The Silent Death

by volker Kutscher

  ‘No, but I did. Go to the canteen and take your morning break. What floor does this Fastré live on?’

  ‘You can find that out for yourself.’ Before Rath could reply, the car screeched away. He jumped back, to make sure the rear mudguard didn’t graze him.

  ‘What an arsehole!’

  ‘You could have been a little more diplomatic,’ said Lange.

  The actress’s name wasn’t amongst those on the mailboxes. They had to ask the caretaker. ‘Vanhaelen, second floor,’ he said. ‘Are the cops asking for her on the hour now?’

  ‘Do you have a key to the flat?’

  ‘Why?’ The accent was local.

  ‘So I can pick your nose with it. Why do you think?’

  ‘You are obliged to assist police in such matters,’ Lange said. ‘Or risk prosecution.’

  The caretaker mumbled something that sounded like ‘give me a moment,’ before disappearing into the flat.

  ‘Sir, I don’t want to interfere,’ Lange said while the man was away, ‘but if you can’t shake off your bad mood, perhaps you should leave the talking to me.’

  Rath couldn’t help but grin. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ He thanked the caretaker politely when he returned with the keys. The man gazed after them with a shake of the head as they climbed the steps.

  It wasn’t until they reached the stairwell on the third floor that they heard the dog, not just barking but yelping and whimpering. As they approached it began to scratch from the inside. Vanhaelen, it said next to the door. That was all.

  ‘Do you know anything about dogs?’ Rath asked. Lange shook his head.

  The scraping increased as the key turned in the lock.

  ‘I was, more or less, raised in a dog pound,’ Rath said, as he unlocked the door. ‘My father has had German shepherds ever since I can remember.’

  ‘I’ve got two cats at home,’ said Lange.

  ‘Then just pray you don’t smell too strongly of them, and that the dog behind that door isn’t too big.’ Lange swallowed and reached for his service weapon. ‘Don’t start spraying bullets everywhere,’ Rath said. ‘Leave the beast to me.’

  With that he opened the door, slowly and carefully. Lange followed and the barking grew louder until it was replaced by a low but menacing growl. Lange started, but the attack didn’t materialise.

  Rath opened the door completely, revealing the author of these menacing sounds: a black ball of wool that growled vehemently while at the same time wagging its stumpy tail and slowly retreating from the intruders.

  ‘It’s just a puppy,’ Rath said. ‘The poor thing seems to be completely beside itself.’

  ‘My God, it stinks in here,’ Lange said, holding his nose.

  ‘There was a butcher’s downstairs. See if you can fetch a few pfennigs of offal.’ Lange looked at him as if Rath was asking him to sell his grandmother. ‘Come on! The poor thing’s starved. I’ll pay you the money back.’

  Lange disappeared while Rath tried to console the dog, which made a sudden sally, darting between his legs into the next room. He followed it in.

  The flat was as elegant as a film set, but stank like a kennel that hadn’t been cleaned for weeks. There was dog mess everywhere and little puddles that polluted the air with their stench. The scratch marks weren’t confined to the door. Rath found a drinking bowl in the kitchen, which he filled with water. The dog must be about to die of thirst, if, that is, it hadn’t drunk from the toilet – but it was too small for that. On the living room table was a glass bowl full of mouldy fruit, which the animal had nibbled at. No more than that; it was too much of a carnivore.

  Rath placed the bowl on the tiled floor of the bathroom and withdrew slowly, keeping his movements as steady as possible. The dog, which had been staring at him the whole time, darted back and forth from a respectful distance. Half-crazy with thirst but still fearful, it waited until he had left the bathroom before drinking the water.

  Amidst all the slurping and splashing noises, Rath continued to look around. He tried to sniff out the smell of decay among the dog stench, scanning every room, ready to stumble upon Jeanette Fastré’s corpse at any moment. Fortunately, he was out of luck: keeping a third dead actress under wraps would be next to impossible.

  As he finished scanning the rooms the doorbell rang. He took care that the dog couldn’t escape before opening to Lange, who was carrying a large paper bag through which blood was seeping. He made a disgusted face. ‘Give it here. I’ll see that the beast is fed.’

  The dog had stayed in the bathroom but, when it smelled the meat, it ventured out a little. Rath placed some of the offal in a food bowl from the kitchen. The dog dashed out of the bathroom, beside itself with hunger, time and time again making little advances, jumping to the bowl before withdrawing again, a strange dance that didn’t end until Rath placed it next to the empty drinking bowl on the floor. This time the dog started eating before Rath could take his hands away. He stroked the animal as it ate, and refilled the drinking bowl.

  ‘You’re being nicer to dogs than people today,’ Lange said.

  ‘What makes you think it’s just today?’

  ‘I didn’t mean to offend you. Did you find anything?’

  Rath shook his head. ‘A load of dog mess, but no woman, neither dead nor alive. No trace of a struggle either. Anything that looks that way was probably caused by the dog.’

  ‘What do we tell Böhm?’

  ‘Either that a completely unscrupulous woman is neglecting her dog while she does a runner, or that we’re dealing with something more serious. People who get themselves a puppy but decide that they don’t want it anymore might abandon it in the woods. They don’t leave it alone in their flat. You can see where that leads.’

  ‘I can smell where that leads.’

  The dog barked. Rath looked to find the bowl empty and the animal gazing up at him, head to one side and tail wagging.

  ‘Well then, Greedy Guts,’ he said. ‘There’s more, but only a little. We don’t want you upsetting your stomach.’ He refilled the bowl and the dog started eating straightaway.

  ‘Let’s get back,’ said Lange. ‘I think the flat’s best left to Forensics. Perhaps they’ll find something.’

  Rath nodded as he watched the dog. ‘It’s a nice image,’ he said. ‘Kronberg’s people packing dog turds into little bags.’

  ‘Surely ED aren’t going to be as meticulous as that. There hasn’t been a murder.’

  ‘You don’t know Kronberg.’

  ‘Not as well as you do.’ Lange went to the front door.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Rath asked.

  ‘Alex, of course.’

  ‘We’ll come too.’

  ‘Surely you don’t mean to take the dog?’

  ‘I certainly do.’

  ‘In the car?’

  ‘He’s not going to be sick.’

  Lange made a disgusted face.

  There was a lead on the coatstand. Rath attached it to the dog’s collar and it followed them eagerly down the stairs.

  When they returned the key, Rath took the opportunity to give the caretaker a piece of his mind. ‘There’s a dog barking here for days and you don’t do anything about it?’

  ‘Listen here! Firstly, the cur wasn’t barking any more than usual. Secondly, I can’t just go wandering into every flat. I only have the key for emergencies. For the cleaning lady when someone’s on holiday, that sort of thing.’

  ‘You don’t regard a dog that’s practically dying of hunger and thirst as an emergency?’

  ‘I couldn’t have known that Fastré was letting it starve to death!’

  ‘You should pay a little more attention to what’s going on around you, my man,’ Rath said. ‘There have been more people jailed for negligence than you might imagine.’

  Erika Voss was thrilled when Rath returned with the little black ball of wool on its lead. ‘Isn’t he sweet?’ she said.

  ‘I take it you mean the dog,’ Rath said, and Lange blushed.
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  The secretary didn’t seem to notice; she only had eyes for the dog.

  ‘Be careful, he’s not very clean,’ Rath said, as she stroked the shaggy, matted fur.

  ‘Where did you find the poor little thing?’

  ‘He was cooped up in a flat for days. He’s already eaten. I think he needs a bath. Do you think you could take care of that?’

  ‘Leave it to me, Inspector. I have an idea.’

  ‘You could ask the canine unit if they have space for a puppy. I don’t think he’s even a year old.’

  ‘All in good time. I’ll give him a bath first, then make him a little basket so that he can sleep. He’s obviously exhausted.’

  She took the filthy little dog in her arms. ‘Little rascal! Mummy will get you all cleaned up,’ she said, as she disappeared through the door.

  Rath gazed after her, shaking his head. His secretary, in whom he had so little confidence initially, continued to surprise him. ‘Let’s report to Böhm,’ he said to Lange.

  ‘What are we going to say to him?’

  ‘We’ll tell him what we saw. That the flat looked like it had been left in a hurry.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean Fastré’s lying dead in some cinema.’

  ‘No, but it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to check all disused cinemas in the city.’

  They encountered a couple of civilians whispering excitedly to one another in the corridor on the way to the DCI’s office: a fat man in a striped suit accompanied by a rake-thin woman in a yellow rain jacket. The fat man looked up, and for a moment his gaze met that of the inspector.

  There was a flicker of recognition, but Rath couldn’t quite place him. It was only when they reached the Homicide office that he realised the fat man had been at the Funkturm yesterday afternoon. He was one of Böhm’s witnesses. Hopefully there weren’t any more sitting behind the door. As a precaution, he entered the office a little behind Lange. It was like a waiting room, but he didn’t see any other familiar faces.

  Böhm was in the middle of an interrogation, so they had to wait. No one paid them any notice. A missing actress was of no interest at that moment; Felix Krempin’s fatal leap was far more spectacular. For Rath too. He would have liked very much to know what was said at briefing that morning, but of course Böhm had sent him away, probably to make it clear, once and for all, that the Winter case was no longer his.

  At that moment one of the doors leading from Homicide opened and Reinhold Gräf entered, looking harassed and handing a stack of papers to a secretary. When he saw Rath his face brightened and he went over to his old partner.

  ‘Gereon,’ he said, ‘back again! How does it feel to be subcontracted to Missing Persons?’

  ‘It’s a dog’s life,’ Rath said. ‘Do you have a moment? Coffee in the canteen?’

  Gräf nodded.

  Rath turned to Lange. ‘Is it OK if you report to Böhm alone?’

  ‘You’re the boss,’ Lange said, shrugging. ‘What should I tell Böhm if he asks where you are?’

  ‘Meaning: what I am doing? Gathering important information, of course. See you in my office at one. OK?’

  ‘OK.’

  There wasn’t much happening in the canteen at this hour – the calm before the lunchtime storm. Rath and Gräf balanced their coffee cups through a sea of tables. Only two were occupied, by a group of young uniformed officers who were relaxing after an operation.

  ‘Why shouldn’t the Commies and the Nazis bash each other’s heads in?’ one of them asked. ‘It would save us a lot of work.’

  ‘You can’t lump them all together,’ another responded.

  ‘You can. Pack ’em in a bag and start pounding. You’d strike lucky every time!’

  A few officers laughed, but by no means all.

  Police were still dealing with the aftermath of the Wessel funeral. In almost all workers’ districts, conflict simmered between members of the red and brown proletariats.

  As Rath and Gräf approached their table, conversation ceased.

  ‘Good day to you too,’ one of them said as they walked past. This time his colleagues all laughed.

  Uniform had been ill-disposed towards CID ever since their chief Heimannsberg had come off second best in a long-running debate with Vipoprä Weiss, and been forced to acknowledge that Uniform was not an independent branch but subordinate to the commissioner and his deputy. Magnus Heimannsberg and his officers were therefore accountable to Zörgiebel and Weiss’s CID, a fact that was chipping away at Uniform’s self-confidence.

  Rath and Gräf sat down off to the side where they could talk in peace. ‘Tough time to be in uniform,’ Rath said.

  ‘I wouldn’t want to be in their shoes right now,’ Gräf replied. ‘Duty in a Communist area is enough to make you fear for your life.’

  ‘If anything, the Nazis are worse.’

  ‘All I’ll say is they were considerably more respectful towards us at the funeral last week.’

  ‘If you were a Jew, they’d call you Isidore. You think that’s respectful?’

  ‘But I’m not a Jew!’ Gräf was outraged.

  Rath had no desire to argue, and certainly not over politics. It was bad enough that such altercations were becoming more and more of an issue for police – and all because these self-styled politicians were going at each other with sticks, knives and pistols. ‘How’s life without me then?’ he asked.

  ‘What can I say, Gereon. I’m at the end of my tether. Without you, I just don’t know how to get through the days.’ He looked as if he was about to cry. Then he grinned at Rath. ‘Seriously: do you think Böhm will let us work together again soon?’

  ‘No idea.’ Rath shrugged. ‘Probably not until Gennat’s back in charge. Böhm’s even separated Plisch and Plum.’

  ‘I heard a moment ago that Trudchen Steiner will be boosting the turnover of local bakeries from Monday.’

  ‘Gennat’s coming back?’

  ‘Looks that way.’ Gräf stirred his coffee. ‘They’re not making any progress in Düsseldorf, despite our help. Even the famous Gennat has had to admit defeat.’

  ‘We need him here, old Fatso. If it’s true, I’ll go to him first thing on Monday and request that we be reunited.’

  ‘That trouble you’re in with Brenner, even Gennat can’t help you anymore. Next stop: stacking files in Köpenick.’

  Rath took a cigarette from his case and lit it. ‘I’ve taken care of that.’

  Gräf looked at him. ‘You haven’t done anything underhand, I hope.’

  ‘Underhand? Not from my end. It’s Brenner who’s playing dirty.’ He drew on his cigarette. ‘Let’s talk about something else. Tell me what came to light at briefing this morning.’

  ‘That it really was Krempin who jumped.’

  ‘I was still there at that point. Is it certain he jumped?’

  ‘How else is he supposed to have got down there? An accident?’

  ‘How about murder?’

  ‘You sound just like Böhm. He’s forbidden us from mentioning suicide.’

  ‘You of all people should know why. We’ve worked on enough together. Only when third-party involvement has been ruled out can we speak of suicide.’

  ‘Sure, but we always had a feeling beforehand. Whenever we thought it was suicide, that’s how it turned out.’

  ‘Then our feelings differ on this occasion.’ Rath stirred his coffee even though he hadn’t added sugar.

  ‘Could be,’ Gräf nodded. ‘All the same, I think Böhm’s taking things too far. He’s still looking for Krempin’s final hiding place. Well, perhaps we’ll find a suicide note or something. Then there’s Oppenberg. He must still be hoping to get something out of him.’

  Rath stopped stirring. ‘But what? The motive for the alleged suicide?’

  ‘That’s clear enough: the killer could no longer bear his guilt. On top of that you have the manhunt, the ‘wanted’ posters.’

  ‘Krempin was no killer, and no suicide either. Someone pushed him, and it was
probably someone he knew: the same person who killed Betty Winter.’

  ‘I had forgotten you thought Krempin was innocent. Then we need to look for this mysterious stranger.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A few witnesses have mentioned a man who was one of the first to appear beside the corpse, before vanishing without trace.’

  ‘Not all onlookers wait like model citizens for the police to arrive.’

  ‘True, it’s strange all the same. The man went back up the Funkturm before making himself scarce.’

  ‘Maybe he left something in the restaurant.’

  Gräf shook his head. ‘When the lift attendant went with the others to look at the corpse, the man took the lift to the viewing platform. He came back down on foot. The attendant had to take the stairs all the way up to the top to retrieve his lift. The car was stuck on the platform because the door was still open. He wasn’t best pleased.’

  ‘And Böhm thinks that’s suspicious? Someone taking the lift?’

  Gräf shrugged his shoulders. ‘No idea, but he’s summoned the sketch artist.’

  36

  Lange still wasn’t back when Rath returned to the office. Instead he was greeted by Erika Voss and a fresh-smelling dog that wagged its tail like crazy as soon as he opened the door.

  ‘He recognises you, Inspector,’ the secretary said with delight. ‘I think he likes you.’

  ‘I’m good with dogs,’ Rath said. ‘It’s one of my inestimable virtues.’ He bent over and let it lick his hands. ‘But he was happy to go with you too. What did they say at the canine unit?’

  ‘They weren’t too keen, but I was persistent.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘They’re sending someone to pick him up.’

  ‘Good. Lange still not back from Böhm?’ She shook her head. ‘Anything from Forensics?’ Another shake of the head. ‘Did you get the producer’s address from Missing Persons?’

  Erika Voss nodded and passed him a piece of paper. ‘I’ve got the list here.’

  He looked at a few names along with addresses and telephone numbers.

  ‘See if a woman resembling Jean Fastré has been admitted to any of the city’s hospitals in the last few days.’