Babylon Berlin (3 page)

His thoughts were interrupted by a toilet flushing and a door opening halfway up the stairs. A slim man was about to pull his braces over his undershirt when he saw Rath. The DI knew that face: the pointed moustache, the gaze that now appeared more surprised than stern. The fake Wilhelm II barely needed a moment to take things in hand. With a single leap he cleared the banister and jumped down nearly half a floor. He continued with a crash, footsteps descending in jerky staccato.

Rath took up the chase instinctively, no time to tell his colleagues. It was so dark in the stairwell that he could scarcely make out the stairs. He stumbled more than he ran, but finally reached the ground floor. The daylight was blinding and he almost tripped over an officer who was picking himself up from the floor.

‘Where is he?’ Rath asked, and the young policeman, who only moments before had been cracking jokes about copulating Kaisers, gazed apologetically in the direction of Hermannstrasse.

‘I’ll deal with the fugitive. You call it in,’ Rath yelled, bounding through the archway towards Hermannstrasse. It had stopped raining, and the pavement was glistening. Outside the tenement he saw the Black Maria, but where was Wilhelm II? There were building materials everywhere along the street, half on the pavement and half on the road: a mixture of beams, steel girders and pipes that pedestrians and cars were forced to make their way past, all set aside for the construction of the underground under Hermannstrasse. In the meantime the driver of the prison van emerged to give Rath a sign. Cursing, he clambered over a pile of wooden planks and spotted the porn Kaiser ducking and weaving down Hermannstrasse towards the square, his braces still hanging loose.

‘Police, stay where you are!’ Rath shouted, but his cry had the effect of a starting pistol on Wilhelm II. The Kaiser shot across the road and onto the pavement, effing and blinding as he careered past a handful of pedestrians.

‘Stop that man,’ cried Rath. ‘This is a police operation!’ Not one of them reacted.

‘Save your breath,’ he heard a familiar voice say from behind. ‘People around here don’t help cops.’ Wolter tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Now run,’ said Uncle, and sprinted ahead. ‘Together we can catch this rat.’

Rath was astonished at the speed with which the sturdy Wolter made his way down the slope at Hermannstrasse. Despite his colleague’s extra bodyweight, Rath could scarcely keep pace. It wasn’t until they had reached Hermannplatz that he finally caught up.

‘Can you see him?’ Rath panted. A stitch in his side forced him to lean against a streetlamp. Only then did he notice he was still holding his hat in his hand. He returned it to its rightful place on his head. Wolter signalled with a nod towards Hermannplatz.

The colossal shell of the Karstadt building towered above them. It was hoped the new department store would lend a touch of New York to provincial Hermannplatz. The official opening was planned for the summer, but for now all that could be seen was an enormous scaffolding, flanked by freight elevators and cranes. The two towers, on the north and south sides, reached sixty metres into the sky. Wilhelm II was racing towards the southern corner, moving diagonally across the intersection past a series of hooting cars, and only narrowly avoiding the number 29 tram as it made its way up Hermannstrasse, waiting until the last moment to execute a full-length dive across the path of the squealing brute before disappearing from the officers’ view. They had no choice but to wait until the train rumbled past, and with that they lost sight of their man.

Across the intersection they surveyed the square.

‘He couldn’t have made it down to the underground,’ Wolter said. ‘There wouldn’t have been time.’

‘But there would’ve been time for
that
,’ Rath said, pointing towards the construction fence, a hoarding plastered with posters and measuring several metres in height.

They approached together, searching for somewhere he might have clambered over. Someone had painted
Exercise your rights and march on May 1st
in red across the hoarding, ruining several advertisements in the process.

Rath looked at Wolter but he must have seen it in the same instant. They made their way towards the
Sinalco
poster to take a closer look. The paper was torn under the C and the O. A dirty abrasion left by a shoe.

Wolter gave Rath a leg-up to haul himself up the slippery wet timber and peer over the top. Wilhelm II was running towards Urbanstrasse and had almost reached the opposite end of the building site. A decent effort, as the department store façade occupied the entire length of Hermannplatz, around 300 metres in all.

‘He’s headed for Urbanstrasse! Go and intercept him there!’ he shouted to Uncle, before jumping over and taking up the chase once more. If Bruno could cut him off, he’d be theirs for the taking, but Wilhelm II had seen Rath, and was growing increasingly frantic. Now level with the north tower, he moved past the freight elevator that flanked it, directly towards the fence onto Urbanstrasse. Any moment now he’d be trapped, but then he stopped, turned on his heels and disappeared behind the steel framework of the elevator. The next minute he was climbing the struts, nimble as a rat. Rath barely gave the situation a second thought before following.

The porn Kaiser must have been a cat burglar or an acrobat. No match for a policeman lacking circus training. Rath swung himself onto the nearest ladder and ascended carefully, level by level, always mindful not to lose sight of the nimble, climbing rat. Today was Sunday and the vast building site was deserted. Only the two of them moved in the web of steel and timber until, suddenly, there were no more ladders. The scaffolding came to an end on the seventh floor, the main building didn’t extend any higher, but the freight elevator by the north tower, which resembled an aborted skyscraper, had scaffolding for several more floors. Wilhelm had kept climbing. Was he headed for the spire? It looked as if he might be.

Rath groaned. Just don’t look down, he told himself. Above, the Kaiser climbed onto the elevator struts sixty metres above ground. Rath fixed his gaze ahead, crossing a few metres of wobbly planks to reach the north tower. Then more scaffolding and another set of ladders. He could no longer see the Kaiser but it didn’t matter, he just had to keep going. They’d get him in the end. When he reached the summit Rath was so out of breath he leaned his head against a cool iron girder, panting. Where was this guy, and why didn’t the scumbag just give himself up?

There was no sign, but he must see that it was pointless. Rath felt his hands cramp around the iron girder as he fixed his gaze downwards. How was it the drop could be so alluring and yet so panic-inducing at the same time?

On Hermannplatz an endless stream of ants scuttled along heedlessly, while toy cars wheeled this way and that. His knees grew weak. Over the roofs, he could see as far as Kreuzberg, the great hall of Görlitzer station amidst a sea of houses and, in the distance, the chimneys of Klingenberg power station.

Was the fake Kaiser already on his way down? If so, Bruno would intercept him. If he was still scrambling around up here it would be
his
responsibility to nab him, Gereon Rath, vertigo or no. The whistling of the wind become unbearable as, carefully, he climbed down to a more sheltered level, and suddenly Wilhelm II was standing right in front of him, just as startled as the detective. He had lost half of his fake moustache during the pursuit.

‘Fuck off, pig,’ he said, his voice nervous and shrill and quite the opposite of majestic. Madness was in his eyes, an impression only intensified by the smear of greasepaint.

Cocaine, Rath thought, he’s on cocaine, he’s been snorting it in the toilet. Just what I need.

‘C’mon pal,’ he said, trying to sound as calm as possible, ‘you must see this is pointless. Why don’t you spare us any further trouble?’

‘I ain’t going to spare you nothing,’ the man said in a thick Berlin accent, and suddenly a glistening piece of metal was in his hand. Great, Rath thought, a junkie with a shooter.

‘Put that away,’ he said, ‘or give it to me, and I promise I won’t have seen it. That I never saw you threaten an officer with it.’

‘Story time over, arsehole?’

‘I’ll forget about you insulting a police official as well.’

‘And when I blow a hole in your brain, will you forget that too?’

‘I just want to have a rational conversation.’

The gun was trembling slightly. It was small calibre, but they weren’t standing that far away from each other and it would be enough to kill a police officer.

‘You’re trying to sweet talk me until your mate comes. Fucking cop!’

The junkie didn’t know how right he was. Wolter was clambering onto the planks behind him.

‘My mate’s waiting for you down below,’ Rath said. ‘Even if you shoot me, there’s no way you’ll get past him. He’s got a gun too, and it’s a damn sight bigger than that toy.’

‘Shall I show you what it can do?’

In the same moment Wolter grabbed him from behind and, with both hands, held his right arm fast.

A shot rang out and Rath heard the bullet whistle past his ear. Wood splintered. He ducked instinctively.

The fake Kaiser looked horrified and momentarily forgot to resist. Wolter took his chance and slammed the man’s right hand against a steel girder. A cry of pain, and the weapon crashed onto the wooden planks. Uncle swivelled the Kaiser round and rammed his right fist into his stomach. The man was already on his way down, but the brawny Wolter followed up with a left hook, sending the Kaiser sprawling onto the scaffolding boards. He aimed a final kick in the unconscious man’s side and gasped for breath.

‘Arsehole!’ he said.

He cuffed the man to the scaffolding and picked up his pistol.

‘That was close, Gereon,’ he said. ‘You should have used your gun.’

‘I needed both hands to climb.’

Rath knew that Uncle was right and that he was deluding himself if he thought he could survive in Vice without a firearm. Police work was police work. ‘Thanks, DCI Wolter,’ he said finally.

‘Thanks
partner
, we say around here,’ Wolter replied, patting him on the shoulder. The DCI pulled out a pocket knife and pared the bullet from the wooded crossbeam. He took it over to the junkie, who had now come round and was struggling with the handcuffs, and gave him such a clout that his nose started to bleed.

‘You should be grateful to me, you fucking arsehole,’ said Wolter. The fucking arsehole spat blood. ‘Do you know why?’ Eyes flickering furiously. ‘I just saved you from going to the scaffold as a cop killer.’ More blood. ‘But that still leaves you with
attempted
murder. Do you know what we do with people like you?’ A shake of the head. ‘You don’t? Well, listen carefully. You get sent to Plötzensee, and there we tell the real hard cases that you’re some godforsaken diaper sniper. Do you know what they do to kiddie-fuckers in Plötzensee? There won’t be any guards stupid enough to interfere. I know people who
wish
they’d gone to the scaffold. People who wish their aim had been better.’

A horrified expression.

Wolter looked at Rath. ‘What shall we do with this scumbag?’ he asked.

Rath shrugged his shoulders.

Uncle Bruno turned to the junkie. ‘Do you realise we’re the only friends you have left?’ He rolled the bullet between his fingers. ‘This here is evidence. This is the bullet you shot at my partner. The one that almost killed him.’ He stowed it in his jacket pocket. ‘But maybe this bullet was never fired.’

Wolter waited until the man had processed what he was saying. Then he took the pistol by the barrel and dangled it at arm’s length. The coked-up eyes tried to follow the weapon’s arc.

‘A Lignose. Nice model. Small but handy. Fires one-handed, right? 6.75 calibre, with your fingerprints on it. Bread and butter for any judge!’ He replaced the pistol in his pocket. ‘But I suppose it depends if a judge ever gets to see it.’

Suddenly the junkie rediscovered his voice. ‘What do you want, cop?’

‘Pay attention because I’m only going to explain this once. From now on you belong to me and my partner.’ Wolter pointed towards Rath, who had edged closer. ‘When we come to you with questions, you have the answers ready. Always. Doesn’t matter if it’s day or night.’

He removed the man’s handcuffs and pulled him up. ‘Why don’t we see if you’ve understood? If you play ball, you might not even have to come back to the station.’

‘I’ve never grassed on no-one. Find some other fink!’

‘There’s a first for everything. You of all people should know that.’ Wolter produced a smile that was almost charming. ‘You’ll get used to it. Who knows, there might even be something in it for you. If we’re satisfied with you.’

‘And if I say you can shove it up your arse?’

‘Just think about what I said about Plötzensee! It should make the decision easier.’

The glistening streets still reflected a white-grey sky, while clouds heavy with rain hovered over the city. A black Ford A shot across Kottbusser Damm with its soft top up, Wolter steering through the slow-moving Sunday traffic. Rath sat in the passenger seat, lost in thought. The real work would start when they reached Alex: questioning, questioning, and more questioning. By now König and his gang were stewing in the cells. Jänicke would have accompanied them to the station in the Black Maria. They would leave König and company in custody to simmer and then, with everything the porn Kaiser – real name Franz Krajewski – had told them, they could really begin to turn up the heat.

The fake Kaiser had talked like a blue streak on the scaffolding before they turned him loose. Rath had gained an insight into how Wolter recruited informants, and his brutality had surprised him. Now they were sitting silently alongside one another, Rath understood that Wolter’s little number on the scaffolding had been meant as a lesson for the new recruit from the Rhine Province. Wolter seemed to read Rath’s mind.

‘If you lock up a rat like that, you’ll get nothing out of him,’ he said. ‘Makes more sense for him to be running around Berlin knowing that we
could
lock him up, so scared he’s afraid to fart without our permission. I’m telling you, that guy will save us a hell of a lot of work. As long as all that coke doesn’t mess with his brain.’ He laughed and rummaged in his jacket pocket. ‘Whenever he thinks about this, he’ll shit himself.’