Фолькер Кучер - The Silent Death

‘Let me guess where Gereon sits,’ Paul said.

Charly looked at the desk. On top of the desk pad was a piece of paper with a note written in pencil. It was an address. Sandwerder had to be down by the Wannsee. A name was circled several times.

She tried to remember, hadn’t Gereon mentioned the name recently?

‘You hold the fort in case he turns up,’ she said to Paul and took the note from the desk. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

Gräf was surprised that she was back so soon.

‘Are there any ongoing investigations in which the name Marquard features?’ she asked.

Gräf shook his head.

‘Marquard?’ The man at the desk sat up and took notice. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘I don’t know.’ She displayed the note. ‘From Gereon… Inspector Rath. Perhaps it means something.’

‘Show it here. Ah,’ he stammered and stretched out a hand. ‘Lange’s the name, Andreas Lange.’

‘Ritter, Charlotte Ritter.’

‘I know,’ Lange said and blushed. He looked at the note and opened a folder. ‘I knew it! Wolfgang Marquard is the owner of the film distribution company Lichtburg. The address is identical to his private residence.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I don’t know if I can say.’

‘Come on, Andreas! Charly’s a colleague. Just on a temporary sabbatical.’

‘So: Lichtburg is one of the four companies that had keys to the cinemas in which we found the bodies of two dead actresses…’

‘ Had keys?’

‘Supposedly they were recalled when the cinemas were forced to close, but you never know, perhaps they weren’t all returned. Besides, you can copy keys like that easily enough.’

Charly nodded thoughtfully. ‘That was how you limited the circle of people who could have planted the actresses.’

‘Correct. There are hardly any other clues.’ Lange looked at the note again. ‘I’m surprised Inspector Rath came across this name; as far as I know he’s investigating the Winter murder.’

‘If we assume that Gereon wasn’t working on your list of keys,’ Charly said, ‘it can mean only one thing. He came across the same name while investigating another lead.’

‘Yangtao,’ Lange said.

‘Pardon me?’ Charly asked.

‘It’s here on the note. Above the address.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Some crazy idea of Gereon’s,’ Gräf explained. ‘Yangtao is a kind of Chinese fruit. That’s why he spent half of yesterday traipsing around the Chinese quarter.’

‘Why?’

‘This Chinese fruit was in Winter’s stomach and Fastré’s fruit bowl.’ Gräf shook his head. ‘Coincidence if you ask me. The Winter case doesn’t have the slightest thing to do with the cinema killings.’

‘Who knows?’ Charly shrugged. ‘Is there really no connection there? What about this Oppenberg who also appears in both cases?’

‘Coincidence.’

‘Do you know where Manfred Oppenberg received the news of Vivian Franck’s death?’

The two CID officers looked at her curiously.

‘In Wolfgang Marquard’s villa,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that rather a lot of coincidences?’

‘You think Oppenberg is the cinema killer?’

‘Or Wolfgang Marquard. Or someone they both know. No idea. At any rate, something isn’t right and Gereon has smelled a rat.’

‘I don’t think he’s gone out there. He didn’t say anything to anyone. Surely you’d take someone with you.’

‘Who knows? If he thought it wasn’t dangerous because he didn’t know the name Marquard had cropped up as part of the cinema killer investigation… Was he familiar with the list, Herr Lange?’

Lange shook his head. ‘No. He can’t have been. The list was here the whole time.’

‘Holy shit,’ Charly cried inadvertently.

‘Are you saying that Gereon Rath has unwittingly stumbled upon the trail of the cinema killer?’

A telephone rang. Rath hadn’t noticed it until now, even though it seemed out of place in these surroundings. It was an old model. The mouthpiece was still integrated in the body of the machine so that you had to lift the receiver.

‘That’ll be Wolfgang,’ Elisabeth Marquard said. ‘No one calls here otherwise. Answer it, it’ll be for you.’

He hesitated and she made an inviting gesture. Rath took the receiver from the cradle.

‘Yes,’ he said into the trumpet.

‘Inspector, how are you?’

‘You ought to know.’

‘I’m sorry, but you left me with no other choice. You shouldn’t have visited me tonight.’

‘I visited you before. You were perfectly friendly then.’

‘You didn’t have a dog sniffing around my house.’

‘What have you done with Kirie?’

‘You should be worrying about yourself rather than the dog.’

‘You can still go back. Let me go, spare my life. If I die things will only get worse. You don’t seriously believe you can escape arrest? Do you want to have to answer for a policeman’s murder, alongside the others?’

‘You haven’t understood anything, Inspector. This isn’t about murder.’

‘If I’m not mistaken you have two actresses on your conscience. What would you call that?’

‘I didn’t murder those women, I made them immortal.’

‘Tell that to the judge.’

‘The way you’re talking, Inspector, shows that you haven’t understood anything, not that it matters. I just wanted to let you know that I’m sorry. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have another guest to attend to.’

He hung up.

Elisabeth Marquard looked at Rath expectantly. ‘Did he send greetings?’

The woman had a nerve. ‘No,’ he said, and her sense of hope seemed to crumble. He felt his legs suddenly grow weak, but the moment passed. ‘Why does he keep you locked up here?’

She shrugged. ‘Because he hates me? Really it’s his father he ought to hate. He’s the one who locked him up!’

‘Why?’

‘It’s how Dr Schlüter wanted it.’

‘What reason can there possibly be to lock up your own son, Frau Marquard? Was he dangerous, even back then?’

‘Dangerous?’ She looked at him as though even speculating that her son could be dangerous was one of the seven deadly sins. With a shake of the head she turned around and gazed out of the window again. ‘Wolfgang was fourteen when he fell ill. First it was just mumps, but then… the pancreas… a serious inflammation. We feared for his life. He survived, but paid a heavy price.’

‘Diabetes.’

She nodded. ‘Dr Schlüter gave us hope. It wasn’t a total loss. The boy could still produce insulin, but too little. A strict diet, the old doctor said, and Wolfgang can live for many years yet. But the boy was foolish.’

‘That’s why you locked him up? Because he couldn’t have kept to his diet otherwise?’

‘I didn’t lock him up! It was my husband.’

‘Where is your husband? Why isn’t your son avenging him?’

‘Richard has been dead for a long time. Just like Dr Schlüter.’

‘Did your son…?’

‘No, what are you thinking of?’

Speaking had tired her. She fell silent and gazed out of the window.

Rath was finding it increasingly difficult to form coherent thoughts. He had to look for an escape route, and went through the open door into the next room of their luxury prison. ‘Room’ was the wrong expression; these were chambers. A bedchamber with a four-poster bed, in which he would never have been able to get to sleep, then a small library and a spacious drawing room. There was dark wood panelling on every wall.

He tried the windows but they were all sealed. Finally, he reached the dining room; here too the windows were sealed. He tried to go through the second door into the adjoining room, to continue his reconnaissance expedition, but it was locked.