Robert Naujoks was reliable. The Lyck train got in at half past two. Rath met him on the platform. Naujoks opened his leather bag and removed a thick lever arch file: the Mathée case. ‘Pretty old hat, this,’ he said. ‘You think you can find something in here that implicates Gustav Wengler? The victim was his fiancée.’
‘We’ll see. All I’ll say is things are about to get seriously hot for our distillery-owning friend.’
Naujoks took the file from his bag. ‘The Mathée case was closed when I took up office here, the killer long since in jail. It was still talked about though.’
‘It’s still talked about today. Only thing is, they got the wrong man – and I think lots of people knew it, too. Gustav Wengler included.’
Naujoks looked around as if someone might be listening. ‘We shouldn’t speak so openly.’
Rath gestured towards the station restaurant. ‘Can I buy you a coffee?’
‘That’s kind, but no. Too many people here still know me. It’s better we’re not seen together.’
‘Perhaps you’re right.’
‘Look after yourself. If there’s one thing Treuburgers don’t like it’s nosy police officers.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘I’ll be on the next train back out to Lyck.’ Naujoks looked at his watch. ‘Leaves in half an hour. I’ll take my coffee alone. You should find yourself someplace quiet, too.’
Rath took his leave of the retired constable, thanking him once more. Naujoks waved and vanished inside the restaurant.
Exiting the station building, file tucked under his arm, he wondered where he could go. Nowhere sprang to mind. Even prior to Naujoks’s warning, he felt as if his every move were being monitored, as if the whole town was conspiring against him.
Then, all at once, the solution presented itself. The light railway that ran from Mierunsken to Schwentainen was only a stone’s throw distant. Perfect: the next train departed in ten minutes. Rath purchased his ticket.
The line didn’t just have a narrower gauge than the Reichsbahn, its cars were smaller too. The train to Schwentainen, which called to mind a toy locomotive, stood at the platform, engine steaming away. He found an empty compartment, and bagged a window seat.
According to the timetable the train stopped at every milk churn, but that was just fine. The first station, shortly after Treuburg, was Luisenhöhe, where he could see the brick chimneys of the distillery. A few people got off, no one got on, and the train continued. Now certain that no subsequent passenger would recognise him, he opened the file and began to read.
The train needed a good half-hour to reach Schwentainen. After almost a dozen additional stops, he had acquired a basic working knowledge of the Mathée homicide from July 1920.
He was surprised by how many names he recognised. Sergeant Siegbert Wengler had found Anna von Mathée dead on Sunday, 11th July 1920, at around three thirty, in the shallows of a small, unnamed lake in the forest behind Markowsken. Wengler had apparently discovered a man crouched over the corpse, whom, upon violently resisting arrest, he had neutralised with the butt of his rifle and led away from the forest in handcuffs as a prime suspect in the murder of Anna von Mathée. The man’s name: Jakub Polakowski.
The dead girl’s horse was tied to a tree by a nearby clearing; Polakowski’s bicycle stood next to the shore.
Sergeant Wengler had then pronounced Anna von Mathée dead before taking leave of the crime scene and requesting a doctor. Prior to that, he had pulled her body towards the shore and closed her eyes, exactly the sort of thing Gennat had been trying to prevent simple-minded uniform cops doing for years. Ordering things, then calling for CID, was a habit those first on the scene couldn’t seem to kick.
In Anna von Mathée’s case, no one had been especially worried. CID officers from Lyck reconstructed the chain of events using Wengler’s witness statement, alongside clues found at the site, and the autopsy report. The reconstruction had the suspect follow Anna von Mathée to the lake on his bicycle, perhaps to watch her bathe, only for desire to get the better of him. When she tried to defend herself he drowned her.
There were all sorts of suppositions in the text. According to Wengler, the plebiscite’s bleak prognosis for Poland could have filled Polakowski with hatred against all things German, speculation aided by the fact that the suspect had instigated a quarrel against three members of the Marggrabowa Homeland Service on the morning of the same day. An appendix provided the details. Again, the names of those involved were familiar: Herbert Lamkau, August Simoneit and Hans Wawerka. Wengler had actually placed Polakowski under arrest for a short time.
Around an hour after Polakowski’s release, Anna von Mathée’s fiancé had arrived at the police station to report her missing, Anna having failed to appear for lunch at the Luisenhöhe estate. Witnesses had seen her riding out to the Markowsken forest in the late morning. So, the search began.
It was striking that Sergeant Wengler had only mentioned the name of this fiancé on one occasion, at a point that could be easily overlooked, as if he were somehow embarrassed to have set out in search of the missing girl with a family member. For the man with whom he scoured the forest, before eventually arriving at the little lake, was none other than Anna’s fiancé himself, was none other than his own brother, the superintendent at Luisenhöhe: Gustav Wengler.
The wicked man, as the Kaubuk called him. The man who had returned to the scene of his crime.
78
Dr Karthaus had moved quickly. Dietrich Assmann’s corpse still lay covered by a white cotton sheet as the pathologist met the Vaterland team down in the hallowed halls of the morgue.
Charly felt uneasy entering the autopsy room, which would be one reason why Wilhelm Böhm had brought her along. It was something any CID cadet assigned to Homicide, however temporarily, must experience. In the days she’d worked as a stenographer for A Division, Böhm and Gennat had valued her theories and deductions, but they had never brought her here. The smell, a mix of human blood and disinfectant, took some getting used to, but her curiosity outweighed any sense of disgust.
Most officers had remained in the Castle to assist Gennat in interrogating the squad of guards. It was still unclear how on earth the killer had gained access to the cells.
‘That was quick, Doctor,’ Böhm said, and Karthaus arched an eyebrow in surprise. Praise from the chief inspector was as rare as a snowflake in August.
‘Superintendent Gennat asked me to prioritise this autopsy, and there were several details that struck me as odd during my initial examination.’
‘The broken neck.’
‘Right! At first I thought it could be a result of the water torture. If you tie your victims up and put the fear of death in them, some react so violently that they break their bones.’
‘But our man doesn’t secure his victims, he paralyses them,’ Charly said.
‘Not this time.’ Karthaus had their undivided attention. ‘The blood analysis is still pending, but I’d be willing to bet it shows negative. I couldn’t find a single puncture site.’
‘So, he did tie Assmann up?’ Böhm asked.
‘That’s what I thought, but there are no signs of a struggle, nothing to indicate the man was tied.’
‘What about the water on the plank bed, the wet cloth? That points to water torture.’
‘That’s what it’s supposed to point to, certainly. However, we only found water in the trachea, and it got in post-mortem.’
‘Nothing in the lungs.’
Karthaus shook his head.
‘A copycat,’ Charly suggested.
‘That’s what I suspect too,’ said Karthaus. ‘Nothing points to the victim having been exposed to the tormenta de toca, let alone having died as a result. Which was his great good fortune, if you can speak of fortune when a man has died. Most likely he barely noticed a thing, except, perhaps, for the lights going out. Metaphorically speaking.’ He threw Charly an apologetic glance. ‘To come back to the water: I’ve exa
mined samples from both the plank bed and the victim’s hair, as well as the residue from the red cloth. The strange smell – it is indeed Pitralon. I found traces of camphor in the water, camphor and alcohol. It was mixed with aftershave, albeit heavily diluted.’
‘Could it be from the victim?’ Böhm asked.
‘Unlikely, but I have another explanation.’ Karthaus pointed to the covered corpse. ‘The man’s neck was broken by someone who knew what he was doing, someone trained in close combat, or similar. Everything else is for the purposes of misdirection.’ The pathologist looked at the two CID officers. ‘He didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. He had to improvise. As for the water used to simulate the tormenta de toca . . .my guess is that the perpetrator brought it into the cell using an empty or almost empty bottle of Pitralon, because he had nothing else to hand.’
79
Rath went for a stroll. He’d have liked to go straight back to Treuburg, but the next train wasn’t for another hour and a half. So he strolled, file under his arm, through the town. Schwentainen was a ribbon settlement on the shore of a lake bearing the same name, with a small church, on whose spire red roof tiles gleamed in the sun. Perhaps being forced to walk like this was good. He needed to think.
Now wasn’t the time to confront Gustav Wengler, whatever his instincts told him. He tried to place what he’d read into some kind of order, comparing it with the lines from Radlewski’s diary.
It was a fix-up, all of it. From Anna’s death right up to Jakub Polakowski’s murder trial.
The Homeland Service boys had deliberately embroiled Polakowski in a fight, so that Gustav Wengler could calmly go about cornering Anna at the lake where she met her paramour in secret. Near the tree in whose bark the young couple had immortalised their love.
Was her murder planned? Her rape? Or was it just meant to be a talk, which had spiralled out of control? A brutal murder for which the Wengler brothers had found the perfect scapegoat in Jakub Polakowski?
Rath left Schwentainen, passing over a narrow headland separating two lakes from one another, and reaching the village on the other shore where a sign read: Suleyken, Oletzko District, Administrative Region of Gumbinnen.
He sat on a jetty and gazed at the roofs of Schwentainen lining the opposite shore, a breathtakingly beautiful scene. Nothing could disturb the idyll here in the Oletzko District, Gumbinnen, and certainly not the truth that Maria Cofalka had closed in on.
They had buried her only yesterday, but already Rath was determined to exhume her body. The librarian might be dead, but her case was far from closed.
80
When Charly returned to the Castle with Böhm, they found Vosskamp, the head guard, sitting in Gennat’s office. Trudchen Steiner, Gennat’s secretary, waved them through. ‘The superintendent has requested your presence,’ she said.
Before Charly could confirm they were both needed, Böhm pushed her through the door. ‘So?’ Gennat said, his coffee poured. ‘What’s the word from Pathology?’
‘It’s a copycat,’ Böhm said. ‘He broke Assmann’s neck, doused him with water and left a red handkerchief to throw us off the scent. Well, we’ve caught it now.’
‘There were traces of aftershave in the water,’ Charly said.
‘Interesting.’ Gennat shovelled three spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee, stirring slowly and deliberately. ‘A copycat, then. That tallies with Forensics’s findings. We still don’t know anything about the others, but the handkerchief from this morning came from the textile section in Tietz, right here on Alexanderplatz.’
‘That was quick.’
‘One of Kronberg’s men recognised it. He bought one himself a few days ago.’
‘Then the man’s a suspect,’ Charly joked.
‘You’re closer to the truth than you might like.’ Buddha looked at the guard on his sofa. ‘In the meantime Herr Vosskamp and I have solved one or two riddles.’
Vosskamp interpreted this as an invitation to make his report. He cleared his throat. ‘Yes,’ he said, placing his cup to one side. ‘We’ve questioned the duty guards on both late and night shifts and pieced together Herr Assmann’s final hours. The prisoner received a visit at twelve minutes past nine, from a detective inspector.’
Charly’s ears pricked up.
‘What inspector?’ Böhm asked. ‘I didn’t send anyone up to him in the middle of the night. Or did Customs . . .?’
‘No, it was a detective inspector,’ Vosskamp said. ‘At least according to our log.’
‘Based on what we know so far,’ Gennat said, ‘this is the man who has Dietrich Assmann on his conscience.’
‘What do you mean? Did an interrogation spiral out of control?’
‘We don’t know yet.’ Gennat shrugged. ‘The guard swears that everything was as normal when he fetched the officer from the cell. He claims the prisoner was already asleep.’
‘Or dead,’ Charly said, immediately irritated by her lapse in control.
‘Yes, Fräulein Ritter,’ Gennat said. ‘That’s what I think too.’ He glanced at a sheet of paper. ‘It was nine thirty-seven when the officer called for the guard, which was also when he left the cell wing.’
‘After which point there were no other incidents of note,’ Vosskamp said. He clearly thought it significant.
‘If he’s in the log then he must have left a name,’ Böhm said. ‘So why aren’t we grilling him as we speak?’
Gennat opened the log and passed it to Böhm. ‘The entry’s there, at the bottom.’
Böhm took the book and looked inside. Charly squinted at the page. Prisoner name, cell number, visitor name and length of visit were all neatly recorded. The last entry bore yesterday’s date and pertained to Dietrich Assmann. She could see the name and signature. No doubt about it, it looked the same as on all those letters he had sent to Paris: the book was signed: Gereon Rath.
81
There was only one fresh grave at the Catholic cemetery in Treuburg. Already the wreaths and flowers were starting to wilt; it smelled of herbs, topsoil and holy water. Maria Cofalka didn’t have a headstone yet, but Rath knew he was in the right place. He’d purchased flowers en route after depositing the homicide file at the train station, in the same locker he’d left his suitcase prior to meeting Naujoks.
He laid the bouquet beside the wreaths and, before he knew what he was doing, sank to his knees. He wasn’t especially devout, didn’t even know if he still believed – but he felt responsible for the death of this woman whom Wengler had ordered killed. For the distillery owner wasn’t only interested in preserving the legend of Anna von Mathée’s death, but also in concealing a murder he himself had committed, and, with the help of his brother, falsely attributed to another man.
If Rath hadn’t let the papers Maria Cofalka entrusted to him be stolen, then perhaps she would still be alive. He felt an urgent need to ask for her forgiveness, but this was ridiculous, kneeling before a mound of earth, communing with a dead woman.
She can’t hear you, goddamn it, it’s too late!
Still, he spoke with her, apologised that he would soon be disrupting her peace so that the circumstances of her death might come to light, in this town where all else, it seemed, was swept under the carpet at the bidding of just one man.
Wanting to confront this man, Rath had alighted from the train the station before Treuburg and walked up to the estate house, finding only Fischer, the private secretary, according to whom, Wengler was still in Berlin. Having settled his brother’s estate he would now depart on business, and wouldn’t return for at least a week.
Was the nimble-minded Fischer aware what kind of man he worked for, that Gustav Wengler had his own fiancée on his conscience, and more people besides? Perhaps the secretary was in cahoots with him?
Rath stood up and wiped the dirt from his knees. Jakub Polakowski’s grave was close by, and, passing it, he read its inscription once more.
For love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave. The coals thereof
are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.
Love. Rath wondered who was responsible for Polakowski being buried here, and for these verses. Perhaps the same person who was responsible for the murders. Someone who knew who first deprived Jakub Polakowski of the love of his life, then sent him to jail for her murder.
If he hadn’t known better, he’d have suspected Maria Cofalka, who had worked in a hospital during the war and would be familiar with needles. As a woman, she’d have been able to get close to her victims without arousing suspicion, right until the needle entered the jugular. But Maria had been in Treuburg when Siegbert Wengler was killed in Berlin. Rath had questioned her in the library the day before.
Perhaps she’d had an accomplice who would finish the job now that she was dead? He needed to find out who else had been close to Jakub Polakowski.
Or he could keep his findings to himself, and let things slide. He could cross his fingers that this mysterious avenger would catch up with Gustav Wengler and subject him to as torturous a death as Wengler had Anna von Mathée.
He shook his head. He couldn’t. He’d have liked to, but he couldn’t. There was a madman on the loose who had killed four people; not innocents, perhaps, but four people all the same. People who hadn’t deserved to die, just as Gustav Wengler didn’t deserve to die.
No, the only right course of action was bringing Gustav Wengler to trial.
On Bergstrasse, just before the marketplace, he was met by around a dozen SA officers, led by Klaus Fabeck, Hella’s boyfriend. Fabeck glowered at him with the typical SA gaze, a strange mix of hatred and contempt. You could be forgiven for thinking the brownshirts practised it. As if it were a forward march, or a kick to the solar plexus.
He stood in the troop’s way, and Fabeck raised his hand and bade his men halt. At least the idiots were well-trained.
The Fatherland Files Page 39