The Fatherland Files

by volker Kutscher

  The hotelier looked at him blankly. ‘I asked Chief Constable Grigat, but apparently you kept him in the dark.’

  ‘He said that?’

  ‘I had to have your room cleared, as we had a number of guests over the weekend. You’re welcome to have it back.’

  ‘How kind.’ Rath wasn’t sure Hermann Rickert noted his sarcasm.

  ‘You ought to have told us you were staying out of town. We’d have kept your case here for you.’

  ‘I’m afraid that wasn’t possible.’

  ‘Well, I don’t mean to be awkward. How about we just charge you for the case? A week in left luggage.’ Rickert smiled his politest hotelier’s smile.

  ‘Most obliging. Then I’d like to have my old room back.’

  ‘Of course.’ Rickert fetched the key from the board. ‘I’ll have your case brought up immediately.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Rath nodded. ‘And . . .you’ll remember I’d lost something before my . . .departure? Did you manage to . . .?’

  ‘But of course! My apologies, how could I forget?’ Rickert stooped to retrieve a black folder from behind the counter.

  ‘Where did you find it?’

  ‘It was my daughter, actually. She found it while clearing your room for our weekend guests, on Sonnabend. It must have slipped behind the bed.’

  ‘I see.’ Rath took the folder and key, and headed up to his room.

  On entering, the first thing he did was check that the letters were all there. At least one was missing, the lines he’d been reading prior to the theft. As for the rest, he couldn’t be sure – and the only person who knew for certain was dead. The news about Maria Cofalka had shaken him. Her death was neither accident nor suicide, nor was it a coincidence.

  There was a knock: not Hella, but Reimund, the Rickert’s factotum. In one hand he held a suitcase, in the other a pair of brogues. Rath put on the shoes, but hung his brown suit in the wardrobe, the only one left for the journey back to Berlin. He locked the folder in the desk, pocketed the key and exited the hotel. First stop was Goldaper Strasse, where he called at the shoemaker’s workshop. Friedrich Kowalski wore a leather apron and held a small hammer in his hand. He looked surprised.

  ‘I wanted to return these,’ Rath said, dropping the muddy boots on the floor so that the crusts flaked off. ‘Please send my regards to Herr Damerau and tell him many thanks. They were a great help.’

  ‘Inspector!’ The shoemaker looked at the shoes, then at Rath. ‘I thought you weren’t coming back.’

  ‘I nearly didn’t.’ Rath peered inside the hall. ‘Where’s your esteemed nephew?’

  ‘In Königsberg.’

  ‘In Königsberg. I see. What’s he doing there?’

  ‘Working, what else? He was recalled, about a week ago now.’

  ‘And the fact that he abandoned me in the forest? That didn’t bother anyone here?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘That’s right, your nephew abandoned me. He and old Adamek. I almost died out there on the moors.’

  ‘Come inside, Inspector.’ A short time later Rath sat with a cup of tea at Kowalski’s kitchen table. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,’ the cobbler said. ‘You sent him back yourself, didn’t you? With a message for Grigat.’

  ‘The last thing I told your nephew was to keep watch by some clearing on the border. By the time I returned he and Adamek were both gone.’

  Kowalski shook his head. ‘That’s not like Anton. He never lets anyone down.’

  ‘What’s this about a message for Grigat?’

  ‘He didn’t tell me. He had to set off pretty much right away after returning from the district office. Königsberg needed him urgently, him and the car.’

  ‘No one thought to ask about me?’

  ‘Anton was rather vague, but somehow we all assumed you no longer needed his help.’

  Rath nodded pensively. Someone here was playing him false, and there were no prizes for guessing who.

  Wilhelm Adamek sat outside his shanty whittling an enormous stick. He registered Rath’s appearance with a twitch of his eyebrows and returned to his work. If he was surprised at seeing the missing inspector he gave no sign. He examined his stick, stuck out his lower lip and continued carving. Rath wondered if he should be wary of the knife. His Walther might not be loaded, but it should serve for intimidation purposes.

  ‘Hello to you, too,’ he said. ‘Safely returned from the forest, I see?’

  Adamek threw him a brief glance and carried on with his whittling. Rath tried to assess the old-timer’s strength. Even under normal circumstances a man like Wilhelm Adamek might have the better of him. After a week in bed with fever, and still wobbly on his legs, there was no question. Diplomacy, then. He couldn’t just yank the man up by the collar.

  ‘I was looking for you, recently. Why didn’t you come back for me?’

  ‘I’d brought you to your destination.’ Adamek didn’t even look up.

  ‘You left me in the lurch.’

  ‘I had to escort your colleague back.’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense. What did you say to Kowalski to make him go with you? That I was sending him back with a message for Chief Constable Grigat? What kind of message? That I’d manage just fine on my own in the wilds, and didn’t need his help?’ Rath was shouting, but didn’t care. The composure with which this outlaw sat whittling made him incandescent. ‘I would have died on the moors, if someone hadn’t pulled me out!’

  Adamek looked up and raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want that.’

  It sounded genuine. Rath was surprised. ‘Then you shouldn’t have abandoned me in the forest.’

  ‘Like I said, I’m sorry.’

  The old-timer’s face was hard to read. ‘It wasn’t your idea, then?’ Adamek said nothing. ‘Who put you up to it?’ More and more splints rained down in front of the bench. ‘Who?’

  ‘I can’t say!’

  ‘So, someone did put you up to it!’ Adamek looked at Rath with a mixture of anger and contempt. ‘Tell me who it was. Did they blackmail you?’ Adamek’s knife carved ever larger splints, this was wood-chopping now. ‘Your poaching, was it? Did someone threaten to turn you in?’

  All of a sudden the old man sprang to his feet and hurled the knife into the bench where it quivered for some time. ‘Listen to me,’ he said. ‘There’s only one thing I want from life, and that is to be left in peace!’

  ‘I don’t like being abandoned.’

  ‘I never abandoned anyone!’

  ‘There’s someone else who won’t leave you in peace, isn’t there? Someone who urged you to teach that puffed-up inspector a lesson. See that he’s had his fill of Masuria, and on the first train back to that hotbed of vice he calls home! So that life here can carry on as normal. Is that it?’ Adamek was silent. ‘Well, let me tell you and your fellow Treuburgers something. You won’t get rid of me so easily! There are far too many secrets in this town, and it’s time someone lifted the lid. Now, kindly tell your mystery employer that’s precisely what I intend to do!’

  Was that a grin on his face? Adamek seemed to have enjoyed Rath’s outburst. ‘Why don’t you tell him yourself?’ he said.

  76

  For as long as she had worked at the Castle, Charly had given the holding cells a wide berth. Now the smell and crude remarks that greeted her arrival appeared to justify her decision. At least the man in here would be keeping his comments to himself. Dietrich Assmann lay on the plank bed, covered by a thin woollen blanket. His eyes were closed, at first glance he looked as if he were sleeping.

  ‘We didn’t realise until reveille,’ the guard told Ernst Gennat. ‘When we saw he wasn’t moving, we went in. The rest you know.’

  ‘The rest we know,’ Gennat gave the guard a hostile look. ‘This man was an important witness and he was was killed on your watch! For God’s sake, are people no longer safe in jail?’

  ‘I wasn’t on duty last night,’ the guard said.

 
; ‘You’re in charge here, man!’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  ‘I demand to know how it could have happened.’

  ‘In theory, Sir, no one can get in or out of here without our say-so.’

  ‘In theory,’ Gennat repeated. ‘Yet somehow a killer got in and out. You can’t tell me this was suicide.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a disgrace! Murder in a police cell! If the press gets wind of this . . . I want this resolved. I need whatever logs are kept here on my desk. Now. And round up everyone who was on duty last night.’

  ‘This moment?’ the guard asked, kneading his cap in his hands.

  ‘Yesterday.’

  ‘Yes, Sir!’

  For some years Gennat had preferred to pull the strings from the comfort of his office, but now the bodies were coming to him. He didn’t even have to leave headquarters to reach Dietrich Assmann’s corpse, just cross to the holding cells in the southern wing and head upstairs to Solitary on the second floor.

  Böhm was there too, alongside Lange, and Cadet Steinke, who had called it in. All stood outside the narrow cell watching the forensic technicians go about their business.

  Gennat approached the corpse, whose neck Dr Karthaus was examining.

  Meanwhile all we can do is carry on. Well, here was Buddha showing the way. Charly didn’t know if it was right, but perhaps there really was no other choice. Did it really matter if their commissioner’s name was Grzesinski or Melcher, if he was a Social Democrat or National Liberal?

  Whatever, it looked as if their killer had struck again. Dietrich Assmann lay dead on his plank bed. The mattress and upper portion of the woollen blanket were wet, and on the bedpost hung a red cloth still damp with water. She went over and examined it, sniffing at the red fabric. ‘It smells like camphor,’ she said.

  Lange finished photographing the corpse and steered the camera towards the cloth. ‘She’s right. Pitralon, I’d say.’

  ‘Pitralon?’ Gennat said curiously, joining them. ‘Aftershave?’

  ‘Seems our man applied it before his death,’ Dr Karthaus said. ‘The corpse smells as if it’s been freshly shaved. Although the chin is quite stubbly.’

  ‘Am I right in thinking these cloths are placed over the victim’s nose and mouth, and then drenched in water?’ Gennat asked.

  ‘You’re saying the smell transferred onto the cloth from Assmann’s face?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Isn’t it too intense for that?’ Charly asked. ‘Seems more likely the cloth was dipped in aftershave.’

  ‘Take a photo of the cloth, Lange, then Kronberg can bag it for examination.’

  ‘Yes, Sir.’

  Gennat turned towards Kronberg, who was speaking with Böhm. ‘Well?’

  The ED man shrugged. ‘We don’t know how the perpetrator got in and out. There are no signs of forced entry. Nothing to indicate the use of a picklock.’

  ‘He must have got in somehow.’

  ‘Perhaps he had a key.’

  ‘You’re saying it was one of the guards?’

  ‘We shouldn’t rule anything out, but actually what I meant is perhaps someone had a key cut. Or got hold of one somehow. Wouldn’t be the first time a key had fallen into the wrong hands.’

  ‘We’ll ask around the relevant people.’

  Gennat was famous for his contacts in the Ringvereine, as well as for his network of informants. If anyone could discover who had keys to the holding cells at Alex, it was him. ‘When you examine that cloth,’ he said to Kronberg, ‘I’d like to know why it smells like that, and if it’s a match for the others.’

  While Gennat was speaking, Charly looked round the cell and found a cigarette stub under the plank bed. She knelt beside Dr Karthaus and lifted it with a pair of tweezers. It had only been half-smoked. ‘Take a look at this,’ she said. Gennat and Böhm turned towards her. ‘Strange, don’t you think?’

  ‘Why?’ Böhm asked. ‘You’re permitted to smoke in police custody.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Gennat said, ‘but in here you smoke each cigarette as if it’s your last. What you don’t do is smoke half and stub the rest out. I think that’s what you’re getting at, am I right, Fräulein Ritter?’

  Charly nodded, but she was embarrassed. She felt like an insufferable know-it-all. Luckily Böhm didn’t hold it against her.

  Dr Karthaus joined them. ‘Did I hear you right? You’re permitted to smoke in here?’ He fetched his cigarette case from his overalls and lit up.

  ‘So long as you don’t stub it out on the floor.’

  ‘No problem.’ Karthaus removed a tin case from his overalls. A pocket ashtray. ‘I know my place where Forensics are concerned.’

  ‘Have you anything for us?’ Böhm asked. ‘Death by drowning? The usual?’

  ‘Depends on how you look at it. If by usual you mean that the man is dead, then yes.’ The pathologist inhaled deeply. ‘If, on the other hand, you are asking whether we are dealing with the same sequence of events as in previous cases, then I’m afraid I must disappoint.’ Böhm looked surprised, and the doctor seemed to enjoy it. He gestured towards the corpse with the cigarette. ‘I’ve searched his neck for a puncture site. There’s nothing.’

  ‘Perhaps the killer injected a different part of his body?’

  ‘We’ll have to wait for the autopsy. However, while examining his neck I made another discovery.’ Karthaus took another long drag and pointed at the corpse a second time. ‘Unless I’m very much mistaken, the man has a broken neck.’

  77

  Erich Grigat was adjusting his shako before the wall mirror when Rath barged through the door. ‘How the hell did you get in here?’ he asked.

  ‘My apologies, Sir,’ his secretary replied. ‘This gentleman completely ignored me. He didn’t even knock, just came . . .’

  ‘It’s fine, Fräulein Bikowski. Let me see to the inspector. Why not go for your lunch? If you need anything, I’ll be in the Salzburger Hof.’

  The secretary nodded and left, but not before throwing Rath a hostile glance. ‘I think it’s in your interests that this conversation remain confidential,’ he said, closing the door.

  ‘I can’t see what there is to discuss, Inspector. You’ve told me nothing of your movements so far, and your Berlin colleagues clearly likewise. Your superior was in touch on several occasions. Unfortunately there was nothing I could say to him.’

  ‘No?’ Rath looked at Grigat’s twitching moustache. ‘You couldn’t have let Berlin know where I’ve spent the last few days?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘What did you say to old Adamek? Did you threaten him? Say you’d no longer turn a blind eye to his poaching? What about your beloved venison loin?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘We ran into you on our way to Adamek’s. You’d just come from there, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Stop speaking in riddles.’

  ‘Granted, you didn’t mean to kill me. You probably just wanted to run me out of your pretty little town. Well, too bad!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Or were you acting on someone else’s behalf, instructing old Adamek to abandon me in the forest like that?’

  ‘Are you implying the Treuburg Police can be bought?’

  ‘Depends what you mean by “bought”? Perhaps you were just doing someone a favour. In Cologne we call it Klüngel. Cabal.’

  ‘And here we call it calumny. I’m warning you, stop making baseless accusations!’ It felt as if Grigat might challenge him to a duel.

  ‘Need I remind you . . .’ Rath placed the letter from Bernhard Weiss on the desk. ‘That the deputy commissioner of the Berlin Police has expressly requested that you provide me with support. Therefore, I advise you to lay your cards on the table. Tell me who wanted rid of me and I won’t lodge a complaint. Otherwise, your conduct could be interpreted as insubordination. No doubt you’re aware of Dr Weiss’s connections in the Interior Ministry?’

  Grigat lifte
d the official letter. ‘As far as I’m concerned the only thing that paper’s good for is wiping your arse.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘You heard me!’

  ‘Do you realise what you’re saying? This is a letter from Berlin Deputy Police Commissioner Bernhard Weiss . . .’

  ‘Your Isidore has no authority here! The Berlin Police commissioner’s name is Kurt Melcher, and your Dr Weiss can count himself lucky he hasn’t had his Jewish arse spanked.’ For a moment Rath thought Grigat had gone mad. He fetched a communication from on top of his filing tray. ‘Came over the ticker this morning. Grzesinski, Weiss and Heimannsberg have all been removed from office. About time someone cleaned up this Social Democrat pigsty.’

  ‘No, Severing would never allow it!’

  ‘The Interior Minister has also been removed, the entire Prussian government in fact, bunch of red bastards. Hindenburg has appointed the Reich chancellor as Reich commissioner for Prussia.’

  ‘Show me!’

  Grigat handed Rath the teleprinter message informing all Prussian police and gendarmerie stations that the Prussian minority government had been removed from office, along with the Berlin Police executive. Until further notice Prussia would be governed by a Reich commissioner.

  ‘This . . .can’t be. It’s a . . .putsch,’ Rath stammered.

  ‘I’d choose your words carefully if I were you,’ Grigat said, now holding the upper hand. ‘Otherwise I might find myself compelled to make a complaint against you! My patience with you and your bizarre code of ethics is at an end!’ He grasped the document and waved towards the door. ‘Now, be so kind as to leave my office, otherwise I’ll have you removed by force.’

  Rath thought better of answering back. Silently he folded Bernhard Weiss’s letter and stowed it in his pocket, before leaving Grigat and the district administrative office behind. Damn it, he thought, a hell of a lot has happened in the days you’ve been gone.

  There was a telephone booth outside the district court. He took out his wallet and counted his change, knowing it was only a matter of time before Treuburg’s chief of police declared him persona non grata.