The Collini Case Read online

  Between the top layers of the scalp and the bone lies a membrane suffused with blood vessels and easily removed from the pericranium. Scalping does not take much force. Wagenstett taught his students that the family of the dead have a right to a corpse looking as intact as possible. For that reason, they should make an incision at the back of the head and move the scalp towards the forehead until the skull is exposed. Then it could simply be sawn apart and the brain removed. After that you pulled the scalp down again and stitched it up so that the corpse still had a head.

  ‘However, in this case that won’t do,’ Wagenstett explained. ‘We must make the incision elsewhere; we need to find the path of the bullets.’ Latin terms followed, Wagenstett dictated, made an incision from ear to ear, and removed the still-intact scalp. A projectile fell from the jelly-like matter in the exposed wound to the metal table. Two more had lodged in the top of the skull, and a fourth had made its exit through the left eye socket. Wagenstett showed the lumps of metal to Reimers, the senior public prosecutor. ‘Greatly distorted. Ballistics will have a tough time with these,’ the professor said.

  Then came the long, thin probes to be used in reconstructing the course taken by the bullets. Wagenstett inserted them in the ‘breaks in the skin’, as he described the entry wounds. They stuck a few centimetres out of the skull. Leinen thought they made the head look like a baroque icon: a saint’s head with rays of light shining from a halo. Wagenstett took photographs, and for some time there was no sound except for the flash charging.

  The autopsy went on for another hour; every wound, every haemorrhage, every splintered bone was measured and recorded. There were old scars: on both knees (5 and 8 centimetres), on the right elbow (2 centimetres), a 6-centimetre scar on the belly from an operation to remove the appendix, a 7-millimetre scar above the left elbow, a 9-millimetre scar on the chin. The organs were removed, examined and weighed (brain 1380 g, heart 340 g, right lung 790 g, left lung 630 g, spleen 150 g, liver 1060 g, right kidney 175 g, left kidney 180 g). Blood from the thighs and the heart, urine, stomach contents, liver and lung tissue, and liquid from the gall bladder were assessed. The kicks were described as precisely as possible, and the marks left by the heel of the killer’s shoe were photographed. Wagenstett dictated the findings of the autopsy and the conclusions to be drawn from them. Dr Reimers stood up to stretch his legs. He would get the report next day, he was told, they were overworked in the secretaries’ office. Then Professor Wagenstett stitched the body up again.

  The two murder squad officers were the first to leave the autopsy room. Leinen, unable to speak, did not say goodbye to anyone. One of the two police officers was wearing a blue-and-white-striped shirt. Leinen stared at the shirt and began counting the stripes. He saw nothing but the shirt, concentrating on the stripes until he was outside. Then he stood on the flight of steps leading up to the brick building of the Forensic Institute, where he felt the full force of the midday heat. He reached for the silver cigarette case in his jacket pocket. It was cold, and it was real. Hands shaking, he lit a cigarette. Reimers came out to stand beside him, saying something. Leinen couldn’t take it in until he was past the first couple of comments:

  ‘… the case seems cut and dried. All the shots fired from behind and above. Presumably the first when he was on his knees, the others when he was down on the floor. No sign of any attempt at self-defence, the victim can’t have suspected anything. I’m sorry, Herr Leinen, but it all points to a charge of murder.’ Reimers had taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. There were dark marks on his shirt collar. ‘My God, it’s hot,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Leinen. His mouth was dry, his tongue furred.

  ‘Have a word with your client; maybe he’ll say why he did it after all. That’s usually the best course to take in a situation like this.’

  ‘I’ll do that. Thanks.’

  Leinen went to his car, only to find it boxed in by a delivery van. He sat down in the shade on the warm slate slabs of a gateway entrance. It was quiet here. The pollen of a chestnut tree had dusted the pavement and the strip of grass red; light was refracted on the hot tarmac, making the street mirror the sky like a stretch of water. I can simply take the plate off my office door again and forget all about this, thought Leinen.

  7

  At five in the afternoon Leinen rang the doorbell of Mattinger’s chambers. Reception for visitors was in the Berlin Room, as it was called, a large room with only one window. It linked the façade to the lateral wings and the back of the building. One of the secretaries told Leinen to go straight through; Herr Mattinger was expecting him. Leinen knocked at his door, waited, heard nothing and went in.

  The room was dark, not much larger than Leinen’s own office, with a simple desk, a wooden chair with arms at the desk, no visitors’ chairs, a yellow lamp, a black phone with a circular dial. The walls were panelled in mahogany, bookshelves were built into the side walls, and there were broad wooden venetian blinds over both windows. It looked like an office from the 1920s. A large cigar box stood on the desk, black wood with pale intarsia work. Mattinger had his feet up on the desk and was dozing; his tie had slipped, saliva trickled from the right-hand corner of his mouth. A few red files lay in front of him; Leinen could see from the names on them that they were being dealt with by other lawyers in the chambers. Mattinger woke with a jolt, saw Leinen, wiped his mouth and stood up. ‘How are you, Herr Leinen?’ he asked. He didn’t reek of alcohol, but the sweetish odour of a man who habitually drinks too much clung to him. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘Thanks, you’re the third person to say so today.’

  ‘Then it’s probably true. Come along, we’ll be too cramped in here. Let’s sit on the balcony.’

  ‘I like your room.’

  ‘I bought it thirty years ago from a building on the Kurfürstendamm that was being renovated, had it installed here. It’s said to have belonged to a famous notary.’

  ‘It’s wonderful.’

  ‘Maybe a little too dark,’ said Mattinger. ‘But I’m used to that by now.’

  They went through two large conference rooms to the balcony, where they sat on pale rattan outdoor furniture under an awning. It had been raining; steam rose from the street.

  Mattinger went back into one of the conference rooms. Leinen heard him speaking to the secretaries in their office, ordering drinks. When he came back he took a cigar case out of his jacket, a well-worn leather case. In his pinstriped suit, Mattinger himself looked like someone from the 1920s.

  ‘Do you smoke cigars? No? What a pity.’ He took a cigar cutter from his waistcoat pocket, twisted it slowly in the end of the cigar and drew out the remains of tobacco with it. Using an extra-long match, he lit the cigar. Although he had to do everything with one hand, he made it look easy. ‘I’ve been making inquiries about you, Leinen.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Distinction in both your state examinations, best of your year in criminal law, assistant to the professor of criminology at Humboldt University, fifteen publications in legal journals.’ Mattinger drew on his cigar. ‘I’ve read them all. Some of them are really first class.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You had offers that would have allowed you to stay on at the university or be appointed a judge. You turned both down. You wanted to be a practising lawyer. Your professor considers that you have a brilliant mind, but he also described you as obstinate and pig-headed.’ Mattinger laughed.

  Leinen laughed with him, but he felt uncomfortable. ‘He’d say a thing like that to you?’

  ‘Your professor and I have known each other for a hundred years. I like to know what sort of person I’m dealing with.’

  The secretary brought coffee and water. They talked about judges and public prosecutors. Meanwhile Leinen watched Mattinger blowing cigar smoke into the air. Gradually he relaxed.

  ‘Well, what have you decided, Leinen? Are you going to defend Collini?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. I’ve just been at th
e autopsy. It was grisly.’

  ‘Yes, it always is. You don’t want to see the corpse as a human being. On the table it’s only a subject for scientific study. Once you understand that, the process actually becomes interesting. But one probably never gets over the shock of it entirely.’

  Leinen examined Mattinger. His skin was brown, deep lines ran horizontally and vertically across his forehead, there were crow’s feet at the corners of his bright eyes. Leinen had read somewhere that in spite of his disability, Mattinger had sailed solo from Hamburg to South America a few years ago.

  ‘Once again, if you do defend him, how do you estimate your chances?’

  ‘Poor. Bloodstains on his clothing, powder marks left on his hands, his fingerprints on the gun and the cartridge cases, on the desk and the bedstead in the hotel. He called the police himself and sat in the hotel lobby waiting to be arrested. There’s no other potential murderer in the frame. So … it probably won’t be a defence expecting an acquittal.’

  ‘Maybe you can get the charge reduced from murder to manslaughter.’

  ‘As I understand it, Hans Meyer was shot from behind. That suggests murder. But I don’t know enough yet. It depends what Collini says. And whether he’ll testify in court at all.’

  ‘How about the motive? The newspapers are saying that nothing is known about the motive.’ Mattinger suddenly turned to Leinen and looked directly at him.

  Those eyes of his are hypnotic, thought Leinen. ‘That’s right, and I don’t know anything either. Hans Meyer was a thoroughly decent man. I have no idea why anyone would want to shoot him.’

  ‘A decent man, eh?’ Mattinger turned away again. ‘They’re few and far between. I’m sixty-four and I’ve known only two thoroughly decent men in my entire life. One of them has been dead for ten years and the other is a monk in a French monastery. Believe me, Leinen, people aren’t black or white … they’re grey.’

  ‘Sounds like a stock phrase,’ said Leinen.

  Mattinger laughed. ‘The older you get, the more you find that clichés are sometimes right.’

  The two men drank coffee, each pursuing his own thoughts.

  ‘It’s too late for it today,’ said Mattinger after a while, ‘but you should go to see your client tomorrow and ask him if he wants you to defend him.’

  Leinen knew that the old lawyer was right. His client had been in prison for days and he hadn’t even asked him yet why he had killed Hans Meyer. Then he realized that he was almost dropping off to sleep. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. ‘I must go home. I was working all last night and I’m really tired now.’

  Mattinger rose to his feet and accompanied Leinen to the door. Leinen went down the broad staircase of the building, which dated from the 1870s: red sisal carpet on the stairs, green marble walls. On the last landing he turned to look back once; he hadn’t heard the door of the chambers close. Mattinger was still standing up there in the doorway, watching him.

  8

  The Royal Remand Prison had been built in 1877 and repeatedly modernized since. It was a redbrick building, with three floors arranged in a star shape around a circular central hall. These days it was known as Moabit Remand Prison. Offenders remanded in custody had been accommodated here for over a hundred and twenty years; the cells were only a few square metres large, each containing a bed, a table, a chair, a cupboard, a washbasin and a toilet. Fabrizio Collini was Prisoner No. 284/01-2, Section II, Cell 145. The woman officer behind the glass pane looked for the name on her list. Leinen showed her the document with the district court’s decision, and she entered his name on another list. Collini could now receive post from him uncensored by a magistrate. She called a prison officer and asked him to bring Collini in to see the lawyer.

  Leinen waited outside one of the small interview rooms used by lawyers. Police officers escorting inmates passed him. They discussed the prisoners as if they were inanimate objects: ‘Where are you taking yours? Mine’s on his way back from the doctor …’ It wasn’t that the officers despised the prisoners; most of them didn’t even want to know what offences they were charged with. They just spoke, as they always had, a simple language.

  Fabrizio Collini came down the corridor. Once again, Leinen was intrigued by his size; he couldn’t even see the officer following Collini. They went into the interview room. It was painted with yellow gloss to two-thirds of the way up the walls; it contained a Formica table, two chairs and a washbasin. There was a small window high up on the front wall of the room, an empty biscuit tin did duty as an ashtray, a red alarm bell was fitted beside the door. The place smelled of cigarettes, food and sweat. Leinen sat down with his back to the window, Collini sat opposite him. He was wearing the blue prison uniform; the murder squad had taken his own clothes away.

  Leinen told his client about his friendship with the Meyers, and watched Collini’s heavy, bony face. Collini did not react.

  ‘We have to clear this point up, Herr Collini. Is my friendship with the Meyers a problem for you?’

  ‘No,’ said Collini. ‘He’s dead. I’m not interested in it any more.’

  ‘Not interested in what?’

  ‘Meyer and his family.’

  ‘But you’re probably going to be charged with murder. You could get a life sentence.’

  Collini placed both hands on the table. ‘Well, I did it.’

  Leinen stared at the huge man’s mouth. It was true, Collini had done it. The man had shot Meyer in the head four times; it was his fault that the forensic pathologists had cut up Caspar’s friend and turned him into a legal case. The man had kicked Hans Meyer’s face until the heel came off his shoe. Leinen remembered that face: the lines on it, the thin lips, Meyer’s laughter. The law expects too much of me, thought Leinen, I can’t defend this man, I can hardly bear to look at him. ‘But why did you kill him?’ asked Leinen, pulling himself together.

  Collini was examining his hands. ‘I did it with these hands,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you did it. But why? You must tell me why.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘I can’t defend you by telling the court that.’

  The shadow of the steel grating in front of the high window stood out indistinctly on the yellow wall. From the corridor, he heard the woman officer calling prisoners’ names out in the corridor. Collini took a packet of cigarettes out of his breast pocket, tapped a cigarette out of it and put it in his mouth. ‘Do you have a light?’ he asked.

  Leinen shook his head.

  Collini got to his feet and went over to the washbasin, then to the door, then back to the washbasin again. Leinen realized that Collini was searching for a lighter, and suddenly he was sorry he didn’t have one on him.

  ‘Would you be prepared to make a confession? If we lose on the murder charge, that would still give the court grounds to reduce your sentence. Would you do that?’

  Collini sat down again. His eyes seemed to be fixed on a certain point on the bare wall.

  ‘Would you at least do that? You only have to say how you killed him. Not why, only how. Do you understand me?’

  After a long pause, Collini said, ‘Yes.’ Simply, ‘Yes,’ that was all. He rose to his feet. ‘I’d rather go back to the cell now.’

  Leinen nodded. Collini went to the door. They didn’t shake hands. Their conversation had lasted less than fifteen minutes.

  The police officer on duty was waiting outside for him, a stout man with a fat neck, his light brown uniform shirt stretched taut over his paunch and showing his vest between the lower buttons. He looked at Collini’s chest and spoke as if to empty air. ‘Right, off we go.’

  Collini and the officer walked away, side by side, but before they reached the first barred door something odd happened. Collini simply stopped in the middle of the corridor and seemed to be thinking. ‘What is it now?’ asked the officer. Collini did not reply, only stood there motionless, looking down at the toecaps of his shoes for almost a minute. Then he took a deep breath, turned, and went back to
the visitors’ room that Leinen had used. The prison officer shrugged his shoulders and followed him. Without knocking, Collini opened the door. ‘Herr Leinen,’ he said. Leinen was just putting his things together, and looked up at him in surprise. ‘Herr Leinen, I know it isn’t easy for you. I’m sorry. Just wanted to say thank you.’ Collini nodded to Leinen. He did not seem to be expecting an answer, but turned round and went back down the corridor, walking with his legs wide apart, not in any hurry.

  Trying to find his way back to the lawyers’ exit, Leinen went in the wrong direction, until a woman officer stopped him and told him which way to go. Then he had to wait for a few minutes outside the bulletproof-glass door for the opening system to operate. The plaster above the door was flaking off. He looked at the police officers checking ID and entering names in notebooks. Here, where the remand prisoners were in their cells, waiting to be found guilty or acquitted, he was in a small, narrow world. No professors here, no textbooks, no discussions. All of it was serious and final. He could try to get rid of his legal aid defence brief. He didn’t have to defend Collini; the man had killed his friend. It would be easy to end it by saying no; anyone would understand that.

  Outside, he took a taxi and went home. The fat baker was sitting on one of the wooden chairs outside his shop, under a sun umbrella.

  ‘How are you?’ asked Leinen.

  ‘Hot,’ said the baker. ‘But it’s even hotter inside.’

  Leinen sat down, tipped his chair back against the wall and squinted at the sun. He thought of Collini.

  ‘And how are you?’ asked the baker.

  ‘I just don’t know what to do.’

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘I don’t know whether I ought to defend a man or not. He killed another man, someone I knew well.’

  ‘But you’re a lawyer.’