Goldstein, page 12
The money he had spent on Rath’s car had been worth it. The same went for Marion’s dress. He mustn’t forget their arrangement. Kurfürstendamm sounded like an expensive neighbourhood, but she had earned it. Without her he’d still be sitting trapped in that lousy hotel. It was only thanks to her help, thanks to her keys, that he could move about as freely as back home. No, more freely. He could do anything he wished here, absolutely anything. The police themselves would testify that Abraham Goldstein had spent the whole day inside his hotel room. The only thing he couldn’t leave was fingerprints.
22
Leafing through the papers on his desk, it was clear that Special Counsel Weber thought the whole thing a damned nuisance. ‘There’s nothing we can use here,’ he said finally. ‘Not a single statement from the accused, not even her personal particulars.’
‘If she doesn’t say anything, how am I supposed to take down her personal particulars?’ the officer facing him said. He had a strong Berlin accent. The girl handcuffed to him stared vacantly into space.
Had Charly imagined it, or was the poor creature shivering?
A representative from the Friedrichshain Youth Welfare Office stood like a lost soul. ‘Perhaps she’s deaf-mute, Officer.’
‘No, I can guarantee you that. She knows how to curse, this one, but she buttoned it as soon as we tried to interview her.’
Weber looked at his watch. ‘Fräulein Ritter, would you take care of the girl? I’ll return for the warrant after my appointment with Dr Keller. Getting her name and address shouldn’t be too difficult. The rest is just routine.’
While he was still speaking he reached for his coat and disappeared with a brief tip of the hat, leaving an embarrassed silence behind him.
So there she was: this taciturn girl who seemed rather shy to Charly, and who was alleged to have attacked a group of police officers on the underground. Routine. Nothing in this job was ever routine.
‘Let’s get started,’ she said, sitting on Weber’s chair, behind Weber’s desk. Judging by the look on the stenographer’s face she was already complicit in the fraudulent exercise of public office. The cop, the girl and the woman from Welfare waited expectantly. ‘Please, take a seat,’ Charly said, gesturing towards the row of chairs.
She skimmed the statement from the 81st precinct, which Weber had criticised moments before. According to it, the girl became violent after the conductor caught her riding the U-Bahn without a ticket. With the help of several passengers he overpowered her and transferred her to police custody at Petersburger Strasse U-Bahn station where, after some resistance, officers had placed her in handcuffs. They had found a knife on her person, a switchblade with traces of blood on it. At the same time they found a cut on her left hand, bandaged in makeshift fashion. These facts were enough to justify her temporary arrest, but witnesses also described a police officer with a bloodied face who had chased the girl in Strausberger Platz U-Bahn station. So far, this was unconfirmed. No wounded officer had come forward to make a statement, nor had the girl made any comment. If the statement was to be believed, apart from cursing and swearing wildly, the unidentified girl hadn’t uttered a word, at least not to the police. The whole thing was a mystery, but the fact that the assailant had punched and kicked officers repeatedly was enough for both a detention order and a charge. In Prussia, resisting law enforcement officers was no petty offence.
Charly looked up from the file. The stenographer waited with sharpened pencil. The lady from Welfare and the cop had sat down, but the girl remained standing.
‘You can take a seat too,’ Charly said.
She didn’t move, but her eyes flickered restlessly.
‘It would be good if I knew your first name. How old are you? Don’t you want to sit down?’
The girl stared out of the window at the building fronts on Magdalenenstrasse.
‘Spare yourself the effort,’ the cop said. ‘You can talk until you’re blue in the face, she won’t say a word.’
Charly ignored him. ‘The very least we need is your name,’ she repeated. ‘And where you live.’
Silence.
‘Should I be taking this down?’ the stenographer asked.
Charly shook her head.
‘If you want my opinion,’ the cop said, ‘she’s one of those brats who hangs around the old axle factory, over by the slaughterhouse. I don’t have to question her to know that.’
‘You’re well informed, Officer.’
‘I know my patch, and I recognise a runaway when I see one.’
‘But you can’t give me a name either.’
‘Scum like that, who cares about her name?’
The woman from Welfare gave a start, but said nothing. Still unsure whether she should be writing anything down, the stenographer looked indecisively from one person to the next.
‘With that sort of attitude it doesn’t surprise me that you were unable to supply the accused’s personal particulars. As an officer of the Prussian Police, you should display greater objectivity.’
‘I’d like to see how objective you are, when you’re trying to question a brat like that.’
‘Perhaps you didn’t go gently enough. The way you’re acting now . . .’
‘The way I’m acting now? Who is it who has to put up with these antisocial brats abusing him day in day out? Who is it they might gang up on and beat to a pulp? Who is it who’s putting his life on the line every day, you or me?’
Charly’s tone became sharper. ‘Remove her handcuffs, Officer.’
‘Pardon me?’
‘You are to remove the girl’s handcuffs before I begin the interrogation. We’re not dealing with a hardened criminal here.’
The officer shrugged and rummaged around for the key. ‘You’re the boss.’
It didn’t sound much like he meant it, but he unfastened the handcuffs without complaint. Nothing happened.
‘You see,’ Charly said.
‘You weren’t there this afternoon.’
The officer clipped the handcuffs back onto his belt.
‘I’d like to question the girl in your absence,’ Charly said.
‘Pardon me?’
‘I think she’s afraid of you. You, or your uniform. If you would be so kind . . .’
The officer shrugged again and stood up. ‘If you think so. You’re the boss.’
Charly looked at the stenographer, who had made no move to get up. ‘I think it’s better if this stays off the record for now,’ she said.
The woman from Welfare also stood up and moved towards the door. ‘You’re right. She doesn’t trust any of us. She probably thinks I want to stick her in a home. Why not try your luck alone?’
‘But you need at least one witness,’ the cop said.
‘This isn’t to conduct an official interview. It’s about regaining trust, so that an interview is possible. I’ll call you back in when we’re ready.’
Charly waited a moment for the door to close.
‘Now, take a seat,’ she said, ‘or do you really want to stand the whole time?’ The girl hesitated but sat in the chair. Charly pushed a carton of Juno across the table. ‘Do you smoke?’ she asked. Another hesitation, but she took a cigarette.
‘Don’t like talking much, do you?’ Charly said, after she had given her a light. ‘Afraid of saying the wrong thing . . .’ Charly lit a Juno for herself too. ‘You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. You can just nod or shake your head. No one’s writing down anything you say, anyway. It’s between us.’
The girl drew greedily on the cigarette, avoiding Charly’s gaze.
‘Does it hurt?’ Charly gestured towards the fresh bandage. According to the statement, several officers had to hold the girl still to inspect and re-bandage the wound. The panic in those eyes! No wonder. ‘How did it happen?’
The girl tensed on her chair, and Charly realised she had asked the wrong question.
‘There’s no need to be scared. No one’s going to be angry with you for defending yourself. We want to help you.’
The girl looked out of the window in silence.
‘You didn’t have money for a ticket, is that it?’
Silence.
‘You know, I got caught by a conductor once too. I must have been about the same age as you. My parents weren’t too pleased, but it wasn’t the end of the world.’
The girl remained silent, and it didn’t look as if that were about to change. Charly could imagine a simple cop losing his patience when confronted with this sort of obstinate behaviour.
‘We can’t help you if you don’t help us,’ she said. ‘If you tell us your name and where you live we can send you home. Otherwise we’ll have to keep you locked up until we find out.’
This was the first time she had issued a threat, but it had just as little effect as everything else. ‘I don’t want to lock you up, and I’m sure you don’t want that either. But you have to give us something.’
The girl seemed to be thinking. That was progress at least. Just when Charly hoped she might say something, there was a commotion in the corridor outside. A babble of voices, a loud cry, worse than a band of hooligans being brought before the magistrate. She tried to ignore the din, but it wouldn’t let up.
Finally she placed the Juno in the ashtray and stood up. ‘Just a moment,’ she said, opening the door to the corridor and total chaos. Most of the offices stood wide open, and everyone had gathered in little groups in the corridor. Handcuffed figures were being led in by uniformed officers. Their clothes were ragged and most of them had scratches to their faces or arms. One held a gauze bandage to a gash on his forehead. Everyone was talking and shouting. The boorish sergeant from the 81st precinct whom Charly had just scolded sat hunched on a wooden bench normally reserved for felons, face buried in his hands, with the woman from Welfare trying in vain to comfort him.
‘What’s going on?’ Charly asked.
The woman shrugged. ‘A group of unemployed who banded together on Frankfurter Allee. They shot a police officer, someone just said.’ She looked towards the distraught officer. ‘I didn’t catch his name, but he seems to have been a friend of the sergeant here.’
‘They killed Emil, the bastards!’ The cop screamed, his face a deep shade of red. ‘They should kill ’em all, Communist swine!’
He sprang to his feet and tried to collar a gaunt-looking man who was being led through in handcuffs. Two colleagues had to wrestle him to the floor.
What in God’s name is happening here today, Charly thought.
Whether or not the sergeant was fit for duty was something she could decide upon later. First, she had to take care of the runaway, but when she returned to the room she found the chair the girl had been sitting on empty; two cigarettes burned in the ashtray, and the window to Magdalenenstrasse stood open. She rushed to the windowsill and looked onto the street, feeling her knees give way. The girl had disappeared.
23
Alex gripped her ankle. Only now did she feel the throbbing pain.
When the woman from the court or whatever she was, had stood up and gone to the door, she had sniffed her chance. With all the noise outside, no one heard her climb onto the windowsill and lower herself onto the wide ledge above the ground floor window. It was still a good two metres down to the pavement, but she had to move quickly before they noticed she was missing.
The drop was too great, but what choice had there been? She had dangled from the ledge, legs frozen for a moment in mid-air, before letting go. An intense pain shot through her left leg upon impact, but she got straight back to her feet and limped behind a car parked a few metres away. A little boy on a scooter gazed curiously at her. She put a finger to her lips, and the little boy nodded.
She looked up at the window as the court lady gazed out and then was gone. Someone else could look out at any moment, but she couldn’t stay here forever. She had to move before the cops gave chase. It didn’t matter if every step hurt like hell. She put as little weight as possible on her left leg, but a piercing pain shot up from her ankle. It felt as if it were about to snap. She gritted her teeth and limped onwards, keeping her eyes ahead. Making it to the U-Bahn station was her only chance. As long as there wasn’t some idiot conductor . . . but don’t think about that now!
Almost at Frankfurter Allee she turned around again. There was no one behind her, neither in uniform nor in plainclothes. Was she actually going to get out of this in one piece? Traffic noise spurred her on, the staccato, stabbing pain becoming more and more rapid, her breathing too. Damn it, first her injured hand and now her ankle.
At the steps to the U-Bahn, she looked back again. There was some commotion taking place further down Frankfurter Allee, probably the unemployed taking their anger out on the cops; the furious cries of the proletariat could be heard from almost a kilometre away. Police uniforms were like blue dots in the milling mass. From somewhere she heard the wail of police sirens and began to realise why her escape had been so easy. The cops had more pressing concerns than an eighteen-year-old guttersnipe who had done a runner.
She made her way down the steps unnoticed. No one on the platform paid her the slightest bit of attention. A girl with a limp – so what? She hauled herself a few metres along the platform, leaned her head against a cool steel beam, closed her eyes and yielded to exhaustion. Someone pressed something cold into her uninjured right hand. She opened her eyes and looked at a one-mark coin.
She wasn’t a beggar. Her first thought was to return the money, but to whom? There was no sign of her benefactor, and people here seemed as distracted as ever, focused on their own concerns. Not knowing who to thank, she pocketed the coin. At least she’d have some money if she ran into a conductor again. They had taken her knife along with everything else in her bag, even the six-pack of Juno she had just opened.
A train arrived through the eastern tunnel. Where should she go? Flat B was too risky, Flat A too dangerous. Benny was dead, Kalli was dead. There was no one in this vast city who could help her, not a single place where she felt safe.
But wait, there was one. She hadn’t been there in over a year and it wouldn’t be easy to turn up and ask for help. There was no way of knowing how he’d react when he saw her. He wouldn’t call the cops, but he might chase her away. She had to be prepared for that but, if he didn’t help, everything would be over anyway. Exhausted by pain and stress, she flopped onto a seat.
The hopelessness of her situation, the fact of having no other choice, almost calmed her until, suddenly, she was overcome by a strange feeling of happiness. A smile crept onto her face. She was so tired, so at the end of her tether, that things could scarcely get any worse. Her mind was made up. She would throw herself on his mercy and hope he didn’t let her down. In spite of everything that had happened.
24
Glass crunched beneath her feet, each step echoing in the empty room. Charly stopped and listened. The rush of traffic noise from Landsberger Allee was interrupted only by the rhythmical clatter of the nearby Ringbahn station. Every little scrape sounded louder and harsher than the muffled noise from outside.
The old axle factory, the cop had said, but there was no sign of the youths. A deserted ruin, perhaps they only came here to sleep?
There was a loud crash, as if something in the hall had been knocked to the floor. A jerky, scuttling noise followed in the chamber of echoes and a rat paused in the middle of the room, gazing insolently at the human intruder. There were people living in this hovel? Children even? Sharing a roof with rats? She shook involuntarily.
At the end of the workshop she found a stairwell and climbed upwards.
The rooms on the first floor were in better condition. Some of the windowpanes were still intact and there wasn’t nearly as much broken glass on the floor. It was conceivable that the odd person slept here at night – even with rats present.
Did she really expect to find the girl and, if she didn’t, why was she here? It wasn’t as if Weber had asked her to spend the evening searching, quite the opposite. ‘That’s for the police,’ he had said. ‘Don’t make things any worse by getting involved.’
Any worse. As if that were possible! She couldn’t stop thinking about the empty chair, the cigarettes in the ashtray, then staring out of the window and onto the street; how she had sounded the alarm but no one was interested. No one paid much attention to a street urchin on a day when shots had been fired on Frankfurter Allee, and a police officer had lost his life. Even the woman from Welfare had shrugged, as if the girl’s escape gave her one thing less to worry about. Charly had dashed out onto Wagnerplatz herself, and continued down Magdalenenstrasse. In vain; the girl was long gone.
Now, Weber, he had been interested, at least enough to shout at her on his return from the public prosecutor. Must be out of your mind, flouted basic security precautions, completely unsuitable for this job were some of the milder accusations. Imagine giving an arsehole like Weber such an easy platform! He had sent her home and told her to take the rest of the week off.
‘This incident will be subject to an investigation,’ he said, ‘and the result will find its way into your personal file.’ Still, by far the most hurtful thing was his hypocritical attempt to comfort her after he had raged for a full quarter of an hour. ‘If I could give you one piece of advice,’ he had said, his voice dripping with paternal sympathy. ‘Don’t torture yourself. You’re a woman! Find a nice man and get married!’
Suddenly Charly found herself transported back to a Cologne cafe, listening to another sympathetic voice. Once you’re married you won’t have to work anymore. Now as then, she had been unable to speak.
