‘I had nothing to do with Kubicki. That was Kuschke’s idea. The same goes for the boy at KaDeWe.’
‘Kuschke was in the SA himself. Why would he stab a fellow member like Kubicki?’
‘I asked him that too. Apparently to pin it on Goldstein, but there were other reasons. For Kuschke, any SA men who didn’t go along with his hero Stennes were just a bunch of fag boys. At least, that’s how he explained it to me. The fact that he was in the SA should have been a warning. Recruiting him for Die Weisse Hand was the biggest mistake I made.’
‘He was good for the dirty work, wasn’t he? Hugo Lenz for example. Or would you have managed him on your own? Did he shoot Rudi Höller too?’
‘What does it matter now? I thought we made a good team, Kuschke and I.’
‘But you were wrong.’
‘So long as he did what he was told, everything worked fine. The problems only began when he started thinking for himself. The man was a sadist, as I should have known. It was my mistake.’
‘Here was I thinking that sadism was a prerequisite for your little troop. You kill people. Just like that.’
‘We eliminate criminals. It has nothing to do with sadism.’
‘You didn’t kill Goldstein. Why?’
‘Perhaps we wanted to shake the general public awake. Show them how dangerous it is to have a gangster roaming the streets of Berlin unattended, and that the laws which allow it to happen need to be changed.’
‘He wasn’t unattended. It was only through your expert help that he gave us the slip.’
‘We were watching him the whole time. Die Weisse Hand isn’t as dim-witted as Inspector Rath.’
‘With the exception of Kuschke. He was only supposed to be keeping Goldstein under surveillance, wasn’t he, not to be killing an SA man into the bargain?’
‘He wasn’t best pleased to see the man behave like a Boy Scout. So he lent a helping hand. To ensure the picture Berliners had of him was accurate.’
‘That he was a Jewish gangster? One who’s about to be exonerated in the press.’
Tornow looked into Rath’s eyes, as if he could read the inspector’s mind. ‘He’s in on this, isn’t he?’ he said, in a moment of insight. ‘Goldstein is in on this conspiracy against Die Weisse Hand!’
‘Conspiracy’s the wrong word. These are criminal proceedings, and his role is not to be underestimated. Quite simply, because he didn’t commit any of the murders your lot tried to pin on him.’
Rath thought of Simon Teitelbaum, Goldstein’s defence witness. The old man had good reason to withhold his name and address: fear of deportation. Teitelbaum was in Germany illegally. It was only after Gennat set everything in motion to grant him citizenship that he had declared himself willing to repeat the statements he had made to Rath in court.
‘You working with gangsters is nothing new,’ Tornow said, ‘but Gennat too! That was Buddha I saw down there, wasn’t it?’ Tornow pointed his beer bottle down towards Leuthener Strasse.
Rath shook his head. ‘I just can’t believe that you’d simply stab a man to death.’
‘It wasn’t simple, you’ve got it wrong there. It was unavoidable.’ He looked at Rath. ‘Believe me, I wasn’t always this cold-blooded, but time teaches you. Having a sheet of ice around your heart helps. A carapace, like after a sleet storm.’ He paused and gazed into the distance, towards the western horizon, over which the last of the daylight could still be seen, before the night finally took over. ‘The ice set in the day we found my sister Luise in the Hollandwiese, when all that remained of her was her physical shell, and the person she had been only that morning was irretrievably lost.’
‘You think that gives you the right to become just like the men who destroyed her?’
‘I’m nothing like those bastards!’ Tornow flashed him a look of such rage that Rath gave a start. ‘I never will be!’
‘You’ve become just as hard-hearted as them. Is that really worth striving for?’
‘It isn’t about whether it’s worth striving for.’ Tornow took a final gulp of beer. ‘We don’t get to choose whether we become hard-hearted or not.’
The bottle was empty. Tornow packed it inside the little leather rucksack, clinking it against another bottle. The one Rath had turned down. He stood up.
‘Let’s go back down,’ he said. ‘I don’t have to cuff you, do I?’
Tornow shook his head and stood up, shouldering the rucksack and fiddling with its clasp.
‘You’ve been very open with me,’ Rath said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me all that a few days ago? You would have spared us a whole lot of trouble.’
‘Because back then I didn’t know I was talking to a dead man.’ All of a sudden there was a pistol in his hand. ‘You’re a Catholic. You know what good it does to unburden your soul. Above all when you know that the seal of confession will be preserved.’
Rath gazed into the mouth of the pistol. It was a Mauser, he saw now, the same model he had once had. ‘Don’t do anything stupid. There’s a squad of a hundred officers waiting below. You’ve no chance of escape.’
‘Who says I want to escape. Perhaps I just want to shoot you.’
‘In front of over a hundred witnesses?’
Tornow shrugged. ‘So what? Have you forgotten that I’m already a police killer. One more won’t make any difference.’
Rath shook his head. ‘I don’t believe you.’
‘What is it you don’t believe?’
‘I don’t believe you’re cold-blooded enough to just gun me down. Besides…’ He pointed towards the maintenance gangway encircling them. While they had been speaking the gas dome had descended by a few centimetres. ‘At any moment this place is going to be surrounded by uniform officers with loaded carbines. If you shoot me, they’ll gun you down like a hare.’
Tornow looked to the side, which was all Rath had wanted. With a quick movement he was beside him, with both his hands on the pistol in Tornow’s right hand. A shot resounded from the Mauser, the bullet flying high into the night sky.
The two men landed on the gently sloping dome of the gas holder. There was a muffled thud as the Mauser and Tornow’s right hand crashed against the metal. While Rath focused his energies on the man’s firing arm, Tornow kicked him hard in the groin, catching him off guard. Rath felt everything go black and for a moment couldn’t breathe, but still he clasped the hand holding the weapon, slamming Tornow’s knuckles against the steel gas holder. He absorbed the kicks and punches until Tornow’s knuckles bled and he let go of the pistol. It slid a few centimetres and came to a halt. Before Tornow could retrieve it, Rath slapped it away as if it were a table-hockey puck, only to watch it skidding across the gently sloping metallic surface. It turned on its axis several times and finally, still moving at pace, slid over the edge of the gas bell. It didn’t fall into the depths, between the telescopic bell and guide framework, as Rath had hoped, but flew across the gap to land on the catwalk grating of the maintenance gangway.
Tornow ran over, diving across the floor and lying face down on the edge of the gas holder, frantically stretching to take the pistol in his grasp. Rath rose unhurriedly to his feet, ignoring the pain from the blows Tornow had dealt him, and pulled his Walther from its holster.
He had just loaded the weapon when Tornow finally reached the Mauser. He had failed to realise that the gas holder was still falling. The handrail on the maintenance gangway hadn’t moved, but the rail that fenced the edge of the gas holder continued its descent. Tornow had reached through both rails to grasp hold of the weapon. His eyes dilated when he realised that his right arm was stuck, jammed between them.