Babylon Berlin, page 36
It was almost twelve when they returned to the Castle.
‘Let’s get back to work,’ Gennat said, when he took leave of the three men outside his office door. ‘See you tomorrow at the funeral.’
Rath had almost completely forgotten that Stephan Jänicke was due to be buried at the Georgen Cemetery on Greifswalder Strasse tomorrow morning at eleven.
For the rest of the day he had free rein. Gennat hadn’t dared force a new assignment on him. Thus he had time to brood once more. Why was Wündisch after Wolter? What had Jänicke discovered?
He played with the idea of phoning the head of the political police and asking, but 1A was legendary for its secrecy. Even when someone died during an undercover investigation, it was unlikely the politicals would cough up any information. They would keep the whole thing under wraps, and perhaps that was what Wolter was counting on. What he needed was more information about Jänicke’s operation, which he hoped to find in the notebook. Perhaps he had overlooked something. He would have to go through it again and it was a pain he couldn’t get to it right away.
On the other hand it was a good thing Plisch and Plum hadn’t found it on him. He just needed to be patient.
Shortly after three Roeder called, as expected.
‘In with your photos, you say? I’ve been looking for it everywhere. It must have fallen inside.’
‘Inspector, you surely don’t think I’m going to deliver your pistol to you! I’m afraid you’ll need to come here. I swore I’d never set foot inside the station again!’
‘I’m just happy it’s turned up at all. I’ll pick it up straightaway, if that’s alright with you.’
‘Nothing doing, I’m afraid, but you might come to the Imperator café at five. I have a meeting with my publisher.’
‘In Friedrichstrasse?’
‘Exactly. That way you don’t have to come all the way out here. If I could give you one more piece of advice, young man…’
‘Yes?’
‘Keep your office tidier! Order is the alpha and omega of our profession. You ought to be more careful, especially with a firearm. Now, if you don’t mind, I have things to do!’
When Rath entered the Imperator at just after five, Roeder was sitting with a fat man wearing glasses, presumably Dr Hildebrandt. He had wrapped the Lignose in newspaper so that no-one would notice it changing hands. By now Roeder’s fingerprints would probably be the only ones on the pistol, Rath thought, as he said thank you courteously and stowed the bundle in his coat. From Friedrichstrasse he went directly to the Excelsior where the concierge was waiting with eager anticipation.
‘Ah, Inspector!’ He pushed the registration form across the counter and appeared relieved when Rath finally began filling it out.
‘One more thing…’ The concierge waved an envelope. ‘Something just came for you in the post.’
Rath took the letter and moved towards the lift, but only after he had closed the door to room 412 did he open the envelope and let the small silver key drop out.
Before Rath went to bed, he strolled to Potsdamer station and looked inside his locker. He placed the pistol inside and fished out the little black book before closing the locker once more. Right now Jänicke’s notebook was the most exciting bedtime reading he could imagine, even if he didn’t understand a single word.
28
The church could scarcely contain the crowd. A huge police contingent had arrived for the burial of Stephan Jänicke, with the plain-clothes officers clustered around the back rows. The violent death of a young officer had affected many Berliners. Nearly all the papers had sent reporters, and there were a number of men with cameras at the back of the church.
Rath gazed around. Some pews were filled entirely by the blue of police uniform. The plain-clothes officers were no less uniformed either, dressed in black to a man with their top hats resting in folded hands. Rath was wearing the same suit he had worn for the funeral of Alexander LeClerk Jnr. Unhappy memories, he sensed them rising.
The coffin was draped in the sober black and white of the Prussian flag, and flanked by two officers in parade uniform with gleaming buttons and highly polished boots. In the front row, next to Zörgiebel, stood a man and a woman, both white-haired although they weren’t much older than fifty. Stephan Jänicke’s parents had travelled from Allenstein. As far as Rath knew, it was the first time they had crossed the Polish Corridor, the first time, in fact, they had ever left their East Prussian homeland.
How would they react if they had known that their son’s killer was seated only a few rows behind? Rath couldn’t make out Wolter’s face from his seat further back, but he had worn a serious expression as he entered the church. He wanted to avoid Uncle if possible; even the sight of him was unbearable. Would their son’s killer look the Jänickes in the eye at the grave? Would he shake their hands and offer his condolences?
The dead man’s book hadn’t provided any answers and, this morning, he had thought about throwing it in the canal along with the pistol. Still, he didn’t want to abandon hope so quickly. If he knew the motive, he could produce the necessary evidence, and the ballistics report would testify that Bruno Wolter had also executed Josef Wilczek. Rath wouldn’t contradict it. No, he wouldn’t have any scruples there, not since Wolter had tried to plant the murder weapon on him.
The service was sober, without pomp. Rath’s first visit to a Lutheran church almost felt like a disappointment. As the mourners set off from Greifswalder Strasse, he maintained a distance from Wolter, which wasn’t difficult since Wolter clearly had no interest in encountering Rath. He fell to the back of the cortege while Rath remained at the front with the homicide detectives, beside Gennat and Böhm.
He hadn’t seen Charly, but she was probably back at the Castle, holding the fort. It was better that way. Jänicke’s funeral wasn’t exactly the ideal place for their first meeting since their memorable encounter at the press conference. You really are an arsehole, Herr Rath! Whenever he recalled that moment, he realised that her eyes were no longer filled with love, but disappointment and contempt.
Six young men, colleagues of Jänicke’s at police academy, removed the coffin from the hearse and took it on their shoulders. They passed through the entrance to the cemetery just behind the priest, with the funeral cortege in tow. All was quiet, except for a finch sounding its call over the graves. Police colleagues strode silently side by side, accompanied by a light rain. Nevertheless, it seemed to be getting warmer. Rath wasn’t the only one sweating in the greenhouse-like heat. Zörgiebel wiped his brow with a white handkerchief. It would be no easy task accompanying the parents of a dead police officer to their son’s grave. The commissioner walked alongside the Jänickes.
The coffin bearers followed the main avenue for some time, before turning right onto another main road, eventually reaching a brick wall. A few metres beyond rose the façade of a tenement house, next to it a brick building, most likely a school and, beside the wall, was a freshly dug grave.
The priest stood still; the coffin bearers took a few more strides until they were exactly positioned on both sides. They were just about to lower the coffin onto the wooden beams that had been laid across the grave when the peace was shattered by a brief but violent cry.
Surprise or horror? Rath couldn’t say, only that it had come from one of the coffin bearers. The six young men froze, and the coffin tilted precariously. After almost losing their composure, the six men were soon gazing as stoically as before. As police officers they had learned to control themselves, but Rath knew they must have seen something terrible and, suddenly, all sense of normality was lost.
The coffin was still hanging in mid-air, as if the coffin bearers couldn’t decide where they should set it down. They exchanged uncertain glances, before shouldering it once more and carrying it slowly back, away from the grave. The priest moved aside, confused, and Zörgiebel reacted immediately. Leaving the Jänickes where they were, he moved quickly but with dignity to the open grave. His eyes widened for a fraction of a second. He removed his top hat, and wiped his brow. Seizing the Jänickes by the arm he pulled them away and motioned discreetly to Gennat, who had remained a few metres ahead of Rath. Despite his corpulence, the head of A Division moved with astounding speed, waving Böhm and a few colleagues over. Rath wasn’t sure if the gesture was intended for him or not, but made his way across anyway.
A sense of uneasiness set in amongst the mourners, and a few rubbernecks moved towards the front. The murmur rose to a clamour and Stephan Jänicke’s funeral was suddenly devoid of all ceremony.
Rath pushed past the coffin bearers. An unbearable odour was rising from the damp earth – and then he saw it.
There was already a corpse in the newly dug grave. Clods of earth hung to a stained, rotting grey suit. Hands and feet were reduced to a bloody pulp, and the body was in an advanced state of decomposition.
Suddenly there was a flash, momentarily bathing the corpse in an eerie, dazzling light.
A few reporters had taken out their cameras and instinctively began to snap. Gennat bellowed his orders, uniform pushed them to one side and a chain of blue uniforms surrounded the grave.
Rath stood between the uniformed officers, gazing at the corpse in disbelief. Though the face of the deceased had also been marked by decay, his features were still so clearly recognisable from the mug shots that there was no room for doubt. He didn’t have to wait for the official identification to know that this corpse was going to bring him trouble. For in the grave that had been dug for Stephan Jänicke lay the mortal remains of one Alexej Ivanovitsch Kardakov.
Remains was the appropriate word, Rath thought as, barely half an hour later, he watched two men from ED pour plaster of Paris into the footprints right next to the stinking bundle that was all that was left of Kardakov. A third man was carefully examining the pockets of the mouldy suit with the aid of a stick and a pair of tweezers. All three had handkerchiefs around their noses and mouths, but were still wearing their top hats.
The rain had abated, but the humidity was becoming unbearable. The ground was steaming and muggy air carried the smell of decay in billows across the graves. It was bad enough up here, Rath thought. God knows what it must be like below.
They had begun the police work immediately, as most of the specialists were already on the scene. Dressed as they were they had set to work without complaint. Gennat had to send for Dr Schwartz and the forensic equipment from the Castle, but that hadn’t taken long, since Alex was close by.
The coffin containing Stephan Jänicke’s corpse was now in the cemetery chapel. As long as the forensics team was still working on the grave, the burial couldn’t take place. Rath would’ve liked to know how Zörgiebel was planning to explain that to the parents.
Whoever had deposited the corpse in the grave, one thing was for certain. He had not only disrupted the ceremonial funeral of a policeman killed in the line of duty, but utterly destroyed it.
Uniform had dispersed the mourners, ushering them from the cemetery as delicately as the situation allowed. Now only officers from Homicide and ED moved between the graves. With their black top hats, the men looked like a disorientated company of mourners. At the Greifswalder Strasse entrance, meanwhile, police were making sure that no-one set foot inside the cemetery for the time being. The little gate on Heinrich-Roller-Strasse was closed anyway.
Above all, the men from ED were looking for footprints – but they had their work cut out. Hundreds of shoes had trampled on the ground where moments earlier mourners had passed behind the coffin. It was pointless to even look there. At first glance, things didn’t look much better by the grave, as it wasn’t just the coffin bearers and priest who had lingered there. Zörgiebel, Gennat’s men and the officers who had sealed off the area had also left their tracks, to say nothing of the rubbernecks and press photographers. Fortunately Gennat had been quick to react and ensured that all those involved had their particulars taken down, so that any subsequent comparison of footprints, though laborious, was still possible.
The press photographers had initially refused to give their names, as they feared reprisals. Nevertheless, uniform hadn’t taken possession of a single camera. The last thing anyone wanted was to provoke a scandal, as Zörgiebel himself had invited the press. Rath didn’t believe any more than Gennat that a newspaper would publish a photo of a decomposing corpse. The pictures, which by now would be lying fully developed in the papers’ offices, would be securely locked away, but they would achieve at least one thing. The Berlin police wouldn’t be able to whitewash the facts. The photos would tell an interesting story. Namely, that the freshly dug grave of murdered CID officer Stephan Jänicke contained the corpse of Alexej Kardakov, a murder suspect for whom they had recently issued a search warrant. Taking this information and a few rehashed details from the previous week, a resourceful journalist could fill an entire front page, without needing a press conference or any exclusives from indiscreet police officers. Besides, it was pointless trying to keep an incident like this, where there had been so many eye-witnesses, under wraps. Zörgiebel must recognise that too.
Forensics emerged from the grave, and Assistant Detective Reinhold Gräf hauled his camera down to take some close-ups. Gräf tied a handkerchief around his face and turned up the collar of his jacket. Rath doubted whether it would do much good. The assistant detective appeared almost as pale as the corpse.
A man from ED was showing Gennat what he had found in Kardakov’s jacket, an astonishingly well-preserved packet of cocaine, a Berolina membership pin and a yellow identity card, valid until 16th May 1929.
Gennat leafed through the document, using a handkerchief to avoid leaving fingerprints. ‘Looks like we’ve found your killer, Herr Rath,’ he said. ‘Afraid he looks pretty dead. No good arresting him now.’
Rath nodded silently, feeling humiliated. Gennat had said it in a relatively harmless way, but the gaze of his colleagues had been less forgiving. Kardakov’s corpse had made a complete fool of him. The man whom Rath had taken for a killer, for whom he had initiated a police search warrant, had clearly been the victim of a violent crime himself.
‘When was he supposed to have killed this man?’ Gennat asked.
‘About three weeks ago.’
‘I’d say that three weeks ago he looked pretty similar to how he does now.’
Precisely the same thought was going through Rath’s head. Kardakov was not a murderer, he was a victim of the same person who had Boris on his conscience. He had known the moment he had seen the corpse and the treatment doled out to the hands and feet.
‘I fear the warrant was a little rash, sir,’ he said.
Gennat nodded. ‘It was even more rash to suspect the man of murder without any proof. Still, this corpse is something of a result for you. Imagine if the poor devil was still alive. If he’d just gone to the Baltic Sea for a few weeks, only to be arrested by police on his return to Szczecin station after seeing his picture in the papers. It’s tantamount to character assassination. You’d have had that to answer for, Inspector!’
Not just me, the commissioner as well, Rath thought. Zörgiebel had ignored Gennat’s protests, had issued the warrant for Kardakov and had gone public with Rath’s theory. The commissioner had made a fool of himself too – and Rath knew Zörgiebel would never forgive him for it.
He had made a whole host of enemies at the Castle. Böhm was standing with Kronberg and a few members of ED a little to the side by the cemetery wall. Not so much to avoid the stench, but Rath himself. To Böhm, I’m a decaying corpse too, Rath thought. Strictly speaking, he didn’t have a single friend left at Alex. The one remaining person he had counted as a friend was the worst of all. Uncle: Bruno Wolter.
A red haze on the edge of his field of vision made him look up.
It was Charly.
She came striding across the cemetery in her red dress, past the men in black, holding a folded umbrella in one hand and a shorthand pad in the other. Rath felt a stabbing pain as she surveyed him briefly, only to move on without so much as a word of acknowledgement. It didn’t stop her greeting the superintendent all the more cheerfully.
‘Ah, Fräulein Ritter,’ Buddha said, sounding almost relieved, ‘good that you’re here!’ He sent her straight over to Kronberg, who was debating something with Böhm by the wall. ‘Take down Forensics’s findings first. Then we’ll turn to our friend Dr Schwartz.’
Charly continued on her way, while Rath gazed after her.
Had Gennat noticed the tension between them? Buddha gave nothing away but continued to look pensively at the corpse.
‘He’s been dead for at least four weeks if you ask me.’
Dr Schwartz arrived shortly afterwards to confirm Gennat’s estimate. The doctor shook his head again and again as he examined Kardakov’s corpse. Schwartz appeared to be the only one who didn’t mind the smell, even while he was right next to the corpse.
‘Looks like he was buried and then dug back up,’ he said, when he was standing next to the CID officers again. ‘Forensics will be able to tell you more.’
‘How did he die?’
‘I don’t know yet. There are clear parallels to another corpse I’ve examined, but there appear to be some striking differences too.’
Gennat nodded. ‘You’re referring to the case Böhm worked on?’ He whistled loudly through his fingers and waved the DCI over. Böhm was still with Kronberg and Charly by the cemetery wall. He couldn’t avoid Rath any longer, but approached Gennat without deigning even to look at him. As far as that went, he seemed to have struck up an agreement with Charly.
‘Sir?’ Böhm barked.
‘You should listen to what Dr Schwartz has to say,’ Gennat said. ‘It’s about your case.’
‘It wasn’t my idea to search for the man who is mouldering away down there!’
