By now it was too late to weigh up the pros and cons. Kirie dragged Charly towards the car, just as Tornow was opening the passenger door. Rath hurriedly got out, and went round to the other side to receive Kirie’s rapturous greeting. Charly smiled at him, she liked how he was with the dog. Tornow looked on.
‘Hello, you two,’ Rath said. ‘Now, that’s what I call a greeting. I’ve brought a colleague along. Allow me to introduce Sebastian Tornow. I’ve told you about him before.’ Tornow stretched out his hand and smiled his winsome smile. ‘And this,’ Rath continued, ‘is Charlotte Ritter, prospective lawyer.’
He broke off when he saw Charly’s frozen smile. It was as if it had appeared by accident in place of an altogether different expression, which Charly, somehow, was unable to find.
‘A pleasure,’ Tornow said, stopping short now himself. Charly didn’t say anything more. ‘I must push on,’ said Tornow, letting go of her hand.
With a tip of his hat, he took his leave, but not before looking back discreetly. Rath couldn’t blame him.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ he asked.
She looked at him, apparently bewildered. ‘Who was that?’
‘I told you that already. My new colleague, perhaps even a new friend. A nice guy, anyway. Sebastian Tornow.’
‘I think I’ve seen him before.’
‘He’s only been at the Castle for a week.’
‘Not at the station.’ She gazed through him, the only person on earth who could look at him like that. ‘Gereon,’ she said. ‘There’s something I have to confess.’
They had hoped to take a drive out to the countryside while daylight still permitted, but contented themselves with a walk over Cornelius Bridge to the nearby Tiergarten. The dog needed exercise, and Rath wanted to hear Charly’s story. He could scarcely believe what she had to say. As they strolled northwards, she explained how she had spent the past week. Since Monday she had been working undercover for Gennat as part of an unofficial operation. She had been detailed to track down Alex and perform surveillance on a cop suspected of murder. This same cop had now been murdered himself. Rath knew Böhm was handling the case from Thursday’s briefing.
‘And you witnessed this murder?’ he asked.
‘Not directly. I followed him, and… it’s best I just show you. We’re almost there.’
Soon afterwards, they reached a church, behind which began one of the better residential areas in the city: nice houses, all with small front gardens, clean and well kept. In the Hansaviertel there was no sign of crumbling stucco on the house fronts.
Charly pointed towards an advertising pillar. ‘That’s where I hid. Coming down Lessingstrasse I naturally kept my distance. When I turned the corner, he was standing by a streetlamp, completely motionless.’ She gestured towards a gas lamp six or seven metres away. ‘I didn’t know what was happening, and just tried to make sure he didn’t see me.’ She swallowed. ‘It wasn’t until I went over to him, that I saw the knife in his chest. Or rather, a trench dagger from the war.’
‘What the hell was Buddha thinking getting you involved?’
‘I think he has a guilty conscience. He probably wasn’t expecting things to develop the way they have.’
‘You were forbidden from telling me?’
‘Gennat and Lange didn’t mention you explicitly,’ she said, smiling for the first time since Hardenbergstrasse. ‘They said I wasn’t to tell anybody.’
‘So, why now?’
Charly took his hand and pulled him and Kirie past the advertising pillar. At the fourth or fifth house she halted. ‘It was here,’ she said. ‘This is where I ran into a cop. Just before I found Kuschke mortally wounded. He was coming towards me, approaching from Händelstrasse, from around the corner.’
‘So?’
‘This cop ransacked Kuschke’s flat on the same day. His victim’s flat.’
‘A uniform cop killing one of his own? My God, what a horror-story.’
‘Until now we thought Kuschke’s killer only used the uniform as camouflage, and to gain access to his flat. You know how most landladies go rigid at the sight of a uniform.’
Rath nodded.
‘Gereon,’ she said. ‘The man I saw here three days ago was Sebastian Tornow.’
100
Now everything was quiet, Alex could venture out of her hiding place. She’d never have thought she’d shut herself in a department store again. The business in KaDeWe and Benny’s death were only two weeks ago. Now it was Wertheim, of all places, but she didn’t have any choice. She urgently needed funds to get out of this city. Cash, that she knew was lying dormant in this vast, confusing mass of buildings. It was spread across the whole store, on every floor, in every department. The tills would contain only change by the evening, as the day’s takings were stored in Wertheim’s private cellar vault. Cracking it was impossible. No safebreaker had ever tried, not even the Brothers Sass, though she reckoned the Wertheim vault contained more cash than most banks in Berlin.
Getting to the money in the registers was easier, however, especially if you knew where the keys were kept. The cashiers picked them up every morning before the start of their shift, and she knew exactly where.
Jewellery and watches were a no-go. Kalli was dead, and with any other fence she ran the risk of being handed over to the police. So, cash it was, and change above all. It would be a real grind, but it would be worth it. In every till was thirty marks’ worth of change, and there were many tills in Wertheim, often several to a department. Alex didn’t know how many exactly but it was at least a hundred. This was Europe’s largest department store, after all. A hundred times thirty. It would mean a lot of shrapnel, and a lot of weight, which was why she had brought Vicky along. They would have to negotiate their escape together, above all if they didn’t want to leave the spoils behind.
She had no reservations about stealing from her former employer. This would be her last hurrah before leaving Berlin for good.
They had borrowed a hundred and twenty marks, having found the cash in an earthenware pan that still smelled of herring. So far they had only spent around eighty, on a few new items of clothing for herself and Vicky, hair dye and, of course, the digs they were staying in. They had rented the room to continue their campaign of revenge. She had hatched a new plan when she saw the article. She wasn’t certain, since it was very vague, but Vicky’s call to the station at Wittenbergplatz had settled the matter. At first they had said that Kuschke was on leave, but when she dug a little deeper, saying it was a private matter she needed to discuss with him at his home, the cop on the telephone explained. He was very sorry, he said, to be the one to have to tell her, he didn’t know how close she was to Sergeant Major Kuschke, but unfortunately the man had died in tragic circumstances.
Someone had killed the sadistic arsehole!
At first, she wasn’t sure if she should be happy or not. It felt as if someone had stolen her chance of revenge. She wouldn’t have gone so far as to kill him, just to put the fear of death in him, but now the fucking pig was dead and she didn’t know if the punishment was fitting or not. It wouldn’t bring Benny back to life, but, then, her own revenge wouldn’t have done that either.
Standing in her dark outfit in the dim light of the store’s vast atrium, Vicky looked almost exactly like Benny two weeks before. The night watchmen had finished their rounds. It was time. They wouldn’t need more than an hour if they stuck to Alex’s route, beginning downstairs in haberdashery.
101
They were the last customers in the Nasse Dreieck but Schorsch, the taciturn landlord, didn’t complain. He simply placed beer after beer in front of them with the patience of a saint, every so often adding a short for good measure. A landlord who knew his patrons didn’t have to talk much, or take orders.