Babylon Berlin, page 26
Rath joined the others and once again had the uncomfortable feeling that all eyes were focused on him. That’s completely normal, he told himself, after all, you’re the one who’s leading the investigation. For a brief moment, all eyes were averted as a man in a grey coat, holding a leather bag in his right hand and a hat in his left, made his way across the site, teetering through the mud like a stork. Dr Schwartz was recognisable from a long way off. The pathologist hadn’t thought to bring gumboots either.
‘Good morning, Doctor,’ he greeted the pathologist, the latter gazing round searchingly, no doubt on the lookout for a familiar face from Homicide. Rath proffered a hand and came towards him. ‘Detective Inspector Gereon Rath. I’m in charge of the investigation.’
Schwartz examined him closely. ‘Haven’t we met?’
‘Only briefly. Hannoversche Strasse. I brought you two victims of the May disturbances.’
The penny dropped. ‘Ah, yes,’ he said, not showing the emotion this memory aroused. ‘Then you enjoyed seeing those corpses so much that you just had to find some more?’
‘It’s good to enjoy your work.’
‘You said it, my friend, you said it.’
Schwartz climbed into the excavation whistling a funeral march. A strange customer, Rath thought, and followed suit.
Despite the traces of concrete, the face of the deceased was now visible, even if the concrete had played havoc with its physiognomy, and the missing left eye made it seem like a grotesque mask.
Nevertheless, one of the uniformed officers who had helped dig him up seemed to recognise the dead man despite his disfigurements. Stürickow, the first sergeant from the 87th precinct, was flabbergasted.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he cried and took a step back. ‘If it isn’t Saint Josef! No wonder, he was always going to come to a sticky end!’ He shook his head in disbelief. When he noticed the curiosity and surprise on the faces of those around him, he shrugged and added by way of explanation: ‘I’ve known him since primary school.’
Saint Josef. That was the name Josef Wilczek had been given, since he wasn’t just known as a highly versatile crook, but also as a devout Catholic. He didn’t have any family, but Sergeant Stürickow and Wilczek’s landlady could both identify him beyond any doubt at the morgue. By the time Jänicke provided the news from Hannoversche Strasse, Rath had long since got hold of Wilczek’s file from the records office, and spread its contents across Erwin Roeder’s abandoned desk. Ironically, it was exactly the same office that Charly had pulled him into a few days before. It wasn’t especially big, but it had a distinct advantage over Rath’s old office in E Division. Namely, he had it to himself. Even the outer office was abandoned, as Roeder’s secretary had gone on holiday, most likely to type up the ex-policeman’s new manuscript.
ED had photographed Wilczek from all sides. At the time, this peculiar saint had sported a moustache. The photographer had clearly forgotten to say smile, please, and Wilczek was gazing into the lens like someone who was about to gobble up small children as soon as the photo call ended.
Rath stared at the file as if it had landed on his desk from a bad dream. He had suspected it ever since he’d set foot on the site that morning. A single glance had been enough to dispel all doubt: it was the same construction site. On that fateful night, he had simply approached from the other side. From the south, and the rear courtyard where the trailer stood.
The realisation had hit him square in the face and he hoped that no-one noticed how nervous he was. Or at least that they had put it down to the fact that Detective Inspector Gereon Rath had been plunged in at the deep end when Buddha charged him with leading the investigation. Rath still couldn’t quite believe it. Was that fate he could hear laughing behind the nearest door? His first official homicide case in this city, the case he had been waiting for – and a corpse that Detective Inspector Gereon Rath himself had buried. Well, congratulations!
Even in the seclusion of Roeder’s tiny office, the thought persisted that the whole thing could be a trap. Why had Gennat sent him, of all people, out to the dead man? Was it really just because of a shortage of people in A Division? Or had everyone known about it for a long time and were simply waiting for him to make a mistake? Whenever he considered it more closely, however, he always came to the same conclusion: no-one could know anything. He just had to calm down and bring his paranoia under control.
His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. Either it was Gennat, or one of his colleagues reporting from the field. No-one else could have access to the new number. Sullenly, he reached for the receiver.
‘Yes?’
‘Good afternoon, Inspector! Herr Heinrich was kind enough to give me your number. It’s Michael Lingen from Tageblatt here. I have a few questions if you don’t mind…’
Which fucking idiot had given the press his number?
There was no reason to be friendly. ‘And what if I do mind?’ Rath said. ‘It just so happens that I’m rather busy.’
‘Please pardon the interruption, Inspector. Naturally you still have work to do during your final days at the station. But I thought – well, ultimately it’s in your best interests.’
Your final days at the station? What the hell was that supposed to mean? Was the guy trying to blackmail him?
‘What do you mean by that?’ Inside, Rath had put up his fists.
‘I mean exactly what I said.’ The journalist didn’t sound like he was trying to take him for a ride. Actually he sounded rather offended. ‘Ultimately,’ the man continued, ‘you must want Tageblatt to bestow a favourable review on your new book, Herr Roeder!’
Rath didn’t have to think long before alighting on a suitable response.
‘Do you think a Prussian official can be bought?’ he intoned. The faux outrage came easily to him. ‘Do you think I’m going to say a damn thing to a hack like you?’
Rath slammed the receiver into the cradle. The new book by his ex-colleague Roeder was unlikely to come off too well in Tageblatt now.
The picture on his desk hauled him back to reality. Josef Wilczek was gazing at him furiously, as if reproaching him for his violent death. The face on the photograph seemed familiar somehow. It was easier to make out than the disfigured profile of his corpse; easier, too, than the face Rath had seen that night under the shadow of the brim of his hat.
Perhaps it was the moustache that made the difference. At any rate, Rath had the feeling that he had encountered the man before the fatal incident, but no matter which way he examined Wilczek’s features he couldn’t for the life of him say when and where their paths might have crossed. On Marlow’s patch, perhaps? Or even before that? Rath pushed the thought aside. It wouldn’t get him anywhere right now. He had probably just dreamed of the dead man once too often.
There were more urgent things to worry about. One way or another he would have to be damn careful. He couldn’t afford to make a mistake, which, paradoxically in this case, meant making as many mistakes as possible. Mistakes that made solving the case impossible without putting him in a negative light. If Rath wasn’t going to solve this case, then he needed to do so in an intelligent way, that is, in a plausible way so that no-one thought he was a rank amateur, or worse still, became suspicious and began to surmise the truth.
He gave a start as the telephone rang.
‘Inspector Rath, CID,’ he said.
‘Nibelungen publishing house,’ he heard a woman say in a voice that seemed to brook no argument. ‘Doctor Hildebrandt, outer office, I’m connecting you now…’
Before Rath could say anything, he was put through. The male voice on the other end of the line was one he hadn’t heard before.
‘Well, my dear fellow! Still hard at it these last few days? I’m sitting here with the final proof. The part where you mention the Jewification of the police force…’
Rath broke him off. ‘Doctor Hildebrandt I presume?’
Silence at the other end of the line. The publisher needed a moment or two to compose himself.
‘Who am I speaking to?’ he asked after clearing his throat.
‘CID, Berlin. If you want to report a crime, then you’ve telephoned the right place. If not, I recommend you use another line…’
Dr Hildebrandt hung up.
Rath let the receiver click back into place. The face on his predecessor’s desk was staring at him as if to say: Hey! Forget Roeder! Concentrate on me! This is my file we’re talking about!
Saint Josef. Why did it have to be a saint he’d buried, of all people?
For the most part the Berlin underworld was in the habit of naming its members after other distinguished characteristics, with the result that safe-breaker-Willis and razor-Edes were far easier to find than saints. But when it came to names, Wilczek would have made things difficult for an American Indian tribe. The truth was he did everything, but nothing properly. His file gave no clear indication of what it was he specialised in. He had made a splash in various fields during the post-war years, always with something illegal. And he had always ended up getting caught. Indeed, the word ‘ragbag’ might have been invented to describe Wilczek’s rap sheet.
The list started with petty larceny and ranged from breaking and entering, perjury and falsification of documents right through to grievous bodily harm. All told, it amounted to two years in prison and five years’ hard labour, and no doubt served as sufficient recommendation for Berolina, which was the most interesting thing he had gleaned from the file. Josef Wilczek belonged to Red Hugo’s Ringverein, which, in turn, was in thrall to Dr M. – further proof that Johann Marlow must have put the man onto him.
Officially, of course, the Wilczek file pointed to a different conclusion, that the murderer moved in criminal circles. First of all, they would have to sound out Berolina, the perfect assignment for the rookie. Rath sent Jänicke to the Barn Quarter, to Mulackritze, a known criminal hang-out, which was also a favourite of Red Hugo’s men. He was almost certain that Johann Marlow would never show his face in a place like that. At most, he would send his Chinese bodyguard to haul the head of Berolina into a car waiting outside. No great danger, then, that the rookie would get in Dr M.’s way.
A convincing red herring – what more could he have asked for? Well, for one that Czerwinski and Henning got as little as possible out of the people in the tenement houses between Koppenstrasse, Münchebergstrasse and Schlesischer Bahnhof. But that was to be expected. The people in this district weren’t especially talkative, particularly not to the police. He hoped to keep the two experts from Homicide pointlessly scouring the apartment houses for as long as possible. That way, they wouldn’t get any big ideas, start reconsidering things and drawing their own conclusions.
He charged Christel Temme with making a neat copy of all the statements made by the construction workers. For the time being, that angle posed no danger. Even the interrogation of the site foreman couldn’t have gone better. Lauffer’s statement made it almost impossible to specify a timeframe when the corpse could have been deposited in the concrete. The workers had been even more vague than their foreman. According to their statements, the time of the incident was more likely to have been Saturday or Sunday than Friday. If push came to shove, he had an absolutely watertight alibi for both evenings, which could be confirmed by various police officers as well as a stenographer. He hoped he would never have to make use of it, but as matters stood there was still evidence out there that pointed to him.
The telephone on Roeder’s desk rang again.
‘Alexandria Ringverein. Services of all kinds. Who might I kill for you this time?’
‘You could start by killing the jokes, Herr Rath! They’re so old they should be given the coup de grace.’
It didn’t seem to be a journalist, or a publisher either. The voice seemed familiar to him. ‘Who am I speaking to, please?’
‘Schwartz here. Can you spare a little time and come down to Hannoversche Strasse? Or would you rather keep playing the fool?’
The pathologist. Rath took a deep breath. At least it wasn’t someone from the top floor. ‘That was quick, have you finished the autopsy already?’
‘No, but I thought you might like to attend. That way you’ll have the initial results by this evening.’
Some sort of test of courage, no doubt. The pathologist wanted to see how the newbie reacted. Was he soft or could he handle it?
Rath decided he could handle it.
‘I’ll be with you in an hour, Doctor, if that’s OK?’
Not even two weeks had gone by since he last passed through this door. Rath took a deep breath before entering the yellow-brick building in Hannoversche Strasse. This was where everything had begun. He gave the door that led from the foyer to the showroom a determined push and entered. On the way to the autopsy rooms, he went past a glass wall behind which Berlin’s unidentified dead were laid out as in a macabre waxwork. This was where they had displayed Boris for three days, and yet there was no-one who knew the man, or at least no-one who would admit to it. In the meantime, he was certain that there were people in this city who were aware of both the first and last names of the dead Russian, and who nevertheless had good reason not to get in touch. People like Alexej Kardakov, for instance, or Svetlana Sorokina – and most likely Johann Marlow too.
The autopsy room was still sealed. Rath waited outside the door. What could he expect to find behind it? Did Schwartz merely want to shock him, or had he found something he could spring on the unsuspecting inspector? He tried to shake off this latest attack of paranoia. The darkness, the rain. No-one could possibly have recognised the men in the courtyard below.
His thoughts were interrupted by Dr Schwartz emerging energetically into the corridor, his lab coat waving behind him.
‘Good day, Inspector,’ the doctor said and shook his hand. ‘Shall we, then?’
The keys jangled loudly as he opened the door. Rath followed him into the room, and saw that the corpse was already on the marble table, covered by a sheet. He watched Schwartz carefully wash his hands at the basin. There were only a few blood spatters on his white coat. Somehow the pathologist’s elegant appearance didn’t quite fit with his profession, or his primitive sense of humour.
‘My first job as a concreter,’ he said, as he approached the autopsy table.
‘I dare say. Corpses encased in concrete are rather rare, aren’t they?’ Rath hoped that Schwartz hadn’t noticed how nervous he was.
‘I wouldn’t bet on it, my friend,’ Schwartz replied. ‘There’s a lot of building work in Berlin; and not everyone is granted a proper burial.’ He winked at Rath. ‘I wouldn’t like to know how many new buildings have been erected on bones. But that’s something for the archaeologists in a thousand years’ time.’
He pulled back the white cotton sheet. Wilczek looked significantly cleaner than he had done in the excavation.
‘I’ve taken the liberty of preparing something,’ Schwartz said. ‘So that you don’t have to give up too much of your time.’
Wilczek’s head looked like a beer stein with an open lid. Schwartz had sawn a perfect circle in the top of the skull to get to the brain. That was bearable. At least he hadn’t expected Rath to deal with the sound of the bone saw. He had always found that to be the worst, much worse than all the blood, for example, or the sight of a face that had been skinned, the eyeballs gaping in their sockets like two glass marbles.
‘Fortunately, most of the concrete was stuck to his clothing, so that contamination of the body was limited,’ Schwartz said. ‘I did find a lump in his mouth, but it entered post mortem. Likewise, some concrete also penetrated the skull, through this hole here.’ He gestured towards the empty eye socket that gave Wilczek’s opened head an even more sinister expression.
Rath breathed a sigh of relief. Dr Schwartz hadn’t just done a little preparatory work; clearly he had already examined the corpse in detail. The doctor had most likely been trying to give the newbie in A Division a little scare.
‘Can you say anything about the cause of death at this stage?’ he asked, reeling off the routine questions a homicide detective asked a pathologist to conceal his nerves.
‘It wasn’t concrete poisoning, even if it looks that way,’ Schwartz said. He opened a tin can and showed Rath a projectile smeared with blood. ‘He got this in the eye, and it did him no good, I’m afraid.’
Rath nodded absent-mindedly and felt himself burning up. The goddamn bullet! He had seen it coming. Of course it had still been in his head, and the doctor had found it.
‘It’s a little deformed, could be a ricochet. So, probably an accident rather than a well-aimed shot,’ Schwartz said and dropped the bullet back into the can. The plink was muffled by the smear of blood and brain. ‘Something for your colleagues in Ballistics,’ the doctor said, before screwing the can closed and handing it to the inspector.
‘Are you one hundred percent sure about the cause of death?’ Rath asked, as he accepted the plain tin can.
Schwartz shrugged. ‘I’ve never known anyone to survive having a piece of metal like that in their brain, and I can’t see another possible cause of death. The concrete came later, poor guy. He was already dead when he was buried. Nothing points to suffocation, and I haven’t been able to find any other injuries that might have been fatal. The only thing was a badly healed nasal fracture. You don’t die of something like that, and it’s a few years old anyway.’
