‘Better view for sure,’ Lange said, and went on his way.
‘You can always tell CID officers,’ Zientek said. ‘Comedians . . .’ He had made a disappointed face as Lange set down the list on Rath’s desk, but couldn’t say anything given Rath’s status as superior officer. ‘Let’s go and find an interrogation room,’ he said, snatching the list gruffly and making for the door. Rath followed, smiling inwardly but hurrying to keep up.
‘These lists,’ he asked. ‘Where are they compiled?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Is there a central list containing the names of all prisoners being held by the police and auxiliary forces?’
‘There might be, if the SA weren’t so damn sloppy, but every so often a prisoner slips through, never to be found. Their prisons are a mess.’
‘The SA have their own prisons? Since when?’
‘Where do you think all this lot are kept? Berlin doesn’t have that many free cells.’
‘But the SA does?’
‘You can be sure of it.’
‘What kind of prisons are these?’
‘For the most part they’re normal basements, though sometimes they cart Thälmann’s boys off to the nearest Sturmlokal to teach them some manners. Which means their record-keeping isn’t quite what it could be. Still, Commies can be dealt with off the books too.’ Zientek laughed, sounding like a goat with pneumonia.
‘Say you’re looking for someone specific, how would you find them?’
‘The men on our list are all brought in from elsewhere. Shouldn’t be much looking involved.’
‘What if they haven’t been brought in yet?’
Zientek halted outside the interrogation room. He seemed wary. ‘If you’re looking for someone specific we can submit a request to SA leadership. Usually they’re delivered the next day. Free of charge.’ He laughed his bleating laugh. ‘Occasionally they can be a little worse for wear. Which is hardly the worst thing for our purposes.’
37
He still didn’t know why he had been locked up or what they intended to do with him.
They weren’t going to beat him to death. They had kicked him and thrashed him with an iron bar, but always stopped just in time. Luckily for Leo, he could take a lot of punishment. He wouldn’t break any time soon, and that, he now believed, was their purpose. They wanted to cut him down a peg, make an example of a head of a Ringverein. To deter other career criminals in the city.
The rest of the inmates were nobodies. Communists mainly, as well as a few Social Democrats who had been taken out of circulation. Also, doctors, authors and lawyers who were united, besides their high school diplomas and university degrees, above all, by being Jewish. Some of them had long forgotten this fact until the SA reminded them.
In the meantime Leo also knew where he was being held, albeit this information was of little use as he had no contact with the outside world. The SA must have only just moved into the former barracks on General-Pape-Strasse since the whole thing retained an improvised feel. The prisoners were herded together in the basement. Thirty or forty men in the one room with only a single steel trough for their toilet, emptied all too infrequently given their captors’ fondness for the castor oil treatment.
Upstairs, the offices and interrogation rooms were a world apart from this basement hell. There were beatings upstairs, too, but the really sadistic torture was carried out by the SA men downstairs, almost all of them in their early or mid-twenties.
Other buildings were also in use, though they housed normal enterprises. From time to time Leo would hear the screeching of a saw, the pounding of hammer on metal alongside footsteps, cries, laughter and the murmur of voices. Berlin workers going about their business as the SA tortured their most vocal supporters in the basement next door.
The Communists, who made up the majority of prisoners, managed to smuggle out the odd message. They were well organised, but didn’t trust Leo, the Ringverein man, which meant he hadn’t got word to Marlow. Whether someone like Dr Kohn, Marlow’s go-to weapon in such cases, would be much help in a situation like this remained to be seen. What happened down here had nothing to do with the rule of law. Besides, wasn’t Kohn Jewish himself? There was more chance of him joining Leo than bailing him out.
A key turned in the lock. ‘Juretzka, follow me!’
Leo stood up. His bones ached, he had bumps and bruises everywhere, and in some places the skin had burst open. His wounds had only just started to heal, and now the bastards would open them again. Since encountering Katsche on the first day, he had begun memorising his torturers’ faces, storing names whenever they were mentioned, as well as any other information he could lay his hands on. If he should ever get out, he’d find them all, no matter where they lived or where they were hiding. Katsche above all, the piece of shit.
He’d only seen him on the first day, but he was almost certain that Horst Kaczmarek had denounced him, perhaps on behalf of the Nordpiraten. Apparently Marczewski had seen Lapke, the head of the Pirates, taking part in an SA rally in Wedding sometime in November. He’d been right in the midst of it, dressed in brown.
Leo blinked as they stepped into the light. They were taking him upstairs. That was good. There would be no messing around with castor oil, or anything that involved severe blood loss. They saved that for the basement.
It was the first time they’d taken him upstairs in daylight. For the first time he could see something on the other side of the windows, a gravel yard where a few cars were stationed. Two men in workers’ overalls leaned by the wall of a brick building and smoked. Outside a large gate a truck waited to be loaded. It really was business as usual. Did the workers realise who had moved in next door?
Behind the desk was a man whom the two guards addressed as Sturmführer Sperling. It was the first time Leo had seen him, but he noted his face, and his name. He was less concerned about the man’s rank, though evidently he was a big fish.
‘Prisoner Juretzka,’ Sperling said. ‘You will be pleased to know that we are preparing your release.’
‘Then you’ve finally realised I’m not a Communist. Congratulations. It only took you six days, or was it seven?’
‘There are plenty of reasons to hold you a little longer. You have one man, and one man alone, to thank for your release. Scharführer Lapke put in . . .’
‘Come again?’ Leo interrupted the Sturmführer, paying for it with a truncheon blow to the ribs.
‘No need to thank me,’ a voice said from the door. Leo turned around and couldn’t believe his eyes. Hermann Lapke, the head of the Nordpiraten, stood in the doorway, but even in SA uniform the man looked more like a grey, middle-class bore than a gangster. The whole world underestimated him, the underworld above all.
‘That sort of thing goes without saying, doesn’t it, Leo?’ Lapke said. ‘What’s a good word between friends?’
Leo spat. ‘I can do without you.’
Lapke leaned casually on the desk, downgrading Sturmführer Sperling, his superior, to a bit-part role.
‘I don’t think you can. If you really want to get out of here, I’m the only who can save you.’
‘Why would you want to save me, Lapke?’
‘It isn’t out of the goodness of my heart.’ He looked Leo in the eye. ‘Think of it as a small token for disbanding Berolina and transferring your men to me. I promise I’ll look after them.’
‘Berolina has existed for more than thirty years, and you want me to disband it?’
‘The Ringvereine are history anyway. Wake up, Leo! There’s no place for them in the new Germany.’
‘But there is a place for the Pirates? Are you trying to tell me you’re not a Ringverein?’
‘The Nordpiraten have recognised the mood of the times. They’ll continue to do business long after Berolina has disappeared.’
‘That’s what you dream of each night? I always wanted to know what you jerked yourself off to.’
Lapke turned to Sperling, who sat behind
the desk as before. ‘I thought you’d softened him up. Still has a pretty big mouth on him.’
‘We haven’t released him yet,’ Sperling said, examining his fingernails. ‘We can always soften him up a little more.’
Damn it, Leo thought. For once in your life, just keep it shut.
Lapke continued. ‘Mark my words, Leo. Soon you’ll do exactly as I say.’
Leo said nothing. They wouldn’t get to Vera. If she was smart, she’d have skipped town already – as he’d told her to if there was ever trouble with the Pirates or the cops. Were they planning on beating him to death? Then someone else would take his place. Berolina wouldn’t let itself be crushed like that. They had managed just fine after Red Hugo’s death.
Lapke gave Sperling a wave and reached for the telephone. ‘Round up the prisoners. Tell SA officer Kaczmarek we need him after all.’
So that was their secret weapon, Leo thought. Thugs like Katsche had never bothered him in the past. The two SA men who had led him upstairs yanked him from the chair and dragged him back down into the basement. Leo told himself things might get bloody, but he was just as sure they wouldn’t kill him.
‘Phew! It stinks down here,’ he heard Lapke say, a few steps behind. ‘Did you shit yourself already, Leo?’
‘Maybe if you shut your mouth, the smell wouldn’t be so bad.’ He felt a truncheon in his side, but he didn’t care anymore.
Down in the basement Horst Kaczmarek waited with a morbid grin. Behind him the prisoners stood in rank and file. They had even fetched the women from their cells. Everyone looked anxiously towards Leo and company. A good dozen SA officers stood alongside, arms folded, gazing out of curious, sceptical eyes.
‘Hello Katsche,’ Leo said. ‘I hear you want to dance. Didn’t realise it was ladies’ choice.’
‘Very funny. Shall I land him one, chief?’
Lapke shook his head and lit a cigarette. ‘No, no, Katsche. It’s time for your party trick. You have your audience, and a volunteer.’
Katsche took off his uniform cap and handed it to one of his comrades. ‘Hold him,’ he said, and the grip of the SA officers on either side grew tighter.
Katsche swept a strand of hair from his forehead and approached, mouth almost at eye level. Then he seized Leo’s head with both hands, so suddenly and unexpectedly that Leo barely knew what was happening. Katsche pressed his fleshy lips on Leo’s right eye, as if leaning in for a kind of warped kiss. Instinctively Leo had closed his eyes, but even so he felt the suction, an unbelievable force that triggered a searing pain in his head, directly behind his eye. Katsche sucked with all his might, and the pain grew. Leo’s eyelid began to flutter. He tried to escape the awful suction, but Katsche held his head for all he was worth, the brownshirts held his arms and legs, and then everything happened impossibly fast. There was a kind of plop, and Leo’s eye slid out of its socket. Katsche clenched his teeth, and a sharp pain shot through Leo’s head, worse than anything he’d experienced before. He screamed, but it was no good.
Katsche detached himself and spat. Leo heard a few men jeer and applaud. Most were speechless.
He screamed and turned into the arms of his captors, but they held him fast. Warm blood ran from his right eye socket down his cheek; the left eye, still intact, was weeping, and through the blur of tears and pain Leo caught sight of something on the concrete floor. A little ball streaked with blood. He needed a moment to understand what it was that lay there like a bloody marble. The optic nerve hung from its blood-smeared eyeball like an umbilical cord. Only after this realisation, which shot through him like dark lightning, did the pain die enough for him to faint.
38
Rath never thought he would see the man again, but here he was. A gaunt figure slumped on the chair opposite with vomit in his goatee beard, and the cheekbone under his left eye swollen. But it was him, no doubt about it.
‘Dr Völcker, Peter, Neukölln,’ the guard announced, as he led the Communist doctor in from the cells.
Völcker hört die Signale. So comrades, come rally. For some reason Rath remembered this sentence from years before. Dr Peter Völcker, Communist and member of Neukölln district council, was an arrogant trouble-maker who never stopped insisting on ‘rights’, and had thus driven many an officer to the brink of despair.
Nothing remained of that man. The only despair came from Völcker himself. Rath felt ashamed, and was relieved that the Communist doctor, with whom he had quarrelled in a mortuary car during the May riots of 1929, didn’t recognise him.
This was his fourth day working alongside Erwin Zientek and already his new partner was driving him up the wall. With each Communist interrogated Rath felt more alienated. They had to be finished soon. He was starting to feel as if he knew every KPD member in Berlin. Couldn’t Gennat take on a homicide that demanded the recall of his men? Rath was almost willing to commit it himself!
He still stopped by A Division every morning to leave Kirie with Erika Voss, before making his way upstairs. On one occasion Erika mentioned a message from Warrants, and he’d prayed it was something important, a response from the Reichswehr perhaps, or some witness that necessitated his immediate return from 1A, but all they had done was pick up the trail of the fugitive girl. If he understood correctly, a nightshirt had been found in a wastepaper basket belonging to the Jonass Department store. The girl had nothing to do with the Wosniak investigation.
As if that wasn’t enough, his work with the Political Police still hadn’t helped him establish the whereabouts of Long Leo Juretzka.
Right now, however, that was the least of his concerns. His problem was that he felt so utterly ashamed in front of the broken Communist doctor. He felt caught out, almost as if Charly were looking on with disapproval. He still hadn’t told her how he was spending his days. ‘Interrogations,’ he had said, the one time she’d attempted to probe. ‘I’ll be glad to get back to Gennat at last.’
Like the many others who had sat before him on this chair, Dr Völcker’s only crime was to be a member of the KPD. It was becoming increasingly clear to Rath that there was no Communist conspiracy. If, as Charly claimed, even Rudolf Diels, the head of the Political Police, thought the Dutchman had acted alone, then why all the games? For the sake of Göring, who needed additional suspects for the trial, or simply to further intimidate the Communists? Most of them seemed pretty intimidated already. Peter Völcker, whom Rath remembered as a serious pain in the arse, perched on his chair with all resistance beaten out of him. Even then he wasn’t about to admit to a conspiracy that didn’t exist.
The interrogation – during which Rath held back as usual and handed the floor to Zientek – had just finished when the telephone rang. To Rath’s surprise it was his secretary. ‘Erika? Is something the matter with Kirie?’
‘Please excuse the interruption, Sir. I have someone on the line who simply won’t let go. It’s at least the fifth time he’s called. He’s even threatened to stop by in person if you refuse to speak to him.’
‘Please tell me it isn’t our Baron von Roddeck.’
‘No.’ Rath was relieved, if only for a fraction of a second. ‘A Herr Frank,’ Erika Voss continued. ‘Neue Preussische Zeitung. I don’t know what more I can say to him.’
‘I hope you didn’t tell him I’ve been seconded to the Politicals.’
‘Of course not.’
‘Patch him through to Detective Zientek’s office, extension . . .’
‘I have the number.’
‘Great. There in ten seconds.’
‘Important call,’ he said to Zientek, shrugging his shoulders apologetically. ‘Back in a moment.’
Zientek scowled, but said nothing.
The telephone was already ringing by the time Rath entered the detective’s office. ‘Rath, CID,’ he said.
‘Frank, Neue Preussische Zeitung. You’re a hard man to get hold of, Inspector.’
‘I’ve been busy.’
‘That’s why I’m calling. I wondered if you had a
nything new to report?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Serialisation of Märzgefallene begins next week. We’ve been promoting it daily, as perhaps you’ve seen. I wanted to ask how things were progressing with the investigation, on behalf of Lieutenant von Roddeck.’
‘Why doesn’t Roddeck get in touch himself?’
‘Like I say, you’re a hard man to reach. Lieutenant von Roddeck is surprised not to have been summoned for a second interview.’
‘I have his novel, don’t I? The details are all inside.’
‘You have a lead on Captain Engel?’
‘I’m afraid it isn’t that simple. The man will almost certainly have assumed a new identity. If, that is, Herr Roddeck’s suspicions are correct, and he survived the war.’
‘You’re casting doubt on the word of a Prussian lieutenant?’
‘Lieutenant Roddeck has merely voiced a suspicion, and so long as we have nothing concrete to go on, we will continue to pursue all avenues. Your mysterious phantom, a man who was actually declared dead, isn’t top of our list.’
‘Inspector, I must say this is most unsatisfactory.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t provide more detail,’ Rath lied. ‘Give Herr Roddeck my regards, and tell him I will be in touch as soon as I have more to go on.’
He hung up and lit a cigarette. Returning to the interrogation room and the latest Communist held little appeal. He stayed where he was behind Zientek’s desk, looking out of the window at the grey winter sky, smoking and thinking about the last few days. In the meantime he understood all too well why Charly had lost her sense of motivation. Not that they spoke about it. In all the years they had known one another, they had probably never exchanged fewer words about work. They finished on time, met for lunch in the canteen, drove together to and from Alex. In short: they did the same as millions of others who regarded their jobs as a means of earning money, and nothing more.
The March Fallen Page 17