Authors: Volker Kutscher
Wolter fished out the bullet that was meant for Rath.
‘Here!’ he said.
‘What am I supposed to do with that?’
‘A souvenir. At the end of the day,
you’re
the one he was trying to kill.’
Wolter stepped on the gas once they had gone under the elevated train at Kottbusser Tor. There was hardly any traffic on Dresdener Strasse.
‘We’re partners,’ said Uncle. ‘Now we even share an informant. That’s just between us. It has nothing to do with anyone else.’
Turning Krajewski loose was against every rule in the book. Rath didn’t feel too clever but their colleagues bought their story that the Kaiser had simply got away. No-one held it against them when they returned to Hermannstrasse empty-handed. Their colleagues laid the blame for the Kaiser’s escape at the door of the young officer whom Krajewski had knocked over.
The boy’s guilty conscience made him eager to please. In his desire to atone he had conducted a painstaking search of the studio. Rath and Wolter had overseen the work, Jänicke having departed with the suspects. They had found any number of plates and prints, more than enough for the public prosecutor. Enough to give König a good going-over too. Back on the scaffolding, Krajewski had revealed that the photographer had presented his gifted troupe with the chance to embark upon a career in film.
Pornography had been on the rise for a few years and dirty magazines were being sold on the streets and under the counter. It made sense for the dregs of the Berlin film industry to recognise the earning potential of these so-called ‘educational films’. They were shown to initiates in back rooms and illegal night spots, generally in the better areas in the west of the city. Certain wealthy gentlemen had been known to take playmates into the performance with them so as not to waste any time putting what they had witnessed on screen into practice.
There was no way König was shouldering the costs alone. There would be other backers in the city’s organised crime circles or amongst the upper classes in the west. Krajewski didn’t name them, no matter how hard they pressed, but perhaps he really didn’t know. Whatever the case, they still had a few pieces of information to rattle König. Perhaps enough to break up the pornography ring.
Rath examined the bullet. Small, shiny and unremarkable, yet it could have cost him his life. He looked across at Uncle, who was honking at a daydreaming cyclist on Oranienplatz. Had the man with the affable face really just saved his life? At the very least he had helped him out of a dicey situation. Nothing in the world gave Gereon Rath the right to criticise Bruno Wolter. He had broken the rules, but so what? Maybe that’s just the way things were in this big, cold city and he’d better get used to it.
‘If you want to make it here, you can’t afford to be soft,’ Wolter said. Rath was surprised at how well his colleague could read his silence.
‘Make it in Vice?’
‘We don’t have it so bad. We get to gad about the night spots of the most exciting city in the world, which is also the most disreputable. There’s something to be said for that. If the odd colleague turns up his nose, so be it. You get used to it.’
‘Why don’t you work in A Division?’ Rath asked. ‘With your skills and contacts?’
‘In Homicide? If they want my skills and experience, not to mention my contacts, they can ask. Frankly, I’m not crazy about working for them.’
‘But they have a good reputation!’
‘Gennat’s boys? The darlings of the press? Well, dealing with theft and murder will get you a lot further than raking up filth and smut.’ Wolter looked at him as if assessing his worth. ‘But it isn’t easy to get in. Gennat’s people are hand-picked. You have to land something big. I mean really big. A Kaiser with his dick out won’t cut it.’ He laughed. ‘But don’t worry, even we lesser mortals are granted access to Olympus now and then. A Division is always borrowing officers from other units. You can run around playing at being in Homicide but, believe me, murder inquiries aren’t half as exciting as they’re cracked up to be.’
‘That depends.’
‘On what?’
‘I used to be in Homicide. I was never bored.’
He hadn’t told anyone in Berlin before. Commissioner Zörgiebel was the only one who knew Gereon Rath’s personal file, and he had guaranteed his old friend Engelbert Rath that he wouldn’t say a thing. Not even Superintendent Lanke knew all the details concerning his new recruit’s service record. Wolter glanced at him.
‘Do you miss the dead bodies?’ he asked.
Rath had to take a deep breath, remembering a pale face and a pale body with a blood-encrusted bullet hole in the chest.
Wolter bypassed the big construction site on Jannowitz Bridge, which was always ripe for traffic chaos, and took the route past Märkisches Museum and over Waisen Bridge. Alexanderplatz was an absolute building site as well. Heavy steam hammers were driving the construction of the underground forward and had almost hollowed out the entire square. Traffic was diverted across thick timber planks, while site fences formed narrow passages for the pedestrian masses to push their way through. There were wooden beams supporting the steel railway bridge above Königstrasse.
They had just turned the corner at Aschinger’s when they fell into the next trap. The Ford A got stuck behind a yellow Berlin city bus, which was blocking the already narrow temporary access route.
Berlin
smokes Juno cigarettes
an advertisement revealed. Wolter cursed. A boy in his Sunday best stood on the steps leading to the upper deck, cocking a snook at them.
The vast brick expanse of police headquarters was already in view. The building wasn’t called
Red Castle
for nothing; the great corner tower presided over Alexanderplatz like a medieval keep. It had taken some time for Rath to get used to the fact that even the officers referred to headquarters as
The
Castle
.
‘Let me out here, I’ll get us something to eat,’ he said. ‘I’ll be quicker on foot. See you back at the Castle.’
After scarcely ten minutes he entered the station from Dircksenstrasse. This was where CID had their offices, on the same side as the city railway. His day-to-day work was interrupted by the peal and rumble of trains wheeling past his window. Rath greeted the cop at the entrance by raising the Aschinger paper bags in his right hand. Three
bratwurst
with mustard. In the left hand a tub of potato salad. The food from Aschinger’s was better than the canteen. First they would take time to eat, and after that they would concentrate on the interviews.
It would be a while before they summoned the first of the gang from the cells. Let them stew a little longer. Rath’s stomach rumbled as he climbed the steps. Apart from two cups of coffee – a good one at home and a bad one in the 220th precinct – he hadn’t eaten anything today.
As he emerged from the stairwell into the grey corridor he paused, lost in thought, outside a glass double door with HOMICIDE written in white capital letters. He thought of Bruno’s words in the car –
Gennat’s boys – hand-picked.
In the long passageway behind the glass door, another door opened. Homicide was busy on Sundays too. A young woman was standing in the doorway. She shouted something back into the office before turning and moving down the passageway. Rath peered through the glass into a narrow face with a resolutely curved mouth, and dark eyes under black hair cut fashionably short. She wore a dark red suit and carried a file under her arm. Her shoes clicked across the stone floor of the long passageway at a brisk clip and, when she greeted a passing colleague, her smile conjured up a dimple on her left cheek.
‘Don’t get lost now,’ a voice startled Rath from his daydream. He turned as if he’d been caught out. ‘You still work for us,’ said Wolter.
The glass door opened and the woman bestowed her smile on the officers from E Division.
‘Good afternoon,’ she said. Her voice was higher than he’d expected.
Wolter tipped his hat and Rath raised the paper bags. The woman looked at him in amusement almost, and he felt stupid and awkward. He lowered the paper bags and her smile returned. Rath wasn’t sure if she was smiling or laughing as she continued on her way, her dark red suit becoming smaller and smaller, before disappearing behind the next glass door. Uncle patted him on the shoulder.
‘Let’s get something to eat before the real work begins. You look completely out of it. When was the last time you had a woman?’
‘Ask me something easier.’
‘No wonder you’re not enjoying Vice,’ Wolter said, ‘if you’re living like a monk. I’ll make sure I introduce you to a few girls.’
‘Forget it.’ After Doris, Rath had had enough of women. She had dropped him as soon as the smear campaign had begun. Not even half a year had passed…
‘Oh come on!’ Wolter wouldn’t let go. ‘I know some great girls! In our line of work, you get around. Like I said:
I’m
not about to trade places.’
‘Things don’t look too bad in Homicide either.’ He pointed to the glass door, the Aschinger bags still in his hand. ‘Can you tell me who that was just now?’
‘Charlotte Ritter, a stenographer in Homicide.’
‘You take care of it, Rath, you know about this sort of thing,’ Lanke shouted. They were sending him onto the roof again.
Behind Superintendent Lanke stood the silent figure of Police Director Engelbert Rath and, behind him, an army of uniformed officers. Above the white moustache, his father’s eyes were icy and full of reproach. It was a familiar look, the same look he had assumed the first time little Gereon brought a bad report home from school. In contrast, Lanke’s face was a fantastically grinning and sadistic caricature.
‘How many more innocent people have to die before you get your arse up there? If you think you can avoid getting your hands dirty, you’re very much mistaken!’
Rath gazed up at the roof, which seemed not only to be getting steeper but also to be growing in size. How the hell was he supposed to get up there? When he turned back the troops had all disappeared, replaced by rows of women with children. That was when the shooting started.
Row upon row went down, mown to the ground, dying mute as their children screamed. More and more children, and the more women who died, the louder the screaming became.
He hurried skywards, forgetting his vertigo, until suddenly the house was cloaked in scaffolding and he saw the sniper with a battery of rifles that he reloaded one after the other.
When he reached the upper platform the sniper lifted his shirt to reveal a pale, emaciated upper body with a gaping bullet hole. The blood had long since dried. It was the sort of wound you found on the corpses in the morgue. Clinical. Clean.
‘How about that?’ the sniper said in a reproachful whine. ‘I’ll tell my father.’
Rath pulled out his service revolver. ‘Drop your weapon!’ he cried, but the man trained his rifle on him.
‘Drop your weapon! I’ll shoot!’
The other man wouldn’t be swayed. ‘You can’t shoot me. I’m already dead,’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten?’
A fuse blew inside Rath’s head and his index finger pulled on the trigger again and again. The Mauser only clicked in response. Click, click, click, it went, as the other man quietly took aim and placed his finger on the trigger. He began to pull down, almost in slow motion…
‘No!’
Rath was awoken by his own cry, suddenly wide awake and sitting bolt upright. His brow was cold and sweaty and his heart was racing. The clicking continued, but it was coming from the window. The clock on his bedside table showed half past one. He peeled himself out of bed, threw on his dressing gown and looked outside. Nürnberger Strasse was completely devoid of people. The only sound was that of the wind rustling through the trees, but there were three or four small stones on the window sill. Someone had been trying to wake him. He opened the window and leaned out.
The heavy front door opened and there was a short, sharp cry. ‘What are you doing hanging around here like a bad smell?’ a woman’s voice asked.
A young girl, in her early twenties perhaps, entered Rath’s field of vision, turning to look over her shoulder before hurrying towards the taxi rank. Weinert must have been entertaining again. Rath couldn’t help but smile, but goodness knows what Elisabeth Behnke would make of it. The landlady was very strict about tenants receiving female visitors at night, and yet the intrepid Weinert had someone there most evenings. Who, he wondered, had Weinert’s latest conquest bumped into down by the front door? Who had given her such a fright?
While he was still thinking he heard the heavy front door click shut and someone pull on the bell, followed by a hammering on the door to the flat. Rath stepped out of his room into the main hall. The door leading to Elisabeth Behnke’s rooms was shut. No sign of Weinert either. He probably had a guilty conscience.
There was another crash against the door.
‘
Kardakow
,’ cried a deep, foreign voice, only slightly muffled by the closed door. ‘
Aleksej Iwanowitsch Kardakow! Atkroj dwer! Eta ja, Boris! Boris Sergejewitsch Karpenko!
’
He flung the door open and gazed into the baffled blue-green eyes of a scruffy, ragged figure. Tangled strands of dark blond hair fell over the man’s gaunt, unshaven chin. Rath could smell the alcohol on his breath.
‘What’s all the racket?’ he asked. The man stared at him with glassy eyes. ‘You’d be better off going home to bed instead of banging on people’s doors in the middle of the night.’
The man said something in a language that Rath didn’t understand. Russian? Polish? He couldn’t say for sure, but he was fairly certain the stranger had just asked him a question.
‘Do you speak German?’ he asked.
The stranger repeated his question. All Rath understood was that it was about a man named Alexej. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you,’ he said. ‘Go home! Good night!’
No sooner had he closed the door than the banging started again.
‘That’s enough,’ he hissed as he threw the door open a second time, ‘if you don’t clear off this instant, there’ll be real trouble!’