The firefighters kept a respectful distance, hosing water through the doors and into the chamber, but still the heat intensified. Weinert gripped his hat and looked for something to hold onto. No one paid attention to him.
Part of the wooden panelling collapsed, sending sparks upwards like an army of angry glowworms. Entering the chamber was impossible, but he had seen enough, and he had to sell his story before someone beat him to it.
At the telephone booths near the southern entrance, he inserted a coin and asked to be put through to the Scherl-Verlag. He was on good terms with Hefner, the senior duty editor of Der Tag and, besides, he paid the best rate. Once Hefner heard his story, the morning edition would need a major rewrite.
‘Weinert here. The Reichstag is on fire.’
Hefner wasn’t surprised. ‘We’ve sent someone.’
‘Bet he isn’t inside the building though.’
Hefner put him through to a typist, and Weinert dictated his story directly into the receiver. More firefighters entered the building, their frantic, almost shell-shocked faces helping him find the right note, but he was astonished at his own fluency. That’s how it was when reporter’s fever took hold, and the story was big enough all right… He could see himself back in the editor’s chair he had lost three years earlier.
He was almost finished when a group of civilians entered, one of whom he recognised, a furious, fat man in a trenchcoat: President of the German Reichstag, Hermann Göring, recently appointed Reich minister without portfolio and commissar for the Prussian Interior Ministry.
Göring’s eyes flashed and in three steps he was at the telephone booth, seizing Weinert by the collar and yanking him out. ‘What are you doing here, man?’ Weinert was too stunned to speak. Was this the Reichstag president or some American gangster? The receiver dangled on its cable. ‘Are you one of the Communists responsible?’
‘Let me go so I can show you my press identification.’
Göring snorted with rage as Weinert searched his coat pockets.
A member of Göring’s entourage lifted the receiver. ‘Hello,’ he said into the mouthpiece. ‘Who am I speaking to?’
The typist had hung up, or simply didn’t answer. The man turned to Weinert. ‘Where’s this ID of yours? Give it here. Otherwise you’ll be spending the night at Alex.’ He sounded like a cop. What Weinert wouldn’t give for Gereon Rath to appear now from around the corner. He searched his pockets with both hands, growing more and more frantic.
The cop fiddled with the receiver. ‘Operator?’ he said, and Weinert was surprised at how friendly the man could sound when he wished. ‘Can you please confirm the recipient of the last call?’ Satisfied with the answer, he hung up and turned to Göring. ‘He was speaking with the Scherl-Verlag, Sir. What shall we do with him?’
‘Turf him out. The press has no business here.’
‘No need. I’m leaving of my own accord.’
Only now did Weinert realise his knees were shaking, and he was sweating despite the cold. He didn’t like to think what might have happened if he had been speaking with the offices of Vorwärts, or, even worse, the Rote Fahne. Or, for that matter, his former employer Mosse, a Jewish publishing house. At least the Scherl-Verlag was staunchly nationalist.
9
‘I’ve got the car outside,’ Charly said, reaching for a cold glass of kümmel. She had only come to pick up the dog, but the Spenerstrasse flat still felt like home. Everything looked as before: the pile of books next to the sofa, the dance dress hanging over the chair, the studied untidiness that gave the flat its sense of cosiness. The bottle of aquavit in the cooling basket by the window. She had been living with Gereon in Charlottenburg since August.
She held out her glass for a refill.
‘I thought your car was outside,’ Greta said.
‘My bedroom’s next door.’ Greta hadn’t let out Charly’s old room. Financially there was no need as her parents sent money regularly. Her father was an engineer, her Swedish mother an actress in Stockholm. She had a permissive attitude to affairs of the heart but had never made any secret of her aversion to Gereon Rath, even less her aversion to marriage.
It was true that Charly had spent the odd night here since moving in with Gereon, and sometimes asked herself where she would go if circumstances changed. So, she accepted a third glass. After a day like today she needed to let her hair down.
Having completed their report on the failed interrogation at Dalldorf, Superintendent Wieking had insisted that she and Karin question a few girls who had been picked up by Warrants in Wedding, suspected of having something against Hitler’s looks. Charly pitied their falling into police clutches, knowing that Wieking wanted to make an example of them. If there had been any trace of paint on the girls, she’d have omitted it from the statements.
Since Dalldorf she and Karin had switched roles. Now her colleague asked the questions while Charly silently made notes. There was no proof, but the episode had done nothing for her mood, since she’d promised Greta that she’d collect Kirie just after six. As she had done each day since Gereon left for Cologne.
‘Has she been out yet?’ Charly asked.
‘Not in the last three hours.’ Greta raised her eyebrows. ‘We were waiting for someone.’
Five minutes later they were strolling down Calvinstrasse towards the Spree, past dirty snow at the side of the road, wind buffeting the trees as they crossed the river and walked along the path towards Bellevue Palace. Kirie sniffed at every streetlight but eventually relieved herself against a tree.
‘Are you going to tell me who ruined your day?’ Greta asked. ‘Karin van Almsick or Gereon Rath?’
‘What do you mean: Gereon?’ Greta could read her mind. ‘Gereon isn’t even in Berlin.’
‘Precisely. Has he been in touch?’
‘No.’
‘You see.’
‘He’s probably been trying. I haven’t been at home much in the last few days.’ Greta’s gaze said: You’re protecting him, even though he doesn’t deserve it. ‘No.’ Charly sighed. ‘I take full responsibility for my mood. I’m just not a very good police officer.’
‘Uh-oh,’ Greta said, linking her arm in Charly’s. ‘Keep on like that and I suggest we turn straight around and finish that bottle. If we run out of Aquavit, there’s a tasty Cognac to follow.’
‘You realise that approach is straight from the Gereon Rath book of problem-solving?’
Greta shrugged. ‘So what?’
Crossing the Luther Bridge, Charly gazed upon the goods station and the gurgling darkness of the Spree, and, not for the first time, was surprised at how the city seemed to set the night sky aglow. The ‘Golden Else’ on top of the Victory Column towered over the dark treetops of the Tiergarten, shining like a torch. Yes, the golden figure of Victoria that soared fifty metres above Platz der Republik was actually flickering in the darkness… but the glow of the sky was irregular, glimmering now here, now there. ‘Something’s not right,’ she said.
‘Come again?’
Charly recalled hearing fire brigade sirens as she stepped out of the car on Spenerstrasse. A common enough sound in Moabit, she had thought nothing of it.