They walked back to the apartment building through a steady rain. The detective pressed a button on the intercom panel. Gabriel took note of the corresponding name. Lillian Ratzinger -- caretaker. A moment later, a small, fierce-looking woman with hunted brown eyes peered at them around the edge of the door. She recognized Weiss and opened the door to them.
"Good afternoon, Frau Ratzinger," the detective said. "This is Benjamin's brother, Ehud Landau. He's here to put Benjamin's affairs in order."
The old woman glanced at Gabriel and nodded. Then she turned away, as if the sight of him made her uneasy.
An acidic odor greeted Gabriel in the lobby. It reminded him of the solvents he used to strip dirty varnish from a canvas. He peered around a corner and saw the cosmetic. A fat woman in the midst of a pedicure looked up at him over a glossy German fashion magazine. Gabriel turned away. Benjamin the eternal student, he thought. Benjamin would be comfortable in a place like this.
On the wall adjacent to the door was a row of metal postboxes. The one corresponding to Benjamin's flat still bore his name. Through the tiny window, Gabriel could see it was empty.
The old woman led them up the dimly lit staircase, a ring of
passkeys tinkling in her hand. She paused outside Benjamin's apartment. Tattered remnants of crime-scene tape hung from the door-jamb, and a mound of dead roses lay on the floor. Taped to the wall was a sign, scrawled in a desperate hand: liebe ist starker als hab--Love is stronger than hate. Something about the idealistic naivety of the slogan angered Gabriel. Then he remembered it was the same thing Leah had said to him before he left for Europe to kill Palestinians for Shamron.
"Love is stronger than hate, Gabriel. Whatever you do, don't hate them. If you hate them, you'll become just life Shamron."
The old woman unlocked the door and left without looking at Gabriel. He wondered about the source of her anxiety. Perhaps it was her age. Perhaps she was of a generation still uncomfortable in the presence of Jews.
Weiss led Gabriel into the front room overlooking the Adalbertstrasse. The afternoon shadows were heavy. The detective illuminated the room by turning on the lamp on Benjamin's desk. Gabriel glanced down, then quickly took a step back. The floor was coated with Benjamin's blood. He looked up at the wall and saw the graffiti for the first time. Detective Weiss pointed to the first symbol, a diamond resting on a pedestal that resembled an inverted V.
"This one is known as the Odin Rune," Weiss said. "It's an ancient Norse symbol that expresses faith in the pagan religion called Odinism."
"And the second one?" Gabriel asked, though he knew the answer already.
Weiss looked at it a moment before responding. Three numeral sevens, linked at their bases, surrounded by a sea of red.
"It's called the Three Sevens or the Three-Bladed Swastika,"
the German said. "It symbolizes supremacy over the devil as represented by the numbers 666."
Gabriel took a step forward and tilted his head to one side, as though he were inspecting a canvas in need of restoration. To his well-trained eye it seemed the artist was an imitator rather than a believer. Something else struck him. The symbols of hatred were probably sprayed onto the wall in the moments after Benjamin's murder, yet the lines were straight and perfectly executed, revealing no signs of stress or anxiety. A man used to killing, thought Gabriel. A man comfortable around the dead.
He walked over to the desk. "Was Benjamin's computer taken as evidence?"
Weiss shook his head. "Stolen."
Gabriel looked down at the safe, which was open and empty.
"Stolen as well," the detective said, anticipating the next question.
Gabriel removed a small notebook and pen from his jacket pocket. The policeman sat heavily on the couch, as if he had been walking a beat all day.
"I have to remain in the flat with you while you conduct your inventory. I'm sorry, but those are the rules." He loosened his tie. "Take as much time as you need, Herr Landau. And whatever you do, don't try to take anything, eh? Those are the rules too."
Gabriel could do only so much in the presence of the detective. He started in the bedroom. The bed was unmade, and on the cracked leather armchair was a stack of freshly laundered clothing, still bound in brown paper and string. On the bedside table was a black mask and a pair of foam-rubber earplugs. Benjamin, Gabriel remembered, was a notoriously light sleeper. The curtains were heavy and dark, the kind usually kept by someone who works at night and sleeps during the day. When Gabriel drew them, the air was suddenly filled with dust.
He spent the next thirty minutes carefully going through the contents of the closet, the dresser, and the bedside table. He made copious notes in his leather-bound notebook, just in case Detective Weiss wanted to have a look at his inventory. In truth, he saw nothing out of the ordinary.
He entered the second bedroom. The walls were lined with bookshelves and filing cabinets. Obviously, Benjamin had turned it into a storage room. It looked as though a bomb had exploded nearby. The floor was strewn with books, and the file drawers were flung open. Gabriel wondered who was responsible, the Munich police or Benjamin's killer.
His search lasted nearly an hour. He flipped through the contents of every file and the pages of every book. Weiss appeared once in the doorway to check on his progress, then yawned and wandered back to the sitting room. Again, Gabriel made abundant notes for the benefit of the detective but found nothing linking Benjamin to the Office--and nothing that might explain why he was murdered.
He walked back to the sitting room. Weiss was watching the evening news on Benjamin's television. He switched it off as Gabriel entered. "Finished?"
"Did Benjamin have a storage room in the building?"
The detective nodded. "German law requires landlords to provide tenants with one."
Gabriel held out his hand. "May I have the key?"
It was Frau Ratzinger who took Gabriel down to the basement and led him along a corridor lined with narrow doorways. She paused at the one marked 2B, which corresponded to Benjamin's flat. The old woman opened the door with a grunt and pulled down on the drawstring connected to the overhead light. A moth scattered, brushing Gabriel's cheek. The woman nodded and receded silently down the hallway.
Gabriel peered into the storage room. It was little more than a closet, some four feet wide and six feet deep, and it reeked of linseed oil and damp. A rusted bicycle frame with one wheel, a pair of ancient skis, unlabeled cardboard boxes stacked to a water-stained ceiling.
He removed the broken bicycle and the skis, and began searching through the boxes of Benjamin's things. In several he found bound stacks of yellowing papers and old spiral notebooks, the flotsam of a lifetime spent in the lecture halls and libraries of academia. There were boxes of dusty old books--the ones, Gabriel supposed, he deemed too unimportant to place on the shelves in his flat. Several more held copies of Conspiracy at Wannsee: A Reappraisal, Benjamin's last book.
The final box contained the purely personal. Gabriel felt like a trespasser. He wondered how he would feel if the roles were reversed, if Shamron had sent someone from the Office to rummage through his things. And what would they find? Only what Gabriel wanted them to see. Solvents and pigment, his brushes and his palette, a fine collection of monographs. A Beretta by his bedside. He drew a long breath and proceeded. Inside a cigar box he
found a pile of tarnished medals and tattered ribbons and remembered that Benjamin had been something of a star runner at school. In an envelope were family photographs. Benjamin, like Gabriel, was an only child. His parents had survived the horrors of Riga only to be killed in a car accident on the road to Haifa. Next he found a stack of letters. The stationery was the color of honey and still smelled of lilac. Gabriel read a few lines and quickly put the letters aside. Vera . . . Benjamin's only love. How many nights had he lain awake in some wretched safe flat, listening to Benjamin complain about how the beguiling Vera had ruined him for all other women? Gabriel was quite certain he hated her more than Benjamin had.