‘If you wait a moment, I’ll take you there myself. I have to see Gennat anyway.’
He could have skipped the explanation, she thought. It sounded overeager and a little forced. Still, her colleagues didn’t seem to notice anything. She nodded as submissively as one would expect from a female cadet.
Lange and Gräf returned to the files as the pair exited the office. Erika Voss didn’t look up from her typewriter, but Charly was certain she had registered them leaving together.
‘I’m just showing Fräulein Ritter here the way to Dettmann’s office,’ Rath said. ‘Then I’m off to see the super.’ Erika Voss nodded, refusing to be distracted from her work.
With a stoical expression, Rath closed the door behind them. Outside their gazes met for an instant, whereupon Charly noticed something else. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Is that my doing?’
Rath looked around. Fortunately the corridor was empty. A few people stood at the other end by the glass door, too far away to see anything, save, perhaps, for a man and a woman lingering slightly too long outside an office door.
‘You’d better show me the way to Dettmann’s,’ she whispered. ‘Stay here any longer and it’ll look like we’re sharing a tearful goodbye.’
‘We need to think of something, Charly, and fast. Things can’t go on like this.’
‘Maybe you should try thinking a little harder about work.’
‘Shouldn’t be too tricky with Gennat.’ He paused and gestured towards a door. ‘This is Dettmann here. Not necessarily the friendliest, but he spent almost ten years with Narcotics. If anyone can tell you about sources of supply, it’s him.’
‘Right you are,’ she said. ‘Everything OK down there?’
‘Much better,’ he said, kissing her so suddenly that she started. But it was no good, she couldn’t help herself. Afterwards she looked up into his boyish grin and turned around. The officers by the glass door had disappeared, and the corridor was deserted once more.
‘Opportunity makes the thief,’ Gereon said, disappearing in the opposite direction, where Gennat had his office. He was right: they had to think of something.
Detective Inspector Harald Dettmann’s office was only two doors down from Gereon’s. She took a quick glance at her pocket mirror to check her lipstick, before knocking and entering cautiously. Dettmann’s outer office was empty but the connecting door was open, and she went through. A wiry man in his late thirties with thinning hair sat at his desk; a second desk in the room was abandoned. He looked up.
‘Detective Inspector Dettmann, I presume.’ Charly stepped inside, still in high spirits.
‘The very same,’ Dettmann said and stood up. ‘Come on in.’ He sat casually on the edge of the desk. ‘With whom do I have the pleasure?’
‘Charlotte Ritter, CID cadet. My apologies. I thought you were at briefing this morning.’
‘I was busy.’ He looked her up and down. ‘Did I miss anything?’
‘Well, I’m currently working on a homicide case and…’
‘A homicide.’ He lit a cigarette. ‘Didn’t know G Division dealt with that sort of thing.’
‘I’ve been assigned to the Vaterland team, led by Inspector Gereon Rath,’ she said, as businesslike as possible. ‘We urgently need information about a substance called tubocurarine. As well as any illegal sources of supply here in Berlin.’
‘I see.’
‘I was hoping you might be able to help.’
‘Why doesn’t Rath come to me himself?’
‘Inspector Rath entrusted me with the task, so it’s me you’ll have to make do with.’
‘Don’t they teach you cadets to speak to Narcotics in such cases? I’m a homicide detective.’
What should have been a harmless chat between colleagues was already going badly wrong. Still, Charly persevered. She wouldn’t let herself be ground down; she hadn’t grown up in Moabit for nothing. ‘Call it an unofficial request,’ she said with a smile, but Dettmann remained impassive. ‘Before I go to another department… I thought, between colleagues…’
‘I see. Between colleagues… Is this some sort of joke?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Do I look like a bloody typist?’
‘I don’t understand…’
‘You were Gennat’s stenographer, weren’t you? And since you take me for a colleague…’
‘I’m no typist, as you’d have it, but a CID cadet. A candidate for inspector in G Division, currently seconded to A Division! And I won’t stand for this much longer.’
‘You won’t stand for this much longer? Well, I say!’
Dettmann looked her up and down, shamelessly ogling her legs. ‘Listen to me, lady,’ he said quietly, leaning so far forward she could smell his aftershave and bad breath. ‘I don’t know who you’ve been blowing around here, Böhm or Buddha, but I do know one thing: you can’t tell me what to do.’
Charly couldn’t believe her ears. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I don’t know what it is you heard, Charlotte.’
‘Since when did I give you permission to use my first name?’ In fact, Dettmann had been using the informal mode of address throughout.
‘Your permission? I don’t need your permission to do anything. Is that clear? Certainly not in my office. Now, why don’t you go back to your women’s division? Maybe they’ll let you order them about. Beat it, I have things to do.’ He returned behind his desk, not deigning to give her another glance.
She stood open-mouthed, baffled. Her initial impulse was to go over and give the bastard a smack, but common sense told her it was unlikely to be a good career move. Instead she stood gasping for air like a fish out of water.
‘Was there something else, Fräulein Ritter?’ Dettmann smiled so brazenly she was rendered speechless once and for all. ‘I thought we were finished here.’
He had reverted to the formal mode of address. Seeing him grin like that, Charly knew, at that moment, that Harald Dettmann would point-blank deny uttering the shameless insults he had just said to her face. And who would believe a female cadet against a veteran detective inspector? Besides, according to the pin on his lapel, Dettmann was a member of the Schrader Verband, the Association of Prussian Police Officers; he’d have to be caught stealing silver spoons from the commissioner’s office to be knocked from his perch.
Charly didn’t want the grinning Dettmann to enjoy her frustration. She turned on her heel, accidentally slamming the door as she returned through the outer office without knowing where she was headed.
The incident seemed more and more unreal the longer she thought about it. As if it had been a dream, although her anger told her in no uncertain terms that it had really happened. Worse than that was her sense of shame. Somehow it felt as if she were the one who ought to be ashamed at Dettmann’s impertinence. Yes, she actually felt ashamed, and when she realised this, she only grew angrier.
Finally, without realising how she had got there, she found herself in the female toilets, built to accommodate the numerous secretaries and stenographers who worked in A Division. Fortunately, there was no one else here; the large washroom was empty, and would only fill up when the women came to fix their lipstick during lunch hour. She locked herself in one of the stalls, sat on the toilet seat and gave way to tears of rage. She couldn’t help it. She kicked against the cubicle door, but it brought nothing but a loud bang and a painful foot.
Dettmann, the fucking arsehole!
The thing that annoyed her most was that he’d managed to hurt her quite so much, just when she’d begun to think of herself as a fully fledged member of the Berlin Police. Now she had been fetched back to earth. The simple fact was that, as a woman in CID, she was nobody. Any inspector with a career-enhancing union membership and a dirty mind could say what the hell he liked, to her face, without fear of the consequences.