She swallowed her tears and ran.
‘Stop that boy! He’s one of them!’
Alex didn’t turn around. She knew she was being chased. She had to steer clear of pedestrians, screaming at an elegant lady to move aside and forcing her into the window grilles, before running towards the throng of people surging down Tauentzienstrasse. Find cover there and disappear. A whistle sounded behind her, and someone shouted.
‘Stop! Police!’
She kept running, straight across the pavement onto Tauentzienstrasse past tooting cars. A taxi screeched to a halt, but Alex paid no heed. After what had happened to Benny, she feared for her life. She threw herself sideways in front of a tram, whose driver sounded the warning bell, crossed the central reservation, and followed the electric train as it juddered eastwards. Her gaze fell on the warning sign, which strictly forbade passengers from jumping aboard while the train was in motion. She leapt onto the moving platform and squeezed herself into the car. The windows on the other side were more or less obscured by her fellow passengers, but not quite completely. There they were, her two pursuers, waiting for the tram to go past as it took the bend on the Wittenbergplatz approach.
Alex jostled her way inside and looked at the sign: the number six, going towards Schöneberg. Not ideal, but if she got out again at Wittenbergplatz there was a good chance they’d spot her. The tram stopped, with more people getting off than on, and her cover grew thinner. She kept glancing out of the window, but could no longer see any blue uniforms. The last passenger to board was a fat man, whom she moved towards straightaway, taking cover behind him, keeping the doors in view.
A bell sounded and the train moved off. As it picked up speed, metre by metre, Alex felt her tension dissolve. She had shaken them off!
Suddenly she felt the cut on her hand throbbing again. The blood had already seeped through the temporary bandage Benny had tied an hour or so ago, and grief came over her like a wild animal. Tears streamed down her face and soon she was crying uncontrollably for the first time in years.
Only when she wiped the tears on her sleeve did she realise that everyone in the car was staring at her. ‘What are you looking at?’ she shouted, and the people, who had been gazing at her in sympathy, returned to whatever it was they were doing before.
2
That’s what you got for being punctuaclass="underline" a wait. Rath’s gaze flitted between his fingernails and the pictures on the wall. He spotted a grease stain on his jacket. He had been wearing the grey suit for too long. If he had known he was being summoned he’d have chosen the brown one, since it had been freshly laundered. At least his fingernails were clean.
Renate Greulich hammered at her typewriter as if she were the only person in the room.
‘Dr Weiss is still in a meeting. Please take a seat,’ was all she had said. So Rath had taken a seat, feeling as if he were in a doctor’s waiting room about to receive bad news. He didn’t know what exactly, only that it was sure to be bad.
When the bosses sent for him, it was usually trouble, although Rath couldn’t remember a single occasion in the last few weeks when he had flouted the rules. He had only been back on duty for a week, after a fortnight’s summer holiday. A few days in Cologne, then a week on the Baltic Sea with Charly. He – they – could have saved themselves the bother.
The telephone rang and Renate Greulich picked up. ‘Yes, Herr Doktor,’ she said, reaching for the file on her desk. She disappeared with it behind the padded door.
Rath gazed after the secretary and picked up a newspaper from the makeshift table. He leafed indifferently through the day’s political issues, reparations disputes, austerity measures, until alighting on a headline in the regional section.
Late-night police chase in KaDeWe. Young intruder plunges to his death.
This was the case Gennat had mentioned at briefing: two jewel thieves caught red-handed in KaDeWe at the weekend, one of whom had launched an unsuccessful bid for freedom via the façade. The young lad, no more than sixteen or seventeen, was still to be identified. His accomplice had escaped with a portion of the spoils.
The way the article read, you’d think the police had hounded the boy to his death. That the pair had shut themselves in a department store to empty the jewellery displays didn’t seem to concern the paper.
The door opened once more, only it wasn’t Greulich who emerged, but a police officer, picture perfect in his freshly ironed and spotlessly clean blue uniform, shako wedged under his arm. The man knew how to appear before a deputy commissioner. Rath laid the newspaper over the grease stain on his suit as the officer nodded his head in greeting.
‘What’s the atmosphere like in there?’ Rath asked.
‘OK.’ The officer gestured towards the paper. ‘Have you seen the news?’
‘Just looking now.’
‘Then you can picture Dr Weiss’s mood.’ The officer appeared at a loss. ‘I was in charge of the KaDeWe operation the night before last.’
‘Nasty,’ Rath said.
‘A nightmare.’
‘Don’t take it to heart. Things like that happen every day.’
‘Thanks, but I still need to go to Homicide.’ The officer put on his shako. ‘Why have you been summoned?’
‘If only I knew.’
The officer tipped the peak of his shako by way of goodbye and disappeared into the corridor. Moments later, Renate Greulich reappeared and bade Rath enter. The deputy commissioner sat behind his desk, noting something down. His expression gave nothing away.
‘Please take a seat,’ he said, without looking up.
Rath sat and looked out of the window while Weiss calmly finished his notes. The crane in front of Alexanderhaus gleamed in the sunlight, leaving a cluster of reinforcing bars hanging weightless in the sky. Weiss snapped his notebook shut and gazed at Rath through thick lenses, like a senior teacher surveying an exam candidate.
‘Inspector, am I right in thinking you have a brother in the United States?’
Rath had reckoned with all sorts of possibilities, but not this. ‘Pardon me, Sir?’
‘If my information is correct, your brother Severin Rath lives in America…’
‘That’s true, but…’
‘…and you visited him there once…’
How had Weiss come by this information? No one knew about that trip, not even Rath’s father, Engelbert, the police director, and he wasn’t a man you kept secrets from. In the spring of 1923 Gereon had spent three months in the USA looking for his brother; his parents had thought he was on an exchange semester in Prague, thanks to the letters his friend Paul had posted from there. ‘You’re well informed,’ Rath said.
‘It’s what I’m paid to be,’ Weiss replied, without a trace of irony. ‘You’ve heard of the Bureau of Investigation?’
‘The American Federal Police…’
Weiss nodded almost imperceptibly and opened a thin file. ‘I have a job for you, Inspector. A special assignment in which knowledge of American customs could be a distinct advantage. How’s your English?’
Rath shrugged. ‘OK, I think. The Yanks understood me anyway, and I understood them.’ What the hell was Weiss driving at?
The deputy commissioner pushed the file across the table. ‘This came through the ticker a few days ago,’ he said.
Rath skimmed the first page. Abraham Goldstein, place of birth: Brooklyn, NY. A profile. Weiss continued: ‘Our American colleagues have warned us about this man. The Bureau believes he is a member of a New York gangster syndicate.’