‘Report about what?’
The agent pointed to a location on a map and explained there was a letterbox in a wall where no letterbox should rightly be. It was grey in colour, knee-height, virtually invisible unless you knew it was there. All correspondence should be posted in that letterbox.
‘We think it’s a good option for you,’ the agent concluded. ‘Erich Ostwald is close to Vendetta. That’s the information we have. And you already have a place in their community. ’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because we know everything about you. Your activities from three years ago could still bring about charges.’
‘I don’t see how.’
‘Do you want to test me? Or what about your underground trading?’ The policeman looked down at his paperwork. ‘Chocolate, cigarettes, homemade sausages. I bet that’s just the beginning of it. Am I right?’
Yes, there was some truth in it. Sometimes, when money was tight, Arno ran errands for some of the Ringvereine gangs whose members you could recognise by the rings on their fingers and by the broken noses they often sported too. He’d traded imported chocolate and cigarettes once or twice. Occasionally, he took packages of cocaine across the city. He’d even once tried his hand at making homemade bratwurst – which was no less of a disaster than all his friends predicted it would be.
At this point, the ugly bastard opposite opened up a file and took out an envelope. He slid it across the table beneath his palm, in the same arrogant manner he’d slid the money across the table on the train.
Inside was a photograph of Arno’s sister, Käthe, and her husband Thomas. Beneath that was another photograph, this one of Monika.
Arno was incensed. ‘What are these? Where the hell did you get them?’
‘I’m just letting you know that we have all we need. Say that you will help us with Vendetta, and we’ll ensure all your family is safe.’
Arno stood up, ready to lunge across the table. He’d never felt anger explode inside him so quickly. He wanted to smash that row of perfect white teeth to the back of his throat. Yet, as he stood, he felt the force of about ten hands push down on his shoulders, squeezing him back into his chair with a bony thud.
‘The choice is yours,’ the man across the table said calmly. Then, in a turn of phrase that angered Arno even more, he said, ‘You worry too much.’
‘I’ve got every reason to. You’re blackmailing me.’
‘We don’t intend to hurt anyone.’
‘Where’s Monika?’
‘I don’t know. At home? At ballet lessons? How would I know?’
‘She’s disappeared.’
‘Has she now?’ The policeman’s eyes widened. ‘Then you’d better get to work, hadn’t you?’
8
A police motorcar took Arno back to the centre of the city, leaving him on the edges of Potsdamer Platz. He wondered why they couldn’t just take him home – for they must have known where he lived.
The clocks of the city chimed seven in the evening as he made his way back to his apartment building. It had been raining and the city was slick with water, turning every stone surface into a yellow-grey mirror. The water had a sucking quality to it too, so that with every step he took, tiny fountains sprang up from his heels. It made him remember the holes in his shoes, and he expected at any moment to feel his socks turn clammy with wet.
On his cheeks he felt the cool air that follows a downpour. The clouds had passed now, except for a couple of drifting billows that looked like slow-moving battleships slipping out of harbour. It was dark enough for the windows of cafés and restaurants to begin to glow with yellow lamplight, rectangular portals onto intimate scenes, of lovers and families out for dinner.
He was standing on the corner of the square, close to the corner of the Tiergarten park. Water was beginning to tickle his toes. All he wanted to do was to get drunk. He wanted to escape to a bar somewhere. Maybe he could catch a glimpse of those African girls dancing to the rhythm of a high-hat.
On the street, people were everywhere, returning home from work or going out for the night. They huddled in large clusters around the tram stops, waiting for their transport home, or else they streamed out from the steps of the U-Bahn in long ribbons, troubling themselves whether to open or close their umbrellas.
Arno made his way home. Memories of the day’s events jostled in his mind like the crowds around him. He thought about going to one of his favourite haunts, the Hopak Bar, to take his mind off the kaleidoscope of questions. Everyone at the Hopak Bar was a little bit vulgar and a little bit desperate, which suited Arno because he didn’t yet know which way his life was destined. It was the only place where aristocrats and paupers like himself were happy to rub shoulders. Perhaps they thought they might swap places one day. The bar always had a huge bowl of pink punch at the entrance, with lemons and strawberries swimming around on top, and for a few coins you could get a ladle of it decanted into a glass with a paper straw. It was a matter of chance if you got drunk on it or not, depending on the night of the week and which bar-tender had made up the bowl.
He thought about Monika. The question of where she was seemed desperately out of reach. Did the police know something or was it a bluff? He was exhausted and confused. All hope of locating her today had to be laid to rest. And somehow, with that thought, the tangle of worries about her was somehow tamed.
And yet, there was still a part of him that expected her to turn up at any minute. Even after the grave conversation he’d had with the police agent, he still trusted Monika to find her way home. He believed innately that she would shake off whatever forces or bad decisions had overtaken her, and at any moment, he would see her face smiling at him again.
The thought stayed with him through the night. He decided against the Hopak Bar and went directly home instead. He ate beans and bread for dinner and drank two bottles of beer. They were his last bottles. It would soon be time to take the thirty-or-so empties that crowded the corner of his room out to the rubbish bins behind the building. How many trips up and down the stairs would it take to carry them down? That would be an hour of his life he knew he wouldn’t enjoy.
As he sat on his bed, slurping on the rim of the brown beer bottle, he had the idea that when people are feeling content, as a general rule, they don’t tend to question the meaning of their lives. They glide along, thinking that this life is special and god-given and beyond any need for doubt. They see things growing, like trees and flowers, and they think, ‘Yes, this is what life is for. Growth. It is so natural.’
It’s only when things go wrong that they start to worry about the harder problems. It’s only when some injury is sustained that they begin to wonder why they held onto the idea that life is like a flower for so long. It’s not like a flower. It’s more like a bottle of beer, one that starts off tasting sharp and delicious but eventually turns stale and stuffy and flat, and moreover, makes you feel ill afterwards. And the final kick in the teeth, it runs out just when you don’t want it to!
Arno felt proud to be chewing over the harder problems, as if there was something inane and silly to be stuck on the merry-go-round of a happy life. He was involved in Vendetta now. The word was a mystery to him, but still, there was something to be said for being chosen like that. The police wanted him. No-one else. Life wasn’t all bad, he supposed.
He went to bed and took a mental image of Monika with him. Even in the morning it was still there. He couldn’t shake off the idea that she was alone and vulnerable somewhere, just waiting for him to find her. He realised his feelings were not just about her beautiful smile and good grace, nor just about their time in the hotel room together, but were connected to something more fundamental than that. He wondered if he loved her. He’d said the words to her before, but only because she’d said them first. That was the rule, wasn’t it? But if he saw her right now, he would be the first to say them. He wouldn’t hesitate to tell her what he felt.
And then he realised, what a dreadful thin
g it was, to want to say ‘I love you’ to someone who isn’t with you and whom you may never see again.
9
Café Bauer was a Viennese-style coffee house on Friedrichstrasse. It had red velvet chairs and golden columns that reached up to a carved, swirling ceiling. The bust of a Greek youth stood in a scalloped alcove surrounded by large mirrors along the walls that gave the impression of a room two or three times the actual size.
The whole establishment hummed with the clinking of cutlery and polite chit-chat, along with the faint sound of a quartet playing Mozart in some hidden corner. Everyone seemed to be wearing hats, the women especially, some with great fans of white feathers, others with patterns of flower petals embroidered across the front.
Arno was there to meet his sister, Käthe. After the meeting with the police, he wanted to check she was unharmed. And perhaps she might know something too.
Käthe was eight years older than Arno and had, in his opinion, easily succumbed to the good-life that Berlin made available to some. She and her new husband, Thomas, lived in an upmarket apartment on the Kurfürstendamm not far from Berlin Zoo. They dressed well, socialised often, took picnics to the lakes at Wannsee, had even tried their hand at sailing. Of course, they were in love. They had that way about them that newly married couples often do. Somewhat proud of themselves, a touch annoying for everyone else.
Arno passed through a heavy green curtain that opened out onto the main seating area, and as he did, was immediately accosted by the head-waiter who took him by the arm and began to lead him back in the direction of the green curtain. Arno wondered if it was his bent-up shoes or the ragged collar of his shirt that marked him out as an undesirable.
He protested, but the waiter, who had thin pursed lips and pale silvery cheeks, ignored his words and gripped his arm more firmly between his thumb and fingers, saying, ‘Don’t make me call the kitchen boys, they won’t be so gentle.’
Fortunately, Käthe and Thomas were just coming through the green drapes as Arno was being escorted out. And being as Thomas had only a year or two before come into a great deal of money – inherited from a benefactor whom everyone presumed penniless – their presence turned everything on its head. The waiter’s bright blue eyes widened and he began to nervously finger the white napkin at his breast pocket. ‘Come, come,’ he now muttered, leading the group of three back into the café, between the tables and towards a favoured spot beneath the tall windows. Käthe tipped the waiter in a cool, almost invisible gesture, and he left them to settle around the marble-top table.
‘It’s been a long time,’ Thomas was the first to say as they sat down. ‘How have you been, Arno? Not in any trouble I hope.’
Arno slouched back in his chair. He didn’t like Thomas’ directness – nor his astuteness. He’d never been sure of his sister’s choice of husband. The man was too cautious for Arno’s tastes, one of those people who he knew the rights and wrongs of everything, but was to too afraid believe in anything in particular. In Thomas, Arno saw an inverted image of himself.
Or maybe it was because Thomas was so very wealthy. That was also the reverse of Arno’s lot. If he was forced to admit it, he’d have to say he was jealous of his sister and her husband, how they’d had the good fortune of falling into wealth completely out of the blue. When would some of their luck come his way?
‘I’ve been better,’ Arno said. He began scratching the tabletop with his fingernail.
‘Are you working at the moment?’ Käthe asked.
‘I’ve got plenty of options,’ he replied.
Käthe began to remove her gloves, folding them onto the table. Thomas watched on, admiring his wife’s hands as she laid the gloves one on top of the other.
Thomas himself was pleased to be there. Arno was someone he had a great deal of respect for, though he tended to keep that opinion to himself. Arno was carefree and sometimes foolhardy – and he wished he could be like that sometimes.
‘Something will turn up,’ Thomas said, not meaning to sound as condescending as he did. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘Well, I’m still waiting for my luck to change,’ Arno said, adopting the wounded-animal demeanour he often took up when he was with the couple. He almost couldn’t help it. Then he said, ‘Have the police been in contact with you?’ He’d meant to say it with concern for his sister but it came out as a threat.
‘No, why would they have been?’
‘You might be interested to know, I’ve heard that Erich Ostwald is back in the country. In fact, he’s back in Berlin by all accounts. The police are interested in him too, apparently.’
He watched as Käthe and Thomas passed glances between each other.
‘Where did you hear that?’ his sister asked.
Arno hadn’t thought through the conversation and wasn’t sure now how much he should reveal. It suddenly occurred to him that even thinking this way indicated that his work for the police had already begun.
‘He wrote to me,’ he lied.
‘Erich wrote to you?’ Thomas said. Both he and Käthe moved forward a fraction.
‘I got a letter from him two days ago. That’s what I wanted to tell you. He wrote to me, mentioning coming back to Berlin. He said something about wanting to get behind the movement again.’
‘The last I heard, Erich Ostwald was in Spain,’ Thomas said. He was trying his best to keep to a matter-of-fact voice. Hearing that name made him instinctively nervous.
‘Have you got the letter with you?’ Käthe said. ‘Can we see it?’
‘No, I left it at home.’
‘You should have brought it with you.’
‘I’m telling you what was in it. What’s the difference?’
‘What else?’ Thomas said. ‘What else did it say?’
Arno watched as Thomas’ eyes flickered. Was it excitement or alarm that was making them dart like that? The two of them – Erich and Thomas – had been old friends once, that is until the whole anti-Communist stunt put a wedge between them. Thomas had been a pawn in Erich’s game back then. He’d wanted Thomas to play a role in the stunt, but Thomas didn’t fall into line. Now the friendship had faded to nothing.
‘I wonder if he’ll try to find me?’ Thomas said, turning to Käthe. There was both hope and dread in his tone. Hearing Erich’s name still stirred in him a curious, slow-moving panic. He knew that his old friend had spent at least two years in Spain. Beyond that, the details were hazy. The letters he wrote said he’d been in the city of Zaragoza, where he’d apparently joined a military academy. He wrote of ‘Pressures growing in America’ and ‘Market troubles that could really destroy our great country if we don’t protect it.’
Erich’s words had proved prophetic. Since then, the stock markets in the U.S. had nose-dived and the waves that came rippling over the Atlantic were like great tsunamis. Factories closed one after another. Government workers were laid-off in droves. You could hardly walk into a shop with being accosted by a malnourished beggar.
All these were signs that Berlin was morphing into a more dangerous city. The sight of columns of men marching to the clash of cymbals or the singing “Raise the Flag” was all too common an appearance. Thomas himself had run into one such gang on the Leipzigerstrasse one night, when a bunch of thugs began smashing the windows of Jewish shops and intimidating anyone passing-by. Thomas crossed the street to avoid the melee, but a couple of the brown-shirted roughs split from the crowd and followed him. They waved leaflets in his face; when he refused to take one, they grabbed him beneath the arms and began stuffing fistfuls of paper into his coat. One of them slapped his cheek, then left him in the road by tripping him over and pushing him onto the ground. Thomas felt like he got off lightly.
And now! Was Erich Ostwald really back in Berlin to join the fray? Could he really be only a step away? The idea that he might run into him on any street corner concerned him far more than a group of sabre-rattling bullies.
‘I sincerely hope he doesn’t try to find you,’ Käthe
replied.
Thomas nodded. ‘He doesn’t know where we live, so that reduces the chances, by a little anyway.’
‘Not unless Arno has told him.’ She looked at her brother. ‘Have you told him where we live?’
‘No. I haven’t said anything. There was no address to reply to, anyway.’
‘Did it say anything else? This letter? Why exactly was he writing to you?’
Arno stumbled through his thoughts. ‘I don’t know. He was letting me know, I suppose, that he’s back in Germany.’
‘Does he want you to do something for him? What was that part about getting behind the movement again? What did he mean?’
‘You know, the Nazis. They plan to overturn the current situation. There are a lot of people who hate the system as it stands.’ As he spoke, Arno sensed he was gaining their attention. ‘In fact, there are lots of people who hate Berlin as it stands. They think they’ve suffered enough. The Nazis intend to do something about it.’
At this point, the waiter returned to the table to take an order. Knowing Thomas would pay, Arno had no hesitation in ordering a double cognac with ice, which was more or less the most costly thing on the menu. Thomas ordered a coffee; Käthe a sweet wine.
‘Will you be eating?’ the waiter asked.
‘Liver and mushroom pâté,’ Arno said quickly. The other two shook their heads.
‘Please tell me you’re not still involved,’ Käthe said. ‘I mean, with all that hateful politics?’
‘It’s all around us. It would irresponsible not to be involved.’
Käthe shook her head, maddened. ‘But are you active? Like you used to be?’
‘Me? Not any more. I’ve moved on in my life. I wouldn’t be telling you about Erich’s letter if I was, would I?’
‘I’ll never forget what you said. About the Communists and the Jews. I’ll never forget that.’
Vanished in Berlin: Kidnap suspense mystery set in 1930s Berlin (Berlin Tales Book 2) Page 5