The March Fallen

80

It was the kind of Monday morning that Rath could do without. Having barely slept, he was looking forward to a quiet start when Erika Voss told him that the police commissioner wanted a word urgently. For the third time in the space of a month. No commissioner had wished to see him as often as Magnus von Levetzow.

Urgently, yet already Rath had waited a full half an hour outside his office. Dagmar Kling, who had outlasted Kurt Melcher, Albert Grzesinski and Karl Zörgiebel, went about her work unperturbed, having witnessed many things including the arrest of a serving commissioner by the Reichswehr. Poor sinners such as Gereon Rath were the least of her concerns.

He had no idea what the summons was about, only that it meant missing morning briefing and his sole remaining link with day-to-day case work. More manhunt than murder inquiry, the search for Benjamin Engel was anything other than a classic Homicide investigation. By this point Rath’s task of reconstructing the circumstances around the deaths of the three former soldiers had been superseded by the order to look for a man who left no trace, and wasn’t about to start.

On his way to Alex, he had taken a detour via the Brommy Bridge, but couldn’t approach the shore without stopping and getting out of the car. Was that why Levetzow wished to speak with him, because they had found the corpse? But then, wouldn’t it be Gennat who summoned him? Perhaps they had been seen. Someone might have spotted the Buick on Köpenicker Strasse and noted the registration. If so, he’d have some explaining to do.

Last night, the first of the new moon, had been ideal. They had returned to Köpenicker Strasse around midnight, dressed in black and wearing gloves, to find the thread Rath had attached to the door still intact, and the dead man exactly where they had left him. They had brought a clothes line, and a sheet for the corpse. Though the blood had already coagulated, it still left red streaks on the white cotton. Charly was about to start wrapping when Rath gestured to wait, and vanished into the yard to fetch cobblestones.

‘We need weight,’ he whispered, before venturing outside three more times. Satisfied that the bundle was heavy enough, they tied it and exited through one of the rear doors that led onto the river.

A cold wind was blowing, and a veil of mist had settled on the Spree. When they switched off their flashlights, the only light came from the gas lamps on the Brommy Bridge. They wouldn’t be the first to pass a dead man into the care of these waters, Rath thought. The bundle was impossibly heavy, an impossible carry, but somehow they managed to haul it across the threshold and drag it to the water where they gave it one last shove. Watching the blood-stained bundle slowly tip forward and slide into the murky depths, they understood there was no going back and that this secret would bind them closer than any marriage ceremony.

‘Inspector Rath?’ Dagmar Kling’s voice returned him to the present. ‘The commissioner will see you now.’

He stood up and entered Levetzow’s office, where the commissioner sat behind his desk. ‘Well, Inspector?’

‘Sir?’

‘Any information you’d care to divulge?’

Well, I found the trench dagger killer, along with his trench dagger, only the man was dead and, being unable to confirm his identity or motives, I preferred to make his corpse disappear. That’ll be an end to the murders, and that’s good news, isn’t it?

‘Nothing, Sir.’

‘As I feared, and precisely the reason I summoned you.’ Levetzow paused, but Rath chose to remain silent and listen. ‘A week ago I asked you to keep me informed on developments in the Engel investigation. Why have I heard nothing?’

‘There haven’t been any, Sir.’

‘You see! That’s your problem right there,’ suddenly Levetzow was pounding his fist on the table. ‘No developments in a week! Damn it, man, I put you on the bastard because I thought you were young and ambitious, and exactly the right man for the job. A Rottweiler, ready to snap.’

‘Sorry if I’ve disappointed you, Sir, but I have reason to suppose this Engel, this trench dagger killer, has gone to ground.’

‘What makes you suppose that?’

Rath couldn’t pretend the killer was still out there, threatening the life of esteemed ex-lieutenant and author Achim von Roddeck. ‘Let’s call it investigative instinct, Sir. There’s no trace of him anywhere. I’m certain he won’t kill again. Lieutenant von Roddeck need no longer fear for his life.’

‘You presume to dictate Achim von Roddeck’s security arrangements?’

‘That wasn’t my intention, Sir.’

‘These wishy-washy statements. This waffle about feelings and instincts. These positively reckless suggestions of yours… They only harden my resolve!’ Magnus von Levetzow turned red in the face. ‘Inspector, I am relieving you of this case. Detective Gräf and Cadet Steinke will take over with immediate effect. I would ask you to pass on all relevant documents and report to Superintendent Gennat.’

Gräf, of all people! Was he being replaced by a lower-ranking officer to humiliate him? He pretended contrition but felt relief. He had blown it with the new commissioner, but experience told him that where commissioners were concerned, the Castle was a revolving door. Magnus von Levetzow was already the fourth since he’d started in Berlin, and Rath was certain he wouldn’t be the last.

‘You can go.’ Levetzow thrust his right arm forward with a brisk ‘Heil Hitler!’

This time Rath was ready for it. He raised his right arm, in a manner similar to Hitler himself, but not as briskly, rather, casually, limply, as if he were saying ‘Hello’, and his ‘Heil’ sounded more like a Hi. The commissioner shooed him away like a disobedient dog. For the time being he was in the clear, and it was unlikely he’d have to return anytime soon. When that day came, he doubted very much that a Nazi would still be in post. Melcher, the previous incumbent, had lasted barely half a year, and Gereon Rath was more than happy to wait his successor out.

They could hardly wait. Before the lunch break had begun Gräf appeared with a cardboard box under his arm and Cadet Steinke in tow. The meeting was an embarrassment for Gräf, but Steinke had no such qualms. ‘We require all documents pertaining to the Wosniak, Meifert and Wibeau investigations,’ he said, as if he were Rath’s commanding officer.

Rath fetched the three files from the cabinet and made a pile of them on his desk, leaving the Bülowplatz file and observation reports from Bonn in his drawer.

‘I’m sorry, Gereon,’ Gräf said. ‘It’s what the commissioner wants. I’d rather we could keep working together.’

‘It’s fine,’ Rath said, returning to the unspectacular case Gennat had assigned him, most likely a suicide, a contemporary for whom the national uprising wasn’t as uplifting as for the majority of his fellow citizens. Shopkeeper Daniel Rothstein had been found dead in his bed in Wilmersdorf and so far there was nothing to suggest foul play, unless, that is, someone had forced him to ingest the bottle of Veronal that lay empty by his bedside table.

Gräf unloaded the contents of his cardboard box into his desk drawers while Steinke moved the files from Rath’s desk onto Gräf’s and reached for the visitor’s chair.

‘What the hell is this?’ Rath demanded.

‘We’re merging the three files into a single dossier,’ Steinke said. ‘The Alberich file, the commissioner suggested. I think that’s what we’re calling it, right, Sir?’

‘You can call it the Arsehole file for all I care,’ Rath glared at Steinke. ‘What I want to know is why you pair of jokers think you can spread yourselves around my office.’

Gräf rediscovered his voice. ‘This is my desk. We have to work somewhere.’

‘And this room is my office. It says so on the door. If you want to take up with a new… partner, you’ll have to find somewhere else. With the Politicals for all I care. That’s where you two sweethearts have come from, isn’t it?’

Gräf packed his things back into the cardboard box. Steinke, however, wasn’t prepared to go down without a fight. ‘Inspector,’ he said, ‘your tone ill becomes you…’

‘Zip it, Steinke,’ Gräf shouted. ‘Take your goddamn files. You heard what he said. We’ll find somewhere else.’

The smirk disappeared from Steinke’s face. He took the files from the desk and followed Gräf outside. Rath knew Gräf was no fan of the Nazi careerist, and was all the more tickled by the commissioner’s decision to lump them together. The pair had distinguished themselves as avid supporters of the national uprising during their stint with the Politicals. How nice to see these spiritual comrades at loggerheads despite their common ground.

‘Shut the door!’ Rath yelled, and Steinke’s wobbly pile of files almost toppled to the floor.

81

Charly drew on her cigarette. ‘Perhaps it was the boycott,’ she said.

Gereon was focused on the traffic. It wasn’t yet five but already they were driving out of town on Landsberger Allee, one of Berlin’s major arterial roads. She didn’t know what Gereon had said to get off work, nor did she care, her sense of duty being currently at odds with the Prussian gold standard. Which wasn’t to say she had no interest in Gereon’s latest investigation, a suicide with no farewell note. In the three days since Levetzow had taken him off the Alberich case, he had yet to establish a motive.

‘This Rothstein,’ she continued, ‘had a little toy shop on Knesebeckstrasse, didn’t he? Perhaps he killed himself fearing the Jewish boycott would drive him to ruin.’

The papers had been full of it for days. As revenge for, supposedly Jewish, atrocity propaganda in the foreign press, a nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses was to be observed this coming Saturday. By now the Central Committee for the Prevention of Jewish Inflammatory and Atrocity Propaganda had sent its call to editorial offices up and down the land, and the newspapers had printed their text in full, even the Vossische. Reading about it, you’d think a national holiday was being observed, complete with parades and demonstrations. Where the new regime was concerned, parades and demonstrations seemed to go with the territory.

‘Bit much, don’t you think?’ Gereon asked.

‘What?’

‘Killing yourself for something like that. Who takes this sort of thing seriously? It’s just the Nazis shooting their mouths off again. Do you really think Berliners are going to be told where to shop?’

‘Perhaps it wasn’t suicide and the SA have him on their conscience.’

‘You should be careful saying that sort of thing.’

‘Gereon, if we can’t speak freely in your car, where can we?’

‘The man took to his bed following an overdose of Veronal. No external injuries. Doesn’t sound like the SA to me.’

‘You’re right. The SA would be sure to roughhouse any Jew they laid their hands on.’ The brick buildings of the Lichtenberg Waterworks flitted past as they approached the city boundary. ‘How far is it to Freienwalde?’

‘About an hour’s drive.’

She could hardly wait to see Hannah again, having known since Monday where she was being kept.

Gereon had sounded like a doctor: ‘She’s lost a lot of blood. It will be some time before she’s healed properly but, all things considered, she seems to be making a steady recovery.’

‘Freienwalde? Why is she in Freienwalde?’

He had hesitated a moment before replying. ‘Because Johann Marlow has a house there. Because there she’ll be safe.’

‘The Johann Marlow? Dr M.?’ She couldn’t believe it.

‘She’s in better hands with him than with your doctor friend.’ That much was true. Dieter was a neurologist, not someone familiar with haemorrhaging and stab wounds.

‘I thought you’d cut all ties with Marlow.’

‘I have, but he still owes me a favour.’

‘There’s a name for that, you know? You’re a police officer, allowing a criminal…’

‘Marlow’s no criminal.’

‘Of course he is, just smart enough not to get caught.’

‘That’s why Hannah is in safe hands. He knows how to handle a situation like this.’

‘Right… probably because his men are treated for gunshot or stab wounds every day. Gereon, you must realise that a police officer shouldn’t be associating with people like that.’

‘Nor should they be casting murder victims into the Spree by night.’

Charly had no answer there. She’d done things she’d never have dreamed herself doing, but what choice had there been? Little by little the state she worked for had ceased to be the German Republic of old, and become a monstrous ogre, as disfigured as the war-disabled beggars on Berlin’s streets or the man they had cast into the Spree.

It seemed unlikely his death would be linked back to Fritze. Charly was doing everything in her power to keep the boy off the streets and give him a future. She had enrolled him at the parish school on Bleibtreustrasse for the start of the new session. For the time being Friedrich Thormann had a home again. He repaid their kindness by being busier around the house than their cleaner, Lina, and more solicitous with the dog. So much that she feared Gereon might grow jealous.

Dusk was falling as they drove into Freienwalde, a pretty little town shaped by its cure industry and the many villas and country houses which had sprung up in the last half century. Reaching one such house on the outskirts, part of a hidden street that meandered its way slowly uphill, Gereon stopped. ‘This must be it,’ he said, parked and got out.

The house overlooked the street like a small castle; an English-style villa built just before the war when all was right with the world and no one imagined the horrors in store. The place radiated innocent assurance, but looked different close up. The walled estate was sealed by a wrought-iron gate, behind which two men stood guard. Neither elegant clothes nor good manners could disguise that they were goons.

‘Fräulein Ritter, Herr Rath,’ one said, lifting his hat. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’ His partner opened a side-gate. On each of the property’s balconies stood a man with a carbine in his hand. Gereon was right, Hannah was safer here than anywhere. They made their way up the gravel path, escorted by one of the guards.

‘Marlow’s nervous,’ Gereon whispered. ‘His rivals, the Nordpiraten, have made a pact with the Berlin SA.’

Charly asked herself how Gereon knew such things. It was rare for Homicide to deal with the Ringvereine. On the stoop was a man who wore neither coat nor hat, but light-coloured linen slacks, a shirt and tie, and a cardigan. ‘Fräulein Ritter, I presume,’ he said, stretching out a hand. ‘Johann Marlow, delighted to meet you.’

‘The pleasure’s mine,’ Charly said, shaking his hand and immediately vexed by her friendliness. His charm had caught her off guard. He wasn’t especially good-looking, perhaps ten years older than Gereon, heavy-set with thinning hair, and, it seemed, unshakeable inner confidence.

‘How’s the girl?’ she asked.

‘Moving in the right direction after severe blood loss, and eating well. We’ve managed to put a little meat on her bones.’

‘But?’

‘She’s still in a state of shock. She hasn’t said a word since she arrived.’

Charly sighed. Here we go again. Yet, if she’d understood Fritze correctly, Hannah was perfectly capable of speech. In Dalldorf her silence had been a denial of her surroundings, now the same thing was happening here.

Marlow led them to a wing of the house where the entrance was also guarded. How could Hannah trust anyone in a place like this?

‘She’s in here,’ Marlow said, stopping outside a door. Yet another armed guard stood to greet him. ‘As you can see, she’s being well looked after.’

‘I’d like to speak to her alone if I may. I fear all you men are making her nervous.’

82

Rath was glad to speak with Johann Marlow in private, relieved that Charly’s first meeting with him had gone off without incident. She had spoken to Dr M. like a mother to a surgeon discussing her daughter’s treatment, and shown greater respect than he, Gereon Rath, had ever mustered. He hated himself for being so dependent on the man. If, years ago, someone had offered him their informal pact, but with full knowledge of the consequences, he’d have respectfully declined. Slowly but surely he had become so mixed up in Marlow’s business that he could no longer see a way out.

‘Thank you for looking after the girl,’ he said.

For the first time he felt something like genuine gratitude. All the other ‘services’ Dr M. had provided – hand-outs, information, even an overnight car-repair – had felt like tying chains around his wrists.

‘It’s nothing,’ Marlow said. ‘I don’t know why you’re hiding her, but she’s safe here.’

‘Your house is better guarded than a prison.’

‘With the crucial difference that my men make sure no one gets in.’

‘What are you so afraid of?’

Marlow’s smile vanished. ‘I’ve already mentioned how the Nordpiraten are causing problems. Lapke has joined the Nazis, or at least the SA, and is making life tricky for us.’

‘Join the party yourself, and the SA will leave you in peace.’

‘The NSDAP? Like all those good citizens who can’t wait to sign up? Who claim they’ve always been Nazis? If there’s one thing I’ve never been, it’s a good citizen!’

Marlow led him into a wood-panelled library. An MP 18 leaned against the wall next to a man in a chair, leafing through a crime novel. Bookshelves reached to the ceiling, all of them full. Most likely Marlow had bought them with the house. In the middle of the room armchairs were grouped around a table; a desk by the window looked onto the garden. Behind it a man with an eye patch sat playing patience.

‘Leo wanted to thank you, Inspector.’

Leopold Juretzka stood and extended his hand. ‘Usually I don’t talk to cops,’ he said, ‘but for you I’ll make an exception.’

‘That’s your mistake right there, Leo,’ Marlow said. ‘You can’t have enough police friends.’

Leo gestured to his eye patch. ‘Your pig friends couldn’t prevent this.’

‘Without my pig friend – excuse the expression, Inspector – the SA would have beaten you to death.’

Juretzka shrugged. ‘Then… thank you, Inspector.’

Rath gazed into the Ringverein man’s remaining eye. Had he really saddled himself with the Wosniak investigation to pry this ungrateful bastard free from the SA? It seemed his good turn had failed to win him a friend. Did the actions of the SA Field Police make Rath, as a serving officer, guilty by association? Juretzka let go of his hand and left.

‘Sorry, Inspector,’ Marlow said. ‘Leo hasn’t been the same since his release.’ He opened a box of cigars and offered one to Rath, who declined.

‘So,’ said Rath, ‘the SA are putting the squeeze on Berolina at the behest of the Nordpiraten?’

Marlow puffed on his cigar. ‘Not just us. Concordia must also suffer this misfortune.’

‘Polish-Paule,’ Rath recalled. Six months ago, Paul Marczewski had helped arrest a black sheep on the force, a police inspector killing off unwanted competition on behalf of the Nordpiraten chief. Lapke eliminating his enemies with the help of the state was nothing new.

‘Marczewski went to ground just in time,’ Marlow said. ‘I don’t know where he is, and I’m taking that as a good sign. Even so, Concordia are temporarily missing their leader, and some of Marczewski’s men have gone across to the Pirates.’

‘What about Berolina?’

‘They’ve had similar problems since the SA arrested Leo. It hasn’t impacted too much on my business, most of which is no longer conducted through Berolina. I doubt Lapke is aware of even half of my revenue streams.’

‘A proportion that might have increased had Leo talked?’

Marlow hunched his shoulders. ‘Leo doesn’t know everything, just a damn sight more than Lapke.’

‘Which is why you’re holding him here.’

Marlow looked onto the garden. ‘I bought this place about a year ago. Far from Berlin and its distractions, yet close enough if my presence is required.’ He drew on his cigar. ‘A lot of rich Berlin Jews spend their summer holidays here, which keeps the local SA occupied. They’re happy to leave us be for now.’

‘You plan to stay away a long time?’

‘This is a good place to wait and see how things settle.’

‘You think they will?’

‘Lapke can’t have the upper hand for ever.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘To keep you informed. It’s always good to know who your friends are. And your enemies.’

‘You don’t have many friends left.’

‘The speed of change has caught me by surprise, but the Nazis are interested in certain things I can provide.’

‘What if they prefer to get these things from Lapke and the Nordpiraten?’

‘The Nordpiraten are the only Ringverein that isn’t being harrassed by the SA, but the Nazis don’t need a Ringverein to do their deals, they just need the right people. My people. Lapke’s doing everything he can to win them over to his side, so far without success.’

‘Everything he can includes depriving men like Juretzka of an eye?’

‘The SA isn’t the only force in the new Germany. Believe me when I say that Lapke is backing the wrong horse.’

‘Him and the rest of the country.’

Marlow laughed. ‘You could be right, Inspector. The real question is: how long will Lapke’s horse be in the running?’

83

Hannah knew something was different. Clip, clop, the sound of a woman’s shoes. Not one of the men who came by with food, nor the one she knew as the doctor, who checked her wounds, listened to her heart with the stethoscope, and oversaw her medication.

The men treated her well, but she didn’t know who they were or what they wanted, and could only vaguely remember how she got here. Huckebein, who had ambushed her in that godforsaken rear courtyard. Felix, who had betrayed her. Then darkness. Fritze, who had appeared like her guardian angel, and with whom she had dragged herself to the old cinema, to her refuge behind the organ pipes. After that, nothing, but the face of a Chinese man who appeared in her dreams and whose gaze was somehow both distant and kind at the same time.

At some point she wakened in brightness, saw the doctor sitting alongside her, and feared for a moment that she was in hospital or, worse, Dalldorf, but the doctor wore a suit and the room was more like a princess’s bedchamber than a hospital ward. Through the window she saw bare treetops. Were they somewhere in the Grunewald?

The doctor had spoken to her but her tongue was tied and she remained silent. She felt relieved to be here, in this soft bed, for the chance to recover, but was troubled by an indeterminate fear. Two other men in the room gazed at her impassively. She had seen the same look in the Crow’s Nest: this mercilessness, as if something had sucked the souls from their bodies. These men were no different, just better dressed, and with good manners.

She hadn’t once seen any women, and was curious about who was approaching her room in stiletto heels. One voice was high-pitched, two others low. When the handle was pushed down, nervous anticipation toppled inside her like a house of cards. It was the policewoman who had shown her the image of Kartoffel with those awful burns, who had produced a photo of her father and shoved it under her nose. She gave a friendly smile and stepped towards the bed.

‘Hello, Hannah. I’m glad you’re feeling better.’

Hannah sat up but said nothing. She hadn’t spoken with the men, and she wouldn’t speak with the policewoman either. It wasn’t a conscious choice, she just couldn’t.

The woman sat next to the bed. ‘I’m a police officer. My name is Charlotte Ritter. I visited you in Dalldorf. You remember, don’t you? Today I’m here because I want you to know that the man who was trying to kill you is dead. He can’t hurt you anymore.’

Hannah felt a giant lump in her throat.

‘I need to hear something from you,’ the woman continued. ‘Something only you can tell me. Why did this man want to kill you? You knew him from the Crow’s Nest, didn’t you? Did he abuse you? Can you tell me his name?’

She could scarcely breathe. Don’t panic, she told herself.

The woman sighed and smiled at the same time, very friendly and patient. ‘Fritze sends his regards,’ she said at last. ‘He’s doing well, he…’

‘Fritze!’ Hannah didn’t know where the word came from. It was the first thing she’d said in four days, her voice a husk. The woman seemed delighted.

‘That’s right. Fritze. He called for help, you weren’t doing so well, you were badly injured. We…’

‘Fritze,’ was the only thing she could say.

The woman laid her hand on the cover. ‘It’s all right. I’ll get your friend. Just be patient, and he’ll be here.’

84

Rath drove until the tank was almost empty, then made for a petrol station. After tailing the sun for hours it had finally shaken him off at Königslutter, and was now no more than a blood-red strip on the horizon. The petrol station lights were on but he was the sole customer. ‘Fill her up, please. The spare can too, while you’re at it.’

As the attendant went about his instructions, he stretched his legs and searched for the toilet, splashing water on his face before stepping back into the dusk. Passing the shop window his gaze fell on a familiar logo. ‘You have Afri-Cola here?’ he asked the attendant, who was cleaning the windscreen.

He bought three bottles. Back on the road, he opened the first before rejoining the traffic. It was too sweet for his liking, but it kept you awake, and he had a long drive ahead.

He had told Charly what he was planning days ago, yet she had made trouble all the same. ‘After everything that happened yesterday I thought you’d understand that we were heading back out to Freienwalde today. She spoke; Hannah spoke about Fritze.’

‘And I thought I’d explained this is something I can only do at the weekend.’

‘With Fritze there, we can get Hannah to talk!’

‘We can do that just as well tomorrow or the next day.’

‘As if you’ll be back tomorrow.’

He had shaken his head and set off. It was his car. Let her take the train if she was in such a hurry. Loath as he was to admit it, he was looking forward to getting away from Carmerstrasse for a couple of days. Since Fritze had reappeared, being at home no longer held the same appeal. Everything revolved around the boy. A few times now he had stayed on in the office, and it wasn’t because he needed to work late. Even so, he still hadn’t managed to close the Rothstein suicide, which ought to have been routine. He had requested Saturday off nonetheless, mumbling something about marriage preparations, and with all the overtime he had accrued Buddha was in no position to turn him down.

At the start of the week he had been afraid Homicide might still be called out to investigate a corpse, at the Mühlendamm Lock or wherever else the Spree saw fit to wash up its dead, but with each day that passed he felt more at ease.

Despite knowing that Gräf and Steinke were chasing a killer who was resting at the bottom of the Spree, he continued to devote more time to the Alberich case than his own. The same was true of Charly, or else why was she so desperate for Hannah Singer to talk? He doubted whether they’d get much sense out of the girl but, like him, Charly wouldn’t let go until they knew whose body they had pushed into the river. What kind of person he was. Why he had been out for Hannah. Why he had killed three men. Above all, who he was. Benjamin Engel? Gerhard Krumbiegel?

Over the past few days he and Charly had asked themselves repeatedly whether Engel and Krumbiegel might not be one and the same but, whatever possibilities they played over, they always found some objection.

The Bonn officers shadowing Eva Heinen didn’t know that Rath had been taken off the case, so he continued to speak with them on the telephone, passing on their written reports to Gräf when, two days later, they arrived in the Castle’s official mail.

Gräf had carved out a space for himself and Steinke in the main office. They had made little progress in their first week on the Alberich case, which was hardly surprising but which pleased Rath all the same. Sometimes it pained him to see Gräf at morning briefing, and he would think back to the old days, to shared evenings in the Nasse Dreieck; shared investigations, more often than not in defiance of Wilhelm Böhm and service regulations… Those days would never return.

He had known from the start that Eva Heinen wasn’t telling the full story, but it was only after re-reading the reports that he’d decided to head back west. He was growing tired but, whenever fatigue threatened to overcome him he drank another bottle of Afri-Cola. It was after midnight when he parked the Buick on a dirt track and finally yielded. His Cola supplies were finished, his cigarettes running out, and his eyes threatened to close. No sooner had he nodded off, however, than he was wakened by a downpour drumming against the roof and windscreen. Looking at his watch he saw that two hours had passed. It would have to do.

He smoked a cigarette and started the engine. Only three left, to be rationed over the next few hours. It was no fun driving in this weather but he couldn’t risk being late. Reaching the Bergisches Land around half past six, the rain behind him with the rising sun, he felt bone weary. He stopped to pee but what he really needed was coffee, wishful thinking in a rural wasteland such as this.

Away from the road he found a stream and splashed ice-cold water on his face. After running his wet hands through his hair, he plopped himself in front of the car mirror and parted it with a comb. If you ignored the rumpled suit and five o’clock shadow, he looked almost respectable.

An hour later he reached his destination, a car park built for day-trippers from nearby towns. This must be the place his Bonn colleagues had described. He had telephoned yesterday specifically to ask, using his credentials as a former Cologne boy to feign local knowledge, and extract a few details that weren’t contained in the reports.

Turning in the car park he concealed the Buick with the Berlin registration in a farm track leading downhill, and returned on foot. The clouds were gathering, but it was a pleasant enough morning. He looked at his watch. Another half hour or so. He crossed the car park and followed the narrow track into the forest. Reaching a clearing moments later, he knew instinctively this was the place. Through leafless branches he looked across a decommissioned quarry into the Rhine Valley and towards Bonn. On the edge of the precipice was an old beech tree with shimmering grey-green bark, between the roots of which the forest soil was brightly flecked. Stones, Rath realised as he crouched, little pebbles from the banks of the Rhine that someone had discarded here. He took one in his hand and laid it back down. Taking up position behind a rock, he smoked his last Overstolz and waited.

He had just stubbed out his cigarette on the damp rock when he heard the sound of an engine, a deep drone that could easily belong to a Mercedes, the crunch of gravel in the car park, and the clank of a Prussian Police Opel. Though the police car continued uphill, Rath was certain his colleagues would stop behind the next curve and observe the parking lot. They had never followed Eva Heinen into the forest, but, with Prussian meticulousness, merely recorded the time she exited and – usually a quarter of an hour later – returned to her vehicle.

Morning stroll the observation reports noted, nothing more, then the time, varying by four or five minutes at the most. Unlike Rath, the officers from Bonn had failed to take a closer look at the site, most likely because they were locals and knew the track led only to a decommissioned quarry, and because they couldn’t imagine the forest was suitable for anything other than a brief stroll.

Still, at some point the regularity of Eva Heinen’s dawn excursions had got Rath thinking, and now here he was.

The Mercedes puttered in neutral, then the engine was switched off. Moments later there was a crackle in the undergrowth, and a well dressed Eva Heinen approached with slow, measured steps to stop in front of the tree with the pebble stones. She stood with her back to him, lost in thought. It was almost as if she were praying, which perhaps she was. Reaching inside her coat pocket, she fetched a small white stone and placed it alongside the many others on the ground.

He felt curiously moved. A spirit of reverence seemed to have gripped the forest. He stepped out and cleared his throat. Her eyes filled with icy fury when she recognised him.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Not so loud, or my colleagues from Bonn will realise you’re talking to someone. In the last few weeks they’ve been happy to wait in the car. It would be a shame if today was the day that changed.’

‘I’m being watched?’

‘You’re surprised?’

‘Your colleagues from Bonn don’t know you’re here?’

‘To be perfectly honest, my colleagues from Berlin don’t know I’m here either.’ He looked around. ‘Nice spot, this. Of the Siebengebirge I know only the Drachenfels.’

‘The Ennert hills are part of a different range.’

‘Oh? Well, it’s a great view, anyway. That’s Bonn down there, isn’t it?’

‘What do you want?

‘The truth.’

‘I told you everything I know three weeks ago.’ She avoided his gaze.

‘At first I thought you were meeting him,’ he said, ‘but now I understand why you come here every morning. He’s really dead, isn’t he?’ Rath pointed towards the tree. ‘You buried him there.’

Eva Heinen nodded. It felt like a surrender.

‘Why did you bury an empty coffin nine years ago? Because your husband wanted a Jewish grave, and you couldn’t do that to your strict, Catholic family?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Edith has converted to the Mosaic faith and her grandparents haven’t disowned her.’

‘Then why a Jewish grave?’

‘It isn’t a Jewish grave, it’s just his final resting place. He wanted us to bury him here, in the forest. Without a headstone.’

‘But it’s a Jewish custom to lay stones on the deceased’s grave.’

‘I like the custom, and I didn’t want to lay flowers. No one can know a man is buried here. It’s illegal to bury people in the wild, as you are no doubt aware.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question. Why all the fuss at the cemetery nine years ago?’

‘Because my husband was still alive when we lowered the empty coffin into the ground.’

‘He was still alive when you had him declared dead?’ Eva Heinen nodded. ‘Then when did you bury him here?’

‘Four years, seven months and five days ago,’ she said. He thought he saw tears.

Achim von Roddeck was right to suspect Benjamin Engel had survived the war, but not that he had threatened him and slain his most loyal men.

‘Why didn’t you say he had survived?’.

‘Because Benjamin wouldn’t have wanted it.’

‘Sounds like you have a lot more to tell me.’

‘Why should I tell you anything? Walther wrote to say you were at the university. That you suspect him of killing these men.’

‘I don’t suspect your son.’

‘That’s not the way he tells it.’

‘Meantime I know who did it. I just don’t understand why.’

‘You think I can help you?’

‘I think you can help me get closer to the truth.’

‘I have to go back to Bonn, Inspector. I’m needed in the store.’

‘I’ve driven hundreds of kilometres to speak to you.’

‘No one asked you to come, not even your own superiors. I don’t know why you’re here.’

‘Because I can’t stand back and watch while our commissioner confuses an anti-Semitic witch-hunt with a police investigation. And because I want to know what really happened.’

Eva Heinen looked surprised by his honesty. ‘Do you know Bonn?’ she asked.

‘I’m from Cologne.’

‘Then be at the Rheinisches Möbelhaus on Brückenstrasse at ten. On the left-hand side as you approach from the Beuler Bridge, you can’t miss it…’

With that she turned and hurried back to the parking lot.

He listened for the noises of two engines, the sonorous drone of the Mercedes and the clank of the police Opel that followed. He didn’t have any Overstolz left, but waited for what he guessed was the length of a cigarette before making his way back.

85

They had washed the dishes together after breakfast. Fritze took Kirie for a walk while Charly read her book. Two pages in, the doorbell rang. She sighed and stood up. That wasn’t much of a walk, she thought. Had he already given up on his chores? He was only a kid; she shouldn’t impose stricter standards because he had lived on the street.

She opened the door, ready to issue a few stern words and send him on his way, only to find Karin van Almsick grinning awkwardly, with a box of chocolates and a large brown envelope tucked under her arm. ‘I didn’t mean to disturb, just to see how you were.’ She handed Charly the chocolates.

‘Thank you, but there’s really no need.’ Charly felt thrown by the surprise visit.

‘It’s from all of us,’ Karin said. ‘Everyone sends best wishes, including Superintendent Wieking.’

‘Thank you,’ Charly stammered. Karin came as if from another world, reminding her of everything that had happened in the last few days. Those things that no one could ever know. She had thrown a corpse into the Spree instead of informing Gennat, concealed a wanted killer and escaped lunatic, visited the notorious underworld boss Johann Marlow and enlisted his aid… and, of course, she wasn’t the slightest bit ill and had spent the last few days gadding blithely around town. She felt her conscience breathing down her neck, an ugly little monkey that refused to be shaken off.

‘Can I come in?’ Karin asked, having already taken a step inside and started nosing around.

‘I… I was just on the sofa.’ A chance look in the wardrobe mirror revealed an idiot grin.

Karin hung up her coat and gazed around the living room. She whistled through her teeth. ‘Nice place.’

‘Gereon inherited a little money.’ It sounded almost like an apology. She adopted a long-suffering face to go with her supposed condition.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ Karin asked. ‘On you go, lie down, and I’ll make us tea.’

‘That’s not necessary, thank you. I haven’t lost the use of my arms.’

‘Is the kitchen through here?’

Charly nodded weakly and left Karin to it. She lay on the sofa with a wet flannel on her head until, a few minutes later, Karin emerged with a tray, two teacups and a pot. She pressed the flannel to her forehead. ‘What brings you to Charlottenburg?’

‘You, silly!’ Karin gave her a sympathetic look. ‘Everyone in the department’s rooting for you. We hope you’ll be back soon.’

‘What are you working on? Any Communist gangs still out there, or have we locked ’em all up?’

Karin van Almsick had never understood irony. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘there’ll be plenty to do when you get back. It was all just too much, all that overtime, and then the wedding. I saw it coming, you know.’

‘The doctor says rest is the most important thing.’ Charly was starting to feel like her grandmother, discussing her various aches and pains over coffee with friends.

‘Tea can work wonders too!’

Charly set the flannel on an armrest.

After pouring the tea Karin pointed to the envelope. ‘There’s post for you.’ She looked at the envelope and read: ‘A Division, Fräulein Ritter, confidential, Police Headquarters Berlin, Alexanderplatz 2-6.’

‘A Division, and it wound up with you?’

‘A stray, from Halle. You know what these provincials are like, always getting things mixed up.’

‘I did make a telephone call for Gereon, last week or the week before, when we were about to go for lunch. Perhaps our friend in Halle got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘You can give it to him when he gets back. Where is he, anyway?’

Exactly the question Charly had feared. The whole department was curious about Gereon, partly because they so rarely set eyes on him in G.

‘Visiting family. Wedding stuff.’ She touched her temple. ‘I ought to be there too, but I couldn’t, not like this.’

‘You poor thing.’

The doorbell rang.

‘That’ll be Fritze,’ Charly said and stood up.

‘Who?’

‘A boy… from the neighbourhood. He’s been looking after the dog while I’ve been sick.’

Charly went into the hall and almost before she could open the door Kirie had slipped past her. Nothing was more urgent than settling into her basket.

‘You wouldn’t believe the number of Jewish shops,’ Fritze said, removing his scarf. ‘There are SA officers outside half the Ku’damm.’

‘Fritze, this my colleague, Fräulein van Almsick,’ Charly said, exaggeratedly, so he realised they weren’t alone.

‘It’s just Almsick,’ Karin said, extending a hand. ‘Forget the van.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Fritze made a perfect bow. ‘Friedrich von Thormann,’ he said and winked. ‘Forget the von.’

It was all Charly could do not to laugh. She hoped the word ‘colleague’ would make Fritze think twice about shooting his mouth off, but he seemed to have other things on his mind. ‘Did you know that Goebbels is planning is to expel all those with Dutch heritage from the public sector? Because of this van Lubbe.’

‘You mean van der Lubbe?’ Karin asked, making a horrified face.

‘That’s right, van der Lubbe. All those with van in their names are being laid off.’

‘Really?’

Fritze nodded seriously. ‘Something about a fire risk. Unless they’re non-smokers of course, in which case they can stay.’

‘That can’t be right,’ Karin cupped her hand over her mouth.

‘Ha! Got you!’ Fritze beamed. ‘April fool!’

Charly had to smile. The boy had been at it all morning.

Karin van Almsick wasn’t in the mood for jokes. ‘Is that the time?’ she said, before turning to check the clock on the wall. ‘I have to go. Our colleagues will be wondering where I am.’ She took her coat from the stand, threw Fritze a hurt expression, shouldered her bag and opened the door. ‘Get well soon, Charly.’

‘Did I scare her off?’ Fritze asked.

‘It’s fine. She was starting to get on my nerves. Wouldn’t like to think of how many cupboards and drawers she stuck her nose inside while she was making the tea.’

‘Then you’d be glad of a little time on your own, Aunt Charly?’

She had grown accustomed to being Aunt Charly. As if he really were the poor orphan child of her – completely fictional – sister from Zehdenick.

‘Well, I had only just sat down when the doorbell rang.’

‘It’s just… I wouldn’t mind heading out for a bit by myself.’

‘Of course.’

She realised they’d been together for more or less the entire week, at home, visiting local authorities, even walking Kirie. No wonder the boy needed a little space.

She heard the door click shut, then the clatter of footsteps and felt almost as if it were her own child heading out to play.

With Fritze gone, her eye fell on the brown envelope. Post from Halle. The Criminal Record Office. It was a good thing they hadn’t opened it in G. There’d be trouble if it became known that she’d been assisting with a Homicide case in Gereon’s office.

Dear Fräulein Ritter, she read, following our telephone conversation of the twenty-first of this month, I hereby enclose all relevant documents pertaining to one Krumbiegel, Gerhard.

Petzold had taken his time, but proved more thorough than she had anticipated following their brief conversation, which, after a series of abortive attempts, had finally come about on the Day of Potsdam. The man from Halle had sent on everything, not just the police files. Even a photo!

The aforementioned Krumbiegel was involved in a barroom brawl in ’16, whereupon he was fingerprinted and photographed, making it possible, on this occasion, to enclose his negative.

The image was attached by paperclip. A standard police photo, taken from three sides, dull gaze, bitter expression. No doubt the poor bastard would have preferred jail to another stint on the Front.

Charly could hardly believe it. She recognised this man gazing into the camera as though he were drunk, which he probably was, having been picked up following a brawl while on army leave. He wasn’t yet disfigured or scarred, but his features left her in no doubt.

It couldn’t be…

… yet no matter how she spun it, the explanation was always the same. It shed new light on the Alberich case, not to mention the man they had cast into the Spree.

86

Rath hadn’t parked outside the furniture store, but a little out of the way on Friedensplatz. Just after ten, he saw the image of the green Opel reflected in the display window and congratulated himself on a good decision. His colleagues were taking their work seriously. Despite never having met them in person Rath pulled his hat a little lower over his forehead.

You really couldn’t miss the Rheinisches Möbelhaus with its brand new signboards and neon letters. Outside a shop a troop of brown-uniformed SA officers were glueing posters.

The doorbell rang as he entered the store. Staff were consulting with clients in hushed tones. He felt almost as if he were in a library. It didn’t take long for someone to approach. Management was on the first floor.

The assistant led him up a dark, wood-panelled staircase, through dark, wood-panelled corridors and an atmosphere of sedate respectability. Eva Heinen’s office, smaller than anticipated, but likewise dark and wood-panelled, exuded the same quality. Two windows faced onto Brückenstrasse and a huge swastika that served to evoke the new age. He didn’t like it but couldn’t get worked up in the same way as Charly. Her outrage when, with a single stroke of his pen, Hindenburg had outlawed the red-black-and-gold of the Republic! The Jew flag or flag of the November criminals, as it was known, and not just by Nazis. For Rath the German colours had always been black-white-and-red. What he couldn’t understand was Hindenburg’s decision to accord the swastika the same status as the imperial flag.

‘Take a seat, Inspector,’ Eva Heinen said, once the assistant had closed the door. Rath kept his distance from the window, thinking of the green Opel on the other side of the road. ‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to reach me.’

‘Let’s hope it’s worth it.’ He took out his cigarette case, having replenished his stocks on Friedensplatz. ‘Do you mind?’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Already I’ve learned how your husband survived the war.’

‘He didn’t.’

‘I’m sorry, I thought…’

‘Benjamin is just as much a victim of war as those to whom we erect monuments and dedicate speeches. No one thinks of the living dead who returned; they get in the way of our hard-won rhetoric of valour and sacrifice.’ Surprised by her own anger, she lowered her voice and continued. ‘Benjamin survived the explosion, yes. But in reality it only prolonged his death. It took ten years for the shrapnel to find its way to his heart.’

‘That’s how he died?’ Rath couldn’t conceal his surprise. ‘Did you realise he was doomed? Is that why you told your children their father had been killed in action?’

‘I thought Benjamin was dead, for years. It was only for the children’s sake that I kept up the vague hope he might still be alive. I tried to carry on the store as he would have wished and, despite some lean years immediately after the war, business was good. Then came the inflation. What can I say? I had just been forced to sell the family home, and was about to put the proceeds back into the store when it happened. Bankruptcy seemed only a question of time.’

Eva Heinen looked out of the window, as if at the past. ‘It was my husband that saved us,’ she continued. ‘I don’t know how he learned of our troubles. It was as if he had been watching over us all that time, like a… guardian angel.’

Schutzengel. Todesengel. For Eva Heinen he was a guardian; for Roddeck an angel of death.

‘Did he make contact with you?’

‘Yes. He donated a large sum of money, which allowed me to refloat the company and buy back the house in Gronau. The family home was the most important thing for the children.’

‘You’re telling me that years after the war, your husband simply waltzed in, placed a large suitcase of money on the table and went on his way?’

‘In all those years, I never saw my husband face-to-face.’ Rath looked at her in disbelief. ‘He didn’t want me to. He didn’t want anyone apart from me to know he was still alive.’

‘I don’t understand. Why weren’t you allowed to see him?’

‘So I could remember him as he was, before war got in the way.’

‘Was he so badly disfigured?’

‘I don’t know, Inspector. Christmas 1916. The photographs with him and the children under the tree are etched forever in my mind.’

She leaned forward and opened a drawer in her desk, placing a mask on the table. A half mask, the right side of a face, to be precise.

‘That’s… your husband,’ Rath said.

‘His prosthetic face. It’s all I have of him. Sometimes I look at it and try to imagine how he looked after the war.’

It was a good piece of work. Propped up by a pair of spectacles the right eye seemed almost real. Rath got the feeling that Benjamin Engel was looking at him with an expression of mild reproach. Eva Heinen replaced the prosthesis and closed the drawer.

He cleared his throat. ‘There’s one thing I still don’t understand. Why, no sooner than you learned that against all expectations your husband had survived the war, did you have him declared dead?’

‘He was the one who requested I stage that farce of a burial, despite knowing how it would hurt the children. He insisted: Benjamin Engel was to be laid to rest.’

‘Why?’

‘He said it was better if Engel Furniture could no longer be linked back to him. It was also his wish that I revert to my maiden name; that the store itself be renamed. I think,’ Eva Heinen gestured towards the swastika flag outside, ‘it was because of that.’

‘In ’24? No one could have guessed…’

‘Nazis aren’t a pre-requisite for anti-Semitism, believe me. Neither, for that matter, are Jews. Benjamin was Catholic, but in the army he was always regarded as a Jew. I think his experiences in the war opened his eyes to the fact that someone like him would never be allowed to belong. Not even if he was baptised; not even if he risked his life for the Fatherland.’

‘So that explains the name: Rheinisches Möbelhaus.’

‘The name paved the way for our expansion across Bonn. Today you’ll find us in an additional four cities.’

‘He just gave you the money?’

‘It was a complicated business, I don’t want to go into detail, but essentially, yes.’

‘What made it so complicated? The fact that it wasn’t money but gold?’

A startled look passed across her eyes. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘I’ve spoken to the demolition expert from back then. The soldiers who hid the gold, most of whom are now dead, were planning to retrieve the spoils in summer ’24. By the time they got there it was gone.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Suddenly she seemed very tense.

‘Listen, I’m not interested in who pinched the gold; the only thing I’m interested in is why a veteran should kill three of his former comrades so many years after the war.’

‘Benjamin didn’t kill anyone. He was looking out for his family.’

‘Are you certain it was him? Did you recognise his voice?’

‘We never spoke on the telephone. We wrote to each other, and it was his handwriting. No doubt about it. Besides, he knew things only Benjamin could know.’ She blushed slightly.

‘Letters, but he didn’t use the Reichspost?’

‘Of course not. He didn’t want to reveal anything about himself, not even his address.’

‘Do you still have these letters?’ She looked so horrified that Rath knew it was pointless to request them. ‘Then you used a middleman. Who?’

‘I can’t say.’

‘Was it the same man you sent to France?’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Was it Franz Thelen?’

‘Who?’ She was even more startled than moments before.

‘Your husband’s driver during the war. After that he worked as a driver for your store.’

‘Our proxy, Herr Theobald, looks after that side of things.’

‘Don’t play games with me. You know Thelen. It was he who established contact with your husband, wasn’t it, and collected the gold from France?’

‘I think I’ve said enough.’ All of a sudden Eva Heinen was as tight-lipped as during their first encounter three weeks before.

‘One last question. Does the name Gerhard Krumbiegel mean anything to you?’

By the way she looked at him, he knew she had no idea. With that, whatever hope he had of making sense of last Sunday vanished.

‘Is he your main suspect?’ Eva Heinen asked. ‘Do you think I hired someone to kill all these men?’

‘I don’t know, Frau Heinen. What I do know is you’re still not giving me the full story.’

‘That’s something you’ll just have to make peace with, Inspector.’

There was a knock, and the bald-headed assistant who had shown Rath upstairs peered inside. ‘Excuse the interruption, Frau Direktor.’

‘It’s all right, Schröter. Herr Rath was just leaving.’

‘It’s… perhaps you should come down.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s best if you come and see for yourself.’

Rath followed her and the assistant downstairs. On the floor, customers and staff stood tightly packed, whispering to one another. Two brownshirts hovered in front of the display window. One unrolled a poster and set about pasting it to the door.

Eva Heinen turned to Rath. ‘Now you understand the reason for everything I’ve just told you,’ she said.

She went outside, moving energetically, unafraid of the brown uniforms. Opening the glass door she almost knocked the SA man off balance. The brush slipped from his hand.

‘What’s all this?’ she asked. He swore under his breath and took out a handkerchief. It was the second SA man who answered her question. He held a cardboard sign in front of him, with three exclamation marks.

Germans! Fight back! Don’t buy from Jews!

‘Don’t you read the papers,’ he said provocatively. ‘The boycott.’

‘This isn’t a Jewish store.’

‘Knock it off. Engel Furniture’s been here since I was in short trousers. It’s always been a Jew store.’

‘The Rheinisches Möbelhaus has absolutely nothing to do with Engel Furniture.’

‘No, it just sells the same furniture with the same assistants in the same stores?’

Rath went outside. He was reluctant to cause a stir with the Opel parked opposite, but this Nazi with his cardboard sign was starting to grate. ‘What you’re doing here is property damage,’ he said. ‘Illegal fly posting at least.’

The poster on the door bore the same slogan. Germans! Fight back! Don’t buy from Jews! Imagination was not a Nazi strong point.

The SA man was uncertain. No doubt it was the first time anyone had stood up to him. Soon enough, though, he was grinning. If things turned nasty, he could count on his mate. ‘Get a load of this, Willi,’ he said to his friend, who was stowing his handkerchief. ‘A shyster who needs taking down a peg.’

‘I’m not a lawyer.’ Rath showed his badge and the man’s grin froze.

The badge said only KRIMINALPOLIZEI, with no indication as to what city he was from. He went on the attack. ‘I am a customer here, and can assure you the owner of this store is no Jew.’

‘But before…’

‘In the new Germany, we’re not interested in “before”! Haven’t you read the provisions? Central Committee has expressly decreed that businesses are only to be boycotted if it can be proven beyond doubt that they are under Jewish ownership.’

He had read something like that yesterday in the newspaper. Mentioning the word ‘decree’ proved an inspired move, for suddenly the SA man stood to attention, comically with a cardboard sign in front of his chest.

‘Yes, Sir. Apologies. I was unaware tha…’

‘Stop talking. Focus on cleaning up this mess, and apologise to the lady.’

The pair set to work. Rath took his leave with a tip of the hat and made his way back to the car before the men in the green Opel got it into their heads to intervene. A look through the display window confirmed that all was quiet again. His colleagues from Bonn continued to observe Eva Heinen, who looked on sternly as the SA men began removing their poster.

Returning to Friedensplatz, it became clear that not everyone shared the former Engel Furniture store’s good fortune. Outside each store Rath passed, two or three SA officers were glueing the now familiar poster to display windows, some of which had also been painted with a Star of David. As yet no windows had been smashed. The Central Committee had explicitly spoken against property damage, but had been unforthcoming when it came to the topic of bodily harm.

The boycott was meant to be revenge for the so-called Jewish atrocity propaganda in the foreign press. Seeing these SA men with their chin-straps and stern faces, defacing display windows with ink and posters, Rath understood why things were being written about Germany’s new government. It was all so tasteless, so repulsive, so unworthy of the Fatherland. He was starting to realise what Charly meant when she said the Nazis had stolen the country she called home.

Some pedestrians gazed to the side in embarrassment and occasional disapproval. Most looked the other way.

Just then Rath saw a woman enter a clothing store in spite of the unwanted attention of two SA officers, and thought perhaps the old Germany was still alive after all. He would have liked to follow suit, if only to show that not all Germans went along with this Nazi bullshit, but he had made himself conspicuous enough already. It was a ladies’ clothing store anyway.

Moments later he had renewed cause for doubt. Passing a shoe shop, a poster in the display window caught the eye immediately, adorned as it was with the black-white-and-red of the imperial German flag, in the middle of which was a swastika and the words Christian Enterprise. Underneath that: Buy German Goods from German Shops! Combat League for Middle-Class Employees and Artisans.

How quickly the Christian middle-classes had realised there was profit to be made from the travails of their Jewish competition.

87

Winter returned on Sunday morning. Sleet that smelled of cold, high winds; foul weather. For the first time since being transferred to this house, into the care of these men whose motives were still unclear, and who might yet turn out to be cops, Hannah appreciated her warm confines. None of them had revealed much. Nor had she asked them. Try as she might she simply couldn’t get the words out.

The pain in her side had been agonising, worse than that in her arm. They had given her morphine from an infusion bottle next to the bed. Hannah recognised old Sister M immediately. Only she had made her final days in the Crow’s Nest bearable. Before the fire that changed everything.

She could barely remember it now, only the warmth of the flames on that bitterly cold December night. She’d set the shack on fire while high, she told the court. She was high, she said, and mad, but it wasn’t true. The fire had been an attempt to free herself. To deliver her once cheerful, carefree father from his suffering, this bitter cripple who had lost the most essential part of himself in the no-man’s-land between the trenches. She had sought to erase the nightmare years in the Crow’s Nest, in the hope of achieving some new future. Only to be packed off to the madhouse, where she had bust out and almost been killed.

Now, with her strength returning, she started to consider her future again, making plans and thinking about her next move. The first thing was to get out of here.

She could make it to the window without assistance and, on a few occasions, had struck out, pulling the infusion bottle behind her. The gardens were surrounded by a high wall, with armed men posted everywhere. The police officer from a few days ago was still the only woman she’d seen, but all her questions had achieved was to tighten the knot in Hannah’s tongue. She couldn’t talk about Huckebein and the Crows and everything the bastards had done to her, nor the approval of the man in whose crippled, morphine-addicted body her father had once resided. Her father who had gone permanently missing in action, and would never have allowed such things to occur.

She was being held in a kind of fortress, better guarded than the sealed unit in Dalldorf. If her hunch was right, this was a criminal’s hideout.

The doctor who never wore a white coat, the friendly but inscrutable man so adept with stab wounds, was none other than Johann Marlow. Never in her life had she imagined she’d see Dr M. in the flesh, and she’d spent the last few days racking her brains over what business this policewoman could have with him. He was no ordinary criminal, that was for sure. Compared with the misery of the Crow’s Nest, the tawdriness of begging and petty theft, this was a whole new world; a world in which, contrary to popular belief, crime appeared to pay handsomely.

Hearing the tottering sound of high-heeled shoes she knew she had visitors. As the footsteps turned into the corridor she heard low voices, and a knock. The door opened and Fritze peered cautiously inside. He took a few steps towards her bed. ‘How are you?’ he asked.

She took him in her arms and hugged him tight. ‘Better,’ she rasped. ‘Better.’

The knot in her tongue, the bung in her throat, were gone, and here was someone who wanted nothing from her but to be near.

‘I was worried you’d die,’ he said, when she let go.

‘Without you, I might have done. Was it you who brought me to this palace?’

‘Friends of mine.’

‘The house belongs to Dr M.’

‘Who?’

‘It doesn’t matter. Tell me about these friends.’

‘They’re cops, only different somehow. Nice. I’m living with them.’

Hannah sat upright. ‘The cops had me brought here?’

‘Not the cops. Two cops. I’m telling you, they’re different. They took care of everything. The man trying to strangle you was some killer.’

Hannah felt her throat constricting. ‘Huckebein.’

‘That’s not his name.’

‘In the Crow’s Nest he…’ She couldn’t carry on.

‘There’s no need to be afraid. He’s dead.’

She reached for his hand, knowing what it meant to have killed someone. Several people. Even people you despised.

‘I just wanted him to stop,’ Fritze said. ‘I kept stabbing until he did.’

‘Let’s talk about something else. Do you know what the plan is?’

‘I’m to start school, they say.’

‘Who?’

‘My aunt Charly, and Gereon. The two cops.’

‘They’re sending you back into care?’

‘No, she gave her word. They’re looking for something else. A family or something.’

‘What about me?’

She hadn’t meant to say it, but it came out with the tears she could no longer hold back. All of a sudden she felt more alone than ever before, and she had spent a hell of a lot of time feeling alone.

Fritze shrugged. ‘The main thing is to get yourself healthy again.’

‘I am healthy.’

‘Hannah, listen,’ he said. ‘Charly wants to ask you a few questions, and…’

‘I know,’ she interrupted, a little too sharply. ‘She’s been here already.’

‘I mean, don’t you want to talk to her, she’s nice you know…’

‘Sometimes I just can’t. I want to, but I can’t.’

He held her hand. ‘I’ll stay with you if you like.’

‘I was wondering why she’s been outside all this time.’

At that moment the door opened and the policewoman came in.

Hannah didn’t understand. Moments ago she’d been talking a blue streak, but no sooner did she lay eyes on the woman than the lump in her throat returned.

‘Hello, Hannah,’ the woman said. Aunt Charly. ‘You look a lot better than the last time I saw you. How are you?’

‘Fine.’ She squeezed the word out.

The woman sat by her bedside. ‘I don’t want to push you, but there’s something I need to know about the man who was trying to kill you.’

The lump in her throat grew bigger. The woman was talking about Huckebein. Why did everyone always want to talk about him? It was just like back in court.

‘Do you think we can manage?’ The woman smiled and said, ‘Listen, we’ll do it like this. I’ll ask my questions in such a way that you need only nod or shake your head.’

Hannah nodded.

‘The man who was trying to kill you… his name is Heinrich Wosniak?’

Yes.

‘When I showed you that photo in Dalldorf, of the corpse from Nollendorfplatz, you realised it wasn’t Wosniak, didn’t you?’

Yes again. Answering like this made her feel almost euphoric.

‘You recognised Gerhard Krumbiegel, even while I spent the whole time talking about Wosniak.’

Yes.

‘Did you realise Wosniak had killed Krumbiegel in order to fake his own death?’

Hannah wasn’t sure if she’d realised anything that day, only that the name Wosniak meant Huckebein was back in Berlin, and that something couldn’t be right if Kartoffel had been found dead in Huckebein’s coat.

‘I’m certain that’s why he meant to kill you. Because you were a potential threat.’

In truth she didn’t care why Huckebein meant to kill her, the main thing was that he no longer could.

‘One more question, then I’ll leave you both in peace,’ the woman said and fetched the photograph from her bag. ‘Do you know this man?’

No.

‘His name is Achim von Roddeck. Perhaps you saw him with Wosniak, or he came to the Crow’s Nest…’

‘No,’ Hannah said, surprised by her own voice. She had never seen the blond, arrogant-looking prig in lieutenant’s uniform. Such a man could not have been in the Crow’s Nest. It had been others who dwelled there, former front soldiers who, time and again, had been thrust into battle by people like this lieutenant, and who, crippled emotionally and physically by the experience, had been condemned to beggarhood when the war came to an end.

‘Good,’ the policewoman said. ‘I suspect they didn’t make contact again until after the Crow’s Nest burned down. Perhaps it was the fire that told him his faithful Heinrich was also in Berlin…’

As the woman reached the door Hannah managed to ask the question that had been on the tip of her tongue all this time. ‘What’s going to happen to me?’

‘Don’t worry. You won’t be going anywhere near Dalldorf again. I won’t allow it.’

She sounded so certain that Hannah believed her. Falling back on her pillow, she took Fritze’s hand and, for the first time in life, thought that, just maybe, everything was going to be all right.

88

Rath stood by the open patio door and watched Kirie romp around the wet garden with a big stick in her mouth. She brought it to Johann Marlow, who hurled it across the lawn for the game to begin again. Charly joined him to watch.

‘Did she talk?’ Rath asked.

‘After a fashion.’

‘And, is it Wosniak?’

‘Yes. He tried to kill her in Dalldorf, but she defended herself and fled. She recognised Krumbiegel from the crime scene photo and must have sensed something was up…’

‘Why didn’t she say at the time? She could have spared us a lot of hassle.’

Charly looked at him reproachfully. ‘Besides revenge for the fire, it could be the reason he wanted her dead. She was the only witness who could expose the fraud. Dalldorf was his first attempt. The second time, in town, she gave him the slip. The third time he was the one who copped it.’

‘Fine, but it doesn’t tell us why Wosniak killed his former comrades.’

‘Shame we can no longer hear his own take on the matter.’

‘Then perhaps we’ll get more out of the man who hired him.’

‘Roddeck?’

‘I’m almost certain he’s behind it. It all fits too well together. Whenever we begin to question his fanciful story about Engel, another dead body appears to back him up.’

‘Murder, in order to prove a theory? Well, that would be unusual. I wonder if Gennat’s come across that as a motive.’

‘I think it’s best we leave Gennat out of this.’

She agreed, and Rath savoured their keeping a secret together. The only thing Charly had ever failed to share with Gennat was their engagement, but it hadn’t taken long for Buddha to find out.

‘Seriously though, perhaps he has something to hide and is ridding himself of troublesome witnesses.’

‘Hmm,’ Rath mumbled. ‘His old comrades, you mean? Who know a secret from the war?’

‘Precisely. Something that casts Roddeck in a negative light.’

‘Why eliminate them now?’

‘Perhaps there was a reason for them to be quiet, and this reason no longer exists. Something like that…’

‘This is fun. I’m beginning to understand why Gennat sets such great store by you.’

‘Beginning to understand?’

‘But for now it’s just speculation, and where does Krumbiegel’s murder fit into all this?’

Charly had an answer to that one, too. ‘An identity switch. Wosniak needed to disappear and, since his old friend had been equally badly disfigured in the Bülowplatz arson and had no next of kin, he made the perfect victim.’

‘Meanwhile Roddeck could pin it all on Engel, the murdering Jew, already blamed for the heinous excesses of Operation Alberich.’

‘Yes.’

‘Even if it was him, how are we ever going to prove it?’

‘I don’t think we can.’

‘We can prove that he lied in the morgue. We have Krumbiegel’s photograph.’

‘Pretty thin, don’t you think? He’ll worm his way out of it.’ Charly made a sceptical face. ‘The way I see it, we have nothing. At least, nothing we can use in court.’

One of the guards signalled to Marlow from the library. Kirie trotted after the gangster as though she were his. The men discussed something briefly and looked over towards Rath and Charly before going inside.

‘We can’t pretend nothing’s happened,’ Rath said.

‘What do you have in mind?’

‘I don’t know, but we can’t simply stand by.’

‘I tell you now, there’s no way you’re dragging the kids into this.’

‘Nothing could be further from my mind. I just can’t bear to watch Achim von Roddeck make as if he’s the perfect fit for the new age, when really he’s a lying, murdering, arsehole.’

‘Maybe that’s why he’s such a good fit.’

‘Do you have to always make things political?’

‘Life is political. Everything we do is political.’

‘Everything you do. All I want is to make sure killers don’t go free.’

‘That’s just it. Once you’ve set your mind on something you can’t help yourself, and hang the consequences. You’re taking this business with Roddeck too personally. You take everything too personally!’

‘That’s the reason I became a police officer,’ he said. ‘Yes, I take it personally when someone commits murder, or incites others, and thinks he can get away with it. It’s the getting away with it I can’t stand.’

‘Our killer’s dead,’ said Charly. ‘He won’t be murdering anyone else and, if I’ve understood correctly, his victims were hardly saints, not even Krumbiegel who treated Hannah like a slave.’

‘No, they weren’t saints, but the biggest sinner is still alive. Strutting about the place like the hottest literary property in town. I’m sorry, but I can’t allow it. The man belongs in jail.’

‘We’re going around in circles here. It won’t work. You don’t have to have studied law to see that.’

‘You don’t? Well, there’s a relief. Poor drop-out such as myself…’

‘Gereon… I didn’t mean it like that.’

Before their conversation could deteriorate further Kirie came pitter-pattering over, and let both of them pet her. Kirie never took sides. Marlow followed. ‘Nice dog,’ he said.

‘I hope you’re not planning on keeping her.’

‘You needn’t worry there.’ Marlow handed him a sheet of paper. ‘This just came through.’

‘What is it?’

‘A radio transmission from Police Headquarters.’

‘You listen to police radio?’ Charly asked.

‘I need to know what’s happening in Berlin,’ Marlow said, and pointed to the message. ‘I think this concerns the two of you more than me.’

Rath looked at the paper. Charly had already begun to read.

Section 1A, the Political Police, the department Bernhard Weiss helped establish, and even led in the years following the war, had put a warrant out for his arrest.

89

The man was sitting in exactly the same spot, white stick beside him, hat and cardboard sign in front. Sub-zero temperatures hadn’t deterred him in February. Today he was here just the same. With the Rothstein report submitted, Rath had put in for the rest of the week off, which Buddha had grudgingly approved. At some point he would have to use up the overtime he had accrued before the Reichstag fire, and with no new investigations running this was the perfect opportunity. He turned up his collar.

Reaching the elevated railway Rath climbed a few stairs, turned and descended slowly, keeping an eye on the site where, around a month ago now, he had collected the soiled canvasses. The pillar where Gerhard Krumbiegel, and not Heinrich Wosniak, had been found.

At the bottom he crouched beside the beggar and tried to adopt his perspective. Though partially unsighted by a steel column, he would have an excellent view of the crime scene. The man wore dark glasses, and from the side Rath could see his eyelids twitch as they blinked. Rath stood in front of him. The stench was unbearable.

War-blind, please give generously, the cardboard sign said. Fetching his wallet he rummaged for change, took out a ten pfennig piece and held it over the hat. Then, instead of dropping the coin, he clenched his fist and made as if to punch the man’s face, only to brake millimetres in front of the dark glasses.

The beggar flinched, no more than a slight jerk, then sat still as before, as if oblivious to the world around him. But Rath had seen enough. He tossed the coin, caught it and enclosed it in his fist. Sitting on the steps he did his best not to hold his nose. ‘Nice spot you’ve got here.’

‘Are you taking the piss?’ the beggar asked.

‘Bet there are a lot of people who come by? A good spot for begging, is what I meant.’

‘If you say so.’

‘You here every day?’

‘Unless I’m needed in the office.’

‘What?’

‘Joke. Do I look I have an office?’

‘You look like the kind of man who doesn’t miss a trick.’

‘You are taking the piss!’

‘Were you here towards the end of February?’

‘I don’t see how that’s any business of yours.’

Rath took out his identification and watched the beggar turn pale under layers of dirt. ‘Can you read it, or are your glasses too dark?’

‘Making fun of a poor veteran who lost his sight in the service of the Fatherland?’

‘Who knows what you lost in the service of the Fatherland. Maybe life dealt you a lousy hand. Hell, maybe you’re even short-sighted, but you are certainly not blind!’ Rath raised his voice.

The beggar placed a finger to his lips in horror. ‘Shh. Not so loud! It’s bad for business.’

‘I’ve no intention of ruining your business, and maybe I won’t even take you down to Alex, but you’d better start being honest.’ He pointed towards the steel pillar. ‘A man lay dead there for days. Homeless, a beggar like you. No one gave a damn.’

‘I knew something wasn’t right, but I couldn’t go official, could I… being blind and all.’

‘You saw him then.’

‘Keep your voice down. Saw him? People might hear! At first I thought the two of them were friends. He’d just given him a thick coat.’

‘He gave him his coat?’

‘Not the one he was wearing. No, it was fine wool, but he had another under his arm, an old army coat.’

‘Which is why you thought they were friends?’

‘I don’t know about friends, but they knew each other, even a blind man could…’ The beggar fell silent and eyed his white stick in embarrassment. ‘I mean, it was obvious.’

‘What happened next?’

‘The tramp put on the coat, all thank you, thank you. And then… I’m not sure. I was only looking over every so often, you know how it is, I had… patrons to thank…’ he swallowed. ‘Anyway, next time I looked over, bowler-hat man was crouched by his friend on the ground. Patted him on the shoulder and off he went.’

‘Towards the station? Past you?’

‘No, towards Bülowstrasse.’

‘Did you see his face?’

‘He had his collar up and his hat was pulled down over his eyes. It looked like he had a few scars. I took them for old war comrades.’

‘Did you notice anything else about the man?’

‘There was one thing. He had a strange gait, always dragging one leg.’

‘What about the dead man?’

‘He was just crouched there. Looked like he had wrapped himself up to take a nap. I didn’t realise anything was amiss until he was still sitting like that the next day. But what could I do? A blind man?’

‘Even blind men can notify the police.’

‘Being blind is how I make my living, Inspector! I thought, let someone who can see him do it. Eventually, someone did.’

90

Friday night. Nibelungen had booked the grand lounge in Hotel Adlon. It was sold out, and Rath only got in by using his police badge. ‘Your colleagues are already inside. At the back, beside the podium.’

Reinhold Gräf sat with Steinke and a few other plainclothes officers from A and H Divisions, probably hoping Benjamin Engel, the murdering Jew as Levetzow called him, would be careless enough to show. The whole thing had the appearance of a large-scale operation between Homicide and Warrants, mounted on the commissioner’s orders, but Rath knew nothing about it, having steered clear of Alex since handing in the Rothstein report on Monday. This was a purely social call.

Everywhere he looked, cops surveyed the diverse audience, the majority being prosperous types in evening dress alongside a number of veterans in uniform. One man had a prosthetic arm. Two or three had crutches by their chairs. None was as disfigured or damaged as the many war-disabled begging on Berlin’s streets.

Then, of course, came the inevitable brown with black-white-and-red brassards, everywhere now, as if the Nazis were rabbits and mating season was in full swing. In reality they were ordinary people who had jumped on the bandwagon before it was too late. Like Marlow said: citizens who wanted to get ahead; but workers too, who had been beaten down by life and joined SA ranks to ensure that others shared their suffering.

A familiar face jostled for position among the journalists in the first row. He had no wish for Berthold Weinert to see him, nor Gräf for that matter, or indeed any of his colleagues. Unusually for a book of this kind a number of women were also present, no doubt due to Roddeck’s previous existence as a dance host. He settled for a place at the back behind a fat lady, and hid his face in the information sheet which had been presented to him at the door.

A string quartet opened proceedings with a rendition of Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden, a traditional lament, performed on this occasion without vocals. Roddeck understood how to make his book launch feel special, none of your brass music or nationalist chanting here. Instead, a touch of culture. When the music ended, Dr Hildebrandt, Roddeck’s bustling publisher, took up position behind the lectern. His tone was solemn, as if a fallen soldier were being laid to rest.

Roddeck remained backstage while an extract was read by an actor. Naturally, they had chosen the scene in which Captain Engel murdered two French children and a German recruit.

Only when the reading was at an end, and with the applause still resounding, did Baron Achim von Roddeck take to the stage, dressed, like so many others here, in his old service uniform. He bowed, and the applause reached a crescendo. When the final members of the audience had ceased clapping, he stepped behind the lectern and commenced his speech, flanked by police officers.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, Brothers-at-Arms! Let me outline the reasons that led a man like me, who has always favoured the sword over the pen, to conclude, after many years, that publishing my war memoirs was in the best interests of the public at large.’

What followed could have been straight out of a Nazi campaign speech. Rath had never heard anyone offer himself up so crudely to the ruling powers. According to Roddeck, Jews in the German army had brought nothing but misery to the Fatherland. Operation Alberich had been a tactical masterstroke, discredited by the treacherous actions of individuals such as Captain Benjamin Engel. With war methods that went against any notion of honour, the Jews had dragged the reputation of the glorious, unvanquished Germany army through the mire.

Roddeck didn’t stop at Operation Alberich either. ‘Who was instrumental in the adoption of poison-gas warfare?’ he asked. ‘Perhaps some of you here tonight are unaware, but that, too, was a Jew. Like Benjamin Engel, Fritz Haber, who still occupies his position at the helm of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, achieved the rank of captain during the war. A disgrace to German science, a disgrace to the German army.’

Roddeck paused to gaze among the rows of seats.

‘From my own experience, all I will say is this. Were it not for the presence of Jews, no German soldier would have been enticed into perpetrating such atrocities, for which we are still being made to pay.’

The audience was not used to German soldiers being accused of atrocities, and certainly hadn’t expected it here.

‘What they forget abroad,’ Roddeck declaimed with a conciliatory wave of the hand, ‘is that these acts were carried out by Jews and not Germans. It is precisely these distortions, Ladies and Gentlemen, that my work intends to set right.’

The volley of applause took Rath aback. Some rose to their feet, and more followed until the whole room stood in acclaim of Lieutenant von Roddeck. He made his way towards the exit. Leaving the room, he turned to look at the audience as it went berserk. Roddeck had his eyes closed, and Rath wondered if people here genuinely believed what he said, or were simply glad to point the finger elsewhere.

The Jews are our misfortune. The sentence was a solution to all their problems. In the present, in the future and even, as Rath realised today for the first time, in the past.

91

Having removed his uniform, Baron Achim von Roddeck stood with outstretched arms before the mirror as a male attendant detached his cufflinks.

Rath had waited in a dark corner of the hotel bar until Gräf, Steinke and the other CID men had left, before making his way to Roddeck’s suite, where the lieutenant had retired following his performance. He wondered if the man’s hotel arrangements were paid for by the public. Like the police manpower deployed by the commissioner to keep the supposedly endangered author safe, he suspected they were. It wasn’t that the public coffers were any more full than prior to the national uprising, rather that the people responsible were no longer obliged to justify every expense.

His police badge had ensured access to the third floor. Seeing Rath led in, Roddeck turned in astonishment. ‘Inspector, you’re the last person I expected to see!’

‘Just goes to show.’

‘What brings you here? Can I sign a book for you?’

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘You can’t be here in an official capacity. Unless I am mistaken you are no longer in charge of the investigation.’

‘I’ve never distinguished much between private and professional.’

‘I don’t have a lot of time, Inspector. I’m about to leave for a reception given by the new Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.’

‘Goebbels is aware of you already?’

‘The Herr Minister is one of my most loyal readers. He has privately expressed concern that my novel wasn’t serialised in Der Angriff or at the very least the Völkischer Beobachter.’

‘A shame he couldn’t be here for the show.’

‘The Herr Minister sent his apologies, but…’ Roddeck pointed towards a gift-wrapped package on his desk. ‘…tonight I will present him with a personal copy, complete with dedication.’

‘I’m sure the Herr Minister can hardly contain his delight.’

Roddeck looked at him as if he had stomach cramp. ‘What are you doing here, Inspector? Don’t waste my time.’

‘Aren’t you surprised that Wosniak hasn’t been in touch?’

Achim von Roddeck, whom the attendant was now helping into his dinner jacket, raised his eyebrows. ‘Spare me the tasteless jokes! I helped to identify his body in the morgue. Did you forget?’

‘I don’t forget things easily. It’s one of my strengths.’

‘It can be a weakness too.’

‘What would you say if I could prove that the dead man from Nollendorfplatz wasn’t Heinrich Wosniak but a man named Gerhard Krumbiegel? The other survivor of the fire that made such a mess of your orderly.’

‘That would mean my faithful Heinrich is still alive!’

‘And that you lied to me in the morgue.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Roddeck succeeded in looking horrified. ‘If what you are saying is true, then it’s possible I was mistaken, but I did not lie. If that corpse wasn’t Heinrich Wosniak then I’m sorry for falsely identifying him, but it wasn’t easy, you know… with all the scars.’

‘You seemed pretty certain at the time.’

‘As did you, Inspector. You’ll recall that the name Wosniak was already in all the papers. It was what led me to you in the first place.’

‘How do you propose to maintain your story about Todesengel?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

‘The body at Nollendorfplatz no longer fits the pattern. Why would Benjamin Engel kill someone who had nothing to do with his old unit?’

‘What do I know, Inspector? Perhaps he got them mixed up, just like you and I did. Perhaps this Krum…?’

‘Krumbiegel.’

‘Perhaps this Krumbiegel was wearing Wosniak’s army coat. You found his service record too, as I recall. A man with burn scars in Wosniak’s coat. Easy enough to get mixed up, when you consider how many years had gone by.’

The man had an answer for everything. Rath grew angrier. ‘Are you claiming Krumbiegel stole Wosniak’s coat along with his service record?’

‘I’m speculating. Still, if that’s what you think…’

‘I’ll tell you what I think, shall I? Heinrich Wosniak pays his old beggar friend Krumbiegel a visit at Nollendorfplatz and donates his old soldier’s coat, in which he has already planted the service record. No sooner does Krumbiegel pull the thing on, but he feels Wosniak’s trench dagger being driven into his brain.’

‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

‘That Wosniak killed Krumbiegel because he wanted to stage his own death.’

‘My faithful Heinrich! Why would he do that?’

‘I’ll know soon enough. I certainly don’t believe that Benjamin Engel killed all these men.’

‘You sound very sure.’

Rath had to tread carefully. He had come here to catch Roddeck off guard, not give away what he knew. ‘It’s just a theory. You have yours and I have mine. As far as I’m concerned Benjamin Engel is not behind these murders.’

‘Perhaps that’s why the commissioner took you off the case. I’d think about that if I were you.’

Back on the street, Rath aimed a kick at one of the rubbish bins that was supposed to keep Unter den Linden, Berlin’s oldest boulevard, free from dirt. The bin was ripped from its moorings and its contents spilled on the pavement. He hadn’t been this angry in a long time.

He had miscalculated. Achim von Roddeck was slippier than an eel, and to cap it all, seemed to know that Rath was onto him. It looked like Gereon Rath and his temper had made a hash of things again. At least on this occasion Gennat was none the wiser.

92

Sometimes Charly felt glad when Fritze was out with Kirie and she had time to catch her breath. Was he really so slow on the uptake or did he just not care? When she thought of everything she’d done to find him a school… If the boy didn’t get his head down soon he’d get a rude awakening after Easter, and the new session. He had gaps just about everywhere, and could barely write his own name. Capable of some basic arithmetic, his brain went on strike whenever fractions were involved. He seemed to have no idea how important these things were, and didn’t want to make the effort.

Do you want to spend the rest of your days on the streets? I’m busting a gut to give you a decent life and you can’t even be bothered trying! More than once she had been close to telling a few home truths, but he had her wrapped around his little finger. It was impossible to stay angry.

One night she’d asked Gereon to go through basic fractions with him, but he was even more impatient than her. What would they do when they had children of their own?

Fritze’s interests lay elsewhere. Recently, after returning from his morning walk with Kirie, she had noticed sherbet powder on his lips. ‘Have you been buying sherbet? I don’t recall giving you any money.’

‘That’s ’cause you didn’t, Auntie.’

‘You haven’t been scrounging again?’ The constant Auntie Charly made her blood boil. ‘Why do you do it? If you need money tell me!’

‘Sorry, Aunt Charly, it just happened. There was this man outside the station, begging to be parted from his cash.’

‘You don’t have to anymore.’

‘I didn’t mean any harm, and he was only too glad to help.’ With that he disappeared into the kitchen and produced another two sachets of sherbet powder. The boy needed a firm hand.

She pondered the coming week with horror. On Monday she was due back in the Castle. Fritze would have all day to himself, but that was hardly her most pressing concern.

Thinking of her office, of Women’s CID, of Friederike Wieking and Karin van Almsick, she felt positively sick. More so when she thought of the files gathering dust on her desk. Files on children and youths, some scarcely older than Fritze, none of whom fitted with the new regime’s plans and certainly not with those of her commanding officer. Finally Friederike Wieking had license to hunt down the youth gangs she had always despised.

For years it had been Charly’s dream to work as a police officer and now, on the verge of becoming a CID inspector, with only the exam still to pass, she suddenly doubted whether this was the job for her. Not, at any rate, with Wieking as her superior. As for her caseload, she hadn’t taken up the job to hunt Communists.

Every day the Vossische Zeitung carried news items headed Shot Attempting to Flee, and no matter where the reports came from, the details were always the same: wanted Communist arrested, attempts to flee en route to the station, fails to heed the cries of police officers, summary execution.

The audacity with which the written press continued to spread such lies was breathtaking. At least the Vossische, which the Ritter family had read for generations, published these endless, identical reports in such a way that the lie was obvious.

She had tried to contact Professor Heymann to seek his advice, but her old law professor had been granted sabbatical leave at his own request and couldn’t be reached. The university office couldn’t, or didn’t want to, say more. She knew from the paper that high-ranking figures, such as directors or professors, were being granted sabbatical leave almost as frequently as Communists were being shot. The common factor being that they were Jewish. Anti-Semitism was more than just electioneering. Last week, prior to the boycott, the SA had picked up all Jewish judges and lawyers from the court building on Grunerstrasse while, at the university, Jewish professors were said to have been assaulted by students. She hoped Professor Heymann had managed to get out in time.

The doorbell returned her to the present. It was the postman. ‘Fräulein Charlotte Ritter?’

‘Yes?’

He never missed the chance to show his disapproval that she should live in an apartment with a different surname on the door.

‘A letter for you, from Prague.’ He stressed ‘Prague’ as if a letter from the Czech capital was the most obscene thing an upstanding German could receive.

‘I’m glad you know where it’s from. Did you look inside? Want to read it to me too while you’re at it?’

The man looked at her as if she were serious, and perhaps thought she was. ‘Read it out?’ He shook his head. ‘No time, Lady. Do you know how many houses I still have to visit?’

She closed the door and went inside to examine the stamp. Pošta Československá. No sender. She didn’t know anyone in Prague. Unless Professor Heymann had…

These days receiving mail from democratic countries made you a target of suspicion, and men like the postman were a perfect fit for this sick, new Germany. Sometimes Charly felt as if Berlin had been full of people just waiting for this government who were now, suddenly, revealing their true colours. As if the whole time somewhere deep under this city there had been another, darker Berlin that was seeping upwards like sewage rising in the street.

That wasn’t true, of course, it was the same people inhabiting the same Berlin. The new government simply had a talent for bringing out the worst in its citizens.

The letter was written on hotel paper.

She let the letter drop. Weiss was safe, the Political Police had been too late in issuing their warrant. Tears flooded her eyes, and she didn’t know why. Relief, perhaps, or grief. Rage that one of Germany’s most celebrated criminal investigators had been forced into exile like a common thief.

The doorbell rang. She wiped the tears from her eyes before opening to a brawny man wrapped in a dark coat and wearing a bowler hat.

93

The morning after his visit to the Adlon, Rath shared the photos of Gerhard Krumbiegel with Gräf and Steinke in the main Homicide office. He was still off-duty, but a visit to Alex had become unavoidable. If Achim von Roddeck knew about Krumbiegel it was essential to bring the official investigation up to speed. He put the letter from Halle in a new envelope, removing the note to Charly. The photographs spoke for themselves; there was no doubt this was the dead man from Nollendorfplatz.

‘Stray post…’ he said. ‘Landed in my office. Actually it was addressed to me, but it’s part of your case.’ He shook them onto the desk. ‘Gerhard Krumbiegel,’ he said, slapping the flat of his hand on the table. ‘The corpse from Nollendorfplatz was Gerhard Krumbiegel, not Heinrich Wosniak.’

Steinke glared at him, while Gräf stared at the photos. ‘Engel must have got them mixed up because he was wearing Wosniak’s coat, and because of the burn scars from the Bülowplatz fire.’

‘Really? Do they look that similar?’

‘We have no photo of Wosniak, but if his former lieutenant got them mixed up, then it’s safe to say Engel did too…’

His attempt to steer Gräf’s thinking had failed. He couldn’t afford to be any more explicit. ‘What are you going to do now?’

‘Intensify the search,’ Gräf said. ‘If Engel got the wrong man we have to do everything we can to find Wosniak. Perhaps we can use him to lure Engel into a trap.’

‘No sign of our captain last night?’

‘I think he was deterred by the police presence. It’s good to know it’s paying off. There’s no question Lieutenant Roddeck is safer for it.’

Steinke had reached for the telephone and asked to be patched through to Warrants. Rath gave up. Let them search if that was all they could think of. ‘Good luck,’ he said, hoping Gräf would hear the sarcasm.

‘Thank you, Gereon,’ Gräf said. ‘Perhaps we can go for a drink when this is all over.’ He seemed glad his old partner was speaking to him again.

Rath left, stopping briefly at his office before heading home. He might be finally rid of the photos, but it seemed unlikely the official investigation would create problems for Achim von Roddeck any time soon.

Opening the door to the apartment, he was surprised to hear voices from the living room. It wasn’t Fritze, and it wasn’t the radio. A deep, booming bass. A dark coat and bowler hat hung on the stand. Entering the room he was ready for anything: for the grinning man, or another of Charly’s university friends, even the Negro from Aschinger who occasionally still haunted his dreams (and about whom she kept quiet to this day), but not for the man sitting in his favourite armchair, a cup of coffee on his lap, speaking earnestly with Charly.

‘Sir,’ Rath said. ‘To what do we owe the honour?’

Wilhelm Böhm looked to the door in surprise. ‘No more “Sir”,’ he growled, setting down his coffee and rising to shake Rath’s hand.

‘They demoted you?’

‘I jumped before I was pushed.’

‘The coffee’s fresh,’ said Charly. She fetched a cup and poured.

‘I’ve retired from police service,’ Böhm explained. ‘Our commissioner would never have allowed me back into Homicide. I’ve already spoken with Gennat.’

‘I’m considering following suit,’ Charly said, ‘but Böhm advises against.’

‘I’ve suggested that your bride-to-be consider thinks very carefully before destroying her career.’

‘Anyway I’ve extended my leave of absence.’

Rath’s gaze flitted back and forth. What the hell was she talking about?

‘What will you do now?’ he asked Böhm. ‘Do you have private means?’

‘I’m not as wealthy as you must think. Besides, I’m too young to pack it in completely. It’s possible to be a detective outside of the police.’

‘If you’re looking for a job as house detective, I could put you in touch with someone at the Excelsior,’ Rath said, earning an angry glance from Charly.

Böhm waved dismissively. ‘I was thinking of starting my own agency.’

‘I hope you’re not here to recruit Charly.’

‘We were having a perfectly normal discussion between friends and ex-colleagues until you arrived,’ she said, sharper than Rath thought necessary.

‘Charly’s been telling me about the strange developments in our old case,’ Böhm said, attempting to change the subject. ‘You know, the dead man from Nollendorfplatz. I understand Levetzow has reassigned you?’

‘He has.’

‘Don’t take it personally. It’s almost a badge of honour to be spurned by our latest commissioner.’

‘Gereon makes a point of being spurned by every commissioner,’ said Charly.

‘Levetzow usually lets Homicide go about its work in peace, but this case is different,’ Rath said.

‘You don’t think his intervention has been for the better?’

‘With all due respect to Gräf, I don’t believe we’ll solve these killings by fixating on a single suspect who might not even be alive.’

Böhm agreed. ‘Charly has explained that the dead man at Nollendorfplatz wasn’t Heinrich Wosniak, but the other beggar. His corpse doesn’t fit with the rest.’

Rath threw Charly a horrified glance. What else had she given away? ‘It’s not for me to worry now I’ve been taken off the case.’

‘On the contrary,’ Böhm said. ‘Your theory about a deliberate identity switch would mean Heinrich Wosniak murdered his former companion and faked his own death, in order to set about killing his ex-comrades.’

At least, Rath thought, she hasn’t told him Wosniak’s corpse is lying at the bottom of the Spree.

‘You’re right about one thing,’ Böhm continued. ‘On no account should you risk making a fool of the police commissioner. These days it could cost you more than your livelihood.’

Rath agreed politely, thinking Böhm was starting to sound like a rich uncle whose advice you couldn’t contradict.

Böhm stood up and they accompanied him into the hall where he shook both their hands. ‘I’ll be on my way now,’ he said. ‘Thank you for the coffee, Charly, and for your hospitality, Herr Rath. It’s good to have friends in times like these.’

Rath nodded and forced a smile. No sooner was Böhm out the door than he turned to Charly. She had a guilty look on her face. ‘You’ve extended your leave of absence?’

‘I’m sorry Böhm heard it before you. His visit caught me off guard. I was going to tell you today that I’d seen Wieking.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She wasn’t pleased, but I need more time.’

‘Charly, this isn’t good. You’re off sick for two weeks, now this? It looks like you’re shirking. Goddamn it, you’re this close to becoming an inspector!’

‘I can’t be there right now, I’ve told you that.’

‘What did you tell Wieking?’

‘Marriage preparations. She’s more likely to understand that.’

‘I’ll tell you what else she’s more likely to understand. Women staying at home to look after their children.’

‘If there’s one thing I don’t want, it’s to stay at home.’

‘Then what have you been doing these last few weeks? Because you certainly haven’t been at work!’

‘Maybe that’s why I’ve been in such a good mood!’ She turned on her heel and slammed the door.

Rath shook his head. What on earth was wrong with her? At least this time she hadn’t slapped him. Or gone to Greta’s, just back into the living room.

The doorbell rang and he opened to Fritze grinning at him with Kirie in tow. ‘Well,’ the boy said. ‘Together again at last?’

94

The day Rath had been dreading came as a perfectly ordinary Tuesday afternoon.

‘Sounds like Gräf will be rejoining us soon,’ Erika Voss said.

‘Has Levetzow given him his marching orders already? After just two weeks?’

‘I’m afraid he has been rather more successful than you, Sir,’ she said, with a distinct lack of sympathy. ‘He’s found Benjamin Engel. Which means he’ll be back as soon as they close the Alberich file.’

‘He’s found Engel?’

‘Dead or alive, the commissioner said. Well, dead it is. They found his corpse in the Spree.’

Rath didn’t have to wait long for the full story.

Heinrich Wosniak’s mortal remains hadn’t made it as far as the Mühlendamm Lock. They had been washed ashore just beyond the Schilling Bridge, when an eagle-eyed pool attendant noticed a white shape floating near the public baths. Using long sticks, he and a colleague reached for the strange, ghost-like bundle, but the fabric ripped, and the corpse broke free and floated to the surface. Forensics took it from there.

The disfigured face, the burn wounds, the clothing, all pointed towards the mystery killer, and the sheet the body was wrapped inside also contained several cobblestones and a trench dagger with triangular cross-section. Gräf had no hesitation in notifying the commissioner and declaring the case closed. The mass-murderer Benjamin Engel had surfaced, in the truest sense of the word, from the depths of the Spree.

Much as Magnus von Levetzow advocated caution in dealings with the press, he had no less performance instinct than his predecessors, and a press conference was arranged for that afternoon. Rath decided to tag along uninvited and mingle with the journalists. Towards the back he spied a familiar face for the second time in recent days. ‘Berthold!’

‘Gereon! Shouldn’t you be up there?’ Berthold Weinert pointed to the podium.

‘It’s not my case anymore.’

‘Sorry… didn’t mean to offend.’ Weinert was whispering now. ‘Was it political?’

‘Just a difference of opinion.’

‘Sounds like maybe we should meet for a beer.’

‘Let’s see what this lot have to say first.’

They were all there, even Gennat, hauling his heavy frame up the double step. Buddha hated acting as a figurehead for Commissioner Levetzow, whose sole interest for weeks now had been catching Benjamin Engel and parading him before the public. The commissioner took his seat in the middle, flanked by Gennat and Gräf. Last to take to the stage was Achim von Roddeck. A murmur passed among the journalists. Most recognised his face; many would have been present at the Adlon launch.

Levetzow opened proceedings, announcing the discovery of the corpse before introducing Gennat. Buddha, in turn, handed the floor to Detective Gräf who, nervously at first, gave a detailed report of the discovery, the trench dagger and the similarity between the corpse and the man who had been sighted around several previous murders.

‘We had good reason to proceed on the assumption that we were dealing with the disabled war veteran Benjamin Engel. To eradicate any lingering doubt, only moments ago, we invited someone to identify the body. This man not only knew Benjamin Engel, but has written about him: Lieutenant Baron Achim von Roddeck to whom I bid the warmest of welcomes.’

Roddeck rose to his feet and made a bow as if he were being applauded, which, Rath was pleased to note, he was not. These journalists had their plus points.

‘If Herr von Roddeck would care to provide his own impressions.’

‘Gladly, Detective,’ said Roddeck, as his gaze wandered over the room. When he caught sight of Rath he looked momentarily confused, but continued. ‘Though heavily scarred by an explosion sixteen years ago, I am almost certain the corpse is that of Captain Engel.’

Rath wondered if, were it not for his own presence, the lieutenant might have said absolutely certain as opposed to almost certain. On hearing the almost, Gräf made a surprised face. Roddeck must have been less equivocal in the morgue.

Gräf went on to explain that the investigation into Engel’s death was still in its infancy, and journalists would be kept abreast of developments.

‘From what we know so far, he was stabbed with his own trench dagger. Forensics have discovered seven stab wounds, of which three could have been fatal. As yet we have been unable to reconstruct the precise sequence of events, nor have we isolated the crime scene, although we are looking at an area somewhere in the vicinity of the Brommy Bridge. One hundred emergency officers, along with a canine unit and several forensic technicians, are combing both sides of the Spree.’

Rath hoped he and Charly had left nothing incriminating behind.

‘Feel free,’ Gräf continued, ‘to report that we are seeking witnesses. If anyone noticed anything suspicious in this area between two and two-and-a-half weeks ago, they should contact police headquarters and ask for the Alberich team. We will be issuing a press release to this effect.’

Rath looked at Weinert’s notepad. He hadn’t written much but raised his hand. ‘One question! Do you have any idea who might be responsible?’

Gräf left this to Levetzow. ‘Whether or not to go public with this has been a matter of careful consideration,’ the commissioner said, ‘since it looks as though we are not dealing with murder, but with self-defence.’ Magnus von Levetzow glanced at Gennat, who ignored the look. ‘We are proceeding on the assumption that Benjamin Engel underestimated his intended victim’s skill in hand-to-hand combat. The man’s only mistake was to dump Engel’s corpse in the Spree rather than notify the police.’

‘It sounds as if you have a name, Commissioner,’ Weinert said.

‘Indeed, I do,’ Levetzow said. ‘The name of the man responsible for Benjamin Engel’s death, and who – let me emphasise this – has nothing to fear from the criminal prosecution authorities, is…’ The journalists reached for their notepads. ‘…Heinrich Wosniak.’

More than just a murmur passed through the room as the journalists talked over one another.

‘Wosniak?’ someone shouted. ‘Wasn’t he the first victim in this series of murders?’

‘Apparently not,’ Levetzow said. ‘Detective Gräf?’ He handed Gräf a note and the detective looked as if he had been blindsided.

‘What the commissioner is referring to is…’ He cleared his throat. ‘For a short time we have known that Benjamin Engel’s first victim was not Heinrich Wosniak, as… Detective Chief Inspector Böhm’s team wrongly stated.’

Rath suspected Gräf was smearing Böhm on Levetzow’s orders and, for the first time in his life, was angry at hearing his former DCI’s name being dragged through the mire.

‘Rather,’ Gräf continued, ‘his name was Gerhard Krumbiegel, a man with whom Wosniak lived for many years as part of a begging gang, and who, like Wosniak, sustained serious burns in an arson attack carried out on New Year’s Eve 1931.’

More noise in the room.

‘Did you know about this?’ Weinert whispered. Rath nodded. ‘My offer of a beer is still valid.’

Again, Rath nodded, realising that he couldn’t say anything without incriminating himself. He started slowly towards the exit, looking at Roddeck as he went. The man was ill at ease, that much was plain, having lied in the morgue on two separate occasions. Somewhere in those eyes was fear, but of what? Discovery? Benjamin Engel? Apparently Roddeck suspected, perhaps even knew, that his former captain had survived the war. What he couldn’t know was that the man he called Todesengel had succumbed to his injuries five years ago, and now, realising this latest corpse spelled the end of his police protection, he was scared. Of the ghosts he himself had invoked.

A smile formed on Rath’s face. It was time he was on his way. The journalists grew restless as the police commissioner rose again to speak. ‘I would like to offer my express thanks to Detective Gräf and Cadet Steinke. Gentlemen, we need men like you in the new Germany!’

Without quite knowing why, Rath felt relieved it wasn’t him being thanked on the podium.

95

Porcelain tinkled as coffee was stirred, otherwise the only sound was the rustling of newspapers. Charly peered at Fritze, bowed over the Vossische Zeitung funny papers as he scoffed his final bread roll. Gereon was hidden behind the World News section.

‘The first of May is to be a national holiday,’ she said, over the top of her paper.

Gereon nodded mechanically. ‘They’re allowed to drink again in New York.’

‘They’re calling it German Labour Day. The Communists will be pleased the Nazis are stealing their day of action along with everything else. They’ve already commandeered the Liebknechthaus.’

‘Just beer for the time being, they’re starting off slow.’

A loud snort made Charly look up. Fritze looked at them both and said: ‘You’re talking at cross purposes!’

Charly looked at Gereon, who lowered his paper and smiled.

‘I’m taking the dog out,’ the boy said, sticking the last piece of bread between his teeth. Kirie followed him eagerly into the hallway and moments later they heard the front door click shut.

‘I think Fritze wants us to have a little time to ourselves,’ Charly said.

‘He could tell we were beating about the bush,’ Gereon muttered.

‘Did you know?’

She didn’t have to explain which article she was referring to. It was the one they had scrupulously avoided discussing all morning.

‘You were asleep when I got home yesterday, otherwise I’d have mentioned it.’

‘They find the corpse and mistake Wosniak for Engel? Really?’

‘They’re so fixated on Engel that I’m not surprised,’ said Rath. ‘I think Gennat’s the only one who has doubts.’

‘I thought as soon as Reinhold saw the Krumbiegel photos he’d realise Wosniak’s the killer.’

‘He doesn’t know what we know. We have Hannah, he doesn’t.’

‘We’re not dragging her into this, Gereon! I thought we’d agreed on that. Hannah Singer on the stand probably wouldn’t get a word out, and fugitives from the asylum don’t tend to make credible witnesses.’

‘I’m not planning anything of the sort. I only gave Reinhold the photos, nothing else.’ He tapped the Vossische Zeitung, which had devoted two columns and a large headline to the death of the murderer Benjamin Engel. ‘You see the result.’

‘Has Fritze seen it?’

‘He only reads the funnies. Besides, he doesn’t know anything. Not really. The name Engel means nothing to him. He wouldn’t guess it’s the man he stabbed to death.’

‘Let’s hope so. The last thing we need is for him to get nervous and start talking.’

‘Nothing can happen to him,’ Gereon said. ‘Not when the commissioner himself’s promised immunity from prosecution.’

‘Cut the jokes. They aren’t funny.’

‘Levetzow’s performance yesterday was a farce, but they all bought it. Weinert was the only one who tried to dig.’

Charly fell silent. Ever since the night of the fire when he had exploited her indiscretion, Weinert’s was a name she could do without. ‘Why Weinert of all people?’ she asked.

‘There was someone next to him at the press conference, sowing the seeds of doubt.’

‘You were at the press conference? Are you mad? What did you say?’

‘Queried a few minor details… The identity of the corpse for example. Weinert wanted to go for a beer but I didn’t let things get that far.’

‘It’s enough to be hanging around a press conference without an invite.’

‘It was my case.’

‘Did Levetzow see you?’

‘What if he did?’

‘Reinhold?’

‘The only person I’m certain saw me is Achim von Roddeck, and that’s a good thing!’

‘I can’t think why.’

‘Don’t you see? Now he realises I know more than the others, but he can’t say anything to Levetzow, because it would make him a suspect. If he hadn’t identified his faithful Heinrich as Benjamin Engel, Homicide would have asked why Heinrich Wosniak killed all these men. All you’d need then is a single witness who’d seen Wosniak and Roddeck together and it would be over.’

Charly took a sip of coffee.

Gereon continued: ‘Roddeck suspects that I know the Spree corpse is Wosniak, and the fact that I haven’t shared this information with the Alberich team is making him nervous. The death of the Alberich-killer means his police protection being stood down. In Roddeck’s mind, he’s now in real danger. Because he believes Benjamin Engel is still alive. And because he must think his novel stands a decent chance of flushing him out.’

‘You mean that pack of lies was intended to lure Engel out of hiding?’

‘Yes, because Roddeck believes – rightly as it happens – that Engel took the French gold.’

‘He meant to corner Engel, so that he could get his hands on it himself?’

‘I don’t know about that, but he certainly can’t have expected his faithful Heinrich to be murdered. That must have spiked his guns, especially since he’ll be wondering who on earth stabbed the man.’

‘Well, so long as you’re happy.’

‘If we can’t get him, then the least we can do is put the fear in him, don’t you think? Perhaps if he’s frightened enough he’ll give himself away.’

‘I don’t understand you. Why do you still care? You were taken off the case weeks ago.’

‘You’re a fine one to talk. You were pretty involved yourself a few days back.’

‘That’s right. Because I wanted to protect the children, but now Wosniak is dead.’

‘You really want Roddeck to get away with this? He’s had three people murdered. As well as robbing another man of his reputation with character assassination dressed as literature.’

‘I don’t know, Gereon. Fundamentally, you’re right, but how are you going to prove any of it? Do you really think anyone in the new Germany cares about justice?’

‘I do.’

She stopped short when he said it, suddenly realising how cowardly she had been, and how pitiful it was to sit back and do nothing. It was time to follow through on the decision she had been mulling over for weeks and translate her thoughts into action.

Still, she struggled to get the words out. ‘After Easter I’m going to speak with Wieking again, I’m going to… resign.’ There, she’d said it at last.

‘So soon before the inspector’s exam?’ He looked at her wide-eyed. ‘Is it… are you pregnant?’

‘No!’ She had to laugh seeing him there, completely beside himself. She became serious again. ‘We’ve talked about it often enough… Wieking, the Communist witch-hunt, everything the WKP stands for.’

‘That’s no reason to throw in the towel.’

‘I can’t work there anymore, not for this police force in this state.’

‘You can’t just go chucking it in. When I think of how long you’ve been striving for this. Things change.’

‘You really think so?’

‘Nothing stays the same. Things always change.’

‘The question is when.’

‘I certainly wouldn’t tell Wieking what you’ve just told me. The new government is sensitive about that sort of thing; the Nazis want to be loved.’

‘And if you aren’t prepared to court them, they break your skull.’

‘Something like that.’ He needed time to digest the news. ‘Have you really thought about this? You haven’t completed your probationary period, you’ll have nothing if you quit now.’

‘I’ll have my state examination.’

‘What are you going to do with that? Go back to Professor Heymann? He’s Jewish in case you’d forgotten, hardly the best reference in the new Germany.’

She could have slapped him. Did he even realise that Heymann was one of those who had been forced out of office despite the new law supposedly not applying to veterans? Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service they’d termed it, cynically, when in reality it got rid of thousands of decorated officials. She was about to give Gereon a piece of her mind when the telephone rang. Answering, she was surprised to hear a familiar voice.

‘Speaking of Jews in the new age,’ she said. ‘Dr Schwartz. For you.’

96

It was still overcast but the rain had stopped. Rath parked on Robert-Koch-Platz and proceeded on foot. He had a strange premonition, which was why he had asked to meet in the lunch break rather than during office hours.

Evidently Magnus Schwartz, the pathologist, shared his concern. Following his resignation from all duties (to spare him worse) he had summoned Rath to a cafe just next to the Neues Tor. He hadn’t said what it was about, insisting instead on a face-to-face meeting.

Schwartz sat alone at a window table reading the newspaper. Seeing Rath, he stood up. ‘Good of you to come, Inspector,’ he said, shaking Rath’s hand. ‘I’d buy you a coffee, but I think it’s better if we take a walk.’ Even in his local cafe a law-abiding citizen such as Magnus Schwartz no longer felt safe from informers. Berliners were becoming more and more suspicious.

‘Then let’s go,’ Rath said.

Outside they faced a chill breeze. The pavement was still wet but the sky was starting to clear. They strolled along Invalidenstrasse, where on the other side of the road the façade of the Natural History Museum rose impressively into the sky. ‘What’s on your mind, Doctor?’

‘It’s about the corpse they found yesterday in the Spree. This war-disabled fellow, but I thought I’d rather speak with you in private.’

Rath said nothing and waited.

‘Karthaus sought me out. Karthaus, who a few weeks ago suggested I take early retirement.’ Schwartz shook his head. ‘Did you know he’s a Nazi now too?’

‘I can’t say I’m surprised.’

‘You need to be, to get on in the new Germany. There are even Jews who want to join the party. They can’t have read the manifesto.’ The doctor waved his hand dismissively. ‘Karthaus is carrying on as if everything is normal between us, as if I took early retirement because of my age. A simple passing on of the baton.’

After only a few metres they turned onto Hessische Strasse, moving towards the Charité Hospital and the morgue. Rath wondered what the veteran pathologist was getting at, but curbed his impatience and waited for Schwartz to make his point.

‘Anyway, Karthaus shows me this corpse, wants confirmation that the puncture channels match those I examined a few weeks back.’

‘Do they?’

‘Without question, but that isn’t why I wanted to see you.’ He came to a halt and looked Rath in the eye. ‘Inspector, there is no way on earth that corpse belongs to Benjamin Engel, even if a thousand witnesses say otherwise.’

Rath feigned surprise. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘Engel is a baptised Jew, am I right?’ Rath nodded. ‘But Jewish born and bred.’

‘Yes. He was baptised Catholic prior to his marriage.’

‘The man in there…’ Schwartz pointed in the direction of the morgue, ‘…is no Jew.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

‘He hasn’t been circumcised.’ Dr Schwartz looked at Rath triumphantly. ‘With all the stab wounds and burn scars, no one seemed to notice. He also has two older wounds that haven’t healed, to the buttocks and upper thigh.’

From Hannah, Rath thought. ‘What does Karthaus say?’

‘He was painfully embarrassed, but gave me to understand that none of it could appear in his report.’

‘I see.’

‘He’s afraid it will make the commissioner look foolish. Seems our Levetzow was a little too eager to stick his head above the parapet.’ Schwartz shook his head. ‘Karthaus cried his eyes out over his own helplessness. An affront when you think how brazenly he’s exploited the political situation himself.’

‘Some people are oblivious to the damage they cause.’ Rath remembered Böhm’s words. How risky it was to make a fool of the commissioner. ‘Why are you telling me all this?’ he asked. ‘Detective Gräf is leading the investigation.’

‘I can’t get involved officially, I’d be stabbing Karthaus in the back.’

‘You prefer to do your backstabbing unofficially?’

‘I know you’ll keep investigating.’ Schwartz hunched his shoulders. ‘You’ve never worried about being taken off a case. As far as you’re concerned, that’s just the chiefs telling you not to put in for overtime.’

‘You’ve seen right through me, Doctor!’

‘Böhm’s confided in me on more than one occasion how difficult you are to work with.’

‘He’s no picnic himself.’

‘Yet he has always spoken very highly of you.’

‘He has?’ It would be hard to find anyone who made a greater show of disdaining him than Wilhelm Böhm. ‘Böhm’s handed in his notice too,’ Rath said, as casually as possible.

‘Sabbatical, early retirement, resignation, that’s the fate of many a public official these days. Funny, Hitler has always spoken about lowering unemployment. I’d question whether ousting civil servants is the way to go about it…’

Reaching the morgue, the pathologist halted as if to enter one last time and show Rath his findings. Instead he sighed. ‘Only a few weeks ago. Göring was telling the world that so long as the Jewish community went about its affairs and proved itself to be loyal, no one had anything to fear. Idiot that I am, I believed him. He just wouldn’t tolerate Jews in positions of government, he said, that’s all.’ Schwartz pointed towards the dirty yellow brick building. ‘Does that look like a position of government? The Berlin morgue? So why, I ask you, am I no longer entitled to work there?’

Rath didn’t know how to respond and caught himself turning away. Damn it, he thought, horrified at himself, if things carry on like this the Nazis really will turn us into a nation of cynical, good-for-nothing cowards.

97

For the first time in weeks, the Alberich investigation played a lead role during A Division morning briefing. Since the discovery of the corpse, Homicide had renewed their interest in the case, and even Forensics had plenty to be getting on with, as Kronberg set out in his own, inimitable way.

Searching both sides of the Spree, they had struck lucky in an abandoned joinery workshop. The place had been broken into and traces of blood found in the sawdust. The blood group matched that of the deceased. The building had formerly been a cabinetmaker’s works and Kronberg emphasised that Benjamin Engel had been a furniture dealer before the war.

Rath was careful not to shake his head. CID officers just couldn’t stop looking for connections, even when there were none.

Kronberg suggested that Gräf investigate whether the bankrupt cabinetmaker had any links with Benjamin Engel’s furniture business, and Gennat nodded his approval. Could they no longer acknowledge a coincidence, or did it just seem that way to someone who knew the corpse had been falsely identified, but couldn’t say? The dead man’s foreskin proved the commissioner was wrong, and that the Alberich team had got sloppy. Rath was tempted to put the idea in Gräf’s head: Word on the street is your Jew isn’t even circumcised.

Once upon a time he could have exposed the error with a press release, but there was no way he could involve Weinert. Not only because reporters were no longer free to report, or because he had something to hide. The truth was that he was scared. Gereon Rath was scared of making a fool of the police commissioner.

As always when leading an investigation Gräf appeared slightly overwhelmed, but Gennat came to his aid. Without undermining his detective, Buddha thanked Kronberg and outlined the next steps. It was a skilful performance which flattered Gräf and made it seem as if the pair had discussed the matter prior to briefing.

Gennat’s intervention notwithstanding, Gräf cut a dash. The commissioner had praised him publicly, and even the senior officers strove to make a good impression. Promotion was possible again in the new Germany, but then so was being fired. Or, indeed, being fired at.

While Gräf basked in admiration, Rath returned to his office, consoling himself that the investigation was the biggest farce ever to have spawned overtime. How he longed to stand, like the boy in the Emperor’s New Clothes, and open everyone’s eyes. Instead he found himself responsible for the most feeble-minded task of all.

‘You were in Bonn recently, Inspector,’ Gennat had said. ‘See if you can establish what relationship existed between the cabinetmakers in Berlin and Engel’s furniture business in Bonn.’

Was he being ironic, or was this a serious request? Feeling Gennat return his gaze, he looked down at the piece of paper on which Gräf or Kronberg, or whoever it was, had written the name of the store. Ohligs Cabinetmakers

In his lonely office, the letters stirred unpleasant memories. He had asked Erika Voss to look into the bankruptcy, saying he would contact Bonn himself. A call he knew he would never make.

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.’

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 Gereon 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 meeting. 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.’

‘Barmen?’

‘You know, the suspension monorail. It’s called Wuppertal now.’

‘I know.’

Rath’s mind was awash with thoughts he couldn’t quite grasp. A flat in Elberfeld, the rumble of the suspension monorail outside the window, people sitting on board and looking inside the flat. The face of Friedrich Grimberg as he recounted his story.

‘Anyway,’ Gräf continued, ‘the Alberich file is closed. This morning was my last time in front of Gennat and the rest.’

Though relieved at no longer having to explain why their friendship had waned, a melancholy feeling rose when Rath remembered the years they had spent in this office, when things between them were good. Gräf’s departure meant the start of a new era here in the Castle too. Still, Homicide would be Homicide for as long as coffee and cake were served on the worn green of Gennat’s upholstered suite. Even without Gräf. Even without Böhm. Even without Charly.

‘The Politicals,’ Rath said. ‘I’d never have thought…’

‘Gereon, it’s not like it used to be. There are more opportunities now. We can really achieve something.’

‘In 1A? The only place police work could be less meaningful is Women’s CID.’

‘We’re helping to build a new Germany. Don’t you see? A country you can be proud of. A country worth living for.’

‘Worth dying for, too?’

‘Let’s not talk politics, Gereon. It never leads anywhere.’

‘Which is precisely why I wouldn’t want to work for your new colleagues. One week with Detective Zientek was enough.’

‘Each to their own.’ Gräf closed the cardboard box which he had by now filled.

‘Where are you going? Back to Bülowplatz, or are you staying in the Castle?’

‘The Castle is too small for the State Police. We’re moving into new offices. They’ve cleared the School of Applied Arts for us.’

‘The School of Applied Arts?’

‘On Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse.’ Gräf had stopped at the outer office. ‘What were you doing in the Dreieck last week?’

It seemed like Reinhold was a perfect fit for the Politicals. ‘I was in the neighbourhood,’ Rath said, ‘and I thought, why not pop in on Schorsch. I was in a bit of a rush, otherwise I might have come past.’

‘You were through the door as soon as I arrived. Who were you speaking to?’

‘Someone I know from before. I forget the name. It was just a quick beer.’ Rath looked at Gräf. ‘How about you? You seem to be out with your neighbour an awful lot these days.’

Gräf looked as if he might turn red, but he was no Andreas Lange. ‘If you’re not going to stop by…’ he said at length. ‘I have to drink with someone.’

Even if it’s a queer Nazi, Rath thought.

‘What would you have done,’ he asked his former colleague, in a final, weary attempt, ‘if the dead man from the Spree hadn’t been Engel?’

‘Thank God it was,’ Gräf said with a shrug, and heaved his box out the door.

101

They didn’t meet in one of the usual places by Alex, but in the Tietz department store restaurant.

‘A few weeks ago we’d have been threatened by the SA for setting foot in here,’ Rath said.

‘Everything’s back to normal,’ said Weinert. ‘You don’t seriously think Berliners will let their department stores be taken away, no matter how much the Nazis might rail against…’ Weinert broke off as the waiter approached.

‘My shout,’ Rath said.

‘Which means you want something from me,’ said Weinert.

‘What I really want is information.’

‘There’s a turn up for the books.’

‘What’s the latest on your article?’

‘What article?’

‘What article? The Alberich case.’

‘I see. I thought you were doing me a favour, when really it’s the other way round.’

‘Wasn’t it ever thus?’ The waiter arrived, and they ordered. ‘Anyway, I hope you can make something of the information I gave you.’

‘It isn’t as easy as all that, Gereon, not these days.’ Weinert lowered his voice. ‘Once upon a time an article like that might have forced the commissioner to resign. Now it creates life-threatening problems for its author.’

‘I don’t care about the commissioner if it creates problems for Achim von Roddeck.’

‘The commissioner is still going to look foolish. Even if I don’t have any evidence, just you as my source.’

‘You keep me out of it. I thought that was clear. We’re talking about confidential information!’

‘Then who do I credit as my source?’

‘What about “well-informed circles”?’

‘Believe me, Gereon, if your commissioner wants to know my source he’ll find out. A troop of SA auxiliaries will take me into custody and won’t stop until I tell them what they want to hear.’

The waiter came with the drinks, and they were silent for a time.

‘Give them Gräf,’ Rath said, when the waiter was out of earshot. ‘He was in the Dreieck that night.’

‘So were you. We were standing together at the bar.’

‘So what? How am I supposed to know anything? It’s far more likely that Gräf does. He was there at the beginning, when Böhm was still investigating. It’s more his case than mine.’

Weinert looked wary. ‘You’re quick to shop your colleagues.’

‘I want the truth to come out.’

‘Then you should vouch for it yourself.’

‘You still owe me one!’

‘That business with Charly and the pigeon shit? That’s done and dusted, or have you forgotten my article on the murdering Jewish captain? The one that got you re-assigned to the case in the first place? It isn’t my fault the commissioner took you off it again.’

‘That stuff about a wicked, murdering Jew was a pack of lies. Don’t you want to set things straight?’

‘You’ve some nerve, Gereon. First you tell me a pack of lies, then you blame me for believing it!’

‘I believed it myself then,’ Rath lied, ‘but things have changed, and it’s for us to set the record straight.’

‘It’s not that I don’t want to write it. It’s just that the story will die a death before the public get anywhere near it.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Hefner wants me to pin the blame on Isidor Weiss, which I could do, at a pinch, if Weiss hadn’t been out for almost a year. So, what’s my angle?’

The waiter served the food. Rath had chosen not to follow Weinert’s lead, and ordered rump steak with chips and a glass of white wine. Straight away he ordered another glass. Returning to his office three glasses of wine and forty-five minutes later, he found Erika Voss already seated behind her desk.

‘Someone to see you, Sir,’ she said, nodding to the side.

A man sat on the visitor’s chair in the outer office, head bowed and folding his hat. Rath couldn’t hide his surprise. ‘Ede!’ he said. ‘What are you doing in Berlin?’

‘A promise is a promise, Inspector.’

Erika Voss watched with curiosity as Rath guided Eduard Schürmann into his office and shut the door.

‘Nice view you’ve got here, Inspector,’ Ede said, looking out of the window.

‘The court building?’

Ede rummaged in his coat pocket. ‘You shouldn’t have said that stuff about the SA in my shop. I can understand a man being suspicious, but the SA… Inspector, that lot are no joke.’ He fished a crumpled note out of his pocket. ‘You can trust old Ede. No need for threats, or the SA and their auxiliary police.’ He unfolded the note and handed it to Rath. ‘Fifty marks! Here they are.’

Rath hadn’t taken Ede’s promise seriously, putting it down to the man’s chronic fear of the SA. Yet it was precisely this fear that had compelled the notorious pickpocket to visit Berlin Police Headquarters of his own accord. Rath examined the note. The watermark looked genuine.

‘What about interest?’ Rath asked. ‘This was months ago.’

Ede’s eyes opened wide. ‘Inspector, it’s a lot of money as it is.’

‘All right. It was good of you to stop by.’

‘Cologners have to stick together.’

‘Right.’ Rath stowed the money. ‘Just promise no relapses, even if you get an itch.’

‘Course, Inspector, course. You think a man like me acts the whiz of his own accord? These days your jack can be long gone and the fuzz still bring you in. They don’t need evidence anymore.’

Ede Schürmann was outraged. Once upon a time it had been tricky to move against a pickpocket. Experts like Ede would operate as part of a trio. The jostler distracted the victim by shoving or colliding into him, before, quick as a flash, the whiz worked his sleight of hand and passed the spoils to the jack, who carried them away. Even if the victim realised their wallet was missing straight away, nothing could be done. Neither the jostler nor the whiz would be carrying the stolen item, and the police would be forced to release them. These days the need for evidence was lost on the police, and the SA most of all.

Rath felt uneasy thinking about it and, for the second time that day, the suspension monorail flashed through his mind. Grimberg. Wosniak. Roddeck. Jostler, whiz, and jack. Before he could finish the thought, however, there was a knock and Erika Voss poked her head through the crack in the door.

‘Apologies for interrupting, Sir, but we have another visitor. Or rather, an addition.’

She opened the door to reveal Andreas Lange wearing an embarrassed smile. In his hand was a cardboard box identical to the one Gräf had filled that morning. Only, Lange’s was chock full with papers and other junk.

‘Lange!’

Andreas Lange had worked in Homicide before putting himself up for inspector. ‘Sorry, Sir. I thought someone would have told you.’

‘Someone did, after a fashion,’ Rath said. ‘Come in, Lange. My guest was just leaving.’

Ede took the hint. ‘If there’s anything else, I’ll be at the Hotel Alhambra.’

‘What was all that about, Sir?’ Lange asked after Ede had bowed backwards through the door.

‘An old acquaintance, from Cologne.’

So, this was his new partner. A good man. An ambitious man. More ambitious than Gräf. Hopefully not too ambitious. ‘Do you know what a whiz is, Lange?’

‘Should I?’

‘Not in Homicide.’ Rath pointed to Gräf’s old desk. ‘Welcome back to A Division. Word is you came to regret your political sojourn.’

‘Like you, Sir. Am I right?’ Lange tried to sound flippant but his eyes told a different story.

‘Just like me. No politics here. In this office we work unexplained deaths.’ He stretched out a hand. ‘Here’s to a successful partnership!’

Lange cleared his things into Gräf’s old desk while Rath returned to his pencil, and gazed out of the window. The greyness over the court building was slightly brighter. The sky still seemed leaden and immovable, but it wasn’t. It was moving, as it always had, and always would. Everything was in a state of flux. Everything, and suddenly Rath finished the thought he had started that morning.

The jostler, the whiz, the jack. You just had to know which one was which, then it was obvious…

102

The sky was almost cloudless, the weather ideal. Grimberg’s gaze wandered beyond man-made cliffs carved out of limestone to the narrow stacks of the Dornap ring oven. It was time to sound the warning horn. Most workers had already sought cover, but he could make out three stragglers including the shift supervisor.

How gratifying to see battle-hardened men flee, just as they had in the war, and the same man in control of them. Himself, Friedrich Grimberg.

Without him no one would have dared to bury the gold. Roddeck would have transported it behind the Siegfried Line next morning as Captain Engel had instructed. Grimberg despised the lieutenant as a pretty boy utterly unworthy of being his superior officer. In the years he had known him, never once had Achim von Roddeck proved to be what he claimed, neither soldier, officer, nor socialite. What he understood best was how to inhabit a role. He was an actor, and his latest persona of author was no different. It was scarcely credible that his so-called writings had struck gold.

It was a panicked Roddeck who had called him in Elberfeld nine months earlier and harangued him almost every day since, his noble heart in his mouth because a man had risen from the grave. He had received a letter from Benjamin Engel, and there was no doubting it was genuine. Engel, the captain whom the world and his wife thought was dead, hinted that he knew what they had done all those years ago. It had taken a lot of words to calm Roddeck; to make him see the letter as their final chance at the gold.

Grimberg looked again at the quarry. The danger zone was clear. He sounded the horn for a second time, and only then connected the ignition wires to the blasting machine. Misfires could be fatal, and in the course of his long career Friedrich Grimberg could honestly say he had never been responsible for one. Not even during the war.

It had almost physically pained him to read the word misfire in the official investigation notes, even if it was only one possible explanation for Captain Engel’s failure to return from his inspection rounds. British artillery fire, or a stray animal, a rat perhaps or a pigeon, were the others. Wilful destruction didn’t figure anywhere in the report. Even so, as many as half the unit suspected a ruse to get rid of an unpopular captain, including the men present at the gold strike, most of whom would die in action before the year was out.

Lieutenant von Roddeck had been hard on his troops in the remaining eighteen months of war. As Grimberg hammered home to his eternally dithering superior: the fewer men that survive, the more there will be for us. The scattered band of soldiers who, after years in jail, or in the service of some volunteer corps or other, had come together in the former Alberich territory to collect their spoils, had amounted to just five men. Of these five, only three remained. Roddeck, Wosniak and Grimberg himself.

He and Heinrich had lost touch following the abortive recovery mission, and God knows his friend had suffered in the intervening years. Having failed to find his fortune in Berlin, Heinrich had been forced to eke out his existence as a beggar and almost burned to death in a dilapidated old shack before deciding to return home.

At first Grimberg didn’t recognise the tramp on the suspension monorail, from whose face the other passengers turned away. When this poor man in the soldier’s coat, a painful reminder of Germany’s collective misfortune, staggered towards him, he assumed it was for money, but moments later they reunited under the wary gaze of their fellow passengers.

Heinrich found accommodation in Barmen, where he fared much better than in Berlin. Grimberg offered him the odd shift in the quarry, where working as a day labourer helped him keep his head above water. Though nothing permanent could come of it they would discuss old times, and the dreams which had vanished with the French gold. Then, out of nowhere, Achim von Roddeck had called and, kitted out with new clothes and spending money, Heinrich Wosniak set forth for the imperial capital once more.

With everything wired, Grimberg gazed for a final time at the solid limestone wall, pressed down the lever and began counting slowly backwards to the explosion. Some blasters put cotton wool in their ears, but not him. He wanted to hear and see everything. The moment it all came crashing down was the moment he spent his days working towards and that he loved. For the tiniest fraction of a second it looked as if the solid mass of rock face were about to topple forward in its immensity, only for it to crumble into the valley, leaving a trail of dust.

Grimberg sounded three short beeps for the all-clear, and watched the men emerging from the hut or from behind a dump truck, where they had gathered to watch. He pulled out the cable and wound it up. Paid by the cubic metre, he could finish as soon as he had packed.

He dragged the machine down the slope. From the quarry to the suspension monorail in Vohwinkel was about twenty minutes’ walk. He could be home in an hour, but had barely been able to stand living with Käthe since his dreams had risen from the ashes. Even less since they had diminished again. Nearing the hut he was met by his excitable assistant, Jüppchen. ‘Come quickly, boss. Telephone for you. Trunk call from Berlin.’

At last! When had he last taken a call from the capital? It must have been when Roddeck got himself worked up about this police inspector, thinking he was suspected of murder because he had been asked for his alibi.

Wosniak had furnished the Herr Lieutenant with the perfect alibi. As far as Grimberg recalled, the taciturn report, ‘the Huguenot is gone’, was the last sign of life he had from his faithful Heinrich, in a brief telephone call weeks earlier from Magdeburg train station. And so, when two police officers had informed him that Engel, the murdering Jew, had been found dead, and he need no longer be concerned for his safety, he wondered what might have happened. Roddeck, for his part, appeared to be avoiding him.

He set down the blasting machine, took the dusty receiver from Jüppchen’s hand, and casually announced himself. ‘Grimberg.’

‘Rath here. Detective Inspector Rath. You remember?’

There was no concealing his disappointment. ‘I remember. The dead homeless man.’

‘The dead homeless man who wasn’t Heinrich Wosniak. I wasn’t certain you’d been informed.’

‘It was in the paper.’ What did the man want from him? He wondered as Jüppchen left.

‘That’s just it, the whole thing is a little… delicate. I wouldn’t have called if you hadn’t made such a good impression when we spoke last time. Can I assume you’ll keep what I’m about to say between us?’

‘If that’s how it has to be.’

‘It concerns the reliability of your former lieutenant, Achim von Roddeck.’

‘I’m not sure I follow, Inspector.’

‘Then let me explain.’ The inspector cleared his throat. ‘The thing is… Herr Grimberg, it was Achim von Roddeck who mistakenly identified the corpse of a homeless man as Heinrich Wosniak.’

‘I’m aware of that.’

‘Of course, but now doubts have started to arise concerning the identity of a second dead man, likewise identified by Lieutenant Roddeck.’ The inspector paused as if embarrassed. ‘Perhaps you read about that as well. A few weeks ago we found a corpse in the Spree, to whom the murders of your war comrades can, beyond any doubt, be attributed.’

‘It was Captain Engel. Your colleagues in Elberfeld told me.’

‘Well, that’s just it. Whether the dead man is, in fact, Captain Engel… Herr Grimberg, forgive my indiscretion. As you know Captain Engel was a baptised Jew. Can you tell me if he was circumcised?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The dead man is not circumcised, hence the doubts I mentioned just now. It wouldn’t be the first time Roddeck had been mistaken.’

‘I don’t know if the captain was circumcised, Inspector. He was high brass and I was a staff sergeant. You think he ever stood under the shower with the likes of me?’

‘Shame, but perhaps you can still be of service.’

‘I can’t imagine how.’

‘Apart from Lieutenant Roddeck you are the only survivor from that time. The only man who knows Benjamin Engel. Could you identify him?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have time.’

‘No need for you to come here. I’ve sent you a few photos of the dead man. They’ll be arriving soon.’

‘I see.’

‘Take a look at the pictures and let me know.’

For a long time after the Berlin inspector hung up, Grimberg stood receiver in hand, staring out of the window. He had suspected something was amiss, that Roddeck was up to something. That he wasn’t playing with an open hand. So far only suspected, but now he knew.

103

It was raining heavily, and Roddeck had stowed his script under his jacket. He’d have liked to call the whole thing off, but Goebbels himself had heard him promise over supper at the minister’s own private apartment on Reichskanzlerplatz. He had been invited as the emerging star of the new Germany’s literary scene along with two student leaders who were not only readers of his work but had also spoken enthusiastically about their action against the ‘un-German spirit’. He couldn’t say whether it was the praise or the wine that inspired him, only that he had promptly pledged his support.

‘You, my dear Roddeck,’ Goebbels said, ‘are a shining example of what German literature can achieve when shorn of the ballast of its distorting Jewish influence. Now, shine!’

Aglow with wine, he had dazzled them with his promises, later publishing an essay which, thanks to the Student Association news service, was carried in several newspapers: German Literature in the Year Zero. It was his publisher, Dr Hildebrandt, who had done the lion’s share of the work, but it had been a great success, thrusting Roddeck’s name further into the limelight and ensuring that, already, Märzgefallene was being reprinted for the seventh time.

About tonight’s speech, also written by Dr Hildebrandt, he wasn’t so sure. It wasn’t that he was afraid of public speaking, quite the opposite. His problem was time, and an appointment he couldn’t afford to miss. It was why he had declined to take part in the torchlight procession which would carry the books from the student residence at Monbijou Palace via Karlstrasse towards the Reichstag, from there down Unter den Linden, and on to the university. No wonder it was taking so long.

He looked at his wristwatch. Gone half past ten, and where were they? People had been waiting here, by the Opera House, for hours. By now a few students had appeared, as well as the police and fire brigade, and the newsreel who made everything as bright as day with their lights, row upon row illuminating the pyre, the lectern draped in flags behind a bouquet of microphones, and the onlookers, the rain above transformed into glittering threads. The rest of the square was a sea of hats and heads, almost lost in darkness.

Despite the weather it felt almost like a public festival. Street hawkers peddled hot sausages and drinks, cigarettes and chocolate. Some were selling trench mirrors to bystanders, relics from the war used to look over the heads of those in front. Umbrella salesmen would have done a brisk trade too, but of these there was no sign.

When everyone was thoroughly soaked, the rain stopped between one moment and the next, as if someone had turned a giant tap to ‘off’. At last he could hear what he had been waiting for, the distant blare of brass instruments, and chants that echoed through the night. Deutschland erwache, Juda verrecke. Germany awake, Jew die.

He joined the crowd as it streamed towards Unter den Linden, approaching via the central promenade, escorted by mounted police. The mass of students reached back to the Brandenburger Tor, a swaying sea of torches and flags. The trucks with the forbidden books came rolling across the central promenade, normally reserved for pedestrians. Uniformed students stood on the load platforms.

Above flags and torches emerged a long pole, onto which a head appeared to have been skewered, a bust of Magnus Hirschfeld, the sex researcher, who advocated that homosexuality go unpunished. Few here would have anything against seeing the head of the Jew faggot impaled for real but, like so many of the cowards whose books were being burned, Hirschfeld hadn’t set foot in Germany for years. His filthy institute had been ransacked the previous week.

As the procession approached, firemen poured canisters of petrol on the soaking pyre.

When they reached the square – corps students in full regalia, others in the uniforms of the SA and SS – they marched in formation to the SA brass band. This was what he loved about this German revolution: so well organised, so disciplined. No other among history’s revolutions could match theirs.

He made his way over to Hippler and Gutjahr, the two student leaders at Goebbels’ dinner, and was reaching to shake hands when Fritz Hippler raised his arm in a wordless Hitler salute. Herbert Gutjahr promptly followed. Glossing over his faux-pas Roddeck returned the greeting. The student leaders took him between them and positioned themselves beside the lectern, where they could watch like generals in battle. Dressed in their SA uniforms they hardly resembled students, although they were no older than twenty. Some of the torchbearers were even younger. Marching past, they threw their torches on the pyre and, with a mighty woof, the petrol erupted in blue flames.

Sandwiched between his hosts, Roddeck no longer dared look at his watch, but knew it must be close to eleven. Time was running away.

As the fire and the heat grew, the crowd retreated and soon even the trucks had to reverse away. Students formed human chains to transport the books to the flames. So young and enthusiastic, the dynamism of the new Germany was vibrantly present. This was a youth movement and the thought made him feel young again.

His novel had appeared at exactly the right time. But for Grimberg’s encouragement he would have taken years to finish, but he had been spurred on by the prospect of unearthing the Alberich gold. The book was meant to serve as bait but, if it continued to sell in such numbers, he would have no need of the spoils. He was one of the heroes of the new Germany.

If he could just do something about the fear, but since Wosniak’s death he had been scared stiff. The letter only made things worse.

The flames reflected back from the windows of the Opera House and the Kommode, the former royal library which was now the university assembly hall. Shadows danced across the faces in the crowd: an unreal, ghostly effect. He let his gaze wander over them. People were here from all sections of society. All could be future readers of his novel. He hesitated. It couldn’t be, could it? but… A face he hadn’t seen in sixteen years. A captain’s uniform from the war. Was it really the man they had been trying to draw out for weeks? Whose initial letter had so terrified them. Whom they hadn’t heard from in almost a year and the arrival of a second letter.

He scoured the crowd. There were any number of uniforms. Mostly SA and SS, but some Stahlhelmers too. A few veterans wore their uniforms from the war, but where he thought he had seen the captain a woman now stood. Behind her the crowd would be lost in darkness but for the flames in the trench mirrors.

Feverish now, he had to be sure he wasn’t imagining things. Gutjahr whispered, ‘When the band has finished, I will approach the lectern and introduce you’, but all at once Roddeck knew for sure. A better look focused on the unmistakable profile, the captain’s hat, Benjamin Engel in the fiery light looking at him through his spectacle lenses. Benjamin Engel pinning all three speakers with his gaze.

Roddeck’s eyes closed for a fraction of a second, a single blink, and when he opened them his view was blocked by the human chain. He had lost him again, but there was no doubt. Engel was waiting. He must have read about his appearance at the book burning in a paper somewhere. Achim von Roddeck was a public figure, and it was no secret that he would be here. Was this the moment of revenge Engel had been waiting for? Had the letter been a means of allaying Roddeck’s doubts?

He turned to the two students and said hoarsely, ‘Gutjahr, Hippler, I’m afraid I must disappoint you. My throat has not improved as I’d hoped. If anything, it’s gotten worse.’ He pressed his script on Gutjahr. ‘Read my words for me, and pass my regards to the Students’ Association. Best wishes for your action, only…’ He pointed again to his throat. ‘Only… I won’t be delivering any speeches tonight.’

Gutjahr was about to say something but a look from Hippler told him to keep quiet.

‘I’m very sorry, gentlemen. I was too optimistic. I should never have come here against the express advice of my doctor.’ Unable to face another moment in the beam of the spotlights, he plunged into darkness.

104

The new hero of German literature stood between two SA striplings, no doubt planning a big entrance. The popinjay couldn’t have wished for better publicity.

Friedrich Grimberg wondered if the whole thing might be coincidence: the letter arriving a few days after the inspector’s telephone call, and a few days after the photos. Someone must have pushed it through the letterbox. The coincidence being what he thought he had seen the night before, but written off as imagination, Captain Engel on board the suspension monorail as it passed outside his window, his face strangely clean-shaven, almost picture-perfect.

Opening the envelope, he recognised the signature and knew the sighting had been real. The same handwriting as the previous year’s letter, written in the same style. Only, this letter wasn’t threatening or abusive. On the contrary.

Grimberg began reading, even though by now he could practically recite its lines by heart.

So, Engel was alive, but did not realise that he, Grimberg, had tried to kill him. Had planned to eliminate the last witnesses.

Now, having finally enticed Engel into the open, what choice did he have? Of course he had gone to Berlin. And of course he hadn’t told Roddeck, the traitor, who might be responsible for Wosniak’s death.

After taking a week’s holiday from the quarry he had told Käthe he had business to attend to. As he had a year ago when he and Wosniak met Roddeck to outline the plan which had turned Achim von Roddeck into a celebrated author. If everything worked out, he wouldn’t be returning to Elberfeld. Not to the quarry, not to Käthe, not to the wreckage of his former life. He was in his mid-forties with time to start afresh, and soon he would have money too. With the help of a trench mirror, he focused on the lectern. The paper had billed Roddeck as speaking on the revival of German literature, but there was no sign of him. The space between the two SA men was empty.

The younger of the two brownshirts approached the microphone. ‘German students! Our action is directed against the un-German spirit.’

His voice was on the verge of cracking, his R’s rolling like his eyes. No skilled orator, he was a youngster trying to pass himself off as a tribune… but, where was Roddeck?

‘Against class struggle and materialism, for a people’s community and idealist view of life,’ the Nazi student said, holding a pile of books aloft. ‘I consign the works of Karl Marx and Kautsky to the flames!’

He stepped from the lectern and threw the books onto the fire. The crowd looked on with no jeering, no applause, nothing. The next student, with more books under his arm, approached the microphone. ‘Against decadence and moral decay. For discipline and decency in family and state. I consign the works of Heinrich Mann, Ernst Glaeser and Erich Kästner to the flames.’

These were the fire incantations that had been billed in the paper, but where was Roddeck? What was happening? Why weren’t they sticking to the script? He felt uneasy. He had to tread carefully.

The incantations continued, and more books were cast into the flames. With the mention of the name Remarque came the first hints of applause. Remarque was one of Roddeck’s competitors, whose books would never again be sold in Germany. Grimberg didn’t feel envy. He was no longer under obligation to Roddeck but, still, had to tread carefully. Since learning that the corpse Roddeck had identified as Captain Engel was in fact Heinrich Wosniak, he refused to put anything past the man. Roddeck might be a coward, but you underestimated him at your peril. He could be cold-blooded when the occasion demanded.

105

Achim von Roddeck was sweating. Pushing his way through the crowd outside the Opera House, he worked his way towards Behrenstrasse and the Dresdner Bank. From the square he heard the crackle of flames and the chatter of students. Time and again he turned around, but there was no sign of the captain. He searched his coat pocket for his old service Luger, which he had carried since they’d stood down his police protection; the same gun he had used to silence the hysterical recruit Wegener, earning him the enduring respect of his men.

He gripped the gun in his pocket and released the safety catch. What few pedestrians he encountered behind the Opera House were heading in the other direction, towards the fire. His watch told him he was ahead of schedule, and perhaps that would give him an advantage.

Midnight, Engel had said, in the decommissioned branch of the Linden tunnel, directly beneath the square where the books were being burned. The access ramp had been filled when the square was repaved, and trams could only pass through the eastern branch, on the other side of the Opera House.

He could scarcely contain himself. What had Engel written in his letter? Time to get even. He didn’t say whether he meant the gold or some other debt, but that didn’t matter. Roddeck intended to get even in his own way, and finally put an end to the fear, but the worst thing in war was not being able to see your enemy. When you didn’t even know if he would attack. When all you knew was that he was there. He had felt this way for months, but now his enemy, Engel, was about to reveal himself.

Two pairs of parallel tracks issued from Französischer Strasse, and swept elegantly past the eastern side of the Opera House towards the access ramp down into the tunnel’s east branch. He had passed through several times on the number 12, but could he just walk inside? Signs forbade it, and there wasn’t much room between the track and tunnel wall. He descended into darkness.

There was no sign of any trams, but still he felt uneasy. Reaching the end of the ramp, he took a flashlight from his coat pocket. It was time to put an end to his fear of Engel’s revenge, of the truth. Having gone out on a limb with his lies, he had sold them to a believing world. Grimberg’s idea was, ‘If you’re going fishing, you need to bait the hook. A man like Engel… you have to appeal to his sense of honour.’

So Roddeck had added a chapter to his war memoirs, detailing an episode which had been shrouded in silence since March 1917, throwing mud at Engel while clearing everyone else, especially himself and Grimberg, who had wanted to kill the loathsome captain from the start, long before they had made their strike.

But Engel had let their appeal go unchallenged for weeks, even the murders they sought to pin on him. Grimberg had shown his faithful Heinrich what was to be done, and Wosniak’s first task was to simulate his own death so that he could slip into the role of Todesengel. When, at first, things hadn’t gone to plan Roddeck had been forced to take matters into his own hands and really spell it out. Almost at once, the press pounced on the story of the murdering captain, and soon the police had come to believe it, too. Excepting, perhaps, Inspector Rath, whose scepticism had been a nuisance from the start. Still, no one at Alex listened to a man like that these days.

The journalist, on the other hand, was another matter. His never-ending telephone calls… ‘How certain are you that Benjamin Engel is dead? Is the body you identified really that of your former captain?’ Sadly, Roddeck could not complain about him to the police commissioner, and he didn’t dare call the newspaper. Best to let sleeping dogs lie.

He could see a glimmer at the end of the tunnel, on the other side of Unter den Linden, where the electric trains emerged by the Singakademie and continued above ground. In the daytime he might have been able to switch off his torch, but now, a quarter of an hour before midnight, the only light came from the gas lamps.

To his left was a row of steel columns and, beyond, another tram line. He must have missed the turnout that led into the decommissioned, western branch of the tunnel, where Engel had suggested they meet. He shone his torch back in the direction he had come. The columns extended to a solid wall where the tracks diverged. To the left, arrow-straight, the eastern tunnel, the route he had taken; to the right and describing a westward curve, the western tunnel, leading to the Opera Square, directly beneath the fire.

Climbing over a low wall between two steel columns, he began tracing the redundant line back into the darkness, his flashlight beam dancing above rusty metal, puddles, and a scurrying rat. Noises from outside were strangely unreal down here, the echo merging them into one. Strains of the brass band accompanied by intermittent jeering and the sounds of traffic, his own footsteps and drops of water splashing out of sight had a dreamlike quality.

He listened. Was there something else?

Switching off his flashlight he was enveloped by impenetrable darkness, but… was that the quiet rhythm of footsteps? Heels on concrete, reinforced by the echo, a slow but continuous staccato growing ever louder? It wasn’t coming from the street. Someone was descending the northern ramp.

He felt panic rising, but remembered his Luger and felt more secure.

What did you expect? Of course he’s coming down. Be glad he wasn’t waiting for you in the dark.

When his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he made out a glimmer of light filtering into the tunnel from the turnout, giving the puddles and concrete floor a yellow shimmer.

The footsteps drew nearer until a shadow made the reflections on the puddles dance. Standing stock-still, pressed against the tunnel wall, he scarcely dared breathe. Taking the torch in his left hand he fetched the pistol from his coat pocket as the figure slowed. He heard a clicking sound, and a lighter flared up, illuminating the face of a man gazing fixedly on the ground as he drew closer. ‘You?’ he said, and started at the sound of his own voice echoing from the walls of the tunnel.

106

Berthold Weinert didn’t want to cover yet another torchlight procession, or listen to still more braying cries of Germany awake! More flags and dimwit speeches. To cap it all, they were burning books, among them some of his favourite authors. He didn’t want to be here, but Hefner had sent him.

Every few days the Nazis found some new pretext for mass marches and torchlight processions. Hitler’s birthday, the first of May, book-burning and, whatever it was, Der Tag and its roving reporter Weinert would be somewhere in the midst.

Against the un-German spirit. What did it mean? The books were written in German, not some strange, other language. He couldn’t help thinking of his own three-quarters-finished novel. Would any publisher take it on? ‘Asphalt-literature’ they would say, no one buys that sort of thing anymore.

His story detailed the exploits of an unsuccessful but optimistic screenplay writer who seeks his fortune in Berlin. Turning it into a tale of Nazi awakening was impossible, but he’d hardly spent any time on it now that his temporary role might become permanent. Perhaps he should just stick it back in its drawer.

The truth was, Weinert was afraid to jeopardise his prospects with a ‘politically dubious’ novel. Better to bide his time and wait for things to change. Finish it then. Nothing stayed the same forever. Besides, the longer a manuscript lay untouched the more it matured. At least he had ceased to rue his slow progress. Indeed, he was happy that his novel – working title, Fade-out – hadn’t been published. In today’s climate, his literary debut – the product of many lonely, torturous night-time hours – would be kindling for the fire.

He could hardly bear to look as the blaze devoured millions of hours of arduous, creative labour, and still more books careered towards the flames, their pages flapping like lost, dying birds. The students delved into the mounds of books at their feet, emerging with their hands full. Thousands of books were being destroyed and, the worst thing, by students who ought to appreciate them.

Moments before, Weinert thought he had seen Erich Kästner in the crowd, whose books were destined for the pyre. He must surely be mistaken. Kästner, a fully paid-up member of the ‘asphalt’ literati, must have got out by now. To Prague, like Weinert’s colleague Kleibert, or some other city where you could still say and write what you wanted.

Gereon had called him yesterday to say that Achim von Roddeck would be speaking, reminding him of the story that stood to make or completely destroy his fledgling career. But Roddeck hadn’t spoken. He had simply vanished, as if sensing that Weinert stood waiting to interrogate him once more.

The way the author had responded to his questions had confirmed that Gereon must be onto something. Achim von Roddeck knew it wasn’t Benjamin Engel who had been fished out of the Spree, so why had he identified the corpse?

Another, more decisive question was whether Gereon’s story would make it to print. By now it was largely written, even if it was based almost exclusively on supposition, but silence, too, could be eloquent. The silence, say, of the forensic pathologist, who had been as open to Weinert’s inquiries as a sealed coffin. The story might be largely written, but Hefner would never print it unless Weinert found an appropriate scapegoat. Wilhelm Böhm was out of favour, but he had relinquished the case before Roddeck came on the scene, and Weinert wasn’t about to do the dirty on Reinhold Gräf, not now he was part of the State Police. Chances were the story would go unpublished unless Roddeck could be duped into some ill-considered remark.

He was considering how long he should wait when the crowd broke out in thunderous applause. At first he thought Roddeck was taking to the podium after all, but then he spotted the sedan, and the Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda waving to the crowd like a crown prince.

Achim von Roddeck wouldn’t be speaking now. The only man allowed to address a crowd after Goebbels was Hitler himself. The minister, dressed in a raincoat and surrounded by adoring, brown-uniformed students, was in high spirits. He had a doctorate in German Studies, but delighted in burning books? Like so many things about the Nazis, Weinert struggled to understand, but he had to admit they knew how to exploit their power.

‘Fellow students!’ Goebbels began, emphasising that he, too, was an academic. ‘German men and women! The age of extreme Jewish intellectualism is at an end!’

107

Wearing a lost expression while waving his gun around, Achim von Roddeck looked overwhelmed. During the war, this had all too frequently been the case. Without Friedrich Grimberg to cajole or beat decisions out of him, his ineptitude would have been exposed in the first year. For the son of a military family it would have been a disgrace, but Grimberg had shielded him through four and a half miserable years of war. Roddeck switched on his flashlight and stammered, ‘Friedrich, what are you doing here?’

Couldn’t he work it out for himself? At least now Grimberg knew that Roddeck hadn’t been trying to swindle him. If anyone had, it was Engel, who had brought them to this place. ‘Are you going to shoot me?’ he asked.

Roddeck smiled nervously and lowered his weapon. ‘Sorry, I thought… you never know who might be down here.’

‘On the contrary. You know very well.’ Grimberg looked at his watch. ‘In five minutes, Benjamin Engel will be here. If he intends to meet us at all.’

‘He’ll be here,’ Roddeck said. ‘I saw him at the book-burning. He’s in the crowd somewhere.’

‘Perhaps he wanted us to gun each other down.’

‘My God, Friedrich, I’m not going to shoot you! We’re comrades.’

‘That didn’t stop you from killing Wegener.’

‘Wegener, a comrade? He’d have betrayed us in a flash.’

‘And Heinrich? Why did he have to die?’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Don’t play the innocent! You saw his corpse. It was clever of you to pass him off as Engel, but you should have told me. Now I can’t shake the feeling you mean to go behind my back, just like you went behind poor Heinrich’s back and stabbed him with his own dagger.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Because you want it all for yourself. You’ve tasted blood. Of the original fifteen, only two remain. You and me.’

‘I didn’t kill Wosniak! That was Engel.’

‘Why should I believe you, and why didn’t you tell me straight away?’

‘I’m sorry, Friedrich, but right now… the book’s just come out, and you wouldn’t believe how draining it’s all been.’

‘You’re so drained you have to pretend not to be there when an old comrade calls.’

Roddeck smiled his uncertain, false smile. ‘We’re both here, so why don’t we talk now?’

‘First we need to work out what to do with Engel. When he appears in…’ He looked at his watch. ‘…three minutes’ time. Any thoughts?’

Roddeck shrugged. ‘I thought I’d do the same with him as… with you.’

Grimberg saw the flash and felt himself swept backwards off his feet, heard the deafening bang, amplified a hundred times and accompanied by an echo louder than any of the explosions he had triggered and with a stronger shock wave. It was stronger even than the one from the trench all those years ago, which had likewise knocked him off his feet. Back then he had landed on soft, muddy ground, but now he found himself lying on his back on hard concrete, in a cold puddle, legs straddling the tram rails. He felt no pain, registering only how badly he was struggling for air. Try as he might, he couldn’t get enough oxygen in his lungs.

For a moment he thought there had been a stray explosion, but then saw Achim von Roddeck above him, a smoking Luger in his hand. He wanted to say something but all that came from his lungs was a torrent of blood.

Roddeck wasn’t smiling anymore. ‘Something on your mind, Grimberg? Save your breath.’

Friedrich Grimberg wanted to speak but couldn’t. Achim von Roddeck raised his pistol and he gazed into the dark barrel. There was another flash, then everything went black.

108

Roddeck had hated the man from his first posting to the front, almost twenty years ago, when Staff Sergeant Friedrich Grimberg saw him piss his pants in a shell crater. Another barrage began and he panicked. At first he hadn’t noticed anything. Only when the shooting ended did he feel the wetness between his legs, along with a bottomless shame.

Grimberg and he crawled across the muddy ground and returned to camp looking like a pair of pigs. They had no choice but to clean their uniforms, and no one else noticed, but from that day Grimberg, two ranks his junior, had him over a barrel, later even managing to wangle his best friend Heinrich Wosniak a job as Roddeck’s orderly. Roddeck had caught himself marvelling at Grimberg’s vigour, growing ever more dependent on the man, and hating himself for it at the same time, and there was no respite after March 1917, thanks to the secret that bound them and many others.

Most were killed before the conflict ended, Grimberg’s idea to send them on a series of suicide missions. Only Meifert and Wibeau had survived, and Wosniak, of course, but he was untouchable and they planned to share the gold with him. The others would be eliminated as soon as it was recovered.

The gold! When in 1924 they returned from France empty-handed, Roddeck had truly believed it was cursed. Grimberg had laughed, but he wasn’t laughing now. He would never again be dependent on Grimberg or his sinister friend, Wosniak. If his ‘faithful Heinrich’ hadn’t killed those two French children in cold blood, Wegener wouldn’t have lost his nerve and Roddeck wouldn’t have shot him. Or Grimberg. They would never humiliate him again.

Had it really been Engel’s intention that they kill each other? Well, with Grimberg down the next on the list would be Benjamin Engel himself. Perhaps Grimberg was right, and Engel wouldn’t show. Even so he remained watchful, listening for sounds from the tunnel entrance. The captain wouldn’t expect trouble, assuming the gold held the importance it always had, but he would be mistaken. Grimberg had wanted the gold, yes, as Roddeck had until a few weeks ago, but with his novel’s growing popularity it had become less important. A place in the new Germany beckoned, and money couldn’t buy it. The new Reich was waiting for his voice, his work, and no way was he going to risk that for something as base as French gold.

‘Hands in the air!’

A voice he hadn’t heard in sixteen years came from behind him. He turned, and from the darkness of the decommissioned tunnel a man carrying a pistol stepped into the light. Not a world-war pistol, but a modern Walther PP. He had been here the whole time, and wore a captain’s uniform which couldn’t be the one he’d been buried in. His face was divided in two. One half was doll-like somehow, too perfect, while the other was covered in scars. Both, unmistakably, had the features of Benjamin Engel.

He went weak at the knees, felt panic rising, just like in the crater where his dreams of a noble war, and a return home as an admired and decorated military hero, had been shattered. Was he going to die here, in this hole?

‘Hands in the air!’ Engel barked.

Slowly Achim von Roddeck raised his hands, Luger in the right, flashlight in the left.

109

Rath’s thinking had allowed for a corpse, so he felt no remorse. Grimberg killing Roddeck would have thrown a spanner in the works, but it had happened the other way around. Achim von Roddeck had murdered his old comrade just as ruthlessly as he had gunned down Wegener. It was fear that drove him, plain and simple, the same fear now showing in his eyes.

Achim von Roddeck was petrified, facing a Walther PP and an army captain apparently risen from the dead. ‘It’s not what you think, Sir. I had nothing to do with the attempt on your life.’ He sounded as if he were about to cry. ‘It was Grimberg’s idea, all of it. He hated you from the start.’

Rath would have liked to see Roddeck squirm for longer but that would be asking too much of his accomplice. Before he could break cover, darkness descended. Roddeck must have switched off his flashlight. There was a muzzle flash and a shot, the sound of running feet. He didn’t know which man had fired, but it didn’t matter. He had to move and set off at pace.

‘Don’t shoot, Engel,’ he shouted, almost tripping over Grimberg’s body. He had to keep further to the left, away from the wall. ‘Stay where you are, Roddeck. CID! There’s no escape.’

There was another flash. Roddeck fired two rounds, missing both times. He couldn’t be far away. A silhouette appeared in the dim light at the end of the tunnel. Now or never!

Accelerating, Rath made a full-length dive, grabbing Roddeck’s ankles and taking him to ground. Roddeck’s head crashed against a tram rail where he lay dazed. Rath snatched away his pistol, pulled his hands behind his back and cuffed him. The flashlight must have slipped out of Roddeck’s hand as he fell. Rath found it in a puddle and switched it on.

Roddeck looked up at him. ‘You?’ he said.

Rath pulled him up and pushed him back inside the decommissioned tunnel. ‘Where’s Engel? I hope for your sake he isn’t injured.’

They walked in silence back to Grimberg’s corpse. There was no sign of the captain. ‘I’d have settled for a confession, but now you’ve shown what you’re capable of, things should be a lot easier.’

‘I can’t imagine this operation was approved by the commissioner.’ Roddeck’s voice was steady again, almost as arrogant as before.

‘Of course not. You think the commissioner’s capable of blackmail?’

‘What are you up to, Rath? Are you threatening me?’

‘I want to make you an offer. That’s what blackmail is, after all, an exchange.’

‘What do you have?’

‘Your freedom. I’ll let you go, and no one will ever know who shot Friedrich Grimberg. As far as the other murders are concerned…’

‘You can’t prove a thing. I’ve nothing to do with them.’

‘Of course you have. Wosniak might have done the dirty work, but you pulled the strings. Still, let’s not quibble over details. You killed Grimberg, and that I can prove.’

‘You lured me into a trap with the help of Captain Engel, a man subject to a nationwide murder hunt, knowing it might end in death. Perhaps I should be the one offering you an exchange, Inspector. Aren’t you concerned for your career?’

‘Not as much as you ought to be concerned for your life and reputation. Both of which will go on the scaffold.’

Roddeck fell silent, a wretched figure with bloody forehead, tangled hair and water-stained raincoat.

‘Engel came to me in confidence and told me the whole sorry tale,’ Rath lied.

‘Who’s going to believe a Jew? Or you, for that matter.’

‘But they’ll believe you.’

He seized Roddeck by the arm and led him further along the tunnel until the curve became a straight. They were now standing beneath Unter den Linden, looking at a box on the wall. On the front was a large rotary control and a jet-black cassette in the form of a sideways figure-of-eight. A cable extended up the tunnel wall and along the ceiling towards the exit, almost reaching back to where Friedrich Grimberg’s corpse lay. There, fixed to an old, out-of-service tunnel lamp, was a microphone.

The device whirred quietly. Rath switched it off.

‘A friend of mine is a film producer,’ he said. ‘It’s a Klangfilm camera, model X, a reportage camera for portable use.’

‘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 friendly 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.

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.

‘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.

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.

‘He isn’t my Führer. It’s bad enough he has to be my Reich Chancellor,’ Charly said. She went to the radio and turned it off. Rath hadn’t seen her this angry in a long time.

‘Quite right,’ Engelbert Rath said. ‘We may have no choice but to accept the man as Chancellor, but going along with this Nazi nonsense and calling him Führer… Never!’ He raised his glass and drank.

Rath had never heard his father speak so bluntly about politics. All the better, then, that he was on Charly’s side.

‘All I wanted was to listen to the radio,’ Luise Ritter grumbled.

‘All right, mother. I think that’s enough champagne.’

Erika Rath tried to get conversation around the table going again. ‘It’s not that we don’t own a radio, but we don’t listen to that sort of thing. There’s far too much politics these days.’

‘There can’t be enough politics as far as I’m concerned,’ Charly’s mother responded. ‘Particularly if it gets Germany back on its feet.’

‘That’s just it, though, Frau Ritter,’ Engelbert Rath said. ‘Will it? Those running politics today are not politicians, and they have hounded our most capable men out of office!’

‘Meaning who, exactly? Your Papist party colleagues? What have you Catholics ever done for us?’ Luise Ritter stood up. Suddenly she became the militant Protestant Rath had experienced when, on a previous occasion, discussion had turned to his Church. ‘Making pacts with the Reds, ushering the Social Democrats into power. Your Erzberger was the worst of all the November criminals!’

‘Erzberger!’ Now Engelbert Rath flew off the handle. ‘The man died for his beliefs! Do you seriously believe he gave his signature to the armistice willingly. With those conditions attached. We had no choice!’

‘Ha!’ Luise Ritter said. ‘Had I known my daughter was marrying into a family like this! Never, my child, would I have allowed…’

‘Mother! That’s enough! This is my wedding, and I refuse to have it spoiled by you!’

Charly was seething. Any more of this and she’d be throwing her mother out of the window. Which perhaps wasn’t the worst idea.

Before things could get that far, however, Paul rose to his feet, positioned himself behind Charly and grinned a grin that screamed ‘up to no good’.

‘You know what’s customary in the Rhineland?’ he said.

‘What?’ Luise Ritter asked.

‘Kidnapping the bride.’

With that he grabbed Charly, threw her over his shoulder and was out the door.

The quarrelling ceased and everyone looked towards Rath as if expecting an explanation. He hunched his shoulders. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘but in the Rhineland it’s also customary for the groom to recover his bride.’

He set down his glass and rose to his feet. Kirie’s tail wagged a greeting as he stepped into the corridor, but he left her where she was, threw on his coat, and went on his way.

‘Wait,’ came the cry from the stairwell.

He came to a halt and turned around. Greta had followed him. Greta, the cold, unknowable blonde who had always treated him like dirt. What did she want? Charly’s friend was smiling at him. Had he ever seen her smile before? By God, but it suited her.

‘Mind if I join?’ she asked. ‘Bride-hunting’s one of my specialties.’

111

Grown-ups were stupid. Each in their own way, but stupid all the same. It didn’t matter if they were beggars in the Crow’s Nest, nurses in Dalldorf, or members of polite society squabbling like tinkers because some man on the radio said something stupid about politics. Grown-ups were always fighting over politics.

She had set down the bottle and cooler and taken refuge inside the kitchen. The only other person there was Lina, the fat maid, who was busy brewing another pot of coffee. Leave the rest to their squabbling.

‘What’s going on in there?’ Lina asked.

Hannah shrugged eloquently. She heard doors slamming. Once. Pause. Twice. Suddenly it was quiet.

After a second pause, the kitchen door opened and Fritze entered looking bashful. ‘Hannah… Hannelore, are you coming? I think our guests are leaving.’

She followed him into the hall. Moments ago the guests had been at each other’s throats, now it was all poisonous glances. Only the three parents were left. No sign of Charly, Gereon or their friends. She shot Fritze a questioning look.

‘My coat please, Fräulein,’ said the woman who had started all the trouble.

Hannah took the heavy coat from the stand and held it while the woman slipped it on. ‘Thank you,’ she said, leaving the apartment without another word.

‘I think we’ll be heading back to our hotel now too?’ said the man with the white moustache. ‘Any idea where the young people might have gone, lad?’

Fritze grabbed the gentleman’s overcoat. ‘No idea. Kidnapping the bride? First I’ve heard of it.’

‘Better Herr Wittkamp gets it out of his system before Saturday,’ the woman said. She turned to Hannah. ‘Please let my son know we’ll be staying at the Savoy. He can give us a ring once he’s found his bride-to-… his wife.’

Hannah curtseyed and, with that, the last of the grown-ups had gone. She looked at Fritze. He was grinning.

‘Good thing it’s over,’ he said, pulling at the collar of his elegant suit. ‘I’ll be glad to get out of these clothes. How about you? Fancy slipping into something more comfortable?’

The black dress itched under her arms and, with the frilly apron and white bonnet perched on top of her dyed-blonde hair, she felt as if she were in fancy dress. Which, in a way, she was.

Kirie wagged her tail expectantly. ‘She needs to be walked,’ said Fritze.

‘Now?’

‘A few weeks ago we were out in weather like this all the time!’

‘All right then.’

Five minutes later she was in the clothes they had given her in Freienwalde, the red-white spotted dress, red shoes, woollen stockings, warm coat and beret, while Fritze sat at the table, also in his coat, eating a piece of cake. Kirie waited on her lead, ready for action. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

‘Right you are, Hannelore, and don’t forget your umbrella.’

She grimaced in response. Hannelore sounded so staid, but the men in Freienwalde had said it was better to choose a name similar to the old one. If need be you could mask a slip of the tongue. In her case: an identical first syllable and the same initials.

H.S. Hannah Singer. Hannelore Schneider. It might sound similar, but it was also completely different.

It wasn’t such a bad idea to bring the umbrella. It was bucketing down as they emerged onto Carmerstrasse. May at its worst. On Steinplatz they waited until Kirie had performed her business. ‘I think I know where they are,’ Fritze said.

‘Who?’

‘All of them.’ He pulled Kirie away from a puddle. ‘Aunt Charly has been talking about Hanne Sobek for days, how she hopes the wedding guests will be gone in time.’

‘Hanne who?’

‘Do you live on the moon or something? Hanne who do you think? Hanne Sobek, half-back for Hertha. German champions in ’30 and ’33.’

‘Hertha, right. Football. They’re playing today?’

‘Sobek’s playing today, but not for Hertha. For a German invitational eleven against Glasgow Rangers.’

‘Glasgow what?’

‘You really don’t know much about football, do you?’

‘Well, you know how it is. Back in Dalldorf they were always packing us off to the opera, the theatre, Lunapark… there just wasn’t time for football.’ She nudged him in the side. ‘I’ve never been to a stadium.’

‘Me neither.’

‘Would you like to?’

‘Ask a silly question.’

‘Where are they playing?’

‘The Poststadion.’

‘In Moabit, right?’ She produced a twenty-mark note from her pocket. ‘How about it? It’s on me.’

She still had to get used to the fact that she had money. Compensation for what Huckebein and the rest had done to her, Charly said.

They left Kirie with the porter in Carmerstrasse. Fritze said he enjoyed it; the man even kept a dog bowl in his lodge. On Steinplatz they waved a taxi over. The driver looked at them suspiciously, but seeing Hannah’s twenty started the meter and drove off to arrive in good time for kick-off. The stadium was gradually filling, though puddles had formed on the playing surface. Under the large advertisement for Trumpf chocolate above the back straight, Hannah spotted a white woman’s hat. The four of them, as if they had arranged to meet in advance. She gave Fritze a nudge and pointed. The boy grinned. ‘See, told you so!’

When they made their way across Charly looked surprised. ‘You two?’

‘The others have gone,’ Fritze said. ‘No way we were bringing them.’

‘I’m just glad they didn’t kill each other,’ Charly said. ‘It’s much better like this. Finally, we can celebrate getting married in our own way!’ She sent the two men off to buy sausages and mustard while the teams were warming up.

‘That’s Sobeck there,’ Fritze said, pointing to a player in black-and-white. The men returned as the referee sounded his whistle.

112

The landscape held a strange fascination for Rath. He parked the black sedan and got out, looking across a thriving green expanse towards the horizon. It was still over twenty kilometres to Cambrai, but this was where it started: a wide strip, extending further than the eye could see, on which there were no trees and scarcely any houses. Once a lowland plain and flat, undulating coastland, it was now perforated by trenches and hollows of various sizes, the lunar landscape left by German and British artillery fifteen and more years ago. Nature had, by and large, reclaimed its territory. Pea-green grass covered the pock-marked countryside like a furry down, between bushes and young birch trees stretching their slender trunks towards the skies.

He reached for Charly’s hand. She looked enchanting in the light summer dress she had bought in Paris. Following a path, they strolled across the pitted terrain like honeymooners exploring the Lüneburg Heath, coming upon the remains of an old trench, with wooden beams jutting out of the earth, moss-covered like tree stumps. Rath looked inside and spotted an abandoned spade.

‘Do you think it’s German or French?’ Charly asked.

‘German probably. It’s what we used to dig all the trenches here.’

Charly nodded pensively. ‘And to kill one another.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘They were supposed to go after each other with their bayonets, but these quickly proved useless in the context of trench warfare. A spade was easier to handle. You didn’t have to pull it back out of your enemy once you’d stabbed him, you could just keep on fighting. Striking your opponent between the shoulder and neck was most effective. A sharpened spade was more than capable of decapitating someone, and if you missed the head you caught the artery.’

Rath was horrified. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘Remarque.’

‘Remarque? That’s propaganda, isn’t it? Roddeck never mentioned anything like that in his novel.’

‘First, Roddeck is a liar. Second, as a lieutenant he wouldn’t have much cause to defend himself in hand-to-hand combat.’

‘Perhaps he just chose not to write about it.’

‘Well, Remarque did, but no one in Germany will read him.’

‘If that’s the sort of stuff he writes, maybe it’s better that way.’ He took her hand and they strolled on. Gazing into the spring landscape he tried to dispel the terrible images she had planted in his mind.

By now they had four carefree days in Paris behind them. The church wedding as well as the party afterwards had gone without a hitch. No rows, no political discussions, and no bridal kidnappings. Without Greta’s help that day, Rath would never have known where Paul and Charly had gone. Instinctively she had guided him to the Poststadion, where they saw the runaways getting out of a taxi. Football, of course. Even Fritze understood that Charly wanted to watch the game. As usual, Gereon Rath had been the last to know. It had turned into a lovely evening, even if the German eleven, having competed well enough to take a first-half lead, had been trounced 5-1 by the Scots.

Like the civil ceremony, the reception that followed the church wedding in St Norbert’s (a no-frills affair thanks to Pastor Warszawski) saw the newlyweds make an early departure, although on this occasion it was planned. At Charly’s request they celebrated in the Tiergarten, in the Charlottenhof restaurant, and the two witnesses, Paul and Greta, accompanied them to Bahnhof Zoo. They spent their wedding night in a sleeper cabin belonging to the Compagnie Internationale des Wagon-Lits, trundling across the Rhine to alight from the Northern Express on Sunday afternoon in Paris Gare du Nord, a city devoid of swastikas.

Only in Paris did Rath realise how much Berlin had changed. Savouring their time, they were almost able to forget everything that had happened in Germany. Then, without having particularly discussed it, they hired a car from a garage near the Canal Saint-Martin, a pitch-black Citroën Rosalie that gleamed like a huge insect in the daylight, and took to the road.

It was about three hours before the landscape between Amiens and Cambrai changed, and Rath started seeing familiar-looking village names. Then at some point, the sign: Neuville 3km. He parked. They got out.

Now, strolling across this war-marked landscape, they sought to gain their bearings. The descriptions from Roddeck’s novel were out of date, but, all of a sudden, in the midst of this scarcely populated terrain, far from the nearest village, they realised where they were. The stone was visible from afar, though the forest Roddeck had written about must have fallen in the final two years of the war. Here, too, they found only furry down, a few bushes, young birch. It would be decades before nature reclaimed its territory, but it would. In the end, nature always won.

The stone, a huge erratic boulder, would have withstood any artillery fire in history and was the perfect marker for a hoard of gold. Silently they scouted the terrain. Rath couldn’t help thinking about what had happened here sixteen years before, how many versions there were, and how all the witnesses but one were now dead.

Back in the car they drove to Neuville. The village was smaller than he imagined from Roddeck’s description. The church that had been destroyed by British artillery fire had been rebuilt, and houses again stood on top of the old cellars and foundation walls. There wasn’t a single pre-war building that hadn’t been at least partly repaired, or, in some instances, completely restored. This place, truly, had been made good, just as nature all around the village stood in defiance to the ravages of war. They saw many fertile fields, even the odd fruit tree.

The village school was housed in a new building. Rath parked outside, suspecting it had been built on the foundations of its predecessor, in which Roddeck’s unit had been billeted. The lieutenant himself had stayed in a bank director’s villa on the edge of the village. Engel, contrary to the novel’s claims, had taken up quarters with his driver in a little house next to the school.

There was no longer any trace of the building Thelen had described. Only the cellar remained, spilling over with debris and anything else that couldn’t be used for rebuilding. Signs warned against entering the site, but Rath climbed down anyway. His French had always been lousy.

Charly looked around anxiously, but it was lunch time and there wasn’t a soul to be seen save one or two curious faces at their windows. No one took exception to a stranger descending into the cellar and working his way through the rubble. The Citroën was brand new and had Paris plates. Possibly some official from the capital was at work.

Rath tried to imagine how the house might have looked prior to its destruction, when stairs would have led down to the cellar. Then he saw the half-landing protruding from a mound of bricks. If this was the remains of the old staircase then… yes… here was the charred beam!

Thelen’s description: a brick under the cellar stairs, that’s where he stowed everything before we set off on our rounds.

Rath pulled the beam aside and cleared more debris, until he could access the brickwork under the stairs. He jolted each brick until, at last, one yielded. Pulling it out he discovered a hollow space and reached inside, thinking it had all been in vain as he grasped something cool, hard, metallic.

Removing the tin can from its hiding place he opened it, finding an unfinished, handwritten letter and a dark notebook like those he had seen weeks before in a villa on the banks of the Rhine.

He heard footsteps and started, and saw Charly’s quizzical face. She had overcome her reluctance to ignore the No Trespass signs. He showed her his find, she opened the book, and together they leafed through to the final page, the final entry.