‘Because you weren’t an officer?’
‘Perhaps because I wasn’t Jewish either. Engel wasn’t popular in the troop, that’s true. He was too ambitious for a lot of them. Doesn’t take long to get a reputation. There were some who really hated him.’
‘What about you? Did you hate him?’
‘He was my commanding officer. Not best friend material, but hatred?’ Grimberg shook his head. ‘Captain Engel valued my work, and I respected him.’ Again he looked around as if someone might hear. ‘I know what you’re driving at, Inspector. Believe me, I’ve asked myself often enough.’
‘And?’
Grimberg shrugged. ‘A charge can always misfire once it’s primed. But . . . at that very instant?’ He looked at Rath as if he were expecting a follow-up question, but none came. ‘It happens more often than you might think. Even if it’s never talked about.’
‘What does?’
‘Soldiers killing their commanding officers and presenting it as an accident. It just takes someone unpopular enough, and a few like-minded souls. And an opportunity.’
‘But, killed for being . . . unpopular?’
‘If it’s someone who sends his men into battle without heed to the consequences, or who’s a brutal slave-driver . . . yes, at some point, that’s the type of man you’d want to kill.’
‘And Engel? Was he a brutal slave-driver?’
‘Not that I’m aware of. He was strict, arrogant perhaps, but he was hated because he was a Jew, and had dared to become a captain.’
Rath thought of his former boss, Bernhard Weiss, whose safety was no longer guaranteed. Weiss, too, had emerged from the war as a highly decorated captain, a fact which only stoked the anti-Semitism of his opponents. The more patriotic Jews were, and the greater their sense of duty to the Fatherland, the more bitter the hatred became.
‘You have your suspicions?’
‘Like I said, Engel wasn’t held in very high regard.’
‘But someone must have been on hand to detonate the trap?’
‘Or they manipulated it and moved the wire to a different site, right at the entrance to the trenches.’ He looked at Rath. ‘If so, it must have been someone who didn’t care if Thelen and I were killed too. The fact that we were still standing by the car when Engel went in was pure coincidence. I should have been there, inspecting the traps with him.’
‘If it was an attack . . .’ Rath considered, ‘could you have been a target?’
‘I was a nobody, Inspector. A man like me didn’t attract hatred or envy, but it must have been someone who thought my life was worthless.’
‘What about Thelen? Would he have stayed by the car whatever?’
‘That was how it was with the others we inspected. He was only the driver.’
‘Do you think he might have been capable? How was his relationship with Engel?’
‘You’d have to ask him yourself. I barely knew him. He was transferred to the Eastern Front shortly afterwards.’
‘You looked for Engel together . . .’
‘Yes, even though it was futile, burrowing through rubble like that. Then the British artillery started firing, and we made sure we got out.’
‘But no one saw the corpse?’
‘No.’
‘Did anyone look for him later?’
‘It wasn’t possible. The enemy was advancing. It was no longer German territory. Leaving an unidentified corpse behind like that, it happened all the time. Plenty more died agonising deaths, because no one could get to them.’
‘Would it be possible to survive one of your booby-traps?’
‘We always packed a lot of scrap metal around the explosive charge. Nails, sheet metal, old screws, things like that. Pretty lethal when it flies through the air.’ Grimberg spoke as if he were explaining the workings of a pressure cooker. ‘With a little luck, you could survive a hailstorm of metal like that,’ he said, adopting a sceptical expression. ‘The question is whether you’d want to. Sometimes, death can be a mercy.’
49
Charly stood at the window and looked at the full moon over Carmerstrasse and the gaslight below. Previously she might have gone out on an evening like this, perhaps met up with Greta or her former classmates, but somehow she didn’t feel like it. What was happening out there made her sick. It was as if a wicked conjuror had cast a spell on her beloved Berlin, and transformed it beyond recognition.
The city she knew still existed; the people, the bars, the streets, but to access it she had to pass at least a dozen swastika flags, and tonight she couldn’t stomach it. Now that the election campaign was over, she hoped they would disappear and Berlin might begin to look normal again, and not like an occupied city. She couldn’t explain it, but she felt an almost bottomless aversion to the swastika, the symbol of the new party of government – and this despite its geometrically perfect form.
These days Nazi flags even flew outside police headquarters; the black-red-and-gold of the Republic had served its time. Systemzeit was the name given to the years of the Republic, making it sound as if democracy were an aberration in German history.
For Kirie’s sake she still left the house, of course. The dog had to be walked no matter what. After a long excursion following Gereon’s departure, tonight a brief stroll would have to suffice.
Waiting for Kirie to perform her business, Charly gazed up at number 3, Steinplatz. The second floor windows were all dark. It was a week now since Bernhard Weiss had fled, but still she was worried.
Late as it was, she decided not to return to Carmerstrasse but to take a detour to Uhlandstrasse. She rang on Adolf Weiss’s door, and it was some time before a maid opened. No doubt she was afraid it might be an SA wrecking crew.
Adolf Weiss might not have said so as he received her, but fear was writ large on his face. The SA had been in Pension Teske already. Somehow, Weiss said, after the maid had brought tea and set a bowl down for Kirie, the brownshirts must have got wind that little Hilde Weiss had been staying there with her grandmother. Luckily Bernhard Weiss had left with his wife after a single night and fled to a friend’s house in Hamburg. Arriving too late, the SA had tried to take Hilde hostage and it was only through the intervention of a courageous lawyer guest that the situation had been resolved. His brother had returned soon after to collect his daughter and mother-in-law.
‘He was here?’ Charly asked, barely able to conceal her horror. ‘When the SA are out for his neck?’
‘He had to get his little girl.’
The family were now on their way out of the country, stopping in a new city each day, never spending more than a single night in the same hotel. Adolf Weiss couldn’t say exactly where they were, or didn’t want to. Charly could understand why. Before taking her leave she asked him to send her best wishes when he could.
Even in the moonlight there was no missing the flags on Steinplatz, and Charly was relieved to arrive home with Kirie. How empty the apartment felt without Gereon! She was missing him after just half a day.
Kirie curled up in her basket and was already dozing when she turned on the radio and opened a bottle of red wine. She flopped onto Gereon’s favourite armchair. Tonight it belonged to her.
There was only music on the radio, nothing on today’s vote. She lit a Juno and tried to read . . .
. . .before catching herself staring out of the window, thinking dark thoughts, snapping awake as she gazed into the eyes of the woman reflected in the glass.
My God, she thought. You’re becoming more and more like Gereon Rath. Sitting here drinking yourself to sleep, alone. At least she hadn’t started on the cognac. She had heard that, after a number of years together, spouses began to resemble one another. To think, they weren’t even married yet.
Either way she couldn’t concentrate on the novel she was supposed to be reading, even though it was by no means bad. Her thoughts kept returning to the last few weeks, to all the Nazi spite and brutality. They had caught everyone off guard. Everyone, not just
the Communists.
The telephone rang. She lifted herself out of the chair and picked up the receiver, realising she was starting to sway slightly. Best hold off on the wine after this glass. It was Gereon.
‘Charly, how’s it going? How was your day?’
‘Lousy. How about yours? Were you successful?’
‘Define successful.’
‘Where are you now?’
‘Elberfeld. That is, Wuppertal, I should say. Just got to the hotel.’ She sensed there was something on his mind. ‘Charly,’ he began. ‘You like dancing, don’t you . . .’
Where was he going with this?
‘Perhaps,’ he continued, ‘you could do me a favour?’
50
Rath gazed out of the window. You could see the Rhine from here, and the peaks of the Siebengebirge mountains. Was that the Drachenfels? The so-called Dragon’s Rock? Now the name of the road made sense. Eva Heinen, the widow Engel, lived in the Gronau district of Bonn, in a splendid villa on Drachenfelsstrasse, not far from the banks of the Rhine, but, according to the man-servant who opened the door, was currently indisposed.
‘I don’t know that the mistress can receive you. She’s very busy.’
‘I think she’ll make time. I’d hate to ask the mistress to accompany me to the police station.’
Rath’s words worked like a charm, and soon the man was leading him up to the first floor, to a kind of drawing room, where he was asked to wait. He had been standing here ever since, smoking and gazing into the dawn. Towards the north the view was hampered by a modern building covered in scaffolding, but the Rhine panorama directly in front of the Heinen residence remained unspoiled.
He turned from the window and ambled across the room to a photograph of a man in captain’s uniform, by his side an attractive, serious-looking woman; in front of them two children, a small curly-haired girl, and a boy of perhaps twelve who looked just as serious as his mother despite standing in front of a Christmas tree. Like many Jewish families, the Engels seemed to have celebrated Hanukkah like Christmas. Was this the last time they’d marked it as a family? Benjamin Engel had been missing since March 1917.
December 1916 was also when the war diaries came to an end. Seeing them on the shelf Rath began leafing through them. Benjamin Engel’s estate: less stories of combat than everyday routine, and written in such a way as to be suitable for female readers, devoid of obscenity and the cruelties of war. A sanitised account for the family.
The door opened after he’d finished his second cigarette, and the servant announced that the mistress would be with him presently. He just had time to return the notebooks to the shelf before she appeared.
He recognised her from the photograph; a slender, dark-haired woman in her mid-forties whose natural elegance made him gasp. He almost kissed her hand, settling in the end for a simple ‘Good morning.’
Eva Heinen led him to a suite by the window and invited him to take a seat.
‘Jakobus, would you make some tea,’ she said, and the servant disappeared. ‘I was told you’d be here, Inspector – only, I’m afraid I must have misunderstood your colleagues from Bonn. It concerns my dead husband?’
‘That’s right, yes.’ Rath cleared his throat. He felt as if he had been blindsided. He’d hoped to begin on a more innocuous subject. ‘It’s . . . Frau Heinen, is it possible that your husband survived the war?’
‘What sort of question is that? Are you trying to mock me?’
‘Absolutely not. It’s just . . . We believe it’s possible that he wasn’t killed in action, and . . .’
‘Don’t you think I’d know about it? That Benjamin would have contacted me? His wife, his children?’
‘You have children with him?’ Rath asked, knowing that she did.
‘Two. Walther is studying in Berlin, Edith lives here with me. She’s just turned nineteen.’
‘Then your daughter was nine when you had your husband declared dead. It was ten years ago, am I right?’
‘Nine.’
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Why did I do what?’
‘Rob your children of a father.’
‘That was the war, not me.’
‘You had him declared dead without needing to.’
‘Why do you think I did it?’
‘You tell me.’
‘For seven years I clung to the hope that he might have survived. Can you imagine what that felt like?’
Rath could imagine it all too well. His brother Anno had fallen in the first year of war; his mother had only accepted his death once she had seen her eldest son’s corpse.
‘What about your children? How did they take it?’
‘At some point you have to deal with the fact that reality doesn’t always care about your wishes. That’s why I had Benjamin declared dead. Because I couldn’t spend the rest of my life waiting for a ghost, and I couldn’t expect my children to either.’
Rath was glad to see the maid appear with the tea and an opportunity to change tack. He waited until she had filled their cups and taken her leave.
‘I’d like to get a picture of your husband. How would you characterise him?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Was he a quiet sort? Or more temperamental? Choleric, even?’
‘He was a quiet, gentle man. A little distant, perhaps. Some people thought he was arrogant as a result.’
‘Could he be cold-blooded?’
‘I don’t know what he was like in the war. I imagine he would have been as cold-blooded as any captain in the reserves.’
‘I mean in the sense of unscrupulous. Merciless.’
‘Inspector, I’m afraid I don’t understand what you’re getting at. Why don’t you just tell me what this is about, so I can answer your questions.’
Rath sighed and told her about Achim von Roddeck’s war memoirs and what had been happening in Berlin. Eva Heinen listened without interrupting.
‘He shot three people? You don’t seriously believe that? This author of yours must be delirious.’
‘It’s the first you’ve heard of it?’ She nodded. ‘Soon the story will be available to read in the paper, and that, according to Roddeck, is why these people, these witnesses, are being murdered. Because your husband is alive, and means to hinder publication at any cost.’ Eva Heinen shook her head indignantly. ‘I realise it’s hard for you to conceive of your husband as a murderer, but believe me, if there’s one thing I have learned in all my years as a homicide detective, it is this: anyone can kill. In war, it goes without saying.’
‘This whole story . . . it can’t be true. Why, in all these years, has no one filed charges against him?’
‘Because the witnesses felt guilty on account of the theft, and when your husband died the following day, in their eyes justice was served.’
‘You believe he’s still alive, don’t you? So, what now?’
‘I believe in facts,’ Rath said. ‘But yes, there are former companions of your husband who believe it, two of whom have been murdered.’
‘Then catch their killer, but don’t chase a phantom. My husband is dead!’
‘I understand it’s hard for you to believe what I’m saying, but there are many clues which corroborate it.’
‘Such as?’
‘Did your husband own a trench dagger?’
‘I was never interested in that sort of thing. And he . . . he didn’t leave anything behind, no uniform, no weapons. Not even a body. We buried an empty coffin, down at the cemetery.’
‘The Jewish cemetery?’
‘No, why?’
‘Your husband was of the Mosaic faith . . .’
‘What makes you think that? Benjamin was baptised Roman Catholic before our wedding. My parents insisted on it, and he didn’t mind. He was never especially religious. Do you really think he could have become a reserve officer in the Prussian army as a Jew? It was only possible because he was baptised.’
‘He was still perceived as Jewish, a
nd experienced difficulties because of it.’
‘Once a Jew, always a Jew . . . Perhaps people resented him for being allowed to serve as an officer.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘My husband wasn’t someone you could get close to.’ Eva Heinen sounded brusque. ‘And that had nothing to do with being Jewish.’
‘Roddeck describes your husband as cold and calculating, with a penchant for sadism. Todesengel, his unit called him.’
‘That doesn’t sound like the Benjamin I knew.’
‘Be that as it may . . .’ Rath sensed he wasn’t getting anywhere. He stood and handed the woman his card. ‘If your husband should be alive and contact you, please inform me immediately.’
‘Why would I do that? If I’ve understood correctly, you believe he’s a killer.’
‘Perhaps you’d do it to prove his innocence. If you’re so convinced of it.’
‘I’m convinced that a dead man can’t kill, Inspector. I would advise you to pursue other leads.’
He said his goodbyes and made for the door where Jakobus was waiting to see him out. Before Rath got into his car he looked up. Eva Heinen stood at the window watching him. She didn’t flinch as their eyes met, nor did she draw the curtain. She looked as if she meant to hypnotise him, or place him under a curse.
51
Charly’s first port of call on Monday morning was Registry. On the way she ran into Detective Kellermann from H Division, with whom she’d dealt regularly when she was still allowed to work for Gennat. ‘Charly,’ he said. ‘Long time no see. Here to inhale some dust?’
‘Looks that way. I see you’ve had your dose.’ A yellowing batch of files was wedged under his arm.
‘Thanks,’ he said, feigning a sneeze. She had always liked him.
‘What’s new in Warrants?’ she asked.
‘I’ve never chased so many Communists in my life. I’ll be surprised if they have the numbers for a revolution.’
‘Forget the Communists. What about the national revolution?’
Kellermann changed the subject. ‘You’re interested in this fugitive arsonist, aren’t you? The one who escaped from Dalldorf?’ Perhaps he was worried about being overheard. Germany had become a nation of cowards.
The March Fallen Page 22