Only two weeks earlier he had decreed that enemies of the state should be ruthlessly gunned down. In other words, the Communists. And Thälmann’s men were supposed to have set fire to the Reichstag now, giving Göring the ideal pretext for even more stringent measures?
Cui bono? Who stands to gain? Once the question was asked, there was only one answer: the one Greta had given instinctively when they passed the Kroll Opera House and realised what was happening. ‘It was the Nazis.’
Remembering brought tears to Charly’s eyes. The Reichstag had been the symbol of the German Republic but the Nazis called it Schwatzbude, talking shop. They had filled more and more seats in the place, until November last year when, for the first time, they’d lost votes, two million in all. Charly hoped the downward trend would continue on Sunday. At some point Germany must come to its senses.
With the help of her CID identification, she and Greta had bypassed the police blockade with Kirie, spying Hitler himself from a distance as he arrived with Goebbels. The pair looked more like gangsters than statesmen. She hadn’t seen fattie Göring, but he had been there too according to Gereon’s journalist friend Berthold Weinert, whom they met at the southern entrance and accompanied to an automat. It had been a long night.
Now Charge Sister Ingeborg was talking about the fire and, for a moment, Charly thought she was trying to pin the blame on Hannah Singer. That was impossible, however. At half past nine the girl had still been strapped to her bed. The last inspection had taken place at eleven, and the alarm raised at half past midnight.
The door hung on its hinges; the glass of the viewing window was shattered, the bolt wrenched from its moorings. It looked like the work of a crazed gorilla, not a sixteen-year-old girl.
‘Here it is,’ Charge Sister Ingeborg said, regarding Charly with disdain. It’s your fault that brat broke out, her gaze told her, if you hadn’t shown up, we’d have been spared all this!
‘Thank you, Sister, that will be all.’
The charge sister turned on her heels and clattered down the corridor.
Charly almost stepped in the pool of blood on the floor. The trail led from the door to the bed, where a man was examining the buckles on the leather straps. ‘The work of the great Houdini?’ she asked.
‘Charly!’ Reinhold Gräf said. ‘Did Böhm send you?’
‘Something like that.’
‘You’re starting to sound like Gereon Rath.’
‘Is that a compliment?’
‘You ought to know. You’re the one marrying him.’ Reinhold had put up with a lot down the years, but he and Gereon were still good friends. ‘The great Houdini indeed… At any rate the girl picked the lock. And then…’ He gestured towards the door. ‘Then she must have kicked in the door and taken the fire escape.’
‘You think Hannah Singer did this? Have you seen her? Hercules she is not.’
‘You wouldn’t believe what crazy people are capable of.’ Then he asked the same question as Böhm. ‘Why did she run? Do you think it could be linked to your interrogation?’
‘Looks that way. As if I frightened her, but I wouldn’t know how.’
‘Wosniak’s death?’
‘She hardly reacted to his photo, but I think she recognised him. Not that she said anything during the interrogation, just sat there. Until I showed her the image of her father. She flipped as soon as the sister tried to reclaim it.’
‘Sounds crazy, but that’s what she is, and an arsonist to boot.’
‘At least she can’t set fire to the Reichstag. How hard can it be to find a girl running around in a hospital nightshirt in winter?’
‘There are more dangerous arsonists out there.’ All of a sudden Gräf was serious. ‘The police are finally taking action against the Reds.’
‘You really think the Communists are responsible?’
‘Who else?’
Charly didn’t say what she was thinking. ‘Perhaps this Dutchman they picked up is the crazy one.’
‘You shouldn’t play down the Communist threat. Germany’s future is at stake. We can’t just stand idly by and watch.’
‘You’re right,’ Charly said, knowing Reinhold had a different kind of political engagement in mind. Suddenly she felt sad; Reinhold had once been her favourite colleague. ‘Anyway, let’s get down to it, start looking for clues.’
Gräf gave a sour smile. ‘The blood in the corridor had already been wiped by the time I arrived. I just about managed to prevent the cleaning lady from tackling the room.’
‘Cleaning is our national obsession.’
‘At least she could still tell me where it’d been.’
‘Let me guess: the trail led from Hannah’s room to the fire escape. I don’t understand.’
‘What don’t you understand?’
‘The tracks in the room.’ She gestured towards the bed and surrounding floor. ‘Why is there blood everywhere if she only injured herself on the door?’
‘Maybe she went back to pick something up.’
Suddenly Charge Sister Ingeborg stood in the doorframe. ‘Excuse me.’ The sister looked at Gräf, Charly being unworthy of her gaze. ‘But… we found something. The cleaning lady…’
Moments later they stood in a small, windowless room which held bucket, broom, scrubbing brush and all kinds of cleaning agents, with a small, wiry woman in an overall.
‘This is Frau Blaschke,’ Charge Sister Ingeborg said. ‘Show the inspector what you found.’
‘Detective,’ Gräf corrected.
The cleaning lady reached behind her back as if she were holding a surprise present. A bloody, oblong shard of glass. The butt end was bound with tape and looked like a knife handle. ‘Herr Gräf…’
‘Detective Gräf,’ Charge Sister Ingeborg said.
‘Right. Detective Gräf says I should stop cleaning, so I take my things back. And then I find this here, on the floor.’ She pointed towards a dark corner near the door.
Charly took the glass knife from her. ‘Have you ever taken blood from Hannah Singer?’
‘Of course.’ Like Frau Blaschke, Charge Sister Ingeborg was confused that a female officer should be in charge.
‘Then you’ll know her blood group.’
‘It’s in the patient file.’
‘Then let’s get the knife to the lab so we can determine the blood group and compare it with the tracks on the floor. I bet they’re identical, and that they don’t match Hannah Singer’s.’
Gräf nodded thoughtfully. He understood what Charly was getting at.
‘That’s… I don’t believe it!’ The cleaning lady stood at a hat and coat rail with two overalls on it, exactly the same as hers.
‘What is it, Frau Blaschke?’ Charge Sister Ingeborg asked.
‘I’ve only just realised, but… the overalls. Half of them are gone. They only came back from Laundry yesterday.’
13
They really had been looking for him everywhere. Rath didn’t find out why until after lunch, during which, apart from grace, not a word was spoken. Engelbert Rath said nothing over the soup, nothing over the meat course and nothing over dessert. His father was a master when it came to the silent treatment, instilling guilt feelings in Gereon from a young age. Somehow this silence and its accompanying gaze of disappointed indifference worked on him still. How, he wondered irritatedly, was it possible to see through a man yet remain so utterly in his thrall?