Babylon Berlin (21 page)

‘Have I made myself clear, Inspector?’

‘Yes, Detective Chief Inspector, sir!’ Rath lit his cigarette and inhaled. He didn’t exhale until Böhm passed him and was crashing down the stairs.

She was happy to leave a little earlier today. The atmosphere in Homicide wasn’t the best. Böhm wasn’t making any headway, his mood was deteriorating and it was nothing to do with working the holiday shift. The way he had stormed out of the office just now! Like a steamroller. She knew that her boss had a choleric streak, but usually they got on fine together. He accepted her, and she gave him credit for that. Still, for the moment it was best not to tangle with him. With him outside, the atmosphere was more relaxed. Gräf, who had been crouched behind his desk as if ducking to evade a series of blows, sat up straight and inhaled deeply.

She thought about the evening. She didn’t want to wear the green dress. It brought bad luck. Thursday again. Exactly a week ago her last date had ended in sublime failure. Yesterday was the first time she had gone out since her abortive evening in
Moka Efti.
With Greta. They had talked about men all evening and agreed on one thing. You shouldn’t get involved with guys who couldn’t accept you as a working woman. That she had already arranged to meet someone else was something she hadn’t told Greta. In fact, she hadn’t told her anything about the newbie at the station. Probably because she felt guilty about meeting another man so soon after the disaster in
Efti.
And one from the Castle at that. But Greta didn’t have to know everything, did she?

It was good that he’d already been here for half an hour and bought tickets early. It was getting full inside
Phoebus Palace
, almost as if the crowd was bearing out his telephone lie about the difficulty in acquiring tickets. While people pressed inside, Rath stood at the showcases examining the publicity photos. Gustav Fröhlich as a cop and a woman who reminded him vaguely of Charlotte, only that she was far more done-up. But that’s just the way it was in film; even the men wore lipstick. Even if they were playing a cop. He couldn’t help but grin as he imagined all the hard-boiled cops from Alex with their lips painted red.

The film was called
Asphalt
, a police drama. He hadn’t known what was on when he invited Charlotte to the cinema.
Phoebus Palace
had presented itself solely because of its proximity to the
Europa-Pavillon.
Both were housed in the new complex inside
Europahaus
. So much the better that it was a film about police officers, although it looked more like a slushy romance than a crime thriller. The film was due to start in five minutes, but there was still no sign of her.

The noise around him grew ever more lively. Besides the cinema,
Europahaus
was home to several restaurants, cafés and dance halls. Almost like in
Haus Vaterland
, only that it was less of a racket here, since the various restaurateurs were competing against one another, as opposed to in
Vaterland
where everything had a single operator. A skyscraper was set to crown the whole complex at
Anhalter Bahnhof
, but for the time being it only existed on paper. The Department of Building Regulations had only recently granted planning permission, after the architect had reduced the number of floors to ten.

Below, in the parts of the building that had already been completed, business was booming.
Europahaus
had the reputation of being sophisticated and metropolitan and was correspondingly popular with Berliners, who heralded anything that cemented the capital’s reputation as a world city.

Then he saw her climbing out of a taxi on the other side of Königgrätzer Strasse, wearing a short coat and a red skirt. He waved and could almost have embraced the nearest passer-by out of joy when she smiled as she spotted him.

The evening wouldn’t be cheap for him, of that she was certain. She was enormously hungry as she entered
Europa-Pavillon
on his arm, and the waiter led them to their table. The film had lasted an hour and a half and by the end she had been hoping that her stomach wouldn’t rumble during the performance. Fortunately, the band had been playing pretty loud. He hadn’t tried to exploit the darkness to take her in his arms or kiss her a single time. He wasn’t one of those types. If he was, she would have passed on dinner, no matter how hungry she was. But this way, there was nothing to prevent them from spending a pleasant evening.

She liked the
Europa-Pavillon
too. The restaurant and dance hall were spread across two floors with orange-gold the dominant colour, interspersed with silver ornaments, the furniture mahogany. The waiter led them upstairs to the gallery. She was wearing the red skirt that, until now, she had only worn to work. He shouldn’t go thinking she had dressed up for him. Nevertheless, Greta had caught her carefully applying her make-up and checking in the mirror to see how it showed off her legs. Her friend hadn’t said anything, but a pair of raised eyebrows had given her to understand that she owed Greta an explanation.

The waiter showed them to a table next to the balustrade. From there they could look down on the dance floor, upon which several couples were already swaying. She liked the music, a brisk swing, and it was only the singer that struck her as overly schmaltzy. The waiter returned to their table with two menus and two glasses of
Heidsieck Monopole.

‘I took the liberty of ordering us something to drink,’ Rath said and raised his glass. So that was why he had been whispering to the waiter before.

She smiled nervously as she toasted his health. She had liked his twinkling grey-blue eyes from the start, right from the very first time he had happened upon her at the Castle. She surveyed his appearance. Elegant – even if he was wearing a brown suit he could have worn to work, indeed probably had worn to work. Just like her and her red skirt. They could have set off right away and started investigating. Instead they were perusing the menu.

The waiter came with the wine and took their order. They decided on the fish.

‘I lied to you,’ she said, once the man in tails had departed again. ‘My story isn’t half as long as I said. I just wanted to have dinner.’

‘In that case you’d better hope I don’t call in Fraud Squad.’

‘Please, no!’ She raised her hands in mock horror. ‘I’ll tell you everything, Inspector. Only I’m afraid that
everything
isn’t very much at all.’ She took a sip of wine. ‘Born and bred in Berlin. Moabit to be precise, right next to the criminal court. Something like that leaves its mark: I’ve been working for CID for four years now as a stenographer, but I wouldn’t like to do it for the rest of my life.’

‘What would you do instead?’

‘I’m studying Law.’

He whistled appreciatively through his teeth. ‘Do you want to be a senior civil servant?’

‘We’ll see. I do think there aren’t enough female CID officers.’

‘How do you combine the two?’ he asked. ‘The work and the studying, I mean.’

‘I only work for Homicide from Thursday until Sunday, that’s what we’ve agreed. So I don’t complain when I have to work late or go out into the field.’

‘Most murders happen at the weekend.’

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’

‘And you have to clock in every weekend?’

‘Most of the time. The others are happy if they can get out of a weekend shift.’

‘Then you can’t have much free time.’

‘Not at the moment. I save my free time activities for the evening.’

‘So long as A Division doesn’t call.’

‘Right.’

He raised his glass. ‘Let’s drink to Böhm having mislaid your phone number, at least for tonight.’

They clinked glasses for a second time. The waiter came with the food and they were silent for a time.

‘You still haven’t told me how you ended up in Vice? Did you fall in love with a jewel thief you were supposed to be bringing in?’

That was what had happened to the cop in the film just now. He had then killed her gangster boyfriend. In the end the jewel thief had saved her beloved cop by confessing, and had gone to jail for him. Pretty far-fetched, but good fun nevertheless. It just didn’t have much to do with normal police work.

He didn’t seem to think so either. ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ he said. ‘But the reality is less romantic. I wanted to come to Berlin and there was nothing else available at Alex.’

‘Where have you come from then?’

He looked at her in astonishment. ‘Don’t tell me you can’t hear it.’

‘The Rhineland?’

‘And there was me hoping I’d got rid of my accent. I’ve even caught myself imitating the Berliners.’

‘Actually I wanted to know what unit you used to work in.’

‘Everything from grievous bodily harm to Homicide.’

She was astonished. A detective who had already worked in Homicide had willingly transferred to Vice because he wanted to come to Berlin? It wasn’t something everyone would have done. She resumed her eating in silence, deep in thought.

‘Why did you want to join the police?’ he asked.

‘Because there are too few women in this job, and because I’ve got something against people who think they can do whatever they want and get away scot free.’ She hadn’t needed long to consider. ‘But actually it’s not yet guaranteed that I’ll become a police officer. I need to study first,’ she added quickly.

He nodded seriously. ‘You’re right. There’s nothing worse than having to close the file on an unsolved case.’

‘Yes. Luckily we don’t have too many wet fish under Gennat.’ That was what they called unsolved cases at the Castle. He seemed to know the expression. ‘A Division has an extremely high detection rate,’ she added, and could have bitten her tongue in the same instant.

‘In that case, our colleague DCI Böhm is currently skewing the statistics,’ he said. ‘When I saw him in the conference room on Monday, I had the impression that this wet corpse was threatening to become a wet fish.’

She nodded. ‘True. It’s not looking good. I came back today after a three day break, and the investigation hadn’t progressed since Sunday. That doesn’t happen often.’

‘Do you have any idea who the dead man might be?’

She shook her head. ‘We’ve been through every missing person’s file since 1927, we’ve asked all residents several times, almost all the papers have printed his picture, and yet, apart from the usual idiots, no-one has been in touch. It is pretty strange that no-one knew the deceased.’

He nodded. ‘Scarcely credible. A dead man’s found in a city of four million, and not one of those four million has seen him before in their lives.’

‘Someone must have seen him.’

‘You mean the killer?’

‘Exactly. But he’s not going to get in touch, is he?’

‘And you’ve got nothing at all to go on?

‘If you’ve worked in Homicide before, then you’ll know what it means to have an unidentified corpse. Normally you look for the perpetrator in the victim’s immediate circle: friends, enemies, family, business partners. Only, how are we supposed to do that if we don’t even know who it is that’s died?’

‘And you don’t have any other leads?’

‘We barely have anything. The man was wearing an expensive suit, no-one knows him and he has lousy teeth. He was driving an expensive car, but it was stolen. He was tortured and died of a heroin overdose. He had already been dead for eight to ten hours when the car went into the canal. Someone wedged the accelerator with a metal rod. Curiously enough with the steering rod of an Opel. None of it hangs together.’

‘Do you like your boss?’

‘Böhm?’ she shrugged her shoulders. ‘What do you mean, like? He isn’t as grumpy as he makes out.’

‘Every division’s supposed to be helping Homicide solve this case. Was that his idea?’

‘Of course not. That comes from Zörgiebel himself. He wants to see results soon, and sometimes mass actions like this can help, although the press appeal has been a disaster up until now. There’s a 500 mark reward set aside from the public purse for information.’

‘So that’s how the social democrats go about spending our taxes?’

‘I take it you’re not a party member?’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t talk to me about politics. Working for 1A is the only thing worse than Vice. They even spy on their own colleagues.’

The waiter cleared away their food.

‘I never even thanked you for the invitation,’ she said, and took a Juno from the packet.

He gave her a light and gazed briefly into her eyes. She felt a slight tingling sensation.

‘Thanks for your company,’ he said, and lit a cigarette for himself. ‘You’re the nicest person I’ve met so far at the Castle.’

‘Hardly a difficult competition to win right now. You’re not exactly flavour of the month. People say you’ve been crawling up Zörgiebel’s backside and that’s the reason the commissioner is protecting you.’

‘Protecting me? Is that a joke? Is that why I’m working in Vice?’

She waved her hand dismissively. ‘I’m just telling you what people are saying in the canteen. It was probably Lanke who started the rumour. He wanted to reinstall his nephew in the position that you are currently occupying. It’s your fault he’s still stewing in Köpenick.’

‘Köpenick? Has he fallen out of favour?’

‘I don’t think young Lanke has ever been in favour. He came to Alex fresh from police academy five years ago and started messing things up right away. By now the dust has settled and Lanke wants him back. He had even agreed it with Dörrzwiebel, but then you came along.’

‘Not even Bruno’s told me anything about that.’

‘Wolter? Of course not. At the Castle you hear everything. Unless it’s about you. But believe me, Wolter is happy that Lanke Junior’s passed him by. He must have welcomed you with open arms, am I right?’

‘And why are you telling
me
all this?’

During dinner he watched the band playing one floor below with no female singer. If anybody sang, then it was Ilja Tretschkov himself. He was better at playing the trumpet. The band leader seemed to have split from Lana Nikoros, or she had split from the band. That much, at least, he still wanted to ask Tretschkov.