Фолькер Кучер - The Silent Death

‘And now we come to the strangest part.’ Schwartz pointed his pencil towards her throat. ‘Her film career was finished before she died. Acting’s a tough job without vocal cords, I should think.’

‘Pardon me?’ Böhm said.

‘Someone cut out her vocal cords.’

‘And that’s how she died?’

Schwartz shook his head. ‘You don’t die from having your vocal cords cut. Though you are right about one thing: this was done to her ante-mortem. I took a look at the incision under the microscope. It must have been carried out shortly before she died.’

‘Her death having being caused by?’ Böhm asked.

‘That question isn’t always so easy to answer, my dear Böhm; and sometimes it can’t be answered at all.’ Schwartz could make even Böhm seem like an impertinent student.

‘I wonder what the meaning of it all is,’ Böhm said. ‘Why maim a person like this?’

‘Torture?’ Rath ventured, receiving two disapproving glances.

Schwartz shook his head. ‘That doesn’t fit. It’s as painful as having tonsillitis, perhaps less so. If it wasn’t an accident during an operation – and complete removal would seem to go against that – then the person who did this meant to humiliate her, I think. Or to prevent her from crying out.’

‘Did she suffer a painful death?’ Rath asked, reintroducing the subject a little more diplomatically than Böhm.

‘No idea.’

‘What do you mean, no idea?’ Böhm asked. ‘That you still don’t know?’

‘I found an injection site in her skin, probably from a hypodermic needle. It must have been administered shortly before she died.’

‘And?’

Schwartz shrugged. ‘So far we have found no sign whatsoever of poison,’ he said. ‘If that remains the case, I would say that she died a natural death. Perhaps she just couldn’t bear no longer having a voice.’

‘Don’t forget drugs,’ Rath said. ‘Perhaps that’s what she died of.’

‘For me they come under poison, no need to mention them specifically.’

Böhm shook his head thoughtfully. ‘Does that mean what we have here might not even be murder?’

Schwartz shrugged. ‘Or a very skilful one.’

The pathologist disappeared for a late lunch while Rath waited for Oppenberg with Böhm and Schwartz’s assistant. He appeared promptly at three, as subdued as Rath had ever seen him. The body had been covered; all the assistant had to do was expose the head and show Oppenberg the pale, blotchy face. A brief nod and he signed. His expression was inscrutable but his silence said everything.

Rath hated moments like these. What could be worse than identifying the body of someone close to you? Perhaps standing alongside and having to watch. He always felt strangely responsible. As once upon a time he had been.

The corpse of a madman had lain on an autopsy table, his life ended by a bullet from Rath’s service revolver. He would never forget the stony face of the father who had come to identify the body: Alexander LeClerk, one of the most important newspaper publishers in Cologne. Nor would he forget the gaze that bore through him like the beam of an X-ray, much less the devastating press campaign that followed, that changed his life and forced him to relocate to Berlin.

Still, there was no reproach in Oppenberg’s gaze, just silent humility, the acceptance of one’s powerlessness against the raging of arbitrary, meaningless fate. There was something else in those eyes though: deep sorrow. Oppenberg seemed to have genuinely loved Vivian Franck. She wasn’t just an investment that had to pay off, as Betty Winter appeared to have been for Heinrich Bellmann.

Rath noticed that Böhm was eyeing Oppenberg suspiciously. He had a few questions still to ask. ‘Did Fräulein Franck have any problems with her voice?’

‘Not at all!’ Oppenberg seemed surprised. His gaze flitted briefly to Rath, before realighting on Böhm. ‘There was scarcely a film actress of her generation more predestined for sound film than Vivian Franck!’

‘Then she didn’t undergo a procedure recently on her vocal cords…’

‘Not that I’m aware of. Why should she have?’

‘Shortly before her death, her vocal cords must have been cut out,’ Böhm said. ‘Can you explain how that happened?’

‘Her vocal cords were removed?’ Oppenberg’s calm voice was mixed with horror. Again his gaze darted towards Rath.

Böhm nodded. ‘A failed operation would be one explanation. Against that is the fact that they weren’t simply cut, but completely removed. Besides, her doctor knows nothing about it.’

‘Did they… did they torture her?’

‘Hard to say, but no, she probably wasn’t in pain.’

‘What does that matter if they took her voice away? Don’t you think that’s torture enough for an actress?’ Suddenly Oppenberg was shouting, ‘That crook! What devil did Bellmann unleash on her, poor girl?’

Not so clumsy after all, the bulldog: he had actually managed to break down the producer’s reserve. For a moment Rath feared Oppenberg might forget himself and reveal his special relationship to Gereon Rath.

‘Those are some serious accusations you’re making,’ Böhm said. ‘Do you have any basis for them?’

‘You only have to read the newspaper to know that he’ll use any means he can to destroy me.’

‘Bellmann at least makes a case for your smuggling a saboteur onto his shoot,’ and with that Böhm had arrived at the Winter case and pushed Oppenberg into a corner.

Oppenberg cast Rath another brief glance, but soon had himself back under control.

‘I can make just as strong a case for Bellmann having abducted my lead actress in order to sabotage my shoot. She’s been missing for weeks!’ He had decided to go on the attack. ‘Before you adopt the untenable assumptions of my rival, you could ask your colleagues from Missing Persons why they did nothing. Perhaps Vivian would still be alive if they had begun their search in good time!’

‘You think your actress was abducted?’

‘She never set out on the holiday she’d planned. Instead of going to the train station three weeks ago there was a stranger waiting for her, in Wilmersdorf somewhere. No doubt that’s where you found the corpse too.’

Oppenberg had said too much; Rath had no choice but to intervene. ‘Why didn’t you tell us all that just now, Herr Oppenberg?’

The producer played along. ‘Quite simple,’ he said. ‘You never asked me.’

‘But I’m asking you now,’ Böhm said. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘I engaged the services of a private investigator, since your colleagues in Missing Persons did nothing.’

Rath began to sweat.

‘You put a watch on your lover because you were jealous?’ Böhm was really going for it now. ‘Caught her unawares and then killed her?’

Oppenberg shook his head. ‘Stop talking nonsense! If I really was the type of man who kills out of jealousy, then I might have killed her lover, but not Vivian. You’re on the wrong track, my good man, I’m not about to kill my best actress.’

Böhm backed down. The missing vocal cords, if they were indeed the work of the killer, didn’t tally with a murder committed out of jealousy. He had wanted to break down Oppenberg’s reserve, and he had managed. ‘You understand that you must continue to remain at our disposal,’ Böhm said.

‘I will support you in any way I can, if you and your young colleague just find Vivian’s killer. What kind of devil does something like that? Taking an actress’s voice?’

Böhm shrugged. ‘If we knew that we’d have our killer.’

The meeting with Oppenberg had been relatively painless, but Rath was relieved when they could finally leave the morgue, having already said goodbye to Oppenberg.