Goldstein, page 32
‘DCI Böhm said you should head out there with your team, Inspector,’ Erika Voss said.
‘Reinhold, take our cadet with you,’ Rath said. ‘I have a meeting I can’t afford to postpone.’
In the canteen Rath had the impression that the two young men got on well. Gräf was scarcely older than Tornow, but his career path had been very different, having never served in uniform. As far as Rath knew, Gräf had worked in Homicide almost from the start, which spoke volumes, as Buddha only took the best. There had been a few rotten eggs, such as Czerwinski or Brenner, but Czerwinski, at least, must have been good once upon a time. Over the years though, he had been passed over too often and subsequently lost all motivation and ambition. As for Brenner? The idiot had been put out to pasture. After last year’s disciplinary proceedings they had transferred him to East Prussia, to the furthest reaches of the country, where he couldn’t get up to any mischief. He was probably sitting in a stuffy office plotting his revenge on Gereon Rath. In reality, he had been responsible for his own downfall, but he wouldn’t see it like that.
Even at lunchtime, conversation had centred around Goldstein.
‘I don’t know why they didn’t just nab him at the border and send him straight back home,’ Gräf said. Tornow agreed.
‘It’s a disgrace that a proven criminal should be allowed to do simply as he pleases.’
The two men had worked themselves into a rage, and Rath had no choice but to play the considered older colleague. He could understand where they were coming from but, ultimately, there was no alternative to the legal system that said you were innocent until proven guilty. It wasn’t enough simply to be thought of as a criminal.
‘Do you need the car for your meeting?’ Gräf asked.
‘You take it,’ Rath said. It wouldn’t hurt to make Gräf’s task at the freight depot a little more appealing. Better to drive to Moabit in a Buick than a green Opel from the motor pool. He tossed him the keys.
‘What kind of meeting is it then?’ Gräf asked. He had always stood out for his healthy curiosity.
‘An informant.’ Rath took his coat and hat from the stand and grabbed Kirie’s lead. ‘Besides, the dog could use some exercise.’
He could see from their eyes that they wanted more, but he left it at that, tipping his hat as he went. Erika Voss would be the most put out by his secrecy.
Stefan Fink, the journalist, was waiting for him at Aschinger in Leipziger Strasse. He had suggested the meeting point himself, though probably not without ulterior motive. This was where he and Rath had met for the first time. Fink, back then a reporter for B.Z., had tried to recruit the inspector as a press informant. Rath politely declined and was hung out to dry.
Fink had a huge plate of Holsteiner Schnitzel in front of him.
‘Bon appétit,’ Rath said.
‘Late lunch,’ Fink replied, wiping his hands with a serviette. ‘Inspector! I’m delighted that you’ve decided to work with me at last. You’ll see that it’s worth it.’
‘I’m not so sure about that.’ Rath tied Kirie’s lead to the table leg, ordered a few Bouletten for the dog and a small beer for himself. He sat and waited for Fink to devour his schnitzel.
‘Right,’ he said finally, dabbing his mouth. ‘I needed that. Five cups of coffee for breakfast.’ He laughed and lit a cigarette.
Rath grinned. The man was a muckraker, which would make this easier. ‘Good of you to find the time,’ he said. ‘You seem to be very busy.’
‘Always. So, what is it you have for me? You made it sound very exciting on the telephone.’
‘It’s pretty explosive. A man with serious gambling debts could be in a lot of trouble.’
Fink hesitated as a light went on in his head. ‘What am I supposed to do with that, and since when are you interested in illegal gambling?’
‘I’m interested in anything worth pursuing.’
‘Can’t you just tell me what this is about? You’re talking in riddles.’
Rath got out the by now very crumpled edition of Der Tag and unfolded it on the table. ‘Here, this is what it’s about.’
Fink forced a weary smile. ‘That’s yesterday’s. You want to see the latest?’ He placed his copy of Der Tag on top. It was hot off the press, the headline underlined in red.
Jewish Gangster Left To Terrorise Berlin.
‘Why are you stirring things up?’ Rath asked.
‘Because it’s what people want to read.’
‘Why is the man’s religion so important that it has to be included in the headline? It almost reads like Der Angriff.’
‘Has Isidor Weiss sent you?’ Fink laughed. ‘What do you want, Herr Rath? I thought you had information. This is old hat.’
‘I do have information.’
‘You mean about the gambling debts? Who cares about that?’
Fink still had a big mouth, but Rath heard uncertainty behind the steady voice.
‘No dice? Then how about something else?’ He lit a cigarette. ‘I can reveal, for example, that you personally will fare much better in the coming days and weeks if you tell me how you got hold of the police sketch and internal information which you used to cobble together your wretched article.’
Fink stubbed out his cigarette and sighed, as if Rath was worthy of his deepest sympathy. ‘Inspector, I can’t see what you hope to gain from this. How many times do you think your colleague Böhm has tried to pump me for information in the last few days? My answer remains the same.’
‘Which is?’
‘Shield law. A serious journalist doesn’t name his sources. At any price.’
‘Is that so?’ Rath pulled an envelope from his pocket.
‘A German journalist cannot be bribed!’
‘All in all you have debts totalling fourteen thousand Reichsmark from illegal gambling.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Fink said, though it was plain he did. He just couldn’t work out how the inspector had got hold of the information.
‘I think you do, and, whether you believe it or not, I’m the man who can help you. If, that is, you are prepared to cooperate.’
Fink lit his next cigarette. The look he gave Rath contained a mixture of suspicion, fear and contempt.
‘I can’t release you from your debts, but I can ensure that your deadline is extended. Perhaps spare you a few broken fingers in the process.’
‘What kind of cop are you? You’re not only corrupt, you’re trying to threaten me.’
‘You play your dirty little games, and I’ll play mine.’
Fink inhaled as if he needed nicotine like he needed oxygen. ‘What makes you think I have gambling debts?’
‘Sorry,’ Rath said. ‘Shield law.’ He stubbed out his cigarette and stood up. ‘I have to take the dog for a walk. She’s getting restless.’
He leaned over and untied Kirie, who began wagging her tail as soon as she realised they were leaving. Rath was halfway to the door when he heard Fink’s voice.
‘Stop. Wait!’
Rath kept his back to Fink. That way he didn’t have to hide his smile.
72
No, it was hardly the Adlon here. The brick walls were damp, the floor hard, and it stank of slurry and muck and salt and blood. To say nothing of chemicals; Alex didn’t even want to know how poisonous they were. And the cries at night. True, she had heard them from the axle factory too, but here they were so loud that she was startled out of sleep on the first night, believing the doomed animals were crying next to her.
What a place! The old tannery, or whatever Erich Rambow had called it. A hellhole, at any rate. Was she supposed to be grateful? She was, of course, after a fashion.
It was just too bad he was full of false hope again. She hadn’t seen him since she had been let go by Wertheim, and was glad to have closed that chapter in her life. Nevertheless, when she had waylaid him the day before yesterday, ready to take to her heels if he reacted strangely, she realised that nothing had changed. He still idolised her. She was using him, it was true, but it was a chance for him to get sex, so it all balanced out. As soon as this business with the murdering cop was over, she’d move with Vicky to another city, Breslau perhaps, where Vicky’s family came from. So far away the Berlin Police couldn’t lay a finger on her.
First, they had to finish things with the cop. Kuschke, the bastard’s name was, Vicky had followed him to his flat. Last night had been a success. A bucket of pig’s blood and a brush was all they needed. Vicky stood watch as Alex painted. It took barely five minutes. In Winterfeldtstrasse, even less.
Outside his flat they had screamed: ‘We’ll get you Kuschke!’ before running off laughing, as if it were a game of ring and run.
All the same, this was serious. They wanted to give the dirtbag a fright, to land him in trouble, before Alex launched the decisive strike.
If that meant spending a few days in this hole, so be it. She glanced at her pocket watch. Vicky was late again. Hopefully she wouldn’t burst in when she was busy with Erich. Still, maybe it would be OK. Alex could think of better things than ‘making love’, as Erich insisted on calling it, in this stench. At least he didn’t talk much. She heard steps and pricked up her ears. It couldn’t be Vicky or Erich; there were too many of them. Probably workers moving from one hall to the next. Fortunately, no one strayed into her dilapidated little hovel, which had been out of use so long it was beginning to rot. It still smelled like a slaughterhouse, however, the whole site did, a nauseating mix. It was what she had always hated about Erich, that the smell had seeped into his clothing by the end of the working day, but here she didn’t notice it so much.
The steps drew closer. Something was different this time, and she needed a moment to work out what it was. There were steps but no voices.
While she was still thinking, the great metal door swung open up ahead. All manner of thoughts raced through her mind as she prepared to retreat. She could only head further back, into the rear rooms, where the stench was at its worst. Damn it, what a stupid hiding place, but what else could Erich have come up with at such short notice? He could hardly have smuggled her under the bed at his parents’ house – or under his own bed, for that matter, which was a mattress in the kitchen – but he remembered the stockyard and slaughterhouse where he’d done his training, and the abandoned building there.
Alex stood with her back against the wall in the furthermost room, like a mouse caught in a trap. Hopefully the intruders would stay up at the front somewhere, otherwise her hideout would be blown, and she wasn’t sure she could find a new one at short notice. She had to stay out of sight of the cops. Vicky wasn’t much use at this sort of thing, having only ever stayed at the old axle factory. Unlike Benny and Alex, she, Fanny and Kotze hadn’t assigned each of their flats a different letter of the alphabet.
Alex peered through the crack, saw them but couldn’t make out their faces. It didn’t seem to be people from the slaughter yard: no blood-spattered white clothing. Instead they wore normal outdoor clothes, nothing special, patched in places and full of holes. A few harmless bums looking for a roof over their heads, just like her.
Or so she thought, until she heard them, and knew they were anything but harmless.
‘Where is she then, the whore? You’re certain she’s here?’
‘Of course. This is where Vicky came out of.’
Alex froze. She had hoped never to hear their voices again. The first belonged to Ralf Krahl, the biggest scumbag in the factory; the second to one of his crew, Felix Pirsig, nicknamed Peaches, a suitably incongruous moniker given his acne-ridden features. Only, right now, it was no laughing matter.
Damn it!
Peaches must have followed Vicky, even though Alex had warned her to be on her guard! Kralle and his crew had had it in for her since she rescued the court woman. A rat like Kralle had a long memory. He had never forgiven Alex for jamming a knife in his arse when he had groped her a while back, rubbing his hard dick up against her as he tried to stick his tongue down her throat. While he was busying himself, she pulled the knife and stabbed him through his trousers right in the middle of his fat arse. Since then he had left her in peace, even if she knew he was only biding his time.
Things were looking better for Kralle than for her. She didn’t even have her knife since the cops had taken it off her. Her best chance was if they assumed she was gone and gave up.
They didn’t oblige. Through the crack she watched them draw closer. There wasn’t much here to defend herself with. She’d have had more choice in the axle factory. Fucking hell! She had deliberately avoided going back there, but these arseholes just had to come to the one place where she thought she was safe.
A wooden handle lay under a mountain of junk.
She pulled until realising what it was: a fleshing knife, an old, rusty fleshing knife which would have been used to scrape the hide from left-over meat. The warped blade was rusty and blunt and had wooden handles on both sides. She grabbed it and searched for a hiding place as the steps drew closer.
No luck, God damnit! There was only one possibility left . . .
The door opened and suddenly Kralle was so close she was afraid he might hear her pounding heart. ‘Shit, Peaches. What kind of dump is this? Do you see that lezzer anywhere? Or are we supposed to fuck the rats?’
Alex was starting to believe in miracles, holding her breath behind the door, when she heard someone step past Kralle into the room. Felix Pirsig turned slowly around but, before he caught sight of her, she drew back and slammed the fleshing knife against his head. She only struck him with the handle, but it sounded like he had lost a few teeth as he tumbled to the floor. The momentum carried her along and out, so that she stood over Peaches as he bled, staring into the empty eyes of his friends.
73
Erika Voss was bursting with curiosity when Rath returned to the office, but his lips were sealed. Gräf and Tornow weren’t back from Moabit, so he withdrew to his desk and closed the door, which told her that he didn’t want to be disturbed. Kirie settled under the table, devouring a Boulette as a reward for covering so many kilometres. Rath took out a large brown envelope from between the newspapers he carried under his arm. He had good reason to conceal it from her curious gaze. He couldn’t reveal to anyone at the Castle how he had got hold of it. No doubt Böhm would have given anything for its contents, which made keeping it from him all the more appealing. Knowledge is power, his father used to say, and Engelbert Rath had made it to Police Director.
He opened the envelope. The police sketch of Abraham Goldstein tumbled out, complete with a few composition notes, alongside six typewritten sides which packed a serious punch. There was a profile of Abraham Goldstein, at least as informative as the one the Bureau of Investigation had sent by teleprinter two weeks ago, only this time in German, and supplemented by the information that the same Abraham Goldstein, whose weapon of choice was known to be a Remington 51, had come to blows with a troop of SA men in Humboldthain on Tuesday night. Then came summaries of two ballistics reports, one dated from Friday concerning the bullet that had been recovered from Humboldthain; the second, dated yesterday, dealing with two bullets of the same calibre which had been discovered in an unidentified corpse, found at the dump at Schöneiche a few days ago. This was confidential police information, ready made for the press and augmented by certain theories, for instance that the unidentified corpse could have been the victim of a gangland shooting, and that the bullets most likely stemmed from a single weapon, an American Remington 51.
Rath skimmed yesterday’s article. There was no mention of a Remington; Goldstein’s weapon of choice wasn’t mentioned until today’s edition. Jewish Gangster Left To Terrorise Berlin. Fink had taken up the suggestions of his informant and posited the theory that Abraham Goldstein was operating on behalf of a Communist-infiltrated Berlin Ringverein; and that the dead SA man and landfill site corpse were simply the first of many expected victims in an orchestrated campaign of retaliation.
Rath couldn’t help thinking of Hugo Lenz and Rudi Höller. Was it possible that this wasn’t a struggle between Berolina and the Nordpiraten at all? Was a third underworld organisation involved? Or had he simply been taken in by the freewheeling imagination of Stefan Fink, who had let the discovery of confidential police information go to his head?
He put the paper aside.
Realising that Rath had him over a barrel, Fink had passed on everything he knew, which, unfortunately, wasn’t quite as much as hoped for. He still didn’t know where the leak at Alex was. Fink had found the envelope with the sketch, Goldstein’s profile and the first ballistics report, on Sunday in his pigeonhole at work. The second report he had discovered in the same place yesterday afternoon. There was no reason to doubt him. Following their meeting at Aschinger, Rath had accompanied him into the nearby editorial office and made off with the envelope.
He returned the papers and sketch to the envelope and placed it in the lower drawer of his desk, stowing a few files on top and weighing it all down with the Funkturm miniature that stood on his desk, a souvenir commemorating his status as the broadcasting tower’s millionth visitor, and a prime example of the category Gifts that no one needs.
After that, he asked Erika Voss to keep an eye on Kirie, who was still lying under the desk, and stepped into the corridor.
Rath thanked God he had never had to work with Gregor Lanke. The head of Vice’s nephew had been taken on as a replacement for Rath when he was transferred to Homicide. Lanke junior hadn’t developed any ambition in the intervening years, and still hadn’t made it past the rank of detective despite his family connections. That said, he had now managed two years in Vice without rebuke, which, by his standards, was quite an achievement.
Rath stood outside the door and considered for a moment, before deciding on a surprise attack. He threw the door open and entered without knocking. He was in luck: Gregor Lanke was alone in his office. Rath’s successor hastily cleared a stack of photos into the top drawer of his desk.
