Фолькер Кучер - The Silent Death

Oppenberg, that rat! So he had lied to him! Krempin was talking about deliberate sabotage, about manipulating the lighting system to destroy the sound film camera. Too many thoughts were racing through his mind, distracting him. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ Rath asked.

‘That my cards are on the table. I know I’ve done bad things, and I want to take responsibility for them. But I’m no murderer!’

‘Then why are you hiding?’

‘Because you’re after me.’

That sounded plausible. People wanted for murder hide. They had those damn newshounds to thank for that! ‘Perhaps it was only involuntary manslaughter. Perhaps you didn’t mean for the spotlight to kill anyone. But that’s what happened, and you need to face up to it.’

‘I removed the wire before I left, deactivated the whole thing. Nothing else could’ve happened. It’s a mystery to me.’

‘Then come to the station and we’ll talk things through.’

Krempin gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘How stupid do you think I am? You’ll arrest me. You don’t have any other choice. That’s why you have my flat under surveillance.’

‘You called me once already,’ Rath said. ‘Yesterday, when I was in Guerickestrasse.’

‘You have good instincts, Inspector, but don’t expect me to come to Alex. I have good instincts too.’

‘Then tell me what you did. How you prepared the spotlight. When…’

Felix Krempin hung up.

Rath kept the receiver in his hand, gave the cradle a quick tap with the side of his hand and had himself put through to the private number listed on Manfred Oppenberg’s card. A maid told him that the master of the house wasn’t home. She wasn’t expecting him until late, as he was attending an important meeting tonight. Rath swallowed his rage for a moment and used all his charm to get the time and address.

That left him a few hours to drive back to Guerickestrasse. The green Opel was still parked outside the door, though with a different team this time. Plisch and Plum looked bored.

‘What are you two doing here?’ Rath asked. ‘I thought you were part of my investigation team.’

‘Your team doesn’t exist anymore,’ said Czerwinski. ‘Böhm’s taken it over, and proceeded to ruin our weekend. By the way, he was fuming that you were nowhere to be found.’

‘I’ve got things to do. Besides, I’m here now.’

‘You definitely can’t be accused of lacking commitment.’ He gave Rath an appraising look. ‘What’s got into you, giving Frank a bloody lip like that?’

‘He provoked me.’

‘He told me you started laying into him out of the blue.’

‘He’s lying.’

‘He was pretty mad!’

‘Well, did he calm down?’

‘No idea. He said something like I’ll tear strips off him , before going after you.’

‘Didn’t catch me though.’

‘Listen, Gereon,’ Czerwinski said. ‘You don’t have many friends in the Castle as it is, and you’re not making your life any easier. Frank is livid and baying for your blood, with a good chance of getting it, given his relationship to Böhm.’

‘What about my relationship to the commissioner?’

‘Like I said: you’re not making yourself any friends in the Castle. Between us, it’d be a good idea to show your colleagues a little more loyalty.’

Rath hunched his shoulders. ‘I am loyal. I’m paying you a visit, aren’t I? And look, I’ve even brought something for you.’ He passed him the container he’d used for Kathi’s reheated stew. ‘Here,’ he said, producing two spoons. ‘Silesian lentil stew. There should still be two portions inside, if you split it fairly.’

‘Sure,’ Czerwinski said, ‘according to rank.’

‘And girth,’ Henning piped up from the back seat.

‘Are you just here to feed the troops?’

‘No, I have an idea. Tuck in and keep an eye on things. I’ll be back in a minute.’

There were two possible houses, and Rath decided on the left-hand one first, beginning on the ground floor. A grey-haired man opened and eyed him suspiciously.

‘CID,’ Rath said, only to be interrupted.

‘I’ve already told you I didn’t see anything! I don’t spend all day staring at the house opposite.’

Rath remained friendly. ‘It’s about this house, not the one opposite. Have you noticed anything unusual, particularly in the last two days?’

The man looked at him from top to bottom. ‘No,’ he said and slammed the door.

He scarcely had any more luck in the remaining flats. Even where people were friendlier, their information was similarly vague. Nor did he find anyone he thought capable of hiding Felix Krempin.

‘You think he might have taken cover in someone’s flat?’ a small, bespectacled man in a grey cardigan asked, a resident from the third floor. ‘Save yourself the effort. No one here’s stupid enough. Better to ask next door.’

Again, Rath worked his way up from the ground floor, only to receive the same answers. On the second floor was a bell that appeared to be broken. He knocked, but no one answered. He knocked again.

‘You can knock as long as you like, no one will open.’

A full-faced woman was standing in the entrance to the flat opposite, her eyes alert.

‘Why not?’

‘No one lives there anymore.’

‘Since when?’

The woman shrugged. ‘The cops came about two or three weeks ago to kick the Seyfrieds out. They hadn’t paid their rent for months.’

‘No one’s replaced them?’

‘If Oppenberg wants as much for that dump as he’s charging us, then I’m not surprised.’

‘Oppenberg?’

‘The landlord.’

Rath nodded. ‘Have you noticed anything in the last few days? Was anyone in the empty flat?’

‘Not that I’m aware of. Why do you ask?’

The woman looked surprised when he showed his badge. ‘The man you’re looking for? I don’t know, but he’d have to be pretty brazen to hide opposite his own house. How’s he supposed to have got in anyway?’

Rath rattled the handle, making the answer superfluous: the door wasn’t locked.

The woman continued to peer over nosily. ‘Thank you,’ Rath said, ‘you’ve been very helpful.’

It took her a moment to understand, then she withdrew to her flat and closed the door.

Rath entered. There was no furniture, only a telephone that had been left on the hallway floor. A series of sharp contours on the yellowing wallpaper revealed where the furniture had stood. The place smelt of cold cigarette smoke.

The living room looked directly onto the street below. When Rath looked out of the window, and leaned forward a little, he could make out the green Opel on the street corner. Across the way he was looking straight into the flat he had visited yesterday. He could even see the telephone.

In the Seyfrieds’ former bedroom Rath struck gold. Krempin hadn’t left much, just a few stubbed-out cigarettes in a tin. Enough for the boys from ED. It was time to disappear before things got too hectic and Wilhelm Böhm showed up in person.

He went downstairs and knocked on the car roof. Czerwinski folded down the side window.

‘Enjoy it?’ Rath asked.

‘Thanks.’ Czerwinski passed him the empty container.

‘You can bring it to my office tomorrow.’

‘Very tasty, by the way. Who’s the cook?’

‘A secret, but I’ll tell you something else.’ Rath leaned over so that Henning could hear too. ‘If you want to score some points with your boss, call the Castle and have ED come out. Seyfried, on the third floor.’

Czerwinski’s eyes practically popped out of his head.

‘Krempin,’ Rath said. ‘I fear we’ve been watching the wrong side of the street.’

It wasn’t easy finding a parking space at Potsdamer Platz. Rath drove past Haus Vaterland and parked under a double street sign opposite Europahaus. The old name K ö niggr ä tzer Strasse had been crossed out, and its replacement housed on a snow-white sign below. Stresemannstrasse. Rath recalled his deep sadness on the dull autumn day on which news of Stresemann’s death had done the rounds. Although hardly interested in politics, he felt that something had been destroyed that day, and that more had died with this man than simply the foreign minister. He had been a strict but loving father to Germany, and Rath could see no one capable of replacing him. A strong politician who loved his country, who neither spread the hollow pathos the German National People’s Party used to mask their feelings of inferiority, nor behaved with the arrogance Goebbels’s Nazis mistook for patriotism.