‘You’ve lost me.’
‘Let’s say you needn’t worry about not being filmed tonight by the newsreel. Everything you’ve said and done in the last ten minutes is preserved for posterity.’
‘Crafty little rat, aren’t you?’
‘The same as you.’
‘You’ll never get it past court.’
‘I’m not planning to. There’ll be plenty of others interested in the sound recording.’
‘Will there now?’
‘Your publisher, Reich Minister Goebbels, the police commissioner, to name a few, and various newspapers at home and abroad.’ Rath pointed at the horizontal figure-of-eight. ‘That cassette contains a talkie without the pictures, and you know the best thing about it? Recordings like this can be copied a hundred times over.’
There was no longer any trace of fear in Roddeck’s face, only blind, helpless rage. ‘What do you want from me?’
‘This.’
Rath took a piece of paper from his pocket and held it under Roddeck’s nose as he shone the flashlight.
‘If you sign this, I’ll let you walk out of here on your own.’ Rath pointed in the direction of the tunnel exit and the brass band music. The midnight burning ceremony appeared to be over. ‘No one will ever know what happened tonight in the Linden tunnel.’
Roddeck skimmed the text and blanched. ‘That’s . . .’ He faltered. ‘You want me to cede all rights to my novel?’
‘And all royalties. Unless you want this here to fall into the wrong hands . . .’
‘It will ruin me!’
‘There’s always the alternative . . .’
‘What guarantee do I have the recording won’t be passed on?’
‘Guarantees are for washing machines and vacuum cleaners.’
‘Who the hell is Hannelore Schneider?’ Roddeck asked.
‘Someone deserving.’ Rath loosened Roddeck’s cuffs and handed him his fountain pen.
No doubt contracts drawn up by Gustav Kohn had been sealed in some strange places, Rath thought, especially if they had been written for Johann Marlow, perhaps even overlooking the odd corpse, but a decommissioned tramcar tunnel must be a first. He checked Roddeck’s signature. Everything was in order.
‘Now scram,’ he said, waving the ink dry. ‘I don’t want to see your face again, or read your name in the papers.’
‘Where am I supposed to go?’
‘To hell as far as I’m concerned.’
‘And my pistol?’
‘It stays with me, along with your flashlight.’
Achim von Roddeck looked as if he were about to cry. Slowly at first, then with growing haste, he made for the tunnel exit. Rath gazed after him without pity.
Behind him he heard a groan. ‘Can I take this off now? It hurts.’
The man in the captain’s uniform stepped out of the darkness of the tunnel and removed the half-face as though it were a carnival mask. Walther Engel’s face was sweaty, and half covered in painted red welts. The right sleeve of his uniform glistened damply.
‘My God, did Roddeck hit you?’ said Rath.
‘Caught me on the arm. Just a graze.’
‘I never should have asked you to do this.’
‘It’s what I wanted, Inspector, and I knew the risks. Who else was going to do it? My mother would never have given the mask to you.’ He looked down at Grimberg’s body. ‘So, that’s the man who tried to kill my father.’
‘He succeeded too,’ said Rath. ‘Even if it took him ten years.’
110
He ought to have been happy, but all he felt was a kind of relief. Everything had gone off without a hitch apart from Kirie’s barking, but that was to be expected. Fritze had looked after her and the ceremony, by that stage mainly forms and signatures, had proceeded without interruption.
Charly wore the home-made, knee-length, white dress she would wear again on Saturday. No veil but to Rath, even with just the white hat, she made the perfect bride. Above all, because she behaved like the perfect bride who said ‘yes’ and revealed her dimpled smile. No sooner had their lips met than Kirie started barking. The old girl couldn’t bear to watch, which was why she had her basket in the corridor and in case of doubt was shown the door.
After Hannelore relieved the guests of their coats, Rath showed the small party to the living room and closed the door before Kirie could slink inside. He took a deep breath. They had come this far.
After lunch in the Charlottenburger Ratskeller, underneath the town hall, the company had departed in two taxicabs for Carmerstrasse. Engelbert Rath nodded in approval of the area his son had chosen to make his home. Entering the stairwell, however, he became more sceptical, no fan of modern architecture, which meant everything built after the war.
Rath almost forgot to carry Charly over the threshold, but a look from her, and a hefty nudge from Paul, reminded him of his duties as groom. Fritze was present to capture the moment for the family album in which he, too, found his place.
Charly had insisted on taking photos of his first day at school, albeit minus the satchel. ‘No way you’re making a sap out of me!’ As it happened, his first two schooldays were holidays, German Labour Day on 1st May followed by a belated celebration of Hitler’s birthday. The Nazis knew how to make themselves popular.
‘As far as I’m concerned, this can carry on,’ Fritze had said, but it couldn’t. On 3rd May classes started in earnest. Yes, he was now an unofficial member of the family, and stood to be formally recognised as the foster child of the newlyweds at the youth welfare office three weeks hence.
For a moment, Rath had been concerned that Charly’s decisive ‘yes’ was not only a product of her love, but their need to appear as a respectable married couple while there. He pushed the thought aside. Now they were man and wife they’d manage with the boy somehow, especially as she would be at home during the day.
Hannelore appeared with a tray of champagne glasses and curtseyed politely. With her white apron and bonnet, she looked as if she’d never done anything else. Without saying much, she made a decent job of it, her manner courteous and reliable.
‘Thank you, Hannelore,’ Rath said, taking a glass for himself. Drawing Charly towards him, he held his champagne aloft and the murmuring died. He could spare himself a speech, having already given one at lunch.
‘Dear parents and friends, welcome to the Rath family’s new branch office in Berlin!’ He winked at his father, and kissed Charly, this time uninterrupted by Kirie, and was met with a round of applause.
Together in Carmerstrasse they had the smallest possible number of guests: two witnesses, Paul Wittkamp and Greta Overbeck, and, inevitably, the parents, Erika and Engelbert Rath, as well as Luise Ritter, Charly’s mother. Rath hadn’t met her until after the engagement, and had seen her on only two or three occasions since. He sensed Charly was a little ashamed of her mother, but he was no different where his parents were concerned.
Following the unexpected death of her husband, Luise Ritter had waited until Charly finished school before leaving Moabit behind, returning to her sister and parents in Schwiebus, a small town in the Brandenburg Province, beyond the banks of the Oder. She had never felt at ease in the capital, and had only moved there for the sake of her husband. A working-class woman from the provinces who dwelt too much in the past, she lamented the loss of Prussia’s King and Imperial Germany’s Kaiser.
Rath’s parents were her opposites in just about every way. Engelbert and Erika Rath might, in nostalgic moments, secretly mourn the good old days, but they were fully paid-up members of the bourgeoisie, correspondingly educated and often at receptions, concerts or the theatre. They were used to being heard, by domestic servants, police officers and, indeed, their own children.
Luise Ritter’s only point in common with Erika Rath, who was as comfortable in the home as she was in polite society, was that she had married a Prussian official, albeit an administrator with Moabit district council rather than a police director on friend
ly terms with the mayor of Cologne.
Charly seemed to worship her dead father like a saint, her mother on the other hand . . . Well, Rath thought, you can’t choose your parents, just as you couldn’t choose your children.
Except, of course, Charly had chosen hers.
He had to hand it to her though, she could have chosen a lot worse. The boy certainly livened up the place, sometimes made it a little too lively. Those quiet moments Rath so valued, drinking cognac and listening to music, had been all but consigned to the past. Stealing a glance towards the other side of the room, he spied a copy of the Prager Tageblatt on his favourite chair. He went over and discreetly returned it to the newspaper rack.
The Tageblatt, increasingly hard to get hold of in Germany, had devoted four columns to the story of the dead man from the Spree, falsely identified thanks to the carelessness of the Berlin Police. Whoever Reinhold Böhm might be, he clearly had intimate knowledge of the situation in the capital. Perhaps he was one of the exiles who had recently decamped to Prague, and was now throwing as much mud as possible at the new Germany. Certainly, that had been Magnus von Levetzow’s interpretation, the commissioner having summoned Rath to his office first thing Monday morning.
Beside the accusations levelled at his person and the police authorities at large, the most troubling aspect for Levetzow was that serious allegations had been made against the new Germany’s great literary hope. Having successfully played the innocent, Rath would send the article, which had appeared at the weekend, to Walther Engel first thing tomorrow. His father’s honour had been vindicated, at least for those Germans living abroad, for whom the Tageblatt was the most important newspaper.
Germans at home, on the other hand, remained in the dark. Government policy was to disregard or refute all Tageblatt articles and, on this occasion, they had opted for disregard, which meant that ‘official’ reports had to provide a different explanation for Achim von Roddeck’s disappearance. The last person to see him was Herbert Gutjahr, leader of the Berlin and Brandenburg branch of the German Students’ Association, and organiser of the book-burning on Opera Square. According to Gutjahr, shortly before making his planned speech Roddeck had thrust his script into his hands and made his excuses on health grounds.
Roddeck did not return to his hotel. It was as if he had fallen off the face of the Earth, and the papers began to speculate wildly on his whereabouts, even suggesting that the nationalist cause had given rise to its own B. Traven, the mysterious author who wrote from a secret location abroad.
Poor Roddeck, Rath thought. First he’s hailed as the national revolution’s answer to Remarque, now he’s up against B. Traven and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Not that the rumours did any harm to sales of Märzgefallene, quite the opposite.
Gregor Hildebrandt was sure to be pleased, although he had been open mouthed when Liang presented him with the transfer authority drawn up by Gustav Kohn and signed by Roddeck. He didn’t think to protest though, or go to the police. Few did after looking into Liang’s dark eyes. Nibelungen paid by cash initially; all future payments would be by cheque. According to Marlow, on Liang’s departure Hildebrandt had asked the same question as Achim von Roddeck: ‘Who is Hannelore Schneider?’
Hannelore Schneider was here, attending to Rath and Charly’s wedding guests.
No one had linked the corpse in the Linden tunnel with Roddeck’s disappearance, and the Vossische provided no more than a summary report, a single column, thirty lines or so. ‘Dead man in the Linden Tunnel!’ The rest was a mystery, police groping in the dark. Soon the file would be consigned to the other ‘wet fish’, the Castle’s store of unsolved cases.
Someone cleared his throat and Rath turned to see his father beside him, champagne in hand, and in high spirits. ‘Not bad, Gereon. Neat flat, prime location, and an enchanting bride.’
‘Thanks, Papa.’ Rath gestured outside the window. ‘Dr Weiss lived over there until recently.’
Engelbert Rath nodded pensively. ‘It’s a disgrace. Our best people are being hounded from office.’
No doubt he was partly referring to himself. Though still in post with the rank of police director, Rath senior was having a hard time in Cologne. As a known associate of Adenauer, he found himself sidelined and no longer involved in the decision-making process at Krebsgasse. His contacts in the ‘Cologne cabal’, mostly fellow Centre Party members, were as good as useless, since practically all Centrists had been ousted from positions of influence. Konrad Adenauer was the tip of the iceberg. For two or three weeks now, the former mayor had taken sanctuary in a monastery, and Engelbert Rath refused to say which. Suspicion, even of one’s own family, was a way of life in the new Germany.
Rath had never seen his father so rattled. Mother hadn’t told him the whole story, and probably didn’t know everything herself, but the new age weighed heavy on the police director’s shoulders.
His parents would remain in Berlin until the weekend. For them the Catholic ceremony was the one that counted, and for their sake he played along. Today everything was low-key, with Rath dressed in a dark formal suit, which made him look a little like a politician. The cutaway and top hat were for Saturday, for Schöneberg and Pastor Warszawski. The guest list would be longer on Saturday too, though there would be no place for Reinhold Gräf. Intending to invite him, Rath had finally struck his name from the list and, on Charly’s wishes, replaced him with Wilhelm Böhm. Gennat’s attendance was something they had been able to agree on, likewise the presence of a few colleagues and friends and, of course, Rath’s sister and her family. He’d be glad when the whole thing was over.
Presents had been arriving for a few days. Bernhard Weiss had sent a card inside the Tageblatt, while Rath’s colleagues from A had sent best wishes by post. Even Cologne was represented in the pile. A ladies’ and a gentleman’s wristwatch, with best regards from master watchmaker Eduard Schürmann. Rath didn’t like to think where they might have come from, nor what wedding gift they could expect from Johann Marlow.
Charly bade them to table, where, as convention dictated, Hannelore had laid places for coffee and cake. She poured coffee and there followed a relaxed conversation about cake recipes, the lousy weather and the registrar’s lovely speech.
Rath smiled at Charly. They had done everything right. Their only mistake, as it would transpire three-quarters of an hour later, was to place Charly’s mother next to the Telefunken radiogramophone.
‘That’s a . . . you have a radio?’ Luise Ritter cried, opening the lid. ‘Do you mind?’ she asked, and switched it on. There was a crackling, then a voice announced itself. Berliner Funkstunde. Adolf Hitler’s voice rasped through the room, transmitting from the Reichstag.
‘Speaking now, as a German National Socialist, I would like to proclaim on behalf of the National Government and the entire national uprising that, above all, we in this young Germany are filled with a deep understanding for those who share our feelings and convictions in other nations across the globe.’
All at table looked at each other in embarrassment, but no one dared speak. Luise Ritter didn’t notice. Charly’s mother was concentrating as hard on the device as her daughter had weeks before, when the election results were read out.
‘The generation of this young Germany, which until now has known only the want, misery and wretchedness of its own people, has suffered too greatly from this madness to consider subjecting others to the same. Devoted as we are in boundless love and faith to our own national traditions, so we respect the rights of other nations, and desire, from the bottom of our hearts, to live with them in peace and harmony. Thus, we do not recognise the concept of Germanisation. The mentality of the previous century, where it was believed that Germans could be made out of Poles and Frenchmen is alien to us, and something that, were it imposed on our citizens, we ourselves would ardently oppose.’
‘Hannelore!’ Rath ended the painful silence. ‘Bring another bottle of champagne from the kitchen. Fritze can help. Let’s make
a toast.’
The girl curtseyed and disappeared.
He tried to get the conversation going again, asking his father for the latest on Adenauer. Meanwhile, together with Paul, Erika dredged up old stories from Gereon’s childhood for the benefit of Greta. Charly shot her mother a series of angry glances but, immersed as she was in Hitler’s speech, they had no effect.
Hannelore returned with the champagne, Rath proposed another toast and they all raised their glasses except for Luise Ritter. ‘Shh,’ she said. ‘Stop making so much noise!’ while turning up the volume so that Adolf Hitler’s voice filled the room.
‘I feel obliged to state that the reason for France or Poland’s current armament cannot possibly be fear of a German invasion. Such a fear would be justified only by the existence of modern offensive weapons, and it is precisely such weapons that Germany does not possess, neither heavy artillery, nor tanks, nor bombers nor poisonous gases. The only nation that could justifiably fear invasion is Germany itself, which is forbidden not only from keeping offensive weapons, but finds its right to avail of defensive weapons restricted, and is, moreover, barred from erecting border fortifications. Germany is ready to renounce offensive weapons at any time, provided the rest of the world does the same. Germany is ready to join any solemn non-aggression pact, for Germany is not interested in attack, only in ensuring its own safety.’
For a while they sat with glasses raised, until at last Charly cried simply: ‘Mother!’
‘The Führer! I knew it . . .’ Luise Ritter looked triumphantly around with a transfigured smile. ‘He wants peace!’
Rath now understood why Charly had reacted badly to his comments about Hitler and women. ‘Mother, we don’t want to hear it. This is a wedding, your daughter’s wedding!’
‘But child, the Führer is speaking!’ Luise Ritter seemed to be in a trance.
The March Fallen Page 45