Фолькер Кучер: Babylon Berlin

‘A Lignose. Nice model. Small but handy. Fires one-handed, right? 6.75 calibre, with your fingerprints on it. Bread and butter for any judge!’ He replaced the pistol in his pocket. ‘But I suppose it depends if a judge ever gets to see it.’

Suddenly the junkie rediscovered his voice. ‘What do you want, cop?’

‘Pay attention because I’m only going to explain this once. From now on you belong to me and my partner.’ Wolter pointed towards Rath, who had edged closer. ‘When we come to you with questions, you have the answers ready. Always. Doesn’t matter if it’s day or night.’

He removed the man’s handcuffs and pulled him up. ‘Why don’t we see if you’ve understood? If you play ball, you might not even have to come back to the station.’

‘I’ve never grassed on no-one. Find some other fink!’

‘There’s a first for everything. You of all people should know that.’ Wolter produced a smile that was almost charming. ‘You’ll get used to it. Who knows, there might even be something in it for you. If we’re satisfied with you.’

‘And if I say you can shove it up your arse?’

‘Just think about what I said about Plötzensee! It should make the decision easier.’

The glistening streets still reflected a white-grey sky, while clouds heavy with rain hovered over the city. A black Ford A shot across Kottbusser Damm with its soft top up, Wolter steering through the slow-moving Sunday traffic. Rath sat in the passenger seat, lost in thought. The real work would start when they reached Alex: questioning, questioning, and more questioning. By now König and his gang were stewing in the cells. Jänicke would have accompanied them to the station in the Black Maria. They would leave König and company in custody to simmer and then, with everything the porn Kaiser – real name Franz Krajewski – had told them, they could really begin to turn up the heat.

The fake Kaiser had talked like a blue streak on the scaffolding before they turned him loose. Rath had gained an insight into how Wolter recruited informants, and his brutality had surprised him. Now they were sitting silently alongside one another, Rath understood that Wolter’s little number on the scaffolding had been meant as a lesson for the new recruit from the Rhine Province. Wolter seemed to read Rath’s mind.

‘If you lock up a rat like that, you’ll get nothing out of him,’ he said. ‘Makes more sense for him to be running around Berlin knowing that we could lock him up, so scared he’s afraid to fart without our permission. I’m telling you, that guy will save us a hell of a lot of work. As long as all that coke doesn’t mess with his brain.’ He laughed and rummaged in his jacket pocket. ‘Whenever he thinks about this, he’ll shit himself.’

Wolter fished out the bullet that was meant for Rath.

‘Here!’ he said.

‘What am I supposed to do with that?’

‘A souvenir. At the end of the day, you’re the one he was trying to kill.’

Wolter stepped on the gas once they had gone under the elevated train at Kottbusser Tor. There was hardly any traffic on Dresdener Strasse.

‘We’re partners,’ said Uncle. ‘Now we even share an informant. That’s just between us. It has nothing to do with anyone else.’

Turning Krajewski loose was against every rule in the book. Rath didn’t feel too clever but their colleagues bought their story that the Kaiser had simply got away. No-one held it against them when they returned to Hermannstrasse empty-handed. Their colleagues laid the blame for the Kaiser’s escape at the door of the young officer whom Krajewski had knocked over.

The boy’s guilty conscience made him eager to please. In his desire to atone he had conducted a painstaking search of the studio. Rath and Wolter had overseen the work, Jänicke having departed with the suspects. They had found any number of plates and prints, more than enough for the public prosecutor. Enough to give König a good going-over too. Back on the scaffolding, Krajewski had revealed that the photographer had presented his gifted troupe with the chance to embark upon a career in film.

Pornography had been on the rise for a few years and dirty magazines were being sold on the streets and under the counter. It made sense for the dregs of the Berlin film industry to recognise the earning potential of these so-called ‘educational films’. They were shown to initiates in back rooms and illegal night spots, generally in the better areas in the west of the city. Certain wealthy gentlemen had been known to take playmates into the performance with them so as not to waste any time putting what they had witnessed on screen into practice.

There was no way König was shouldering the costs alone. There would be other backers in the city’s organised crime circles or amongst the upper classes in the west. Krajewski didn’t name them, no matter how hard they pressed, but perhaps he really didn’t know. Whatever the case, they still had a few pieces of information to rattle König. Perhaps enough to break up the pornography ring.

Rath examined the bullet. Small, shiny and unremarkable, yet it could have cost him his life. He looked across at Uncle, who was honking at a daydreaming cyclist on Oranienplatz. Had the man with the affable face really just saved his life? At the very least he had helped him out of a dicey situation. Nothing in the world gave Gereon Rath the right to criticise Bruno Wolter. He had broken the rules, but so what? Maybe that’s just the way things were in this big, cold city and he’d better get used to it.

‘If you want to make it here, you can’t afford to be soft,’ Wolter said. Rath was surprised at how well his colleague could read his silence.

‘Make it in Vice?’

‘We don’t have it so bad. We get to gad about the night spots of the most exciting city in the world, which is also the most disreputable. There’s something to be said for that. If the odd colleague turns up his nose, so be it. You get used to it.’

‘Why don’t you work in A Division?’ Rath asked. ‘With your skills and contacts?’

‘In Homicide? If they want my skills and experience, not to mention my contacts, they can ask. Frankly, I’m not crazy about working for them.’

‘But they have a good reputation!’

‘Gennat’s boys? The darlings of the press? Well, dealing with theft and murder will get you a lot further than raking up filth and smut.’ Wolter looked at him as if assessing his worth. ‘But it isn’t easy to get in. Gennat’s people are hand-picked. You have to land something big. I mean really big. A Kaiser with his dick out won’t cut it.’ He laughed. ‘But don’t worry, even we lesser mortals are granted access to Olympus now and then. A Division is always borrowing officers from other units. You can run around playing at being in Homicide but, believe me, murder inquiries aren’t half as exciting as they’re cracked up to be.’

‘That depends.’

‘On what?’

‘I used to be in Homicide. I was never bored.’

He hadn’t told anyone in Berlin before. Commissioner Zörgiebel was the only one who knew Gereon Rath’s personal file, and he had guaranteed his old friend Engelbert Rath that he wouldn’t say a thing. Not even Superintendent Lanke knew all the details concerning his new recruit’s service record. Wolter glanced at him.

‘Do you miss the dead bodies?’ he asked.

Rath had to take a deep breath, remembering a pale face and a pale body with a blood-encrusted bullet hole in the chest.

Wolter bypassed the big construction site on Jannowitz Bridge, which was always ripe for traffic chaos, and took the route past Märkisches Museum and over Waisen Bridge. Alexanderplatz was an absolute building site as well. Heavy steam hammers were driving the construction of the underground forward and had almost hollowed out the entire square. Traffic was diverted across thick timber planks, while site fences formed narrow passages for the pedestrian masses to push their way through. There were wooden beams supporting the steel railway bridge above Königstrasse.