Фолькер Кучер - The Silent Death

A noise made him start. A loud bang, directly above their table. As if a large fist had struck the roof of the restaurant. The bang was followed by a clatter, scraping noises, as if something was sliding across the roof, and for a moment Rath’s heart stood still. For a fraction of a second he was gazing straight into Felix Krempin’s wide-open eyes on the other side of the window pane!

A dream, was his first thought.

Not a dream! He had really seen it. He lunged forward, his chair crashing to the ground. Weinert gazed at him in astonishment and a woman issued a brief, sharp cry. Rath turned and looked into horrified faces. Everyone had stopped what they were doing and stood rooted to the spot.

The waiter’s voice cut through the silence. ‘My God, somebody just jumped!’

Rath lay on the wide balustrade so that he could see down as far as possible through the sloping pane. There was someone lying there. The first onlookers were cautiously approaching the lifeless corpse on the exhibition grounds below. Rath looked at Weinert and the pair dashed to the lift which, predictably enough, wasn’t on the restaurant floor. A queue had already formed outside the doors.

‘This could take forever,’ Weinert said. They took the stairs at full speed, but it was still some time before they reached the bottom.

A handful of onlookers had formed an uneven circle around the body and were keeping a respectful distance, attracted and repelled in equal measure by the shattered corpse. Rath and Weinert pushed towards the front, and Rath recognised the tilted face of the dead man instantly. He gave Weinert a nod, and the journalist understood.

‘Weinert, Tageblatt ,’ he said, approaching the bystanders with his pad at the ready. Instinctively, they stood back. ‘Did anyone see how it happened?’

A few people understood the question as an invitation to leave, but a stocky man in a grey uniform replied. Rath recognised the Cerberus to whom they had paid their entry fee.

‘He’ll have jumped, won’t he? Wouldn’t be the first! About time they stopped letting ’em up on the viewing platform, or built a high railing so they can’t climb over.’

Rath examined the corpse. It was Krempin, no doubt about it, heavily made up with his hair bleached light blond and his nose lengthened with a piece of wax. Apart from that, he was wearing a false moustache, which had come loose on impact and was now hanging by a shred. His face was unscathed save for a graze on the right cheek, but his unnaturally contorted limbs were a nasty sight. A pool of blood was growing under the body. Rath felt his carotid artery all the same.

Nothing, the man was dead.

A thought flashed through Rath’s mind. Better if your colleagues don’t find you here. ‘I need to get out of here,’ he said to Weinert. ‘You call the police.’

Weinert nodded and Rath took his leave. In the meantime, the lift must have reached the bottom floor, as a whole load of people he recognised from the restaurant came towards him. Even the lift attendant had left his post. Rath gazed up at the steel framework of the Funkturm. The viewing platform, from which Krempin must have plunged first onto the restaurant roof and then onto the surface of the courtyard, was easily a hundred and fifty metres. Seeing the abandoned lift Rath climbed in and, this time, went past the restaurant to the top.

He couldn’t believe that Krempin had jumped. Someone must have pushed him. Betty Winter’s killer, hoping to prevent Krempin from incriminating him, or from helping the police pick up his trail. But how did he know about their meeting?

Surely Krempin hadn’t confided in him. Or perhaps he had? Had the person whom Felix Krempin trusted most turned out to be his killer? The face of Manfred Oppenberg flashed through Rath’s mind.

The glazed viewing platform was deserted when he emerged from the lift. To get to the highest point he needed to climb another set of stairs. Suddenly he was standing in the open air.

Although it was no longer raining, there was a strong wind. Definitely not the weather for observation platforms. The parapet was fairly high, but it would be easy enough to scale, or to pull someone’s legs from underneath them and throw them over.

He leaned over the railing and gazed below. Krempin’s fall had left its mark on the roof of the restaurant. He felt dizzy. If someone grabbed his feet now, he would be done for. He stepped back and looked around. There was no one up here.

He inspected the railing more closely. If Krempin hadn’t jumped, where was the man who pushed him? He would hardly have taken the lift. Perhaps Rath could still catch him. He hastened down the steel stairs. He had found it easier with Weinert a moment ago, but it didn’t help that he was now a hundred metres further up.

Don’t think about it! Just keep moving!

He tried to look down without his knees trembling, but it still wasn’t clear if there was anyone moving below. Every so often he thought he saw patches of colour flitting past, but couldn’t be sure. He continued to stumble down the steps until, all of a sudden, he saw something that seemed out of place in the steel framework. At first he thought it was an animal cowering in the supporting beams, but when he looked a little closer he realised what it was.

A toupee.

Had Krempin lost part of his disguise when he fell? Hardly – he had coloured his hair. Besides, whatever was being ruffled by the wind was only a hairpiece, rather than a full-blown wig. Someone had lost their toupee. Either a tourist who’d leaned too far over the railing, or a man who’d had it torn from his head.

The hairpiece was too far away to reach and, just as Rath was considering whether he was staring at a crucial piece of evidence, it was seized by a gust of wind and carried off, sailing slowly towards the ground, pirouetting further and further away before landing in a dense shrub.

When he reached the foot of the Funkturm the first uniformed officers were already on the scene. One of them was questioning Weinert – or perhaps Weinert was questioning the police officer, Rath couldn’t be exactly sure. Had the journalist struck lucky during his search for an eyewitness? At any rate, Berthold Weinert had his exclusive, even if it wasn’t the one he had been expecting.

Time to leave, before CID arrived and, with it, the prospect of familiar faces. Rath stole away from the exhibition grounds and tried to locate the shrub where the hairpiece had landed. Now wasn’t the right time; he would have to come back. He still wasn’t sure how he was going to explain it all to Böhm, but he’d think of something. At any rate, the DCI couldn’t get wind of the fact that Gereon Rath had been intending to meet a fugitive murder suspect without having first informed the police.

Not a moment too soon he reclaimed his seat in the Buick to see the murder wagon shooting along from the direction of Kantstrasse. Rath slipped down and waited until the black vehicle had turned onto the exhibition grounds.

Lange and a few others were holding the fort. Otherwise, nearly all of Homicide had flown the nest. One of the uniformed officers Weinert had alerted must have recognised the dead man and reported back to Alex, as Böhm had driven to the exhibition grounds himself. Erika Voss passed on the news before Lange could say anything. Rath pretended to be surprised.

‘Krempin? Are you sure?’ he asked.

‘Looks that way. Seems like he jumped from the Funkturm.’

‘Suicide? Has that been confirmed?’

‘I’m just telling you what everyone’s saying.’

‘What else could it be?’ Lange asked.

‘Murder,’ said Rath.

‘Who would want to kill Krempin?’