Gennat had paused on the stairs. Rath gave the squad leader the nod. He waved at his men and they stepped into action like a perfectly rehearsed ballet troupe. The first man kicked in the door and the second peeled inside, firearm at the ready, followed by three colleagues. Rath remained outside, his Walther primed, even if he didn’t think Tornow would come out shooting.
The squad leader emerged from the flat shaking his head. ‘No one home,’ he said.
Rath cast a brief a glance over the flat. It didn’t look as if Tornow had fled. His gaze fell instead on the gasometer at the end of Leuthener Strasse. He exited the flat and the officers descended once more, frustrated as ever after a futile operation. Gennat was waiting for them at the foot of the stairs.
Rath shrugged. ‘No one home, but I’d be willing to bet I know where he is.’
Perhaps Tornow had an inkling after all, Rath thought, as they approached the gasworks, although it wasn’t public knowledge that Helmut Grabowski and Gregor Lanke had been arrested, let alone interrogated.
Rath had waylaid Gregor Lanke outside the canteen, using the pretext of a confidential discussion to lure him out to Schöneberg. The detective had been astonished to find Superintendent Gennat and Chief Inspector Böhm waiting for him in the priest’s office at Saint Norbert’s. Once he had recovered from the shock, Lanke had seemed genuinely relieved by the presence of Buddha, and unburdened his soul.
Grabowski, meanwhile, was part of Böhm’s team. All the Bulldog had to do was summon him. The assistant detective from Homicide was, by far, the harder nut to crack, but Gennat’s doggedness, allied with Lanke’s statements and the names Charly had provided, finally broke him.
Rudi Scheer seemed to act as a kind of patron, placing the necessary means at the group’s disposal for specific operations. Grabowski claimed that Scheer was still involved in weapons trafficking, though it would be difficult to prove. The only lead they had was an illegal arms dealer in Grenadierstrasse. Goldstein confirmed that was where he had purchased the Remington. He got the address from Marion, who at that time had been working on behalf of Gregor Lanke and Die Weisse Hand. Somehow, in the maze, Goldstein had become an important witness.
But that was another story entirely.
Even if Scheer had provided the money, the group’s driving force was Sebastian Tornow, young as he was. The two hoods he had told Rath about, who had apparently lost their lives as part of a gangland war, the two who had ruined his sister’s life, had been his first victims. In Rudi Scheer, whom he must have met in the early stages of his training, Tornow recognised a kindred spirit. From that point, the pair had surrounded themselves with men who shared their worldview. Gräf, too, had been sounded out by Tornow, when asked whether a good police officer ought to be able to kill.
In Tornow’s eyes, the answer was yes. Jochen Kuschke, meanwhile, who had taken this principle too much to heart, had to die, because he had acted impetuously and become a danger to the organisation. His fate, so Grabowski said, had been sealed at a secret night-time meeting of group members. In the end Tornow took the job upon himself because Kuschke, his erstwhile superior officer and mentor, had trusted him the most.
They reached the site of the gasworks without any trouble. As Tornow had said, only signs forbade people from climbing the gasometer. They described such behaviour as strengstens verboten, the sound of which alone was enough to make would-be offenders recoil.
Rath was used to breaking rules.
‘Wait here with your men,’ he said to Gennat. ‘I’ll see if anyone’s up there.’
Before Gennat could say anything, he was on his way.
Scaling dizzying heights was hardly the stuff of his innermost dreams, but this was personal. Tornow had taken Charly from him and made her suffer for two days. If he was crouched up there, admiring Berlin’s night sky, then he, Gereon Rath, wanted to be the one to tell him he was under arrest.
The gasometer was a massive, barrel-shaped guide frame, a steel, half-timbered construction, around eighty metres high, in which the gas bell patiently went about its business. A kind of fire escape led upwards, a steel staircase the like of which could sometimes be seen in tenement houses. After four steps, Rath reached the first maintenance gangway, a steel ring of catwalk grating that extended around the whole gasometer. There was one every ten or so metres, but Tornow’s spot was up on top of the gas holder, not on one of the maintenance gangways. Rath continued.
On the first landing he held to his resolution not to look down, but at one point he inadvertently took the risk, and instantly regretted it. He held on tight to the rail and hunkered down. Below he could see Gennat talking to a man, probably the night watchman. Buddha pointed skywards and Rath tried to look the other way, up inside the structure, to dispel the feeling of vertigo. The framework’s interior was filled by an enormous steel cylinder that was in motion day and night, rising and falling, as gradually as the sun and moon, and just as inexorably, an irresistible, relentless force. Cantilevers with guide pulleys ran via tracks into the vertical steel ribs to ensure the gas bell breathed steadily. Rath thought he could see it slowly descending as the bell exhaled again, an operation that would last the entire night. The heavy telescopic bell descended at a speed that was barely discernible, compressing the gas into the network of lines and hoses that played their part in illuminating Berlin’s night sky.
When he reached the topmost maintenance gangway he saw Tornow sitting on the enormous steel bell and the gas supply for half a city. Not just anywhere, but right in its centre, on a large valve that looked like a steel tree-stump and was the same size as a comfy stool. Next to him was a rucksack.
Rath climbed onto the gas bell using one of the cantilevers. Like the maintenance gangways, the slightly domed upper surface of the gas holder was secured by a wrap-around rail.
Slowly he approached the middle of the bell. It was like ascending a little hill, steadily sloping upwards. On top of the flat, circular summit sat the former uniform officer, whose promising career as a CID inspector was over before it had begun. The man with the perfect smile: Sebastian Tornow, the fallen angel.
Rath came to a halt about a metre behind him.
Tornow, who had his back turned, took a brief glance over his shoulder, and turned around without saying anything. In his hand he held a half-finished bottle of beer.
‘I’ve come to take you away,’ Rath said.
‘You sound like the devil himself.’
‘I’m a detective inspector come to make an arrest.’
‘An arrest? It’s not forbidden to sit up here drinking beer.’
‘No.’
Tornow raised the bottle to his lips. ‘Let me finish my beer, then I’ll come with you. You know how much I’m going to miss sitting up here.’
Rath nodded. Tornow offered him a bottle. ‘You want one too?’
‘No, thank you.’ Rath shook his head. ‘You know how it is: business before pleasure… I’ll smoke instead.’
He took a cigarette from his case, lit it and sat next to Tornow. ‘It really is beautiful up here,’ he said, blowing pale cigarette smoke into the night sky.
‘But that isn’t why you’re here.’
‘No.’ Rath looked across at Tornow, who was staring into the distance. ‘Today is the day Die Weisse Hand is finally broken. Right now all across the city men are being arrested. You’re one of them. You’ll also be charged with the murder of Jochen Kuschke…’
‘Kuschke, the fool.’
‘…and with acting as an accessory to the murder of Eberhard Kallweit, Hugo Lenz, Rudolf Höller and Gerhard Kubicki.’