Babylon Berlin (47 page)

Above all, the men from ED were looking for footprints – but they had their work cut out. Hundreds of shoes had trampled on the ground where moments earlier mourners had passed behind the coffin. It was pointless to even look there. At first glance, things didn’t look much better by the grave, as it wasn’t just the coffin bearers and priest who had lingered there. Zörgiebel, Gennat’s men and the officers who had sealed off the area had also left their tracks, to say nothing of the rubbernecks and press photographers. Fortunately Gennat had been quick to react and ensured that all those involved had their particulars taken down, so that any subsequent comparison of footprints, though laborious, was still possible.

The press photographers had initially refused to give their names, as they feared reprisals. Nevertheless, uniform hadn’t taken possession of a single camera. The last thing anyone wanted was to provoke a scandal, as Zörgiebel himself had invited the press. Rath didn’t believe any more than Gennat that a newspaper would publish a photo of a decomposing corpse. The pictures, which by now would be lying fully developed in the papers’ offices, would be securely locked away, but they would achieve at least one thing. The Berlin police wouldn’t be able to whitewash the facts. The photos would tell an interesting story. Namely, that the freshly dug grave of murdered CID officer Stephan Jänicke contained the corpse of Alexej Kardakov, a murder suspect for whom they had recently issued a search warrant. Taking this information and a few rehashed details from the previous week, a resourceful journalist could fill an entire front page, without needing a press conference or any exclusives from indiscreet police officers. Besides, it was pointless trying to keep an incident like this, where there had been so many eye-witnesses, under wraps. Zörgiebel must recognise that too.

Forensics emerged from the grave, and Assistant Detective Reinhold Gräf hauled his camera down to take some close-ups. Gräf tied a handkerchief around his face and turned up the collar of his jacket. Rath doubted whether it would do much good. The assistant detective appeared almost as pale as the corpse.

A man from ED was showing Gennat what he had found in Kardakov’s jacket, an astonishingly well-preserved packet of cocaine, a
Berolina
membership pin and a yellow identity card,
valid until 16th May 1929.

Gennat leafed through the document, using a handkerchief to avoid leaving fingerprints. ‘Looks like we’ve found your killer, Herr Rath,’ he said. ‘Afraid he looks pretty dead. No good arresting him now.’

Rath nodded silently, feeling humiliated. Gennat had said it in a relatively harmless way, but the gaze of his colleagues had been less forgiving. Kardakov’s corpse had made a complete fool of him. The man whom Rath had taken for a killer, for whom he had initiated a police search warrant, had clearly been the victim of a violent crime himself.

‘When was he supposed to have killed this man?’ Gennat asked.

‘About three weeks ago.’

‘I’d say that three weeks ago he looked pretty similar to how he does now.’

Precisely the same thought was going through Rath’s head. Kardakov was not a murderer, he was a victim of the same person who had Boris on his conscience. He had known the moment he had seen the corpse and the treatment doled out to the hands and feet.

‘I fear the warrant was a little rash, sir,’ he said.

Gennat nodded. ‘It was even more rash to suspect the man of murder without any proof. Still, this corpse is something of a result for you. Imagine if the poor devil was still alive. If he’d just gone to the Baltic Sea for a few weeks, only to be arrested by police on his return to Szczecin station after seeing his picture in the papers. It’s tantamount to character assassination. You’d have had that to answer for, Inspector!’

Not just me
,
the commissioner as well
, Rath thought. Zörgiebel had ignored Gennat’s protests, had issued the warrant for Kardakov and had gone public with Rath’s theory. The commissioner had made a fool of himself too – and Rath knew Zörgiebel would never forgive him for it.

He had made a whole host of enemies at the Castle. Böhm was standing with Kronberg and a few members of ED a little to the side by the cemetery wall. Not so much to avoid the stench, but Rath himself. To Böhm, I’m a decaying corpse too, Rath thought. Strictly speaking, he didn’t have a single friend left at Alex. The one remaining person he had counted as a friend was the worst of all. Uncle: Bruno Wolter.

A red haze on the edge of his field of vision made him look up.

It was Charly.

She came striding across the cemetery in her red dress, past the men in black, holding a folded umbrella in one hand and a shorthand pad in the other. Rath felt a stabbing pain as she surveyed him briefly, only to move on without so much as a word of acknowledgement. It didn’t stop her greeting the superintendent all the more cheerfully.

‘Ah, Fräulein Ritter,’ Buddha said, sounding almost relieved, ‘good that you’re here!’ He sent her straight over to Kronberg, who was debating something with Böhm by the wall. ‘Take down Forensics’s findings first. Then we’ll turn to our friend Dr Schwartz.’

Charly continued on her way, while Rath gazed after her.

Had Gennat noticed the tension between them? Buddha gave nothing away but continued to look pensively at the corpse.

‘He’s been dead for at least four weeks if you ask me.’

Dr Schwartz arrived shortly afterwards to confirm Gennat’s estimate. The doctor shook his head again and again as he examined Kardakov’s corpse. Schwartz appeared to be the only one who didn’t mind the smell, even while he was right next to the corpse.

‘Looks like he was buried and then dug back up,’ he said, when he was standing next to the CID officers again. ‘Forensics will be able to tell you more.’

‘How did he die?’

‘I don’t know yet. There are clear parallels to another corpse I’ve examined, but there appear to be some striking differences too.’

Gennat nodded. ‘You’re referring to the case Böhm worked on?’ He whistled loudly through his fingers and waved the DCI over. Böhm was still with Kronberg and Charly by the cemetery wall. He couldn’t avoid Rath any longer, but approached Gennat without deigning even to look at him. As far as that went, he seemed to have struck up an agreement with Charly.

‘Sir?’ Böhm barked.

‘You should listen to what Dr Schwartz has to say,’ Gennat said. ‘It’s about your case.’

‘It wasn’t my idea to search for the man who is mouldering away down there!’

‘I appreciate rivalry in my division, Böhm, but make sure you don’t poison the atmosphere. We can only make progress if we work together.’

He hadn’t been looking at Böhm when he said this last sentence, but Rath.

‘I think it would be advisable for you both to shake hands,’ Buddha continued. ‘You haven’t even said ‘good morning’ to each other yet.’

‘Is that right?’ Böhm stretched out a paw, and Rath grasped it. He would have preferred a reconciliation with Charly, and gazed across at her while Dr Schwartz continued with his explanation.

Half an hour later, Rath had already botched his first chance at making up with Charly. Gennat hadn’t forced them to shake hands, but had sent the pair of them off together. The division chief had detailed around twenty officers to question the inhabitants of Heinrich-Roller-Strasse, which bordered directly onto the cemetery, and allocated number 17 to Gereon Rath and Charlotte Ritter.

If it was supposed to have been a peace-making manoeuvre, then it had backfired horribly. Yet how Rath’s heart had leapt when Gennat assigned her to him, whether through joy or nervousness he couldn’t say. Her proximity alone made him euphoric, the chance to work with her even more so. Only for her behaviour to sober him up.

Cold and impersonal, she had walked beside him like a stranger, barely saying a word and addressing him formally when she did. Nor was it just for appearance’s sake. The look in her eyes told him she hadn’t forgiven him.

‘What do you suggest, Inspector?’ she asked, when they were standing on the other side of the cemetery wall, outside the five-storey tenement. Their colleagues had long since disappeared into the neighbouring houses.

‘We can drop the titles, nobody’ll hear us,’ he said.

‘I have no intention of creating professional difficulties for myself by being too familiar with an inspector, especially one who hasn’t earned it.’

She was a lawyer, a pretty good one too by the sound of it.

‘That was exactly what I wanted to talk about. Don’t you at least want to…?’

She cut him off. ‘I don’t recall the superintendent giving you orders to discuss anything with me.’

If that was how she wanted to play it, Rath could be just as clinical.

‘Very well, Fräulein Ritter. So that there is no danger of our becoming over-familiar with one another, I suggest that we question the witnesses separately. You do one half, I’ll do the other.’

He had actually addressed her formally, and didn’t get the feeling she was too upset. Clearly the whole concept rankled more with him.

‘As you wish, Inspector.’

‘Then you take the two upper floors and I’ll take the three below.’

Her long legs were already flying up the stairs.

Rath shrugged his shoulders and set to work.

He was finished quickly. You couldn’t even see over the cemetery wall from the ground floor flats, and no-one had noticed anything suspicious, neither the caretaker nor the teacher who lived opposite. As for the flats higher up, there was no-one home except for Elfriede Gaede, a deaf old lady on the first floor. Though Frau Gaede had a prime view of the cemetery, she only had eyes for the numerous cats that prowled through her rooms. It took some time for Rath to realise that Frau Gaede was not only deaf but almost completely blind. And he was happy to leave the stench of cat piss behind.

Downstairs, he stepped onto the street and looked around. There was still no sign of Charly. To the left of the tenement, by the corner of a red-brick house, he could see Plisch and Plum, each with a cigarette. Rath joined them and lit an Overstolz. At least the pair hadn’t run away as he approached.

‘You finished too?’ he said, placing the cigarette carton back in his pocket.

‘It’s a school,’ Czerwinski said, ‘huge building, but only the caretaker and his wife live there.’ He drew deeply on his cigarette. ‘Neither of them saw anything.’

‘It’s a crackpot idea, if you ask me,’ Henning said. ‘What are the people here supposed to have seen? Whoever dumped the body came via the cemetery. Clambering over the wall would be far too obvious, with a corpse at that. It must’ve been someone who knew the cemetery staff, someone who knew a police officer was being buried here today.’

‘It was in all the papers,’ Rath replied. ‘There can’t have been too many freshly dug graves at
Georgen
Cemetery this morning.’

‘Strange business,’ Henning said. ‘Why would someone throw an old corpse into a fresh police grave?’

‘It is odd,’ Rath agreed.

The killer hadn’t allowed Kardakov to surface for no reason; that was certain. Perhaps they wanted to put one over the commissioner? Or Rath? Was it even the killer who had dumped the corpse? There was something artificial about the whole thing: the cocaine in the jacket pocket, the identity card, and to top it off the
Berolina
pin. Was Marlow involved? Was someone trying to tell them that Dr M. or Red Hugo had killed the two Russians? Perhaps a rival
Ringverein
, one that was trying to create trouble for
Berolina
and make a fool of the police at the same time? The
Nordpiraten
weren’t on good terms with
Berolina
at the moment. Perhaps it merited a closer look.

The three men finished smoking and Rath decided to accompany Henning and Czerwinski back to the cemetery. He wasn’t going to wait around for Charly, only to be treated like dirt.

Despite their cigarette break, the trio were among the first to report back to Gennat, but without much to go on. A man from number 19 had seen two men that morning dragging a cart across the cemetery’s main avenue, but couldn’t remember the exact time. Officers were gradually returning, even those who had questioned the cemetery staff. Buddha listened patiently to all the reports, barely making any notes. He was said to have a phenomenal memory.

They were slowly building a picture. The cemetery gardener had only dug one grave yesterday, that of Jänicke. Just before ten today, the man had assured, there had still been no corpse inside, as that was when he had checked the beams for the coffin. That meant the pair – if it was indeed the two men that the witness had seen – must have completed the job between ten and eleven. It was something to go on at any rate.

It wasn’t until the last of the officers returned from Heinrich-Roller-Strasse that Charly re-emerged, walking alongside Reinhold Gräf, smiling and chatting animatedly.

Without warning, Rath was overcome by a severe pang of jealousy.

C’mon man!
He thought.
You’ve got enough problems as it
is without worrying about her! Forget Charly, put her out
of your mind! Don’t let her treat you like
this!

For the time being their work was done. The first CID officers were already on their way back to the Castle to write their reports. Two undertakers had removed Kardakov’s corpse from the grave and placed it carefully in a zinc coffin. Then they had set off. The mortuary car was already waiting for them at Greifswalder Strasse.

From the grave to the mortuary car, Rath thought to himself, as he watched the men. Usually it’s the other way round.

He had seen the storm coming. Erika Voss was waiting with the news.

‘The commissioner would like to see you, Inspector.’

Rath knew it would be no ordinary meeting, and he was right. He had never seen the fat man so furious. Zörgiebel rose from his desk to pace up and down the room, his voice operating in the higher registers.

The door to the outer office was closed but Rath knew that Dagmar Kling could hear every word.