The March Fallen

by volker Kutscher

  ‘You, silly!’ Karin gave her a sympathetic look. ‘Everyone in the department’s rooting for you. We hope you’ll be back soon.’

  ‘What are you working on? Any Communist gangs still out there, or have we locked ’em all up?’

  Karin van Almsick had never understood irony. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘there’ll be plenty to do when you get back. It was all just too much, all that overtime, and then the wedding. I saw it coming, you know.’

  ‘The doctor says rest is the most important thing.’ Charly was starting to feel like her grandmother, discussing her various aches and pains over coffee with friends.

  ‘Tea can work wonders too!’

  Charly set the flannel on an armrest.

  After pouring the tea Karin pointed to the envelope. ‘There’s post for you.’ She looked at the envelope and read: ‘A Division, Fräulein Ritter, confidential, Police Headquarters Berlin, Alexanderplatz 2-6.’

  ‘A Division, and it wound up with you?’

  ‘A stray, from Halle. You know what these provincials are like, always getting things mixed up.’

  ‘I did make a telephone call for Gereon, last week or the week before, when we were about to go for lunch. Perhaps our friend in Halle got the wrong end of the stick.’

  ‘You can give it to him when he gets back. Where is he, anyway?’

  Exactly the question Charly had feared. The whole department was curious about Gereon, partly because they so rarely set eyes on him in G.

  ‘Visiting family. Wedding stuff.’ She touched her temple. ‘I ought to be there too, but I couldn’t, not like this.’

  ‘You poor thing.’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘That’ll be Fritze,’ Charly said and stood up.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A boy . . . from the neighbourhood. He’s been looking after the dog while I’ve been sick.’

  Charly went into the hall and almost before she could open the door Kirie had slipped past her. Nothing was more urgent than settling into her basket.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe the number of Jewish shops,’ Fritze said, removing his scarf. ‘There are SA officers outside half the Ku’damm.’

  ‘Fritze, this my colleague, Fräulein van Almsick,’ Charly said, exaggeratedly, so he realised they weren’t alone.

  ‘It’s just Almsick,’ Karin said, extending a hand. ‘Forget the van.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ Fritze made a perfect bow. ‘Friedrich von Thormann,’ he said and winked. ‘Forget the von.’

  It was all Charly could do not to laugh. She hoped the word ‘colleague’ would make Fritze think twice about shooting his mouth off, but he seemed to have other things on his mind. ‘Did you know that Goebbels is planning is to expel all those with Dutch heritage from the public sector? Because of this van Lubbe.’

  ‘You mean van der Lubbe?’ Karin asked, making a horrified face.

  ‘That’s right, van der Lubbe. All those with van in their names are being laid off.’

  ‘Really?’

  Fritze nodded seriously. ‘Something about a fire risk. Unless they’re non-smokers of course, in which case they can stay.’

  ‘That can’t be right,’ Karin cupped her hand over her mouth.

  ‘Ha! Got you!’ Fritze beamed. ‘April fool!’

  Charly had to smile. The boy had been at it all morning.

  Karin van Almsick wasn’t in the mood for jokes. ‘Is that the time?’ she said, before turning to check the clock on the wall. ‘I have to go. Our colleagues will be wondering where I am.’ She took her coat from the stand, threw Fritze a hurt expression, shouldered her bag and opened the door. ‘Get well soon, Charly.’

  ‘Did I scare her off?’ Fritze asked.

  ‘It’s fine. She was starting to get on my nerves. Wouldn’t like to think of how many cupboards and drawers she stuck her nose inside while she was making the tea.’

  ‘Then you’d be glad of a little time on your own, Aunt Charly?’

  She had grown accustomed to being Aunt Charly. As if he really were the poor orphan child of her – completely fictional – sister from Zehdenick.

  ‘Well, I had only just sat down when the doorbell rang.’

  ‘It’s just . . . I wouldn’t mind heading out for a bit by myself.’

  ‘Of course.’

  She realised they’d been together for more or less the entire week, at home, visiting local authorities, even walking Kirie. No wonder the boy needed a little space.

  She heard the door click shut, then the clatter of footsteps and felt almost as if it were her own child heading out to play.

  With Fritze gone, her eye fell on the brown envelope. Post from Halle. The Criminal Record Office. It was a good thing they hadn’t opened it in G. There’d be trouble if it became known that she’d been assisting with a Homicide case in Gereon’s office.

  Dear Fräulein Ritter, she read, following our telephone conversation of the twenty-first of this month, I hereby enclose all relevant documents pertaining to one Krumbiegel, Gerhard.

  Petzold had taken his time, but proved more thorough than she had anticipated following their brief conversation, which, after a series of abortive attempts, had finally come about on the Day of Potsdam. The man from Halle had sent on everything, not just the police files. Even a photo!

  The aforementioned Krumbiegel was involved in a barroom brawl in ’16, whereupon he was fingerprinted and photographed, making it possible, on this occasion, to enclose his negative.

  The image was attached by paperclip. A standard police photo, taken from three sides, dull gaze, bitter expression. No doubt the poor bastard would have preferred jail to another stint on the Front.

  Charly could hardly believe it. She recognised this man gazing into the camera as though he were drunk, which he probably was, having been picked up following a brawl while on army leave. He wasn’t yet disfigured or scarred, but his features left her in no doubt.

  It couldn’t be . . .

  . . . yet no matter how she spun it, the explanation was always the same. It shed new light on the Alberich case, not to mention the man they had cast into the Spree.

  86

  Rath hadn’t parked outside the furniture store, but a little out of the way on Friedensplatz. Just after ten, he saw the image of the green Opel reflected in the display window and congratulated himself on a good decision. His colleagues were taking their work seriously. Despite never having met them in person Rath pulled his hat a little lower over his forehead.

  You really couldn’t miss the Rheinisches Möbelhaus with its brand new signboards and neon letters. Outside a shop a troop of brown-uniformed SA officers were glueing posters.

  The doorbell rang as he entered the store. Staff were consulting with clients in hushed tones. He felt almost as if he were in a library. It didn’t take long for someone to approach. Management was on the first floor.

  The assistant led him up a dark, wood-panelled staircase, through dark, wood-panelled corridors and an atmosphere of sedate respectability. Eva Heinen’s office, smaller than anticipated, but likewise dark and wood-panelled, exuded the same quality. Two windows faced onto Brückenstrasse and a huge swastika that served to evoke the new age. He didn’t like it but couldn’t get worked up in the same way as Charly. Her outrage when, with a single stroke of his pen, Hindenburg had outlawed the red-black-and-gold of the Republic! The Jew flag or flag of the November criminals, as it was known, and not just by Nazis. For Rath the German colours had always been black-white-and-red. What he couldn’t understand was Hindenburg’s decision to accord the swastika the same status as the imperial flag.

  ‘Take a seat, Inspector,’ Eva Heinen said, once the assistant had closed the door. Rath kept his distance from the window, thinking of the green Opel on the other side of the road. ‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to reach me.’

  ‘Let’s hope it’s worth it.’ He took out his cigarette case, having replenished his stocks on Friedensplatz. ‘Do you mind?’
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br />   ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Already I’ve learned how your husband survived the war.’

  ‘He didn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought . . .’

  ‘Benjamin is just as much a victim of war as those to whom we erect monuments and dedicate speeches. No one thinks of the living dead who returned; they get in the way of our hard-won rhetoric of valour and sacrifice.’ Surprised by her own anger, she lowered her voice and continued. ‘Benjamin survived the explosion, yes. But in reality it only prolonged his death. It took ten years for the shrapnel to find its way to his heart.’

  ‘That’s how he died?’ Rath couldn’t conceal his surprise. ‘Did you realise he was doomed? Is that why you told your children their father had been killed in action?’

  ‘I thought Benjamin was dead, for years. It was only for the children’s sake that I kept up the vague hope he might still be alive. I tried to carry on the store as he would have wished and, despite some lean years immediately after the war, business was good. Then came the inflation. What can I say? I had just been forced to sell the family home, and was about to put the proceeds back into the store when it happened. Bankruptcy seemed only a question of time.’

  Eva Heinen looked out of the window, as if at the past. ‘It was my husband that saved us,’ she continued. ‘I don’t know how he learned of our troubles. It was as if he had been watching over us all that time, like a . . . guardian angel.’

  Schutzengel. Todesengel. For Eva Heinen he was a guardian; for Roddeck an angel of death.

  ‘Did he make contact with you?’

  ‘Yes. He donated a large sum of money, which allowed me to refloat the company and buy back the house in Gronau. The family home was the most important thing for the children.’

  ‘You’re telling me that years after the war, your husband simply waltzed in, placed a large suitcase of money on the table and went on his way?’

  ‘In all those years, I never saw my husband face-to-face.’ Rath looked at her in disbelief. ‘He didn’t want me to. He didn’t want anyone apart from me to know he was still alive.’

  ‘I don’t understand. Why weren’t you allowed to see him?’

  ‘So I could remember him as he was, before war got in the way.’

  ‘Was he so badly disfigured?’

  ‘I don’t know, Inspector. Christmas 1916. The photographs with him and the children under the tree are etched forever in my mind.’

  She leaned forward and opened a drawer in her desk, placing a mask on the table. A half mask, the right side of a face, to be precise.

  ‘That’s . . . your husband,’ Rath said.

  ‘His prosthetic face. It’s all I have of him. Sometimes I look at it and try to imagine how he looked after the war.’

  It was a good piece of work. Propped up by a pair of spectacles the right eye seemed almost real. Rath got the feeling that Benjamin Engel was looking at him with an expression of mild reproach. Eva Heinen replaced the prosthesis and closed the drawer.

  He cleared his throat. ‘There’s one thing I still don’t understand. Why, no sooner than you learned that against all expectations your husband had survived the war, did you have him declared dead?’

  ‘He was the one who requested I stage that farce of a burial, despite knowing how it would hurt the children. He insisted: Benjamin Engel was to be laid to rest.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He said it was better if Engel Furniture could no longer be linked back to him. It was also his wish that I revert to my maiden name; that the store itself be renamed. I think,’ Eva Heinen gestured towards the swastika flag outside, ‘it was because of that.’

  ‘In ’24? No one could have guessed . . .’

  ‘Nazis aren’t a pre-requisite for anti-Semitism, believe me. Neither, for that matter, are Jews. Benjamin was Catholic, but in the army he was always regarded as a Jew. I think his experiences in the war opened his eyes to the fact that someone like him would never be allowed to belong. Not even if he was baptised; not even if he risked his life for the Fatherland.’

  ‘So that explains the name: Rheinisches Möbelhaus.’

  ‘The name paved the way for our expansion across Bonn. Today you’ll find us in an additional four cities.’

  ‘He just gave you the money?’

  ‘It was a complicated business, I don’t want to go into detail, but essentially, yes.’

  ‘What made it so complicated? The fact that it wasn’t money but gold?’

  A startled look passed across her eyes. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘I’ve spoken to the demolition expert from back then. The soldiers who hid the gold, most of whom are now dead, were planning to retrieve the spoils in summer ’24. By the time they got there it was gone.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Suddenly she seemed very tense.

  ‘Listen, I’m not interested in who pinched the gold; the only thing I’m interested in is why a veteran should kill three of his former comrades so many years after the war.’

  ‘Benjamin didn’t kill anyone. He was looking out for his family.’

  ‘Are you certain it was him? Did you recognise his voice?’

  ‘We never spoke on the telephone. We wrote to each other, and it was his handwriting. No doubt about it. Besides, he knew things only Benjamin could know.’ She blushed slightly.

  ‘Letters, but he didn’t use the Reichspost?’

  ‘Of course not. He didn’t want to reveal anything about himself, not even his address.’

  ‘Do you still have these letters?’ She looked so horrified that Rath knew it was pointless to request them. ‘Then you used a middleman. Who?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘Was it the same man you sent to France?’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘Was it Franz Thelen?’

  ‘Who?’ She was even more startled than moments before.

  ‘Your husband’s driver during the war. After that he worked as a driver for your store.’

  ‘Our proxy, Herr Theobald, looks after that side of things.’

  ‘Don’t play games with me. You know Thelen. It was he who established contact with your husband, wasn’t it, and collected the gold from France?’

  ‘I think I’ve said enough.’ All of a sudden Eva Heinen was as tight-lipped as during their first encounter three weeks before.

  ‘One last question. Does the name Gerhard Krumbiegel mean anything to you?’

  By the way she looked at him, he knew she had no idea. With that, whatever hope he had of making sense of last Sunday vanished.

  ‘Is he your main suspect?’ Eva Heinen asked. ‘Do you think I hired someone to kill all these men?’

  ‘I don’t know, Frau Heinen. What I do know is you’re still not giving me the full story.’

  ‘That’s something you’ll just have to make peace with, Inspector.’

  There was a knock, and the bald-headed assistant who had shown Rath upstairs peered inside. ‘Excuse the interruption, Frau Direktor.’

  ‘It’s all right, Schröter. Herr Rath was just leaving.’

  ‘It’s . . . perhaps you should come down.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s best if you come and see for yourself.’

  Rath followed her and the assistant downstairs. On the floor, customers and staff stood tightly packed, whispering to one another. Two brownshirts hovered in front of the display window. One unrolled a poster and set about pasting it to the door.

  Eva Heinen turned to Rath. ‘Now you understand the reason for everything I’ve just told you,’ she said.

  She went outside, moving energetically, unafraid of the brown uniforms. Opening the glass door she almost knocked the SA man off balance. The brush slipped from his hand.

  ‘What’s all this?’ she asked. He swore under his breath and took out a handkerchief. It was the second SA man who answered her question. He held a cardboard sign in front of him, with three exclamation marks.

&nb
sp; Germans! Fight back! Don’t buy from Jews!

  ‘Don’t you read the papers,’ he said provocatively. ‘The boycott.’

  ‘This isn’t a Jewish store.’

  ‘Knock it off. Engel Furniture’s been here since I was in short trousers. It’s always been a Jew store.’

  ‘The Rheinisches Möbelhaus has absolutely nothing to do with Engel Furniture.’

  ‘No, it just sells the same furniture with the same assistants in the same stores?’

  Rath went outside. He was reluctant to cause a stir with the Opel parked opposite, but this Nazi with his cardboard sign was starting to grate. ‘What you’re doing here is property damage,’ he said. ‘Illegal fly posting at least.’

  The poster on the door bore the same slogan. Germans! Fight back! Don’t buy from Jews! Imagination was not a Nazi strong point.

  The SA man was uncertain. No doubt it was the first time anyone had stood up to him. Soon enough, though, he was grinning. If things turned nasty, he could count on his mate. ‘Get a load of this, Willi,’ he said to his friend, who was stowing his handkerchief. ‘A shyster who needs taking down a peg.’

  ‘I’m not a lawyer.’ Rath showed his badge and the man’s grin froze.

  The badge said only KRIMINALPOLIZEI, with no indication as to what city he was from. He went on the attack. ‘I am a customer here, and can assure you the owner of this store is no Jew.’

  ‘But before . . .’

  ‘In the new Germany, we’re not interested in “before”! Haven’t you read the provisions? Central Committee has expressly decreed that businesses are only to be boycotted if it can be proven beyond doubt that they are under Jewish ownership.’

  He had read something like that yesterday in the newspaper. Mentioning the word ‘decree’ proved an inspired move, for suddenly the SA man stood to attention, comically with a cardboard sign in front of his chest.

  ‘Yes, Sir. Apologies. I was unaware tha . . .’

  ‘Stop talking. Focus on cleaning up this mess, and apologise to the lady.’

  The pair set to work. Rath took his leave with a tip of the hat and made his way back to the car before the men in the green Opel got it into their heads to intervene. A look through the display window confirmed that all was quiet again. His colleagues from Bonn continued to observe Eva Heinen, who looked on sternly as the SA men began removing their poster.