The Silent Death

by volker Kutscher

  ‘And you swiped it?’

  ‘Not me, my brother.’

  ‘You’ve never told me about your brother.’

  ‘Severin is four years older than me and has been living in the States for a long time. It was more his idea than mine, but I helped him. Back then I was a server and I opened the sacristy for him, just before mass.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘We waved the incense during the consecration, and by the end Pastor Lippe was saying increasingly strange things. Which didn’t strike anyone as unusual, because he was a little strange anyway.’

  ‘But giggling during mass; he never used to do that,’ Paul said.

  ‘No one would’ve noticed, not until Naujoks collapsed.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The other server waving the incense. We bore the brunt of it. I wasn’t feeling too good either. I felt sick, but I didn’t collapse.’

  ‘Was it because of this Naujoks that you were caught?’

  ‘Father figured it out when he discovered the hashish was missing. Apparently, Severin was seen coming out of the back of the sacristy.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘To this day my father doesn’t know I was involved, and he never will. Severin didn’t say anything. They knew somebody must’ve helped him, but he held firm.’ Rath remembered the pressure they put on his brother over that stupid prank. He was packed off to boarding school, where things happened that were so terrible he never spoke of them. No sooner had he finished school than he cleared off, as far away as possible from Cologne, his family, his past, everything.

  ‘They really tore a strip off him,’ Rath continued. ‘In the spring of 1914, just before war broke out, he hightailed it to America. He had only just turned nineteen.’

  ‘My God. I thought it was a funny story. That’s what drove your brother to America?’

  Rath shrugged his shoulders. ‘It wasn’t the only thing, but if it wasn’t for that stupid prank, things would’ve probably turned out differently.’

  ‘For you too?’

  ‘It pretty much knocked the stuffing out of me, what they did to Severin, and, if they had caught me, it would have been worse.’ He stubbed out the cigarette. ‘Paul is the only person who knows the truth,’ he said finally. ‘Now you do too.’

  ‘Welcome to the club,’ Paul said, but Charly couldn’t bring herself to laugh.

  The waiter came with their schnitzels and they ate in silence. For the time being the easy atmosphere between them had been destroyed. Rath looked across at Paul. Why had he brought up the hash story now, of all times? Of course, he had wanted to know how far Rath would go in Charly’s presence, what she meant to him. But why now? He could have just asked him. Not that they ever spoke about their women. Yesterday evening Rath had simply told him he had a date, and that he was heading out to the country with a girl.

  Paul was first to finish. He ordered another round of wine and asked for the bill. The wine came when Rath and Charly were also finished. The waiter placed the bill on the table. ‘Allow me,’ Paul said. ‘A little thank-you for the invitation and the lovely afternoon.’

  ‘Absolutely not,’ Rath protested. ‘You paid for last night as well.’

  ‘If I want to pay then surely you can let me.’

  ‘Would the gentlemen care to duel – or do I get my money today?’ the waiter asked.

  Rath pressed thirty marks into his hand, and Paul added a five-mark note. The waiter bowed. ‘Good day, gentlemen.’

  They took the bus back to Bahnhof Wannsee, where Paul was suddenly in a hurry to get away. ‘You’ll forgive me if I leave now,’ he said. ‘But I think I would like to take a little wander round Berlin after all. It isn’t every day you’re in the imperial capital.’ They said their goodbyes on the platform. ‘It was nice to meet you,’ he said to Charly. ‘Thanks for this afternoon.’

  ‘It was only half an afternoon,’ she said.

  The train was already rolling into the station as he said goodbye to Rath. ‘You won’t find another like her,’ he whispered as the two men briefly embraced. ‘Make sure you hold onto her!’

  Paul jumped on-board the train to Potsdamer Platz. ‘Perhaps we’ll see each other again!’ he shouted before the doors closed.

  Kirie barked after the departing train and Rath looked at Charly. It was a rather hasty goodbye. She seemed to think so too. ‘That’s Paul,’ he said. ‘Not always easy to understand.’

  ‘Says you! I think he just wanted to be discreet and leave us alone.’

  ‘What now? Should we head back and go to the Pfaueninsel?’

  ‘Another time.’ She gestured towards the station clock. ‘It’s almost four. Let’s go back to your car.’

  ‘What should we do with the rest of the afternoon?’

  ‘I could think of something,’ she said, nestling up to him.

  ‘Your place or mine?’

  ‘Yours,’ she said, her lips drawing closer to his mouth. He closed his eyes and kissed her, but at precisely that moment the dog started barking. Their train was coming in.

  42

  He had hoped the day might end in Luisenufer, and so had cleaned beforehand. Not wanting it to look too much like a bachelor flat he had taken the empty beer bottles down to the cellar, washed the dirty dishes and, above all, placed the bottle of cognac next to the other bottles in the cupboard. He fetched it now, along with two glasses, placed an empty ashtray on the table and put on a record.

  ‘What a treat to be waited on by a man!’

  ‘All part of the Sunday service.’

  ‘Just the Sunday service?’

  ‘Try it.’

  They clinked glasses.

  Kirie had curled into a ball under the living room table, ignoring the basket Rath had so lovingly prepared. She ought really to have been in the kitchen after demolishing a whole bowl of food in record time, but no sooner had he closed the door than she began barking, scratching and whimpering. He had no choice but to open it again.

  ‘Are you training the dog or is she training you?’

  ‘Kirie belongs to a diva, so she can afford to have bad manners.’

  Rath put on something slow, a languid blues: Bessie Smith accompanied by Louis Armstrong on trumpet, and they sat for a while, listening.

  ‘Is dancing permitted here?’ Charly asked.

  Rath stood up, held out his right hand and pulled her from her chair. Nestled closely together, they moved to the gentle, rhythmical beat. He waited for the final chord to take her chin in his hands and kiss her long and hard, until fierce barking interrupted them. An indignant Kirie stood before them.

  ‘This can’t be happening,’ he said. ‘Whenever we kiss, the dog barks. Come on, Kirie, out!’

  Kirie lay back down.

  Charly laughed. ‘I think she’s jealous. She objects to you kissing me.’

  ‘Then she needs to go to her basket.’

  ‘You know how much fuss she makes when you shut her in.’

  ‘As far as I’m concerned the whole flat can be hers, but the bedroom is ours.’

  Kirie seemed content with her fate. There was no more barking to be heard, no sound of furniture being overturned or vases being smashed and, at last, they could kiss one another.

  The feel of Charly’s body, the redolence of her scent, was hugely arousing. They undressed each other while kissing only to lose balance and fall onto the bed. He kissed her slender throat, the nape of her neck, slowly working his way down… Then the telephone rang and Kirie started barking again, and neither would stop. Charly couldn’t help but laugh.

  ‘What have I done to deserve this?’ he said, making for the living room in his underwear.

  Kirie was standing in front of the telephone table barking at the machine. Rath picked up, and the dog fell silent as soon as the ringing ceased. It was Lange. ‘Boss, finally!’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You were right!’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘About the cinemas! We have a corpse
! The Kosmos in Weissensee. Probably Fastré.’

  ‘Is someone already out there?’

  ‘You’re the only one missing. I thought I’d let you know. It was your idea after all…’

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  Kirie followed him into the bedroom.

  ‘And?’ Charly asked.

  Rath reached for his trousers. ‘The Castle.’

  He didn’t have to say anything else. She got dressed too. ‘Should I come with you?’

  ‘Best not. If people see us together, there’ll be talk.’

  ‘Especially now that I don’t work at the Castle.’

  ‘Why don’t you stay here? You can take Kirie for a walk. It would be nice if you could look after her.’ He paused. ‘It’s probably her mistress we’ve found.’

  ‘Oh my, poor dog.’

  ‘I’ll be back as soon as soon as I can. You can sleep here too.’

  When Kirie tilted her head to one side Charly could hardly refuse.

  At Antonplatz the ED car was parked behind the murder wagon. The cream-coloured Horch standing last in line looked like that of Dr Karthaus, the younger colleague of Dr Schwartz’s. There was no uniformed officer guarding the main entrance, which was anyway protected by a rolling grille.

  The Kosmos was one of several cinemas near Antonplatz, but the only one whose neon lights no longer burned. Andreas Lange was waiting for him under the dark letters, looking like someone who refused to acknowledge that he had been stood up, even after the cinema had closed. ‘Evening, Sir,’ he said. ‘We have to go in via the courtyard.’

  They didn’t encounter a uniformed officer until they reached the concrete stairs at the rear entrance. A metal gate shielded the courtyard from the world outside.

  Only inside the auditorium did the extent of the police operation become clear. There were ED men everywhere looking for clues. Meanwhile, the officers from the 271st precinct, who had found the body, were standing idly by.

  This time the body was actually on the stage, right in front of the screen: a blonde angel in a sparkling, silvery-white evening dress. There was a flash, and Rath recognised Reinhold Gräf behind the camera. He gave his former partner a brief wave. Bulldog Böhm was speaking to one of the officers as well as a civilian, momentarily interrupting himself when he caught sight of Rath. He didn’t seem too pleased that a search he had turned down had led to this success. Next to the corpse stood the pathologist, bobbing impatiently up and down on the balls of his feet.

  ‘If you don’t want any trouble with Böhm,’ Rath said to Lange, ‘tell him you couldn’t get hold of me yesterday evening. You don’t know anything about my telephone call to the search unit.’

  ‘I told Böhm the truth,’ Lange said. ‘In my opinion you did the right thing yesterday. It’s how we found Fastré’s corpse, isn’t it?’

  ‘Good of you to back me up. Are we certain it’s her?’

  ‘We haven’t found any papers and she hasn’t been officially identified, but really there’s no doubt. She looks just like her billboards.’

  Rath drew closer and saw what Lange meant. Jeanette Fastré didn’t look like a corpse at all. Her face had been carefully made up and though her eyes were staring up at the ceiling, they seemed more hypnotised than dead.

  ‘Do your work, Doctor,’ Böhm said to Karthaus, who immediately ceased bobbing up and down. ‘We have every-thing we need in the can.’

  ‘Evening, gentlemen,’ Rath said politely. Böhm ignored him.

  ‘Evening, Rath,’ Karthaus said. ‘Are A Division having their company outing? I haven’t seen so many earnest faces in a long time.’

  It became clear what he meant when an imposing figure emerged from the darkness and climbed the steps to the stage. Ernst Gennat! So, Gräf was right: Buddha was back, and had even driven out to the crime scene, which only happened once in a blue moon.

  ‘Inspector,’ Gennat said, when he caught sight of Rath. ‘I hear we have you to thank for this discovery.’

  ‘I’d say the search unit did a good job, Sir.’

  ‘It seems we really do have a serial killer on our hands,’ Gennat said. ‘The strict information ban imposed by DCI Böhm holds for the time being. There’s no need to send the public crazy while we still don’t know what’s going on. So, not a word to the press.’

  ‘It seems like someone who specialises in film actresses. Shouldn’t we at least warn them?’

  ‘We’ll clarify that at briefing tomorrow. There’s no rush. Vivian Franck was last seen on the eighth of February and most likely killed shortly afterwards. Frau Fastré here has been dead for a few days at most. Our man likes to take his time. There’s roughly a month between the two crimes.’

  ‘Assuming there are no other victims we haven’t found…’

  ‘You checked all missing person cases, didn’t you?’

  ‘We’ve compared everything. Fastré was the first missing actress in years.’

  ‘Then he’ll bide his time before the next one.’ Gennat gazed thoughtfully at the corpse. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Why does he kill? A sex offender?’

  Rath shrugged his shoulders. ‘There was nothing to suggest that with Vivian Franck’s corpse.’

  ‘Still, difficult to say, given her stage of decomposition. We’ve been lucky this time insofar as we have such a well-preserved corpse. I’ll be very interested to hear the results of Dr Karthaus’s examination.’

  Rath looked across at Böhm. He had dismissed the uniformed officer and was now speaking to the civilian, probably the man who had let the police in. Karthaus turned the corpse over. ‘How’s it looking?’ Buddha asked.

  Karthaus shrugged. ‘No external agencies, as far as I can see.’

  ‘No injection sites?’

  ‘A number of them, but hardly visible, probably subcutaneous. How did you know?’

  ‘Vivian Franck,’ Rath said, more to Gennat than Karthaus. ‘Schwartz found injection sites on her too. Maybe lethal.’

  By now Böhm had joined them, but didn’t deign to look at Rath. Gennat seemed to notice, but didn’t say anything. ‘Can you say how she died, Doctor?’ he asked.

  Karthaus shrugged. ‘On first glance, I’d say natural causes. Let’s see if we find any trace of poisoning during the autopsy.’ He gestured towards the body that lay before them so angelically. ‘I can tell you one thing for sure, however. This corpse has been washed.’

  ‘Seriously?’ Gennat was surprised.

  Karthaus nodded. ‘Normally,’ he said, ‘corpses aren’t particularly sweet-smelling. Not just because of the decomposition – the sphincter fails at the moment of death, but in this case…there is no excrement whatsoever, everything is clean. I think she might even have been perfumed before she was left here.’

  ‘Was that the case with Vivian Franck?’

  Gennat had addressed the question to both Rath and Böhm. Rath deferred to the senior man, who raised his broad shoulders into a shrug. ‘She was made up, but washed? No idea. Schwartz didn’t say anything about that, nor did the men from ED. I’ll tell you one thing though: Vivian Franck didn’t smell good when we found her. She had already been dead for weeks.’

  Gennat nodded. ‘How long has this one been dead?’

  Karthaus considered for a moment. ‘Ten hours at the most, I’d say.’

  ‘Are you familiar with the Franck file?’ Rath asked the doctor.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we need to know if the two cases have anything in common.’

  ‘I’ll have a look at it tomorrow, before I open the corpse.’

  ‘Can you tell us anything about her vocal cords?’

  ‘No,’ Karthaus said. ‘I’d need to cut her open for that. But I’m not doing it here. You’ll have to be patient.’

  Kirie was already asleep when Rath got home, much later than anticipated. Charly, on the other hand, was still awake. She was sitting in the living room with a glass of red wine, and placed her book on criminal law to one side when he entered
.

  He gave her a kiss. ‘Thanks for looking after the little one. It would have been a real shock for her to see her mistress dead.’

  ‘So it really was her.’

  Rath nodded as he fetched a glass from the cupboard and sat beside her. He poured himself a little red wine and lit a cigarette. Charly was eager to hear everything that had happened. The only thing he didn’t mention was that he was at loggerheads with Böhm again.

  ‘Do you think her vocal cords are missing too?’

  ‘I’m almost certain.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘No idea. With Vivian Franck, I thought it was someone trying to give Oppenberg a shock. That theory doesn’t fit anymore, not now that we have a second dead actress who has absolutely nothing to do with him.’

  ‘An actress’s voice is her most important tool. If you take it away, then you take away everything.’

  ‘Unless she makes silent films,’ Rath said, and Charly gave him an angry glance. She didn’t like cynical remarks like that. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘The real question is why he kills them at all. Or rather: why does he remove their vocal cords if he means to kill them anyway? Where’s the sense in that?’

  ‘It must have a symbolic meaning,’ Charly said. ‘He’s trying to tell us something. The fact that the corpses are in old cinemas has to mean something too.’

  ‘Do you think he’s leaving clues about his identity? That he wants to be caught?’

  ‘Don’t know, but these are real productions. He’s trying to tell us something.’

  ‘It doesn’t look like he’s a sex offender at any rate.’

  There was a pitter-patter in the corridor and Kirie poked her sleepy, black head through the door. She came in and curled up at Rath’s feet.

  ‘What’s going to happen to the dog?’ Charly asked.

  Rath shrugged. ‘Someone will inherit her.’

  ‘But you’re not going to let her go to a home, are you?’

  ‘She’ll stay with me for now.’

  ‘I’m tired.’ Charly yawned and stood up.

  ‘My bed is your bed.’

  ‘You’ll take the sofa, will you?’

  ‘As you know, I have a very large bed.’