By now such dreams were his only remaining link to the war, and he was proud to live a normal life as a respected, if slightly dotty, senior teacher in Potsdam. How many others had been unable to return, had joined volunteer corps, turned to crime or landed in the gutter like Wosniak?
The class was staring at him expectantly. No giggling, like in the girls’ lycée years ago. The boys were too disciplined for that. Even so, they were waiting for him to drop his next clanger.
He cleared his throat. ‘Right then, let’s recap. How do I define a parallelogram? Wosniak!’
No response. No one stood up. Astonished faces.
‘There’s no Wosniak here, Sir.’
Concentrate, damn it!
‘Pardon? No, of course not. So. The definition of a parallelogram. We had it last week. Vogelsang, answer when I call your name!’
Vogelsang stood up straight as if on the parade ground and, for a moment, it seemed as if he might protest against the injustice, but decided against it. That was why Meifert had chosen him. Vogelsang always complied.
‘A parallelogram is a quadrilateral in which the opposing sides are equal,’ he said dutifully.
‘Good! Sit down. Why didn’t you respond straight away?’ Vogelsang furrowed his brow. ‘Today we are going to practise what we have learned. Open your books and turn to page forty seven.’
‘Which exercise, Sir?’
‘I just said. Page forty seven. The whole page.’
The boys obeyed with a collective groan. While the lower third completed a page of algebra, Meifert made himself comfortable behind his desk. Could he really be in danger?
The article didn’t mention when Wosniak had died, or why. Only a handful of men knew what had happened on the Western Front, most of whom were long in the ground. Meifert had never breathed a word about it and didn’t intend to. After all these years it was the events of March 1917 that still haunted his dreams.
22
Rath sat on Böhm’s visitor’s chair and gazed blankly at the Hindenburg portrait on the wall. In his long years of service he had witnessed many summonings by top brass. Usually it was a bad sign. Even so, he had never seen anyone being led away as Böhm had been moments before. Still, his sympathy was limited.
How many times had he been called to make his report by Böhm? Now the boot was on the other foot. Multiple breaches of duty… It seemed the punctilious detective chief inspector, who demanded even greater punctiliousness from his men, had finally rubbed someone up the wrong way. Rath wondered what Charly would say. He’d never understood why she set such great store by the grumpy so-and-so in the first place.
The telephone rang in Böhm’s outer office, an internal call. He went through and picked up. Perhaps it would be Gennat, calling to re-assign the Wosniak investigation.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Böhm’s office. Inspector Rath speaking.’
‘Porter here. Brettschneider. We have someone here requesting to speak with DCI Böhm urgently.’
‘He isn’t here.’
‘Can I send him up anyway?’
‘I don’t know when he’ll be back. Tell your man to make an appointment.’
‘He claims the matter is urgent and brooks no delay. It concerns the dead homeless man.’
The receiver clicked, and Rath heard a clipped but pleasantly warm voice. ‘Von Roddeck here. With whom am I speaking, please?’
‘Detective Inspector Rath. Detective Chief Inspector Böhm is currently unavailable. What is it that’s so urgent?’
‘It concerns the case in today’s paper. The dead homeless man. The pigeon droppings and…’
‘If you wish to make a complaint, I must ask you to do so in writing.’
‘No, no, I don’t wish to make a complaint. Perhaps I can be of assistance.’
‘You were a witness?’
‘No, but I knew Heinrich Wosniak.’
The man on the telephone didn’t sound as if he moved in homeless circles. As for his name… ‘Do you think you could identify Wosniak? He’s still at the morgue.’
‘It was a long time ago, but I think so.’
Rath led Achim von Roddeck to his own office to avoid an ill-tempered Wilhelm Böhm bursting in on their conversation following his return from the police commissioner.
Baron Achim von Roddeck, to give him his full title, and that wasn’t the half of it. Achim Friedrich Wilhelm Albrecht Achilles… Rath stopped listening after the fifth name. The man had actually pushed his passport across the table when asked for his personal particulars, as if it were important that he be formally identified. Rath handed the passport to Erika Voss, who was on shorthand duty.
The first thing he noticed about the man was his immaculate wardrobe. It wasn’t just the suit or coat and hat that he hung on the stand next to the door; his gloves looked tailor-made, and his brightly polished shoes. His ash blond hair – more ash than blond – was perfectly parted, albeit rather thin. The man looked like a yellowing portrait of his own youth. Even so, he could still turn heads, Rath could tell as much from his secretary’s reaction.
‘May I?’ Achim von Roddeck asked. He smoked Manoli and his cigarette case was silver and decorated with a coat of arms. Rath pushed the ashtray across the table and produced a light. The baron made no move to offer one of his cigarettes, so Rath fished his own, unadorned, case from his jacket. Overstolz, a price tier below Manoli. Roddeck inhaled deeply. No doubt he was nervous. He shivered as he clapped the cigarette case shut and returned it to his pocket. The coat of arms on the silver lid showed an axe, crossed with a sword, as well as a few other symbols that Rath couldn’t identify.
‘You knew Heinrich Wosniak?’ he began. Roddeck nodded. Rath gestured towards Erika Voss. ‘Please answer yes or no, for the record.’
‘Yes, I knew him,’ Roddeck said. The shorthand pencil scratched across the page.
‘I would ask that you identify the body.’
‘Gladly, though I’m surprised it’s taken this long.’
‘We’ve been unable to trace any friends or relatives. We have the name from his old service record, which he was carrying in his coat.’
‘That sounds like him.’ Von Roddeck appeared almost moved, to the extent that any Prussian indulged in such sentimentality. He drew on his cigarette before continuing. ‘We stood together in the trenches on the Western Front.’
Rath leafed through the file and opened the worn service record. ‘In the First Guards Reserve Infantry Regiment.’
‘I served as a lieutenant, and Heinrich was my orderly. A good man. That he should have died this way…’ Roddeck shook his head. ‘Homeless, you say?’
‘You say.’
‘Well, that’s what it said in the paper. As if it were a disgrace. As if it were pointless even investigating his death. Damn hacks! The man risked his neck fighting for the likes of them.’
Roddeck’s outrage appeared genuine. All too frequently, would-be soldiers gave voice to their patriotism without having served, without knowing what they were talking about. Achim von Roddeck seemed to know.
‘I intend to publish my war memoirs,’ he continued.
‘Like Remarque?’
‘Nothing like Remarque!’ Roddeck practically hissed in response. ‘Märzgefallene won’t drag the name of German soldiers through the mire. On the contrary, it will show that the blame for the Fatherland’s defeat lies squarely with those who should never have been allowed to wear the officer’s uniform in the first place.’
‘Märzgefallene?’ The March Fallen.
‘The title of my novel. Pre-printing begins in the Kreuzzeitung in less than two weeks, and the work will be published by Nibelungen in May.’