[AH Fiction] Murder in Hitlerstadt
- Thread starter varyar
- Start date
South-east borough of the city. IOTL a hipster zone, which seems to be an improbability in this tale.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neukölln
I cheated a little - Neukölln, Horst-Wessel-Stadt and Hakenkreuzberg (aka Neukölln, Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg) form a real Berlin police district. I ordered a WW2-era book about the German police, so I might change that, but for now, those neighborhoods make up Ziska's part of Hitlerstadt.
Update coming later tonight. Be warned! Ziska Meester isn't Heydrich 2.0, but she's not cut from the same cloth as Therese Lohmeyer or even Sibylle Schreiber.
Update coming later tonight. Be warned! Ziska Meester isn't Heydrich 2.0, but she's not cut from the same cloth as Therese Lohmeyer or even Sibylle Schreiber.
So Ziska is a "good" daughter of the Reich? You don't want to meet her in an interrogation room?
TWO
The bar’s name was Springbrunnen and even by the rough-and-tumble standards of Horst-Wessel-Stadt it was a dump. It sat on the corner of Oskar-Körner-Straße and Lasdehner Straße, a scowling lump of stone the same slate-grey color as SS uniforms.
Ziska parked her department-issued BMW and stepped out into the cold autumn evening. A street light, one of the old orange sodium ones, gave the damp sidewalk a strange pallor. Not far away, the last spasm of rush hour traffic noisily went up and down Großgermanisches Straße (the old Große Frankfurter Straße). Loud cars and quiet pedestrians – the German way.
A single green uniformed Orpo officer stood guard by the bar’s front door. He straightened at Ziska’s appearance and saluted as she drew closer.
Ziska frowned a little. There was a single Orpo patrol car, a boxy old Göringmobil instead of a BMW, parked near the bar instead of the small herd of autos she expected. Where was the ambulance? Where were the other patrol cars?
“Where is everyone?”
“Gone,” the uniform said.
“Gone?”
“The paramedics took the killer and the body. The other greens took the witnesses.”
Ziska stared at him.
No suspect.
No body.
No witnesses.
It was almost Schrödinger’s Crime.
Ziska wrote down the relevant names and locations in her notepad, then slipped it into the pocket of her overcoat. She pushed her way into Springbrunnen. It looked exactly like she expected. Dark, filled with the smell of beer and sawdust, decorated with large old-fashioned signs for Krakauer, Warsteiner, Carlsberg and Grolsch. The Gothic letters, faded by decades of smoke and neglect, were barely visible.
More visible was the broad pool of blood next to an overturned table in the back.
There were two people still in the bar – a bartender and a waitress. He was stout, she was pretty. They were both twenty or so, fresh out of national service, and both looked anxious and confused. Ziska’s arrival only made them look more anxious and confused.
“You didn’t see what happened, did you?” she demanded, already knowing the answer.
Both of them shook their heads.
“Udo told us we had to get down here right away,” the waitress said.
“We only got here after everything was over,” the bartender said.
“Hold on, hold on. Udo? Who’s that? Your boss?”
“Udo Böhm, yeah,” the waitress said. “You took him away.”
“Mm.” Ziska made a note and took another look around. Overturned table, broken glasses, blood on the floor. “Soccer or a woman?” she asked.
“What?”
“Was the fight over soccer or over a woman?”
“A woman,” the bartender said, shaking his head.
“Mm,” Ziska said again. The usual scenario. Boy A + Girl B + Boy C = Violence. The only surprise was that it was so early. Usually this sort of thing didn’t play out until 10 or 11. Maybe it was a full moon? “What else can you tell me?”
“Nothing, detective, I’m sorry,” the waitress stammered.
“Mm. Well,” Ziska said. She put her notebook back into her pocket before she wrote down the names of every cop she wanted to kick in the head for leaving her such a pathetic scene. On the other hand, if what the Orpo had said was true, the case was wrapping itself up in a nice package for her. A victim, a suspect in custody, and a van or two of witnesses. It was better than Christmas! She approached the waitress and whipped out her wallet, produced a business card and handed it to the girl. “If you remember anything... if you need anything... please. Call me.” The touch lingered for a moment before she stepped back.
The waitress smiled hesitantly and then nodded briskly. “Yes, yes, of course.”
Ziska smiled again. “Good.”
She circled the scene of the crime. Two broken bottles. Shards of glass streaked with blood.
About ten minutes later, the crime lab techs appeared. Ziska directed them to photograph the overturned table and the broken glass from several angles, then collect the glass and bag it up for fingerprinting later. Probably a lost cause, given how small the shards were, but sometimes – rarely – the basement gnomes managed not to disappoint.
Half an hour after that, she paid a flying visit to the morgue at the old Kripo headquarters and current police technical services center on Werderscher Markt. The coroner on duty, a lumpy old ghoul named Leimbach, wasn’t anywhere near ready to cut up the body from Springbrunnen. “We have three other bodies in front of yours,” he told Ziska. “But I don’t think yours will give me any surprises. Someone cut his throat wide open with a broken bottle.”
“No doubt about it.”
“Ask me again tomorrow. But I don’t think so,” Leimbach said. He eyed her for a moment. “You look disappointed.”
“I am. We already locked the killer up.”
“How awful.”
“It really is.”
“If I could give you an exotic poison, I would.”
Ziska smiled. Only after she was on the way to one of the local hospitals did she realize the ambiguity of the statement. By that point, though, she only cared about how much overtime she would not be making on this case.
And, sure enough, the first thing the suspect, a tall ogre of a man named Stefan Wechsler with a puffy, bruised face and one handcuff fixing him to the hospital bed, said was “You bet I cut him. That shit was putting his hands on my girl.”
“Was he?”
“You bet he was.”
Thank God for painkillers. Ziska produced a tape recorder and laid it on the little tray table next to the bed. “Start from the beginning.”
Wechsler nodded and launched into a long, barely coherent account of how he had arrived at Springbrunnen just after clocking out of his construction job and instantly struck up a conversation – no, more than that, a friendship – with ‘the redhead’ only to have the ‘shit’ ruin it all. Honor was at stake! So of course he broke a bottle and jammed it into the man’s neck. What else was a decent fellow supposed to do?
“I can’t imagine,” Ziska said. She wasn’t going to get any overtime out of this, but she would get two easy cleared cases in the space of a week. That was something for the neanderthals in Directorate V homicide to chew on, wasn’t it?
She finished the interrogation and smiled cheerfully as she headed for the elevator.
Her phone rang just as she reached her car. It was another hospital. Her murder victim, it turned out, was alive and, if not well, at least looking like he’d live to fight another day.
Ziska took that in stride. “Very good, thank you,” she said before hanging up, yelling “Shit!” and kicking the tire of her BMW.
First, find out the name of that idiot Orpo. Second, find out the name of that girl, she thought as she drove back to work.
The bar’s name was Springbrunnen and even by the rough-and-tumble standards of Horst-Wessel-Stadt it was a dump. It sat on the corner of Oskar-Körner-Straße and Lasdehner Straße, a scowling lump of stone the same slate-grey color as SS uniforms.
Ziska parked her department-issued BMW and stepped out into the cold autumn evening. A street light, one of the old orange sodium ones, gave the damp sidewalk a strange pallor. Not far away, the last spasm of rush hour traffic noisily went up and down Großgermanisches Straße (the old Große Frankfurter Straße). Loud cars and quiet pedestrians – the German way.
A single green uniformed Orpo officer stood guard by the bar’s front door. He straightened at Ziska’s appearance and saluted as she drew closer.
Ziska frowned a little. There was a single Orpo patrol car, a boxy old Göringmobil instead of a BMW, parked near the bar instead of the small herd of autos she expected. Where was the ambulance? Where were the other patrol cars?
“Where is everyone?”
“Gone,” the uniform said.
“Gone?”
“The paramedics took the killer and the body. The other greens took the witnesses.”
Ziska stared at him.
No suspect.
No body.
No witnesses.
It was almost Schrödinger’s Crime.
Ziska wrote down the relevant names and locations in her notepad, then slipped it into the pocket of her overcoat. She pushed her way into Springbrunnen. It looked exactly like she expected. Dark, filled with the smell of beer and sawdust, decorated with large old-fashioned signs for Krakauer, Warsteiner, Carlsberg and Grolsch. The Gothic letters, faded by decades of smoke and neglect, were barely visible.
More visible was the broad pool of blood next to an overturned table in the back.
There were two people still in the bar – a bartender and a waitress. He was stout, she was pretty. They were both twenty or so, fresh out of national service, and both looked anxious and confused. Ziska’s arrival only made them look more anxious and confused.
“You didn’t see what happened, did you?” she demanded, already knowing the answer.
Both of them shook their heads.
“Udo told us we had to get down here right away,” the waitress said.
“We only got here after everything was over,” the bartender said.
“Hold on, hold on. Udo? Who’s that? Your boss?”
“Udo Böhm, yeah,” the waitress said. “You took him away.”
“Mm.” Ziska made a note and took another look around. Overturned table, broken glasses, blood on the floor. “Soccer or a woman?” she asked.
“What?”
“Was the fight over soccer or over a woman?”
“A woman,” the bartender said, shaking his head.
“Mm,” Ziska said again. The usual scenario. Boy A + Girl B + Boy C = Violence. The only surprise was that it was so early. Usually this sort of thing didn’t play out until 10 or 11. Maybe it was a full moon? “What else can you tell me?”
“Nothing, detective, I’m sorry,” the waitress stammered.
“Mm. Well,” Ziska said. She put her notebook back into her pocket before she wrote down the names of every cop she wanted to kick in the head for leaving her such a pathetic scene. On the other hand, if what the Orpo had said was true, the case was wrapping itself up in a nice package for her. A victim, a suspect in custody, and a van or two of witnesses. It was better than Christmas! She approached the waitress and whipped out her wallet, produced a business card and handed it to the girl. “If you remember anything... if you need anything... please. Call me.” The touch lingered for a moment before she stepped back.
The waitress smiled hesitantly and then nodded briskly. “Yes, yes, of course.”
Ziska smiled again. “Good.”
She circled the scene of the crime. Two broken bottles. Shards of glass streaked with blood.
About ten minutes later, the crime lab techs appeared. Ziska directed them to photograph the overturned table and the broken glass from several angles, then collect the glass and bag it up for fingerprinting later. Probably a lost cause, given how small the shards were, but sometimes – rarely – the basement gnomes managed not to disappoint.
Half an hour after that, she paid a flying visit to the morgue at the old Kripo headquarters and current police technical services center on Werderscher Markt. The coroner on duty, a lumpy old ghoul named Leimbach, wasn’t anywhere near ready to cut up the body from Springbrunnen. “We have three other bodies in front of yours,” he told Ziska. “But I don’t think yours will give me any surprises. Someone cut his throat wide open with a broken bottle.”
“No doubt about it.”
“Ask me again tomorrow. But I don’t think so,” Leimbach said. He eyed her for a moment. “You look disappointed.”
“I am. We already locked the killer up.”
“How awful.”
“It really is.”
“If I could give you an exotic poison, I would.”
Ziska smiled. Only after she was on the way to one of the local hospitals did she realize the ambiguity of the statement. By that point, though, she only cared about how much overtime she would not be making on this case.
And, sure enough, the first thing the suspect, a tall ogre of a man named Stefan Wechsler with a puffy, bruised face and one handcuff fixing him to the hospital bed, said was “You bet I cut him. That shit was putting his hands on my girl.”
“Was he?”
“You bet he was.”
Thank God for painkillers. Ziska produced a tape recorder and laid it on the little tray table next to the bed. “Start from the beginning.”
Wechsler nodded and launched into a long, barely coherent account of how he had arrived at Springbrunnen just after clocking out of his construction job and instantly struck up a conversation – no, more than that, a friendship – with ‘the redhead’ only to have the ‘shit’ ruin it all. Honor was at stake! So of course he broke a bottle and jammed it into the man’s neck. What else was a decent fellow supposed to do?
“I can’t imagine,” Ziska said. She wasn’t going to get any overtime out of this, but she would get two easy cleared cases in the space of a week. That was something for the neanderthals in Directorate V homicide to chew on, wasn’t it?
She finished the interrogation and smiled cheerfully as she headed for the elevator.
Her phone rang just as she reached her car. It was another hospital. Her murder victim, it turned out, was alive and, if not well, at least looking like he’d live to fight another day.
Ziska took that in stride. “Very good, thank you,” she said before hanging up, yelling “Shit!” and kicking the tire of her BMW.
First, find out the name of that idiot Orpo. Second, find out the name of that girl, she thought as she drove back to work.
My bet'd be on Stalingrad. (unless it's back to Tsaritsyne)
That'd make sense too.
Stalingrad is Fuhrerstadt here.
http://www.walagata.com/w/varyar/Greater_Germany.jpg (courtesy of our own @Sapiento )
I'm sure I don't know what you mean. /cough.
Reader poll time! Choose the (Ziska) Form:
or
On the first crime scene, why did she close the Bible? The fact that it was open to a particular page might be important.
Certainly important to the dead man, most likely irritating to the Reich. It was a little gesture to spare his legacy as well as she could.
Good point. I was just thinking that if it was a "suicide" and not a suicide, the killer might have opened it to that page. There might be other scenes with a Bible open to that page if there's a serial killer. (If it's just a fan of a movie similar to OTL Pulp Fiction, it's useless because the movie is so ingrained into popular culture that 90% of the population is a suspect.) But Meester doesn't know any of that.
The blonde looks more like how I picture Meester.
Fair points, but 'real life' (or ATL version of same) is rarely that complicated. Visser was just a depressed and possibly senile old concentration camp guard.
Thanks!
IMHO a KZL near Moscow would have been "processing primarily Slavs with a few Jews thrown in for spice. On the Eastern Front Jews were dealt with locally and not transported to killing centers. If 1.7 million were dealt with, it had to be mostly Slavs as the Jewish population in the Moscow region was nowhere near that.
Definitely going to follow this.
BTW my guess this takes place in the 1960s or thereabouts.
Definitely going to follow this.
BTW my guess this takes place in the 1960s or thereabouts.
Zagan
Donor
Impossible. If the suicide victim in the first case was about 80 years old and born on 28 May 1925, the action must take place after 2000.
Deleted member 94680
I vote for number two, as she looks more business like. Fits the image of the angry woman the story portrays.
Although number one is more "aryan"?
Is there a nazi version of NATO in this TL?
For those questioning the date, the map linked on the last story was dated 2017 if memory serves...
Although number one is more "aryan"?
Is there a nazi version of NATO in this TL?
For those questioning the date, the map linked on the last story was dated 2017 if memory serves...
Insider
Banned
Yup, people do not realise that 90% of murder cases are exactly this, either suicides, or brawls gone wrong. I wonder what crime rate per 100000 New Reich would have. I expect something above OTL Germany, but not ridiculously above. It is not San Salvador after all, even though the ideology praising strength and honour and fighting wouldn't help.
As of pictures... well if you want to include romantic subplot, or at least introduce a bunch of men who wouldn't mind to be a romantic subplot, then number one. She is the Buxom Aryan Blonde (BABe?
) unless the ideal changed which is actually fairly possible, fashions change after all.Number two is something more business like (but again, Girl One has very informal clothes on the pic, she most likely would look more professional with uniform and hair neatly tied). And she has piercing eyes.