Фолькер Кучер: Babylon Berlin

They had just turned the corner at Aschinger’s when they fell into the next trap. The Ford A got stuck behind a yellow Berlin city bus, which was blocking the already narrow temporary access route. Berlin smokes Juno cigarettes an advertisement revealed. Wolter cursed. A boy in his Sunday best stood on the steps leading to the upper deck, cocking a snook at them.

The vast brick expanse of police headquarters was already in view. The building wasn’t called Red Castle for nothing; the great corner tower presided over Alexanderplatz like a medieval keep. It had taken some time for Rath to get used to the fact that even the officers referred to headquarters as The Castle .

‘Let me out here, I’ll get us something to eat,’ he said. ‘I’ll be quicker on foot. See you back at the Castle.’

After scarcely ten minutes he entered the station from Dircksenstrasse. This was where CID had their offices, on the same side as the city railway. His day-to-day work was interrupted by the peal and rumble of trains wheeling past his window. Rath greeted the cop at the entrance by raising the Aschinger paper bags in his right hand. Three bratwurst with mustard. In the left hand a tub of potato salad. The food from Aschinger’s was better than the canteen. First they would take time to eat, and after that they would concentrate on the interviews.

It would be a while before they summoned the first of the gang from the cells. Let them stew a little longer. Rath’s stomach rumbled as he climbed the steps. Apart from two cups of coffee – a good one at home and a bad one in the 220th precinct – he hadn’t eaten anything today.

As he emerged from the stairwell into the grey corridor he paused, lost in thought, outside a glass double door with HOMICIDE written in white capital letters. He thought of Bruno’s words in the car – Gennat’s boys – hand-picked. In the long passageway behind the glass door, another door opened. Homicide was busy on Sundays too. A young woman was standing in the doorway. She shouted something back into the office before turning and moving down the passageway. Rath peered through the glass into a narrow face with a resolutely curved mouth, and dark eyes under black hair cut fashionably short. She wore a dark red suit and carried a file under her arm. Her shoes clicked across the stone floor of the long passageway at a brisk clip and, when she greeted a passing colleague, her smile conjured up a dimple on her left cheek.

‘Don’t get lost now,’ a voice startled Rath from his daydream. He turned as if he’d been caught out. ‘You still work for us,’ said Wolter.

The glass door opened and the woman bestowed her smile on the officers from E Division.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said. Her voice was higher than he’d expected.

Wolter tipped his hat and Rath raised the paper bags. The woman looked at him in amusement almost, and he felt stupid and awkward. He lowered the paper bags and her smile returned. Rath wasn’t sure if she was smiling or laughing as she continued on her way, her dark red suit becoming smaller and smaller, before disappearing behind the next glass door. Uncle patted him on the shoulder.

‘Let’s get something to eat before the real work begins. You look completely out of it. When was the last time you had a woman?’

‘Ask me something easier.’

‘No wonder you’re not enjoying Vice,’ Wolter said, ‘if you’re living like a monk. I’ll make sure I introduce you to a few girls.’

‘Forget it.’ After Doris, Rath had had enough of women. She had dropped him as soon as the smear campaign had begun. Not even half a year had passed…

‘Oh come on!’ Wolter wouldn’t let go. ‘I know some great girls! In our line of work, you get around. Like I said: I’m not about to trade places.’

‘Things don’t look too bad in Homicide either.’ He pointed to the glass door, the Aschinger bags still in his hand. ‘Can you tell me who that was just now?’

‘Charlotte Ritter, a stenographer in Homicide.’

‘You take care of it, Rath, you know about this sort of thing,’ Lanke shouted. They were sending him onto the roof again.

Behind Superintendent Lanke stood the silent figure of Police Director Engelbert Rath and, behind him, an army of uniformed officers. Above the white moustache, his father’s eyes were icy and full of reproach. It was a familiar look, the same look he had assumed the first time little Gereon brought a bad report home from school. In contrast, Lanke’s face was a fantastically grinning and sadistic caricature.

‘How many more innocent people have to die before you get your arse up there? If you think you can avoid getting your hands dirty, you’re very much mistaken!’

Rath gazed up at the roof, which seemed not only to be getting steeper but also to be growing in size. How the hell was he supposed to get up there? When he turned back the troops had all disappeared, replaced by rows of women with children. That was when the shooting started.

Row upon row went down, mown to the ground, dying mute as their children screamed. More and more children, and the more women who died, the louder the screaming became.

He hurried skywards, forgetting his vertigo, until suddenly the house was cloaked in scaffolding and he saw the sniper with a battery of rifles that he reloaded one after the other.

When he reached the upper platform the sniper lifted his shirt to reveal a pale, emaciated upper body with a gaping bullet hole. The blood had long since dried. It was the sort of wound you found on the corpses in the morgue. Clinical. Clean.

‘How about that?’ the sniper said in a reproachful whine. ‘I’ll tell my father.’

Rath pulled out his service revolver. ‘Drop your weapon!’ he cried, but the man trained his rifle on him.

‘Drop your weapon! I’ll shoot!’

The other man wouldn’t be swayed. ‘You can’t shoot me. I’m already dead,’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten?’

A fuse blew inside Rath’s head and his index finger pulled on the trigger again and again. The Mauser only clicked in response. Click, click, click, it went, as the other man quietly took aim and placed his finger on the trigger. He began to pull down, almost in slow motion…

‘No!’

Rath was awoken by his own cry, suddenly wide awake and sitting bolt upright. His brow was cold and sweaty and his heart was racing. The clicking continued, but it was coming from the window. The clock on his bedside table showed half past one. He peeled himself out of bed, threw on his dressing gown and looked outside. Nürnberger Strasse was completely devoid of people. The only sound was that of the wind rustling through the trees, but there were three or four small stones on the window sill. Someone had been trying to wake him. He opened the window and leaned out.

The heavy front door opened and there was a short, sharp cry. ‘What are you doing hanging around here like a bad smell?’ a woman’s voice asked.

A young girl, in her early twenties perhaps, entered Rath’s field of vision, turning to look over her shoulder before hurrying towards the taxi rank. Weinert must have been entertaining again. Rath couldn’t help but smile, but goodness knows what Elisabeth Behnke would make of it. The landlady was very strict about tenants receiving female visitors at night, and yet the intrepid Weinert had someone there most evenings. Who, he wondered, had Weinert’s latest conquest bumped into down by the front door? Who had given her such a fright?

While he was still thinking he heard the heavy front door click shut and someone pull on the bell, followed by a hammering on the door to the flat. Rath stepped out of his room into the main hall. The door leading to Elisabeth Behnke’s rooms was shut. No sign of Weinert either. He probably had a guilty conscience.