The March Fallen

by volker Kutscher

  He delivered the punchline without looking. Even Gereon had to smile.

  She was starting to feel as if he’d made his peace with the situation. At Easter they had hidden a few eggs for the boy, and felt almost like a little family. Sunday afternoon they had strolled in glorious sunshine, and visited Johann Marlow’s house at Freienwalde next day. Hannah was making astounding progress. It wasn’t just the speed at which her wounds were healing. Even more astounding was her conversation, albeit she still found it difficult to talk about her past, the Crow’s Nest and her childhood.

  ‘It was my old life I was torching,’ she had said, more to herself than to Charly, her first and only explanation for her terrible crime.

  Charly still didn’t know what would become of her. She couldn’t let the state authorities near her again, but what was the alternative? They could hardly take her in at Carmerstrasse, a fugitive killer from the asylum. Hannah didn’t just need a new future, like Fritze, she needed a new past: a new life and a new name.

  She had asked Gereon if Marlow could obtain false papers, and how much it might cost, but he looked at her wide-eyed before shaking his head. Next thing she knew he had withdrawn to Marlow’s office.

  In the meantime, she had come to appreciate the gangster more. The armed guards told a different story, but Marlow himself was exceptionally polite and there was something touching about the way he cared for Hannah. He had even given her a present for Easter.

  She was wondering if there might be room for a fourth person at the breakfast table when Gereon stood up. ‘Time I was on my way. Want me to drive you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said firmly, and half an hour later was strolling down the corridors of G Division towards Friederike Wieking’s office. She felt like a stranger. Even the once familiar smell of tea and dust was alien. She took a deep breath and knocked. Yes, her mind was made up.

  ‘Do you have an appointment?’ the superintendent’s secretary looked at her over the rim of her glasses.

  ‘No, but it’s important, I . . .’

  ‘If you don’t have an appointment, I’m afraid I can’t let you through.’

  The door to the office opened and Friederike Wieking emerged, furrowing her brow. ‘Fräulein Ritter! Fancy seeing you here.’

  ‘Good morning, ma’am. I wanted to speak with you briefly, if I may.’

  ‘Your timing is perfect. We have a lot to discuss.’

  Charly thought she saw disappointment in the secretary’s face as she took her seat on the visitor’s chair.

  ‘This conversation ought to have taken place long before now.’ Wieking gazed at her sternly from behind her desk. ‘Fräulein Ritter, have you considered whether you possess the necessary moral fibre and work ethic to be a member of the WKP?’

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re driving at, ma’am.’

  ‘Let’s take your sense of duty as a starting point. Can it be that you feel more drawn to working in A Division, for example?’

  ‘Superintendent Gennat has requested my involvement in two cases. My former colleagues value my work.’

  ‘One in particular seems to value your contribution. I’m not talking about your official forays into Homicide, although I wish you showed the same enthusiasm for your work here. No, my problem is that you have been seen in Homicide on several occasions during the working day, leaving your colleague to cope by herself for hours while you stop by your fiancé’s office. God alone knows what you’ve been doing there!’ With each sentence Wieking’s voice grew louder. Had Karin van Almsick squealed? Perhaps, but there must be someone in Homicide who couldn’t keep quiet either. ‘As if that wasn’t enough,’ Wieking continued, ‘you absent yourself from duty for weeks . . .’

  ‘I was sick!’

  ‘Sick!’ Wieking practically spat out the word. ‘A psychological illness! I’m sorry, but I can do without all this Jew whining.’

  ‘This what?’

  ‘Paroxysmal Neurasthenia.’ Wieking made it sound like the Latin name for a slimy toad. ‘You do realise the doctor who diagnosed you is Jewish? They link everything to the psyche.’

  Yes, Charly realised that Dieter was Jewish. He made nothing of it and she had never thought it significant. ‘You’re questioning Dr Wolff’s qualifications?’

  ‘What I’m questioning is your willingness to take part in the national-socialist revolution.’

  The national-socialist revolution . . . What had started as the national concentration had morphed into the national uprising, then the national revolution. Now it was a national-socialist revolution. Terms that were in constant flux, and no sooner did they arise than they appeared in the written press. This was the pace of change in the new Germany. For her part, Charly believed that the old Germany still existed somewhere. The country she loved couldn’t have dissolved into thin air. ‘Pardon me, ma’am, but I’m not a National Socialist,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t have to be a party member, child. But you’re a German, and the fate of our country must matter to you!’ Friederike Wieking sounded like a headmistress refusing to give up on her student.

  ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘There you are, and you can’t just leave your colleagues in the lurch! God knows, we have enough on our plates. Especially here, charged with looking after the nation’s young. Our youth is our future.’

  ‘Perhaps I have different ideas about the nature of our work here. And our future.’

  ‘Then it’s time you reconsidered. In a people’s community everyone must pull together. It starts on a small scale, with family, and work, and expands into something greater. Think about that.’

  ‘I’ve given it thought, ma’am. It’s the reason I’m here today. I’ve come to realise that police work is not for me.’

  How hard it was to say these words. They weren’t true, or at least were only half the story. I can no longer be a police officer for this state, which tramples over our every legal right, was what she meant, but being seen as an intractable supporter of the Republic could create problems for Gereon.

  ‘Might you change your mind?’ Wieking hadn’t been expecting this. Charly had taken the wind out of her sails. ‘You have done excellent work here, on the rare occasion you have seen fit, that is.’

  ‘My decision is final, and I will confirm it in writing, ma’am.’

  ‘That won’t be necessary.’ Wieking’s maternal mask slipped. ‘I think I’ve heard enough. Your probationary service is terminated with immediate effect. Pack your things. I don’t want to see you here again. You will be paid until the end of the month.’

  ‘If that is all.’

  ‘That is all. Heil Hitler.’

  99

  Berthold Weinert felt uneasy. It wasn’t the first time Gereon Rath had dragged him to the Nasse Dreieck on Wassertorplatz, and he had never liked the place: too small, too smoky, too Kreuzberg. Looking at the bar and four tables, he realised he was the only journalist present just as, clearly, Gereon was the only police officer. Better to meet here than be surrounded by colleagues in the newspaper quarter, or at Alex where every third drinker was a hoodlum or a cop. The only person who paid them any heed in the Dreieck was the landlord, Schorsch, and he had eyes only for their beer glasses.

  The things he did for information. Gereon had been playing hard to get for months but, after his enigmatic appearance at the press conference, Weinert knew he had to talk to him. Schorsch set down two fresh glasses.

  ‘Back on your feet, I see,’ Gereon said.

  ‘Since the Reichstag fire. Holiday cover at first, but after the elections the man extended his leave indefinitely. Right now he’s in Prague, and won’t return.’

  ‘You’re keeping his desk warm?’

  ‘An editor again, at last. What did you have to tell me?’

  ‘What if I said the dead man from the Spree isn’t Captain Engel, but someone else?’

  Ten minutes later Weinert had heard a hair-raising story he would not have believed if it hadn’t come from Ger
eon Rath.

  ‘Engel isn’t dead?’

  ‘The corpse from the Spree still had its foreskin. Engel was circumcised eight days after his birth, in December 1883.’

  ‘So who is it?’

  Gereon shrugged. ‘Pathology swept it under the carpet to avoid making a fool of the commissioner.’

  Weinert shook his head. ‘Is that why they took you off the case?’

  ‘The commissioner took me off the case because I was investigating it, rather than hunting Benjamin Engel. What if I told you it isn’t Engel, but Lieutenant von Roddeck who’s behind the killings?’

  ‘He doesn’t fit the profile. Besides, they found the murder weapon.’

  ‘You think Roddeck’s going to drive a trench dagger into someone’s skull? That’s what his faithful Heinrich is for.’

  ‘His who?’

  ‘Heinrich Wosniak. Any money he’s the dead man from the Spree. The burns aren’t from a boobytrap in ’17, but a fire on New Year’s Eve ’31.’

  ‘Wosniak? Then he’ll have the other tramp on his conscience too?’

  ‘He gave him his coat before killing him. The pocket still contained Wosniak’s service record so everyone thought it was him.’

  ‘Why should he murder all these men? His former comrades?’

  ‘Only Achim von Roddeck can answer that. You should ask him sometime.’

  ‘Not likely. That’s up to the police, or is Roddeck so untouchable that . . .’ Weinert broke off in mid-sentence. Having signalled for him to be quiet, Gereon looked towards the entrance. Weinert turned to see that a blond SA officer had entered with a man in civilian clothes. Both seemed known here. The civilian raised his hand uncertainly in their direction. Gereon replied with a nod.

  ‘Who’s that?’ Weinert asked, thinking he recognised the civilian.

  ‘A colleague,’ Gereon whispered. ‘Give Schorsch a fiver and let’s be on our way.’

  The blinds on the glass door of the senior duty editor’s office were down, as usual, but a light burned inside. Hiding away like this, chances were Hefner’s mood wasn’t great. Weinert knocked on the glass and a droning sound came from within. With a little imagination, it might have been an enter.

  Harald Hefner’s long, thin body was folded behind a desk that appeared much too small, partly on account of its owner, partly on account of the reams of papers spilling everywhere. The universe must have looked something like this before the Earth was created but, with a kind of somnambulistic self-confidence, Hefner knew exactly where to find whatever he needed, forging a new, printed world from the chaos each day.

  ‘Where have you been, Weinert? I’ve been looking for you. You have the honour of putting together Hitler’s birthday edition, but you’ll need to get a move on or the man will be forty-five before we get anything in print.’

  ‘The amount we’ve published you’d have to be illiterate not to know even he gets older each year.’ Hefner screwed up his face. ‘All right,’ Weinert conceded. ‘I’d be glad to, but first I want to tell you why I was late. I was meeting an informant. The Alberich murders . . .’

  ‘That’s old hat.’

  ‘What if I told you Benjamin Engel isn’t responsible.’

  Harald Hefner reached for his cigar box, fished one out and offered one. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said, cutting off the tip.

  Weinert was done in seven when the duty editor thundered: ‘Are you telling me everything we . . . everything you wrote last week, was rot?’

  ‘It came from police headquarters’s official statement. The commissioner spoke at the press conference himself.’

  ‘The police commissioner, Herr Weinert, is an upstanding National Socialist. Our paper is not about to take a stance against the national-socialist revolution.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to. Just against sloppy police work.’

  Hefner drew on his cigar and considered, the old-school journalist in him battling against the editor obliged to conform with Goebbels’s wishes.

  ‘Perhaps . . .’ he muttered at length, ‘ . . .you can bring Isidor Weiss into it as the man responsible for this sloppy police work.’ A jolt passed through Hefner’s body and he pounded his fist on the table. ‘But, not right now. Right now, you need to take care of this!’

  He pushed across a press release with the letterhead of the NSDAP Reich Chief Press Officer. Weinert skimmed the text, written by Otto Dietrich himself: a gushing tribute to the birthday boy who, tomorrow, would celebrate the culmination of his forty-fourth year, and in whose honour every German paper was publishing a slew of articles. Last year Hitler’s birthday hadn’t even made the Angriff, although back then the Nazi paper might still have been banned. Now, in emotive language, Dietrich outlined everything that had happened since. The Führer’s Kampfjahr, or year of struggle had been, without question, an eventful twelve months.

  ‘One more thing . . .’ Weinert turned around at the door. ‘I want to read your Alberich article before anyone else. You understand? Not a word about it in the meantime.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You make inquiries at your own risk. If you should tread on the wrong people’s toes I know nothing. Clear?’

  Weinert nodded and left the office. It was better than nothing. At least for a few days he could feel like a real journalist again.

  100

  Grey clouds hung oppressively over the city. Rath sat in his office, gazing across Reinhold Gräf’s abandoned desk and fiddling with a pencil. The file on his desk ought to have interested him, but didn’t. Another unexplained death, probably a suicide. Three years ago, when share prices hit rock bottom, suicides had boomed. People had ruined themselves through speculation, these days political ruin was to blame.

  Here, at last, was a case that made sense and might actually lead to a result, unlike the ridiculous task of finding a link between Ohligs Cabinetmakers and the Rheinisches Möbelhaus. The Alberich file was as good as closed and, according to Gräf, the only thing left was the hunt for Wosniak. Still, Rath couldn’t focus.

  He could have spoken up at morning briefing, voiced some doubt, shaken Gräf and Steinke out of their self-satisfaction, but hadn’t and now it was too late, the case was gone. He would have to speak with Gennat to get it reopened, but what could he say without dragging Dr Schwartz or himself into it? For Buddha, it was enough to know the killer was out of action, whoever was responsible for his death.

  It was five or six days since he’d met Weinert, but Der Tag still hadn’t published anything on the Alberich case, let alone the article he’d been expecting. Nothing was happening, his hands were tied, and what could he do with facts that couldn’t be corroborated? Whatever he had on Roddeck was either inadmissible in court or easily challenged by a lawyer. It was as if the case were jinxed, and it had started to weigh on his soul. Like the sky above: impassive, grey, and immovable.

  More and more he understood Charly’s indignation, and was beginning to dread his work at the Castle. For someone who hated and avoided everything political, the place had grown unbearable.

  Ernst Gennat seemed to feel likewise, refusing to bow and scrape to the commissioner like so many others. The leader and founder of A Division was a living legend and it would be easier to send Grzesinski or Bernhard Weiss packing than Buddha. While the world erupted around him he ensured that things carried on as before. Even so, the atmosphere in Homicide had changed. Suspicion and mistrust were everywhere, and the fate of Wilhelm Böhm had shown where denunciation could lead.

  Rath looked out of the window. Nothing was happening. Things couldn’t go on like this, he had to do something. He opened the door to the outer office. ‘Erika! Take a trip to Registry and see what you can find out about . . .’ He looked in the file, still not having internalised the name of the potential suicide. ‘ . . . Herr Ruland, Ferdinand, who last resided in Derfflingerstrasse, Tiergarten.’

  He waited until she had left the office before reaching for the telephone, and two minutes later had arranged a lunchtime meeti
ng. He had just hung up and was fiddling with his pencil again when there was a knock at the door. It was always the same, the moment Erika Voss left the office. Before he could shout Enter! the door opened.

  Reinhold Gräf cast Erika Voss’s abandoned desk a brief, almost startled glance, and crossed the outer office, a cardboard box under his arm. ‘Hello Gereon. Hope I’m not interrupting?’

  ‘Moving back in?’

  Gräf began clearing his desk. ‘On the contrary. I’m moving out for good. You’re getting a new colleague.’

  ‘No one said anything to me.’

  ‘Gennat didn’t want to shout it from the rooftops. Lange is returning from 1A. Steinke and I are leaving A Division in exchange.’

  ‘You’re joining the Politicals? Permanently?’

  ‘Apparently Diels requested me himself. The Political Police need more officers, he said, and they could use a man like me. Levetzow said a promotion’s in the offing if I agree.’

  ‘All these years you’ve refused to put yourself up for inspector and now . . .?’

  ‘It looks like they’re prepared to waive my probationary year.’

  ‘A thank-you for the Alberich case? Congratulations.’

  Gräf looked at the floor, as if embarrassed. ‘I was lucky, Gereon, that’s all. That Engel’s corpse turned up, I mean.’

  ‘You don’t know how he was killed yet?’

  ‘Probably self-defence. Despite numerous appeals, Wosniak still hasn’t made contact.’

  ‘Perhaps he doesn’t read the newspapers. Is there really no sign though? At the start of the investigation you spent some time scouring the homeless shelters in Berlin.’

  Gräf shook his head. ‘That’s the thing. All that looking in Berlin, but he skipped town after the fire, and returned home. We’ve had word from the homeless shelter in Barmen. Our colleagues there are taking up the search.’