You want things to end up like they did with Betty Winter? the brawny officer cried, and the fat one said something in reply.
Now the brawny one is speaking again. Victor Meisner has been given advance warning thanks to Rath, he heard him grumble. He isn’t going to confess to anything now! The way he stood there at his wife’s grave this morning, acting the grieving widower…disgusting! As if he knew very well we couldn’t prove he killed his wife. You really want Rath to mess things up with Marquard too?
Again the fat man says something he doesn’t understand, but it doesn’t matter now.
He has heard enough.
He knows what he must do, and opens his eyes.
He is already dead and they still haven’t realised. Meanwhile there is another man in this city who doesn’t realise that he, too, is already dead.
He sits up again.
‘Seems like he’s feeling better. Should I still call for a doctor?’
‘You’re right. Let’s not go overboard. In a quarter of an hour we’ll be in Moabit, he’s being examined there anyway.’
63
Things move so quickly in our age that even the horrors of the Düsseldorf murders have already partially faded from memory. And yet not so long ago we were living almost in a state of war: the struggle of an entire population against beasts in human form, who sought their victims now here, now there…
Rath had just begun to leaf through the new edition of the Monatshefte. He was reading Gennat’s article when he was interrupted by the clattering of crockery.
‘Dinner time,’ Sister Angelika yodelled, ‘but first we need to take some blood.’ She placed the tray to one side and felt for his vein.
‘I’ve come to believe you are a vampire,’ he said, smiling grimly.
Her response came in the form of a needle, which she thrust into his arm. That would be a Yes.
After she had finished, she sat him up and served him chicken with rice. The sister wished him bon appétit and let him alone. It didn’t taste bad at all.
Superintendent Gennat appeared before dessert.
‘I see you’ve got your appetite back,’ he said. ‘That’s a good sign.’
Rath mumbled something with his mouth full.
‘Don’t let me disturb you.’
He spooned the tinned pears they had given him for dessert into his mouth, while Gennat set a little present on his lap and looked round.
‘I’ve brought you something,’ he said when Rath was finished, and unwrapped his gift. He had evidently stopped off at a bakery and loaded up on supplies. ‘They tell me you need a lot of sugar, so I thought… You do eat cakes, don’t you?’
‘Thank you, Sir. Put it on the table for now. Can I offer you a slice?’
‘Only if you take some too.’
It was more or less a command, so Rath sat on his sickbed nibbling at a slice of marble cake, while Ernst Gennat savoured his gooseberry tart.
Sister Angelika swept in to clear away the tray and could scarcely believe her eyes.
‘That’s against your diet,’ she said, taking Rath’s cake away. She didn’t dare make a move on Gennat’s plate.
‘If it was up to me, I wouldn’t allow you so many visitors, Herr Rath,’ she said, casting Gennat a disapproving glance. ‘The doctor lets himself get talked into things far too easily. Just because it’s the police.’
Once she had left again, Gennat placed his cake plate to one side.
‘I ought to be giving you another dressing-down,’ he began. ‘That display of high-handedness yesterday, and after I’d suspended you!’
‘Sorry, Sir, but I had a feeling it could be a lead.’
‘Well, you were proved right. I’m glad we were able to take the man out of circulation, before he put the whole city in a flurry. Your operation saved the life of a certain Eva Kröger. We found her in the cellar. Marquard had created his own little film world down there: a small cinema, a studio, as well as a kind of operating theatre. He had already drugged Kröger; she could only remember that he had invited her to dinner.’
‘Because he wanted to make her a lucrative offer,’ said Rath. ‘He wanted to make films with her.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Marquard had already approached Betty Winter, before her death got in the way.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Relatively. There are so many similarities with the other cases, it can’t just be coincidence. Ask Marquard the next time you interrogate him.’
‘If only it were that easy.’ Gennat played with his hat. ‘He’s a tough one. He won’t accept that he killed the women. He just talks about film and how it has made them immortal. We found a number of reels. He filmed his victims in the throes of death. Not that you’d know it. That they were in the throes of death, that is. The films are very aesthetic. Perfectly lit, and the poor women all perfectly made up.’
‘The man is crazy.’
‘You could be right there.’ Gennat nodded. ‘We’ve consulted a psychiatrist, but Marquard hasn’t said anything.’
‘He’ll be convicted whether he talks or not. He tried to kill me. I can testify to that.’
‘You won’t have to testify to anything. I did wonder, however, whether you might like to take part in the interrogation tomorrow. Perhaps Marquard will speak to you. If you ever get out of here, that is.’
‘One more night and I’ll be ready to escape Sister Angelika’s clutches.’
‘Good. Then come to Moabit tomorrow at two o’clock. Marquard’s in custody there.’
‘I thought I was suspended.’
‘Your suspension is over from tomorrow morning, though I won’t be letting you anywhere near the Winter case. I hope that much is clear; nor will you be spared disciplinary proceedings. Let there be no misunderstandings there! But I think your present conduct as well as your success in solving the cinema killings will work in your favour.’
Rath understood that Gennat wanted him back at the Castle. He didn’t want to show how happy he was and so changed the subject. ‘Where is Marquard’s mother?’
‘We had her admitted to hospital. She is probably a case for the psychiatric unit. Why do you ask?’
‘I owe her a stroll by the lake.’
Suddenly the door flew open and Assistant Detective Lange came bursting in.
‘Couldn’t you have knocked? This is a sickroom,’ Gennat scolded.
Lange was out of breath. ‘I’m glad I found you here, Sir. Wolfgang Marquard escaped during the transfer to Moabit!’
‘What!?’ Gennat dropped his cake fork. ‘How did that happen?’
‘He simulated a diabetic attack and then put the guards out of action. They panicked and pulled over somewhere on Invalidenstrasse, because he was no longer moving.’
‘And?’
Lange cleared his throat. ‘Marquard took Lensing’s service weapon off him along with a pair of handcuffs and keys. Then he used the other pair to chain them to the steering column. It took quite a while for a passer-by to find them.’
‘He has a weapon?’ Gennat shouted.
Lange nodded.
Gennat calmed down. ‘What the hell? The man won’t get too far without insulin.’
‘I’m afraid he might.’ Lange appeared so dejected it was as if he was responsible for the slip-up himself. ‘We’ve just had a call from his chemist. He’s based in Wilmersdorf.’
‘Surely he didn’t give him insulin, he knows that Marquard was arrested.’
‘I’m afraid he did. Marquard threatened him with a gun. Lensing’s service weapon, I imagine.’
‘How much insulin did he take?’
‘The chemist said enough for two or three weeks.’
‘Goddamn it!’ said Rath.
Gennat patted his arm. ‘Don’t you worry, my man. If he’s out for revenge then he’s got no chance. I’ll have the hospital placed under guard immediately.’
They had taken blood from Rath again, for the final time today. Then it was l
ights out at ten on the dot. All at the same time, just like in the clink. He dozed for a while and waited for sleep.
It was a catastrophe that Marquard had escaped. He wouldn’t want to be in the shoes of the two guards. He didn’t really think the fugitive would turn up here in the hospital, but in Gennat’s position he’d have done the same and placed it under guard. The hospital and any other places he might have felt drawn to: his villa, his cinemas, and of course wherever his mother and Eva Kröger currently were. He was in no doubt that Marquard was enough of a megalomaniac to want to bring his work, as he called it, on Kröger to a conclusion.
His thoughts became more and more entangled as the first fragments of dream emerged, and he felt himself slowly rocking to sleep. Sleep, sleep, sleep.
A noise fetched him back to the present. A door handle being pressed down.
The door opened quietly without anyone having knocked. Perhaps Gennat’s guards weren’t so invincible after all?
He groped for the bell he used to call Sister Angelika. ‘Who are you?’ he said into the darkness. ‘Tell me right now, or I’ll call the nurse.’
‘Sshh,’ a voice hissed from the darkness. ‘Do you really want me to fall into Sister Angelika’s hands?’
The door closed and the steps drew closer to the bed. Silky hair tickled his face, and he felt a wet mouth on his. Charly!
‘Do you know who it is?’ she asked.
‘Lieselotte? Isolde? Franziska? Hildegard? Angelika?’ He fired the names as if they were bullets from a machine gun.
He couldn’t help it, he always had to destroy the romance with stupid jokes, but at least she laughed.
‘Angelika I’m not buying.’
‘You do the rest?’
‘You’re more closely guarded than the Reichsbank. If I didn’t know the two officers outside, I’d never have made it to you.’
‘Marquard’s escaped,’ he said with a scratchy voice, before clearing his throat. ‘Gennat thinks he might want to come here.’
‘They just reported it on the radio. I don’t think he’ll get very far.’
‘Why’s he doing it? Silent in the interrogations, almost as if he’s given up, then this?’
‘Perhaps he really is finished with everything and just wants to die in peace.’
‘If that’s true, do you think he’d have stolen so much insulin?’
‘I don’t know, but I do know one thing. Right now you urgently need protection.’
While she was still speaking she slipped under the covers and kissed him a second time. He closed his eyes as a man flitted past, grinned at him and disappeared.
Screw you, Rath thought. Charly is here. With me!
64
Friday 14th March 1930
It has snowed in the night; the snow has laid a white sheet over the world, and, at least for a moment, returned its innocence to her. From up here the city looks as if it has sprouted from a white crystal.
A beautiful image. A beautiful, final image.
The wind up here is cold, and prickles his face like needles, but he scarcely feels it. The man beside him is shivering. Ever since he gave him the gun, he no longer speaks, only shivers.
The killer is silent because he has understood. If he shoots they will both be plunged into the depths, no matter who the bullet hits. The handcuffs see to that. He threw away the key as soon as they assumed their position on the parapet. He thinks he might even have heard the soft pling as the metal struck the roof of the restaurant one hundred metres below.
The horrified expression of the man at the moment of realisation! They are two dead men sitting on the parapet and there is nothing anyone can do.
He doesn’t want to spare him the fear of imminent death, those torturous final minutes knowing that the end has come, and that it is inevitable.
He had to wait the entire night, and when the killer finally emerged from his car half an hour ago on Lietzensee, still intoxicated, and gazed into the barrel of a gun, he had no inkling of what awaited. He pulled out his purse, but soon realised it wasn’t about money.
With the gun in his coat pocket he drove the killer onto the Funkturm and into the lift. The attendant didn’t notice a thing, and let them out on the viewing platform on the upper floor. ‘You haven’t exactly picked the best day for it!’
They stood facing each other for a moment in silence, before he forced the killer upstairs, out onto the platform, into the wind and cold. There he took the handcuffs out of his pocket and gestured towards the parapet. The killer still didn’t know why, but he climbed to the top of the railing, shivering with fear and cold, and babbling, endlessly babbling, to drown his fear. Then he sat down, knees facing outwards, hands clinging to the rail until his knuckles turned completely white.
A killer frightened to death. Babbling like a child.
For a moment he gazed at the white knuckles before pushing the piston all the way down. A single shot for himself, that’s enough, the killer should be fully conscious for his own demise. Then he sat down next to the man, clicked the handcuffs shut and listened to his jabbering.
‘What’s going on here? This is dangerous! Did Rath send you? Don’t go thinking you can intimidate me like this!’
Since he has held the gun in his hands, the killer no longer speaks. He has understood the significance of the gesture. Even a pistol can’t help you now.
Victor Meisner will die in the next few minutes, because that’s what Wolfgang Marquard wants, and even with a gun in his hands he is powerless to prevent it.
Down below, police cars are circling. They have picked up his trail again. Perhaps the lift attendant did notice something after all.
All the better, let them see it!
It is almost time, the pain is over. He feels the fine film of sweat on his skin. All his muscles relax, completely loose now. He is ready.
Just one question occupies his mind.
Will he be able to hear it?
Can it be heard at all?
Then it comes and answers all his questions, because he can hear it. Hear it approaching, as quickly and inexorably as a raging tornado. Hear it ploughing everything else to one side, the roar of the world, the whistling of the wind, even the unbearable racket deep within his own heart until, finally, it arrives.
The silence before death.
The Silent Death Page 47