Having breakfasted on the train, he skipped coffee in the buffet and headed straight for his bank on Behrenstrasse, where he deposited Shchepkin’s banker’s draft. As he headed for Franzòsischestrasse in search of a tram home Russell felt an almost dizzying sense of solvency. Presents for everybody, he thought. Including himself.
The sense of well-being evaporated the moment he saw Frau Heidegger’s face. ‘Oh Herr Russell,’ she said, grabbing his left arm with both hands. ‘Thank God you’re back. I…’
‘What’s happened?’
‘Herr McKinley – he’s dead. He committed suicide – can you believe it? The poor boy… And he seemed so happy these last few weeks. I can’t…’
‘How?’ Russell asked. He felt cold all over, and slightly nauseous. ‘How did he kill himself?’ He couldn’t believe it. He didn’t believe it.
Frau Heidegger mopped up a tear. ‘He threw himself in front of a train. At Zoo Station. There were lots of witnesses.’
‘When?’
‘Late on Saturday. The police came just before midnight and locked his room. Then they came back yesterday. They were up there for hours.’
‘The Kripo?’
She looked bewildered for a second. ‘Yes, yes, I think so. There were so many of them. They must have been looking for a suicide note, I think. Or something to tell them why he did it.’
Or a letter, Russell thought.
‘But I don’t think they found anything,’ Frau Heidegger went on. ‘They seemed very frustrated when they went. I suppose they’re worried that the Americans won’t believe he killed himself.’
‘Perhaps,’ Russell said. He still felt stunned.
‘They left the room very tidy,’ Frau Heidegger said inconsequentially. ‘And they want to talk to you,’ she added. ‘“As soon as he gets back” they said. And they put a note under your door saying the same thing. I have the telephone number.’ She disappeared back into her apartment for a few seconds and re-emerged with what looked like a torn-off page from a police notebook. There was a number and a name – Kriminalinspektor Oehm.
‘I’ll ring him now,’ Russell said.
‘Yes, please,’ Frau Heidegger said, as if it would take a huge weight off her mind.
The underling who answered knew who Russell was. ‘The Kriminalinspektor would like to see you immediately,’ he said, with the stress on the last word. ‘At the Alex. Room 456.’
‘I’m on my way,’ Russell said. It seemed the politic thing to do.
‘I’ll look after your bag,’ Frau Heidegger said, picking it up and moving towards her door. ‘You can collect it when you get back.’
He started walking towards the U-bahn, thinking it would be quicker, but changed his mind once he reached Lindenstrasse. Why was he hurrying? A tram ride would give him time to think.
He climbed aboard the first Alexanderplatz-bound tram and stared blankly out of the window. If there was one thing he knew, it was that McKinley hadn’t killed himself. In fact, he could hardly think of anyone less likely to do so. He supposed it could have been an accident – the platforms got pretty crowded at Zoo Station after theatre-closing time – but if so, why the rush to a suicide verdict? Frau Heidegger had mentioned witnesses – lots of them. An apparent suicide, Russell realized, offered stronger grounds for a police investigation than a simple accident. They’d spent most of yesterday in McKinley’s room, and they must have been looking for something. Theresa Jürissen’s letter was an obvious candidate, but who knew what other pieces of paper McKinley had collected in support of his story. And it looked as though they hadn’t found what they were looking for. Russell wasn’t sure how reliable a judge of Kripo moods Frau Heidegger was, but the urgency of his summons certainly suggested they were missing something.
If they hadn’t found the letter, then where the hell was it? Six days had passed since he and McKinley visited Theresa Jürissen, and McKinley had been in a hurry – it didn’t seem likely that he’d taken his time sending her the money. Unless, of course, he’d had trouble raising it. And she might have had trouble getting down to the Poste Restante to pick the money up. The letter could still be in the post. Or in her possession. He’d have to warn her, for his own sake as well as hers. If she was arrested, his own involvement would come out, and even if the Kripo accepted that he’d only been along as an interpreter, he’d still failed to report a possible crime against the state. At the very least, grounds for deportation. At worst… it didn’t bear thinking about.
If McKinley had received the letter and they hadn’t found it, then what had he done with it? He might have risked posting it off to the States, but Russell didn’t think so. If they’d been watching him – and it seemed likely that they had – then any outgoing mail would have been intercepted. Russell remembered McKinley’s reluctant admission that he thought he was being followed, and his own scarcely-concealed derision. ‘Sorry, Tyler,’ he murmured out loud, drawing a stare from a woman opposite.
Of course, McKinley’s suspicions would have made him doubly careful. Which meant there was a good chance he had hidden the letter. But where? If he hadn’t stashed it in his room, where could he have hidden it? Just about anywhere in Berlin, Russell thought, looking out at the Konigstrasse. McKinley had probably stolen an idea from one of the endless detective novels he read.
He got off outside the Alexanderplatz branch of Wertheim and walked under the railway bridge and into the square itself. The station and another department store, Tietz, occupied the northern side, the huge drab mass of the police praesidium – the ‘Alex’ as all Berliners called it – the southern side. Russell walked past entrances 4, 3 and 2 – the latter housing the morgue where McKinley’s body was presumably residing – and in through the doors of 1, the all-purpose entrance.
The whole Berlin detective force, around 1,800 strong, worked out of this building, and Russell imagined some of them were still waiting for their offices to be discovered. He was gestured towards one of several staircases, and then spent about ten minutes pacing down a succession of identical-looking corridors in search of Room 456. The windows overlooking the inner courtyard were all barred, suggesting a guests’ penchant for self-defenestration which Russell found less than comforting. Eventually he was intercepted by a surprisingly helpful detective, who took him down the right flight of stairs and turned him into the right corridor.
Kriminalinspektor Oehm’s office looked like a work in progress. There were files everywhere – piled on the desk, floor, windowsill and filing cabinets. Oehm, a chubby man with florid face, abundant fair hair and sharp-looking blue eyes, seemed unconcerned by the chaos, but his companion, a redhead with unusually pale skin, kept looking round in apparent disbelief. He was not introduced, but even without the tell-tale leather coat Russell would have assumed Gestapo.
Oehm invited him to sit down. ‘We’ve been trying to contact you since yesterday morning,’ he said.
‘I’ve been out of town,’ Russell said.
‘So your fiancée told us.’
Russell said nothing. He hoped Effi had behaved herself.
‘Where exactly were you?’ the Gestapo man asked.
‘Poland. Cracow to be precise. I’m working on a series of articles on Germany’s neighbours.’
‘You know why we wish to talk to you?’ Oehm said.
‘I assume it’s about Tyler McKinley.’
‘Correct. You were surprised by the news?’
‘That he committed suicide. Yes, I was.’
Oehm shrugged. ‘He must have had his reasons.’
‘Perhaps. Are you certain he killed himself?’
‘Absolutely. There is no doubt. We have several witnesses. Reliable witnesses. A police officer, for one.’
‘Then he must have,’ Russell agreed. He still couldn’t see why they – whoever, exactly, they were – had needed to kill McKinley, and he didn’t suppose he would ever find out. It didn’t much matter, really. His knowing certainly wouldn’t help McKinley.
&n
bsp; ‘There is one possible reason for his action,’ Oehm said. ‘I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, but…well, we have good reason to believe that your friend had become involved with political elements hostile to the state, that he may have become part of a plot against the state involving forged official documents – documents, that is to say, which have been fabricated to create a misleading and slanderous impression of activities inside the Reich.’
‘What sort of activities?’ Russell asked innocently.
‘That is not your concern,’ the Gestapo man said.
‘And he wasn’t my friend,’ Russell added. ‘I liked him, but we hardly ever saw each other for more than a chat on the stairs.
A drink every month or so, perhaps. Nothing more.’
‘Ah…’
‘And if he was involved in this plot, why would that lead him to kill himself?’ Russell asked.
‘Perhaps it all got too much for him, and he couldn’t think of any other way out,’ Oehm suggested.
‘He didn’t give you anything to keep for him?’ the Gestapo man asked.
‘No, he didn’t.’
‘You are sure about that.’
‘One hundred per cent.’
The Gestapo man looked sceptical, but said nothing.
‘One more thing,’ Oehm said. ‘Herr McKinley’s sister will be arriving in Berlin on Wednesday. To take the body home…’
‘How’s she getting here so quickly?’ Russell asked.
‘She is apparently flying across the Atlantic. The Americans have these new flying-boats – Clippers I believe they’re called – and though they’re not yet in public service, there are frequent trials. Proving flights, they call them…’
‘Yes, yes,’ the Gestapo man murmured, but Oehm ignored him.
‘I am a flyer myself,’ he told Russell. ‘Weekends only, of course.’
‘We all need hobbies,’ Russell agreed. ‘But how has McKinley’s sister wangled a flight on one these…’
‘Clippers. I imagine Senator McKinley used his influence to get his niece a place on one of them.’
‘Senator McKinley?’
‘Tyler McKinley’s uncle.’ Oehm noticed the surprise in Russell’s face. ‘You did not know his uncle was a US Senator?’
‘Like I said, we weren’t exactly friends.’ He could understand why McKinley had kept quiet about it – the boy would have hated anyone thinking he owed anything to family connections. But he was amazed that none of his fellow American journalists had spilled the beans. They must have assumed Russell knew.
‘As I was saying,’ Oehm continued. ‘His sister will arrange for the body to be sent home and collect her brother’s effects. I was hoping you could be here when we talk to her, as an interpreter and someone who knew her brother.’
‘I can do that.’
‘Her plane from Lisbon arrives around eleven. So, if you could be here at one?’
‘I will be. Is that all?’
‘Yes, Herr Russell that is all.’ Oehm smiled up at him. The Gestapo man gave him the merest of nods.
Russell retraced his steps to the main entrance. As he emerged into the open air he took a deep breath in and blew it out again. One thing was certain – they hadn’t found the letter.
He crossed the square and walked into a café underneath the Stadtbahn tracks which he occasionally frequented. After ordering a couple of frankfurters and a kartoffelsalat he perched on a stool by the window, cleared a hole in the condensation, and looked out. No one had followed him in, but was anyone loitering outside? He couldn’t see anyone obvious, but that didn’t mean much. He would have to make sure in Tietz, pull a variation of the same trick he and McKinley had pulled in the Neukölln Karstadt department store. But it would have to look like an accident. He didn’t want them thinking he’d lost them on purpose.
The food tasted bad, which was unusual. It was the taste in his mouth, Russell thought. Fear.
He crossed the road and walked into Tietz, heading for the rank of telephone booths that he remembered outside the store’s ground floor tea room. Ensconced in the first booth, he looked back along the aisle he had just walked. No one looked furtive. He dialled Effi’s number.
She answered on the second ring. ‘You’re back. I had the police…’
‘I know. I’ve just spent twenty minutes in the Alex. I’m sorry you got…’
‘Oh, it was no problem. They didn’t break anything. I was just worried about you. Are you really upset? You didn’t know him that well, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t. I feel sad, though. He was a nice enough man.’
‘Are you coming over?’
‘Yes, but it’ll be a few hours. Say around six. I have to see someone.’
‘Okay.’
‘I’ll see you then.’
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too.’
He replaced the receiver and scanned the aisle again. Still nothing. A taxi, he decided. From this side of the station, where there were often only two or three waiting.
He was in luck – there was only one. ‘Friedrichstrasse Station,’ he told the driver, and watched through the rear window as they swung round beneath the railway and headed down Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse. There was no sign of pursuit. At Friedrichstrasse he hurried down the steps to the U-bahn platform, reaching it as a Grenzallee train pulled in. He stepped aboard, standing beside the doors until they closed, but no one else emerged through the platform gates.
The train pulled out and he sank into the nearest seat. Should he be waiting for darkness, he wondered. Or would that be even riskier? He had no real idea, and felt shaken by how important such a decision could be.
It took twenty minutes to reach Hermannplatz. Russell climbed up to the street, where the loudspeakers were broadcasting Hitler’s long-awaited speech to the Reichstag. A small crowd had gathered around the one outside Karstadt, their faces as overcast as the sky. The Fuhrer’s tone was calm and reasonable, which suggested he was still warming up.
Russell walked on, following a trail of street-names familiar from the week before. It was a good thing he recognised these, because the area seemed utterly different by daylight, its workshops and factories bursting with noisy activity, its cobbled streets full of rumbling lorries. Most of the workplaces were broadcasting the speech to their employees, and Hitler’s words seeped out through doors and over walls, a promise here, a threat there, a piece of self-congratulation sandwiched in between. Stopping for a moment on a bridge across the Neukollner-Schiffahrtkanal Russell heard fragments of the speech tossed around on the breeze, like the puffs of wind-strewn smoke belching from the myriad chimneys.
Schönlankerstrasse was empty, the block door wide open. He walked in and knocked on Theresa Jürissen’s door. There was no answer. He knocked again with the same result, and was wondering what to do when footsteps sounded on the stairs. It was her.
Her face registered alarm, and then anger. Without speaking, she opened her door and gestured him in. Marietta was sitting exactly where she had been on his last visit, still drawing, still oblivious. ‘What do you want?’ Theresa asked, the moment the door was closed behind her.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I know this is dangerous for you, but not coming might have been more dangerous.’
He told her about McKinley’s death.
‘Could the police connect you?’ he asked. ‘Did you ever write to him?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Never.’
‘What about the document you told us about?’
‘I sent it, but that’s all. I gave no name or address.’
Russell sighed in relief. ‘When did you send it?’
‘Last week. Thursday afternoon.’
McKinley had received it. He must have. Russell explained why he had asked. ‘They haven’t found it,’ he told her. ‘He must have hidden it somewhere.’
‘There’s nothing to connect me,’ she said. ‘Except you,’ she added, the look of alarm back on her face.
‘They won’t hear about you from me,’ Russell promised her, hoping he could live up to such an assurance.
‘Thank you,’ she said doubtfully, as if she wasn’t that sure either. ‘And their secret will stay secret,’ she added, as much to herself as to him.
‘Looks like it.’
She nodded, her view of the world confirmed.
‘I’ll be going,’ he said.
‘Let me make sure there’s no one about,’ she cautioned him. A few moments later she returned. ‘It’s all clear.’
Russell smiled goodbye to a closing door and began the long walk back to the centre of Neukölln. The Führer was well into his stride now, each torrent of words reinforced by the sound of his fist hammering at the lectern. By the time he reached Karstadt the listening crowd had spilled into the street, all eyes raised to the crackling loudspeaker, as if Hitler would emerge genie-like from the mesh, a head spouting venom on a shimmering tail.
It was dark by the time he reached Effi’s flat. She was wearing a dress he hadn’t seen before, deep red with a black lace collar. And she wanted to eat out, at a Chinese restaurant which had opened a few weeks earlier at the Halensee end of the Ku’damm.
‘I’ve been learning my lines,’ she announced as they walked downstairs. ‘Would you hear me later?’
It was a peace offering, Russell realised. ‘Love to,’ he told her.
They walked through to the Ku’damm and took a westbound tram. The wide pavements were crowded with homegoing workers, the restaurants and cinemas gearing up for the evening as the shops closed down. Alighting at Lehninerplatz they found the Chinese restaurant already filling up. ‘Goering eats here,’ Effi said, as if in explanation.
‘He eats everywhere,’ Russell said. ‘And this is on me,’ he added.
Effi gave him a look.
‘I’ve sold a lot of work lately,’ he explained.
They were shown to their table, which stood beneath a huge scroll of dragons. Russell picked up the menu, hoping it was in German, but needn’t have bothered.
‘Let me order,’ Effi said.
‘Include beer,’ Russell insisted. He was still feeling tense, he realised. And maybe still a little in shock. Sitting there, half-listening as Effi questioned the waiter, he found himself imagining McKinley’s death – the moment of falling, of realisation. Of terror. ‘How was your weekend?’ he asked.
Zoo Station Page 14
