The March Fallen

by volker Kutscher

  ‘I’m more than happy to have the corpse transferred, provided you supply the appropriate authorisation from your police commissioner. That doesn’t mean I’m relinquishing the case.’

  ‘Your case, my case, they’re one and the same. Berlin Homicide have been investigating this for two weeks! Maybe if you had reported to Main Branch you’d be better informed.’

  ‘I haven’t breached any regulations.’

  ‘Maybe not, but you have shown an unwillingness to cooperate.’ Rath took care not to fly off the handle. ‘Isn’t it customary to look beyond the boundaries of your own precinct when confronted with a death like this and . . . I don’t know, search for parallels with other investigations?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what isn’t customary. Putting the blame on your colleagues. I can’t recall hearing anything about an unusual mode of death from Berlin. As I understand it, Inspector, your man was killed first.’

  ‘We had other things to deal with, like the threat of a Communist uprising. Besides, the story was in all the papers.’

  ‘Our case was in the papers too. Only you lot aren’t interested in what happens in Potsdam.’

  The man was stubborn. ‘I’ll supply the necessary documentation,’ Rath said. ‘So that our offices can work together. In the meantime could I take a look at the corpse?’

  Lehmann considered for a moment. ‘Fine. Come with me.’

  The earthly remains of Linus Meifert were housed in a cooling cellar belonging to Potsdam Municipal Hospital, by the Berliner Tor. On the authority of Inspector Lehmann, who was well known here, they bypassed various doormen. A man in a white coat, approximately Rath’s age, joined them unbidden.

  ‘Dr Ehrmanntraut,’ Lehmann said. ‘He opened up the corpse at the behest of the public prosecutor.’

  Rath shook the doctor’s hand. ‘We’re here because of a similar case in Berlin.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘We suspect it could be the same killer. The deceased served together during the war.’

  ‘Is that right?’ seemed to be one of Ehrmanntraut’s favourite phrases. He opened a door leading to a cold storage room containing five biers. Cardboard signs dangled from the toes of the covered corpses. The doctor put on his glasses, checked the signs carefully and finally lifted the sheet from the penultimate bier. ‘This is him.’

  Linus Meifert’s corpse was significantly less gruesome than that of his disfigured ex-comrade Wosniak, and better nourished. The dead man’s left nostril was one giant scab. ‘Can you tell me about the cross-section of the stab wound?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘Is the puncture channel unusual in any way?’

  ‘A long, sharp object, as I’ve already told Inspector Lehmann. You can refer to my report.’

  ‘I’m only asking because our cross-section was rather atypical.’

  ‘Who examined the corpse?’

  ‘Dr Schwartz.’

  ‘Is he still doing the rounds?’ Clearly Ehrmanntraut was no fan of the long-serving Berlin pathologist. Perhaps he had studied under Schwartz, and that, Rath guessed, would be no picnic. ‘We measured the length of the puncture wound,’ the doctor explained. ‘The shape of the cross-section didn’t seem relevant.’

  ‘Then please take another look,’ Rath said. ‘I’d stake my month’s salary on it being triangular.’

  47

  It was obvious now that Lieutenant Achim von Roddeck didn’t have a persecution complex, his fears were well-founded. Someone out there was assassinating members of his old troop. Two men who appeared in his war novel were now dead.

  Whether this someone was Captain Benjamin Engel, missing, presumed dead, was a different matter. Previously Rath hadn’t thought so: Juretzka’s statement had been a means of activating the police commissioner’s anti-Semitic reflex so that he might reopen the Wosniak case. So far, so good – only now, it looked as if the whole thing might be real after all.

  The corpse in Potsdam had made headlines in Berlin by Saturday morning. The police hadn’t informed the press, but they had informed Roddeck, and the news found its way into the Kreuzzeitung, which could continue beating the drum for its soon-to-be-published serial. A novel, for the sake of which people were being killed . . . naturally, readers were curious. Nibelungen had brought publication, initially scheduled for May, forward by four weeks and everyone sensed a big payday. Apparently even the lieutenant’s personal protection was being exploited: the Kreuzzeitung had published a picture of von Roddeck jutting his chin forward in the company of two scowling uniformed cops. The midday editions had followed suit, and though they failed to mention the novel’s forthcoming serialisation in the Kreuzzeitung, their copy brimmed with anti-Semitic undertones.

  ‘I don’t like the way this is going,’ said Dr Schwartz, on whose desk Meifert’s corpse – after a call from the Prussian Interior Ministry – had landed after all. ‘A mysterious Jew, wandering like Ahasver and butchering brave German veterans. It sounds like something from Der Stürmer.’

  Rath shrugged as if he felt the need to apologise personally. ‘I don’t like it either, but the Jewish angle is what convinced the police commissioner to reopen the case.’

  ‘Anti-Semite as he is, I’m not surprised.’

  Rath had never heard the long-standing pathologist be so disrespectful about a serving commissioner. For all the scorn he might reserve for weak-stomached CID officers, Dr Schwartz had always been loyal to the Berlin Police. That seemed to have changed.

  Rath cleared his throat. ‘But you can confirm it’s the same modus operandi?’

  ‘The same puncture channel, almost the exact same spot. As if the perpetrator had done it many times, practised it even.’

  ‘A soldier then?’

  ‘Do you want his rank and religion?’

  ‘All right. I was only asking.’

  ‘What do you want to hear? That only a Jewish captain can kill in such a perfidious manner?’

  ‘I’m no anti-Semite, I’m just looking for a Jewish captain.’

  ‘You’re right, I’m sorry.’ Dr Schwartz sounded calmer again. ‘It’s just . . . in times like these . . . it can be hard to know what to think of people.’ He covered the corpse and looked at Rath. ‘Do you know what Dr Karthaus said to me yesterday? He told me to take early retirement!’

  Gero Karthaus was Schwartz’s younger colleague. A little on the strange side, perhaps, but wiry and ambitious. Above all: not Jewish.

  ‘I’d be old enough, he said. In times like these, it would be better for all concerned. From one colleague to another, you understand.’ Schwartz shook his head. ‘Karthaus isn’t even a Nazi. It just suits him to swim with the tide.’

  Rath wasn’t so sure about that. These days more and more Nazis chose to hide in plain sight.

  48

  On Sunday afternoon, having cast his vote in the local elections with Charly at his side, Rath sped across the North German Plain on the Fernverkehrstrasse 1. The journey would take approximately ten hours, with a couple of breaks thrown in. He’d sooner have sent Henning and Czerwinski, but Gennat insisted that he make the trip to the Rhineland himself. No doubt Buddha was still smarting at Magnus Levetzow calling him to report.

  Charly wasn’t exactly thrilled, but there wasn’t a great deal she could say. Official assignments were sacred to her, especially when the order came from Gennat.

  His first port of call was Magdeburg, where, according to Erika Voss’s research, Private Hermann Wibeau now lived. Eventually he found the right street, but no one answered the door. He kept ringing, and finally the front door opposite opened and a woman with small, crafty eyes peered through the crack.

  ‘Are you looking for Herr Wiebau?’

  Rath looked at his note. ‘Hermann Wibeau. He lives here, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Herr Wiebau is a travelling salesman. He’s rarely at home.’

  She made a point of mispronouncing the Huguenot name. Rath displayed equal force of will. ‘What does Herr Wibeau se
ll?’

  The lady blushed. ‘How should I know?’

  ‘You’re his neighbour, aren’t you?’

  ‘So?’

  ‘What time does Herr Wibeau usually get home?’

  ‘Hard to say. The police were here yesterday, too. Has something happened?’

  ‘I sent them,’ Rath said, showing his identification. ‘CID, Berlin. Herr Wibeau is an important witness.’

  He wrote a note on his card, and pushed it through Wibeau’s letterbox.

  What a start. The same story in Elberfeld and Bonn would mean two or three days’ work, and any amount of petrol, for damn all.

  He left Magdeburg and continued westwards, always in the direction of the sun. Passing through villages and towns, he was struck by the numbers of swastika flags hanging from windows, sometimes flying outside official buildings. It was polling day, of course, and the Germans loved nailing their colours to the mast, but in the course of the whole journey he didn’t see a single black-red-and-gold flag, let alone a red one. Voting wasn’t even over, and already it looked as if the Nazis had assumed control of Prussia’s town halls. Country dwellers had long since accepted the new powers, while Berlin and other cities resisted still.

  Somewhere beyond Hildesheim, he stopped for the second time, parking outside one of the few country inns that hadn’t been converted into a polling station. The front was draped in black-white-and-red, but at least there was no swastika. It was still cold, though with the sun shining all day it felt as if spring were in the air. Rath ordered a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette and fetched Roddeck’s manuscript from his pocket.

  We spied an enormous pillar of smoke on the western horizon, illuminated by the rising sun, and then, after some delay, heard the thundering explosion. The effect was as a tempest, where the rumble lags behind the flash, allowing the experienced meteorologist to determine the distance of the storm. At first we believed the British artillery had started firing, especially since more blasts followed, though none was as violent as the first. It, moreover, had not been preceded by the typical whistling of grenades that warns of an impending artillery strike. All this was only apparent in retrospect, however. A short time later the captain’s car roared towards us as we effected our retreat. Thelen, the captain’s driver, climbed out, then Grimberg, the demolition expert, uniforms and faces covered in dust. Immediately they submitted their report and we learned what had happened. Making an inspection of the booby-traps on the front line, Captain Engel had fallen victim to a misfire triggered as he set foot inside a trench. Thelen and Grimberg were fortunate to be standing by the car when the charge detonated. They had searched for the captain but soon acknowledged the futility of their efforts. Everything had collapsed, they reported, Engel was fully submerged in the rubble of the dugout. Though Thelen had fetched a shovel from the vehicle in order to clear the point where he believed his captain lay, by then the British had opened fire and they had no choice but to abort.

  My men and I looked at one another and I could see from their faces that they, like I, felt a silent satisfaction. After the events of yesterday, the blackmailing captain’s death seemed like a higher form of justice.

  No one was upset, not even Engel’s driver, when I ordered that we move without delay. Going back would only have compromised Operation Alberich. ‘There’s nothing more we can do,’ I said, and my men nodded in silence. And so we left the dead captain where he lay, in the grave that war had dug him.

  Roddeck must have thought Engel was dead when he wrote these lines. Now the fallen captain had murdered two men. Rath paid and went on his way. Shortly before dusk he reached Elberfeld.

  Friedrich Grimberg, Roddeck’s former demolition expert, lived on Tannenbergstrasse, on the shores of the Wupper, the suspension monorail rumbling along at eye level outside the windows of his second floor flat. Its passengers could see into his rooms, and most were glad of the distraction.

  ‘Doesn’t it bother you?’ Rath asked in Grimberg’s living room. Pans clattered in the kitchen. It was supper time.

  ‘You get used to it. I’ve nothing to hide. If it becomes a nuisance, I just pull the curtains.’

  ‘I understand my colleagues from Elberfeld have spoken with you already?’

  ‘One was here last night to check I was still alive. What’s all this about? My wife was beside herself.’ Rath outlined Roddeck’s tale in a few words. ‘Achim von Roddeck has joined the literary fraternity?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘You have to earn your crust.’ Grimberg shrugged. ‘I have remained within my trade, though I now work as a quarry blaster.’

  ‘Tell me about what happened back then. The murder of the two civilians and the recruit.’

  ‘I wasn’t there.’

  ‘Ah . . .’

  ‘I stayed on in the village to lay the traps. Everything had to be ready for our withdrawal the next day.’

  The traps. The way Grimberg spoke about them you’d think they were jumping jacks, but they had claimed the lives of countless British and French soldiers.

  ‘It was one of your traps that killed Captain Engel, am I right?’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘It’s just a question.’

  ‘They were all mine. It’s why I was there on the morning of the retreat, when the captain carried out the inspection.’

  ‘And this one trap was faulty . . .’

  ‘Inspector, to this day I don’t know how it happened, but it certainly wasn’t faulty.’

  ‘Then why did it go off?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps a pigeon strayed into the dugout and became caught in the wire. Fluttered around a bit, and then: boom!’

  ‘What wire?’

  ‘The fuse was to be activated by a wire in the final dugout. It wasn’t supposed to go off until as many enemies as possible had entered our abandoned trenches.’

  ‘Sounds brutal.’

  ‘War is brutal, Inspector. Those were our orders.’

  ‘What about requisitioning and hiding French gold? How did that square with your orders?’

  ‘It didn’t.’ Grimberg looked around, as if afraid his wife might hear. ‘I blame myself to this day.’

  ‘But you said yourself, you weren’t there when it was hidden.’

  ‘I knew about it, and said nothing.’ He shrugged. ‘Still, why should it matter now? The gold’s gone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Didn’t Roddeck tell you? That we were in France again, after the war was over?’

  ‘No.’ Rath didn’t mention that he’d failed to question Roddeck properly because he didn’t believe his story.

  ‘We crossed the border on different days, and at different checkpoints, to avoid suspicion. It isn’t so easy to get into France. You need a visa, and have to say exactly where you are going and why. Each of us had a different story for the French authorities, and it wasn’t until Cambrai that we met. Roddeck was even more cautious. He only sent his shadow.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Wosniak, his orderly. He could trust him. Wosniak worshipped Roddeck like a saint.’

  ‘Yet in recent years the good lieutenant rather neglected his faithful Henrich.’

  ‘He had enough problems keeping himself above water, our Herr Gigolo.’

  ‘Roddeck’s a dance host?’

  ‘An author too, it seems. Whatever: he certainly could have done with the French gold back then. But it wasn’t there.’

  ‘The French found it before you?’

  ‘Looks that way, Inspector, and I must say, disappointed as I was, I feel only relief now.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘Summer ’24.’

  ‘So late?’

  ‘We needed time to find our feet again after the war, and it wasn’t easy for a German to travel to France in those first years. Inflation meant our money wasn’t worth anything.’ Grimberg had to pause, as a train rattled past his window. The rumble and squeal was hellishly loud. ‘Any
way, we were too late. No one wanted to believe the gold was gone. Wosniak even accused Meifert of having pinched it.’

  ‘The maths teacher?’

  ‘Minus Meifert might not have been the bravest, but he was crafty.’

  ‘You suspected each other?’

  ‘Initially perhaps, but little by little it became clear that none of us could have done it. We were too poor. Meifert was the one who said it. Look at us! Do we look rich? And, if one of us were rich, would he be here now?’

  ‘In that case you must have suspected Roddeck. He wasn’t there.’

  ‘But his shadow was, and if anyone had said anything against his lieutenant, he’d have gone for their throat.’

  ‘More of an attack dog than a shadow then.’

  ‘If you like. No one fancied taking on Wosniak, but the truth is no one suspected Roddeck. He was a classic case of impoverished nobility. You think someone like that willingly goes into hotels and allows rich, fat and, worst of all, bourgeois women to bore him silly?’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about the German upper classes.’

  ‘I’ve encountered plenty of noblemen in uniform.’ He gave a scornful look. ‘Without that sort of baggage we might have won the war, and Germany certainly wouldn’t have such a bad reputation.’

  ‘I thought it was people like Captain Engel who dragged the country’s reputation through the mire. That’s what Roddeck writes, anyway.’

  ‘I’m in no position to judge.’

  ‘Did the captain own a trench dagger?’

  ‘Everyone who fought in the trenches did.’

  ‘Yes, but Engel’s was unique, wasn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t remember. All I know is that Engel was one of the few officers who didn’t shy away from trench warfare.’

  ‘Did he enjoy killing? Is that why he was known as Todesengel?’

  ‘He was called that because he was responsible for the casualties in Alberich territory. As was I, only I didn’t acquire a nickname.’