‘Shame. I prefer my women to come.’ His grin left her in no doubt that he was being deliberately suggestive.
Damn it, she thought, why did you have to go traipsing around here all by yourself?
‘I’m looking for someone,’ she said. ‘A girl. About five foot seven, dark-blonde, slim, bandage on her…’
‘What the hell is this, are you a dyke?’ The boy planted himself in front of her. ‘Or is it your daughter who’s run away? Give me a better description. Maybe I’ve fucked her.’
Charly wanted to punch his ugly face. You don’t scare me, she thought, you’re still just a kid, a cheeky brat with no manners. ‘Looks like someone forgot to bring you up properly.’
‘You can always start now. Shall I show you where I’d like to be brought up?’
This potty-mouthed chatter was too much. Charly tried to push her way past, but the boy took her by the arm and flung her backwards. She stumbled but managed to grab hold of the rail before landing on the steel edge of the concrete steps, earning herself a few bruises.
She was wrong. This was no child she was dealing with, and no one knew she was here, not even Weber. She picked herself up and was about to say something when she heard a voice, sharp as a knife. ‘Leave the woman alone, Kralle!’
She looked around at a girl in a thin coat, her black hair covered by a beret. Although her snub nose and massive brown eyes made her look sweet, Kralle seemed to respect her – or maybe it was the large knife in her hand.
‘If it isn’t little Vicky,’ he said. ‘What’s this, have you founded a new club? Women helping women?’
‘I don’t want the cops breathing down our neck because you can’t keep it in your pants. So apologise and let her go.’ She pointed towards the exit with the tip of the blade.
‘Naughty little Vicky has a knife. I’m so scared.’
‘I would be too in your shoes, arsehole, or have you forgotten what girls with knives can do? I’m just as handy as Alex.’
‘Alex, the stupid dyke.’
Vicky had touched a nerve.
‘Alex,’ Charly asked, ‘is a girl?’
She could see Vicky thinking quickly. She had said more than she intended.
‘Is she the one you’re looking for?’ Kralle said, almost politely now. ‘Alexandra Reinhold? The description fits. Well, I’m afraid our Alex isn’t home at the moment, otherwise I’d be only too glad to introduce the little tramp…’ Stupid as he looked, he had an instinct for hurting people.
‘Kralle, shut up!’
‘The fuck I will! Who brought you up? When grown-ups ask you something, you answer.’
Charly tried to allay Vicky’s fears. ‘You needn’t be afraid,’ she said. ‘I want to help your friend.’
‘If you’re from Welfare, you can piss off,’ Vicky hissed. ‘We know your kind of help!’
‘Maybe the cops sent her on ahead,’ Kralle said. ‘Is Alex involved in this KaDeWe business? I thought she and her little Jewish friend had something to do with it.’
The girl with the knife suddenly lost her temper. ‘Do you have any idea what you’re saying,’ she shouted. ‘Do you have any idea what happened, you stupid, fat bastard? Now piss off before I cut you a second arsehole!’
Kralle hunched his shoulders and left.
‘You’d better go too,’ Vicky said to Charly, ‘and forget what that idiot just said.’
‘I want to help Alexandra. Do you know where I can find her? She’s injured her hand and I think…’
‘Didn’t you hear me? Piss off!’
The knife in Vicky’s hand shook, and she looked as if she could lose control at any moment. Charly decided not to take that chance. The knife looked sharp.
‘OK,’ she said, ‘but if you change your mind, call me. Like I said, I want to help. I know that Alexandra is afraid of something; perhaps she should talk to me about it. I’m not from the police or Welfare.’ From her handbag she produced the notebook she had carried since her time in Homicide, wrote down her Moabit number and tore out the page. She placed the paper on the stairs and picked her way across the shards of glass, back into the open air.
Her heart was pounding as she emerged onto the street. Walking quickly towards Landsberger Allee, she opened her handbag and counted her change as she went. At the Ringbahn station she made straight for the nearest telephone booth.
25
Dressed in a dark suit with a bouquet of flowers in his hand, Goldstein stood outside the door, stared at the brass number, and withdrew the hand that was about to knock. Seized by a sudden nervousness, he paced back and forth like a tiger in a cage. No one paid him any attention; only a child being dragged through the ward in his parents’ wake looked at him for any length of time. He decided to go in, despite his reservations, just as the door unexpectedly opened. A man wearing a black hat came out, looked at him and his bouquet with a serious expression and walked past.
Beard and sidelocks made him seem older than he was, possibly about thirty, more likely mid-twenties. The brief moment the door was open had been enough for Goldstein to see the numerous visitors inside the room. It looked as if the entire family was gathered round the sickbed, including a second man in a black caftan. Everyone else was dressed in normal clothes.
He took a deep breath when the door closed again and the young man had disappeared inside the stairwell at the end of the corridor.
Arriving during visiting hours had been a bad idea. He couldn’t go in, not with all those people there, and suddenly felt out of place with his bouquet of flowers.
Yet, until that point everything had gone so smoothly. No one had asked any questions, and the porter had provided the room number without hesitation. Dressed in his plain, dark, single-breasted suit and carrying his bouquet of flowers, Abraham Goldstein looked like an ordinary visitor, blending in with the many others moving about with flowers during visiting hours.
Everything had seemed so easy, except that it wasn’t.
Goldstein paced up and down outside the door, unsure what to do. No one in there would recognise him, but he wondered whether he shouldn’t wait until the family had gone. With that, he made up his mind. Pressing the flowers into the hands of a puzzled nurse, he exited the ward the same way he had come.
26
At the public entrance, Charly had said, but she wasn’t there when Rath turned the corner past Alexanderhaus. The entrance to police headquarters on Grunerstrasse, right by the arches of the suburban railway, might have been the only one with an eye-catching perron, but that didn’t stop the rest of the colossal brick structure from inspiring awe. Purpose-built and bigger, even, than the City Palace, Berliners referred to it as Red Castle. Most police officers, however, simply called their workplace Castle; others, somewhat less awe-struck, dubbed it Factory.
He was to wait on the steps outside, rather than at the porter’s lodge or in his office. She hadn’t said why, but he sensed she would have no great desire to run into her former colleagues. Well, there was little chance of that happening here. Although a great many people used the public entrance, those who worked at police headquarters tended to avoid it. She hadn’t said a great deal on the telephone, only that they should meet at Alex and that she needed his help.
Kirie was sniffing at every corner and gazing at strange dogs as they passed. Already Rath had been forced to ward off the attentions of a pushy male pug during their lunchtime stroll, but that was as exciting as it got. His shift in the Excelsior had passed without event. Evidently Goldstein had given up trying to escape his minders and disappeared into his suite. He hadn’t shown himself since, even choosing to have his lunch brought to the room.