Babylon Berlin (37 page)

‘Do you think you’ll see the Countess again?’

Tretschkov shrugged his shoulders, a picture of misery. ‘I hope so,’ he said, ‘but I fear the opposite.’

‘Aside from you, has anyone else been in the room these last four weeks?’

‘Who?’

‘The Countess herself? Kardakov? Stalin’s spies? You just said she was afraid, and you told me Stalin was after her.’

‘That’s just a hunch…’

Rath realised he was losing his patience, but pulled himself together. ‘Did you notice anything?’ he asked calmly. ‘Did the room ever look different to how you left it? Like someone had been rummaging around?’

‘How did you know? I cleared the whole mess up. Almost nothing was where it should’ve been.’

‘When was this?’

‘Maybe a week after she disappeared.’

‘You said just now that suspecting Countess Sorokina of murder was absurd. Does the same apply to Kardakov?’

‘Him?’ Tretschkov’s voice was full of disdain. ‘He’d do anything for his political ideas. Kill anyone who stood in the way of his ever so just cause. Including himself!’

‘Could he have the Countess on his conscience?’

‘You mean…’

‘I don’t mean anything for the time being, but Kardakov has disappeared. Do you think it’s possible?’

Tretschkov’s face told Rath that he had voiced the musician’s worst fears. He stood up. It was time to head back to the Castle.

‘Very well, Herr Tretschkov, but there’s one final thing I must ask you. What was it you found in the coat?’

The musician went to the shelf that Tchaikovsky was guarding, returning with a music notebook. It didn’t look like jazz. The musician exited the room once more, returning with a knife.

‘I play classical too,’ he said when he realised that Rath was studying the music. It sounded almost apologetic. ‘You earn more in this city with dance music.’ He cut open the thick pasteboard. A thin, white envelope fell out and landed next to Tretschkov’s teacup.

The musician passed it to the inspector.

‘I haven’t opened it yet,’ he said. ‘I haven’t dared.’

22

Bülowplatz was still one of the shabbiest parts of the city. All it had in abundance was space. A wicked wind blew across the enormous, bare expanse, the only resistance provided by the people’s theatre, whose unadorned structure stood like a steamer stranded in the desert. Twenty years ago now they tore down the narrow, old streets of the Barn Quarter, but still the new buildings hadn’t materialised. The triangle surrounding the people’s theatre was largely formed by construction hoardings and shacks; little wooden huts selling cigarettes, beer and soda; and a hairdresser offering ladies and gentlemen the latest Parisian styles at knock-down prices. The desert was testimony to the failed plans of ambitious city-planners, although they had succeeded in creating space, in cutting a swathe through the winding crush of the Barn Quarter.

An old newspaper blew past Wilhelm Böhm as he entered the square. It was a wretched area. No wonder the communists had their headquarters here, he thought. Karl-Liebknecht-Haus resembled a political advertisement pillar, so heavily was its façade plastered with slogans and portraits of Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht.

In front of the house an abandoned lectern was being taken down amongst discarded sandwich papers and empty beer bottles, the remains of a rally. The communists weren’t exactly a tidy lot.

Two cops were on guard duty in front of the shack.
Cigarettes at cost
price
proclaimed a faded red advertisement above their heads, its colour starting to peel. Two rusty enamel boards advertised
Engelhardt
Biere
and
Engelhardt Special Hell
. The guards in front of the entrance looked uneasy. This was not a good place for men in police shakos.

Böhm looked around as he reached the shack. The murder wagon still hadn’t arrived. He knew he’d be quicker on foot; he should have made that bet with Gräf after all. The construction sites on Alex were currently the worst traffic hazard in the whole city. Even for a police car.

‘Afternoon,’ Böhm snapped at the cops and showed his badge. ‘You haven’t touched anything, I hope.’

‘No, sir! Crime scene exactly as found.’

‘Who discovered him then?’

The older officer shrugged. ‘No idea. Someone phoned in anonymously. Probably a bum surprised to find someone in his bed. Or his toilet.’

‘A bum who calls the cops? Because the emergency number’s free? Perhaps you’re right. You came straightaway?’

‘Depends what you mean by straightaway. We’ve got other things to do, you know.’

‘Wait for the end of the rally, did you?’

Since the events of May, uniform was avoiding the communists. The officer grew surly.

‘You here to give us grief or to solve a murder inquiry?’

Inside the shack was dark; a strong smell of urine hung in the hair, daylight penetrating only in thin strips. Böhm switched on his flashlight. The corpse was lying against the wall, head forward. Above average height, thin, blond hair. He squatted to look at the face but could scarcely make anything out. There, where the nose had been, was a gaping, bloody wound. The blood had run down the man’s collar and coloured his shirt red.

Outside, he heard the wagon arrive and the voice of the cop: ‘The DCI’s already at the crime scene.’

Gräf appeared in the door, camera over his shoulder.

‘Let’s hope he’s got his papers on him, eh, sir?’

‘Your job is to shoot photos, not wisecracks. We can check what’s in his coat after.’

For a split second the darkness was illuminated by the flash.

‘Everything’s in the can,’ Gräf said when he had finished. ‘Won’t be enough for a decent profile shot, though.’

That wasn’t necessary either, since the dead man had proof of identity in his pocket. Straightaway Böhm knew that this would be a red letter case; that he could assign the
Möckern Bridge
file to the wet fish. The DCI looked at the passport photo, the serious young face staring back at him, and breathed heavily.

In his hands, he was holding a Prussian police ID.

The letter that Tretschkov had given him was a disappointment. So far, Rath had only managed to suss one thing out, that it wasn’t a letter at all. The envelope contained a single, thin sheet of paper, home to a muddle of letters that he had spent the entire evening brooding over, without making any headway. At least there weren’t any Cyrillic letters – though it wasn’t any more intelligible for that. Everything pointed to the fact that it was some sort of encoded message, but Rath couldn’t even begin to figure out what the cipher might be. There wasn’t a single clue, nothing that made any sense, just a series of different-sized letters, drawn – yes, the letters appeared to have been drawn, rather than written – at varying intervals, either side by side or one below the other.

He had fallen asleep over the paper, only to wake up in the middle of the night, blinking into the light that still burned in his room. The whole right side of his head was in pain from the hard table surface. He had given his face a quick wash and hauled himself off to bed. Just before he fell asleep, he realised that he had forgotten to call Charly again. It was also his first thought on waking.

This morning he had tried a few times from his office, once his team were out and about and he was alone again, though of course no-one had picked up. Greta was probably at work, and Charly must have been sitting in some lecture theatre, boning up on articles. Whatever. She’d be back at the Castle tomorrow.

He would address her formally.

The telephone rang. Rath was surprised to hear the voice of Wilhelm Böhm rasping down the receiver.

‘You need to come to Bülowplatz,’ he said, ‘I’m here with one of your colleagues, Assistant Detective Stephan Jänicke.’

‘Why can’t Jänicke talk to me himself?’

‘If only he could.’ This time Böhm sounded nothing like a bulldog. Rath almost had the impression the fat man was sighing. ‘Inspector, I was called out because someone found a corpse. Stephan Jänicke is dead.’

The DCI was waiting for him as he made his way across Bülowplatz barely ten minutes later. A large contingent of uniformed officers was guarding the shabby wooden hut where Jänicke’s body had been found. Serious faces. No sign of the quips that were usually wheeled out to combat the horror of a crime scene. When one of their own was murdered, the Prussian police didn’t stand for any nonsense. Still, that wasn’t the only reason a hundred officers were sealing off the area. A growing crowd had gathered to chant slogans. Clearly the communists regarded the appearance of police on their patch as a provocation. ‘
Ar-beiter-mör-der!
’ it echoed in time, ‘
Zör-giebel-knech-te!
’ Murderers, slaves to Zörgiebel!

Böhm greeted him with a handshake. Rath had never seen him so becalmed.

‘Come with me, Inspector,’ said the DCI. ‘Schwartz is taking care of Jänicke. Have you any idea why someone would want to kill the poor guy? Could it be something to do with your current case?’

Rath shrugged his shoulders. He hadn’t been able to shake the thought since making his way over from Alex. Had he sent the rookie to his death when he put him onto the
Mulackritze
? The place wasn’t far away. Perhaps Jänicke had rocked the boat a little more than Red Hugo liked. In this neighbourhood it was easy to stir up a hornets’ nest. Even when you had no idea; especially when you had no idea.

Rath kept his thoughts to himself as he followed Böhm into the hut. A spotlight illuminated walls adorned by posters that were long out of date. On the back wall, a damp bloodstain still glistened. Beneath it a man was crouching on the floor in a pale, light summer coat, head hunched over something on the wall. Dr Schwartz appeared more serious than usual. Today, he had left his infamous sense of humour at home.

‘Your colleague?’ he asked as he stood up. Rath nodded. He wasn’t looking at the doctor but at the bundle on the floor, the fair hair smeared with blood, the face likewise. There was barely anything left of the nose. If he hadn’t known who it was he wouldn’t have recognised Jänicke. What a lousy way to go, in a hovel that reeked of piss.

‘Must have happened three, four hours ago,’ Schwartz said, wiping his hands with a white handkerchief. ‘Contact shot. You don’t need to be particularly handy with a gun for that. Seems to have shoved the barrel right under his nose.’

‘He was shot here, right?’ Rath asked and pointed to the bloodstain on the wall.

‘Everything points to it. Of course, we still need to examine whether it’s really his blood,’ Schwartz said.

Rath shook his head. ‘Shooting off his nose,’ he said. ‘What sort of person does that?’

‘It’s what some of the new
Ringvereine
do with traitors,’ Böhm said. ‘Just blast away their noses. But they don’t normally blow the person’s brains out too.’

‘The Black Reichswehr used to have it in their repertoire too, back in the day,’ Dr Schwartz said. ‘Just like the Red Front. In the wild years, that was.’

Maybe the wild years are about to return, Rath thought. ‘Are there any witnesses?’

Böhm shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘No idea. We don’t have any yet. The man who found him preferred to remain anonymous. I’d be willing to bet those troublemakers out there know more. Thälmann’s lot were holding a rally this morning in front of Karl-Liebknecht-Haus. Perhaps one of them saw something.’

‘Or fired the shot.’

‘Or fired the shot, but it looks as if the young man knew his killer, given how close he let him get. As far as I know Jänicke was no Red.’

‘Perhaps two people held him, while a third took the shot.’

‘Let’s stop speculating and start gathering clues.’ Böhm’s tone was brusque once more, as Rath had grown to expect. ‘Why don’t you tell me what the assistant detective was doing at Bülowplatz in the first place?’

So Rath told him about Saint Josef and Red Hugo, and how he had put Jänicke onto
Berolina
to pursue a possible lead in this farce of an investigation he had staged to distract from his own guilt. A farce that had suddenly become deadly serious. The DCI listened in silence.

‘Very well, Inspector,’ he said finally. ‘I think in that case I should take a look at your files from the Wilczek case. Perhaps you could look out any records of statements taken by Jänicke.’

Rath felt uneasy about letting someone else sniff around a case that he regarded as a private matter, so to speak.

‘If there’s a link,’ Böhm continued, ‘we should merge our investigating teams. Under my leadership, of course.’

‘If you gentlemen would excuse me,’ Dr Schwartz raised his hat. ‘My work here is done. You’ll learn the rest in Hannoversche Strasse. I’ll call you, Böhm.’

In the narrow door the pathologist almost bumped into a powerfully built figure, whom he greeted briefly. Bruno Wolter came in. Uncle looked pale and harried, as if he had run all the way from the Castle. So Böhm had also called E Division. Logical really. When a police officer was murdered, it seemed reasonable to assume it might have something to do with his work. But with the König case, of all things?

‘My God,’ Bruno stammered, when he saw the corpse. His gaze wandered from Böhm to Rath, before he sat down beside Jänicke’s body. Rath had never seen Uncle so agitated. He had always thought of him as a tough old so-and-so, but that was how it was with lots of police officers. Often they seemed cold-blooded because they didn’t allow things to get to them, but some things got to you whether you liked it or not. Rath placed a hand on his colleague’s shoulder.

They were silent. Outside, the communists were still bellowing their slogans.

‘If these commie arseholes don’t put a lid on it soon, I won’t be responsible for what happens,’ he heard Bruno say through gritted teeth.

The news of Stephan Jänicke’s death spread through the Castle like the shock wave of a bomb, furiously quickly and to devastating effect. For the majority, the issue of guilt was already resolved. If a police officer was killed at Bülowplatz, it had to be the communists. An aggression took hold, worse than the uncertainty of two weeks before. Back then most people had simply been afraid of a revolt. Now, however, a desire for revenge threatened to push every rational thought to one side.