The minister would have to wait.
Chapter 12
‘Petra,’ Roth said, as they were speeding to the stock yards in another Schupo pool auto. ‘Petra Kleist.’
The streets they drove through were hazy and there was a slight chill in the air. The haze was the only thing stopping the low early morning sun from blinding Trautmann altogether when it peeked through odd gaps in the buildings.
‘What?’ Trautmann said, looking over at his assistant in the passenger seat and wondering what the younger man was gabbling about.
Trautmann had been turning the case over in his mind, thinking now they had yet another suspect for the list – one powerful enough to influence the course of the investigation if he chose.
Hoping Fleischer would lead them to his niece and they could wrap this whole thing up before the minister got impatient – or angry. Roth had been just sitting saying nothing until that moment.
‘You asked earlier if I had a sweetheart,’ Roth said.
Enlightenment dawned. ‘Oh yes, so I did. Petra, you say?’
‘That’s right.’
‘“Rose red, and half as old as time”,’ Trautmann said quietly, quoting from the junk shop of his memory.
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a pretty name. Is she pretty?’
Roth hunkered down in his seat. ‘She was.’
‘Was?’ Good Lord, Trautmann hoped the poor girl wasn’t dead. Though it would explain much about Roth if she was.
Roth sneered. ‘We’re not together any more.’
Trautmann took a corner. The trembling steering wheel in his hands told him he was driving too fast so he eased off the accelerator. Should he ask the obvious question?
He decided what the hell. ‘So what – ’
‘I’d rather not talk about it.’
‘Fine.’
The auto turned another corner and the smell of the stock yards hit them. Dung and urine – not just from frightened animals approaching death, but also the tanneries close by. The buildings were lower on this street and now the unobstructed sun bathed them in warmth. It also made it damned hard to see.
‘Oh, great,’ Roth said. He pulled himself upright and squinted through the windscreen. ‘How the hell did he manage to get here ahead of us?’
Dozens of Schupo were forming a loose cordon around the slaughterhouse and stock yards, with more of them tumbling out of an open-topped limousine. Behind that, sunlight glinted off the steel machine gun turrets of a pillbox – a Schupo armoured car.
‘You know, Kessler’s been all over this case so much I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it,’ Roth said.
Trautmann snorted.
‘No, I mean it,’ Roth said. ‘After all, why not? Maybe he’s the disgruntled Nazi who wants to hurt the minister by striking at his stepson. Maybe he found out who Meist really was, and decided to use that to his advantage.’
‘Kill one of his own?’ Trautmann said.
‘Weren’t you the one who just suggested that to the minister? Think about it. This is a party dedicated to breaking the law to get into power – and dismantling the constitution once it gets there. They’ve said it often enough. What’s one sacrifice to achieve that?’
‘But how does this help them achieve that, Roth?’ Trautmann replied. ‘What would they gain by this?’
‘Well, now you’re asking for logic from Nazis.’ Roth shifted in his seat. ‘Or maybe you were right. Maybe Kessler’s got some personal agenda. I don’t know. Feels like we’re just going round and round.’
Trautmann slowed the auto as the first of the slaughtering sheds came up on their right and they reached the outer limits of the police cordon.
‘Show them your ID, Roth,’ Trautmann said. ‘I don’t want them getting over excited and shooting us.’
The uniforms waved them through as Roth wound down his window and brandished his papers. Trautmann heard the cries of cattle from a delivery in the nearest yard.
More Schupo were in the yard, rounding up thickset men in bloodied leather aprons to get them out, out, out. Leaving the cattle to mill around. One Schupoman hauled the driver out of his delivery truck without even letting him turn off the engine.
‘They’re enjoying themselves far too much for my liking,’ Trautmann mumbled.
‘Kessler’s not fooling around, is he? How many squads is this?’
Just then, from somewhere up ahead, the man himself spoke through a loudhailer.
‘Last chance, Fleischer!’
Trautmann saw him then, the Schupo sergeant standing by the limousine, the huddled men in front of him aiming their bullet hoses at the entrance to one of the sheds. Trautmann rolled the auto to a stop next to the barricade, nudging Schupomen off the kerb.
He got a few angry stares but he ignored them.
Kessler looked back at the pillbox behind him, the forward machine gun turret pointing over his head, also aimed at the shed. He raised his arm.
Trautmann had managed to get his door half open when the machine gun opened up. Roth flinched and Trautmann let go of the door handle like it was too hot to hold.
Bullets drove holes into the shed walls and tore up the planks. A section of the corrugated iron roof fell in.
Then the shooting stopped. Silence hung heavy for a couple of seconds, before, little by little, various sounds rolled back in. Cattle snorting and shuffling in the yard out of sight. The murmur of Schupomen. The clanking of their equipment. Laughter from somewhere.
Trautmann kicked his door open the rest of the way and got out of the car: ‘Kessler!’
The sergeant turned to him, a glint in his grey eyes that had more to it that just the reflection of the morning sun. Sweat rolled down his cheeks and he was grinning.
‘Bastard won’t come out,’ Kessler said. ‘We’ve given him plenty of warning.’
‘What about the girl? Is she there?’
Kessler frowned.
‘Fleischer’s niece,’ Trautmann said. ‘Is she in there?’ Roth stood next to him, and Trautmann willed his assistant not to say anything out of turn.
‘Oh.’ Kessler’s grin returned. ‘Good idea. Won’t do any good though, you’ll see.’ He raised the loudhailer: ‘Fleischer! If the girl is in there with you, send her out. You have my word she won’t be harmed.’
Fleischer said nothing. Assuming he was in there – and still alive.
‘See?’ Kessler said to Trautmann.
Roth nudged the kommissar and pointed out some Schupomen who’d snuck up to the shed. Some splashed kerosene about while others set the walls alight with burning brands.
‘Kessler, you fool!’ Trautmann said. ‘Let us try to talk them out of there first.’
‘This is hardly the time for talk, Mule,’ Kessler said, before using the loudhailer again: ‘This is it, Fleischer! If you don’t come out of there now with your hands aloft, we’ll burn you out!’
Flames licked the sides of the building.
Trautmann turned, his pulse thick in his ears.
‘Sir?’ Roth said, his voice seeming very distant, though Trautmann could see how close he was out of the corner of one eye.
‘Back in the car, Roth,’ he said.
‘Sir?’
‘I thought I was the deaf one.’
Trautmann grazed a shin on the still-open door before sliding in behind the wheel. Roth settled into the passenger seat. He looked unhappy. Trautmann didn’t blame him, though he still found it annoying.
‘And you needn’t think I want to look at your pouting face for the rest of the morning,’ he snapped, pulling his door shut.
He turned the ignition and the motor coughed into life. He backed up the auto a little way and then paused.
‘Brace yourself against something, Roth. We’re about to jeopardise our pensions.’
Chapter 13
Trautmann jammed the gearstick into first and floored the accelerator. The auto juddered forwards, bouncing bluecoats off the bonnet.
They coursed across the patch of dry grass between the curb and the flaming shed walls and then smashed through. What little remained of the roof tumbled down behind them.
They drove through a room that was all smoke, then into a connecting room. It was clearer in the second room, but darker. The front wheels jammed hard against something Trautmann couldn’t see. He hit the brake pedal and the auto slid into a long, shallow gutter.
Roth smacked against the windscreen as the engine stalled. The glass cracked but it held, and when Roth leaned back in his seat he was honest-to-God smiling, blood slicking his teeth.
‘I told you to brace yourself,’ Trautmann said.
‘I’ve never seen you this upset,’ Roth said. ‘It’s fun.’
Trautmann applied the handbrake – something of an academic exercise. This time when he kicked his door open it was because the door was stuck and he had to.
‘They shouldn’t have made me shoot that boy back in the club,’ he said.
Black smoke drifted around them, most of it clinging to the floor like a drunken English ukulele band. The roof was still on this part of the building, and flickering electric lights cast jagged shadows, illuminating hanging cattle carcasses between microsecond blackouts.
The carcasses hung on hooks connected to a thick chain on some kind of pulley. Blubbery purple-and-white guts hung from some of them. One carcass spun gently, suspended on one leg, the other shorn through by machine gun bullets.
Trautmann kneeled to get a look under the auto. So that was the cause of the jam: another cow carcass that must have come loose from the chain above. The front left axle had smashed under the impact.
Trautmann wondered how they were going to get out.
‘Good God!’ said Roth.
Trautmann straightened, glad to get his face out of the smoke. Too much like Fleischer’s damned club.
Running along one side of the gutter was a raised platform. Roth was backing away from Fleischer, who looked to have been hiding beneath the platform and had now emerged from under it. There was blood on his face and soaking through his shirt.
The bloodied shirt was from a bullet wound in his right shoulder. That on his face? Trautmann didn’t like to speculate. Still, there was no shortage of the stuff sprinkled liberally about.
‘What’s this, the negotiating committee?’ Fleischer said. His Mauser was in his left hand, right arm hanging lifeless at his side. The breech of the pistol had locked open: no bullets left.
‘Where’s the girl, Fleischer?’ Trautmann said.
‘Far away from here,’ Fleischer said, sitting down atop the raised platform.
‘You’ve packed her off to Alexanderplatz station, I expect?’ Roth said. ‘Some brilliant scheme like that?’
Fleischer looked from Roth to Trautmann and said nothing.
‘Oh, tell me you haven’t,’ Roth said. Now it was his turn to look at Trautmann. ‘The man’s an idiot, after all. You don’t think we’ve got every station crawling with police on the lookout for her?’
Fleischer wiped blood from his eyes and sighed.
‘You’d better hope our people get to her before Kessler’s do,’ Trautmann said.
Kessler’s voice reached them on the loudhailer, a tad tinny, as though he’d shrunk to Thumbelina size and was shouting at them from the corner:
‘What the hell was that, Mule? Have you been drinking?’
There were two doorways at either end of the room, both hung with leather straps. An orange glow from the one to Trautmann’s right told him the flames were getting closer and they needed to find a way out.
‘You needn’t think I’m sending anyone in after you!’ said Thumbelina-Kessler.
‘I wish he’d shut up,’ said Fleischer.
‘You know a way out of here?’ Trautmann said.
‘Look, I killed the Meist boy. I admit it. Just leave me here. Makes no difference if the fire gets me or Kessler does.’
‘Rubbish,’ Trautmann said. ‘You no more killed that boy than I did.’ The kommissar moved in closer. ‘Help me get him up, Roth.’
They reached for him, but he shrugged them off.
‘Why does this mean so much to you? You’re so desperate to prove Kessler wrong?’
‘Isn’t that motive enough?’ Roth said.
‘Your niece didn’t kill him either,’ Trautmann said. ‘Whatever foolish notion you have in your head. And think about it for a minute. If Kessler can’t get you for this, who do you think’s going to be number two on his list? Someone who shares your flesh and blood perhaps?’
That did it. Fleischer stood and glanced at the two doorways.
‘We’ll have to go out through the killing shed,’ he said, and headed for the doorway to Trautmann’s left.
Once in the killing shed, the smell of dung came through stronger. The murmurs of confined cattle were much louder, too. Not to mention the crack of hooves and horns against wood.
The electric lights had failed altogether in this shed but daylight shone in through gaps in the walls – and fire crackled around the room’s single opening to the stockyards. Only trouble was, between the three men and their only way out was a funnel created by two stout wooden fences and blocked off by a gate that slid into place from above like a guillotine blade. And the funnel was crammed with cattle.
That gate was the only thing stopping the cattle stampeding through the shed, and it buckled under the panicking press of flesh behind it.
Sweat dribbled down Trautmann’s back and crawled from his underarms like a nest of damp spiders.
‘This the only way out?’ Roth said. ‘Christ, we may as well give ourselves up to Kessler right now.’
Trautmann shushed him, unsure if Roth could hear over the noise of the fire and the livestock. The gate was attached to a chain that ran up through a ring set in a beam in the ceiling and then ran down again. That was how the stock men opened it. Stood to reason it would still work.
‘Help me,’ Trautmann said, heading towards the hanging chain. Whether the others had cottoned on or not, they followed.
They had to cross in front of the gate to get to the chain, though. And as they did so, the gate cracked.
‘Quick!’ Fleischer said, pushing Trautmann out of the way to the tortured sound of splintering wood.
‘What about Roth?’ Trautmann said, his words lost.
He turned back to see the gate smash open under the pressure and cattle burst out of the funnel. He reached for Roth’s outstretched hand to pull him clear. Their fingers touched.
Just as a piece of the gate flew out and knocked Roth on the side of the head. He slipped from Trautmann’s grip and fell beneath the stampede.
Chapter 14
The hooves carried Roth away. Trautmann, unbalanced, took a half step towards the seething cattle, arms still stupidly outstretched.
A tug at Trautmann’s back told him Fleischer was trying to keep him from getting caught under the stampede too. He sagged backwards even as he cursed his cowardice.
He let Fleischer guide him back against the nearest wall, the hoof-churned dust catching the back of his throat. He coughed, and the coughing turned to hacking, then dry heaving from guts that felt like they’d taken a punch.
The last of the cattle bolted through a hole in the shed wall. The sound of the hooves had been so loud he’d not even heard the wood breaking as the herd punched its way through.
But that could have been the tinnitus; it was with him again, swelling now to fill his head. Dizziness made him stumble before Fleischer righted him. The hair smoked on the rumps of the last of the cattle, giving off the smell of roasting shit.
Then the shed was clear of all but the haze of mingled dust and smoke.
A scarecrow-shaped jumble of clothing lay mid-way between Trautmann and the far shed wall. As he noticed it, it moved. He hobbled over to it, pulling Fleischer along.
Roth groaned as they neared. Thank God he was alive, at least. For now.
‘We need to get him out
,’ Trautmann said, his throat so dry it came out as a whisper.
‘Under the arms,’ Fleischer suggested.
They each took hold of an armpit, Trautmann taking the stump side and having to pull on loose clothing. They dragged Roth backwards through the smashed gate and along the fenced-in channel. Roth’s legs bounced on the stony floor and he groaned anew.
Trautmann flinched at each bounce, each one shaking through the tiring muscles in his arms. He was losing his grip on Roth’s clothing.
He wanted to ask Fleischer to stop but his weak voice wouldn’t carry. Besides, they were nearing the exit to the cattle yards now and it was wreathed in flames.
Trautmann refreshed his grip with his left hand but Roth kept slipping. He was paying too close attention to his grip as Fleischer yanked them through the fire. Heat blasted Trautmann’s face, fire burning the hair on his right side. He ignored the pain, crouched low and pulled.
Then, finally, they were through.
Fleischer pushed him to the ground and kicked dust on him. Then he kneeled close and rolled him around. Trautmann didn’t have the strength to stop him – could barely see what was going on through his squinting eyes. His flesh had singed coming through, he knew that. He just didn’t know how bad his burns were.
Fleischer stopped and pulled Trautmann into a sitting position.
‘You ok to drive?’ Fleischer said. ‘I don’t trust my bad arm.’
‘Drive?’
A delivery truck was less than ten metres away and it sounded as though the engine were turning over. Of course, that must be the same truck Trautmann had seen the Schupo pulling the driver from when they’d first arrived.
This close, the truck looked massive, the back doors still hanging open and its ramp still attached for the cattle to walk down. Trautmann wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle it. But what choice did they have?
‘Yes,’ Trautmann spat out dust, and tried not to think about the odds that he’d swallowed some cow dung. ‘I’ll drive. Let’s get Roth on the front seat with us. I don’t want him rolling around in the back.’
They carried Roth into the front and Fleischer got in after him, holding him in place as Trautmann went around to the driver’s side and got in. The keys were in the ignition and the engine was idling, all ready to go.
Berlin Burning Page 5
