Babylon Berlin, page 25
Where to put the car key? The chaos on the desk seemed too great to put anything else on top. His gaze fell on the typewriter. What if he were to place the key on the keyboard? A journalist couldn’t fail to see something like that. There was still a sheet of paper in the machine, which was almost completely covered in writing. It looked as if Weinert had forgotten about it after his argument with old Behnke this morning. Perhaps he had missed it in the office?
He was just about to turn away to find a more suitable place to leave the keys, when two words from the heading above the article caught his eye.
Red Fortress.
It took a moment for him to remember. Of course, that was the organisation that Major General Seegers had mentioned. The Red Fortress. The secret communist society.
What does the Red Fortress want? read the whole title above the article in the typewriter.
Rath was amazed. How was it that Weinert was preoccupied with the same communist sect that Rath had encountered during the course of his investigations into Kardakov? That was a strange coincidence, but then the penny dropped.
Berthold Weinert had known Alexej Kardakov.
The journalist had been living at Nürnberger Strasse for more than a year. And for all that time, he had been the neighbour of the missing Kardakov. Rath was prepared to bet that Berthold Weinert knew more about his neighbour than Elisabeth Behnke did. The man was a journalist.
20
So, there he was sitting opposite the legend. Because that’s exactly what Superintendent Gennat was. The chief of homicide was known as Buddha, partly on account of his stoic calm, but more because of his corpulence, which had also earned him the nickname The Full Ernst from less respectful colleagues. Gennat’s passion for cakes was known throughout the city. In the past, he had often made the murder wagon stop at the bakery en route to an investigation, and only with an ample selection of cakes would they proceed to the crime scene. That was a few years ago. Now, Gennat seldom drove out himself. It wasn’t necessary anymore because the Homicide division he had set up at Alex was staffed with hand-picked officers and boasted one of the best detection rates in the whole of the Castle. For the most part, Gennat remained in his office, its furnishings more akin to that of a living room, eating cakes and pulling strings. He knew about every single investigation and still undertook particularly tricky interrogations himself. His psychological astuteness was infamous. He had made even the most hard-bitten customers pour their hearts out.
Rath could see very well how, too, now that he was sitting opposite this man whose reputation preceded him. Gennat appeared friendly, almost sleepy, and carried his double chin with a certain pride. But Rath wasn’t about to be fooled; out of this gentle face blazed two eyes on high alert. Two eyes that were currently examining the new inspector with curiosity.
They hadn’t sat down at his desk, but rather at a living room table, round which were two green chairs and a worn, green sofa. The door to the outer office opened where Gertrud Steiner, Gennat’s long-serving secretary, balanced a tray with tea. A lavish selection of cakes was already laid out on the table. While she poured, Gennat assumed the task of doling out the cakes. Rath asked for a nut cake; all he could tolerate at this hour. Gennat meanwhile shovelled an enormous slice of gooseberry tart onto his own plate.
‘Thank you, Trudchen.’ Gennat sank back into the green cushions. ‘Tuck in, Herr Rath,’ he said and took a sip of tea. ‘You haven’t been in Berlin long, I understand?’
‘Barely two months.’
‘In which division?’
‘E.’
‘And before that you were in Cologne?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever been part of a murder investigation?’
‘Many times. In Cologne we don’t have a permanent Homicide division like here, but there are specialists. It was usually me they consulted following a suspected homicide.’ Sell yourself as best you can, he thought.
Gennat didn’t seem impressed. ‘Yes. I’ve heard all about your previous service. You know the commissioner from before?’
‘That’s right. I worked under Herr Zörgiebel when I was in Cologne. He entrusted me with the lead on several investigations.’
Gennat nodded and took a forkful of cake. Rath used the pause to take a bite of his nut cake, nodding in appreciation. The best he had eaten in Berlin so far. Gennat knew where to shop.
‘Now, Herr Rath, you will initially be deployed in a team that has already been operational for some time. We need every man possible on investigation Möckern Bridge.’
Investigation Möckern Bridge was the official name for Aquarius. So much for a position of responsibility, that would have been too good to be true. So, it was donkey work after all. Rath tried to swallow his disappointment, and reached for his teacup.
‘This case is currently causing us a lot of trouble,’ Gennat continued. ‘An unidentified dead man. You will have heard about it, as we informed the other divisions last week. The thing was in all the papers…’ Rath correctly sensed what was coming next. ‘…I’m afraid even that has scarcely provided our colleague Böhm with any clues. But he is an experienced man. You can learn a lot from him.’
So, it seemed good old Zörgiebel had led his pal Engelbert Rath up the garden path. The commissioner was only interested in putting as many men as possible on a case he had become fixated on.
‘Believe me, sir, it is a great honour to be able to work in Homicide.’
‘No need to speak so loftily, my dear Rath! It’s not an honour, it’s a bloody grind, you should be aware of that. You can forget about finishing at a regular time…’
The door flew open and Gertrud Steiner stormed into the room without a teapot. Gennat looked up in annoyance.
‘What’s the matter, Trudchen? I did say no interruptions!’
‘That’s why I’m here, sir! Because I had to interrupt! There’s a call for you, I think you should take it!’
‘Well, put them through.’ Gennat stood up, and the secretary returned to the outer office. No sooner had she closed the door than the telephone on his desk sounded. He picked up.
‘Yes?’
His gaze, which moments before had been mourning the plate of cakes he had left behind, grew suddenly serious.
‘Where?’ he asked, and pulled out a pencil.
‘When?’ The pencil scratched against the paper.
‘No. We can’t bother Böhm with it. He has enough on his plate. He’s got Zörgiebel on his case every day.’
A scratch of the pencil and then Gennat fell silent. It wasn’t clear if he was listening or thinking.
‘Pull Henning and Czerwinski off the stakeout, and inform ED. I’ll take care of the rest.’
He hung up. Slowly, he returned to the table and sat down at his plate of cakes. Silently, he shoved a forkful of gooseberry tart into his mouth and chewed on it slowly. He still appeared to be thinking. Then he placed the cake fork on the plate.
‘My dear Rath, forget most of what I’ve just told you.’ Gennat looked him in the eye and asked, ‘Do you think you’re capable of leading a homicide investigation?’
The murder wagon was waiting with its engine running as Rath and Jänicke stormed into the atrium. He had requested the rookie from Gennat, and Lanke had provided. He needed at least one familiar face in his homicide team, and unfortunately Bruno was out of the question. But, an assistant detective from the old troop, at least that was a start. Rath had sensed the mistrust confronting him as soon as he stepped into the car. No wonder: for three of the four men in the vehicle, he was a stranger. The driver and the two CID officers examined him defiantly. Not even Jänicke gave him a friendly look. The stenographer was the only one who smiled. Luckily her name was Christel Temme, and not Charlotte Ritter.
‘Good morning, madam. Good morning gentlemen,’ Rath said as he fell onto the well-cushioned back seat. ‘Shall we then?’
He hadn’t even managed to close the door when the driver stepped on the gas, and they shot out through the exit onto Alexanderstrasse.
Now he was sitting between Stephan Jänicke and the man who had introduced himself as Detective Paul Czerwinski, a small overweight man with the beginnings of a bald patch. He must have been roughly the same age as Rath but looked a little older on account of his thinning hair – and was two ranks below him in the police hierarchy. In the passenger seat in front was Assistant Detective Alfons Henning, whom Jänicke had addressed by his first name, a tall, gangly young man, whose eyes danced behind his glasses. The two assistant detectives obviously knew each other from police academy. Perhaps the atmosphere might yet improve.
The journey wasn’t a long one. The address hadn’t meant anything to Rath at first, but now that the murder wagon was approaching Schlesischer Bahnhof, the area seemed more familiar. The vehicle made a few turns before reaching Koppenstrasse, coming to a halt in front of a wide gap in the row of houses. A plaque revealed that the not-for-profit housing cooperative Nova was throwing up a light and modern tower block complex. A hoarding blocked the view of the building site.
The ED vehicle was parked at the side of the road. Otherwise the only sign that anything had happened here was the presence of two cops who were chatting by the entrance to the construction site. Barely a single passer-by paused at the scene. No wonder. The standard phrase that every police officer reeled off to protect a crime scene from rubberneckers – please move on! There’s nothing to see here! – held true in this case. Apart from a site fence and two cops, there really was nothing to see.
The uniformed officers saluted as the various members of CID climbed out of the vehicle. One of them stayed where he was, the other escorted the officers to the building site. At the moment there was nothing doing. To the left was a digger without a driver. Some of the workers had settled on a sunlit stack of planks, while others were standing around, hands in their pockets. The majority, however, had gathered on the other side of the construction pit at an embankment made out of excavated March of Brandenburg sand and were gazing into the depths. Down at the foundations a group of cops had also taken up position, though clearly there was more to see than just blue uniforms. Next to the construction pit, the men from ED had already started their work. They were mixing plaster of Paris in a little tub to pour into the footprints.
A thickset man detached himself from the group of construction workers and came towards them.
‘This is the site foreman,’ the cop said, ‘he can show you everything.’
The foreman greeted them with a nod when he reached them. He was wearing white overalls, and a blue wool pullover covered in plaster and cement. His hair was greying. He had to squint against the sun as he examined first Czerwinski and then Rath.
‘Come with me then, gentlemen,’ he said, in a thick Berlin accent.
Even though the sun was shining, the ground was still slippery from the rain of the previous nights. The men cursed as the foreman led them across the site. Mud, sludge and puddles everywhere. They had almost everything you could think of in the murder wagon, even a mini chemistry lab, but no-one had remembered to bring gumboots.
The uneasy feeling accompanying Rath intensified as they approached the other side of the excavation. The south-side of the site was also blocked by a hoarding. In the background the brick walls of a dreary rear courtyard rose up against the sky.
‘Where did you find him?’ he asked the foreman, who was walking directly in front of him.
‘What d’you mean find? I just saw that the lads had messed up the foundations, the whole base was like hill country, so I says open it up again, we need to re-pour it. And then suddenly a leg appears in the concrete. Naturally, we called you straightaway, Superintendent.’
‘Detective Inspector.’
‘Whatever you say.’
It wasn’t until they had walked around the construction pit and were standing on the embankment that they saw something black peeking out from the concrete: crinkled fabric, full of cement, unmistakeably a trouser leg.
‘At first we just thought it was an old pair of trousers, thrown in as a joke. But there’s someone in there.’
Rath nodded and climbed into the excavation, no longer paying attention to where he stepped. He could forget about his shoes, the second pair he’d chucked inside a couple of days.
The cops saluted him.
‘First Sergeant Stürickow, 87th precinct,’ said the highest-ranking officer. ‘Suspected male corpse in the concrete, sir.’
‘Not yet recovered?’
‘Not yet recovered, sir. Waiting for CID first.’
Exemplary. The realisation that forensics was an important aspect of police work was gradually seeping through to even the beat cops. Here of all places he had to meet one who seemed to have understood.
A pitiless anxiety slowly but inexorably took hold of him. He was almost trembling, but there were men gazing at him, mesmerised, and awaiting instructions. Detective Inspector Gereon Rath was here to issue orders. Very well, he didn’t want to disappoint them. He would keep them so busy they didn’t have time to think.
‘Henning, bring the camera down here,’ he cried. ‘Before we start uncovering everything, we need photographs of the status quo.’
The assistant detective had strapped the camera round his shoulders and was labouring down the embankment, almost slipping in the damp topsoil.
Rath turned to the foreman. ‘Is there somewhere we could talk in private?’
Shortly afterwards they stood in the neighbouring rear courtyard in front of a trailer that had been secured with a new padlock. Two kids were playing hopscotch on the pavement.
‘Had to park it here,’ the foreman explained. ‘No space on the site itself. And what happens? ‘Course: it gets broken into.’ The construction worker fiddled awkwardly with the key in the lock. ‘Wouldn’t surprise me if it was one of the low-lives around here. Anti-socials, all of them.’
He nodded disgustedly in the direction of the two children. Rath didn’t have to ask him to continue. ‘A bike was nicked, and about ten marks are missing from our drinks kitty. Your colleagues were already here on Sonnabend, but they didn’t find anything.’
Rath felt uneasy at the small, rickety table. The foreman sat opposite, with the stenographer between them. Christel Temme was approaching fifty and had nothing in common with Charly. Nevertheless, she took her job seriously, which consisted of taking everything they said down in shorthand. Beyond that she wasn’t concerned about anything; she left the thinking to the horses, or in this case, the CID.
First, Rath took down the man’s details – Edgar Lauffer, 57 years of age, resident in Danziger Strasse – then the real questioning could begin.
‘So,’ he said. ‘Let’s start again at the beginning. How and when did you discover that something wasn’t right with the construction site?’
The foreman scratched his head. ‘Well, this morning, of course. I hope you’re not after an exact time?’
‘If possible, yes.’
‘We start at six. First I go through what needs to be done that day with the team and then I divide them up. So that everyone knows what they should be doing. Don’t want anyone to be standing around looking stupid in the corner, do we?’
Rath fiddled with his pen and looked up at the trailer roof, while the stenographer tirelessly noted every syllable.
‘Should I carry on?’ Lauffer seemed a little confused.
‘Please do.’ Rath could sound about as merciful as a Grand Inquisitor. Lauffer began to stutter.
‘Well… I think it must have been around quarter to seven when I went down to the excavation and saw the whole mess.’
‘What did you see?’
‘It was the concrete… it was all… how can I put it… it looked more like the High Alps than a foundation.’
‘And when did you actually pour the foundation?’
‘Friday. I know that for a fact. It was after the public holiday.’
‘And on Saturday… I mean Sonnabend, the concrete was still fine?’
Lauffer began kneading his hat. His face told of his guilty conscience. It wasn’t just that he had used the break-in to pocket the contents of the drinks kitty; Rath suspected that the construction workers had spent most of their Saturday drinking beer and playing skat. At any rate, they hadn’t made great strides with the building. It was the only way he could explain the foreman’s embarrassment.
‘So?’ Rath probed. ‘Was the concrete OK on Sonnabend?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘But you were working here.’
‘Yes. But there was the break-in, the whole kerfuffle.’
‘You didn’t take a look at the foundation?’
‘I looked to see if the concrete had set. It had rained the previous night, remember?’
‘But the whole mess, as you just called it, you hadn’t noticed it by then?’
‘No, I suppose not, but…’
‘So the corpse could have been deposited in the concrete on Sa… Sonnabend, or even Sunday.’
Lauffer shrugged his shoulders. ‘Don’t know. Only if someone opened that corner back there up again, chucked the corpse in and re-poured. It was already beginning to set on Sonnabend.’
‘But it’s possible. You just said you didn’t notice anything about the concrete on Sonnabend.’
‘No, that’s right. Didn’t see the whole mess until this morning.’ The relief on Lauffer’s face was palpable. ‘It wasn’t one of my lads. It was a murderer who ripped up all our good work. They stop at nothing these days, these criminals!’
Rath felt pleased with himself as he left the trailer to take a look at the progress of the salvage operation. The conversation with the foreman couldn’t have gone any better. In the excavation they were still retrieving the corpse from its concrete grave. Rath had assigned the task to Jänicke, and he was directing the cops, who were making a mess of their uniforms as they went. They had to make sure they didn’t damage the corpse, and were going about their business carefully with hammer and chisel. From time to time there was a suppressed curse. The concrete was hard but still damp, and it was leaving ugly stains on their blue uniforms. The construction workers looked on, grinning furtively. The body of the deceased had already been uncovered; next would come the head. Slowly but surely, they whittled away the scraps and lumps of concrete.
