Babylon Berlin (34 page)

Saint Josef. Why did it have to be a saint he’d buried, of all people?

For the most part the Berlin underworld was in the habit of naming its members after other distinguished characteristics, with the result that safe-breaker-Willis and razor-Edes were far easier to find than saints. But when it came to names, Wilczek would have made things difficult for an American Indian tribe. The truth was he did everything, but nothing properly. His file gave no clear indication of what it was he specialised in. He had made a splash in various fields during the post-war years, always with something illegal. And he had always ended up getting caught. Indeed, the word ‘ragbag’ might have been invented to describe Wilczek’s rap sheet.

The list started with petty larceny and ranged from breaking and entering, perjury and falsification of documents right through to grievous bodily harm. All told, it amounted to two years in prison and five years’ hard labour, and no doubt served as sufficient recommendation for
Berolina
, which was the most interesting thing he had gleaned from the file. Josef Wilczek belonged to Red Hugo’s
Ringverein
, which, in turn, was in thrall to Dr M. – further proof that Johann Marlow must have put the man onto him.

Officially, of course, the Wilczek file pointed to a different conclusion, that the murderer moved in criminal circles. First of all, they would have to sound out
Berolina
, the perfect assignment for the rookie. Rath sent Jänicke to the Barn Quarter, to
Mulackritze
, a known criminal hang-out, which was also a favourite of Red Hugo’s men. He was almost certain that Johann Marlow would never show his face in a place like that. At most, he would send his Chinese bodyguard to haul the head of
Berolina
into a car waiting outside. No great danger, then, that the rookie would get in Dr M.’s way.

A convincing red herring – what more could he have asked for? Well, for one that Czerwinski and Henning got as little as possible out of the people in the tenement houses between Koppenstrasse, Münchebergstrasse and
Schlesischer Bahnhof
. But that was to be expected. The people in this district weren’t especially talkative, particularly not to the police. He hoped to keep the two experts from Homicide pointlessly scouring the apartment houses for as long as possible. That way, they wouldn’t get any big ideas, start reconsidering things and drawing their own conclusions.

He charged Christel Temme with making a neat copy of all the statements made by the construction workers. For the time being, that angle posed no danger. Even the interrogation of the site foreman couldn’t have gone better. Lauffer’s statement made it almost impossible to specify a timeframe when the corpse could have been deposited in the concrete. The workers had been even more vague than their foreman. According to their statements, the time of the incident was more likely to have been Saturday or Sunday than Friday. If push came to shove, he had an absolutely watertight alibi for both evenings, which could be confirmed by various police officers as well as a stenographer. He hoped he would never have to make use of it, but as matters stood there was still evidence out there that pointed to him.

The telephone on Roeder’s desk rang again.

‘Alexandria
Ringverein
. Services of all kinds. Who might I kill for you this time?’

‘You could start by killing the jokes, Herr Rath! They’re so old they should be given the
coup de grace
.’

It didn’t seem to be a journalist, or a publisher either. The voice seemed familiar to him. ‘Who am I speaking to, please?’

‘Schwartz here. Can you spare a little time and come down to Hannoversche Strasse? Or would you rather keep playing the fool?’

The pathologist. Rath took a deep breath. At least it wasn’t someone from the top floor. ‘That was quick, have you finished the autopsy already?’

‘No, but I thought you might like to attend. That way you’ll have the initial results by this evening.’

Some sort of test of courage, no doubt. The pathologist wanted to see how the newbie reacted. Was he soft or could he handle it?

Rath decided he could handle it.

‘I’ll be with you in an hour, Doctor, if that’s OK?’

Not even two weeks had gone by since he last passed through this door. Rath took a deep breath before entering the yellow-brick building in Hannoversche Strasse. This was where everything had begun. He gave the door that led from the foyer to the showroom a determined push and entered. On the way to the autopsy rooms, he went past a glass wall behind which Berlin’s unidentified dead were laid out as in a macabre waxwork. This was where they had displayed Boris for three days, and yet there was no-one who knew the man, or at least no-one who would admit to it. In the meantime, he was certain that there were people in this city who were aware of both the first and last names of the dead Russian, and who nevertheless had good reason not to get in touch. People like Alexej Kardakov, for instance, or Svetlana Sorokina – and most likely Johann Marlow too.

The autopsy room was still sealed. Rath waited outside the door. What could he expect to find behind it? Did Schwartz merely want to shock him, or had he found something he could spring on the unsuspecting inspector? He tried to shake off this latest attack of paranoia. The darkness, the rain. No-one could possibly have recognised the men in the courtyard below.

His thoughts were interrupted by Dr Schwartz emerging energetically into the corridor, his lab coat waving behind him.

‘Good day, Inspector,’ the doctor said and shook his hand. ‘Shall we, then?’

The keys jangled loudly as he opened the door. Rath followed him into the room, and saw that the corpse was already on the marble table, covered by a sheet. He watched Schwartz carefully wash his hands at the basin. There were only a few blood spatters on his white coat. Somehow the pathologist’s elegant appearance didn’t quite fit with his profession, or his primitive sense of humour.

‘My first job as a concreter,’ he said, as he approached the autopsy table.

‘I dare say. Corpses encased in concrete are rather rare, aren’t they?’ Rath hoped that Schwartz hadn’t noticed how nervous he was.

‘I wouldn’t bet on it, my friend,’ Schwartz replied. ‘There’s a lot of building work in Berlin; and not everyone is granted a proper burial.’ He winked at Rath. ‘I wouldn’t like to know how many new buildings have been erected on bones. But that’s something for the archaeologists in a thousand years’ time.’

He pulled back the white cotton sheet. Wilczek looked significantly cleaner than he had done in the excavation.

‘I’ve taken the liberty of preparing something,’ Schwartz said. ‘So that you don’t have to give up too much of your time.’

Wilczek’s head looked like a beer stein with an open lid. Schwartz had sawn a perfect circle in the top of the skull to get to the brain. That was bearable. At least he hadn’t expected Rath to deal with the sound of the bone saw. He had always found that to be the worst, much worse than all the blood, for example, or the sight of a face that had been skinned, the eyeballs gaping in their sockets like two glass marbles.

‘Fortunately, most of the concrete was stuck to his clothing, so that contamination of the body was limited,’ Schwartz said. ‘I did find a lump in his mouth, but it entered
post mortem.
Likewise, some concrete also penetrated the skull, through this hole here.’ He gestured towards the empty eye socket that gave Wilczek’s opened head an even more sinister expression.

Rath breathed a sigh of relief. Dr Schwartz hadn’t just done a little preparatory work; clearly he had already examined the corpse in detail. The doctor had most likely been trying to give the newbie in A Division a little scare.

‘Can you say anything about the cause of death at this stage?’ he asked, reeling off the routine questions a homicide detective asked a pathologist to conceal his nerves.

‘It wasn’t concrete poisoning, even if it looks that way,’ Schwartz said. He opened a tin can and showed Rath a projectile smeared with blood. ‘He got this in the eye, and it did him no good, I’m afraid.’

Rath nodded absent-mindedly and felt himself burning up. The goddamn bullet! He had seen it coming. Of course it had still been in his head, and the doctor had found it.

‘It’s a little deformed, could be a ricochet. So, probably an accident rather than a well-aimed shot,’ Schwartz said and dropped the bullet back into the can. The
plink
was muffled by the smear of blood and brain. ‘Something for your colleagues in Ballistics,’ the doctor said, before screwing the can closed and handing it to the inspector.

‘Are you one hundred percent sure about the cause of death?’ Rath asked, as he accepted the plain tin can.

Schwartz shrugged. ‘I’ve never known anyone to survive having a piece of metal like that in their brain, and I can’t see another possible cause of death. The concrete came later, poor guy. He was already dead when he was buried. Nothing points to suffocation, and I haven’t been able to find any other injuries that might have been fatal. The only thing was a badly healed nasal fracture. You don’t die of something like that, and it’s a few years old anyway.’

‘Can you rule out all other causes of death? Poisoning, for example?’

‘Young man, if you absolutely insist upon it, then I can open up the stomach. But believe me, it doesn’t smell too good.’

‘I know,’ Rath said. ‘But perhaps it is necessary.’

Schwartz laughed. ‘I like you, you don’t shy away from anything! Well, you can rest easy, Inspector. I’ve taken care of that already.’ The pathologist pulled the sheet down past the navel. There were fresh incisions on the breast and stomach of the dead man, which had been hastily sown up again. ‘I’ve examined the state of the vital organs, the contents of his stomach too. Nothing unusual, just beer and
bratwurst
leftovers.’ He pulled the sheet back up. ‘But there’s something else that might interest you!’ Schwartz lifted Wilczek’s right wrist and turned it slightly. ‘Before his sudden death it seems likely that our friend here also fired a gun. These powder burns suggest there was a shoot-out. Don’t get too fixated on the idea, it’s just a possibility.’

‘And when did our man die?’ Rath asked, rattling out the questions the same way he used to get through the Lord’s Prayer: automatically, without listening to his own words, let alone what Dr Schwartz said in response. His mind was on other things.

The bullet.

As far as the case went, the piece of metal he was holding in his hand was the best lead so far. It was only a matter of time before word got out that the bullet Dr Schwartz had fished out of Wilczek’s brain had come from the service revolver of Detective Inspector Gereon Rath.

‘I hope that’s sufficient, Inspector.’

‘Pardon?’

Schwartz was gazing at him over the rim of his spectacles.

‘Naturally you will also receive a written report of my findings, my good man, but I do expect you to listen. I am speaking to a detective inspector and not a medical student, am I not?’

‘Sorry, Doctor.’ Rath cleared his throat. ‘I wasn’t quite with it. Could you please repeat what you’ve just said?’

‘I wouldn’t do it for a student, so I hope you appreciate it.’ Schwartz pushed his glasses up and suddenly sounded very officious. ‘As already mentioned, I am afraid I cannot determine exactly when the death occurred, due to the heavy contamination of the open wound. A precise statement is further complicated by the fact that the corpse was embedded in concrete, which could conceivably have delayed the body’s decomposition.’

Rath nodded. At least the spur of the moment decision to bury the body in concrete had achieved something.

‘It is nevertheless certain,’ Schwartz continued, ‘that the corpse was not in the fresh air for long. The poor man was placed in concrete shortly after his death. Exactly when he came into contact with the concrete cannot be established on the basis of this forensic report. That could still take a few days, even a week.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘You will receive the written results tomorrow,’ Schwartz said, before covering the corpse once more. ‘There you will also find details pertaining to the state of the vital organs, the contents of the stomach and similarly appetising things…’

The bullet clattered in the can, as Rath walked through the showroom back towards the foyer. Each clattering sound reminded him that he was carrying a ticking time bomb.

Could be a ricochet.

Misdirected bullets seemed to follow him around in this city. First Krajewski on the scaffolding, then the two women in Neukölln, the ones who had brought him to the morgue in the first place, and now Wilczek. The last of these bullets was now threatening to bring him down.

He came to a halt in the lobby, just a few metres shy of the main door. A thought was racing through his mind, and he had to stand still to capture it. More a flash of inspiration than a thought, it felt almost as if it had sprung up of its own accord. The porter gazed at the inspector in amazement as the latter removed his wallet from his coat and looked inside, only to replace it and head for the porter’s office.

‘Where’s the toilet here?’ he asked.

‘That way,’ the porter said, pointing towards the swing door in the showroom.

A series of small signs coyly pointed the way. When Rath opened the door, all was quiet in the tiled room. He locked himself in one of the cubicles and opened the toilet lid. Soon he had opened his wallet and was examining the bullet from the Lignose. The projectile had long since become a sort of symbol for his friendship with Bruno, who had saved his life above Hermannplatz. But now there was a better use for it.

Rath opened the tin and let the bullet from the Mauser drop into the toilet bowl. There was a harmless splash, then a low click as the metal came into contact with the ceramic bowl. Streaks of red weaved their way through the water, gradually dissolving into pale red clouds. Next he dipped his index and middle fingers into the blood-smeared tin and rolled the bullet from the Lignose between his fingertips. When it looked bloody enough, he dropped it into the tin. Although Ballistics would certainly wash it before any examination, the bullet should at least appear as though it had been removed directly from a brain. Carefully, he screwed the lid tight and put the tin back in his pocket. After flushing he waited a moment or two until the swirl had died back down. There was no sign of the bullet, which had disappeared into the Berlin sewerage system. Perhaps a rat would swallow it by mistake, perhaps it would end up in a sewage farm, or perhaps it would simply disappear into the bowels of Hannoversche Strasse. At all events, it would never wind up under the microscope of a ballistics officer in ED.