Фолькер Кучер - The Silent Death

‘I would like, once more, to offer my condolences on the death of your wife, Herr Meisner…’ Meisner looked through him as if he were made of glass. ‘…I know this isn’t easy for you, but I need to ask you a few questions.’

Meisner nodded.

‘How did the accident happen? Can you outline the order of events?’

The actor’s eyes grew larger. The memory seemed to terrify him.

‘We did the scene again,’ he said at last, ‘and I had the feeling that this time Dressler would go for it. It went off without a hitch, Betty was marvellous. We were already through when there was this technical issue, the thunder didn’t work. I thought: it doesn’t matter. Just add it later, you can do that.’

Rath was as sympathetic as a priest in the confessional.

‘That’s when it happened,’ Meisner continued. ‘The light came loose somehow, and then…’ He broke off. ‘My God! At first I didn’t even know what was wrong. Only when I saw her lying there…’

‘Why didn’t you pull her away? Why did you fetch the bucket?’

‘Pull her away? Impossible. And what can I say about the bucket? I don’t know myself why I fetched it. At that moment, I wasn’t thinking about anything save for perhaps, my God, Betty is burning! When I think about how she screamed! The bucket was backstage. There’s one every few metres. The boss always stressed how important they are; we have a fire drill once a month. I just grabbed the nearest one. My God, her screams! I only have to close my eyes and I hear them again.’

Meisner closed his eyes and, gradually, Rath began to sense that the grieving widower was just another role for him; that his whole life was comprised of a series of different roles.

‘How was it with Eva Kröger?’ he asked.

‘Pardon me?’ Meisner opened his eyes again.

‘You filmed the scene again with her. How was that for you?’

Cora Bellmann interjected. ‘How dare you?’ she said, rising from her chair. ‘Do you have any idea what Victor’s been through in the past few days? What he’s still going through, and here you are reproaching him for his professionalism? He’s an actor. Actors are expected to block out their private lives when they play a role.’

Meisner pulled her down onto her chair. ‘Leave it, Cora. The inspector’s right. I don’t know who it was in front of the camera yesterday, some robot reciting a text, but it certainly wasn’t me.’

A robot reciting a text. Business as usual, Rath thought, remembering Meisner’s last adventure film. ‘How are you coping with the death of your wife?’

‘Not a day goes by that I don’t wish I could turn back time, the way you rewind a film, and bring her back to life.’ He faltered. ‘My God, how I miss her.’ He grimaced and began weeping silently.

Rath looked at him helplessly.

‘I’m a murderer, Inspector!’ Meisner screamed suddenly, his chair clattering against the floor as he rose. ‘I killed my own wife!’ He pressed his wrists together and held them out towards Rath. ‘I killed Betty, I’m responsible for her death, I alone. Arrest me!’

‘Calm down! No one here’s blaming you for anything, nor should you be blaming yourself. Someone manipulated the spotlight so that it fell on her, and that same someone intended for her to die, or at the very least entertained the possibility of her death.’

‘What does that change? Without me, she’d still be alive!’

‘…and lying in the Charité with life-threatening injuries. If you’re to be charged with anything,’ Rath said, receiving an angry glare from Cora Bellmann, ‘then it’ll be for causing death by negligence. But no judge in Berlin is going to convict a grieving widower for that.’

‘She’s dead,’ Meisner screamed. ‘Don’t you understand? She’s dead and I killed her. I don’t give a damn what any judge says!’

He buried his face in his hands and turned towards Cora Bellmann, who took him in her arms. She petted him and whispered something in his ear, as if comforting a nervous racehorse. At that moment Rath was glad he wasn’t alone with Meisner: anything was preferable to a despairing widower on the verge of breakdown.

Meisner sobbed silently into his hands, and from time to time his body shook violently. Cora Bellmann looked at Rath as if to say: nice job, Inspector!

‘I think it’s better if you leave now,’ Rath said. In the doorway Cora Bellmann cast him a final, reproachful glance. She had put the actor’s sunglasses back on, probably so that no one on Alexanderplatz would recognise him, and for a moment Rath thought that if the pair of them were just a little more shabbily dressed they could earn a heap of money on Weidendammer Bridge, selling matchsticks or shoelaces, or by simply holding out a hat. He shook his head. These film types were hard as nails in front of the camera, and soft as putty in real life.

There was a telephone on the wall, and Rath asked to be put through to Erika Voss. She started on the same theme as Gräf.

‘Inspector, what luck! Where are you? DCI Böhm has asked after you a hundred ti…’

‘Erika, would you be so kind as to bring the Betty Winter file up to date by this afternoon, I’d like to…’

‘The file is with DCI Böhm. Inspector, I…’

‘Then get it back.’

‘DCI Böhm is leading the investigation now, Inspector. You need to come to the station urgently. Superintendent Gennat has also been asking for you, Fräulein Steiner was even here in person and…’

‘Hello? Hello?’ said Rath.

‘Inspector?’

‘What’s that? The connection’s terrible. Can you hear me? Hello?’ He hammered the cradle with his index finger and hung up.

The vultures were circling overhead, and their orbit was growing smaller. He couldn’t show his face in the office for the moment, typewriter or not, and it was only a matter of time before someone found out who had booked interrogation room B until one o’clock.

Rath packed his things and decided to consider any further matters at Aschinger, in the branch at Leipziger Strasse. The risk of running into a colleague there was considerably lower than at Alex.

He didn’t encounter anyone in the corridors, but almost collided with Brenner in the atrium, managing to duck behind a police vehicle in the nick of time. A few uniformed officers he didn’t know gazed curiously in his direction and he made a placatory gesture with his hands. Brenner was limping and wore his arm in a sling. Rath was already intrigued by the certificates he was planning to use against him. Brenner often skived off, which suggested the man had an unusually easy-going doctor.

Rath waited until Brenner had disappeared into the stairwell, then took the quickest route outside, got in his car and drove off.

The clientele in the Aschinger on Leipziger Strasse was different from Alex. No small-time criminals, no policemen: mostly office workers and a few journalists from the nearby newspaper quarter, and shoppers taking a break between stores. Rath felt happier knowing there was no chance of being recognised, and ordered goulash soup as he leafed through the script. The thunder effect appeared on twelve separate occasions. He compared the scene numbers with the production schedule. All thunder scenes had already been shot and there had been no incidents, save for the last one.

‘You’re Inspector Rath, aren’t you?’ A small, familiar-looking man stood beside his table. Instinctively Rath was on guard.

‘Who’s asking?’

The little man placed a card next to Rath’s bowl. ‘Fink, B.Z. am Mittag . May I?’

Without waiting for a response, the man pulled up a chair and sat down. Rath continued eating his soup, now remembering him as one of those firing questions at Bellmann’s press conference.