It had only occurred to him to buy flowers when he was outside the station. He had seen a light on in the concourse and knocked on the windowpane. The girl had kindly interrupted sorting the freshly delivered flowers to make up a bouquet. Now here they stood on the platform, all dressed up with nowhere to go: a man, a dog and a bouquet of flowers.
Rath stretched, standing on tiptoes to get the blood pumping. Reaching for the cigarette case in his inside jacket pocket, he wedged the flowers under his arm and lit an Overstolz. The truth was he shouldn’t be here. He was on standby, which meant he must be contactable at all times. Usually people simply informed headquarters where they could be reached if they didn’t want to spend the whole weekend by the telephone. In this way Rath suspected that Buddha Ernst Gennat, the chief of Homicide, had built up a pretty clear idea of how his officers spent their free time, knowing, as he did, the bars, theatres, cinemas, gymnasiums, race tracks and even the women they frequented. It was why under normal circumstances Rath chose to perform his duties from home, as he had done this morning, before ducking out to Bahnhof Zoo. Still, he would only be gone for half an hour, three-quarters of an hour tops. What could possibly go wrong?
Recently, homicide cases had been few and far between – if, that is, you discounted the activities of Communists and Nazis, who seemed to take increasing pleasure in killing one another, ever since the new regime had lifted the SA ban imposed by the Brüning government. Only yesterday there had been gunfights in Wedding and Moabit. The result: one dead Nazi, eight additional casualties. Such cases were handled by local CID forces, if anyone from Alex attended then it would be the political police. Otherwise, suicide was still king. Someone had blown their brains out in Grunewald, while in Bernauer Strasse, a woman had thrown her five-year-old child out of the window before following herself. The usual madness, then.
Rarely had his work in Homicide felt so futile. Rath had always thought that police were there to maintain law and order, but recently it seemed their only role was to pick up the pieces.
There was a scratch on the tannoy and a military-sounding voice announced that the Northern Express would arrive after a delay of approximately ten minutes. Rath flicked his Overstolz onto the platform and reached for another. One more smoke and she’d be here. He felt more and more nervous the longer he was made to wait. It was just him on the platform, no grinning man, no Greta, no one else who might get in the way; two telephone calls had been enough to see to that. He knew that most of Charly’s friends preferred to give him a wide berth, or perhaps it was the other way around, he couldn’t say for sure. He had never known quite what to make of all these students and lawyers.
Accompanying Charly to the station last autumn, he had felt simply lousy, but now that she was on her way home, he scarcely felt any better. Her single semester in Paris had become two. Though they had exchanged many letters and spoken regularly on the telephone, they had only met once, a few weeks after her departure, and endured a frantic night of lovemaking in a Cologne hotel, before saying their goodbyes. Rath’s plan to spend Christmas with her in Paris had been scotched when he hadn’t been able to get the time off.
A contract killer was on the loose, a sniper who picked off his victims with a single shot to the heart, before vanishing without trace. A flashy Berlin lawyer had been gunned down in front of the opera house in Charlottenburg and, with only the bullet to go on, Czerwinski, the portly detective, had made a quip about the ‘phantom of the opera’. The press had gleefully seized on the name.
The Phantom, as the triggerman was now known in official circles, had gifted police officers a Christmas ban on leave, but Rath had consoled himself with the knowledge that Charly would be returning in mid-February. Perhaps they might even catch the man before New Year’s Eve, in which case he could at least decamp to Paris for the Bells.
Sadly, neither came to pass.
They hadn’t caught the Phantom, neither before New Year’s Eve nor after. The unidentified sniper had continued to strike, and was responsible for at least two further deaths, possibly more, and had become a symbol of failure for the otherwise celebrated Berlin Homicide Division.
As for Charly’s return… At the end of January, two weeks before she was due home, she had sent a telegram to say that Professor Weyer had extended her contract. Rath had pretended to share her joy and extended his congratulations, keeping his true thoughts to himself. Everything seemed to be going swimmingly in Paris. Fräulein Charlotte Ritter was beginning to make a name for herself in the legal world. In Gereon Rath’s world, however, things weren’t quite as smooth, and the photo she had left him appeared so unreal it was as if the person depicted no longer existed…
…but all that was over now. She was coming back, and he had sworn never again to be apart from her for so long, had sworn, finally, to take his life into his own hands.
He threw the stub of his second cigarette on the track bed as the loudspeaker announced the train’s arrival. Rath stood up straight, tugged at his suit and gazed into the lights that were gradually emerging out of the dawn, noiselessly at first, until the Northern Express rumbled into the station, hissing and steaming, and filling the air with a loud, metallic squeal. A series of midnight-blue sleeping cars passed, moving ever more slowly until the train eventually came to a halt with a final sizzle of its valves.
It felt as if time had stood still, until the doors flew open and people flooded out, filling the platform with noise and chatter. Rath craned his neck, searching for Charly’s slim figure, but it was hopeless in the mayhem. He had to take a step back to avoid being knocked down. Suddenly Kirie barked, wagged her tail vigorously and pulled on the lead with all her might. Rath yielded, allowing her to lead him through the crowd.
Charly was on the platform, and he was so bowled over by the sight of her that for a moment he stood rooted to the spot. Kirie howled as the lead tightened, and gazed up at him in confusion. Charly had scarcely changed but, somehow, he almost failed to recognise her.
Her hair was different, in a shorter, new cut, her dark locks tinged with an unfamiliar, red sheen. Her hat must be new, too, as well as her coat and her shoes. Her appearance contradicted his mental image of her to such an extent that he was overcome by a feeling of estrangement. He shot up an arm and waved the bouquet until, at last, she saw him. When she smiled, the dimple on her left cheek made her a little more familiar. The dog kept pulling, and positively dragged Rath towards her.
Kirie jumped up to lick Charly’s face, and Rath was so overjoyed by Charly’s laughter that he stood and watched until long after Kirie had settled back into wagging her tail and barking. For a moment they stared at each other without words.
‘Welcome home,’ he said at last, just to say something, and took her in his arms. He breathed in her scent and, even if her perfume was as foreign as her appearance, underneath he perceived the unmistakable fragrance of her skin, a fragrance that consigned all traces of estrangement to oblivion, reviving countless memories along the way. Not memories, exactly, but something from a deeper place, a place he hadn’t even known was there. So much lay in her scent that he felt as if their months of separation had never occurred.