Garden of Beasts

artist’s rendering, fragrant with the scent of ink.
    “Good . . . Now, sadly, Janssen, you have one more task tonight.”
    “Yes, sir, whatever I can do.”
    One further quality of serious Janssen was that he had no aversion to working hard.
    “You will take the DKW and return to the Olympic Village. Show the artist’s picture to everyone you can find, American or otherwise, and see if anybody recognizes him. Leave some copies along with our telephone number. If you have no luck there, take some copies to the Lützow Plaza precinct. If they happen to find the suspect tell them to detain him as a witness only and to call me at once. Even at home.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Thank you, Janssen. . . . Wait, this is your first murder investigation, is it not?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Ah, you never forget the first one. You’re doing well.”
    “I appreciate that, sir.”
    Kohl gave him the keys to the DKW. “A delicate hand on the choke. She likes air as much as petrol. Perhaps more.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I’ll be at home. Telephone me with any developments.”
    After the young man had gone Kohl unlaced and removed his shoes. He opened his desk drawer, extracted a box of lamb’s wool and wound several pieces around his toes to cushion the sensitive areas. He placed a few strategic wads in his shoes themselves and, wincing, slipped his feet back inside.
    He glanced past the picture of the suspect to the grim photographs of the murders in Gatow and Charlottenburg.He’d heard nothing more about the report from the crime scene or interviews of any witnesses. He supposed that his fiction about the Kosi conspiracy he’d pitched to Chief of Inspectors Horcher had had no effect.
    Gazing at the pictures: a dead boy, a woman trying to grasp the leg of a man lying just out of reach, a worker clutching his worn shovel . . . Heartbreaking. He stared for some moments. He knew it was dangerous to pursue the case. Certainly dangerous for his career, if not his life. And yet he had no choice.
    Why? he wondered. Why this compulsion he invariably felt to close a murder case?
    Willi Kohl supposed it was that, ironically, in death he found his sanity. Or, more accurately, in the process of bringing to justice those who caused death. This was his purpose on earth, he felt, and to ignore any killing—of a fat man in an alley or a family of Jews—was to ignore his nature and was therefore a sin.
    The inspector now put the photographs away. Taking his hat, he stepped into the hallway of the old building and proceeded down the length of Prussian tile and stone and wood worn down over the years but nonetheless spotlessly clean and polished to a shine. He walked through shafts of low, rosy sun, which was the main source of illumination at headquarters this time of year; the grande dame of Berlin had become a spendthrift under the National Socialists (“Guns before butter,” Göring proclaimed over and over and over), and the building’s engineers did all they could to conserve resources.
    Since he’d given his car to Janssen and would have to take a tram home, Kohl continued down two flights to a back door of headquarters, a shortcut to the stop.
    At the bottom of the stairs signs pointed the way to the Kripo’s holding cells, to the left, and to the old-case archives straight ahead. It was in this latter direction that he headed, recalling spending time there in his days as a detective-inspector assistant, reading the files not only to learn what he could from the great Prussian detectives of the past but simply because he enjoyed seeing the history of Berlin as told through its law enforcers.
    His daughter’s fiancé, Heinrich, was a civil servant but his passion was police work. Kohl decided he would bring the young man here sometime and they could browse through the files together. The inspector might even show him some of the cases Kohl himself had worked on years ago.
    But, as he pushed through the doorway, he stopped fast; the archives were gone. Kohl was startled to find himself in a brilliantly lit corridor in which stood six armed men. They were not, however, in the green uniforms of the Schupo; they wore SS black. Almost as one, they turned toward him.
    “Good evening, sir,” one said, the closest to him. A lean man with an astonishingly long face. He eyed Kohl carefully. “You are . . . ?”
    “Detective Inspector Kohl. And who are you?”
    “If you’re looking for the archives they are now on the