Goldstein, page 14
‘I like monogamous men,’ Marlow said. ‘It shows loyalty.’
‘I’m a bachelor,’ Rath said. He had no intention of speaking to Johann Marlow about Charly; it was bad enough the man recognised her.
Marlow laughed. ‘But a loyal bachelor, evidently. Got a date, have you? Well, don’t worry. We’ll take a turn around the block and deliver you on time.’
Where on earth was Gereon? Charly took a crumpled packet out of her handbag and lit a Juno. In the same instant a bus came down Grunerstrasse, its upper deck plastered with images of the brand. She inhaled hurriedly and took another look at her watch. He was already more than ten minutes late. True, she had been running five minutes behind schedule herself, but what was the world coming to when even the men no longer appeared on time.
She was furious with him, even though she had no real reason to be; furious with his lateness, and with the fact that he hadn’t even asked what it was about. She was furious with herself, too, furious with the passing time, as she stood there helplessly, driven almost to the brink of madness. Each minute she had to wait she felt her fury rise, and the last five went on Gereon Rath’s account. She drew deeply on her cigarette, inhaling the smoke with the full force of her wrath. It helped a little, but didn’t really calm her down, until there he was at last, standing on the other side of Grunerstrasse in front of the construction hoardings.
He didn’t seem to have noticed her yet, but Kirie wagged her tail and pulled on the lead, as her master looked right and left before crossing the carriageway behind a flashy American sedan. Finally, he saw her and smiled, and immediately she felt better. No longer alone, she stubbed out her cigarette, rage expunged.
Kirie was the first to reach her, jumping up to lick her face. She defended herself as best she could, and stroked the dog’s black fur. ‘Kirie, settle down,’ she said.
‘I should have taken a taxi,’ he said.
She attempted to smile in return, but made a complete hash of it.
Gereon’s smile vanished as he drew a step nearer and took her in his arms. Gratefully she allowed her head to sink onto his shoulders, felt his warm hands stroking the nape of her neck. She had to be careful she didn’t start bawling her eyes out, like a child expelled from school.
‘What is it, my love?’ he asked, and she forgave him for every minute he had been late. She felt a lump in her throat, and it was a moment before she could speak.
‘Oh Gereon,’ she said. ‘I’ve made such a mess of things. You have to help me.’
‘You’re shaking, what on earth’s the matter?’
She hadn’t realised, but he was right, she was shaking all over. She started to cry, which had never happened before in his presence, then turned her face away, but he only held her tighter. She could picture his face filled with consternation, but couldn’t make it out through her tears.
Ten minutes later they were in Aschinger. Charly had wanted to go straight to the Castle, to Records; not to waste a second, but Gereon had insisted that she tell him what happened first, and give her tears a chance to dry. When she saw her face in the mirror of the ladies toilet, she realised it was a good idea. She needed a few minutes to redo her make-up, and when she returned their drinks were on the table: tea with lemon for her, coffee, black as always, for him. Gereon drank coffee at all times of day, even in the evening. For Kirie there were two Bouletten. No sooner had her master set the plate down than she pounced, demolishing the meatballs in record time and devoting herself all the more intensely to licking the plate clean. At least the greedy dog succeeded in coaxing a smile out of her.
Charly took a sip of tea and told Gereon the whole story: the frightened girl in her office, Weber’s assignment, the boor of a sergeant, the commotion in the corridor on account of the dead policeman – and, finally, her catastrophic error.
His reaction wasn’t quite what she had expected. ‘You left a guttersnipe unattended in your office?’
‘I couldn’t know what would happen. I just went to the door . . .’
‘You didn’t even have her in sight. What if she’d taken a paper knife from the desk and attacked you . . .’
‘Weber doesn’t have a paper knife on his desk.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Gereon, don’t you start. I know I’ve messed up. But this girl . . . there was something about her. She was scared stiff. Of the cop, I thought, but maybe it was just the uniform.’
‘No wonder! Attacking a police officer is no petty offence. Even if it sometimes feels like it in this city.’
‘I don’t believe she really attacked him. The witness could have invented it. No cop’s come forward to report it.’
‘Charly, open your eyes! She’s dangerous. When I think about what the little brute could have done to you . . .’
‘She’s not a brute. Who knows what she’s been through? She’s got a gash on her hand herself. When I think of those kids in that old factory . . .’
‘Charly, Charly!’ Gereon sighed. ‘You can’t afford to have compassion in our job. Even less as a judge or public prosecutor.’
Instinctively she reached for her cigarettes. ‘Define compassion. I just want to know what happened. Now, are you going to help me look for her or not?’
Charly lit a Juno and took a deep drag, feeling her fury rise again. Gereon made a conciliatory gesture with his hands.
‘Of course I’ll help you.’ He took a notebook and pencil from his jacket. ‘So, her last name is Reinhold . . .’
‘Alexandra Reinhold. I don’t think they were having me on in the factory. The guy seemed to get a kick out of annoying this girl, Vicky, by snitching on Alex. He seems to really hate the pair of them.’
‘It must be possible to find out where she’s from.’
‘That’s why I asked you to help. Let’s go to Records and get the addresses of all Reinholds in Berlin.’
‘We don’t even know that she’s from Berlin . . .’
‘Gereon, I’m already at my wits’ end. I don’t know if I’m ever going to track this girl down. So, please, do me a favour and stop quibbling. Let’s just try. I might not get another chance.’
‘You’re right, but do you really think you can impress Weber by delivering this Alex?’
‘At least I’ll have made good on my mistake. Besides, the girl needs help.’
‘An arsehole like Weber is just waiting for you to mess up so he can write something negative in your file. He wants to destroy your career, that’s been his aim from the start.’
‘There are lawyers who hold me in higher regard.’
‘But they’re not the ones making decisions about your career.’
Perhaps they are, Charly thought. She stubbed out her cigarette.
‘Let’s see what happens,’ Gereon continued. ‘The way I see it, Weber won’t want to make too much of a scene. He should never have left you alone like that. You’re a judicial clerk. You can’t be playing magistrate in your preparatory year!’
‘I wasn’t. Weber just didn’t want his meeting with the public prosecutor to fall through. I was meant to get the girl’s personal particulars, that’s all.’
‘He must have a guilty conscience.’
‘He didn’t appear to just now.’
‘Maybe,’ Gereon said, ‘but have you thought about everything that’s happened? The dead policeman, the shoot-out on Frankfurter Allee. Who’s going to care about some tramp jumping out of the court window? I can’t imagine Weber’s going to be shouting his mouth off about this. He’s trying to scare you because he wants to hound you out of his court, and the profession too. Don’t let him intimidate you.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’ She took a sip of tea and attempted a smile.
‘Of course I’m right,’ Gereon said, looking at her encouragingly. ‘Now drink up, we’ve got work to do.’
27
The corridor lay empty ahead, with only the dim light of dusk reflecting from the polished floor. So far, no one. Most people had gone home long ago, and the patients were asleep. Goldstein had to wait for a moment outside, until two ambulances arrived one after the other, delivering the victims of a fight. At the same time a flood of relatives, friends, and others affected by the incident had rolled up and, within seconds, created an almighty stir in Accident and Emergency. Evidently, a wedding party had gone wrong.
He slipped onto the premises as the quarrelling started again, then through a door into a dim corridor, locating the stairwell and taking his bearings. This afternoon had been worthwhile after all.
The hospital wasn’t especially big, not in comparison with the Jewish Hospital on Prospect Place where they had removed his appendix, but there were many wards, doors and long corridors. It was better to know your way around.
He stood before the brass-numbered door again, and though aware that all he would encounter was an old man wandering through dreams, he hesitated as before. This time he hadn’t brought flowers, only the Remington in his inside pocket.
His hand pressed down on the handle and the door moved without a sound. He gazed once more across the corridor – the door to the nurses’ office was still closed – and crept into the unlit room. The curtains were drawn, but a glimmer of light outlined its contours. The bed stood against the end wall, and in it lay an old man with a wrinkled face. The sign at the foot of the bed confirmed what Goldstein knew already. The only sound was the rattling in his chest, but his eyes sparkled. He was awake. He sat up as Goldstein drew closer.
He hadn’t expected recognition, but the eyes in that lined face were alert.
The old man opened his mouth and his lips moved. His voice was scarcely audible, but each of the three syllables was plain to hear in the silence of the room. Abraham. They had never met, but the old man recognised him. The eyes that looked at him were already awaiting death.
28
Rath and Charly entered the Castle through the public entrance and made straight for Records. It reminded him of class trips where he and schoolfriends had roved the girls’ dormitories of youth hostels. Charly was a civilian now, and here he was helping her procure information that ought to have been off-limits. It was easier than he thought.
When he showed his identification, nobody was interested in the woman at his side except the clerk with responsibility for the letters L to R. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he asked. ‘Are you working in Homicide again?’
Charly had to think on her feet. ‘Temporarily! I have to help the inspector here track down an address. Reinhold is the name.’
The clerk nodded and made for an enormous card index cabinet. ‘D or dt?’
‘Both.’
The man took a huge drawer out of the cupboard and hauled it onto the table. ‘They should all be in here, both ‘d’ and ‘dt’. What’s the good fellow’s name?’
‘We’re looking for a woman,’ Rath said. ‘More precisely: a girl.’
‘A minor? That makes things trickier. Do you see? At the top of the cards you have the names of the heads of household. Wives and children aren’t shown separately, and I’d be willing to bet some of them aren’t registered.’
Rath sighed. Charly, on the other hand, got straight to work.
There were ninety-seven Reinhold families in Berlin. If you counted those that spelled their name with a ‘dt’, over a hundred.
‘And we’re supposed to find a girl called Alex among that lot,’ Rath said, but Charly was already looking through the first card.
They found five Reinholds and one Reinholdt who had registered either an Alexa, an Alexandra or an Alexia. ‘There’s no way you can be sure that’s all of them,’ Rath said. ‘Do you want to visit every Reinhold family in Berlin?’
Charly was now leafing through index cards, and beginning to sort them in piles.
‘What are you doing?’ Rath asked.
‘I think she’s from the East, Friedrichshain or Lichtenberg. We should start with those addresses.’
There were still around a dozen. Rath thought she was joking when Charly suggested visiting them all today. ‘It’s already half past six,’ he protested. ‘People are eating their dinner, and in a few hours they’ll be in their beds.’
Charly’s frosty gaze nipped his opposition in the bud. Rath sighed, pulled out his pencil and began transferring the first addresses from the card to his notebook. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘but let’s split up. We’ll be quicker that way.’
Charly smiled at him, and Rath realised, not for the first time, that he’d do anything for that smile. Canvassing addresses was a cinch.
29
Outside the hospital Goldstein faced an unexpectedly fierce wind that cut through to his core, but decided against a taxi. Too restless to let himself flop onto the cushion of a vehicle, he walked. Walking always helped. He took out a Camel and lit it from behind his upturned collar.
The old man had the eyes of someone who knew he was about to die, but refused to let it affect him. How many people failed to recognise when their time had come and, if they did, couldn’t accept it, clinging to their lives until the end? Most people simply didn’t bargain on death, and when, inevitably, it came, their only response was surprise at the shocking revelation that it was all over.
At Badstrasse, behind the restaurant he had sat in earlier, the road led down to a perfectly straight little stream. He paused on the bridge, took a few drags on his cigarette and flung it into the dirty water. There was still a lot of activity on the street. He put his hands in his pockets and followed the flow of pedestrians.
A welcoming white ‘U’ shone in the night, above an elegant, modern brick building. Looking at the route map he saw that the next train was heading south. There was no queue and an escalator led below the ground. He allowed it to carry him down before checking behind. A figure in a black hat stepped on at the top and, for a moment, he thought his mind was playing tricks. The man stood on the stairs, gliding down at the same, monotonous pace as everyone else, an old Jew who reminded him of his father, whose hair was also white by the end. It wasn’t so unusual a sight, what with a Jewish hospital nearby, but the man looked like a spectre, a dybbuk, the ghost of Nathan Goldstein returned to haunt his son.
On the platform, he lost sight of him and was tempted to put the experience down to his imagination, when the figure appeared again, floating down the escalator to fall into a short, mincing tread that bore an eerie resemblance to Nathan Goldstein’s gait. His father had walked just like that over Williamsburg Bridge to Greenberg’s clothing factory on the Lower East Side. The old man was reminiscent of his dead father in many ways except one: Nathan Goldstein would never have taken the train. He was too tight, or simply too poor.
In the middle of the platform the black hat came to a halt and to Goldstein he seemed like a man out of time among the advertising signs, electric lights and people waiting for their trains.
Four men in brown were laughing and talking far too loudly, their faces reddened with alcohol. They had followed the old man down the escalator. A passenger with a bandage on his face who must also have come from the hospital pointedly turned his back on them.
They wore uniform shirts the colour of an unhealthy bout of diarrhoea, military style caps, also in brown, with red brassards on their left arms. At first Goldstein thought they were Communists, until he saw the black cross against the white circle, a cross with hooks, a symbol Goldstein had seen a few times in Berlin without remembering where. The old man seemed to recognise the symbol and the uniforms. Discreetly he distanced himself from the four men, moving slowly and inconspicuously – no mincing now – to the opposite end of the platform. Others waiting had also registered the newcomers, but no one wanted to let it show. Instead they remained as unobtrusive and indifferent as possible.
The brownshirts, oblivious to the change in atmosphere, pushed their way past. You could smell the drink on them even in the stale underground air. ‘Well now, what have we here?’
Their laughter trickled out like the last drop of rainwater in a gully; as did all conversation on the platform. ‘Is someone lost? I thought this was an Aryan platform!’
The rest of the passengers stared either at their newspapers or their feet. The old man gave up trying to be invisible.
‘Should we show the poor man the way?’
It didn’t sound like the brownshirt was being a good Boy Scout. The old man lapsed into his mincing walk, back towards the escalator at the other end of the platform.
‘Hey, old timer! We mean you, stay where you are!’ He didn’t turn around. ‘Hey Jew! Stand still when Germans speak to you.’
The old man reached the escalator, climbing the moving steps one by one until he disappeared from Goldstein’s field of vision. The brownshirts followed.
He seemed to be the only one who had seen the incident; everyone else continued looking at their newspapers or staring at the ground. Only when the train arrived did they raise their eyes. The doors opened, and they climbed aboard. No one got out. The train wouldn’t depart for another few minutes. He looked at the open doors and then at the escalator, which continued to roll upwards.
30
Rath had taken the east. While Charly spoke to the five families who had registered girls called Alex, he would work his way through the list of Reinholds based in Friedrichshain. He strode to the top of the escalator and lit a cigarette. Before emerging from the U-Bahn station at Strausberger Platz, he took another look in his notebook. The first address was in Andreasstrasse, not far from here.
In her determination to make amends, Charly had reminded him of the year before, when she had flunked her exam. Clearly, failure was not a concept that existed in her world. Her only source of comfort was to act, which she had done by tackling the exam for a second time. She’s a tough one, my girl, he had thought, as she started over again, studying long into the night. He felt an immense love for Charly in those hours he observed her unnoticed. At the same time her dogged grimness almost scared him.
