Babylon Berlin (13 page)

Something about this address didn’t add up. He decided to pay another visit to Luisenufer as he had to know who this invisible Herr Müller really was. Either he spoke with a Russian accent or else Kardakov had left Elisabeth Behnke a false address. Whatever the case, one thing was certain: Alexej Ivanovitsch Kardakov had gone to ground and didn’t want anyone to find him. That it was rent arrears alone, however, he could no longer believe. Not after they had fished a dead Russian out of the canal. The disappearance of the one Russian was surely linked to the death of the other.

There was something else troubling him. Rath wondered whether he might have set eyes on Herr Müller after all. A small man with a hat that seemed too big for him. The man who had told him about the fight between the two Russians the first time he had visited. Frau Schäffner, on the other hand, was absolutely sure that it had been a Russian and a German. Who was telling the truth?

At any rate, there was something about the row that night. Boris had been looking for Kardakov here on Luisenufer too. The question was, had he found him? When he heard that there had been two Russians fighting, on his first visit here, Rath had assumed the answer was yes. If it was true that only
one
of the squabbling pair had been speaking Russian, then another solution presented itself. Namely, there had been a similar incident to the one at Rath’s flat. Boris had awoken another complete stranger, thinking it was Kardakov. A fight followed, and Boris had pushed off, only to be murdered shortly afterwards. By the underground Kardakov, because someone had got too close for comfort? But what about the abuse Boris had suffered? What information had Kardakov been trying to extract, and why had Boris died of a heroin overdose?

Before Rath climbed the steps to the station at Kottbusser Tor, he trod out his cigarette sullenly. Spin it any way you liked, it just didn’t make sense. Still, that was a feeling he recognised. It was how things usually were at the start of an investigation. They would change though, he had to be patient and he couldn’t give up.

He boarded the train and travelled three stations westbound, alighting at Möckern Bridge. He wanted to see where it had happened.

10

He could see it as he crossed the canal. On Tempelhofer Ufer, close to the bridge, was a gaping hole in the canal fencing, secured by planks painted red and white. Passers-by scarcely paid attention to the temporary barrier. Rath sat on a bench in the shadow of the trees lining the promenade and lit his last Overstolz.

Though he seemed to be gazing aimlessly into the distance, he was registering every detail. To his left, where the car had crashed through the fencing, a tree was missing a large piece of bark. Otherwise the vehicle seemed to have pierced the gap between two trees almost exactly. With a dead man at the wheel! He tried to imagine how the whole thing might have happened. Boris had been sitting in the car, already dead, feet and hands broken. So who had been driving? Either someone was sitting in the car with him or someone must have wedged down the accelerator. Rath would have very much liked to know more details but, apart from what he had heard in the morgue and the little information carried in the papers, he knew nothing.

He crossed the street for a look at the houses on Tempelhofer Ufer. Presentable looking flats, they weren’t the sort of place to have a high crime rate. On the bridge, on the other side of Möckernstrasse, was a kiosk. Otherwise there were no shops, just residential buildings, offices and the goods station. Rath walked slowly past the house entrances and checked the names on the mailboxes. No sign of a Kardakov, not that he had expected there to be.

Behind the kiosk marked the start of the goods station premises. The little stall probably supplied the railway workers with cigarettes, newspapers and beer. Kiosk owners were usually rewarding conversation partners for police. Rath made his way over.

‘Overstolz, five six-packs,’ he said, nodding at the figure in the darkness of the wooden stall. The man was so fat it seemed as if he was physically attached to his little cubbyhole. Rath wouldn’t have been surprised if his huge upper body was screwed to a bogie. That was how it looked, at least, as he swung round and reached for the cigarettes.

‘One fifty,’ he said. ‘Need a light too?’

‘Please.’

The fat man passed him a box of matches. ‘Did someone stand you up?’ he asked unexpectedly. Rath gave him a questioning look. ‘It looked as if you were waiting for someone just now.’

‘Well,’ Rath said, as he lit the first cigarette from the new packet, ‘perhaps it wasn’t such a good idea to meet here of all places.’ He gestured towards the red-white planks. ‘That’s where he went through isn’t it?’

The fat man nodded. ‘Actually it was pretty nice to have my corner mentioned in the paper. Hasn’t done anything for turnover yet, mind.’

‘No legions of voyeurs and journalists?’

‘Only a few cops so far, but they don’t buy anything. They just ask questions.’

The kiosk owner didn’t seem to think he was a cop. Fine. Rath wasn’t here on official duty and the last thing he wanted was for Böhm’s people to hear there was someone from Vice muscling in on their patch. He had put the badge he usually wore on his jacket in his coat pocket during the train ride. ‘Did you see anything?’ he asked, hoping the direct question wouldn’t arouse suspicion.

The fat man was happy to talk. ‘It happened in the middle of the night, and I close at six, but the next morning around five, when I was about to open up, there were two cops hanging around. CID didn’t arrive from Alex until later and pestered me with all sorts of questions considering I didn’t actually see anything.’

‘Bet you see a lot here though?’

‘There are always loads of people walking past.’

‘Still, you must have good powers of observation.’ Rath took a deep breath. ‘I mean, you noticed me straightaway.’

‘You have to keep an eye on people. There’s always someone trying to steal something. A colleague of mine at
Schlesischer Bahnhof
had his stall burned down while he was inside. Petrol over the papers, light a match and see you later. A bunch of brats, couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, and the cops haven’t caught a single one. No wonder, the boys were sent by
Norden
, the kiosk was in their area and for some reason they didn’t like the owner. I don’t have any trouble with the
Ringvereine
, but you still need to be on your toes.’

Rath nodded. The
Norden Ringverein
had made the headlines only recently. After a bloody mass brawl on Breslauer Strasse, during which a Hamburg carpenter had been stabbed to death, the commissioner had banned two prostitution rings, one of which was
Norden.
In light of such violence, the police were forced to take drastic action. Normally, however, they tolerated the
Ringvereine
, associations that were supposed to help ex-cons reintegrate into society, but in reality deployed their singular abilities for profit. In short: the
Ringvereine
regulated organised crime in Berlin and had divided the city into different precincts. The police did nothing since the underworld was easier to control if it regulated itself, and excesses like those on Breslauer Strasse were rare. Murder was a crime that violated the
Ringvereine
’s code of honour. Some of the new associations, decried as rats by the more established organisations, no longer kept to the rules. Times were tougher these days.

‘Is there a
Ringverein
here?’ Rath asked the fat man. ‘I thought they only had them in the east.’

‘Don’t go thinking there’s no crime in Kreuzberg, my friend!’ The man leaned forward ever so slightly – Rath suspected he’d have fallen off his chair otherwise – but enough to lend him a conspiratorial air. ‘I wouldn’t like to say,’ he whispered, ‘how many stolen goods are shifted day in day out back there. You should ask one of the workers here about the kind of people milling around the
Anhalter
goods station!’

‘You don’t think it could have something to do with the murder?’ Rath gestured towards the shattered canal fencing.

‘You’ll laugh, but that’s exactly what CID asked me too!’

Rath was just about to dig a little deeper when he saw them. Right on cue, two figures emerged onto the street from one of the houses Rath had visited a few minutes before. One of them was an assistant detective from A Division, whose name Rath didn’t know. The other was a woman. Not a detective, a stenographer: Charlotte Ritter.

Rath disappeared behind the newspaper stands and leafed through the papers. Böhm had turned them loose, no question. Better if they didn’t find him here. ‘Is there anything about the dead man from the canal in here?’ he asked, before treading out his cigarette.

‘Try
Tageblatt
. It’s more informative.’

The paper Rath was holding was the
Angriff.
A smearsheet favoured by the Nazis which regularly defamed the deputy chief of police. Dr Bernhard Weiß was Jewish and the
Angriff
didn’t need any other justification for its attacks on the best criminal investigator in Berlin. The only reason Weiß hadn’t been made commissioner was that he wasn’t a social democrat. Or was it? Perhaps there were other reasons too. It wasn’t just the Nazis who had a problem with Jews, but they were the only ones who hawked their anti-Semitism around.

The fat man held out a copy of the
Berliner Tageblatt
and Rath grabbed it, making sure he kept the pair in view as they moved towards Möckernstrasse. He would buy the paper so as not to arouse suspicion, despite having read it in the café just now. He searched for his wallet somewhat awkwardly, both liberal and Nazi newspapers wedged underneath his arm. When he looked up again, he saw the assistant detective crossing Möckern Bridge in the direction of the station, alone.

‘Fifteen pfennigs,’ the fat man said. Rath rattled around for change. He felt uneasy. How was he supposed to avoid Charlotte Ritter when he didn’t know where she had gone?

The question was superfluous. First he saw her coat and slim ankles approaching from under the newspaper stands, the next moment she was standing before him. Her eyes were even darker than he remembered.

She seemed more surprised than he was. No wonder. He had had time to prepare himself for their meeting, admittedly only about four seconds, but that was enough to get a reasonable hold of himself.

‘What a surprise,’ he said, placing the papers and wallet on the counter and lifting his hat. ‘Do you live around here?

‘I’m here on duty,’ she replied.

‘The lady works for the police,’ the fat man prompted.

‘The gentleman knows, he works for the police too.’

The fat man was visibly put out by the news.

‘Could I have a packet of Juno?’ she continued, and the heavy upper body turned once more to the shelf of cigarettes. ‘Interesting mix,’ she said to Rath.

He must have gazed at her dim-wittedly. She smiled and her dimple almost caused him to lose his composure.

‘Your reading material,’ she said.

There was something not quite right about seeing the
Angriff
and
Berliner Tageblatt
co-existing on the counter. ‘I only need one of them,’ he said.

‘Let’s hope it’s the right one.’

He placed two coins on the counter and took
Tageblatt.
He wasn’t political, but there was no harm in her thinking he was a liberal. Better than a nazi. Or a social democrat, as the rumour-mongers at the Castle had branded him when they learned that he had enjoyed protection from Zörgiebel. Meantime, the fat man turned to face them again.

‘I’ll have to fetch the Junos,’ he said, detaching himself from his chair.

Rath was glad to be alone with Charlotte Ritter. ‘Do even the stenographers from A Division do overtime?’ he asked.

‘When they’re being used for murder inquiries, then yes they do.’

‘The dead man in the canal?’

She nodded.

‘You’re being used as a CID officer?’

‘Only sometimes, but I get paid as a stenographer. That doesn’t change.’

‘And what do the people you question say to that?’

‘They don’t even realise. I’m always on duty with an officer who shows his ID. Today I had the pleasure of traipsing round the houses with our very own Assistant Detective Gräf.’

The fat man returned and twisted himself back onto his chair with a groan.

‘What brings you here?’ she asked. ‘Do you live here? In that case I’d have to question you as well.’

Rath gazed at the fat man, who was trying to open a carton of two hundred cigarettes, but floundering with the paper. ‘I was meeting someone.’

‘He was stood up,’ the man from the kiosk said as he presented Ritter with a six pack of cigarettes. ‘Not many people buy them,’ he mumbled apologetically, turned his stool round and began loading the remaining cartons onto the shelf.

For a long time there was an awkward silence, but it came at the right time. No harm in Ritter thinking that the fat man had embarrassed him. At least she wouldn’t realise that she had been the real cause.

‘Twenty pfennigs,’ the fat man said from the dark hollow.

She opened her handbag and searched for her purse. Rath made use of the opportunity to take his leave with a brief tip of his hat.

‘See you on Monday at the Castle,’ he said.

‘Probably not. On Monday I have criminal law,’ she replied, meeting his gaze.

Those dark eyes. He racked his brains for an answer. ‘Well, have a good weekend anyway,’ he said, and set off.

‘Your change,’ the fat man called after him as he crossed the street, but Rath pretended not to have heard. He crossed Möckern Bridge, but neglected to take the steps up to the elevated railway. She was bound to take the train, and after all that he didn’t want to find himself sitting next to her. He continued to
Anhalter Bahnhof
on foot before splashing out on a taxi.

In
Café Berlin
no-one was sober. Those who hadn’t indulged in sparkling wine had powdered their noses with cocaine in the elegant washrooms, and most had done both. The place was spread across three floors, likewise the abstract light sculpture housed on a giant pilaster. Below, the dance hall was attached to the wine bar, whose main attraction was the tropical jungle growing on the ground floor, where it seemed as if the neighbouring Zoological Garden had sprawled over its walls. Anyone hoping to escape the hustle and bustle made for the tea room or the cocktail bar on the first floor. Though dancing was restricted to the second floor, the music could be heard everywhere, elegant, fluid swing, not as quick or as hectic as in
Kakadu
, where the music positively assaulted your ears. A poster indicated that it was the
Excellos Seven
playing in such a civilised manner.