Babylon Berlin (49 page)

She didn’t even pour him half a cup, more like a puddle. By the time Rath had asked his first question, his cup was already empty.

She didn’t respond. ‘Another?’ she asked.

He nodded, and she reached for the coffee pot. As she topped him up, she leaned so far forward that her ample breasts almost spilled out of her dressing gown. This procedure repeated itself so many times that Rath began to discern the method behind it. Each time she topped him up she drew a little closer, providing an ever more generous view of her décolletage. Soon she was splashing two or three drops of coffee onto his lap and rubbing his crotch with a serviette, by which time Rath had had enough. He left his hospitable surrounds quick-sharp, sprinting down the stairs as he went.

On the first floor landing, he encountered the old lady whose army of cats he had so admired the day before. Elfriede Gaede. She was beaming at him.

‘Inspector! Good that you’re here!’ She waved him in. What now?

‘Sorry, I don’t have any time,’ he said, trying to move past her. She didn’t seem to hear. Her thin fingers reached for his arm and pulled him into the flat. He had no choice but to follow: Elfriede Gaede wasn’t as weak as she looked. Besides, the last thing Rath wanted to do was get involved in a wrestling match with an old woman.

‘What is it?’ he asked, louder this time.

She looked at him. At least she seemed to have heard him.

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head energetically, ‘on the ledge!’

Rath remembered a similarly absurd conversation from the day before, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. The flat still smelt like one big cat pan. The old lady led him to the open window.

‘There,’ she said and pointed outside. ‘He just went out, and now he can’t get back! Poor Napoleon!’

Rath leaned out of the window. Five or six metres to his right, a great fat tomcat was sitting on the ledge of the façade, spitting at him.

Wasn’t rescuing cats what Zörgiebel had said lay in store for him in Köpenick?

‘Isn’t there a local policeman who can help you?’

‘This morning? What do you think?’

She seemed genuinely incensed. Rath didn’t know quite why, but realised he wasn’t going to get out of here until a fat cat named Napoleon was rubbing back against the legs of an old lady named Elfriede Gaede.

He took off his hat and coat and climbed onto the narrow ledge. Clinging to the wall like a limpet he edged his way towards the cat. The animal seemed less than enthused, arching its back and recoiling.

Stay where you are you little
bastard
, Rath thought to himself, not daring to say it out loud. Not because of Frau Gaede – who wouldn’t have heard him anyway – but in case Napoleon recoiled any further, or fell onto the street out of shock.

He was slowly making progress. The distance between him and Napoleon was decreasing. He had almost reached the tom when he heard the husky, metallic rattle of the school recess bell.

Napoleon gave even more of a start than his would-be rescuer. The fat tom leapt forward, somehow managing to get past Rath’s legs, disappearing through the window in the blink of an eye.

The inspector needed a little longer to get back. As he was trying to manoeuvre himself backwards through the window, he spied five boys on the street below, eleven, twelve years old at the most. They were climbing over the brick wall of the cemetery.

From this vantage point, he had an excellent view of what they were doing. They were under a shrub near Jänicke’s closed off grave, where one of them seemed to fetch something from the ground and share it out amongst the rest. Moments later, white clouds of smoke were swirling from the branches of the shrub. The boys were puffing away on cigarettes. It looked like a well-rehearsed ritual. Indeed, it seemed almost as if the smokers spent every recess there.

Rath ignored Elfriede Gaede’s thanks, as she held Napoleon in her arms, stroking him, grabbed his hat and coat and went out into the street.

The best way to judge how long it takes to smoke a cigarette is to smoke one yourself. Rath positioned himself against the cemetery wall and fumbled around for an Overstolz. He had just trod it out when the first of the boys came over the wall: straw-blond hair, freckled, cheeky face, eyes wide open in surprise. He made to escape, but Rath grabbed him by the scruff of the neck.

‘Don’t try to run away,’ he said. ‘I only want to talk to you. If you answer a few questions for me, everything’ll be dandy. If you make trouble, I’m going to have to tell your rector what you get up to in the cemetery during recess.’ He pulled out his badge. ‘I’m a policeman, you see, but one you can talk to.’

A puzzled face appeared on the wall above.

‘Incidentally, that applies to your friends too. Tell them to come over here and nothing will happen, I promise.’

The boy stood as if paralysed. His friend on the wall clearly didn’t know whether to give into his instincts and run, or let common sense prevail.

‘Come on, quickly! Recess’ll be over soon,’ Rath said.

Finally the boy sprang to life. ‘Kalle, come on,’ he said to the next boy, hesitating on the wall. ‘Hanke, Zerlett, Froese, you too! Or else we’re in trouble.’

A moment later the five boys were standing around Rath looking abashed. He told them what had happened the day before.

‘We know! We’re not stupid! It’s in the paper!’ Kalle said. ‘Besides, we…’

He was silenced by a poke in the ribs. The freckle face seemed to be in charge here.

‘Listen here, boys! I’m investigating a murder. The fact that you smoke only interests me in so far as I’m hoping you were here during recess yesterday as well.’

‘And?’ Freckle face asked.

‘You could be important witnesses.’

‘You see, Hotte! I told you we should have gone to the cops,’ Kalle said to freckle face. ‘Now we’re in a right mess!’

‘Oh, shut up,’ Hotte moaned.

‘If you’ve got something to say to the police, it’s still not too late,’ Rath said.

The four boys looked at Hotte. Clearly, they wanted to leave the decision up to him. He was still humming and hawing a little, but pulled himself together.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘We were in the cemetery, Inspector. Yesterday too.’

‘And you saw something?’

Hotte nodded. ‘There were two men heading straight for our bush with this cart. We’d just buried the fags and were about to leave. Stayed in our hideout, of course.’

‘Two men with a cart?’

‘Exactly, it was the cemetery cart, we recognised it. But the men weren’t from the cemetery.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The people from the cemetery are either in tails and top hat, or going about in their work clothes. These wore normal grey hats, suits and coats.’

‘Could you see them?’

‘Hardly. They turned off somewhere, away from the bush. Besides, it was raining. They were pretty powerful-looking though.’

‘Was there a carpet on the cart?’

‘No, ‘course not. They had a perfectly normal coffin.’

‘I see,’ Rath nodded. ‘Everything as usual, then.’

‘No, actually,’ Hotte said. ‘The coffin wasn’t nailed down. And when they reached the grave that’d been dug, they tied handkerchiefs around their mouths, opened the lid, got rid of the beams, and tipped the coffin out.’

‘Tipped it out?’

‘Tipped it into the grave. It all happened pretty fast. We didn’t realise it was a dead body ‘til we saw it in the paper. Otherwise we’d have gone straight to the station. Promise!’

‘And then?’

‘Then they were off. Beams back over the grave, close the lid on the coffin and away.’

‘What about you lot?’

‘Us as well, man! We were already late for school!’

‘You didn’t look inside the grave?’

‘No, promise. We didn’t have any time.’

Rath wasn’t sure whether to believe him, but it didn’t really matter now.

‘Thanks for the help, lads.’

‘You’re alright, Inspector. At first I thought old Funke had put the fuzz onto us.’

Rath considered for a moment whether he shouldn’t give the boys away after all. He thought about how much fun one could have with the help of a wet sponge, a chair and a clueless school principal, but ultimately decided against it. No doubt Rector Funke would have his work cut out with these boys anyway.

‘So none of you could make out a face? To describe to our sketch artist?’ Shakes of the head all round. ‘Still, one of you ought to make a statement. I promise I won’t say anything to your principal or your parents.’

‘I can do it,’ Hotte said bravely.

‘Good, I’ll take you straight after school. Tell your parents you have to take care of something important. Won’t take long, and there’ll be cakes besides.’ Rath knew he could count on Gennat for that.

‘If you’d asked yesterday, we’d have told you all this, Inspector. Promise.’

‘You could have told one of my colleagues as well. They were here yesterday. Did no-one question you?’

More shakes of the head.

‘You don’t live on this street then?’

‘Heinrich-Roller, no!’ It sounded almost as if Hotte was offended. ‘We’re all from Winsstrasse.’

‘I see,’ Rath gave a knowing nod. He took the police photos from last week out of his pocket. ‘Have you seen this man around here?’ he asked. He had to leaf through the pictures like a pack of cards until he found the image of Kardakov. ‘Must be a few weeks ago now.’

Each of the boys looked at the photo in turn and shook their heads. Rath put the photos away again. Kardakov could have gone underground in this area before his tormentors caught up with him.

On the other side of the road, the school bell trilled. The five boys set off. At the entrance to the school they stopped for a quick discussion. One of them turned round. It was Kalle.

‘Inspector!’ he said. ‘Can you show me the man again?’

Rath fished out the picture of Kardakov.

‘Not him, the other one.’

At first Rath wasn’t sure which one he meant, but then he showed him the old mug shots of the two Russians.

The boy’s gaze fell on the picture of Selenskij.

‘Him,’ Kalle said after considering briefly. ‘He was the one pulling the cart yesterday. Hundred percent.’

Shortly afterwards, Rath was in a green Opel on his way to Kreuzberg. Before collecting Horst Jezorek and Karl-Heinz Urban, that is, Hotte and Kalle, from school and bringing them to the station, he wanted to pay a visit to an old acquaintance.

Selenskij!

As so often in this case, the pieces of the puzzle were rearranging themselves in his head. Selenskij, whom they had let go of once already, did have something to do with Kardakov after all! Only, he wasn’t his bodyguard. He was the one who had deposited Kardakov’s corpse in Jänicke’s grave, whatever the reason. Perhaps he also had Kardakov on his conscience.

At any rate, it was no coincidence that he lived in the same house as the missing Countess.

Was the Russian working for Marlow? Rath was now almost convinced he’d seen one of Marlow’s people on Luisenufer before: Josef Wilczek.

At that time, Saint Josef had still had his moustache. Rath had assumed he was a tenant and questioned him innocently on Kardakov, only for Wilczek to fob him off with some nonsense or other.

Josef Wilczek had been there because he was visiting Vitali Selenskij. The Russian must be one of Marlow’s people, likewise his scar-faced friend. Rath was willing to bet that scar face Fallin had been the second man at the cemetery, even if none of the boys had recognised him.

If they really were Marlow’s people, it begged the question why Dr M. should want to dig the corpse back up and place it right in front of their noses.

Or were the Russians part of the
Nordpiraten Ringverein
, who were currently at loggerheads with
Berolina
?

The one thing that certainly didn’t fit into the picture was that the pair were working as police informants. Informants were hardly colleagues, of course, but why should they want to disrupt a police funeral and make a fool of the entire Berlin police force?

Who were they working for at the station? The politicals? That they were linked to Wündisch’s mystery men seemed the most likely explanation.

The light at Moritzplatz showed red. Rath examined his pistol. He would need it if Selenskij turned nasty, and that was a real possibility. Rath didn’t think the Tsar’s secret police had exactly treated people with kid gloves back in the day.

On Reichenberger Strasse, there was a mortuary car coming towards him. Another dead person. One hundred and twenty-four Berliners died every day, five of them violently, mostly as the result of an accident, according to the statistics Rath had consulted in Cologne in preparation for his new posting. Police investigated a new murder or manslaughter case every four days; he wouldn’t be short of work in A Division.

Already from the street he could see that something was wrong on Luisenufer. There were three police bicycles leaning against the wrought-iron fence that enclosed the meagre front garden. A cop from the 106th precinct was standing outside the door to the rear building; Rath showed him his badge.

‘Homicide? What are you doing here, Inspector? It was only an accident,’ the man said.

‘Routine,’ Rath mumbled and pushed through the door. Herr Müller’s flat was open. Rath went inside – splashing into a great pool of water. The entire hallway was submerged. Margarete Schäffner was crouched on the floor wringing out a cloth. The water was splattering into the pail. She still had a lot of work to do.

The flat seemed unusually light and welcoming given it was in a rear building. It was so sparsely furnished that the water hadn’t caused too much damage, even if it had spread to every corner. Rath followed the puddle and ended up in the bathroom. Three men were standing next to the bathtub: two cops and a man in grey work overalls. All three looked at him in surprise. Rath didn’t even have to ask to know that the man in the overalls was Hermann Schäffner. This time he wasn’t out with the SA.

He showed them his badge.

‘An accident, Inspector,’ Schäffner was quick to say. ‘An unfortunate accident.’