The March Fallen

by volker Kutscher

  Hearing fire brigade sirens, he reached for the telephone. The fire station was on Linienstrasse, just by Oranienburger Tor, barely a kilometre from his apartment. By their sound, the first tenders must be approaching Karlstrasse.

  ‘Hello, Siggi! Berthold here. What’s going on? Where . . .?’

  Weinert quickly packed his notepad and pencil, reached for hat, coat, scarf, and gloves and ran into the street. The question was not so much whether the story was big, but how big given the location. An icy wind almost knocked him from his bicycle on the Kronprinz Bridge, but in five minutes he reached Platz der Republik where the first fire engines stood in front of the Reichstag.

  He leaned his bike against a tree and looked around at firefighters rolling out hoses and cops holding people back, but no barrier yet. He plunged into the crowd, trying to establish the heart of the blaze. A burst of flame in a window near the main entrance . . . a ladder was on its way. Broken glass when a firefighter smashed a window with his axe. That must be the Reichstag restaurant. Had the fire broken out in the kitchen? In better times he had dined there with politicians.

  A fire in the Reichstag was worth an inside page at least. With luck, and if the firefighters didn’t extinguish the blaze too quickly, it might even yield a major story. He climbed the stairs to the ramp in front of the main entrance, moving quickly but calmly while trying to look official. He could pass for a CID arson investigator, thanks to what he knew from Gereon, his ex-neighbour. Herr Rath had gone a little quiet on the story front recently. Some people had it too good.

  Weinert’s gaze was drawn skywards, to the glass dome that crowned the massive building. Suddenly illuminated from inside, it was as if someone had switched on a giant light bulb. Firefighters and police officers stopped with him to look up, grimly fascinated, only to fall into an even more pronounced frenzy. More fire engines arrived, some of which were directed to the other sides of the building.

  News that the Reichstag was on fire spread quickly. Police officers cordoned off parts of the square as more pedestrians arrived. The dome shone so bright in the misty winter night; even the golden Victoria on the Victory Column reflected the flames, sending word across the city: the Reichstag is on fire! One by one the glass panes of the dome shattered in the heat.

  Weinert hoped his news colleagues would be late on the scene. Best if his story was exclusive!

  He hurried to the south wing, where firefighters leapt from their vehicles and rolled out hoses. The entrance was open. He strode determinedly past the abandoned porter’s lodge and climbed upstairs. All he had to do was follow the hoses.

  The smell of burning grew more intense. Pulling his scarf over his mouth and nose, he reached the hall where in recent years politicians had mostly debated in vain, since with Hindenburg’s blessing successive governments had done as they pleased. The frosted glass of the swing doors had shattered and a solid wall of flames burned on the other side. The enormous room consisted, in its entirety, of fire. A dim memory from his religious childhood told him that hell looked something like this.

  The firefighters kept a respectful distance, hosing water through the doors and into the chamber, but still the heat intensified. Weinert gripped his hat and looked for something to hold onto. No one paid attention to him.

  Part of the wooden panelling collapsed, sending sparks upwards like an army of angry glowworms. Entering the chamber was impossible, but he had seen enough, and he had to sell his story before someone beat him to it.

  At the telephone booths near the southern entrance, he inserted a coin and asked to be put through to the Scherl-Verlag. He was on good terms with Hefner, the senior duty editor of Der Tag and, besides, he paid the best rate. Once Hefner heard his story, the morning edition would need a major rewrite.

  ‘Weinert here. The Reichstag is on fire.’

  Hefner wasn’t surprised. ‘We’ve sent someone.’

  ‘Bet he isn’t inside the building though.’

  Hefner put him through to a typist, and Weinert dictated his story directly into the receiver. More firefighters entered the building, their frantic, almost shell-shocked faces helping him find the right note, but he was astonished at his own fluency. That’s how it was when reporter’s fever took hold, and the story was big enough all right . . . He could see himself back in the editor’s chair he had lost three years earlier.

  He was almost finished when a group of civilians entered, one of whom he recognised, a furious, fat man in a trenchcoat: President of the German Reichstag, Hermann Göring, recently appointed Reich minister without portfolio and commissar for the Prussian Interior Ministry.

  Göring’s eyes flashed and in three steps he was at the telephone booth, seizing Weinert by the collar and yanking him out. ‘What are you doing here, man?’ Weinert was too stunned to speak. Was this the Reichstag president or some American gangster? The receiver dangled on its cable. ‘Are you one of the Communists responsible?’

  ‘Let me go so I can show you my press identification.’

  Göring snorted with rage as Weinert searched his coat pockets.

  A member of Göring’s entourage lifted the receiver. ‘Hello,’ he said into the mouthpiece. ‘Who am I speaking to?’

  The typist had hung up, or simply didn’t answer. The man turned to Weinert. ‘Where’s this ID of yours? Give it here. Otherwise you’ll be spending the night at Alex.’ He sounded like a cop. What Weinert wouldn’t give for Gereon Rath to appear now from around the corner. He searched his pockets with both hands, growing more and more frantic.

  The cop fiddled with the receiver. ‘Operator?’ he said, and Weinert was surprised at how friendly the man could sound when he wished. ‘Can you please confirm the recipient of the last call?’ Satisfied with the answer, he hung up and turned to Göring. ‘He was speaking with the Scherl-Verlag, Sir. What shall we do with him?’

  ‘Turf him out. The press has no business here.’

  ‘No need. I’m leaving of my own accord.’

  Only now did Weinert realise his knees were shaking, and he was sweating despite the cold. He didn’t like to think what might have happened if he had been speaking with the offices of Vorwärts, or, even worse, the Rote Fahne. Or, for that matter, his former employer Mosse, a Jewish publishing house. At least the Scherl-Verlag was staunchly nationalist.

  9

  ‘I’ve got the car outside,’ Charly said, reaching for a cold glass of kümmel. She had only come to pick up the dog, but the Spenerstrasse flat still felt like home. Everything looked as before: the pile of books next to the sofa, the dance dress hanging over the chair, the studied untidiness that gave the flat its sense of cosiness. The bottle of aquavit in the cooling basket by the window. She had been living with Gereon in Charlottenburg since August.

  She held out her glass for a refill.

  ‘I thought your car was outside,’ Greta said.

  ‘My bedroom’s next door.’ Greta hadn’t let out Charly’s old room. Financially there was no need as her parents sent money regularly. Her father was an engineer, her Swedish mother an actress in Stockholm. She had a permissive attitude to affairs of the heart but had never made any secret of her aversion to Gereon Rath, even less her aversion to marriage.

  It was true that Charly had spent the odd night here since moving in with Gereon, and sometimes asked herself where she would go if circumstances changed. So, she accepted a third glass. After a day like today she needed to let her hair down.

  Having completed their report on the failed interrogation at Dalldorf, Superintendent Wieking had insisted that she and Karin question a few girls who had been picked up by Warrants in Wedding, suspected of having something against Hitler’s looks. Charly pitied their falling into police clutches, knowing that Wieking wanted to make an example of them. If there had been any trace of paint on the girls, she’d have omitted it from the statements.

  Since Dalldorf she and Karin had switched roles. Now her colleague asked the questions while Charly silently made notes.
There was no proof, but the episode had done nothing for her mood, since she’d promised Greta that she’d collect Kirie just after six. As she had done each day since Gereon left for Cologne.

  ‘Has she been out yet?’ Charly asked.

  ‘Not in the last three hours.’ Greta raised her eyebrows. ‘We were waiting for someone.’

  Five minutes later they were strolling down Calvinstrasse towards the Spree, past dirty snow at the side of the road, wind buffeting the trees as they crossed the river and walked along the path towards Bellevue Palace. Kirie sniffed at every streetlight but eventually relieved herself against a tree.

  ‘Are you going to tell me who ruined your day?’ Greta asked. ‘Karin van Almsick or Gereon Rath?’

  ‘What do you mean: Gereon?’ Greta could read her mind. ‘Gereon isn’t even in Berlin.’

  ‘Precisely. Has he been in touch?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You see.’

  ‘He’s probably been trying. I haven’t been at home much in the last few days.’ Greta’s gaze said: You’re protecting him, even though he doesn’t deserve it. ‘No.’ Charly sighed. ‘I take full responsibility for my mood. I’m just not a very good police officer.’

  ‘Uh-oh,’ Greta said, linking her arm in Charly’s. ‘Keep on like that and I suggest we turn straight around and finish that bottle. If we run out of Aquavit, there’s a tasty Cognac to follow.’

  ‘You realise that approach is straight from the Gereon Rath book of problem-solving?’

  Greta shrugged. ‘So what?’

  Crossing the Luther Bridge, Charly gazed upon the goods station and the gurgling darkness of the Spree, and, not for the first time, was surprised at how the city seemed to set the night sky aglow. The ‘Golden Else’ on top of the Victory Column towered over the dark treetops of the Tiergarten, shining like a torch. Yes, the golden figure of Victoria that soared fifty metres above Platz der Republik was actually flickering in the darkness . . . but the glow of the sky was irregular, glimmering now here, now there. ‘Something’s not right,’ she said.

  ‘Come again?’

  Charly recalled hearing fire brigade sirens as she stepped out of the car on Spenerstrasse. A common enough sound in Moabit, she had thought nothing of it.

  ‘What do you think it is?’

  ‘How should I know? The Kroll Opera House has gone bust, hasn’t it? Wouldn’t be the first time someone had started afresh with help from their insurance.’

  ‘Trust you to think of a crime . . .’

  ‘Professional hazard.’

  ‘It’s more likely someone’s testing out a new sign.’

  ‘It smells like burning to me.’ The glow was no neon sign! If she looked closely she could see naked flames reflected in the gold of the statue of Victoria.

  Without exchanging another word, the two friends stepped off the bridge. Their destination was no longer Moabit, but the source of the flames. Kirie followed begrudgingly when she realised they weren’t going home. Charly had to pull on the lead. It was Monday evening, just after ten.

  10

  Strapped to the metal frame of the bed, she deliberately kept herself awake. She was used to the ghastly cries of her fellow inmates. It had nothing to do with them; nothing to do with the night-time lullaby. It was a only matter of time before Scholtens appeared; after midnight – soon – when the checks were reduced to two-hourly intervals.

  The first time he assaulted her he hadn’t thought it necessary to keep her mouth shut or gag her, but taken her as she lay strapped to the bed. Knowing that no one would come, that her cries were only one part of Dalldorf’s nightly concert of horrors, he let her scream and her helplessness only aroused him further. Next time, when she refused to scream, he hit her until she started. He revelled in torturing her, but tonight she was ready, with the paperclip that had been attached to her father’s photograph in her mouth. By the time the warders overwhelmed her and Charge Sister Ingeborg had wrestled the photo from her hand, she had it. No one had seen a thing.

  Spitting it out and bending it open, she used it to prise open the clasp that secured the bed straps. It didn’t take long, and when she was certain no one was watching she fetched a glass shard from under the radiator. She had hidden the long, pointed piece of glass weeks before when she had broken a vase in the corridor, kicking a stray fragment under the bed in her room. When they loosened her restraints a day later it was still under the bed. She had wrapped its butt end in fabric and hidden it under the radiator.

  She didn’t know if it would keep Scholtens away in future, or provoke him and make things worse, but she did know this: tonight it would be him that screamed.

  There was no sign of him. She had fantasised her revenge so often and so vividly that she felt disappointment. At last she heard footsteps as the cries of inmates fell away.

  Her door had no handle on the inside, but she knew he was coming by the shadow in front of the little glass window. The door scraped open and a figure in white uniform squeezed in, but it wasn’t Scholtens. The man wedged a chair in the crack. No master key, so he couldn’t be one of the staff. She had an inkling of who . . . but then she knew. She knew before she heard his voice.

  ‘You’re awake. That’s good.’ She felt him looking at her, even if she couldn’t see his eyes. ‘Defenceless, too. Lucky me.’ Rummaging in his overalls he took out a long, sharp dagger. ‘See this? A single, well-directed thrust and the lights go out. That’s the cleanest way, but you don’t deserve a quick death.’

  Hannah clasped the glass shard she’d wanted to drive into Scholten’s arse.

  When the police officer had showed her the photo of the dead man, Hannah couldn’t make sense of it, realising only that Huckebein was back. Even so, she’d never have believed things could move so quickly.

  Huckebein. Peg Leg. With a single jerking motion, he pulled her pillow away and her head struck the mattress. For a moment she was afraid that the surprise manoeuvre might have revealed her unrestrained arms and legs, but Huckebein was concentrating on her eyes. The bastard was grinning. He held the pillow in both hands and pressed it hard against her face. Her mouth and nose were blocked, as if taped shut. She tried to think clearly, rearing so that the straps didn’t slip down. Her hand closed around the shard, gripping the fabric at the end. The first blow had to hit home, had to incapacitate him at least temporarily. She couldn’t just stab blindly. His back would be the best place, right in the middle of his back. Now!

  She thrust with the glass for all she was worth, heard him yelp, sensed the pressure on her face immediately recede. She pulled the shard out and drove it into his body again, only now rolling from the bed and running for the door.

  Huckebein held his thigh and hobbled after her, but lost his balance and fell to the ground. ‘I’ll kill you, you bitch!’

  She pulled the door shut, trapping him inside with no handle to turn, and ran down the corridor. Let him pound at the door, let him rant; raving lunacy was normal here. He wouldn’t get out until the night team made their next inspection. Or when Scholtens came . . .

  She had to get out of this shitty madhouse first. She wasn’t crazy. A murderer, yes, but she wasn’t crazy. She had to go where they couldn’t touch her. Only, where? This was the secure wing and all she was wearing was an asylum nightgown, open at the sides. She pulled a pair of rubber boots from a cleaning cupboard over her bare feet and helped herself to three overalls from the hook.

  Behind her, in the half-darkness, a door crashed open.

  She pulled the door of the cleaning cupboard quietly shut, sure of only two things: Huckebein couldn’t find her here, and she had to get out of the building. If he had entered undetected, there must also be a way out. She listened. He was moving in her direction.

  She curled into a ball, groping in the dark for the glass shard, but she must have dropped it in her mad flight.

  11

  Rath found himself lying on the floor looking at a huge pair of black ears. Closing his eyes ag
ain he tried a second time, lifting his eyelids slowly and carefully – to see the same thing: a pair of oversized mouse’s ears on the dusty floor. They were made of cardboard with leather straps that could be buckled on. Under the sofa were the remains of a carnival outfit. Gradually it dawned on him what it was, and to whom it belonged: Mickey Mouse. One of a pair. Two girls who had accompanied them to the bar on Eigelstein straight after the parade and then . . .

  On the walls stood shelves and cases of wine and, in front of the windowsill, a desk. He couldn’t see much outside save for a bare brick wall and a few shorn trees, but the view was familiar. The furnishings even more so. How many times had he sat here in the past? He tried to sit up, but the steam hammer in his head pounded so hard he had to stop. Next to the sofa was an open case of wine with wood shavings sticking out. He stood up, letting the thin woollen blanket that had covered him fall to the floor. At least he was wearing underwear. Had he fallen from the sofa or lain deliberately on the carpet? He couldn’t remember, but someone was snoring under a bedcover on the sofa. Blonde hair glistened in the daylight that filtered through the window into the room. He pushed an empty wine bottle across the floor with his foot. The bundle on the sofa sighed and turned over. One by one the memories returned.

  The Mickey Mouses had been standing in the shadow of the cathedral. After linking arms to sway to the music, they had wound up in a bar on Eigelstein that Rath didn’t know, but which Paul claimed was the best place to go after the parade. Mickey and Mickey needed no second invitation. One was blonde and the other brunette; the blonde had talked a lot and the brunette gave the occasional smile. But what a smile it was! Paul must have thought so too since at some point they made themselves scarce, leaving Gereon alone with the blonde.

  So, what now? she had asked, and he had shrugged and ordered another round of champagne. They clinked glasses and when he made no move to kiss her, she pushed the false nose and moustache onto his forehead and seized the initiative. He didn’t resist.