The Odessa File

He finished his cigarette, still listening to the radio, wound down the window and threw the stub away. At a touch of the button the 3.8 litre engine beneath the long sloping bonnet of the Jaguar XK 150 S thundered once and settled down to its habitual and comforting rumble like an angry animal trying to get out of a cage. Miller flicked on the two headlights, checked behind and swung out into the growing traffic stream along Osdorf Way.

He had got as far as the traffic lights on Stresemann Strasse and they were standing at red when he heard the clamour of the ambulance behind him. It came past him on the left, the wail of the siren rising and falling, slowed slightly before heading into the road junction against the red light, then swung across Miller’s nose and down to the right into Daimler Strasse. Miller reacted on reflexes alone. He let in the clutch and the Jaguar surged after the ambulance twenty metres behind it.

As soon as he had done it he wished he had gone straight on home. It was probably nothing, but one never knew. Ambulances meant trouble and trouble could mean a story, particularly if one were first on the scene and the whole thing had been cleared up before the staff reporters arrived. It could be a major crash on the road, or a big wharf fire, a tenement building ablaze with children trapped inside. It could be anything. Miller always carried a small Yashica with flash attachment in the glove compartment of his car because one never knew what was going to happen right in front of one’s eyes.

He knew a man who had been waiting for a plane at Munich airport on February 6th, 1958, and the plane carrying the Manchester United football team had crashed a few hundred metres from where he stood. The man was not even a professional photographer, but he had unslung the camera he was taking on a ski-ing holiday and snapped the first exclusive pictures of the burning aircraft. The pictorial magazines had paid over £5000 for them.

The ambulance twisted into the maze of small and mean streets of Altona, leaving the Altona railway station on the left and heading down towards the river. Whoever was driving the flat-snouted, high-roofed Mercedes ambulance knew his Hamburg and knew how to drive. Even with his greater acceleration and hard suspension, Miller coul

d feel the back wheels of the Jaguar skidding across the cobbles, slick with rain.

Miller watched Menck’s auto-parts warehouse rush by and two streets later his original question was answered. The ambulance drew up in a poor and sleazy street, ill-lit and gloomy in the slanting sleet, bordered by crumbling tenements and rooming-houses. It stopped in front of one of these where a police car already stood, its blue roof-light twirling, the beam sending a ghostly glow across the faces of a knot of bystanders grouped round the door.

A burly police sergeant in a rain-cape roared at the crowd to stand back and make a gap in front of the door for the ambulance. Into this the Mercedes slid. Its driver and attendant climbed down, ran round to the back and eased out an empty stretcher. After a brief word with the sergeant the pair hastened upstairs.

Miller pulled the Jaguar to the opposite kerb twenty yards down the road and raised his eyebrows. No crash, no fire, no trapped children. Probably just a heart attack. He climbed out and strolled over to the crowd which the sergeant was holding back in a semicircle around the door of the rooming-house to clear a path from the door to the rear of the ambulance.

‘Mind if I go up?’ asked Miller.

‘Certainly do. It’s nothing to do with you.’

‘I’m Press,’ said Miller, proffering his Hamburg City press card.

‘And I’m police,’ said the sergeant. ‘Nobody goes up. Those stairs are narrow enough as it is, and none too safe. The ambulance men will be down directly.’

He was a big man, as befits top sergeants of the police force in the rougher sections of Hamburg. Standing six feet three and in his rain-cape, with his arms spread wide to hold back the crowd, he looked as immovable as a barn door.

‘What’s up, then?’ asked Miller.

‘Can’t make statements. Check at the station later on.’

A man in civilian clothes came down the stairs and emerged on to the pavement. The turning light on top of the Volkswagen patrol car swung across his face and Miller recognised him. They had been at school together at Hamburg Central High. The man was now a junior detective inspector in the Hamburg police, stationed at Altona Central.

‘Hey, Karl.’

The young inspector turned at the call of his name and scanned the crowd behind the sergeant. In the next swirl of the police-car light he caught sight of Miller and his raised right hand. His face broke into a grin, part of pleasure, part exasperation. He nodded to the sergeant.

‘It’s all right, Sergeant. He’s more or less harmless.’

The sergeant lowered his arm and Miller darted past. He shook hands with Karl Brandt.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Followed the ambulance.’

‘Bloody vulture. What are you up to these days?’

‘Same as usual. Freelancing.’

‘Making quite a packet out of it, by the look of it. I keep seeing your name in the picture magazines.’

‘It’s a living. Hear about Kennedy?’

‘Yes. Hell of a thing. They must be turning Dallas inside out tonight. Glad it wasn’t on my patch.’

Miller nodded towards the dimly lit hallway of the rooming-house where a low-watt naked bulb cast a yellow glare over peeling wallpaper.

‘A suicide. Gas. Neighbours smelt it coming under the door and called us. Just as well no one struck a match, the place was reeking with it.’