‘I wondered if you’d have lunch with me. I didn’t fancy eating at Alex.’
‘I’m afraid there’s no canteen here.’
‘Only nice new offices.’
‘Nice big offices anyway. We need the space.’
‘Ah yes, the new age. 1A has more officers seconded to it than any other department.’
‘Yet our work continues,’ he said, deadly serious.
‘Is that why you don’t have a canteen?’
Reinhold grinned and put the file he’d been reading into a drawer. ‘You might not believe it, but sometimes even the Political Police need a break. There’s a nice little restaurant around the corner.’ He reached for his hat and coat and held the door open.
‘Do you actually enjoy working for the Politicals?’ she asked, when they were out of earshot.
‘Define enjoy. Certain things you have to do.’
‘Snooping on people’s political beliefs?’
‘This isn’t a question of beliefs. People can think what they like, but the Communists want to establish a Soviet Germany by force. Having dragged our country to the brink of civil war with their rioting, they set the Reichstag on fire . . . don’t you think it’s time we put a stop to it?’
‘But your methods . . .’
‘Our methods, Charly. In the fight against the Reds every individual matters. Women’s CID are just as important as the Politicals and every other officer, including the auxiliary police.’
‘Who are free to use exactly the type of force we seek to prevent?’
‘History has shown there’s no other way. Besides: we are permitted to do so by the authority invested in us by the state.’
Conversations with Reinhold used to be less complicated.
He took her to a little restaurant beside the cinema. The prices were reasonable; perhaps some things never changed. Apart from a group of brownshirts occupying a table of six, the place was empty. The nearby presence of the SA and Political Police deterred normal paying customers. They found a seat away from the loudmouthed SA men.
‘I know what CID think of 1A,’ Reinhold said, ‘but, since joining the Politicals, for the first time in my career I feel like if I’m doing something useful. Not just in Berlin, but the country as a whole.’
‘You didn’t feel that way in Homicide?’
‘Where we investigate after the fact? Working for 1A I can actually prevent Communists and other enemies of the state from causing further damage.’
Enemies of the state. Charly wondered whether the Nazis didn’t pose the greater danger. Before she could say the wrong thing, the waiter arrived. Reinhold recommended the chicken fricassee Berlin style, and Charly followed his lead.
‘Speaking of old times,’ she said. ‘You worked with Böhm on the Wosniak case, didn’t you? These homeless shelters . . .’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘We were looking for someone to identify the deceased. Preferably the other survivor of the Bülowplatz arson.’
‘Gerhard Krumbiegel?’
‘Right.’
‘Did you find him?’
He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t have to mean anything. There are all manner of homeless shelters in Berlin. My theory is that Krumbiegel skipped town after the fire, maybe went back to Saxony. That’s where he was from.’
‘Saxony?’
‘Not the Free State, the Prussian province. He was from Halle. I telephoned the Criminal Record Office there. A colleague was due to comb the files.’
‘And?’
‘Then this lieutenant showed up and identified Wosniak.’
‘Von Roddeck?’
‘Yes, I told Halle the matter was closed.’
‘Did they find anything?’
‘Krumbiegel hasn’t been registered in Halle since he left shortly after the war.’
‘He was homeless. Doesn’t have to mean anything.’
‘No. What’s all this about, Charly?’
‘I don’t know. I just sense he’s got some role to play in all this. He might even be our killer.’
‘You’re back in Homicide?’
She felt caught out and had to laugh. ‘No, but I think this girl who bust out of Dalldorf . . .’
‘The crazy arsonist . . .’
‘Hannah Singer. I think she could be a key factor.’
‘What does Gereon think? Does he know you’re interfering in his case?’
‘Define interfering.’ She placed a finger to her lips. ‘Don’t say anything to Wieking. I’m just helping him a little when my schedule allows.’
‘Charly, Charly!’ Reinhold shook his head. ‘You’re talking like Gereon Rath.’
‘Is that a compliment?’
‘I’d rather not say. Just don’t let the chiefs catch you!’
‘It isn’t their concern how I spend my lunch break, or my free time.’
‘Charly, it would be a shame if your career went down the tubes before it’s even begun. Don’t go the same way as Gereon. His method’s toast, especially now.’
‘The way you talk about him . . .’ She smiled. ‘I thought he was your friend.’
‘So did I.’ The sentence had slipped out, and Reinhold was talking again before she had the chance to respond. ‘What’s up with him anyway? It’s like he’s disappeared. I hope you haven’t banned him from going out already?’
Charly sensed he wasn’t quite as relaxed as he made out. Clearly Gereon was playing hard to get, and Reinhold was wondering why. Had Gereon broken with his friend because he thought he was a Nazi? Without telling him . . . He was certainly capable of it. Besides, these days who told a Nazi to his face you didn’t share his beliefs?
She realised conversation with her old friend was being suffocated by politics. ‘You really think Gereon Rath would let himself be hen-pecked?
‘By someone as pretty as you, perhaps.’
She met the compliment with a smile, which felt just as false as the rest of their conversation. Once upon a time she had feared Reinhold was in love with her, only to realise that he simply valued her as a colleague. Now she wondered if they were even that.
67
Rath found the boy in the kitchen. Washing up done, he was cleaning the sink. The water gurgled down the drain, drowning out all other noise. Fritze spun around as Kirie jogged his elbow. ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Morning, Fritze.’
‘Morning, Herr Rath.’ The boy pointed towards the sink. ‘Thought I’d do the washing up before I went looking for Hannah. It’s still only half past nine.’
‘Good,’ Rath said. ‘Perhaps you’ll have more luck today.’
‘Perhaps.’ After two blank days of searching it sounded as if Fritze had a guilty conscience.
‘I think it’s great you’re helping Fräulein Ritter,’ Rath said. He fetched his wallet from his jacket pocket and fished out a ten-mark note. ‘For you.’
Fritze looked at the note as if he smelled a rat.
‘Take it, for your help.’
‘No need.’ The boy looked almost scared of the money. At length, he accepted. ‘Thank you.’
‘Let’s not beat about the bush. We both know you can’t sleep on the sofa indefinitely.’ Fritze folded the note over and over again. ‘You can look after yourself out there, can’t you? You don’t need us.’ The boy nodded mechanically, as if he were a wind-up toy. ‘I’m not going to say anything to Welfare, but I don’t want to see you here again.’
‘And Hannah? Aunt Char . . . Fräulein Ritter wants me to . . .’
‘If you find her, sure, let Charly know. She’ll be pleased.’ Rath put a finger to his lips. ‘Not a word about our talk, you understand? It stays between us men.’
Fritze smiled uncertainly. ‘If I find Hannah I’ll be in touch. Otherwise you won’t hear from me again.’ He ruffled Kirie’s fur and she wagged her tail. No doubt hoping for a stroll she pitter-pattered towards the front door. Rath followed, grabbing her by the collar in the nick of time.
‘So,’ he said, raising his hand. ‘Good lu
ck!’
‘Thanks for everything.’ Fritze glanced at Kirie a final time before taking to the steps.
Rath closed the door, feeling uneasy, but he couldn’t let the flat he shared with Charly be turned into a shelter for street children. Two nights with an unwanted guest in the room next door was quite enough. The boy was a real passion-killer.
He sat in the living room and smoked a cigarette. March music blared from the radio; he switched it off. Ever since Gauleiter Goebbels assumed control of the Berliner Funkstunde as Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the station’s output had grown ever more wretched.
68
Charly couldn’t bear it. Karin van Almsick’s radio had been on since ten o’clock. Friederike Wieking had stopped by, but said nothing, not on a day like today when even the schools were closed. Against a backdrop of march music the reporter spoke as if more were at stake than the inauguration of the new Reichstag. The ceremony had been summarily relocated to the Potsdam Garrison Church, and the one-time royal seat of Prussia turned on its head. Festival services, open-air concerts, goose-steps, the whole shebang.
‘Everywhere you look the spirit of Prussia abounds,’ the reporter was saying, after painstakingly listing the regiments that formed the guard of honour which, together with the SA and Stahlhelm, now awaited the meeting of Hindenburg with Hitler.
‘The Reich President, still to emerge from his car, the pleasure garden awash with military federations of the Fatherland. We await his arrival here in front of the guard of honour . . .’
‘Can you turn it down a little, I can’t concentrate,’ she groaned.
‘Don’t be like that.’ Karin’s right ear was practically nailed to the device. ‘Oh, what I’d give to be there.’
‘I’m sure your Rudi will tell you all about it.’
Karin had ears for the radio only. His voice breaking with emotion, the reporter described how Hitler received Hindenburg, who had arrived at last, with a low bow and shake of the hand.
‘Just imagine, this is happening right now!’
The pathos from the radio made Charly dizzy. She actually felt sick. It wasn’t that she lacked Prussian patriotism, but here it served merely to highlight the hypocrisy on show. The Nazis had already taken Berlin, and now they were taking her Prussia, too! ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I have to stop by Registry.’
Karin nodded, and Charly wedged the Bülowplatz file under her arm and left for where she could make a call in peace. There was no radio in his office. Instead she was greeted by the dog. Gereon looked surprised.
Charly gestured towards Erika Voss’s abandoned desk. ‘You did promise me refuge if it came to the worst.’
‘Has something happened?’
‘The radio’s been on the whole day. Reichstag inauguration, in Potsdam. I’m sure you can imagine.’ She set the file on Erika Voss’s desk.
‘Doesn’t look like your standard G Division case.’
‘Mind if I help with yours?’
‘My orders are to find Benjamin Engel.’
‘Then someone has to investigate the leads you can’t.’
‘Make yourself at home,’ he said, ‘and if you need a break, there’s less chance of us being interrupted in my office.’
‘Gereon! I’m here to work.’
‘Just a suggestion.’
She sat down and Gereon returned to his office. Kirie looked for a spot under her desk while she placed a trunk call to Halle.
‘Officer Petzold and colleagues are following events in Potsdam,’ a secretary informed her. ‘Please try again later.’
Charly slammed the receiver onto the cradle with such force that Gereon came back out. ‘That is the property of the Berlin Police,’ he said. ‘It’s Bakelite, not Krupp steel.’
‘Is anyone actually working today? The only thing people seem to care about is Hindenburg shaking this goddamn Hitler’s hand.’
‘It isn’t the only thing,’ he said, pulling her chair away from the desk and into his office, where he shut the connecting door and turned the key in the lock. He leaned over her and kissed her, and, after a brief and half-hearted protest, she kissed him back.
‘You do this with your secretary too?’ she asked.
‘Only every third Tuesday.’
‘Cheeky bastard.’
‘Sorry,’ he said and kissed her on the nape of the neck. ‘But after the last two nights . . .’
She sighed, but he was right. If no one else was working why the hell should she?
‘Close the curtains,’ she said, pointing to the window. Outside an S-Bahn rumbled past, no doubt bound for Potsdam.
69
The university library reading room was the size of a railway concourse, but much quieter.
Walther Engel resembled his father in all but the captain’s uniform and Kaiser Wilhelm moustache. Rath had been looking over his shoulder but, when Engel turned around, put a finger to his lips. He laid his identification next to the books: German Quarterly for Literary Studies and Intellectual History; Psychoanalysis and Literary Studies; The Literary Generations; Identifying Characteristics of German Romanticism . . .
Engel examined the identification. ‘My mother said you might show up. Let’s go outside. I could use a break.’
Rath agreed and stowed his ID. On Dorotheenstrasse they were greeted by a chill wind. They walked alongside one another, hands in pockets. ‘Your mother mentioned my visit?’ he asked.
‘And your story about my father.’
‘What do you think?’
‘Can I imagine my father is still alive, or that he’s a spineless killer?’
‘You’re well briefed.’ Rath took his cigarette case from his coat and held it out. The two men strolled on, smoking as they went.
‘I’m glad I ran into you,’ Rath said. ‘It’s the semester break, isn’t it?’
‘You can study outside of lectures.’
‘But your . . . studies have little to do with the furniture business . . .’
‘Because I want nothing to do with it.’
‘Who will carry it into the fourth generation?’
‘My mother has taken care of all that. In times like these it falls to others to safeguard the store’s future.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I’m half-Jewish, Inspector, even if I’ve never set foot in a synagogue. Though that’s also true of many who count as “full Jews” in the eyes of the anti-Semites.’
‘So?’
‘What kind of future do you suppose a Jewish furniture business has in the new Germany?’
‘Come off it! What use is anti-Semitism to the Nazis now they’re in power? Things aren’t nearly as bad as people make out.’
‘I wish I shared your confidence. My mother certainly doesn’t. Why do you think she reverted to her maiden name? My father could have been baptised a hundred times, but as far as Bonn society’s concerned we’ll always be Jew upstarts.’ He gazed at Rath critically. ‘What is it you want?’
‘Anything you can tell me about your father.’
‘Inspector, I don’t know if I can help you. I was twelve when my mother told me Father wouldn’t be coming home. She never used words like dead or killed in action, but we knew, Edith and I. Like her we still hoped that one day he might return.’
‘And now?’
‘My father is dead. I can feel it.’
Rath took the police sketch from his pocket. ‘This man is almost certainly responsible for the murder of three ex-soldiers from your father’s unit.’
‘You think that’s my father? It looks nothing like him.’
‘It could do, if he survived a serious injury.’
‘Which he didn’t. We’re going around in circles.’
‘I’m a police officer and have to assume anything’s possible. There are some questions I need to ask you.’
‘Fine, but I tell you now, I won’t respond to speculation.’
Rath snapped open his notebook. ‘Do you know A
chim von Roddeck?’
‘No.’
Rath made a tick. ‘Your father never mentioned the name?’
‘He never spoke about the war during his visits home. One day the visits stopped.’
‘But you recognise it.’
‘Only since he’s been dragging the Engel name through the mire.’
Rath made a second tick. ‘Did you threaten Roddeck to prevent him from publishing his war memoirs?’
‘As I’ve already said, I won’t respond to speculation. Especially not when it is so patently absurd. Am I a suspect?’
‘I’m afraid I must ask for your alibi.’ Rath said. ‘Where were you last Friday around midday?’
‘At my mother’s house in Bonn. It was her Saint’s day on the Tuesday, and I stayed on a few days.’
Rath made a note. ‘What about the ninth of March?’
‘I don’t know, Inspector. What day was that?’
‘Thursday.’
‘Library, probably.’
‘And the twenty-first and twenty-second of February? A Tuesday and a Wednesday.’
Engel shrugged. ‘I’d need to think about that. I can tell you I didn’t kill any war veterans.’
‘Let me know when you remember.’ Rath put his notepad away. ‘Best to provide details of a few witnesses while you’re at it.’
‘Of course, if there are any.’
‘Did you know any of the victims? Heinrich Wosniak, Linus Meifert, Hermann Wibeau?’
Engel shook his head. ‘They all served with my father, didn’t they? Like I said, my father never discussed the war at home.’
‘What about the names Friedrich Grimberg and Franz Thelen?’
Walther Engel looked surprised. ‘The driver?’
‘I thought your father never discussed the war. How do you know his driver’s name?’
‘His driver? More like one of my mother’s, from the store.’
‘You didn’t know he chauffeured your father during the war?’
Engel shook his head. ‘Mother will have. Maybe that’s why she hired him.’
‘Does Thelen still work for Engel Furniture?’
‘No, and he hasn’t for a long time. Why are you interested in him?’
The March Fallen Page 29