‘Hello, Katsche,’ Leo said. ‘Nice uniform.’
The man with the file pressed Leo onto the bloody surface of the chair and closed the door.
‘I didn’t realise the SA worked with criminals,’ Leo said. ‘Has Katsche here told you who else he runs with? Ever heard of the Nordpiraten?’
‘Keep your mouth shut,’ File Man said. ‘Comrade Kaczmarek will deal with you soon enough.’
Right on cue, Katsche emerged from the darkened corner, took up position next to Leo’s chair, and dealt him a blow to the liver. Leo doubled up in pain. He ought to have known what Katsche’s role was. The man was a bouncer. He knew how to strike where it hurt.
‘Am I being held by the Pirates or the SA?’ Leo asked, receiving another blow to the knuckles for his troubles.
The man behind the desk set his report form to one side. ‘You, scum, are in the hands of the German police.’ He planted himself in front of Leo. ‘And you’ll speak when you’re spoken too. Understood?’
‘Sarge.’ Leo said through gritted teeth. ‘I just didn’t recognise your new uniform. Didn’t it use to be blue?’
Another blow, to the ribs this time.
‘That’s Herr Scharführer to you, you piece of shit.’
‘Yes, Sir.’
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, Herr Scharführer, Sir.’
The Scharführer looked satisfied. Typical German, Leo thought, always crowing about his rank.
‘Might I ask what it is you want from me, Herr Scharführer? I’ve nothing to do with the Reichstag fire, and I’m no Red either. Just ask Katsch . . . I mean SA-officer Kaczmarek.’
Katsche struck him a blow to the solar plexus. He gagged and Katsche seized him and pulled him up by the collar. ‘See that you don’t puke over the floor,’ he said. ‘Otherwise you’ll be licking it up yourself. You Red swine.’
Red swine? Leo was surprised. Surely Katsche knew better. Had he denounced him as a Communist to his new comrades? To settle old scores?
Katsche let him flop back onto the chair.
‘We ask the questions here,’ said the Scharführer. ‘All we want from you is answers. Understood?’
Leo nodded. Why give these arseholes any more excuses? It would soon be clear enough that he was no Communist, in which case they’d have to let him go. Then, if he really had denounced him, Katsche would be the one in trouble. That was something at least.
18
Rath wakened at a quarter past four following a restless sleep. After tossing and turning for fifteen minutes he went into the kitchen to put on some coffee. He took a long shower and emerged feeling half-awake. The central heating, which ensured the supply of hot water was constant, was one of the advantages of his newly-built apartment in Charlottenburg. How he had hated having to switch on the water heater on cold winter days in his old place in Kreuzberg.
In the kitchen Kirie looked at him out of drowsy eyes, and Rath ran his hands affectionately through her black fur. Despite another late night, he didn’t feel too hungover, but perhaps the headache was still to come. Finishing his coffee, he saw that it wasn’t yet five. Kirie looked bewildered as he attached her lead and shooed her outside. The night porter greeted him with the same blank gaze as always, only Rath was more familiar with it on his way in. He had never left the house so early before.
Reaching the small park at Steinplatz, he was the only person for miles around. At other times of day it wasn’t unusual to run into fellow dog-walker Bernhard Weiss, who lived here with his wife and daughter, having been evicted from his official residence in Charlottenburg last summer when the Reich government made a purge of the Berlin police executive. It was a shame: in Police Commissioner Grzesinski and his deputy, two capable men had been lost. These days Rath felt slightly embarrassed at seeing him, unsure whether to regard him as his ex-boss or a new neighbour.
Charly had no such qualms, chatting as if they were old school friends . . . but now he was thinking about her again. It didn’t matter what else was going on in his head, at some point his thoughts turned to Charly. Even this stupid murder case linked back to her, or at least she thought it did. This crazy girl wandering the streets of Berlin like a ghost. It was only a matter of time before Warrants picked her up.
Once Kirie had completed her business he shunted her into the car and started the engine and drove aimlessly through the city, only to wind up in Moabit. To his left he saw the prison, the yard of which was brightly lit even at night, and the long, dark brick wall. To his right was Spenerstrasse. He switched on the indicator to turn, but pulled over at the last minute.
What’s the plan here? he asked himself. Ring on Greta’s door and offer Charly a lift to Alex? A crazy idea, they’ll almost certainly still be asleep. You’ll only make a fool of yourself.
He drove on through the city, past the burned-out Reichstag whose silhouette rose dark against the brightening eastern sky. Apart from the shattered, warped glass dome, the building looked exactly as before. You could be forgiven for thinking nothing had happened.
He tried to focus on something else, to look forward to the coming day, to seeing Charly, at the latest in the canteen, and greeting his colleagues. All at once he knew where he could go. They could discuss the case, perhaps even arrange to meet for a beer later in the Nasse Dreieck, just like old times.
Parking on Luisenufer, he felt better. It was still very early, but if Gräf was planning to take the bus to Alex, as he did every morning, then he would certainly be up. At worst, he’d be having his breakfast. Rath and Kirie crossed the empty courtyard and made for the rear building. At just after six, there was no one in the stairwell. Reaching the door on the first floor, he debated whether he should permit himself the obligatory greeting, before giving a loud knock and crying: ‘Police! Open at once!’
Moments later the door opened a crack and Reinhold Gräf, in a dressing gown and with his hair still wet, peered out, white as a ghost. ‘Gereon, for the love of God. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing much. Just thought I’d pick you up for a change.’
Gräf looked at the clock on the wall. ‘You do realise what time it is? I haven’t had breakfast yet.’
‘No problem. Why don’t I join you?’
Gräf made no move to let him in. The door was open no more than a crack, but for Kirie that was enough. Rath had noticed her growing impatient on the stairs, pulling on the lead as she sniffed out the flat where she’d spent the first years of her life. Or perhaps it was the liver sausage, but either way she broke off from her lead and charged inside.
‘Bad dog!’ Rath cried. ‘To heel!’
Kirie never paid much attention to such commands. Rushing after her, Gräf and Rath found her in the kitchen, in the corner she used to call her own. It was a year now since Rath had passed on his old Luisenufer flat to Gräf, in favour of his apartment on Carmerstrasse, which was not only bigger but twice as expensive.
Rath crouched and threatened Kirie with his index finger. ‘You should be ashamed,’ he said, and Kirie closed her eyes, less out of shame, Rath suspected, than the need to catch up on sleep. He shrugged. ‘Well, now that we’re inside, I might as well take a coffee. No rush. There’s plenty of time.’
Gräf gave a pained smile and filled the kettle. ‘How about you see to that while I get ready?’ he said, placing the kettle on the stove. ‘You know where everything is.’
Rath went to the cupboard and fetched the coffee grinder. The kitchen door was still open, and he could see the stand in the hall outside. He hesitated. No, he wasn’t imagining things. An SA uniform hung from one of the hooks. He continued as if nothing was wrong. ‘Any joy yesterday?’
‘Come again?’
‘In the homeless shelters.’
‘Nothing. No trace of Heinrich Wosniak anywhere. I’ve scoured all the relevant addresses around Bülow and Nollendorfplatz, but there’s no one who knew him.’
‘A man fights for his country, and ten years later the whole world’s fo
rgotten about him.’
‘There are thousands of them.’
Rath was about to ask about the brown uniform when the bathroom door opened and a man emerged, towel wrapped around his hips, blond hair still wet but perfectly parted, and marched straight into the kitchen. Rath had heard the water running as Kirie charged inside, but thought nothing of it.
Seeing Rath, the blond man stopped in his tracks.
Gräf was visibly uncomfortable. ‘This is Conrad. I mean, Herr Kötter,’ he said. ‘He lives upstairs in the attic room, where that Countess used . . .’ He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, Herr Kötter has no running water, which is why . . .’
‘Burst pipe,’ the blond man said to Rath, but it sounded like: ‘Wanna’ fight?’
In the same instant Rath realised where he had seen him before. On several previous visits to Luisenufer he had run into an SA man in the courtyard who’d greeted him with a dirty look. He didn’t appear much friendlier now.
‘I’ll be off then,’ Herr Kötter said, removing his uniform from the hook. ‘Many thanks, neighbour.’
‘No trouble.’ Gräf smiled uneasily.
No wonder, Rath thought. Imagine letting a Nazi do his morning toilet in your flat.
Kötter slung his trousers and brown shirt over his arm, put on his uniform cap, and picked up his boots. It was strange seeing an SA officer clad in only a towel and peaked cap, but Rath sensed he’d be wise to suppress a grin. The SA wasn’t known for its sense of humour.
‘Just a moment,’ Gräf said and ran into the corridor. He took the swastika brassard from the hall stand and set it on top of the clothes pile on Kötter’s arm. They exchanged another glance, which Rath couldn’t explain, and the door clicked shut.
Rath poured coffee beans into the grinder. ‘Best get in with the new regime. Or did you just fancy seeing a Nazi in his pants?’
Gräf ignored the quip. ‘I’ll get ready,’ he said, disappearing into the bedroom.
Rath cranked the lever, considering the situation as the beans cracked. He knew that Reinhold harboured sympathies for the ‘government of national concentration’, as Hitler’s cabinet termed itself.
‘At last things are looking up,’ Gräf had said back in January, when Hindenburg appointed his new Chancellor. In spite of Reinhold’s admiration for the brownshirts, Rath had hoped he wasn’t a true believer. No one who had kept their sense of humour could be and Reinhold had kept his – until now.
They never really discussed politics when they met, nor did they speak about their private affairs. For a long time Rath hadn’t told Reinhold about Charly, partly out of concern that his colleague might have eyes for her too, but there had been no bad blood when he learned of their engagement and his congratulations had been genuine.
Continuing to crank the lever, Rath’s gaze fell on the breakfast table. It was already laid for two: two coffee cups, two plates, two knives, even two egg cups. It must have looked like this before he and Kirie burst in. The table wasn’t laid for him, it was laid for . . . Blood rushed to his head. It couldn’t be true, or could it?
Gräf returned to the kitchen, looking immaculate. Even his tie was done up.
‘Could I . . .,’ Rath said. ‘Would you mind if I used the bathroom?’ He paused. ‘Or do I have to join the SA first?’
‘Very funny.’
Rath set down the coffee grinder knowing he had to get out of the room. Perhaps he was just imagining it. Perhaps Gräf had offered his neighbour a coffee, just as he had his commanding officer. If they really had been meaning to have breakfast together, the detective and his Nazi neighbour, it didn’t have to mean anything. Gräf was embarrassed, naturally, accurately sensing what Rath might say after bursting into the flat. Still, being friends with a Nazi was nothing for a police officer to be ashamed of these days. A year ago the Politicals would have become involved and an internal investigation triggered. Now it was practically a badge of honour.
Reaching Gräf’s bathroom, Rath saw something that rattled him even more, perhaps because the display of intimacy was precisely what his own bathroom lacked whenever Charly decamped to Greta’s. Reinhold Gräf’s bathroom looked as Gereon Rath’s ought to have looked, with two glasses on the shelf in front of the mirror, and in each glass a toothbrush.
19
The awakening city flitted past but all Reinhold Gräf could see was Gereon staring blankly through the windscreen. He had been silent since the flat, saying nothing in the face of what was obvious: nothing about Conny, who’d emerged from the bathroom freshly showered, nothing about the breakfast table, nothing about the idyll they shared like an old married couple. How could they have been so naive?
Returning to the bedroom to get dressed – to dispose of Conny’s things and fix the crumpled sheets – Gräf had slammed his fist against the mattress in anger at his own stupidity.
Why, oh why, had they chosen to play with fire like this? Conny usually crawled upstairs to his attic flat at the end of the evening, but in the last few weeks they had grown careless. Perhaps it was their euphoria at Germany’s change in fortune. Joy at the triumph of the nationalist movement was one of many things they had in common. Even so, they shouldn’t have forgotten that what they were doing was wrong and illegal.
Someone like Gereon Rath, who had previously worked for Vice, wasn’t blind, and he certainly wasn’t stupid. There must be a reason for his silence, or was he simply over-tired? Was Gräf attaching meaning where there was none? Because he had felt caught from the moment Gereon appeared at his front door? Half an hour later and Conny would have been on his way to work.
Ifs and buts . . . what was done was done.
‘Strausberger Strasse?’ Gereon asked.
Gräf nodded, grateful for even the most banal of utterances. ‘Number seven, second rear building. Silesian Olga.’
‘Doesn’t sound very official.’
‘I’ve been round all the municipal shelters.’
‘So you’re going private?’
‘If you like.’
Gereon stopped outside the house. ‘See you at the Castle.’
‘Depends how I get on. I still have a few addresses to check. How about a beer tonight in the Dreieck?’
‘No can do. I have to look after Charly.’
Gräf got out, let Kirie onto the passenger seat and tipped his hat. Gereon returned the gesture. No sooner had he closed the door than the Buick turned and headed back towards Frankfurter Allee. Through the reflection in the windscreen he tried to see whether Gereon was looking back, but all he could make out was Kirie’s silhouette.
After crossing a miserable-looking courtyard, he descended the basement stairs to the second rear building and was assailed by the smells of mildew and male sweat. Olga Joppich lived in a flat almost completely devoid of light. It seemed scarcely credible that a dozen men could have slept here last night, but they had, and paid for the privilege.
Places like this were plentiful in north and east Berlin. Miserable, damp, mouldy basements that poor souls like Olga Joppich rented to those who were even less fortunate, to avoid being put out on the streets themselves.
Gräf fervently hoped that such conditions, imposed on Germany by the November criminals, would soon be a thing of the past. German soldiers who had sacrificed their health for the Fatherland now lived on the streets – that couldn’t be right. In the new Germany, they, too, would find their place. Sadly it was too late for Heinrich Wosniak, and many others who had spent their final years in penury. Men whom the Weimar ‘system’ had on its conscience.
Reaching the door he followed the instructions on the yellowed sheet nailed to the jamb, and rang three times.
20
Rath still wasn’t quite with it as discussion turned to the latest rumblings in the press. The article in Der Tag had opened the floodgates for the rest. Gennat advocated going on the offensive, but Böhm was having none of it, so great was his distrust of ‘hack writers’. His experiences with the press hadn’t been univ
ersally positive, which no one knew better than Rath, who had been responsible for many of them. But what did Böhm, who avoided all contact with journalists, expect? Certainly Gennat was against such default negativity.
While Buddha and Böhm argued, Rath’s thoughts turned to Luisenufer earlier that day. He still couldn’t believe it, but there was no other explanation. Reinhold Gräf was a pansy.
How could he do this to him? After all the beers they had drunk together, everything they had been through? How often had they got changed after police sports? Stood under the shower together? Plenty of opportunity to look him up and down . . . Rath grew furious thinking about it.
‘ . . . isn’t that so, Inspector Rath?’
The voice belonged to Böhm, but everyone was looking at him.
‘Come again?’
‘The murder weapon. The trench dagger. My colleagues and I would like to know what progress you have made.’
‘Well, it’s tricky.’ Rath cleared his throat. ‘There is no such thing as a standardised trench dagger. Remember that trench warfare was something unknown, for which German soldiers were unprepared. For the most part, the men would have acquired their own daggers, whether by manufacturing them or adapting existing weapons. It wasn’t until the second year that infantrymen on the Western Front were provided with trench daggers, albeit there were still enormous regional differences.’
‘Fine, Inspector,’ Böhm interrupted. ‘But what does it mean for us?’
‘That we still have a long way to go. The only thing we can say with any certainty is that our murder weapon is unlikely to be standard army issue.’
‘A homemade job then?’
The March Fallen Page 9