Ostland, page 15
I remembered Ogorzow from his file, partly because he was, like me, twenty-eight. He had actually been stopped and questioned at Karlshorst station, back in September 1940, after the initial spate of non-fatal attacks. Further information had been accumulated on him, as it had on a huge number of other men, of course. But the investigation into him had been closed on 23 December 1940, simply because there was no good reason whatever to continue it.
Ogorzow had worked for the Reichsbahn since signing on as a labourer in 1934, and his superiors ever since, without exception, had regarded him as hard-working and reliable. He was called up in January 1940, served in the invasion of France and then invalided home in mid-July with a wounded wrist. The injury hadn’t prevented him returning to work on the railways. For the past year, he’d been an assistant signalman at Rummelsburg. The stationmaster there spoke particularly highly of him. Ogorzow, he said, had become a sort of factotum: running errands for him, doing odd jobs and even making him breakfast from time to time.
His personal life was equally beyond reproach. He married his wife Gertrude, a former saleswoman, on 5 June 1937. She was two years his junior and already had a daughter from a previous relationship. Ogorzow and Gertrude had a son of their own. Immediately after their marriage the couple lived with Ogorzow’s mother, Marie Saga, in her family apartment at 24 Dorotheastrasse, a mid-nineteenth-century building in Karlshorst, near to the station. They later moved to a ground-floor apartment of their own in the same building. It had a garden and a small cherry orchard, where Ogorzow liked to pass the time and play with his children.
So here we had a good, honest, German working man. He wasn’t particularly tall and had a light build – in that he conformed to the descriptions given by the women who had survived the S-Bahn murderer’s attacks. But then, so did a great many men in Berlin. In other respects, however, Ogorzow didn’t remotely answer to the picture we had built up of our man. In so far as the women described their assailant’s face, for example, they were agreed that he had a straight nose. Ogorzow had a crooked nose that looked as if it had been broken and then not properly reset.
As if that were not enough to rule him out, he was a sergeant in the SA, having joined the Party in 1931 and the Brownshirts in ’32. By definition, a loyal National Socialist was incapable of committing crimes as heinous as these. He’d even taken part in SA operations to guard women in and around the stations on the No. 3 line and on the trains themselves. In short, there was every reason to keep his file closed and none whatever to reopen it.
Lüdtke, however, was possessed by one of those obsessions that sometimes strike even the greatest police detectives. Something about Ogorzow had got under his skin. He was convinced that this was our man and wouldn’t listen to any counter-arguments. I wasn’t quite sure then, nor am I any the wiser now, about why Lüdtke felt the way he did. Perhaps it was a simple, physical response. For all his golden reputation, Ogorzow didn’t look like the picture of Aryan perfection. His face was set into an expression of sullen resentment, as if he were dissatisfied with his lot in life and wanted someone to blame. But how much did he really have to complain about? He’d been born illegitimate in Muntau, east Prussia. His mother was a farm servant who had got herself pregnant and his father was never named: the surname Ogorzow came from a subsequent one of his mother’s lovers, who adopted young Paul when he was eleven. Illegitimacy carried a stigma, true enough, but his childhood was hardly the violent, sexually abusive hell in which Peter Kürten grew up, and no worse than countless other bastard children have had to cope with. His life now, working in a secure job, far from the front line and going home every night to his wife and family, was one that millions of German men could only dream of. Yet the fact that he was an irritating, ungrateful little man with a face one wanted to punch hardly gave reasonable grounds to call Paul Ogorzow a criminal.
I did, however, spot another tiny scrap of evidence, though it was utterly circumstantial. There had been a gap in the original Friedrichsfelde attacks between December 1939 and July 1940 that exactly fitted the time Ogorzow was away with the army. I pointed it out to Lüdtke, suggesting it gave us a basis for reopening the investigation into Paul Ogorzow. But then we finally caught a break and the investigation was sent off in a very different direction.
22
Two knee-prints and a set of footprints had been found near Frieda Koziol’s body. The footprints consisted only of the soles of the shoes that had made them – no heel marks at all – suggesting that they belonged to someone who was running. The obvious explanation was that the killer had got down on his knees to examine his victim, been disturbed for some reason and then fled the scene of his crime. Find the shoes that made these prints and we would have our man.
The prints led away down the path for fifty metres before they disappeared. We’d tried to pick up the trail beyond that point, but not even our best police dog was able to follow it. But all was not lost, for the footprints bore a distinctive pattern. Our forensics people took a plaster cast and were able to identify the shoe as a Salamander ‘Podiatrist’, size 40, sold in the Salamander shoe company’s own stores.
‘We’ve got him!’ shouted Lüdtke exultantly, when he heard that news. He knew now that it was just a matter of time and hard work. Anyone buying shoes required special coupons. More than 20,000 coupons issued to men in the districts of Berlin surrounding the area in which the killings had occurred were cross-referenced with coupons used to purchase Size 40 Salamander Podiatrist shoes.
A man was found who lived just a hundred metres from the path on which Koziol had been killed.
His shoes exactly matched our plaster cast.
He was a known sex offender.
But he was not Paul Ogorzow.
His name was Hermann Wirtig. He worked as a carpenter, but in his spare time he was a Peeping Tom whose particular pleasure was to creep around the Karlshorst area, looking for women who’d neglected to draw their bedroom curtains, couples making love in the open, or any other glimpse of someone else’s sexuality with which he could feed his pathetic fantasies.
Wirtig admitted that he’d stumbled across Koziol’s body on the path that night. He even confessed that he’d stuck his hand in his trousers and masturbated at the sight of her lying there. But that, he swore, was all he’d done. He’d not even realized she was dead at first: in the darkness it was hard to tell. But once he’d seen the terrible wound to the side of her skull he panicked and ran off as fast as his legs would carry him.
It was very, very tempting to pin the whole S-Bahn case on Wirtig. Any half-decent group of detectives could have beaten a desperate confession out of him – the kind that is given to avoid further punishment – cooked up some evidence and had him convicted. God knows it would have made our lives easier. The Koziol killing had infuriated Heydrich. Yet another dead woman for the public to talk about and no sign whatever of her murderer – it smacked of disorder, incompetence, lack of control: all the things that the Nazi Party despised and feared most. Impatience at the Reich Security Main Office was growing by the hour. Influential voices were starting to suggest that since the Berlin murder squad seemed incapable of doing their jobs, it was time someone else was brought in to do it for them. If that happened, the consequences for those of us who had been seen to fail would not be pleasant. We feared we might find ourselves putting on Waffen-SS uniforms and getting front-row tickets to the Russian Front. And all Lüdtke had to do to make everyone happy was to take a man who confessed to being in the presence of the murder victim on the night she died and name him as the S-Bahn murderer.
Lüdtke wouldn’t do it.
‘What would people say, if they saw that this was the way we do things in Germany?’ he insisted. And what, he might have added, will people say if we arrest the wrong man and the killings still continue?
So back we went to Paul Ogorzow. Through all the months of frustration the men’s loyalty to Lüdtke had remained unshakable. Now, for the first time, it began to be strained as we grew more and more committed to what many of us believed was a wild goose chase. The only source of any good humour whatsoever was provided by Helmut Schwibs. He’d taken to visiting Alex almost every day and giving us the name of the man who he thought had jumped over the fence. Three times he tried and three times he failed. Two of the men he named adamantly denied doing any such thing and could prove that they were never on night shifts at Rummelsburg. The third name didn’t belong to any S-Bahn worker at all. Baum and Richter began a competition to see if anyone could guess the name that Schwibs would come up with next. Winston Churchill was the most popular choice, followed by Lili Marlene.
On 9 July Schwibs turned up at Alex for a fifth time. When the call came through to the squad-room there was heated debate about whether to let him up again or not. Frei was dead set against it. He regarded Schwibs as nothing more than an absurd distraction from our proper jobs, and for once I could see his point. Baum and Richter, of course, just wanted to find out whom he would name today. In the end it was Lüdtke who sighed: ‘Oh, what the hell, let’s hear what the old fool has to say for himself now.’
So Schwibs came up to the squad-room and was greeted with a cheery cry from Baum of, ‘Morning, Helmut!’ As always, the old man was wearing the same shiny black suit. His hands worked nervously at the felt of his old brown hat as a small crowd of detectives gathered round to discover what today’s name would be.
‘So, Herr Schwibs, what would you like to tell us?’ Lüdtke asked.
Schwibs swallowed hard. He shuffled his feet. ‘I’ve got the name,’ he said. ‘And this time it’s the right one. I know it is.’
‘And what is this name?’ Lüdtke asked.
‘Adolf Galland!’ Baum shouted, referring to the Luftwaffe’s greatest ace.
Schwibs looked appalled. ‘Oh no, it’s not him,’ he said. ‘I’d never say nothing bad about a hero like Colonel Galland. Never! I mean I’m a loyal citizen, I …’
It was clear that he thought we might at any moment arrest him for treason. Lüdtke flashed a furious look at Baum and then said, ‘Don’t worry, Herr Schwibs. No one seriously thinks you were going to name Galland. So who was it really? Who climbed over that fence?’
The room fell silent. Schwibs said nothing. I feared he’d forgotten what he came here to say. The silence continued – for an eternity, it seemed. Then, at last, Helmut Schwibs gathered his scattered nerves together, took a deep breath and said, ‘Ogorzow. The man’s name was Paul Ogorzow.’
In German law, even Nazi German law, a criminal can only be arrested with a warrant issued by a court at the request of a public prosecutor. Of course, in those days we had the power to take political prisoners into so-called ‘protective custody’, which is to say, internment without trial in a concentration camp. But for a homicide case such as this, the principles enshrined for decades in the Code of Criminal Procedure still applied, albeit with some adjustments. It took two more days for us to assemble our evidence and have it put before a judge. The case we made against Ogorzow was not a strong one, but in 1941 the National Socialist League of German Jurists ensured that every judge in the land understood the importance of acting in the best interests of the Party and the state, which were effectively one and the same thing. The Party wanted the S-Bahn murderer arrested and convicted as soon as possible. There was a possibility, however distant, that the arrest of Ogorzow would enable this to happen. Therefore we got our warrant.
‘I want you to make the arrest,’ Lüdtke said as we left the courtroom.
I was overwhelmed at the honour, but not quite able to believe it. ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘After all this time, don’t you want to be the one to bring him in?’
Lüdtke shook his head. ‘No, I want to be the one who makes him admit that he did it. And it’ll do you good. You’ve got to make your first arrest at some point or other. Why not start with a big one? Besides, I need a good night’s sleep. I want to be as sharp as a razor when I sit down to interview this man.’
*
There was precious little sleep for me that night. The arrest was carried out on 12 July at four in the morning, the best hour to catch any man at his weakest and most befuddled. I posted men around the building to make sure that Ogorzow couldn’t escape and then rapped hard on the door of his apartment. There was no response. I knocked again. A few more seconds went by and then a woman’s sleepy voice called out: ‘Hang on, I’m coming.’
The door opened to reveal Gertrude Ogorzow, knotting the belt of the dressing gown that was covering her otherwise naked body. She was only thirty-nine but looked older: feeding, clothing and caring for a family were not easy tasks for women in wartime. There was a bicycle behind her, propped up against the wall.
‘Is your husband at home?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ she mumbled.
A small boy appeared, peering round the bicycle’s rear wheel and wanting to know what was happening. Gertrude shooed him back to his room.
‘Where is he, your husband?’ I asked.
‘The room at the end, on the right,’ she said, jerking her head towards a door at the far end of the hall.
‘Excuse me, please,’ I said and walked down the hall past the woman and her child, who was still lingering, desperate to see what was going on. I’d not got far when Ogorzow himself appeared, dressed in nothing more than a pair of black trousers. He was fiddling with the top buttons of his fly, trying to make himself decent. He looked up at me with that dull, surly expression of his and said: ‘Oh, you … what do you want, then?’
‘I have a warrant for your arrest. You are charged with the murder of Frieda Koziol and seven other women. You will come with me to Criminal Police headquarters, immediately.’
‘Why? I’ve done nothing wrong!’
I ignored his plea. ‘Get dressed, now.’
Two of my men were loitering by the front door, waiting for instructions. I told one of them: ‘Go with him. Make sure that he doesn’t try anything.’
Ogorzow and the police officer went into the bedroom. The daughter had now appeared next to her brother and Gertrude was trying to push them both back into their bedroom. She finally closed the door, snapped an exhausted, infuriated: ‘Now just stay there till I tell you to come out!’ and turned to me.
‘What the hell is going on?’ she said. ‘My husband is a respectable man. He’s been questioned, followed, taken up to Alexanderplatz. Now this. Why won’t you leave us alone?’
‘We have reason to suspect that he may be involved in a number of very serious crimes,’ I said, trying to keep my voice calm. I might be a police officer, but she was a woman on the verge of hysteria and I had no intention of driving her any closer. ‘Please pay attention to me, Frau Ogorzow. My men have orders to seize all of your husband’s clothes, shoes and personal belongings for forensic examination. You will assist them to do this as quickly and efficiently as possible. If you do not cooperate with them, there will be consequences. Do I make myself clear?’
She glared at me, not saying a word.
‘I’ll ask you again: do you understand what I just told you?’
‘Oh yes, I understand that you’re taking my Paul. I understand that you want his clothes and all that. But why? That’s what I don’t understand.’
‘We have reason to believe that your husband is involved with the S-Bahn murders.’
‘My husband? Don’t be daft! What on earth makes you think that?’
Not a lot, I thought to myself. To Gertrude Ogorzow, however, I said: ‘I am not at liberty to discuss this matter any further. I repeat: you will please assist my men with all their inquiries. A receipt will be issued to you for any property taken from these premises.’
Ogorzow emerged from his bedroom, fully dressed with his hands cuffed. ‘I’ll take him from here,’ I told the police officer. ‘Turn this place upside down. I want everything this shitbag owns over at Alex, fast.’
Twenty minutes later, Ogorzow was sitting in a police cell. Lüdtke had left specific instructions that he was not to be allowed to sleep before his interrogation. He could have one tin cup of water, but no food. Nor could he be told anything further about the case, or our case against him. The interrogation would begin at nine o’clock sharp.
23
As Lüdtke’s assistant my job was to watch, listen, take notes and keep my mouth shut. I suppose I’d been hoping for some moment of genius in which my boss would, like the hero of a cheap crime novel, reveal some crucial piece of evidence or brilliant deduction, hitherto kept secret even from his fellow detectives, that would force our man to crack and admit all. Instead, the first session with Ogorzow was a frustrating, even depressing affair.
Lüdtke was dressed quite formally in a smart suit and tie, with his Nazi Party badge in his lapel. He would always make sure to have it clearly visible whenever he was with Ogorzow, a detail whose significance would only become evident several days later. Now he sat down opposite Ogorzow. There was nothing between them on the table. Lüdtke liked to make his connection with suspects as direct and uncluttered as possible.
‘You climbed over the fence by Rummelsburg station when you should have been at work,’ Lüdtke began. ‘Why did you do that?’
‘No, I never,’ Ogorzow replied, sleepily. He yawned and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t just look tired, he seemed bored by the entire proceedings.
‘Don’t lie to me,’ Lüdtke told him. He slammed the table, as much as if he were trying to attract Ogorzow’s attention as to frighten him into an answer. ‘We know you went over the fence. You were seen and you know it. So don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Why did you go over the fence?’
