Erika Voss removed a letter from her folder. ‘You still need to sign.’
‘It’s Böhm who needs to sign. Has he been in touch?’
‘It’s as if he’s disappeared from the face of the Earth. Fräulein Ahrens isn’t answering either.’
‘Strange,’ said Rath. ‘We’ll just have to keep trying. I’ll fill him in tomorrow at briefing.’
He took out a pencil and signed the document, which contained a precise description of Wosniak and appealed for witnesses who had seen anything unusual at Nollendorfplatz between the 21st and 25th of February.
‘Pass it on to Gennat. I’d rather he approved it, if Böhm’s nowhere to be found. Otherwise I’ll just be accused of going it alone again.’
Erika Voss reached for an internal mail envelope. ‘I’ll take this and be on my way.’
‘Wait a moment,’ Rath said.
He had a hunch she was meeting someone, and was pleased at her startled face. Fetching his brown leather briefcase he stowed the Roddeck novel and interview transcript inside.
‘Homework,’ he said, attaching Kirie’s lead and reaching for the coat he had only just taken off. Erika Voss looked at him quizzically. ‘Can I drive you somewhere?’ he asked, and her face was transformed by a smile.
He had parked the Buick on Dircksenstrasse, and started when he saw a familiar Adler sedan tucked in behind. ‘Get in, Erika,’ he said, opening the passenger door. ‘I need to do Kirie’s seat.’
Before Rath unfolded the dickey he went across to the black sedan, the window of which was lowered in the same instant. ‘New girlfriend, Inspector?’ Johann Marlow asked from the back. In the rearview mirror Rath recognised a pair of narrow eyes. Marlow’s closest confidant Liang was behind the wheel.
‘My secretary,’ Rath said. ‘Better for both of us if she doesn’t see us together.’
‘I need to talk to you, and the only person at home is your bride-to-be.’
‘Then you should have called headquarters. This isn’t a good time.’
‘I need to speak to you today. If you don’t want your secretary to find out, then suggest an alternative location.’
Rath looked around. Erika Voss was using the time to paint her lips. ‘She lives on Wörther Strasse. Is there somewhere we can meet close by?’
‘Let’s do it like this,’ Marlow said. ‘I’ll wait around the corner, by the water tower. We’ll talk there in the car. It’ll be better for both of us.’
The window was closed before Rath could say anything. He went over to the Buick and tipped up the dickey. The sedan pulled out of its space and rolled slowly past. Rath released Kirie’s collar and she jumped on the seat. He hadn’t seen Johann Marlow in almost a year, but Rath had the uneasy feeling of being shackled to the man, knowing his career would be over if their association were ever made known, and not just his career. Charly would never forgive him if she found out. Not so much his working alongside a known criminal as lying about it for so long. Four years ago she had made him promise that he’d never see Johann Marlow again.
He climbed into the Buick and Erika Voss twisted her lipstick shut. ‘What did you want with the man in the sedan?’
‘Illegally parked.’ Rath started the engine. ‘I politely suggested that this was a no-stopping zone, whether you were a swank with a chauffeur or not.’
26
The Jonass department store lacked the pomp of Kadewe or Wertheim, and the tasteful respectability of Tietz or Karstadt, but was no less impressive. Sober and functional, the newly-built eight-storey department store dominated the Prenzlauer Berg skyline, gazing over the districts of Spandau and Friedrichshain from which it drew its custom.
Hannah had tried at both branches of Tietz, on Alexanderplatz and on Leipziger Strasse; had been in Wertheim and Kadewe, but everywhere she went they threw her out. She still looked like a beggar girl, despite the old coat she had pinched from Aschinger. Her oversized rubber boots, stuffed with newspaper, undermined any attempt to appear even halfway solvent.
It wasn’t easy finding somewhere to sleep when you didn’t have a penny. The places she had been forced to bed down since Dalldorf! Last night had been a sandpit on the banks of the Spree, where she had shivered until morning. Upon waking she’d dragged herself from bar to bar, taking advantage of the warmth until her inevitable expulsion. Being thrown out was the one thing she could count on. The waiters couldn’t have her begging or selling her body against the promise of a warm meal.
More than once she had considered returning to Reinickendorf, where there was at least food and warmth, but then she remembered it wasn’t just Charge Sister Ingeborg or Warder Scholtens who’d be waiting, but Huckebein too.
Jeder Preis ein Schlager, the sign above the entrance said. Every price a winner. Hannah stepped into the enveloping warmth. At Kadewe one of the uniformed porters had sent her on her way within seconds, but at Jonass she didn’t stand out quite so much. You could buy on credit here, which meant there were more shabby-looking figures about, and fewer judgemental looks. A gaunt girl in an oversized coat attracted little attention. She strolled through the aisles, past the clothes racks and up and down the stairs until she found what looked like a suitable place to sleep.
The large wooden trunk in the furniture department was the kind of place no night watchman would think to look. Hannah would have liked nothing better than to climb straight in but, as soon as she opened the lid, she felt half a dozen pairs of eyes on her. She gave the trunk a look of appraisal and replaced the lid.
The department store idea came from the Märchenbrunnen posse. They recalled a girl who would get herself locked in at night so that she could make off with jewellery and so forth. For Hannah the appeal resided less in stealing jewellery than the prospect of a meal and something warm to wear, and the chance of a few hours’ comfortable sleep.
The Märchenbrunnen posse weren’t a fixed set, not like the hundreds of gangs with martial-sounding names like Red Rats or Black Hand, but a handful of homeless youths or runaways who had chosen the Märchenbrunnen in Volkspark Friedrichshain as their meeting point around the same time Hannah had finally escaped the hell of the Crow’s Nest. The Crows had found her again a few days later, of course, and hounded her back to Bülowplatz. Back to her slave’s existence selling matchsticks on the Weidendammer Bridge along with her bitter, crippled father whose morphine addiction swallowed the greater part of their takings.
Still, those few days in summer had shown her a life in which she owned little but was free; in which she had friends. Escaping from Dalldorf, memories of those warm nights had driven her back to the Märchenbrunnen, the Fairytale Fountain, but Hansel and Gretel’s noses were covered in icicles and there were no young people for miles around. Since then she spent her days in the Volkspark and surrounding area looking for the posse, and her evenings scouring department stores for somewhere to sleep.
Yes, she was a thief. The coat wasn’t the only thing, and she didn’t feel guilty – a girl like her couldn’t sink any lower. The only thing that made stealing difficult was the fear of getting caught. If someone handed her over to the cops, she would be sent back to Dalldorf, perhaps even to jail. Somewhere, at any rate, where Huckebein would find her.
Of course Berlin wasn’t completely safe, but how, she asked herself each day, would she survive outside the big city? Owning nothing but the clothes on her body she was better off in the capital than out in the country where the farmers would chase her off their land. Cold as the winter here might be, there were plenty of opportunities to get warm.
In the meantime, she took up position in a stairwell of the office wing, where the employees finished earlier than those on the floor. Hannah looked for somewhere to hide in the ladies’ toilet, knowing from her experiences in Tietz that it would be searched before closing. The staff toilets might be different. She waited for the glow of light in the lavatory window to dim… and then started.