‘Some relative, a friend, no idea. I’ll know soon enough.’
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘I need to take care of something here, then I’ll be on my way.’
‘Aren’t you at the train station already?’
‘I have a ticket for the overnighter tomorrow evening. I’ll be at Bahnhof Zoo the day after tomorrow, just after six. It’d mean a lot if you…’
‘The day after tomorrow? What…?’
The line beeped and the connection was interrupted. She rattled the cradle impatiently. Nothing doing.
‘Operator? Why was this call ended?’
‘Sorry,’ came the reply. ‘The caller ran out of money.’
Charly hung up. How was she supposed to get hold of him now? She hesitated before reaching again for the telephone and asking for the Salzburger Hof. ‘Ritter here, good evening. I’m sorry to disturb you again. I heard that Inspector Rath, your guest from Berlin, is back in Treuburg, and wondered if you could pass on a messa…’
‘I’m sorry, Fräulein Ritter,’ the hotelier interrupted. ‘Bad timing. The inspector checked out at lunchtime today.’
‘Oh… I see.’
‘I do apologise.’
She hung up and stared at the black Bakelite. What in the hell was Gereon up to? The telephone gave nothing away, and at length she took her coat and switched off the light.
As she closed the office door a voice behind her asked, ‘All alone?’
It was Harald Dettmann. ‘We meet again,’ he said, grinning his nasty grin. ‘Working late?’
‘Leave me alone, Dettmann!’ She tried to evade him, but he moved with her, and her evasion became a kind of retreat. He pressed her back into the corridor, towards the glass wall and into the corner. ‘Let me go! What is this?’
‘I’d never have thought you were such a snitch.’
‘What do you want?’
Dettmann shook his head. ‘You just had to go to your fancy pants hero, didn’t you, give him a good suck, then bawl your eyes out on his shoulder.’
‘Cut it out! Let me go!’
Dettmann pressed his arms against the wall, trapping her so that she couldn’t move left or right. She smelled the sweat of his armpits, his aftershave, and turned her face away. ‘Listen to me, lady, then I’ll let you go. There’s no one here you can go crying to. They’ve sent your Gereon packing, and everyone else has finished for the night.’
‘I’ll be reporting this to Superintendent Gennat!’
‘What have I ever done to you except voice my opinion? Believe me, there are plenty who think women have no place in Homicide.’ He looked down at her with a mix of disdain, hatred and disgust.
Charly felt impotent, and helpless. She had no desire to sit on the toilet crying her eyes out again. She thought of Gereon, how he had fought her corner. OK, so he had played a little dirty, but at least he had done something.
You have to do something too, she thought, you can’t spend your whole life running from men like this.
Dettmann pushed himself off the wall and stood, wide-legged, observing his victim with a certain satisfaction as he lit a cigarette.
It really was no more than a stupid power game. He had wanted to intimidate her, but was too cowardly to actually do anything. All he was interested in was humiliation.
She looked into his dull eyes, held her ground when he blew cigarette smoke in her face and, without so much as batting an eyelash, aimed a short, sharp kick between his legs.
83
This time Rath dragged Karl Rammoser out of bed. The teacher had thrown on a dressing gown and looked at him bleary-eyed. It wasn’t even that late.
‘My apologies,’ Rath said, ‘but I thought as long as the trains are still running to Wielitzken, it’s OK to knock on people’s doors.’
Rammoser glanced at the time, then at the suitcase by Rath’s feet. ‘That was the last train.’
‘Correct.’ Rath cleared his throat. ‘Seeing as the sofa in your staffroom is so comfortable, and school hasn’t started yet… I wondered if I might ask for your hospitality again.’
Rammoser gestured towards the suitcase. ‘Are you planning on moving in?’
‘One night only. Tomorrow morning I catch the train to Allenstein, and from there it’s on to Berlin. It’s just… I don’t feel safe in the Salzburger Hof any longer. I picked a fight with the SA and it’s better they don’t know where I am.’
‘You did what?’ Rammoser gazed to the left and right, but the streets of Wielitzken were deserted. He pulled Rath into the schoolhouse and closed the door. ‘Did anyone see you?’
‘No one else got off the train.’
‘Let’s hope the SA haven’t got wind of where you’re staying.’
‘They think I’m in Allenstein, at least that’s what I told the hotel. The Rickert family are on good terms with the SA.’
‘The daughter, above all,’ Rammoser said. He led Rath into the lounge and set two glasses on the table. ‘I have to get a fresh bottle from the classroom.’
Rath lit a cigarette. He couldn’t help thinking back to his telephone conversation with Charly. Should he tell Rammoser there was a warrant out for his arrest, and that he was suspected of murder? Best not: this SA business had spooked him enough.
‘I’ve brought your clothes,’ he said when Rammoser returned. ‘Thanks again.’
‘No trouble.’ Rammoser filled their glasses. ‘Now, why would you pick a fight with the SA, in Treuburg of all places? You do know what they’re about here, don’t you?’
‘They’re Wengler’s thugs, you told me yourself. The same thugs who have Maria Cofalka on their conscience.’
‘I’m sorry?’ Rammoser set down his glass without drinking from it. ‘Why would the SA kill Maria? They beat up Communists, sure, but a harmless librarian?’
‘Rottenführer Fabeck didn’t deny it.’
‘Fabeck? Even in school the boy was a horror. King of the playground, maybe, but hardly the sharpest tool.’
‘You know him?’
‘I taught him, and he’s a sorry example of the human species. But a murderer?’
‘Better men than Klaus Fabeck have resorted to murder, believe me. Especially when they can hide behind an organisation.’
‘Why? Maria would never have picked a fight with that lot. She wouldn’t have gone within ten metres of them. She acted like any person in their right mind, whose head wasn’t turned by this Hitler’s recent performance in Lötzen. That is to say, she took no notice of the brownshirts. She treated the little shits as if they were still the same schoolboys borrowing books by Karl May and Mark Twain.’
‘They aren’t schoolboys any more.’
‘No.’ Rammoser drained the contents of his glass and wiped his mouth.
Rath drank a small sip. This bottle seemed even stronger than the last. ‘Maria Cofalka didn’t pick a fight with the SA,’ he said. ‘She became a danger for Gustav Wengler. That’s why she had to die.’
Rammoser suddenly appeared very pensive. He topped up their glasses while Rath told him the story of the letters and their contents, and how they had been stolen from his hotel room (though he no more than sketched Hella Rickert’s role). He told him how the decisive pages were missing when the letters were returned, the pages that suggested Jakub Polakowski was innocent.
‘Damn it,’ Rammoser said, when he finished. ‘I should have known. I should have protected Maria.’
‘How could you have known? I was the first person she told about her correspondence with Radlewski. It’s me who failed. It’s me who should have protected her.’
‘You don’t know the full story. At the plebiscite anniversary two years ago, Maria had a little too much to drink. It didn’t happen often. She almost never drank, but sometimes I had the feeling that alcohol was the only way she could stomach Wengler acting like the Fatherland’s saviour. Anyway – at some point late in the day, when everyone had forgotten Wengler’s speech and just wanted to have a good time, she publicly accused him of murder.’