The presence of Erika Voss made it impossible to clarify matters at the Castle, but he hoped it was some comfort for Charly to know that his own inquiries had also stalled. Herbert Lamkau hadn’t received the first death notice from the Zollern Colliery, either from management or the works council, and Rath had failed to get hold of the investigating officer in the Wawerka case, reaching only his secretary. Lange, too, had returned from Tempelhof empty-handed. The widow Lamkau had known nothing about the death notices, and been equally flummoxed by the names Wawerka and August Simoneit.
Charly would just have to get used to the fact that most of what they did in CID was a waste of time.
At long last he had sent his team home, only to intercept Charly outside the train station and invite her to Aschinger. Somehow it felt more like he had ensnared her, as if, without his intervention, she’d have simply gone back to Spenerstrasse; as if, after a single day, she had completely forgotten about their engagement. On the way to Aschinger she had only wanted to discuss work.
Now they sat at the window, Kirie curled up under their table, gazing out at the ruins of the Königstadt Theatre, and the last, forlorn-looking, pieces of wall. A solitary washbasin stood roughly ten metres above the relieving arch. He was considering his opening gambit when Charly broke the silence. ‘The question is why?’ she said, and it wasn’t clear if she were speaking to him, or to herself.
‘Pardon me?’
‘Why make such heavy weather of it?’ She turned from the window. ‘There must be some reason to first paralyse, then drown your victims. Or, at least, let them think they’ll drown.’
Rath didn’t want to talk about work.
‘Perhaps he’s trying to tell us something. Like with these death notices. It’s a message.’
‘A message for whom? The police?’ Rath was shorter than he intended, but she didn’t seem to notice.
‘Then we’d have got them too. No.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s a message for the victim, saying their time is up.’
Why was she pretending everything was fine? He couldn’t take it any longer. ‘What happened today?’ he asked.
She looked surprised for a moment. ‘What do you mean, “what happened?”’ Her smile was so artificial it could have been glued on.
‘You don’t stop by the office after visiting Dettmann, you spend an age with Narcotics, and who knows what you’re up to during lunch. And then, wham, you’re back at your desk making a face like your goldfish has just died. It isn’t normal.’
‘Do you mind telling me what passes for normal at police headquarters? You, of all people?’
‘I just want to know what happened. I was worried. You should have come back when you realised Dettmann couldn’t help. I’d have been better off talking to Narcotics. Did they mock you, or make some stupid remark? Don’t take it personally, they do the same with all new recruits.’
She was about to say something but stopped suddenly. When he saw her face, Rath started. There was something in her gaze that shook him to the core. Something numb, something dead. Her otherwise warm, brown eyes looked frozen. He knew his Charly. She only looked like that when she was losing her temper, or trying desperately to conceal her feelings, but there was no outburst, nothing. She stared at the table as if trying to pull herself together.
‘Sorry,’ he said, as gently as he could. ‘I didn’t mean to sound harsh, I’m just worried. What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, but her voice told a different story.
‘Charly! Has something happened? Is it about how I was today?’ She shook her head. ‘All that bossing you around was just a front. You know that, don’t you?’ She nodded, still incapable of getting the words out. ‘Tell me what’s wrong. You’re really scaring me here.’
She shook her head as if trying to jerk her face awake.
He took her by the hand, as if asking her to dance, only there was no dance floor or music. Even so, she stood up and he took her in his arms. ‘What’s the matter, girl?’ he whispered in her ear. A silent sob heaved through her body. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, stroking her head, and, when she wouldn’t stop: ‘It’s OK, it’s OK,’ repeating it over and over like an incantation.
Finally the shaking stopped and she prised herself loose. She looked at him through mascara-smudged eyes before lowering her gaze and disappearing inside the ladies’ toilet. When she returned to the table, tears dried and face newly made-up, she managed to tell him what had happened.
18
Hackhackhackhackhack.
Movements so quick they were almost impossible to follow, and with that the latest onion was chopped into tiny pieces.
‘There, d’you see? Hold it like this, and Bob’s your uncle. Keep the knife pointing down, bish bash bosh, and mind your fingers when you flip it back.’
The red-headed boy couldn’t have been more than eighteen, but he chopped with such speed and precision he could have been in the circus. Charly had rarely felt so clumsy. She tried to hold the knife and onion the way he had shown her, and soon realised she was making progress, even if she was still a long way off his greased-lightning pace.
‘There you are.’ He had been assigned to her by the head chef, Unger. ‘By the time you get through this lot, it’ll feel like you’ve been doing it your whole life.’
This lot must have been a good fifty kilograms of onions, an absolute mountain at any rate. Charly had never seen so many in her life. The boy gave a wink of encouragement and left her to it.
She set about her task with a plucky grin. The tears started immediately, but she was loath to follow his advice – ‘just keep your peepers closed’ – for fear she’d be heading home bereft of her fingers. Besides, her eyes only burned more when she closed them. She decided to let the tears flow, and tried to work out what she was doing through the watery haze.
The interview with Unger was the highlight of her day so far, although he had spent the entire time ogling her legs. He had dictated a small sample text but had failed, so far, to actually use her shorthand skills.
‘You can start immediately,’ he had said, giving her a vexed look when she reached for her pad. ‘No, no. It’s kitchen work for the moment. I’ll get someone to train you up.’
She had put her pad away and asked to make a telephone call, meeting Unger’s furrowed brow with a friendly smile. ‘My mother. She’ll worry if I’m not home for lunch.’
Unger pushed the telephone across the desk. ‘It’ll cost you twenty pfennigs. To be deducted from your wage.’ He left to fetch the apprentice.
She had been looking forward to a few words in private with Gereon, but got Erika Voss instead. The inspector was elsewhere. Moments later Unger returned with the redhead in tow.
Thinking back to last night: it had helped to finally tell someone, even if recounting the incident made her feel small and dirty again. Despite having nothing to reproach herself for, it had felt like a confession. As if Gereon had actually absolved her of sin. At once she felt her anger return, that same, helpless rage. For a moment he’d said nothing, just sat there looking at her, incensed.
‘Why didn’t you defend yourself? Give that arsehole a piece of your mind?’
‘Gereon, it sounds as if you’re blaming me. Haven’t you ever been rendered speechless by someone’s sheer audacity?’
‘Sorry. You know I have.’
She had watched his eyes fill with anger and made him promise not to mention anything at the Castle, neither to Gennat nor anyone else.
In spite of everything, it had turned into an enjoyable evening. Somehow she had managed to laugh again, properly laugh through her dried tears. They had made themselves comfortable in Carmerstrasse, in the huge apartment she still wasn’t convinced Gereon could actually afford, at least not with his salary payments alone. Perhaps his Uncle Joseph had left him something. The family had money, she had seen as much during her visit to Cologne the previous year.