Фолькер Кучер - The Silent Death

‘Thanks for the warning,’ Rath said.

Lange nodded and went on his way.

Brenner, that back-stabber! Of course he’d run to Böhm. It had been stupid to lose his temper but Brenner had deserved it. In spite of his painful knuckles and the trouble that lay in store, Rath had the rare feeling of having done exactly the right thing.

It was cold again in his office. Perhaps he should spend more time here during normal working hours, he thought, at least then it would be heated. To avoid Böhm, he was currently out of sync with the Castle, carrying out private assignments by day and only appearing in the office after hours.

Everything he was looking for was on Gräf’s desk: the report from Dr Schwartz as well as the initial analysis of the evidence secured by Kronberg’s people. Gräf had been busy, even managing to get Plisch and Plum to set their interviews down on paper.

Still in hat and coat, Rath sat at Gräf’s chair and opened the forensic report. He was now accustomed to how Schwartz composed his texts, and knew which parts he could skim and which parts to read more closely.

There was no doubt about the cause of death: cardiac arrest due to electric shock. No internal injuries, but severe burns to the head and shoulders, a total of five fractures to the clavicle, upper arm and ulna – as well as a spinal trauma. Had Betty Winter survived, she’d have spent the rest of her life disfigured and in a wheelchair.

Clearly, Betty Winter and Vivian Franck were cut from different cloths. There was no trace of opiates, cocaine or hashish in Winter’s system, only a liver that suggested frequent alcohol consumption.

He had intended to skim the section about the contents of the deceased’s stomach, but his gaze fell on a single word: yangtao.

An alien element, more alien than the recurring medical terminology, and yet it stirred his memory. The Chinese restaurant in Wilmersdorf, or was he confusing two Asian-sounding words? It was Chinese at any rate.

Schwartz loved to show off his general knowledge and worldliness, and here he could do both. Thus: yangtao was a fruit from China, a berry about the size of a hen’s egg, with a tough, thin, brown, hairy skin, green flesh and little, hard, dark brown seeds. Satisfying and easy on the stomach, the doctor had added, which suggested he had tried yangtao himself. He had found the exotic fruit in conjunction with banal foodstuffs such as mushrooms, rice and chicken, inferring that the deceased had eaten a Chinese meal on the day of her death.

That was typical of Dr Schwartz. Instead of limiting himself to the facts of his forensic analysis, he liked to make inferences. Rath welcomed the contributions of any departments assigned to the CID, but sometimes Schwartz could be a damn nuisance. Still, as long as he only had to read what the doctor thought, he could put up with it.

ED officers had already examined the spotlight mounting. The technical analysis had concluded that there were no material defects. All threads were in order, and the bolt Gräf had found was intact. It must have been unscrewed by someone, and that someone was who they were looking for.

He reached for the telephone and was put through to the search unit: no trace of Krempin. A few citizens claimed to have seen him following the newspaper appeal, but so far everything had proved a dead end.

He returned his attention to the ED file. His colleagues had also taken in the deceased’s clothing for analysis: the scorched silk dress, as well as her shoes, stockings and underwear. There was something uncanny about the pedantry of these Prussians. Kronberg’s people had done everything to the letter. They had found blood on Betty Winter’s dress (her own, naturally) and several hairs that didn’t come from her (but probably from her cloakroom attendant or co-star). What insight was that supposed to provide in a case like this, a fatality that had actually been filmed?!

He reached for the interview records. Plisch and Plum had been busy. He leafed through the statements, not noticing any contradictions. Everyone who had witnessed Betty Winter’s death had described it in exactly the same terms as Jo Dressler. If it really was murder then there had to be a motive, and the statements about the dead woman were more revealing. Soon Rath realised that lack of motive wasn’t the problem; quite the opposite, in fact.

Betty Winter had been a regular dragon. Although those questioned had chosen their words carefully following her appalling death, reading between the lines, it was clear she hadn’t had many friends amongst her colleagues. She was respected but not well liked. Others hadn’t minced their words, listing all the people who hated her – always careful to except themselves, of course. It was difficult to know what to take at face value, and Rath had to keep asking himself who was trying to damage whose reputation with what remark. Quite a web of intrigue and slander was forming. He would have to take another look at Bellmann’s little family , as the producer called it, since he couldn’t rely on tracking Krempin down.

Henning had dictated a summary of the deceased’s life to Erika Voss. Born Bettina Zima on July 17th 1904 in Freienwalde, she had never undergone classical training, but many colleagues testified to her natural ability. The inflation years had brought her to Berlin, where she had tried her luck in variety, achieving success in a number of revues, before landing smaller roles in stage plays. In 1925 she played in her first film, alongside Victor Meisner, who was four years her senior. It was Meisner who advanced her in film, and not Bellmann as Rath had suspected. He was already well established, above all as a hero in adventure films and crime thrillers.

With Bettina Zima at his side, or Betty Winter as she was now known, Meisner had made the leap into romantic comedy. In the last five years, the pair had filmed about a dozen pictures together, becoming one of the most popular on-screen couples – a fact that had completely escaped Rath, who couldn’t bear schmaltzy love stories – as well as an item in real life, following their second film, Fallstricke des Verlangens. This information didn’t come from La Belle circles alone. Henning had peppered the dossier with references to film and gossip magazines, clearly indulging a secret passion.

According to his research, Betty Winter and Victor Meisner, who had married in 1927 but retained their respective stage names, were regarded as the happiest couple in the industry. No doubt because they hadn’t been divorced after the first three months. It looked as if Meisner was the only one for whom Betty Winter’s death was a personal tragedy.

Rath had felt from the start that Bellmann’s mourning for his star was purely financial.

Nevertheless, Victor Meisner, actor and husband, was missing from the list of those who had been questioned. He still hadn’t returned to the studio yesterday, and it would have taken more than a miracle for Plisch and Plum to have shown some initiative and visited him at home. Still, they had managed to question everybody else in the studio, where Dressler had recommenced filming despite the death of his lead actress.

Time is money , Rath recalled Bellmann’s words. Or was it Oppenberg? The producer hadn’t allowed his people a single day of mourning. They were probably filming now, making use of every day they had access to Terra Studios. Time is money…

He couldn’t help thinking of his father’s motto. Knowledge is power. For some people the ability to reduce everything to simple equations brought order to the world, but Rath couldn’t do it and didn’t want to. He was afraid he might no longer be able to see reality, and reality, after all, was what his work was about: shedding light on what had really happened, however complicated, chaotic and illogical it might sometimes be, however complicated, chaotic and illogical it usually was.