Commissar was speaking the literal truth. But when we sat down again with Ogorzow, Lüdtke began by informing him that his story about the menstrual blood was in tatters. ‘The scientists say it’s the wrong kind of blood, and your wife’s admitted you never had sex when she was having a period.’

  ‘She never,’ Ogorzow insisted. ‘She wouldn’t say nothing against me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t, or wouldn’t dare?’ Lüdtke asked.

  Ogorzow didn’t reply.

  ‘Well, that’s all done with, anyway,’ said Lüdtke. ‘There’s blood on your clothes. It came from someone you battered to death. We’ll find out who it was soon enough. But that’s not what I want to talk about now. No, I want to know how you get to work.’

  That surprised Ogorzow. He looked distinctly unsettled and ill-at-ease. ‘Sorry, I’m not with you,’ he said, presumably trying to buy some time to work out what he needed to say.

  ‘It’s a simple question. You live in Karlshorst. You work at Rummelsburg. That’s about four kilometres away. So how do you get from home to work and back again every day?’

  ‘I dunno. Depends, really. Lots of different ways.’

  I leaned over to Lüdtke and whispered: ‘He had a man’s bicycle in the hall of his apartment.’

  ‘Do you walk?’ Lüdtke asked.

  ‘Yeah, maybe, sometimes.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It’s a very nice area. Walking through all the allotments, past the gardens and orchards on a nice summer’s morning. Who could ask for anything more pleasant?’

  Ogorzow nodded enthusiastically. ‘Oh yeah, very pleasant. Absolutely.’

  ‘But still, it’s a fair way to walk every day, four kilometres. I dare say you probably cycle a lot of the time too.’

  Again Ogorzow nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah … I do that and all.’

  Lüdtke had a map, folded up beside him. Now he opened it up and spread it on the table between him and Ogorzow. It covered those oh-so-familiar areas of eastern Berlin, showing every road and track, down to the smallest footpath.

  ‘Here’s Dorotheastrasse, where you live,’ Lüdtke said, placing his forefinger on the map. And over … ah … here is Rummelsburg station. Now, how do you get between those two places?’

  ‘I couldn’t rightly say. I’m not very good with maps, me.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you’re not that bad,’ Lüdtke said, encouragingly. ‘A man like you, working on the railways – don’t tell me you can’t look at a map and work out exactly where you’re supposed to place one of those signal lamps you were talking about.’

  ‘Well, yeah, a railway map, maybe. But this is different, isn’t it?’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ said Lüdtke, suddenly as cold as ice. ‘It’s a map, just the same as any other map. It shows an area you know like the back of your hand. You’re very well aware of the paths you walk along, or cycle along when you go to work. So stop pissing me about and tell me which ones they are.’

  Ogorzow gave in. ‘Oh all right, then. Here …’ He gave a desultory wave of his hand that just about traced a route along the map. ‘I go that way some of the time. Or this way here.’

  Now Lüdtke and I were the ones who had to play poker, for we had just been dealt a winning hand if only we could play it. Women had been attacked on both the routes Ogorzow had described: women who had survived and might just be able to identify Ogorzow as their assailant.

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ Lüdtke said to him. ‘Very interesting indeed. Now, tell me, what else have you done when you’ve been going along these paths?’

  ‘I’ve not done nothing. I walk. Or I go on my bike. That’s it.’

  ‘Really. So when you happen to meet a woman, out by herself at night, you just raise your cap and wish her good evening. Is that it?’

  ‘Yeah, well, something like that.’

  ‘Bullshit. You’re lying to me, Ogorzow, and you know it as well as I do. You attack women on those paths. You hit them. You stab them …’

  He looked blankly back at Lüdtke. ‘No, I never,’

  ‘You raped them …’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You killed at least two of them … ‘

  ‘No, I didn’t kill no one.’

  ‘So what did you do? All these women that you met along the way … what did you do to the women?’

  Silence had fallen on the interview room, but it felt as though Lüdtke’s words were still vibrating, unheard, in the air all around us. Ogorzow sat dumbly, yet his face was once again telling us exactly how much trouble he knew he was in. He was chewing and twitching his lips. His eyes were blinking. Now he flopped forward and rested his head in his hands as if the weight of all his guilt had become insupportable. Finally, he raised it again and said: ‘All right, maybe I was a bit cheeky. But that was all.’

  ‘Cheeky? What’s that supposed to mean?’ Lüdtke asked.

  ‘Well, maybe I’d light them up, you know, with my torch. Shine it in their faces. Maybe I said a few things, like, dirty things. Just to give them a bit of a thrill. But that was all, I swear.’

  ‘That’s what you were doing, was it? Giving these women a bit of a thrill? I see … Tell me, did they look to you as if they were thrilled? Did they shriek like girls on a fairground ride? You know, a little bit scared, but having a wonderful time underneath.’

  Ogorzow was dumb enough to think that he was being given a way out. ‘Yeah, yeah, that was it. They was scared, but they was happy. I mean, one of them shouted at me. They get like that, women, don’t they? But nothing serious, just mouthing off a bit.’

  ‘Very well then, tomorrow, you and I will take a little walk along the same paths that you use to get to work. And as we walk along, you can show me some of the places where you shone your torch at these women. Maybe you could point out the place where that woman shouted back at you, too. How does that sound to you?’

  Ogorzow shrugged. ‘All right.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Lüdtke. ‘Then that is what we will do.’

  Ogorzow was led away again. Lüdtke turned to me, and this time he wasn’t slumped against walls, or closing his eyes in exhaustion. He was filled with energy and conviction.