Authors: Volker Kutscher
So far they had confiscated only a single revolver – and that after nearly six hours of hard searching in at least four dozen flats, and the man they had taken the weapon off wasn’t even a communist. They had found an embroidered text of the Internationale on the wall of his kitchen, but only in the way that Christians might display Biblical quotations. The man was a social democrat like the commissioner.
The operation was beginning to get on Rath’s nerves, and judging by his expression Bruno felt the same way. Pointless, it was a total waste of resources, and yet the pair had struggled to suppress a grin when they saw that Leykestrasse was on their list. That was where Franz Krajewski, the junkie from the Karstadt department store scaffolding and their latest informant, had his digs. The porn Kaiser himself opened the door when they called on him just after seven in the morning.
Krajewski’s heart sunk into his boots as the crowd of uniformed officers marched past him into the flat. Rath and Wolter kept him in suspense for a moment before Uncle trotted out the usual spiel, that police were engaged in a routine search for weapons throughout the district. Krajewski seemed a little more relaxed after that. A trace of nervousness remained, however, and Rath knew why. He had had the presence of mind to recover a small bag of cocaine from the sugar bowl in the kitchen before uniform got there.
‘Lucky you met us a few days ago,’ Rath whispered. ‘Otherwise we’d have found a shooter on you and you’d have had to come along with us.’
‘What’s all the fuss about?’ Krajewski asked.
‘You live in the wrong area. Too many communists. You should mind what you hide in the kitchen.’
Krajewski turned pale, but uniform were already on the next floor up. Rath lingered a moment before pressing the paper bag into Krajewski’s hands.
It was now just after twelve and they had worked through another three blocks. House after house, flat after flat, but there was still a long way to go.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Wolter said, as the pair left another building full of angry faces and furious protests – without finding a single weapon.
‘Trench work,’ said Uncle, and lit a cigarette while uniform got stuck into the waste containers in the courtyard.
Rath nodded. ‘We’re not about to find anything either.’
‘Are you surprised? The fighters are all out on the streets. Thälmann’s boys are stashing their weapons. 1A need to be more on the ball. It’s these caches we should be cleaning out, instead we’re searching workers’ flats.’
Wolter made no secret of his aversion to the political police. He took a final drag and threw the half-smoked cigarette onto the courtyard. ‘This is no work for CID. I’m sure uniform can manage for a while on their own.’ At the rubbish containers a young officer was using a giant poker to root through ashes and waste. Uncle gave him a few instructions and pressed the list of addresses into his hand before making his way back to Rath.
‘Let’s go to Hermannstrasse, drop off the revolver and submit an interim report,’ he said. ‘They’ve got a good old-fashioned field kitchen and my stomach’s starting to rumble.’ Police had sequestered two private flats on the first floor of Hermannstrasse 207 to set up an operational base for the troops. ‘Who knows, maybe we’ll find someone looting or erecting a barricade on the way. At least then we’ll have done something useful today.’
It wasn’t until Hermannstrasse that they encountered anybody else, but still no-one they needed to arrest. All the streetlamps had been shattered and broken glass crunched beneath their feet. In several places stacks of wood for the construction of the new underground had been overturned across the carriageway. Not exactly barricades, they were more like minor traffic obstacles. Not that there were any cars on the road.
The tram wasn’t stopping at Hermannstrasse today either as uniform had effectively sealed the trouble spot. No-one came in and no-one went out without police say-so. The Berlin public transport authority no longer sent any of its buses or trains into the communist districts anyway, as rioters had already wrecked several.
Shots rang out and Rath and Wolter sought cover in the entrance to a house. Uncle drew his weapon. Rath did likewise, having taken the episode on the Karstadt scaffolding to heart. He released the safety catch of his Mauser and poked his head out carefully from the entrance. An armoured car was rolling up Hermannstrasse, rattling its machine gun at irregular intervals. ‘Idiots. Just like in the war. Under fire from our own side.’
They put their guns away. Standing in a house entrance in civilian clothing with a pistol in your hand was dangerous. It was all too easy for your own side to become confused.
‘Your attention please, this is the police speaking,’ a voice cried. ‘Keep the streets clear! Move away from your windows! We’re about to open fire!’
Really? Rath thought. We’re about to open fire? They’re announcing that a little prematurely. He peered round the corner and watched the armoured car roll onwards. The few people still on the streets took refuge in house entrances to the left and right. Behind the armoured car were two trucks carrying duty officers. The men had jumped down from the trucks and were cocking their rifles. Rath could feel how nervous they were. With anxious glances, they scoured the windows for snipers, weapons at the ready. For a short time it was quiet, then a rifle crackled and a glass pane shattered.
‘Move away from your windows!’ The voice was drowned by the crackle of rifle fire. The first shot had opened the floodgates.
A man was running across the pavement with his hands over his head as if they could shield him from bullets and falling glass. He came towards them in the entrance, pulled a key from his pocket and opened the heavy front door.
‘Come on then,’ he said, and held the door open. ‘Inside before the pigs get you.’ They burst into the house and the man ran upstairs. Rath banged the door shut and gazed after him.
‘For fuck’s sake, they’re clearing the streets! Deploying a special vehicle. Why the hell didn’t anyone tell us this was happening?’
‘No idea,’ Wolter replied. ‘Probably because the whole thing’s been planned by social democrats.’
There were more shots from the streets. Rath gestured with his head that they should move further back into the stairwell where they’d be safer.
Suddenly they heard a cry. ‘No!’
Not a cry of pain or fear. A cry of horror.
They briefly exchanged glances and hastened upstairs. The door to the flat on the first floor stood open. They burst inside to be welcomed by petty bourgeois conservatism and comfort. Nothing here was remotely out of place, not a person to be seen or a voice to be heard. In the neighbouring flat, Richard Tauber was singing, his voice scratched out by a gramophone. The noise from the street penetrated through the open balcony door. From time to time there was a cry or an isolated shot as the commando receded into the distance. A gentle wind made the long curtain billow out and blow into the room.
There were two women lying on the balcony. Peacefully, as though they were sleeping, but they weren’t sleeping. Blood was seeping from their heads and chests. The cry must have come from the man who was hunched over the older of the two, the man who had just opened the door for them. He was no longer crying out, but weeping silently. Having laid the head of the deceased on his lap, he was now stroking her bloody hair.
‘Martha,’ he said. ‘Martha!’
The windows were boarded on the outside so there was barely any daylight in the shop. The man behind the counter didn’t look much like a master butcher. Far too thin, pale face, hollow cheeks. Only the blood specks on his white coat gave him away, and his greeting.
‘What will it be?’
‘Police.’ Rath showed his ID.
He had been on the move for quarter of an hour. No-one in Hermannstrasse seemed to own a telephone. The only public telephone he found hadn’t worked but he struck lucky with Wilhelm Prokot the butcher. There was a sign on the door with a telephone symbol.
Telephone 20 pfennig per
conversation
, it said below. Twice as expensive as a public telephone.
‘There was me surprised that there were still people out shopping with all that racket,’ grumbled the butcher. ‘Do you and your colleagues want to occupy the shop?’
‘I just need to use the telephone.’
‘Out back,’ the butcher nodded towards a door. ‘It’s not for free though.’
‘The state will pay.’
Rath followed the man to a telephone hanging from the wall and asked to be put through to Hermannstrasse 207. The butcher remained in the doorway, looking on curiously. ‘Do you have nothing else to do?’ Rath barked.
‘No,’ said Prokot in his Berlin accent. ‘Your people have scared off all my customers.’ He disappeared back into the shop.
Rath asked to speak with one of the officers in charge of the operation. He gave a concise report of the fatal incident and received equally concise instructions in return: take down particulars, secure evidence, interview witnesses, have the corpses medically examined and removed, processes with which Rath was familiar from his time in Homicide. It annoyed him that they treated him like a novice here.
‘Can you recommend a doctor?’ he asked, as he pressed two 10 pfennig coins into the butcher’s hands.
‘What seems to be the matter?’ the butcher asked.
The Berlin sense of humour did nothing for Rath. He ignored the stupid remark. ‘Well,’ he said simply, doing his best to conceal his displeasure.
‘You’re in luck. There’s a doctor in the house above.’
The practice was directly above the butcher’s shop.
Dr Peter Völcker, General Practitioner
, read the sign next to the door. The waiting room was empty. The receptionist looked at Rath with surprise. ‘An emergency,’ he said simply, showing his badge. ‘I need a doctor.’ The woman led him into the consulting room where Dr Völcker was sitting at his desk.
The doctor was even more gaunt than the butcher and gave the impression of being strict and ascetic. He listened attentively as Rath briefly outlined the situation, took his hat and coat, and reached for the bag. Finally he sent the receptionist home.
‘We’re closing. There’ll be no-one coming today anyway,’ he said. ‘No-one dares venture outside while the police are doing target practice.’
The sentence ought to have made Rath suspicious, but he didn’t think anything of it. He didn’t learn the truth about Dr Völcker until they had returned to the flat, Uncle having remained behind to comfort the grieving widower. Wolter was sitting beside the man, who appeared to have composed himself in the meantime, at the living room table.
‘Where did you dredge him up?’ Wolter asked.
The doctor greeted the widower briefly, offered his condolences and then disappeared onto the balcony.
‘Do you two know each other?’ Rath asked.
Wolter waited until the widower had joined the doctor on the balcony. ‘You’ve really landed us in it there,’ he began.
Soon Rath realised this was something of an understatement. Dr Peter Völcker was not only a doctor and head of the Neukölln public health department; he also had a seat and a vote on the local district council – as a member of the Communist Party.
In police circles, he was infamous, a troublemaker who enjoyed calling for inquiries and threatened legal action whenever police officers and communists clashed.
‘Shit!’ Rath commented.
‘Succinctly put,’ said Wolter. ‘Nothing we can do now though.’ He patted his colleague on the shoulder. ‘Come on, we shouldn’t leave the communist doctor alone for too long. Who knows what he’ll try and foist on us?’
When they stepped onto the balcony, the two women were lying exactly where they had been found. The doctor had obviously examined them already. He was now standing by one of the wooden privacy screens that flanked the balcony, fiddling around with the wood. The widower hunched over the corpse of his wife.
‘If you’re finished, Doctor, you ought to fill out the death certificates,’ Wolter said. ‘The corpses shouldn’t remain here any longer than is necessary. Have you recorded the death? In that case, don’t waste any more time here and get back to your practice. There are bound to be some proles waiting to have their chicken eyes removed.’
‘All in good time, my man,’ Völcker replied. ‘I’m still establishing the cause of death.’ He turned round and presented both police officers with a large, sharp projectile. ‘Here!’
‘What the hell is that supposed to be?’ Rath asked.
‘You of all people should know. A police bullet. Not the first victim your colleagues have on their conscience.’ There was something unbearably self-righteous about Völcker’s tone.
‘My dear doctor!’ Wolter was like a steam boiler whose safety valves had opened to release high pressure in a sharp hiss. ‘Perhaps you’re unclear about the traditional division of labour. It’s neither your job to secure evidence, nor to draw conclusions, and certainly not hasty ones!’ He snatched the projectile from the doctor’s hand. ‘Whether it’s a police bullet or not remains to be seen. We shall…’
‘Murderers!’ The widower had risen to his feet, his face no longer pale but red and distorted with rage. ‘Murderers!’ he cried again and hurled himself on Wolter. Rath pulled him back in an arm lock.
‘Calm yourself down,’ he said. At first the man tried to wriggle free, before growing quieter and finally beginning to sob. Rath gave him a consoling pat on the shoulder.
‘Do you see what you’ve done?’ Now Wolter was really yelling. Völcker winced inwardly.
‘I’m not the one who made this man a widower,’ replied the doctor.
‘Are you trying to suggest that I…’
‘Bruno!’ Rath feared he would soon have to hold Wolter back too. Uncle paused mid-sentence and turned towards him, looking as if he might go for the doctor’s throat at any moment. With a struggle he regained his composure.
‘My dear doctor,’ Wolter continued. ‘As a scientist you should really be approaching a task like this from an impartial standpoint. I’m not sure if you’re the right man for the job.’ He turned to Rath. ‘Call Dr Schwartz from the Charité hospital. He has more experience in this area.’