A faithful soldier, without fear . . . The song was blaring from the loudspeaker as they left the bar. He led her through the night-time streets as if he had a destination in mind which, to his surprise, he did: Paul’s office on Sudermanstrasse, which he entered with the lockpick that Bruno Wolter had taught him how to use.
What an arsehole! Breaking into his best friend’s wine store because he and some girl he’d picked up needed a place for the night. At least he’d had the good sense not to call on his parents. He squinted across at the make-up smeared face. She wasn’t bad looking, the type he always went for when he was drunk.
His socks and shoes lay beside him, but he needed longer to find the rest. At first, all he could lay his hands on was her outfit: short red trousers with big black buttons, full length black knitted stockings and white gloves. With each item a new memory arrived. How he had taken off her trousers and stockings, and more besides – after opening one of Paul’s cases and helping himself to a bottle of red wine. God, he had been out of control! They had taken it in turns to swig from the bottle, kissing, pawing and stripping one another as they went. Her giggling hadn’t stopped him, even though giggling was something he really couldn’t stand.
His trousers were under the sofa behind the black cardboard ears. His shirt was there too. Jacket and overcoat lay beneath the desk, which left only the fake moustache-and-glasses combo from Tietz. The sofa yawned softly and he turned around. Two bleary eyes squinted at him.
‘Good morning,’ he said.
‘You’re up early.’
‘I didn’t want to wake you.’ He couldn’t remember her name, and where was that goddamn false nose? He looked behind the desk and underneath the chair.
‘Looking for this?’ She pulled it out from beneath the cover. The wire rim was bent out of shape. He put it in his pocket. The girl seemed to find the whole business a good deal less embarrassing.
He threw the black stockings and Mickey Mouse outfit onto the sofa. ‘Get dressed,’ he said. ‘The cleaning lady will be here soon.’
‘No breakfast?’
‘Not here.’
He turned his back, a slave to his Catholic upbringing and afraid he’d give the wrong impression if he got an erection.
She looked around. ‘Is this your office? Are you a wine merchant?’
‘Something like that.’
When she was dressed, he led her through the store onto the road, letting the door click shut. Hilde, he remembered now, Wilde Hilde. Not even that had deterred him.
It looked as if a bomb had gone off on Eigelstein. The street cleaners hadn’t cleared the paper, broken glass or other rubbish, let alone the less appetising deposits. He led her to a little cafe on the Hansaring.
‘Let me order,’ she said. ‘I know a good hangover cure.’
‘Who said anything about a hangover?’ Rath asked, making such a pained face that she laughed out loud before going to the counter, then the toilet.
Rath lit an Overstolz and hoped in vain that she would slip out through the rear exit. By the time Wilde Hilde returned the waiter had set down two glasses of a brown, fizzy liquid.
‘What’s this?’ Rath asked. The smudged make-up was gone; Hilde had pencilled over her eyebrows and applied fresh lipstick, an ordinary civilian once more.
‘Try it.’ The drink was ice-cold, and tasted sweet as lemonade, only better. ‘So?’
‘It’s good,’ he said.
‘It’s called Afri-Cola.’
‘Are they paying you for this?’
‘Something like that.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘I work at their offices.’
‘Where?’
‘Blumhoffer in Braunsfeld.’
She smoked Juno, the same brand as Charly. He made his excuses and went to the toilet, running the cold tap and silently cursing his reflection. At least he recognised it: unshaven, hair tousled, dressed for carnival, otherwise presentable. No worse than most Cologners the day after Rosenmontag. He splashed cold water on his face and ran his hands through his hair. He felt better already; this Afri-Cola stuff seemed to work.
Back in the cafe, he ordered two more Afri-Cola and sat with Hilde for a final cigarette. At some point she asked about the scar on his shoulder and he let her believe it was a relic from the war. After placing a five-mark note on the table, he gave her a kiss on the cheek. ‘Sorry, but I have to . . .’
‘Will we see each other again?’
He shrugged and went on his way.
Outside, on the Ring, he made for the telephone booth by the tram stop on Platz der Republik, within sight of the Eigelstein gate, and called Paul. He let it ring for a long time, but no one picked up. You should have left a note, he thought, but it was too late now. He bought a ticket and the morning paper and climbed aboard the next tram. He had to go home to his parents, shower and put on fresh clothes. Then shoot himself.
He boarded the number sixteen tram and opened the paper. It was one of LeClerk’s, the man who’d forced him out of Cologne four years ago. Assassin, the press had dubbed him for days and weeks, Officer Trigger-happy. Now Berlin was where he belonged, with Charly, not in Cologne. This city was drunk on itself; it could stick its ridiculous excesses. The headline jolted him instantly awake.
Reichstag in Flammen. Holländischer Kommunist verhaftet. Reichstag in flames. Dutch Communist arrested.
Was the Red Front finally hitting back at the Nazis? He leafed through the paper, reading everything he could find on the story, almost forgetting to change to the twenty-one at Barbarossaplatz. Most Cologners were busy dealing with the aftermath of Rosenmontag, and perhaps they were right. What did they care what these idiots in Berlin were up to? Communists, Nazis, it was all the same – even if the danger of civil war had never been greater than since the brownshirts installed their Chancellor. Did this, now, mark the start? Surely not; the Communists in Berlin were braggarts who favoured words over actions.
Adenauer had said: Hitler should have been countered with force a year ago. It’s too late now. Was it really? Wasn’t there an election on Sunday? Germany had been transformed into a madhouse in the last two or three years, but Nazi support was on the wane. A little patience and normality would soon be restored.
He alighted the tram on Luxemburger Strasse. The smell of roast meat wafted through the hall as Frieda opened the heavy front door. In the Rath household, lunch was taken at twelve thirty whether or not the world outside was coming to an end.
‘Herr Rath!’ The girl regarded him wide-eyed. ‘We’ve been looking for you everywhere.’
12
The corridors of the Wittenauer Sanatorium smelled of cabbage and bratwurst. Charly’s stomach rumbled as she hurried along the shiny corridor, trying her best to keep up with Charge Sister Ingeborg. After Böhm’s call she hadn’t hesitated, had dropped everything and headed back to Reinickendorf, alone this time.
‘You’re going back?’ Karin asked, wide-eyed. ‘Why?’
‘Because the girl we questioned yesterday escaped last night.’
‘So what? That’s up to Homicide to investigate.’
That was true, but Charly wanted to know what had happened in Dalldorf. ‘Hold the fort,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back in two hours.’
On the way she had stopped by the Reichstag to see how it looked in daylight. The smell of burning still filled the air, and the kitsch glass dome was reduced to a sooty steel skeleton. She doubted whether the Communists were responsible for the arson, as the papers claimed, but hadn’t said anything at the office, revealing neither where she’d been last night, nor her reservations about the arsonist’s identity. Why should the Communists dredge up some Dutch comrade, then ask that he, of all people, set fire to Parliament? If they really wanted to go for the Nazis, why not hit the SA Sturmlokale found all over the city? Or the Reich Chancellery itself? Or, for that matter, the Interior Ministry, where Göring was doing his best to turn the Prussian Police into a political brute squad?
Only two weeks earlier he h
ad decreed that enemies of the state should be ruthlessly gunned down. In other words, the Communists. And Thälmann’s men were supposed to have set fire to the Reichstag now, giving Göring the ideal pretext for even more stringent measures?
Cui bono? Who stands to gain? Once the question was asked, there was only one answer: the one Greta had given instinctively when they passed the Kroll Opera House and realised what was happening. ‘It was the Nazis.’
Remembering brought tears to Charly’s eyes. The Reichstag had been the symbol of the German Republic but the Nazis called it Schwatzbude, talking shop. They had filled more and more seats in the place, until November last year when, for the first time, they’d lost votes, two million in all. Charly hoped the downward trend would continue on Sunday. At some point Germany must come to its senses.
With the help of her CID identification, she and Greta had bypassed the police blockade with Kirie, spying Hitler himself from a distance as he arrived with Goebbels. The pair looked more like gangsters than statesmen. She hadn’t seen fattie Göring, but he had been there too according to Gereon’s journalist friend Berthold Weinert, whom they met at the southern entrance and accompanied to an automat. It had been a long night.
Now Charge Sister Ingeborg was talking about the fire and, for a moment, Charly thought she was trying to pin the blame on Hannah Singer. That was impossible, however. At half past nine the girl had still been strapped to her bed. The last inspection had taken place at eleven, and the alarm raised at half past midnight.
The door hung on its hinges; the glass of the viewing window was shattered, the bolt wrenched from its moorings. It looked like the work of a crazed gorilla, not a sixteen-year-old girl.
‘Here it is,’ Charge Sister Ingeborg said, regarding Charly with disdain. It’s your fault that brat broke out, her gaze told her, if you hadn’t shown up, we’d have been spared all this!
‘Thank you, Sister, that will be all.’
The charge sister turned on her heels and clattered down the corridor.
Charly almost stepped in the pool of blood on the floor. The trail led from the door to the bed, where a man was examining the buckles on the leather straps. ‘The work of the great Houdini?’ she asked.
‘Charly!’ Reinhold Gräf said. ‘Did Böhm send you?’
‘Something like that.’
‘You’re starting to sound like Gereon Rath.’
‘Is that a compliment?’
‘You ought to know. You’re the one marrying him.’ Reinhold had put up with a lot down the years, but he and Gereon were still good friends. ‘The great Houdini indeed . . . At any rate the girl picked the lock. And then . . .’ He gestured towards the door. ‘Then she must have kicked in the door and taken the fire escape.’
‘You think Hannah Singer did this? Have you seen her? Hercules she is not.’
‘You wouldn’t believe what crazy people are capable of.’ Then he asked the same question as Böhm. ‘Why did she run? Do you think it could be linked to your interrogation?’
‘Looks that way. As if I frightened her, but I wouldn’t know how.’
‘Wosniak’s death?’
‘She hardly reacted to his photo, but I think she recognised him. Not that she said anything during the interrogation, just sat there. Until I showed her the image of her father. She flipped as soon as the sister tried to reclaim it.’
‘Sounds crazy, but that’s what she is, and an arsonist to boot.’
‘At least she can’t set fire to the Reichstag. How hard can it be to find a girl running around in a hospital nightshirt in winter?’
‘There are more dangerous arsonists out there.’ All of a sudden Gräf was serious. ‘The police are finally taking action against the Reds.’
‘You really think the Communists are responsible?’
‘Who else?’
Charly didn’t say what she was thinking. ‘Perhaps this Dutchman they picked up is the crazy one.’
‘You shouldn’t play down the Communist threat. Germany’s future is at stake. We can’t just stand idly by and watch.’
‘You’re right,’ Charly said, knowing Reinhold had a different kind of political engagement in mind. Suddenly she felt sad; Reinhold had once been her favourite colleague. ‘Anyway, let’s get down to it, start looking for clues.’
Gräf gave a sour smile. ‘The blood in the corridor had already been wiped by the time I arrived. I just about managed to prevent the cleaning lady from tackling the room.’
‘Cleaning is our national obsession.’
‘At least she could still tell me where it’d been.’
‘Let me guess: the trail led from Hannah’s room to the fire escape. I don’t understand.’
‘What don’t you understand?’
‘The tracks in the room.’ She gestured towards the bed and surrounding floor. ‘Why is there blood everywhere if she only injured herself on the door?’
‘Maybe she went back to pick something up.’
Suddenly Charge Sister Ingeborg stood in the doorframe. ‘Excuse me.’ The sister looked at Gräf, Charly being unworthy of her gaze. ‘But . . . we found something. The cleaning lady . . .’
Moments later they stood in a small, windowless room which held bucket, broom, scrubbing brush and all kinds of cleaning agents, with a small, wiry woman in an overall.
‘This is Frau Blaschke,’ Charge Sister Ingeborg said. ‘Show the inspector what you found.’
‘Detective,’ Gräf corrected.
The cleaning lady reached behind her back as if she were holding a surprise present. A bloody, oblong shard of glass. The butt end was bound with tape and looked like a knife handle. ‘Herr Gräf . . .’
‘Detective Gräf,’ Charge Sister Ingeborg said.
‘Right. Detective Gräf says I should stop cleaning, so I take my things back. And then I find this here, on the floor.’ She pointed towards a dark corner near the door.
Charly took the glass knife from her. ‘Have you ever taken blood from Hannah Singer?’
‘Of course.’ Like Frau Blaschke, Charge Sister Ingeborg was confused that a female officer should be in charge.
‘Then you’ll know her blood group.’
‘It’s in the patient file.’
‘Then let’s get the knife to the lab so we can determine the blood group and compare it with the tracks on the floor. I bet they’re identical, and that they don’t match Hannah Singer’s.’
Gräf nodded thoughtfully. He understood what Charly was getting at.
‘That’s . . . I don’t believe it!’ The cleaning lady stood at a hat and coat rail with two overalls on it, exactly the same as hers.
‘What is it, Frau Blaschke?’ Charge Sister Ingeborg asked.
‘I’ve only just realised, but . . . the overalls. Half of them are gone. They only came back from Laundry yesterday.’
13
They really had been looking for him everywhere. Rath didn’t find out why until after lunch, during which, apart from grace, not a word was spoken. Engelbert Rath said nothing over the soup, nothing over the meat course and nothing over dessert. His father was a master when it came to the silent treatment, instilling guilt feelings in Gereon from a young age. Somehow this silence and its accompanying gaze of disappointed indifference worked on him still. How, he wondered irritatedly, was it possible to see through a man yet remain so utterly in his thrall?
Lunch over, he was called into the study, where in bygone days Engelbert Rath had presided over his children’s misdemeanours like almighty God. Even now it was clear he was brooding over his wayward third son. He skimmed through his papers, stacked them neatly together and shifted them around a huge desk.
Rath still felt hungover, though his symptoms were mainly psychological. The shower had helped with the physical side, but his guilty conscience was harder to shift. At last his father broke the silence. ‘You didn’t stay on the balcony for long yesterday.’
Engelbert Rath didn’t come at you with questions, but state
ments and accusations.
‘I had an invite from Paul Wittkamp. Like I told you.’
‘You had an invite from the mayor too.’
‘I came, didn’t I?’
‘You disappeared after ten minutes.’
‘Half an hour. I didn’t ask to parade around with the big shots on the town hall balcony.’
‘Konrad and I were doing you a favour.’
‘Thank you.’
‘There’s no need for sarcasm. Are you one of those who refuse to acknowledge our mayor since the Nazis started agitating against him?’
‘He isn’t my mayor.’
‘You know what I mean. Are you avoiding him because it’s politically opportune?’
‘Political opportunism is more your domain. I already know how it feels to have your friends desert you overnight.’ Rath lit an Overstolz, knowing his father would hate it. ‘Konrad Adenauer isn’t my friend. He’s yours. Don’t take it out on me if your cabal is vanishing into thin air. You backed the wrong horse. The Centrists are out. You’d have been better off with the Nazis.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this from my own son. Konrad Adenauer is my friend and, precisely because he is having a rough time politically, I took the opportunity to stand by his side. I’d have welcomed you being man enough to do the same.’
‘I wanted to enjoy Carnival, not play at politics.’
‘Politics happens whether you like it or not. We need to ensure it’s conducted by the right people.’
‘I’m a police officer.’
Engelbert Rath slammed his fist against the paper on his desk. ‘What do you think this is? The Reichstag on fire. Politics! As well as being a police investigation.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Berlin called. Several times.’
‘Police headquarters?’
‘Who else? Heinz Rühmann? Of course it was headquarters.’
‘They do realise yesterday was Rosenmontag?’
‘What does that matter? What matters is that someone wishes to speak to my son on police business, and no one has the faintest idea where he is.’
The March Fallen Page 6
