Фолькер Кучер - The Silent Death

The telephone rang and Dagmar Kling answered. She listened and hung up. ‘The commissioner will see you now, gentlemen.’

Brenner jumped to his feet and Rath let him go first. In his eagerness Brenner hadn’t realised it would be difficult to open the massive double door with only his left hand. Rath didn’t come to his aid, even when he fancied Dagmar Kling was staring at him reproachfully. He waited and followed Brenner in at a respectful distance.

Zörgiebel wasn’t alone. Across his brightly polished desk, in one of the three leather chairs, sat Superintendent Brückner, Chief of the Fraud Squad. Brenner had been caught out, Rath registered with satisfaction, although he didn’t realise it yet. He couldn’t have seen his doctor in the past few days. Smiling obsequiously, Brenner gave first Zörgiebel, and then Brückner, his left hand before sitting down. Rath was glad it wasn’t Bernhard Weiss leading the discussion, as that would have been a tougher nut to crack. With Zörgiebel he had no such reservations.

Preliminary greetings over, Zörgiebel didn’t hang about. ‘Gentlemen, you know why you are here, so let’s get to the point. An incident occurred on the evening of the first of March in the Residenz-Casino. Inspector Rath, you are alleged to have struck Inspector Brenner on two occasions. What do you have to say to that?’

Rath made a guilty face. ‘I did strike Inspector Brenner, and I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but it is a mystery to me how he could have sustained such serious injuries. I took a couple of hefty swipes at him, but my blows couldn’t have been that forceful. I’m not Max Schmeling.’

‘We’ll come to that presently,’ Zörgiebel said. ‘So, you are sorry that you struck Inspector Brenner.’ The commissioner cleared his throat. ‘Then I would ask you to stand up, give the inspector your hand and apologise formally for behaviour that is entirely unworthy of a Prussian police officer.’

Rath did exactly as asked. He stood up and stretched out his right hand towards Brenner, who almost met it with the hand in the sling, before switching to his left. Rath likewise switched hands.

‘I apologise unreservedly, Herr Brenner,’ he said. ‘It won’t happen again.’

‘Good,’ Zörgiebel said after Rath had resumed his seat, ‘then let that be an end to this. Inspector Rath, I would like to remind you that one of a Prussian police officer’s most important duties is to conduct himself in a fitting manner at all times. Especially now, with the press ready to pounce on our every error.’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Good. Then I won’t keep you from your work any longer. Please take this matter to heart and…’

‘What?’ Brenner could no longer keep his rage and disappointment in check. ‘That’s it? A half-baked apology and the matter is closed for good old Herr Rath? If that’s how it is, I’m going to have to seriously consider instituting criminal proceedings against my colleague here for assault. You and your distinguished Vipoprä tried to talk me out of it, and, idiot that I am, I agreed. This isn’t the last of it!’

Brenner no longer had himself under control, almost slamming his right hand against the table.

Zörgiebel remained calm. ‘Inspector Brenner, I think you should consider very carefully what you are saying. If you institute criminal proceedings I will have to insist upon an official medical examination. Do you really want that?’

Brenner gave a start. ‘What are you trying to say?’

‘That is something I’d like to discuss with you and Superintendent Brückner in private. That’s why I was just asking Inspector Rath to leave, before you interrupted me.’

‘My apologies, Commissioner.’ Brenner was kowtowing now. Did he sense what was in store? Rath would have dearly loved to stay in the room and hear what accusations Brenner had to defend himself against.

‘Can I go now, Sir?’ he asked.

‘Of course, my dear Rath!’ Zörgiebel waved him out. ‘Get back to work.’

Rath took his leave with a bow and the friendliest of smiles. This will be hard on Brenner, he thought, strolling past Dagmar Kling’s clattering typewriter and out of the office. Falsification of documents, theft. A number of charges had accumulated. Zörgiebel would probably sweep most of it under the carpet, but Brenner would pay a price. Normally they threatened miscreants with a stint in Köpenick, far outside the gates of the city. Rath’s costume in the Resi would thus take on a prophetic meaning.

He had just begun to feel pleased at this favourable turn of events when he remembered what had caused them in the first place. Charly and her cowboy. The grinning man who’d opened the door that morning was the one he should have beaten up, not Brenner.

It was twenty past three when he opened the glass doors to Homicide and knocked on Gennat’s door. Trudchen Steiner told him that Böhm was still with Buddha. ‘I’ll ask if you can go in.’

He could. Böhm and Gennat were sitting eating cake.

‘Take a seat,’ Gennat said. ‘Would you like a slice? Trudchen, please bring the inspector a cup of coffee and a cake plate.’

Rath sat down. The fact that Buddha could get stuck into cakes straight after a visit to the morgue testified to a steady constitution. Böhm didn’t look quite so happy, but was forcing himself to eat a slice of nut cake.

‘So,’ Gennat said, ‘take a seat and tell me what you found out about these yangatang…’

‘Yangtao, Sir.’ Rath fished one out of his pocket and divided it with the cake knife. ‘You can use your fork to scoop it out.’

Gennat tried it and nodded appreciatively. ‘It comes from China, you say?’

‘I met someone today who grows yangtao here in Berlin, but that’s the exception. Otherwise I think you can only get it in China. It’s a very exclusive fruit, and not exactly cheap.’

‘Just the thing for film actresses.’

‘Perhaps it’s fashionable in those circles. I still don’t know where Fastré bought hers, but the owner of the Chinahaus in Kantstrasse remembered Betty Winter. Curious as it seems, the matter doesn’t appear to go anywhere after that. You see, Vivian Franck has nothing to do with yangtao. She never even went near Chinese food, I learned today. On the other hand, she was picked up by this stranger outside a Chinese restaurant.’

Trudchen Steiner entered with coffee and a cake plate. ‘Help yourself,’ Gennat said.

Rath looked at the cake plate which, despite having already been plundered, still contained a lavish selection. He left the last slice of gooseberry tart for Gennat, Buddha’s favourite, and shovelled a slice of cheesecake onto his own plate.

‘Well,’ Böhm said, having polished off his nut cake, ‘we can consign this Chinese gooseberry nonsense to the shelves. I thought it was hogwash from the start.’

Gennat helped himself to some German gooseberry tart. ‘Rath has already voiced his doubts,’ he said, ‘but as far as I’m concerned the matter isn’t closed. There remains this curious coincidence…’

‘Exactly, coincidence!’ Böhm thundered. ‘The Winter and Fastré cases have nothing to do with each other!’

‘…this curious coincidence,’ Gennat continued, ‘and such coincidences always make me uneasy.’

‘We should be concerned with facts, not feelings,’ Böhm said.

‘We might collect facts, but we should nevertheless allow ourselves to be guided by our instincts,’ Gennat said. ‘I wouldn’t have solved half the cases I have if I had limited myself to simply collecting the facts.’

‘I’m not talking about limiting ourselves. I’m saying we shouldn’t be abandoning ourselves to wild theories,’ Böhm grumbled.

‘If you mean Rath’s theory that it was staged,’ Gennat responded, ‘then I have to tell you that, of all the observations made by colleagues this morning, it’s still the most plausible. We are dealing with a perpetrator who loves putting on a show – perhaps he has a background in theatre or film, which would explain his preference for actresses. If the killer is trying to tell us something with these murders, and the way he presents his victims, then there are a number of questions we need to ask ourselves. Why are the corpses in these cinemas specifically? Why are they in cinemas at all? Why film actresses, and why does he remove their vocal cords? We know that he kills them first. So why does he dress their corpses so beautifully afterwards, make them up and deck them out in fine clothes, perfume them even?’