The Silent Death

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The Silent Death Page 46

by volker Kutscher


  Perhaps he was mistaken, and it was the latest actress Marquard meant to immortalise, as he put it. Then he heard another familiar voice.

  Paul!

  What were the two of them doing in Wolfgang Marquard’s drawing room?

  Or perhaps it wasn’t Wolfgang Marquard’s drawing room at all? Perhaps he was long since back at home and hadn’t realised? There were a few gaps in his memory. They were in there at any rate, his friends, no doubt they’d been waiting for hours already and it was high time he went in. What was he doing still standing out here anyway? He was so tired, he needed to sit down in his chair and listen to music and fall asleep. Yes, that was exactly what he wanted.

  He opened the door to his living room, but someone had stolen the record player and put a fireplace there instead. Wolfgang Marquard was standing by the fire. What business did he have here? He ought to let him be, he was the one who was trying to kill him and Kirie. Now he even had a gun. Rath recognised his own Mauser. Did a man like Marquard even know how to handle it? Someone ought to show him.

  And there was Paul, who seemed suddenly to take off from the floor and fly, old Wittkamp had never told him he could fly, he was probably showing off in front of Charly, the swine, for Charly really was sitting there.

  Charlotte Ritter had returned and was gazing at him with those wide eyes. Those great big, wide eyes. How lovely!

  He managed a smile…then someone turned the room upside down, just like that, and switched off the lights. The darkness had him once more, dragging him inexorably into its murky depths.

  59

  Wolfgang Marquard looked at Gereon Rath as if he had seen a ghost. Gereon Rath, who was swaying in the door, with sweat on his forehead and a bottle in his hand, a monument to drinkers everywhere.

  He turned towards Rath to cover him, and Paul seized the advantage. He made straight for the hand holding the gun and knocked it with a clatter to the floor, where it slid across the gleaming parquet towards the fireplace.

  What did Gereon do? He gave Charly a blissful smile, as if she were everything he wanted from this life, and doubled up like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

  What had they done to him? She had no time to think about that now. Paul and Marquard were rolling in front of her on the floor, dangerously close to the fire, each trying to gain the upper hand or get hold of the pistol. At one point it looked as if Paul had managed, but Marquard was strong and resisted stoutly. All the while Kirie danced round the two men barking.

  Charly hated physical violence, but she had to intervene or things would come to a sticky end. She approached the tangle of arms and legs, waited until Wolfgang Marquard turned his face towards her and kicked as hard as she could.

  Marquard threw his head backwards and stayed down, while Paul looked at her gratefully.

  She ran to Gereon, whom Kirie was already sniffing and licking. It looked bad. There was sweat on his forehead, his skin was deathly pale and his pulse was alarmingly weak. She patted his cheeks, spoke to him and finally shouted and slapped him, but Gereon refused to stir.

  She ran through the patio door into the dark garden, put the whistle to her lips, tried to orient herself in the direction of the road and blew, kept on running and blowing, running and blowing until, by the time she reached the gate, a group of uniformed officers came marching towards her. Pistols drawn, they stormed in the direction of the house.

  ‘We need a doctor,’ she cried and noticed how, for the first time that evening, she was on the verge of losing control. ‘Quickly, a doctor!’

  Just then a shot rang out from inside.

  60

  Thursday 13th March 1930

  Through a narrow window, just below the ceiling, he can see a patch of sky. It is grey. A heavy grey, heavy with snow. Soon it will snow, he sees it, smells it, for the final time this year it will snow.

  He told them everything, those police officers, but they are stupid, they don’t understand. They ask the wrong questions, interrupt him, probe at the wrong times, and ignore him at critical points. They don’t listen to a word he says. He can’t talk to them.

  They haven’t let him keep anything, not even his syringes. A doctor comes to his cell to give him insulin in the exact dosage. They take his blood regularly, they don’t want to get anything wrong.

  He stretches out on the plank bed, the snowy sky outside soothes him.

  It is over. He must accept that his life is at an end.

  For half of his life he perceived his own body as his worst enemy. Since then he is aware just how rarely man realises his potential so long as he is trapped inside his body. To achieve his true essence, man must free himself from that body, must leave it behind. And he can do so only in art. Or in death.

  He knows because he has fused the two together.

  And he regrets nothing.

  Only that they didn’t let him finish his final work; it would have been better than ever.

  Perfect.

  Why have they locked him up, he who can make people immortal – while Betty Winter’s killer, who desecrated her and deprived her of her immortality, is allowed to roam free?

  He doesn’t understand. And they don’t understand him. Nothing he has told them, nothing he has done. You can’t talk to them.

  And if you have nothing to say you should remain silent.

  He hears steps and the metallic jangle of a key ring. The lock squeaks, turning in fits and starts, and the door opens. They have come to take him again. They don’t realise he is already dead.

  61

  Rath had no idea where the journey would end, or if it ever would. Darkness everywhere, and yet he could sense movement. In this dark confinement, he recognised a tiny point, barely the size of a pin, growing gradually larger, slowly at first, then quicker and quicker.

  He was afraid of the end of the journey, afraid of what he might see, afraid that he might feel sick, and that there would be no bucket at hand. Strangely he wasn’t afraid of the pain, and then he lay, suddenly perfectly calm, staring into the whiteness. Free from fear, free from nausea, free from pain. He realised that the whiteness wasn’t white, but rather a blotchy, light, eggshell yellow and, in the midst of it all, a forty-watt bulb in a cheap holder that wasn’t lit. He could read the Osram logo alongside the wattage.

  ‘He’s opened his eyes!’

  A shadow obscured his field of vision, and he squinted at it until it took shape. Two faces. One, a stern woman’s face, framed by a white cap, the other friendly with dark brown eyes.

  The cap face disappeared. ‘I’ll get a doctor.’

  The brown eyes remained. He could have her watch him forever.

  She looked so concerned that he had to grin. ‘Where are we?’ he asked. ‘Your place or mine?’

  ‘Oh, Gereon!’ Charly squeezed him and hid her face in his breast. He lifted a hand and stroked her hair realising, in the process, that there was a thin rubber tube attached to his arm.

  Charly sat up again. Her eyes were moist. ‘Do you realise how close you were to death, and you’re making stupid jokes already?!’

  ‘It’s not a joke. I’d like to know where I am.’

  ‘In Urban Hospital.’

  ‘You’re my nurse?’

  She shook her head. ‘Sister Angelika will be back in a moment to knock that joking streak out of you.’

  ‘Where’s Kirie?’

  ‘In Spenerstrasse. She asks after you the whole time! She feels quite at home with me, but don’t worry, you’ll get her back.’

  ‘I was snatched from the jaws of death, was I?’

  ‘If Böhm hadn’t been there, who knows whether…’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Böhm. Wilhelm Böhm saved your life.’

  He sat up. ‘Couldn’t you have let me die?’

  ‘Don’t joke about it!’ She looked at him sternly. ‘It’s about time the sister was here.’

  ‘So, Böhm was there too. What happened anyway? I can only remember that Marquard pumped
me full of insulin and his mother…’ Vague memories floated from the depths to the surface. He saw Charly in the fireplace room. And Paul. Next to him Marquard with a pistol. ‘You were there too!’ he said, louder than he intended. ‘With Paul! What business did you have at Marquard’s?’

  ‘That’s a long story. I’ll tell you when the doctor allows. You look pretty worn out.’

  He did feel unbelievably exhausted, as if he needed to catch up on decades of lost sleep. What on earth had that damned Marquard pumped into him?

  When Sister Angelika returned with the doctor, he abandoned his resistance and allowed himself to fall back into darkness.

  When he awoke, Charly was gone. In her place sat a man with an impudent grin, a plaster on his right temple and a black eye.

  ‘There you are at last, sleepyhead,’ Paul said. ‘I was just about to get a puzzle book from the kiosk downstairs, out of pure boredom.’

  Paul’s arm was in a sling. ‘What happened to you, you big faker?’

  ‘They’ve given me a clean bill of health,’ Paul said. He pointed with his healthy right arm towards its bandaged counterpart. ‘A grazing shot, plus a few little bruises from your delightful colleagues who thought I was the cinema killer, when in fact I was keeping him in check.’

  ‘A grazing shot!’

  ‘It didn’t come from the Prussian police, although they were a little rough with me.’

  ‘Did Marquard shoot you?’

  ‘No. Just your pistol, God rest its soul!’

  ‘Stop talking in riddles!’

  ‘You’re going to have to get yourself a new service weapon. Your old one didn’t survive its baptism of fire at Marquard’s. Before giving up the ghost it managed a parting shot at me. Thank God it was just a grazing shot.’ Paul shrugged his shoulders. ‘I ought to be seeking recourse against you. It was your gun, and you allowed it to be taken off you.’

  ‘Who threw it in the fire?’

  ‘I fear that was me. When you made your grand entrance, I knocked it out of Marquard’s hand. That’s when it must have happened, or during our struggle.’

  ‘What were you doing there in the first place? With Charly?’

  ‘That’s a long story.’

  ‘Don’t you say you have to get a doctor before you can tell me too.’

  ‘I’ll keep it brief. All I wanted was to say goodbye before leaving for Cologne. There was no getting hold of you so I paid your flat a visit along with Charly.’

  ‘Why was Charly there?’

  ‘Because the Reich Chancellor was busy, and I don’t know anyone else in this stupid city. Apart from you, but of course you weren’t there. We were worried, Charly especially, and once she’d taken up the scent there was no stopping her. I think she’d make a good policewoman. Or a good sleuth.’

  ‘She is a good policewoman. Even if she’s not allowed to call herself one yet.’ He had almost forgotten about the grinning man in Charly’s front door. ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘She has to revise for her exams at some point, having spent the whole morning and half of last night by your bedside, completely ignoring us serious casualties.’ Paul shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’ve done to deserve her. You probably haven’t realised, which is why I’m telling you now. Charly is the kind of woman you ought to marry. What do I mean ought? Have to! Don’t let anyone pinch her off you.’

  Rath gave a weak smile and nodded, but the memory of the cowboy at Charly’s door wouldn’t leave him alone. ‘Thanks for the advice. You sound like my mother.’

  ‘If it wasn’t for Charly there’s a good chance you wouldn’t be alive. We have her to thank for the whole operation.’

  ‘What about Böhm?’

  ‘That fat, grumpy inspector?

  ‘Chief inspector.’

  ‘He came strolling through the patio door right at the end, long after Uniform had tied Marquard up. We were waiting for the doctor, because you were in a pretty bad way, my friend, and that fatso was the only one who realised what was wrong. He made sure you got fruit juice and sugared water, anything we could lay our hands on, which is what saved your life. So the emergency doctor said at any rate, before putting you on that drip.’ Paul gestured towards the tube attached to Rath’s arm. ‘Before even bandaging me up.’

  ‘And all you wanted was to say goodbye…’

  ‘I just hope it won’t involve gunshot wounds this time.’

  ‘When does your train leave?’

  Paul glanced at the time. ‘It should be rolling across Hohenzollern Bridge right about now.’ He shrugged. ‘What the hell, I’ve got a compartment booked on the eighteen forty-seven, but I don’t want to miss that one too.’

  ‘You’re in a rush to get home.’

  ‘And how! I’m positively longing for Cologne. Berlin is far too dangerous for me.’

  Paul said goodbye and Rath fell asleep as soon as his friend had exited the room.

  The bouquets and bottles of grape juice were mounting on his bedside table. His hospital room had come to seem more like a place of pilgrimage, so many visitors had he received. After Charly and Paul it had been Berthold Weinert’s turn. Amidst all the excitement they had completely forgotten about him in the Nasse Dreieck. Rath told the still hung-over journalist a few things about the cinema killer that wouldn’t be appearing in rival papers.

  ‘And the Winter case?’ Weinert had asked. ‘Is it connected or not?’

  ‘I know who killed Betty Winter, but we don’t have any evidence. Only the hairpiece from the Funkturm… But that will probably be inadmissible.’

  ‘Who lost it?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. It’s not even official police opinion.’

  ‘Just as background information. Who?’

  ‘Victor Meisner.’

  ‘The husband?’

  ‘If you write anything along those lines, then it’s speculation and nothing more.’

  Weinert was gone by the time Rath’s colleagues arrived, almost all of them at once. Erika Voss led the way with a large bouquet, followed by Reinhold Gräf and Andreas Lange, then Mertens, Grabowski and finally Henning and Czerwinski, together again at last. Suddenly the little room was chock-a-block.

  ‘I’m afraid I can’t offer everyone a chair,’ Rath said.

  Gräf shook his head. ‘What on earth have you been up to, Gereon? It’s high time you found yourself a partner. You can’t be left on your own for a minute.’ The detective passed him a pile of Kriminalistische Monatshefte. ‘So that you don’t get bored without us…’

  Since Lange and Czerwinski were among the few who were still working on the cinema killings, they had been allowed to assist Gennat during his interrogation of Marquard.

  ‘This morning he talked nineteen to the dozen,’ Czerwinski said. ‘Now he isn’t saying a thing.’

  ‘The inspector doesn’t want to hear about work,’ Erika Voss said. ‘He needs to look after himself. Isn’t that right, Herr Rath?’

  ‘Let them speak. It’s bad enough I can’t be at the station.’

  Lange had tried to reconstruct Marquard’s background, primarily from his medical records. At fourteen, Wolfgang Marquard, who had spent his entire childhood in that enormous, forbidding Wannsee villa, had fallen ill with mumps. Then came the inflammation of the pancreas and diabetes, all as Elisabeth Marquard had said.

  ‘Those years must have been torturous, if the doctor’s medical notes are anything to go by,’ Lange said. ‘The strictest of diets and the lack of insulin left him little more than skin and bones. When insulin became available as a form of treatment, it must have been like starting a new life after those six years of constant torment. He took up medicine, which would explain his surgical skills, but gave up after a few semesters. At twenty-two he lost his father, that was Christmas twenty-five. Barely half a year later, in May twenty-six, the family doctor, Dr Schlüter, died as well. Guess how?’ Lange paused. ‘Insulin. Hypoglycaemia.’

  ‘And the father?’

  ‘Dr
Schlüter recorded it as a heart attack, but no one examined his blood.’

  ‘Yet they did take a blood sample from Dr Schlüter…’

  ‘Schlüter suffered from age-related diabetes and took insulin in small doses, which is why they collected the sample. A logical suspicion, but no one could explain why the experienced physician had miscalculated the dose to such an extent.’

  ‘He probably hadn’t.’

  ‘No,’ Lange said. ‘Probably not. We can’t prove anything after all these years, but we believe these two deaths were Marquard’s first murders using insulin.’

  Rath shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was his mother, Elisabeth Marquard, who killed them both. Her son found out and locked her up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So that we didn’t, or have her committed to an institution. She’s mad; no doubt she’d have given herself away sooner or later. At least that’s what he feared, and so locked her away.’

  ‘Why did he remove her vocal cords?’

  ‘No idea,’ Rath shrugged. ‘He seems to be rather sensitive where voices are concerned.’

  ‘It isn’t just the mother who’s mad in that family,’ Czerwinski said. ‘Marquard junior is crackers too, that much is clear. Has a full-blown shrine in his tower room, with photos and posters of all the women he’s killed or intended to kill.’

  ‘I know,’ Rath said. ‘He showed it to me.’

  62

  Her name! He heard them call her name. Even though they closed the door immediately behind them.

  Betty Winter!

  He is left speechless and slumps onto the chair next to the door. He supports his head in his hands and closes his eyes, almost dragging the guard to the floor in the process.

  ‘Quickly, Lensing, call the doctor,’ the officer says, holding Marquard’s arm with such force it’s as if handcuffs alone aren’t enough. The man crouches beside him while his colleague goes to the telephone; the handcuffs that bind them together leave him no choice.

  The police officers inside are speaking loudly, he can understand almost everything. He has closed his eyes and is concentrating on each individual word.

 

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