Фолькер Кучер - The Silent Death

‘Half of Berlin, I’d say. Since the whole world’s decided he’s a serial killer.’

‘That makes suicide just as likely. Imagine your picture’s in all the papers and the whole city’s hounding you – how long can any one person stand it?’

‘If he’s got a good hiding place, I’d say quite a while. Until now, Krempin always had a good hiding place.’

‘Yes, but Gräf and his men were closing in on him all the time.’

‘By the way, Inspector,’ Erika Voss said. ‘Frau Kling called. You have an appointment with the commissioner.’ She looked down at her pad. ‘Monday, three o’clock.’

‘What’s it about?’

‘She didn’t say. You’ll have it confirmed in writing. She just wanted to arrange the appointment.’

Rath nodded. ‘What’s the latest with our case?’ he asked Lange. ‘Did our artist produce anything worthwhile?’

Lange handed him a drawing of a gloomy-looking man who bore no resemblance whatsoever to the actor Ziehlke had picked out from Oppenberg’s collection of photos. If anything he looked like…

‘Lange, that could just as well be you!’

‘That’s what Fräulein Voss thinks, but it wasn’t me, I swear!’

‘I hope you have an alibi,’ Rath said sternly, before breaking into a laugh.

‘If you ask me, that taxi driver would be incapable of giving a recognisable description of someone with three eyes and two noses.’

‘Perhaps it’s our sketch artist who’s not up to the job.’

‘I don’t think it’s his fault. He did what that Ziehlke told him, as far as possible. It’s just that our witness kept contradicting himself.’

‘Doesn’t look like the sketch is going to be much help then.’

‘No,’ Erika Voss said. ‘If we go to the press, poor Lange will be denounced and arrested by tomorrow morning.’

Lange was about to throw the picture in the waste-paper basket when Rath stopped him. ‘Leave it! Perhaps we might be able to use it after all.’

Lange hunched his shoulders. ‘If you think so. How about you? Did you find anything out?’

Rath described his trip to the corner of Hohenzollerndamm on Sunday. The Chinese restaurant, the menswear store, the wine dealership.

‘Not very fruitful then,’ said Lange.

‘No,’ Rath said. ‘And yet that corner is precisely where we need to start. That’s where she met our stranger. Roll the drawing up and fetch your coat. We’re heading there now.’

‘With this picture?’

‘First we’ll show people the picture of Vivian Franck. We’ll canvass the shops, and if that doesn’t yield anything, the flats too. Perhaps someone saw her. Perhaps even together with our phantom.’

The salespeople in the menswear store only knew Vivian Franck from the screen.

‘Women don’t often shop here,’ said one. ‘Or did old Franck play for the other team?’ The sketch didn’t yield any results either, just confused glances at Lange.

It was a similar story in the wine dealership, only the owner spared them the stupid remarks and, indeed, was rather taciturn for a Berliner.

The Chinese restaurant was still closed, but after they knocked loudly against the roller shutters someone opened. The man who poked his head through the door didn’t speak a word of German, but understood the two police IDs well enough. He bowed and bade them enter. Inside it smelled of beer and exotic spices; they were preparing for an onslaught of guests and things were suitably chaotic. Nevertheless, the whole team looked patiently at the picture of Vivian Franck.

The Chinese didn’t appear to go to the cinema; Rath and Lange received only shakes of the head. Nor did anyone recognise the stranger. The manager was the only one who spoke German. Rath pointed towards a green fruit with brown skin that a kitchen hand was currently slicing in two. ‘Yangtao?’ he asked.

‘Yangtao!’ the manager said, smiling broadly. The fact that Rath recognised the fruit seemed to impress him. ‘Very good. Want to try?’

The bright green flesh was juicy and sour and didn’t taste bad at all. So that was what Betty Winter had eaten just before her death.

‘Good for health,’ the manager said.

Rath rummaged in his pockets, eventually finding the photo he was looking for. He didn’t know why, but suddenly he felt feverishly excited. A thousand intangible thoughts raced through his mind, as always when he spotted something, some lead, some connection that he still couldn’t quite make sense of. He showed the Chinese the high-resolution print of Betty Winter. ‘Do you know this woman? Was she ever here?’

To his surprise the man nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Nice lady. Liked yangtao a lot.’

Rath stared stubbornly at the traffic, immersed in his thoughts.

‘How strange,’ Lange said. ‘There we are conducting a fruitless investigation into the Franck case, and we stumble upon a restaurant where Betty Winter used to eat.’

Rath’s head was spinning with ideas. The two dead actresses had worked for rival producers, which was enough for Fink to cook up his nonsense about a serial killer, and now there was a second, more puzzling, connection: Betty Winter had eaten in the restaurant outside which Vivian Franck had been met by her suspected killer. It could be coincidence, but against that was a tingling sensation in his veins, and a hollow feeling in his stomach. He was onto something, he could feel it, even if he still didn’t know quite what.

It was already late and he didn’t want to go back to the station, where they would only run the risk of Böhm saddling them with overtime, or asking about Oppenberg’s private detective. He set Lange down at Gleisdreieck to catch the Prenzlauer Berg train, and drove home. If he wanted to pick up Charly promptly at half past seven he’d have to get his glad rags on sharpish.

At home he started up the boiler and showered. As the water ran down his neck, he couldn’t help thinking about Krempin plunging to his death before his eyes.

What would Böhm say about the case at briefing tomorrow? And how would Oppenberg take the news of his friend’s death? Had the producer pushed him himself, out of fear that Krempin might implicate him? It was hard to imagine how someone with a heart condition like Oppenberg could make it down all those steps, but who else could have known that Krempin was at the Funkturm? And that he meant to use the viewing platform as a lookout before going to his secret meeting in the restaurant? Rath wondered whether Oppenberg could have sent someone to silence Krempin.

Tomorrow he’d have to start looking for the toupee; it was possible that it belonged to the murderer. If, indeed, there was a murderer. His instincts said yes, and they had served him well enough in the past.

When the water grew cold he climbed out of the shower. He was getting nervous. Thoughts of Charly banished all others from his mind. Soon he would be seeing her. Going out with her. For the first time in more than half a year. He didn’t want to think about how their last evening together had ended in a huge fight.

The neon letters on the Plaza façade burned brighter than the dim gaslights around Küstriner Platz. Rath found a space near the entrance and parked the Buick. Charly smiled when she realised where he was taking her. He hadn’t revealed their destination even as they journeyed ever deeper into the forbidding Stralau quarter.

Rath was relieved, she seemed to like variety theatre. He didn’t have happy memories of the Plaza, and not just because of the indifferent programme with which the theatre had opened the year before. The complex had been built inside the station concourse of the former Ostbahnhof, whose goods station, in contrast to the passenger terminus, was still in use. It was here, in an unprepossessing warehouse, that Johann Marlow had his office: a room seemingly lifted straight from an English country house, complete with fireplace. It was less than a year since he had met Marlow here for the first time, the secret ruler of the Berlin underworld, the only Berlin underworld kingpin yet to see prison from the inside. Rath often thought about that night, which had ended with a dead man who, to this day, still haunted his dreams.