Фолькер Кучер - Goldstein

‘That’s right. Abraham Goldstein. But don’t worry, the man knows that the police…’

‘Herr Rath?’ Teubner, the porter, interrupted them. He stood behind his counter, holding the receiver in his hand. ‘My apologies. Telephone for you, Herr Rath. It seems to be rather urgent. A Herr Gräf…’

Rath took the receiver. ‘Reinhold?’ he said into the mouthpiece.

‘Gereon, you were right!’ The detective sounded a little harried. ‘Goldstein has taken the lift downstairs and is heading for the tunnel.’

It took Kalli a moment to realise what had happened. The pain in his skull was resounding, like the noise of the S-Bahn if you stood directly under the bridge. Then he noticed that someone was singing. He recognised the voice, but couldn’t see who it was and, when he opened his eyes, saw nothing but a blurry, undefined, dirty grey. He had to force himself to focus, at last making out the familiar grey overalls he wore in the shop, covered in blood. He was staring at his own lap. A record was playing, and now he recognised the song thundering from the loudspeakers, much louder than he was accustomed to.

A blue figure was sitting on the sofa next to the record player, where he usually took his nap. With the face, the memory came flooding back.

A cop had appeared in his shop, someone he had never seen before, neither here nor in the neighbourhood – and Kalli knew all the cops who walked the beat. A newbie, he thought at first, who would learn in time that it was best not to sniff around in here if you didn’t want to make trouble with Berolina. He had taken a wristwatch from the shelf, a cheap piece of rubbish, nothing like as elegant as the pieces Alex had lifted from KaDeWe. The cop hadn’t responded to his friendly greeting, merely held the watch in his hand, gripping the strap so that the dial now faced him, and gaping at the inert clock-hand as if this piece of crap, whose provenance Kalli knew absolutely nothing about, was the most valuable item under the sun, before drawing closer to the counter.

‘Bet this is stolen,’ were his precise words as he arrived, nothing more, and Kalli felt his hunch confirmed: a greenhorn who needed to be taught some manners. One phone call to Lenz, and the matter would be resolved. Berolina would cut this big mouth down to size, no need to feel intimidated, but then something unexpected happened.

The cop, now standing right in front of the counter with an indefinable grin on his face, struck him without warning with his right hand, using the watch as a kind of knuckleduster. The first blow landed in the middle of Kalli’s face, and the shopkeeper heard his nose break and felt blood streaming out of him. He tumbled against the shelves, still not sure what had happened. The cop pulled him up brutally by his overalls and struck him again on the point of the chin. After a brief flash of pain, everything went black.

He couldn’t say how long he had been unconscious. Light spilled in from the shop through the crack in the door, so it must still be daytime. He lifted his head slowly, carefully, to avoid exacerbating the pain. The cop had made himself comfortable on the sofa, having removed the shako from his head and placed it beside him. This man sitting on his sofa, in his back room, listening to his music, did he have any idea what Berolina would do to him when they found out?

Kalli couldn’t believe he had let himself be caught unawares like this. He thought he knew all the tricks, thought himself better than all the ne’er-do-wells here in the Samariterviertel. No one would dare rob his little shop. It was no secret that he kept a loaded war pistol underneath the counter. This cop either didn’t know or didn’t care.

Kalli tried to speak, but his tongue stuck to his gums. He could only utter a squelching sort of groan.

‘Well, you bent Jews’ sow,’ the cop said. ‘Awake at last?’

Kalli had to gather enough spit to get his tongue moving again. ‘I’m not a Jew,’ he protested, as if that was the most pressing issue to clarify. He was still thinking about the stupidity of his response when the cop planted himself in front of him.

‘Then what are you doing in a goddamned Jew shop?’ Kalli could smell the sweat in the fabric of his uniform.

Again, the blow came without warning, this time to the solar plexus. Kalli felt like he was going to choke, and instinctively tried to protect his stomach with his hands, but couldn’t move. The man must have bound him.

‘What’s the big idea?’ he gasped. ‘What the hell is going on?’

The next blow struck him in exactly the same location. The gag reflex turned Kalli’s stomach upside down and a part of its contents landed in his mouth. He swallowed the sour-tasting gruel and suppressed a fresh urge to choke. What kind of arsehole was he dealing with here?

‘First rule: only speak when spoken to,’ the cop said.

Kalli waited to be spoken to, but the man moved silently to the record player, removing the needle so that a violent scratch echoed through the loudspeaker.

Then a question did come, but not from the cop who had retaken his seat next to the shako. It came from a man who must have been standing at the door leading out back.

‘Why do you think we’re here, Kalli?’ said a familiar voice.

Kalli turned as far as he could, but it wasn’t enough to see his interrogator. The thing that startled him most was that they knew his name, even his nickname. All at once, Eberhard Kallweit knew he was in serious trouble. He had misread the situation. The cop was just muscle. Kalli’s real problem was the other man, the owner of the voice. The nameless man, whom Kalli had always called Stephan , after the telephone exchange through which he contacted him. How the hell had he found his shop?

Lenz or Berolina must have played him false, otherwise he’d never have been listening to that voice within his own four walls, unless through a telephone cable. He didn’t know anything about Stephan , didn’t know what he looked like or what he was called, but he had to be a cop, a cop that Berolina trusted and probably even paid.

Lenz had given him the number to get rid of Alex and Benny, and Kalli had called it. Stephan hadn’t identified himself on the line, and Kalli hadn’t divulged anything, not even just now, when, after Alex’s surprise visit, he had gone straight over to the S-Bahn station, and asked to be put through again: STEPHAN 1701 . It was the only link to Stephan he had. He almost gave a start when the man picked up after the first ring. Then, drawing courage from the fact that he couldn’t be seen, he proceeded to kick up a fuss. He had been shocked by the news of Benny’s death, putting two and two together that morning as he leafed through the paper. Alex had merely confirmed his suspicions with her version of events later that day. He hadn’t wanted the boy to die; nor, surely, had Berolina. No, it was the fault of the cops alone. It was they who would have to pay!

Stephan had been angry from the start, but seeing as he was invisible, Kalli didn’t care. ‘Why the hell are you calling me?’ he had said. ‘It’s over. You don’t know this number anymore.’

‘That wasn’t what we agreed! They were supposed to end up behind bars. No one said anything about killing them.’

‘What was supposed to happen is none of your concern. The boy died. It was an accident.’

‘It was no accident, it was murder. I’ve got witnesses. I know reporters who’d pay a pretty penny for a story like that. Police officer murders minor! ’

The momentary silence at the end of the line confirmed what Kalli knew already. Alex must have been telling the truth.