Фолькер Кучер: The Fatherland Files

The telephone rang again. Whoever it was, they were stubborn – but Rath was determined to ignore the sound until Kirie’s bark drowned it out. Charly grinned and said, ‘Perhaps you should take it after all.’

He looked at his watch. A quarter to six. He went over to answer.

‘Gereon! Finally! Where the hell have you been hiding?’

Reinhold Gräf. Exactly as Rath had feared. ‘I just ducked out to the train station.’

‘Just ducked out? I’ve been trying to reach you for ages…’

‘What’s happened?’

‘Male corpse. Haus Vaterland . Potsdamer Platz.’

‘Shit.’

‘Shit is right. Now, for God’s sake get a move on, before along with everyone else Böhm cottons on to the fact that the duty inspector is absent.’

Rath hung up and straightened his tie. He didn’t have to say anything to Charly. She was already buttoning her blouse.

Haus Vaterland overlooked Potsdamer Platz like a marooned pleasure steamer, and in a sense that’s what it was. It didn’t give a hoot about patriotism, only with fleecing its clients for cash. Behind the building’s façade around a dozen restaurants of all kinds waited for custom: a Bavarian brauhaus , a Spanish bodega, a Wild West bar, a Turkish café, and more, all with furnishings, menus and entertainment to match. Those who came in just to stare weren’t welcome, with would-be patrons obliged to buy food and drinks vouchers at the door.

During his first days in Berlin, Rath had tried to find a home of sorts in the Rheinterrasse , but all it offered was oversweet wine and tacky Rhine romanticism. As for Berlin’s famous metropolitan flair, an idea propagated mainly by Berliners themselves, Haus Vaterland was something of a let-down. Provincial tourists might stop and gawp, but to Rath’s mind, the more sophisticated drinking establishments in the west, such as Femina or Kakadu , had a lot more going for them. The building impressed by its sheer size, as well as its neon strip lights, which dominated Potsdamer Platz at night.

At this hour, however, the marooned pleasure steamer was as deserted as a ghost ship. Only the cars at the goods entrance, above all the murder wagon, suggested that something was afoot. Rath parked his Buick behind an Opel from ED, the police identification service, but remained inside. He took a drag on his Overstolz and blew smoke against the windscreen. Never had he felt so reluctant to work, so begrudging of his profession, as this morning. He had suggested that Charly come along, but she had refused. ‘What would people say if we appeared together?’ He felt aggrieved by her response, even if he knew she was right.

He stubbed out his cigarette in the Buick’s tiny ashtray and got out, determined to get this over and done with as soon as possible and return to Carmerstrasse.

Dr Karthaus, who wore his white coat even outside the dissecting room, stood at the entrance, cigarette in hand, chatting to a uniform cop. The officer saluted as Rath approached; the pathologist nodded his head.

‘Good morning, Doctor.’

‘Good of you to join us, Inspector. I’ve been smoking my lungs black waiting. Car trouble, was it? You should get yourself a German model.’

Rath ignored the dig. ‘What can you tell me about the corpse?’

Karthaus gave a gentle smile. ‘That’s the good thing about the Criminal Police – you get to explain everything three times. Come with me and I’ll show you. It’s upstairs. The undertakers have been positively itching to take it away.’

‘Upstairs?’

Karthaus flung his cigarette into a puddle. ‘If you would be so kind as to follow me,’ he said, and, without waiting for a response, turned and headed inside.

Rath followed the white coat into a large, plain room with two freight elevators and a stairwell, that seemed to be Haus Vaterland ’s goods reception. Karthaus took the stairs to the fourth floor where two uniform cops and two men dressed in black waited in front of the lift doors. On the floor was a zinc coffin.

‘Can we get going?’ asked one of the men in black.

‘In a moment,’ said Karthaus. ‘The inspector here needs to look at the corpse.’ He gave a sour smile and gestured towards an elevator car hanging a metre too low in its shaft. Two forensic technicians were taking fingerprints from its buttons, as well as from a wire mesh cart loaded to the brim with crates of schnapps.

‘An accident, was it?’ Rath asked, lighting another cigarette. Even now he felt little interest. Couldn’t Gräf have dealt with this on his own?

‘Accident?’ Karthaus gazed sceptically. ‘I’m afraid not.’

Rath climbed down into the car, cigarette between his lips, and the pathologist followed.

The dead man was wearing grey overalls. His eyes were well out of their sockets, gazing wide open as if they had witnessed the full horror of eternal damnation. For a moment Rath had the idea that the freight elevator in Haus Vaterland might lead straight down to hell. Instinctively he followed the dead man’s gaze, but saw only yellowed plywood.

‘So how did he die, if it wasn’t an accident?’

The doctor cleared his throat. ‘I know it sounds unlikely, but I’m certain the autopsy will confirm my assessment that…’

‘Autopsy?’

‘Your colleague has already telephoned the public prosecutor. On my recommendation, of course.’

‘Where are my colleagues now?’

‘As far as I know, questioning witnesses. Now, as I was saying, unless I am very much mistaken the man here drowned.’

The forensics men continued stoically with their work.

‘Drowned?’ Rath asked. ‘Don’t you normally drown in water?’

‘Perhaps the corpse was simply dumped here.’

‘Doesn’t look like it,’ said one of the forensics officers. ‘Not according to the footprints. Everything points to him entering the lift himself.’ His colleague secured another fingerprint on the wire mesh cart’s steel tubing. ‘Besides, he came here in his own van. He wasn’t dumped here by anyone.’

Dr Karthaus shrugged. ‘We’ll know more once the autopsy is complete,’ he said.

‘Where did you say Gräf was?’

‘Questioning witnesses in some office or other. Ask the cops,’ Karthaus said and climbed out, seemingly in a hurry to leave. Rath stubbed out his cigarette on the floor, about chest height, and followed.

The undertakers heaved the zinc coffin towards the elevator as one of the uniform cops offered to take him down to his colleagues. Rath followed through the eerily deserted Löwenbräu , where the fug of yesterday’s beer still hung in the air, and into the vast central hall. From here a multitude of stairways, tribunes, elevators and doors led to the various restaurants and attractions that Haus Vaterland hosted across four floors. Normally a hive of activity, now the hall’s size made it seem supernaturally calm. Around two dozen men were seated on the stairs, some in kitchen aprons, others in waiter’s uniforms or lounge suits, a few more in worker’s overalls. If the four or five uniform cops were like dogs guarding a herd of sheep, then Assistant Detective Andreas Lange was their shepherd, manning the stairs with two additional uniform officers.

‘Morning, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Good that you’re here.’

‘Morning, Lange. What a lot of people!’

‘Witnesses. Detective Gräf rounded them up.’

‘And all of them saw something?’

‘We don’t know yet. These workers were on early shift at the probable time of death. Or late shift.’

‘All of them?’ If Gräf really meant to question each one, they’d be here all day. ‘Let’s just be grateful this didn’t happen last night during the rush. Then there’d be another thousand people on the stairs.’ Rath thought of Charly in Carmerstrasse, and his mood darkened further. ‘Any findings?’