‘Or stolen from the enemy, that sort of thing happened too. Although a dagger with a triangular cross-section was rare, it wouldn’t have been the only one. For the time being I have concentrated our inquiries on Heinrich Wosniak’s unit, the First Guards Reserve Infantry Regiment. Perhaps we’ll learn more if we can track down one of his old comrades.’
‘Thank you, Inspector Rath,’ said Gennat. A ‘thank you’ from Böhm was unthinkable. ‘Given the degree of uncertainty, I think it would now be appropriate to appeal to the press for witnesses.’
Böhm seemed to hold Rath personally responsible for his defeat. ‘You heard Superintendent Gennat,’ he shouted, ten minutes later when they had retired to his office. ‘Now get the ball rolling.’
‘Me?’
‘It’s thanks to you we’re in this position. If you’d made a little more progress on the murder weapon, we wouldn’t have to bother.’
‘I don’t understand your aversion to launching an appeal, Sir. The public has helped get many an investigation back on track.’
‘First, who said anything about my investigation not being on track? Second, you know perfectly well that for every reliable witness another twenty unreliable ones crawl out of the woodwork, and that’s not counting the busybodies.’
‘I . . .’ Rath didn’t get a chance to finish. There was a loud knock and, before anyone could say ‘come in’, two SA men wearing auxiliary police brassards appeared in the doorway. Behind them, Böhm’s secretary, Margot Ahrens, gestured apologetically.
‘I’m sorry, Sir, but the gentlemen wouldn’t take no for an answer.’
Böhm leaped from his chair. ‘How dare you?’ he thundered. ‘You’re interrupting an official conversation.’
The brownshirts were unimpressed. ‘Detective Chief Inspector Böhm?’ the smaller one asked. Böhm nodded. ‘The commissioner would like to see you.’
‘Fine. Tell Herr von Levetzow I’ll come and find him as soon as our meeting is over. In future, a simple telephone call will suffice, especially when we need every available man.’
‘You don’t understand. We have orders to bring you to the commissioner. Now get your jacket and come with us.’
‘I beg your pardon!’
‘The police commissioner would like to see you. Now.’
‘You hangers-on would be better off doing as you’re told,’ the second SA man said. ‘You’re finished here.’
For a moment Böhm was speechless, then it all came out. ‘You’ve some nerve, speaking to me like that. You’re an auxiliary officer! How dare you take that tone with a Prussian police officer?’
‘Prussian police officer? Let’s see about that,’ the small man said. ‘You are guilty of multiple breaches of duty, and . . .’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Now come with us.’ The SA man placed his hand on Böhm’s shoulder.
Böhm looked at the hand as if it were an insect to brush away. He opened his mouth but said nothing, halting in the doorway to address his secretary, who didn’t know where to look for embarrassment.
‘I’ll be right back, Fräulein Ahrens, it’ll be fine. Go and take your break.’ He looked at Rath and shook his head before following the uniformed officers through the outer office into the corridor.
Margot Ahrens stared at the door as it shut behind them. She uttered a brief cry of horror, more like a sob, and held her hand in front of her mouth. She looked at Rath wide-eyed, and when all he could do was shrug, she took her coat from the hook and ran outside.
21
The fourth years seemed to sense he was distracted. Entering the room like an absent-minded professor, he took the wrong textbook from his bag and almost returned the seventh year essays, two whole lessons early. The article in the morning paper had startled him. Heinrich Wosniak. How long had it been since he’d heard the name?
Linus Meifert had settled into a modest existence as a senior teacher and tried not to think of that time any longer, at least not during the day. Nights were different. Time and again he wakened drenched in sweat.
By now such dreams were his only remaining link to the war, and he was proud to live a normal life as a respected, if slightly dotty, senior teacher in Potsdam. How many others had been unable to return, had joined volunteer corps, turned to crime or landed in the gutter like Wosniak?
The class was staring at him expectantly. No giggling, like in the girls’ lycée years ago. The boys were too disciplined for that. Even so, they were waiting for him to drop his next clanger.
He cleared his throat. ‘Right then, let’s recap. How do I define a parallelogram? Wosniak!’
No response. No one stood up. Astonished faces.
‘There’s no Wosniak here, Sir.’
Concentrate, damn it!
‘Pardon? No, of course not. So. The definition of a parallelogram. We had it last week. Vogelsang, answer when I call your name!’
Vogelsang stood up straight as if on the parade ground and, for a moment, it seemed as if he might protest against the injustice, but decided against it. That was why Meifert had chosen him. Vogelsang always complied.
‘A parallelogram is a quadrilateral in which the opposing sides are equal,’ he said dutifully.
‘Good! Sit down. Why didn’t you respond straight away?’ Vogelsang furrowed his brow. ‘Today we are going to practise what we have learned. Open your books and turn to page forty seven.’
‘Which exercise, Sir?’
‘I just said. Page forty seven. The whole page.’
The boys obeyed with a collective groan. While the lower third completed a page of algebra, Meifert made himself comfortable behind his desk. Could he really be in danger?
The article didn’t mention when Wosniak had died, or why. Only a handful of men knew what had happened on the Western Front, most of whom were long in the ground. Meifert had never breathed a word about it and didn’t intend to. After all these years it was the events of March 1917 that still haunted his dreams.
22
Rath sat on Böhm’s visitor’s chair and gazed blankly at the Hindenburg portrait on the wall. In his long years of service he had witnessed many summonings by top brass. Usually it was a bad sign. Even so, he had never seen anyone being led away as Böhm had been moments before. Still, his sympathy was limited.
How many times had he been called to make his report by Böhm? Now the boot was on the other foot. Multiple breaches of duty . . . It seemed the punctilious detective chief inspector, who demanded even greater punctiliousness from his men, had finally rubbed someone up the wrong way. Rath wondered what Charly would say. He’d never understood why she set such great store by the grumpy so-and-so in the first place.
The telephone rang in Böhm’s outer office, an internal call. He went through and picked up. Perhaps it would be Gennat, calling to re-assign the Wosniak investigation.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Böhm’s office. Inspector Rath speaking.’
‘Porter here. Brettschneider. We have someone here requesting to speak with DCI Böhm urgently.’
‘He isn’t here.’
‘Can I send him up anyway?’
‘I don’t know when he’ll be back. Tell your man to make an appointment.’
‘He claims the matter is urgent and brooks no delay. It concerns the dead homeless man.’
The receiver clicked, and Rath heard a clipped but pleasantly warm voice. ‘Von Roddeck here. With whom am I speaking, please?’
‘Detective Inspector Rath. Detective Chief Inspector Böhm is currently unavailable. What is it that’s so urgent?’
‘It concerns the case in today’s paper. The dead homeless man. The pigeon droppings and . . .’
‘If you wish to make a complaint, I must ask you to do so in writing.’
‘No, no, I don’t wish to make a complaint. Perhaps I can be of assistance.’
‘You were a witness?’
‘No, but I knew Heinrich Wosniak.’
The man on the telephone didn’t sou
nd as if he moved in homeless circles. As for his name . . . ‘Do you think you could identify Wosniak? He’s still at the morgue.’
‘It was a long time ago, but I think so.’
Rath led Achim von Roddeck to his own office to avoid an ill-tempered Wilhelm Böhm bursting in on their conversation following his return from the police commissioner.
Baron Achim von Roddeck, to give him his full title, and that wasn’t the half of it. Achim Friedrich Wilhelm Albrecht Achilles . . . Rath stopped listening after the fifth name. The man had actually pushed his passport across the table when asked for his personal particulars, as if it were important that he be formally identified. Rath handed the passport to Erika Voss, who was on shorthand duty.
The first thing he noticed about the man was his immaculate wardrobe. It wasn’t just the suit or coat and hat that he hung on the stand next to the door; his gloves looked tailor-made, and his brightly polished shoes. His ash blond hair – more ash than blond – was perfectly parted, albeit rather thin. The man looked like a yellowing portrait of his own youth. Even so, he could still turn heads, Rath could tell as much from his secretary’s reaction.
‘May I?’ Achim von Roddeck asked. He smoked Manoli and his cigarette case was silver and decorated with a coat of arms. Rath pushed the ashtray across the table and produced a light. The baron made no move to offer one of his cigarettes, so Rath fished his own, unadorned, case from his jacket. Overstolz, a price tier below Manoli. Roddeck inhaled deeply. No doubt he was nervous. He shivered as he clapped the cigarette case shut and returned it to his pocket. The coat of arms on the silver lid showed an axe, crossed with a sword, as well as a few other symbols that Rath couldn’t identify.
‘You knew Heinrich Wosniak?’ he began. Roddeck nodded. Rath gestured towards Erika Voss. ‘Please answer yes or no, for the record.’
‘Yes, I knew him,’ Roddeck said. The shorthand pencil scratched across the page.
‘I would ask that you identify the body.’
‘Gladly, though I’m surprised it’s taken this long.’
‘We’ve been unable to trace any friends or relatives. We have the name from his old service record, which he was carrying in his coat.’
‘That sounds like him.’ Von Roddeck appeared almost moved, to the extent that any Prussian indulged in such sentimentality. He drew on his cigarette before continuing. ‘We stood together in the trenches on the Western Front.’
Rath leafed through the file and opened the worn service record. ‘In the First Guards Reserve Infantry Regiment.’
‘I served as a lieutenant, and Heinrich was my orderly. A good man. That he should have died this way . . .’ Roddeck shook his head. ‘Homeless, you say?’
‘You say.’
‘Well, that’s what it said in the paper. As if it were a disgrace. As if it were pointless even investigating his death. Damn hacks! The man risked his neck fighting for the likes of them.’
Roddeck’s outrage appeared genuine. All too frequently, would-be soldiers gave voice to their patriotism without having served, without knowing what they were talking about. Achim von Roddeck seemed to know.
‘I intend to publish my war memoirs,’ he continued.
‘Like Remarque?’
‘Nothing like Remarque!’ Roddeck practically hissed in response. ‘Märzgefallene won’t drag the name of German soldiers through the mire. On the contrary, it will show that the blame for the Fatherland’s defeat lies squarely with those who should never have been allowed to wear the officer’s uniform in the first place.’
‘Märzgefallene?’ The March Fallen.
‘The title of my novel. Pre-printing begins in the Kreuzzeitung in less than two weeks, and the work will be published by Nibelungen in May.’
The baron was starting to grate. So, he had written a book . . . ‘Why are you telling me this? Are you hoping to gain a new reader?’
‘I fear my novel has someone running scared. Someone whom I thought long dead.’
‘Come again?’
Roddeck fetched a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket. ‘Read this. I found it in my mailbox two weeks ago, days after the pre-printing of Märzgefallene was announced.’
Rath skimmed the document, which looked like a blackmail letter, typewritten, and in block capitals.
THERE ARE THINGS IT PAYS TO BE SILENT ABOUT. EVEN TODAY ALBERICH CAN STILL BE DEADLY!
‘I thought it was a bad joke, but it seems he has made good on his threat.’
‘Alberich? Like the dwarf? Strange name.’
‘A code name.’
‘Of course . . .’
‘You’re aware of Operation Alberich?’ Roddeck asked.
‘1917. The retreat to the Siegfried Line.’
Achim von Roddeck gave a nod of acknowledgement. ‘You served, didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t make it to the Front,’ Rath replied. ‘A few months too young.’ He shrugged guiltily, an involuntary reaction. He had no call to apologise for being spared the carnage, for having seen out the end of the war in the rear, where, in anticipation of imminent death, he and his comrades had lived each day as if it were their last.
‘I was part of it. We evacuated the territory, mined the streets, destroyed the railways, booby-trapped abandoned villages, poisoned wells, you name it. Nothing glorious about it, but that’s war. We did what was necessary.’
Rath silently disagreed. Operation Alberich was a masterfully conceived manoeuvre, but the way the troops had devastated the abandoned territory, leaving it littered with dead, was a matter of national shame. It was one of the many wartime episodes that had shaken his naive belief in the heroism of hand-to-hand combat, which had been drummed into him since his schooldays.
‘Since he called himself Alberich, I thought it might be one of my ex-comrades playing me for a fool,’ Roddeck said. Rath and Erika Voss waited for a name. ‘All these years I thought he was dead. We all did. But he’s alive. No doubt about it, and he killed my faithful Heinrich.’
‘Who did, Herr von Roddeck?’
Achim von Roddeck drew on his cigarette and Erika Voss rolled her eyes. ‘His name is Benjamin Engel. He was a captain on the Western Front.’
At last Erika Voss’s pencil scratched across the page.
What he served up next was hard for Rath to digest: a convoluted account of the exploits of one Captain Engel, who had stood out for his cruelty during the retreat, and had incited his unit to conceal a gold strike, murdering three people when the episode threatened to come to light. Two minors – French civilians – and a German recruit.
‘You covered it up all these years?’
‘Engel fell the day after the murders, or so we thought. Why drag the German army’s good name through the mire?’
We. ‘There were other witnesses?’
‘Heinrich Wosniak was one.’
‘You think this Captain Engel is still alive, and trying to prevent the publication of your novel, which tells precisely this story . . .’
‘Correct.’
‘Then why did he murder your orderly, if you and your novel are the threat?’
‘My death wouldn’t have prevented its release! Wosniak’s murder was a sign that Engel means business. Isn’t that obvious?’
‘This Captain Engel of yours killed, to give you a sign?’
‘Engel stopped at nothing during the war. Todesengel, we called him. Angel of Death. When I remember how cold-bloodedly he murdered those children, and Wegener, the youthful recruit . . .’
Despite finding the whole thing fanciful, Rath had Erika Voss note all the names. Not only was Heinrich Wosniak dead, he had met with a violent end. Exactly how violent, Rath would soon see for himself. His body had been on display in the morgue for some days, standard procedure for those whose identity was unconfirmed.
‘I have a gentleman here who knew Heinrich Wosniak from the war,’ Rath explained to the porter. Moments later he and Roddeck stood before the thick glass pane that separated the chilled corps
es from onlookers. The showroom was stiller even than a church; the dead demanded respect, or perhaps it was the attendance of Death that made the living fall silent.
Wosniak’s corpse was laid at a slight angle so that visitors could examine his face.
Rath couldn’t work out the man standing next to him. Was Achim von Roddeck a serious witness or just another busybody, the sort who appeared without fail at headquarters following a newspaper appeal?
Roddeck looked at the body carefully. ‘My God, how old his face has grown, and such horrific scars.’
‘Burns,’ explained Rath, who had only seen photos until now. ‘Wosniak survived a fire about a year ago. The shack he shared with various others was burned down.’
Roddeck shook his head. ‘A man survives a war for this.’
‘You can identify him then?’
‘Yes, that’s my faithful Heinrich. You really haven’t traced any next of kin?’
‘But for the service record in his coat we wouldn’t even have his name. Nickname was a different matter. Kartoffel.’
‘Kartoffel!’ Roddeck shook his head. ‘It’s a disgrace the way our Fatherland has treated its most loyal sons!’ He sounded as if he weren’t just speaking for poor disenfranchised souls like Heinrich Wosniak, but men such as himself. He looked at his silver fob watch.
‘Inspector, do you still need me? I have an urgent meeting with my publisher and the editor of the Kreuzzeitung.’
Rath pricked up his ears. ‘You’re thinking of pulling the release?’
‘Absolutely not! I’ve given my word. A German officer does not submit to threats.’
‘Especially when he doesn’t stand to come to harm himself.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘This mysterious captain hasn’t ruined your life but that of your orderly. You told me yourself, your own death won’t prevent the novel being printed.’
‘Nothing will prevent my novel being printed!’ Achim von Roddeck flashed his eyes at Rath, a look that Kaiser Wilhelm had once made popular. ‘Do you sincerely believe my life isn’t in danger?’ He gestured towards the deceased Wosniak. ‘Is that not proof enough of the seriousness of Engel’s threats?’
The March Fallen Page 10
