‘Thank you, Hannelore,’ Rath said, taking a glass for himself. Drawing Charly towards him, he held his champagne aloft and the murmuring died. He could spare himself a speech, having already given one at lunch.
‘Dear parents and friends, welcome to the Rath family’s new branch office in Berlin!’ He winked at his father, and kissed Charly, this time uninterrupted by Kirie, and was met with a round of applause.
Together in Carmerstrasse they had the smallest possible number of guests: two witnesses, Paul Wittkamp and Greta Overbeck, and, inevitably, the parents, Erika and Engelbert Rath, as well as Luise Ritter, Charly’s mother. Rath hadn’t met her until after the engagement, and had seen her on only two or three occasions since. He sensed Charly was a little ashamed of her mother, but he was no different where his parents were concerned.
Following the unexpected death of her husband, Luise Ritter had waited until Charly finished school before leaving Moabit behind, returning to her sister and parents in Schwiebus, a small town in the Brandenburg Province, beyond the banks of the Oder. She had never felt at ease in the capital, and had only moved there for the sake of her husband. A working-class woman from the provinces who dwelt too much in the past, she lamented the loss of Prussia’s King and Imperial Germany’s Kaiser.
Rath’s parents were her opposites in just about every way. Engelbert and Erika Rath might, in nostalgic moments, secretly mourn the good old days, but they were fully paid-up members of the bourgeoisie, correspondingly educated and often at receptions, concerts or the theatre. They were used to being heard, by domestic servants, police officers and, indeed, their own children.
Luise Ritter’s only point in common with Erika Rath, who was as comfortable in the home as she was in polite society, was that she had married a Prussian official, albeit an administrator with Moabit district council rather than a police director on friendly terms with the mayor of Cologne.
Charly seemed to worship her dead father like a saint, her mother on the other hand… Well, Rath thought, you can’t choose your parents, just as you couldn’t choose your children.
Except, of course, Charly had chosen hers.
He had to hand it to her though, she could have chosen a lot worse. The boy certainly livened up the place, sometimes made it a little too lively. Those quiet moments Rath so valued, drinking cognac and listening to music, had been all but consigned to the past. Stealing a glance towards the other side of the room, he spied a copy of the Prager Tageblatt on his favourite chair. He went over and discreetly returned it to the newspaper rack.
The Tageblatt, increasingly hard to get hold of in Germany, had devoted four columns to the story of the dead man from the Spree, falsely identified thanks to the carelessness of the Berlin Police. Whoever Reinhold Böhm might be, he clearly had intimate knowledge of the situation in the capital. Perhaps he was one of the exiles who had recently decamped to Prague, and was now throwing as much mud as possible at the new Germany. Certainly, that had been Magnus von Levetzow’s interpretation, the commissioner having summoned Rath to his office first thing Monday morning.
Beside the accusations levelled at his person and the police authorities at large, the most troubling aspect for Levetzow was that serious allegations had been made against the new Germany’s great literary hope. Having successfully played the innocent, Rath would send the article, which had appeared at the weekend, to Walther Engel first thing tomorrow. His father’s honour had been vindicated, at least for those Germans living abroad, for whom the Tageblatt was the most important newspaper.
Germans at home, on the other hand, remained in the dark. Government policy was to disregard or refute all Tageblatt articles and, on this occasion, they had opted for disregard, which meant that ‘official’ reports had to provide a different explanation for Achim von Roddeck’s disappearance. The last person to see him was Herbert Gutjahr, leader of the Berlin and Brandenburg branch of the German Students’ Association, and organiser of the book-burning on Opera Square. According to Gutjahr, shortly before making his planned speech Roddeck had thrust his script into his hands and made his excuses on health grounds.
Roddeck did not return to his hotel. It was as if he had fallen off the face of the Earth, and the papers began to speculate wildly on his whereabouts, even suggesting that the nationalist cause had given rise to its own B. Traven, the mysterious author who wrote from a secret location abroad.
Poor Roddeck, Rath thought. First he’s hailed as the national revolution’s answer to Remarque, now he’s up against B. Traven and The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Not that the rumours did any harm to sales of Märzgefallene, quite the opposite.
Gregor Hildebrandt was sure to be pleased, although he had been open mouthed when Liang presented him with the transfer authority drawn up by Gustav Kohn and signed by Roddeck. He didn’t think to protest though, or go to the police. Few did after looking into Liang’s dark eyes. Nibelungen paid by cash initially; all future payments would be by cheque. According to Marlow, on Liang’s departure Hildebrandt had asked the same question as Achim von Roddeck: ‘Who is Hannelore Schneider?’
Hannelore Schneider was here, attending to Rath and Charly’s wedding guests.
No one had linked the corpse in the Linden tunnel with Roddeck’s disappearance, and the Vossische provided no more than a summary report, a single column, thirty lines or so. ‘Dead man in the Linden Tunnel!’ The rest was a mystery, police groping in the dark. Soon the file would be consigned to the other ‘wet fish’, the Castle’s store of unsolved cases.
Someone cleared his throat and Rath turned to see his father beside him, champagne in hand, and in high spirits. ‘Not bad, Gereon. Neat flat, prime location, and an enchanting bride.’
‘Thanks, Papa.’ Rath gestured outside the window. ‘Dr Weiss lived over there until recently.’
Engelbert Rath nodded pensively. ‘It’s a disgrace. Our best people are being hounded from office.’
No doubt he was partly referring to himself. Though still in post with the rank of police director, Rath senior was having a hard time in Cologne. As a known associate of Adenauer, he found himself sidelined and no longer involved in the decision-making process at Krebsgasse. His contacts in the ‘Cologne cabal’, mostly fellow Centre Party members, were as good as useless, since practically all Centrists had been ousted from positions of influence. Konrad Adenauer was the tip of the iceberg. For two or three weeks now, the former mayor had taken sanctuary in a monastery, and Engelbert Rath refused to say which. Suspicion, even of one’s own family, was a way of life in the new Germany.
Rath had never seen his father so rattled. Mother hadn’t told him the whole story, and probably didn’t know everything herself, but the new age weighed heavy on the police director’s shoulders.
His parents would remain in Berlin until the weekend. For them the Catholic ceremony was the one that counted, and for their sake he played along. Today everything was low-key, with Rath dressed in a dark formal suit, which made him look a little like a politician. The cutaway and top hat were for Saturday, for Schöneberg and Pastor Warszawski. The guest list would be longer on Saturday too, though there would be no place for Reinhold Gräf. Intending to invite him, Rath had finally struck his name from the list and, on Charly’s wishes, replaced him with Wilhelm Böhm. Gennat’s attendance was something they had been able to agree on, likewise the presence of a few colleagues and friends and, of course, Rath’s sister and her family. He’d be glad when the whole thing was over.