He wondered whether Eva Heinen had been informed. Had Gräf telephoned to say that her husband had survived the war but turned up dead in the Spree, or had they entrusted it to Bonn? Probably the latter. He imagined the two cops from the police Opel ending their four-week observation with a knock on her door. How they would look, with undisguised voyeurism, at the elegant Eva Heinen, and inform her, with equally undisguised sadism, that her husband, the serial killer, had died in violent circumstances. How would Eva Heinen react? Erika Voss returned him to the present with a knock.
‘What is it?’
She poked her head inside. ‘Taxicab for you, Sir. It’s waiting at the entrance on Grunerstrasse.’
‘Must be a misunderstanding.’
‘The driver mentioned you expressly by name. He’s downstairs with the porter. Would you like to speak with him yourself?’
‘Patch him through.’ He reached for the telephone. ‘Listen, I didn’t order a taxi . . .’
‘I know,’ a male voice interrupted. ‘Someone ordered it for you.’
‘Who?’
‘I’m not at liberty to say, but he’ll pick up the tab.’
It must be Marlow. Had something happened to Hannah? Or Juretzka? ‘All right. Down in three.’
‘I’ll wait in the car.’
He took his hat and coat from the hook and reached for his briefcase. ‘Let me guess,’ Erika Voss said. ‘You’re not coming back.’
‘Correct. Just leave whatever you’ve found on my desk.’
Erika Voss rarely smiled these days. The atmosphere was frostier since Gräf had switched partners. Rath was frostier too.
A lone taxi waited on Grunerstrasse. Premium rate. No sooner had he sat down than it started from the kerb. ‘I didn’t realise we were in a hurry.’
The driver wore a peaked cap and thin wire-framed spectacles. In the rearview mirror Rath could make out a neat bow tie and alert eyes. ‘Time is money,’ he said.
‘Since I’m not paying, I’ll ask that you slow down. Where are we even going? They crossed the Jannowitz Bridge. Thick cloud lay over the Spree. ‘Perhaps you’re not allowed to say? Who’s your employer?’
‘You are Detective Inspector Gereon Rath, Homicide?’
‘The same.’
The driver stopped at a red light and turned around. ‘Show me your identification.’
Rath fumbled the document from his wallet and passed it forward.
The driver took a close look at him in the rearview mirror and returned the identification. The light changed to green and they crossed Köpenicker Strasse heading south. Instinctively Rath felt for his shoulder holster and the outline of his Walther.
‘You’ve been looking for Franz Thelen?’ the driver asked suddenly. Rath had been ready for the Nordpiraten, even the SA, but not this. After all the fuss about the corpse, he had lost sight of the real Benjamin Engel. The mysterious driver, of whom Eva Heinen apparently had no memory. ‘You’re taking me to Thelen? Does he live in Berlin?’
‘No.’
‘Then where are we going?’
‘I’m taking you for a spin. Thelen’s dead but I can tell you his story.’
‘Did Eva Heinen send you?’
‘Do you want to hear it or not? I can just as easily set you back down at Alex.’
Rath sighed and leaned back. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘but do me a favour and stop referring to yourself in the third person, Herr Thelen.’
The driver filtered into the traffic on Moritzplatz.
‘Your new name is Erich Heintze, if I read the sign on your door correctly, and you’re the owner of this taxi company. Did Eva Heinen suggest you pay me a visit?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Why do you prefer to be dead, Herr Thelen, and why did Benjamin Engel?’
‘These days I rarely take the wheel myself, but for you I’ll make an exception. Free of charge, like I said.’ He reached for the meter and switched it off. ‘Franz Thelen has no wish for his identity to be exposed, Inspector, since his life would be in danger, just like the three Alberich victims.’
‘The killer’s dead. Don’t you read the papers?’
‘The papers say Benjamin Engel is dead, but we both know that isn’t right. Nor did he kill those three men. Who’s the body from the Spree? Is it Wosniak?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘It’s him, isn’t it? He faked his own death to go about butchering his victims unsuspected.’
‘He wanted people to think he was dead. Now he is.’
‘That’s what all of us share. We’d like to be dead or be someone else.’
‘What happened in the war?’
‘Franz Thelen didn’t see everything, Inspector, he was only the captain’s driver. And a good friend.’
‘Like I said: there’s no need for you to refer to yourself in the third person.’
‘I’ve grown accustomed to the fact that Franz Thelen is gone. Perhaps you should too.’
‘Who are you afraid of? Heinrich Wosniak is dead.’
‘But not his lieutenant.’
‘You mean Roddeck.’ Thelen nodded. ‘Listen, I think he set the whole thing up, but don’t know why. I can’t prove anything either.’
‘He killed Wosniak, I’m certain of it. The man had served his purpose. Roddeck no longer needed him.’
‘Kill his faithful Heinrich?’
‘They weren’t quite as cordial as Roddeck’s novel makes out.’
Rath considered this. Perhaps that really was Roddeck’s plan, only Fritze had got in the way. They were passing the gasworks by the Landwehr canal. His old neck of the woods. ‘Mind if I smoke?’
‘Go ahead.’
He felt for his cigarette case and lit up. ‘Where are my manners? Can I offer you one?’
Thelen reached back. ‘Overstolz,’ he said. ‘A taste of home.’
‘You’re from Cologne?’
‘The Rhineland anyway. Like most of us back then.’
‘You returned after the war?’ Thelen nodded. ‘And worked as a driver for Engel Furniture?’
‘Only after Captain Engel asked me to.’
‘You were in contact with him the whole time?’
‘I thought he was dead until he got back in touch.’
‘How did he do that?’
‘By post. One morning there was a letter in my mailbox from a certain André Bonnechance, who addressed me as old friend and claimed his real name was Benjamin Engel. He had survived the boobytrap, and been dug out by English and French troops. I couldn’t believe it, but went to the address he provided, a lousy attic flat in Cologne, and saw the price he’d paid.’
Time and again Thelen paused to attend to his cigarette or the road ahead.
‘Go on,’ Rath said.
‘Fate would have shown greater mercy in allowing him to die. He had to wear a prosthetic mask. Half his face was missing: an eye, part of his lower jaw. He could barely speak, and wrote most things down.’
‘How did you know it was him?’
‘Half a face is all you need to recognise a man, and he knew things about me that only Captain Engel could know.’
‘Such as?’
‘I’d rather not discuss it, Inspector. War, more than anything else, teaches you about your fellow man.’
‘He had changed his name?’
‘Not him, the French.’
‘I’m surprised they didn’t beat him to death. A Bosch, buried and barely alive in a German trench.’
‘The whole thing’s a miracle.’ Thelen’s eyes fixed on his in the rearview mirror. ‘Captain Engel couldn’t remember a thing when he wakened from his death-like state. He didn’t know who or where he was. Everyone around him spoke French, so when his voice returned he spoke it too. Perhaps they thought he was a French spy caught behind German lines, but they patched him up, gave him a new name and put him in a home for veterans. He remained there until the war ended, and that was the day he remembered. The gun salutes, the fireworks,
all that racket around the armistice . . . brought it all back. The explosion, and everything that went before.’
‘You remember you’re a German soldier, only to find yourself in a home for French veterans.’
‘That was nothing beside his longing for his wife and family.’
‘Yet he hid himself in a garrett?’
‘He didn’t want them, didn’t want anyone, to see him like that. Besides, his fate was already sealed.’
‘The shrapnel . . .’
‘The doctors in France gave him five years, but he lived almost ten. It was Eva who kept him alive, and it was for her sake that he didn’t make an end. Her and the children. He told me to apply for a driver’s job in the furniture store the first time we met. Sometimes I think it’s the only reason he got in touch with me.’
‘You were to keep an eye on his family?’
‘I visited him regularly to report back. He wanted to know every last detail. We would meet every Sunday.’
‘Did you reveal your identity to Eva or the children?’
‘Captain Engel didn’t want that under any circumstances, but things changed with inflation.’
‘Which is when he remembered the gold.’
‘What do you know about that?’
‘Whatever Achim von Roddeck writes in his memoirs.’
‘That’s only half the story, and it’s twisted at that, but you’re right. Engel knew where the gold was buried and briefed me on its location. It was the first I’d heard of it.’
‘This would be four or five years after the war? Why wait so long?’
‘Because it was no picnic. Even today the French are incredibly wary. All Germans require a visa, and you have to say where you are headed and why. Throw in a hoard of gold to be smuggled across the border, and you start to get a picture.’
‘But you had a plan.’
‘We needed to let his wife in on it first.’
‘You had to tell her he was alive . . .’
‘The captain still didn’t want her to see him, but they wrote almost every day.’
‘You were about to say how you got the gold back to Bonn.’
‘It was simple.’ Thelen’s eyes smiled in the rearview mirror. ‘We ordered furniture from a French factory near Cambrai and drove across the border in a big van. Captain Engel wasn’t certain we’d find the gold, but it was exactly where he’d described, albeit the forest was no more. The boulder was the only thing spared by war.’
‘Who’s we?’
‘I took Walther with me. He was only sixteen, but capable. It was quite a business, in the dead of night, but we managed. We stowed the bars behind the furniture. No one noticed a thing.’
Rath leaned back. So, Engel junior hadn’t told him the full story. ‘But these gold bars belonged to a French bank. They were embossed, weren’t they? How did you turn them into cash?’
‘Frau Engel has a banker friend who exchanged them into currency. Don’t ask me what he did with the bars. Probably had them melted, and stamped with his own seal. He’d be glad to top up his bank’s supplies.’
‘I don’t understand,’ Rath said. ‘Eva Heinen, Engel as she was, experiences this great miracle of her husband’s survival, but shortly after has him declared dead. Why?’
‘It’s how the captain wanted it. She was to bury Benjamin Engel along with his name.’
‘As well as rebrand the store.’
‘Bearing in mind what happened two weeks ago with the boycott, it was the correct decision. Knowing he was alive made it easier for her to declare him dead. The only thing she and the boy found hard was that they still couldn’t see him. No one knew his address. I took care of his errands and whatever else he needed.’
‘Then you had two jobs: van driver and orderly.’
Thelen’s eyes flashed in the rearview mirror. ‘It was friendship. It might be hard for someone like you to understand, but that’s how it was.’
‘So, why the hide-and-seek? Why the false name? Because he wanted to spare his wife the sight of a crippled veteran?’
‘No.’ Thelen shook his head. ‘Benjamin Engel was certain he’d survived an assassination attempt. The explosion was no accident.’
‘An unloved superior, murdered by his unit. Just like Grimberg said.’
‘Grimberg? The demolition expert? You spoke to him?’
‘Didn’t Frau Heinen mention it?’
‘I must say I’m surprised. It was Grimberg who detonated the charge.’
‘I thought he was with you when the trap went off? He could have been killed himself.’
‘He knew exactly where he was when it happened. Apart from the shock wave we were both unscathed.’
‘Why didn’t you report him at the time?’
‘Because I didn’t know! I believed what he told me. He was the expert. He even came with me to look for the captain. It was only when the artillery fire became heavier that we called it off. How was I to know he was behind it?’
‘Sounds pretty naive to me.’
‘The pot calling the kettle black!’
Thelen was right. Rath, too, had been duped by the demolition expert.
‘It all seems so obvious in retrospect,’ Thelen continued. ‘We got out of the car, and Grimberg crouched in front of a bush to the side. I thought it was strange at the time, carrying on like that. He was only tying his laces. Anyway, the captain pressed ahead.’
‘Let me guess: Grimberg told you exactly where to park.’
‘I didn’t think anything of it. He was the one with local knowledge, and who’d planted the traps. Now, of course, I see why I had to park there, and why he crouched on the floor. The detonator was hidden behind the bush. Roddeck must have put him up to it during the night.’
‘What did Roddeck have against your captain?’
‘He didn’t like him, which perhaps made it easier, but the real reason was that he and his men were afraid of being turned in. The captain didn’t want to leave the gold. He wanted to get it behind German lines and claim it as spoils of war.’
‘Why didn’t they just blackmail him? He had shot three men, including a recruit from his own unit.’
‘You shouldn’t believe everything Achim von Roddeck says. Much less everything he writes.’ The eyes in the rearview mirror looked at Rath. ‘My captain was no saint, Inspector, but he was no killer either.’
‘What happened that night?’
‘Inspector, I wasn’t there.’
They were approaching the Spree. The dark building of the Märkisches Museum loomed on the horizon. Rath flicked his cigarette out of the window. ‘I don’t understand it,’ he said. ‘What was Engel doing, climbing into the trench alone like that? Didn’t he see he might be in danger?’
‘Why would he? He didn’t know Grimberg was one of those wanting to conceal the gold. The man wasn’t even there when they buried it.’
‘Engel could have turned them all in to the field police.’
‘He was going to, but the police were behind the Hindenburg Line. We were the last of the Mohicans! The rearguard.’ Thelen’s eyes looked for Rath’s in the rearview mirror. ‘Our retreat was to begin that morning. Operation Alberich was on a tight schedule, and Benjamin Engel was a dutiful captain. He had no intention of jeopardising the operation and risking people’s lives all because of a dishonourable troop of soldiers. They’d get their just deserts soon enough.’
‘Things never got that far.’
‘No.’ Thelen shook his head. ‘If he’d told me what happened that night, I’d have been more wary. Perhaps I’d have noticed that something with Grimberg wasn’t right.’
‘And he has the nerve to play the innocent. He didn’t have much good to say about Roddeck, but I’d never have guessed the pair were in cahoots.’
‘That’s my story, Inspector. Do what you can with it.’
‘The only way I can do anything is if you sign a statement and repeat it in a court of law.’
‘I’m not about to renounce
my new life.’
‘I know,’ Rath said. ‘Thank you all the same.’
They arrived at police headquarters, but Rath directed Thelen towards Dircksenstrasse, where the Buick was parked. Thelen turned around and Rath thought he might ask for his fare after all.
‘Inspector, before you go . . . There’s something else I need to tell you. Roddeck’s novel, this whole series of murders . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I’m partly to blame. I saw Roddeck again about a year ago, in the Hotel Eden, where I was attending a tea-dance with my wife.’
‘You’re married?’
‘My wife married Erich Heintze, not Franz Thelen. She’s part of my new life, not my old.’
‘You only changed your name a few years ago. Why?’
‘Because I began to think I might be in danger too. I left the Rhineland to start afresh in Berlin with a new name and some money from Frau Engel. I couldn’t have known that others would do the same. People I had no wish to see again.’
‘You saw Roddeck. Did he recognise you?’
‘I don’t think so. He was entirely occupied with his lady friend, and not just on the dancefloor. I pretended to be ill, and Elli and I left.’
‘Then nothing happened?’
‘On the contrary.’ Thelen gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I wrote him a letter. Just like that: Hotel Eden, care of Achim von Roddeck.’
‘What sort of letter.’
‘I rubbed the whole story from back then in his face. Told him he could write off the gold, and that the truth always finds a way. I wanted to spite him, do you understand? Put fear in him. He was strutting about the place . . . no guilty conscience, no shame. I had to.’
‘You risked your anonymity . . . to frighten him?’
‘That’s just it. I didn’t write the letter in my name.’ Franz Thelen hunched his shoulders as if to apologise. ‘I wrote it as Benjamin Engel.’
98
Fritze sat at the breakfast table, eating a cheese sandwich and reading the Vossische funny papers. Charly was happy he was at least reading something. It was high time, school was starting soon, but he was making good progress.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I have to read this out. In . . . Halberstadt a man calls a boy to the window of his . . . coupé: Get me a pair of . . . Halberstädter . . . sausages. Here’s a mark, buy yourself a pair too as a . . . reward. The rascal hast . . . hastens away and returns with both cheeks bulging. Here’s fifty pfennig back – I got the last two.’
The March Fallen Page 40