Фолькер Кучер - Babylon Berlin

He removed the pistol from its holster as he entered the house. In the great, shadowy stairwell he could hear rasping voices a few storeys above. Could it be Fallin? He lived on the fourth floor. What was taking him so long? Had he checked his mailbox first, leafed through his post? Gräf took the safety catch off the pistol and began to climb the stairs as quietly as possible. For a few moments, he could hear only the sound of his own breath allied to the low creak of the steps. Slowly he worked his way up to the second floor.

Then came the jangle of a keyring, and a moment later a woman’s voice echoed through the stairwell.

‘Nikita?’

The voice came from above. Gräf considered whether he should lean over the banister and look to see who had shouted, who had been waiting for the Russian, when suddenly there was a crackling noise like the sound of wood snapping, followed by a short, sharp cry and a low thud. There was a second thud and the cry died away, as if the air had been sucked out of it; then a third, as a heavy body struck the handrail in front of Gräf, fingers clasping a broken chunk of banister as if they might still find a purchase. Gräf heard the sound of bones breaking before the body rebounded and fell further into the depths, arms and legs twisting wildly. One final crash and all was still.

The assistant detective stood flabbergasted, pistol still cocked in his hand. He rushed to the banister and looked down. On the pale stone floor, lay a powerful-looking man in a dark suit, arms and legs strangely contorted. The image almost resembled a swastika. A bright-red trickle of blood was oozing from under the black body, spreading quickly and growing thicker all the time.

The assistant detective put away his pistol and stumbled down the steps.

The man was lying face down in an ever expanding pool of blood, beside him the broken chunk of banister. Gräf leaned over the body and turned the man’s head to one side. A scar ran right across the left cheek.

The creaking of the steps made Gräf look up. A dainty woman was gazing upon the dead man and the blood. Eyes wide open, white as a sheet.

‘Is he dead?’

Gräf’s felt his neck in vain for a pulse. He nodded.

‘My God!’ The woman was already at the door. ‘Stay here. I’ll get the police.’

‘Stop,’ Gräf called after her, ‘I am the police!’ She was already gone, but it wouldn’t hurt if she came back with a few cops. That way he could stay with the corpse.

He listened into the silence. Everything was quiet. Had no-one in the house heard anything apart from the young woman?

In the dark of the stairwell, he had been unable to make out her face, but in her appearance and manner, she had almost reminded him a little of Charly. Only, this woman was blonde; and Charly would never have worn a blue hat.

Rath had been away for almost half an hour in total when he finally returned to Yorckstrasse. The green Opel was still parked in the shadow of a tree on the corner of the street. Exactly as he had left it – except for one detail. It was empty.

At first Rath thought that Gräf had simply leaned forward to pick up his notepad or something, but as he drew closer he realised his initial impression had been correct.

Gräf was no longer in the car!

Where the hell had the assistant detective got to? Had he actually no longer been able to stand the build-up of pressure in his bladder and disappeared into the nearest pub to use the toilet? Was he making a relieved face even now?

He hadn’t even locked the Opel. Rath shook his head and sat back in the driver’s seat. In vain he looked for a piece of paper, any sort of message. He opened a packet of Overstolz and lit a cigarette. Well, the lad would soon be back. Hopefully he had prepared a decent excuse. And hopefully Fallin hadn’t slipped through their fingers.

Fallin! Of course! There was another possibility: Nikita Fallin had returned!

Hopefully nothing had happened to the boy. If his past was anything to go by, the burly Russian was capable of anything.

Rath checked his Mauser, pulled his hat a little lower over his forehead and got out of the car. Slowly he moved over to the house, smoking, head bowed. If Fallin was looking out of the window, he didn’t want him to recognise a familiar face from Kakadu. He trod his cigarette out before opening the front door.

Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t this.

On the half landing Assistant Detective Reinhold Gräf was crouched over the corpse of a man whose scar face identified him beyond any doubt as Nikita Fallin.

It was just after four when he dropped Gräf off at the station. At least the observation had been cut short; Gennat hadn’t detailed the relief until six o’clock. Rath had alerted the Castle from the first telephone he could find, and only then called the 103rd precinct in Möckernstrasse. He didn’t want to be accused of not giving his division chief enough information this time. Let Buddha come out in the murder wagon to see for himself!

He came too. Gennat hadn’t driven out to a crime scene for a long time. It was clear to all officers present that something must be up if Buddha himself was stepping out of the murder wagon.

This time it was one hundred percent certain they were dealing with a murder. Gräf had told them he had witnessed the fall, and the chunk of banister lying next to the corpse clearly displayed saw marks. The suspicion that someone had transformed the banister into a deadly trap was confirmed when Forensics examined the fourth floor. A big chunk was missing from directly opposite the door to Fallin’s flat, where his suitcase was still standing. The banister had been carefully sawn into. In his reconstruction of events, which Rath supported, Gräf had claimed it was probably the woman’s cry that had enticed the Russian over to the banister in the first place. He had leaned over to see who was calling him, before plummeting to his death.

The identity of the woman and the possibility that she had intentionally lured Scar Face into the trap was just a hunch at first. However, it was corroborated by the knowledge that the woman, whom Gräf had seen, hadn’t called the police as promised. Quite the opposite, she had fled from them.

Gräf, who was inconsolable at his faux pas , had been unable to make out her face in the dark stairwell. The only thing he had noticed was her blue hat. Rath could imagine whom the assistant detective had encountered, but preferred to keep it to himself. Not only because he wasn’t sure if he really had seen the Countess on Grossbeerenstrasse just before, he also believed that a dirty pig like Nikita Fallin deserved his violent end.

Like Vitali Selenskij before him. Two Black Hundredists who for more than three years had been eating out of the hand of an unscrupulous Stahlhelmer . Who had tortured Kardakov and the hapless Boris so brutally. Bruno Wolter’s sadistic helpers.

Now both were dead and the thought that their avenging angel, Countess Sorokina, might also pick up the trail of Uncle secretly filled Rath with satisfaction.

It was more likely, however, that she had no idea the two Black Hundredists were in cahoots with a Prussian police officer. Only he knew that, Gereon Rath.

After he dropped Gräf off at Alex, Rath drove on to Potsdamer station. The motor pool could wait on the vehicle, Rath still had things to do. The officers at the Castle would just have to make do without him today.

First of all he went to the station and opened his locker. What a hotchpotch of items he had accumulated: a notebook, a pistol, a photo of wartime companions, a telephone ripped from the wall. And a packet of cocaine. All his dirty secrets were here.