The election dictated editorial proceedings, everything else was secondary. Proofs for the morning edition were postponed until the small hours. It would be a long night for everyone, not that Berthold Weinert minded. After more than three years he was glad to experience the chaos of day-to-day news production again.
His Reichstag fire story had returned him to the fold, though he’d been careful to omit his encounter with Göring. The last thing he needed was for the fat minister to link him with the journalist from the burning Reichstag, and place him in the dock with van der Lubbe and the rest.
He had to go carefully. The Berliner Tageblatt, for which he had written before being shown the door in the bitter cold of January 1930, was Jewish-owned and regarded as left-wing by the Nazis. In Theodor Wolff it had a Jewish editor-in-chief, or used to have. After writing an article that was critical of the Nazis in the days following the fire, Wolff had fled abroad, and been summarily dismissed by his – also Jewish – publisher on Friday. With him, more than a quarter of a century of experience had vanished overnight.
Weinert knew from experience how swiftly the Mosse-Verlag could wield the axe. He hadn’t criticised anyone in his story, nor had he written up the rumours that the Nazis themselves were responsible for the fire. Clearly he wasn’t alone in finding it odd that the brownshirts should be so up in arms about the blaze when they’d spent years referring to the building as a talking shop. Knowing the Scherl-Verlag would remove such things from his copy, he had concentrated on making his story as exciting as possible, and his vivid, sensationalist portrayal had drawn praise from all sides.
And resulted in his own desk.
It had been a holiday cover at first, but now that he had his foot in the door, he had a chance to show what he could do, and there was no point grumbling about gathering election results. He had been assigned Electoral District 7, which roughly corresponded to the administrative region of Breslau. The Scherl-Verlag had people everywhere to carry the preliminary results back to the editorial office in Berlin. Meanwhile the office was staffed with people like Weinert, who noted everything that came over the wires and used it to compile a series of tables, which were then made available to political editors.
It was vital he didn’t get above his station. He had already shown that he could not only write stories, but break them himself. The business with the dead homeless man and the pigeons had caused quite a stir. A number of papers, some of them more respectable than Der Tag, had picked up the scoop.
The telephone rang for a fourth time. His pre-printed form was gradually filling with numbers. No sooner had he hung up than it rang again. ‘Ward name?’ he said. Four down, twenty to go; it would be a long night. Perhaps when it was over he’d have a drink with colleagues. It couldn’t hurt. ‘Weinert here, ward name please,’ he repeated.
‘Berlin Alexanderplatz,’ said the man on the other end.
‘Gereon!’ Weinert said, barely concealing his astonishment. ‘How did you get this number?’
‘I’m a police officer.’
‘We’ll have to chat another time. Right now, counting is in full swing and…’
‘I didn’t realise you had a permanent position again.’
‘An editor went to take the waters in Karlsbad.’
‘Some people are better off abroad.’
‘It’s good of you to call, but the timing’s all wrong. We’re blocking a line here.’
‘Speaking of right and wrong. How about using someone as an informant without their prior knowledge?’
‘You mean her prior knowledge.’
‘Then you know what I’m talking about.’
‘We ran into one another at the Reichstag and went on to a bar in Friedrichstrasse. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time. It’s normal to say what you’re up to.’
‘Is it normal to do the dirty afterwards?’
‘I didn’t do the dirty on Charly, just on Böhm. I thought you couldn’t stand the man.’
‘He’s a demigod as far as Charly’s concerned. She’s inconsolable and blames herself for everything.’
‘For what?’
‘Böhm was transferred.’
‘You’re not serious.’
‘The investigation you made fun of was shelved by the powers-that-be. Thing is, it was my investigation too.’
‘What can I say? The power of the press. Sometimes it surprises even me.’
‘You could have told Charly you were going to write about the dead tramp.’
‘I didn’t know I was. It wasn’t until I mentioned Böhm’s name that my boss’s ears pricked up. Gereon, I was forced to write that article!’ That was a slight exaggeration, but Weinert didn’t want to risk losing Gereon Rath as a contact. ‘Besides, I couldn’t have been that far off, or the other papers wouldn’t have followed suit.’
‘Well, they all had a great time. You know the canvasses were partly Charly’s idea?’
‘The pigeon business?’
‘It might sound stupid, but in the end it worked.’
‘I’m sorry, Gereon. I really didn’t mean…’
‘You should be sorry. You owe me one.’
‘Any time. Give me the information and I’ll write your story, just like old times…’
Weinert heard someone clearing their throat and turned around. Harald Hefner, the tall senior duty editor, stood behind him with furrowed brow. ‘Are you engaging in private conversations?’
‘An informant.’ Weinert placed his hand over the mouthpiece.
‘Put them off. You’re here for the election results. Don’t get above yourself!’
‘Of course not.’ Weinert hung up. He was about to say something else, when the telephone rang again, announcing the results from the rural district of Strehlen. He sighed and reached for his pencil.
35
‘Shhh,’ Charly hissed, as Gereon entered the living room. She waved her arms, hoping he’d understand, and he did. Or rather, he grinned, placed his fingers to his lips and tiptoed exaggeratedly towards his armchair. Couldn’t he take her seriously, just this once? The ten o’clock news was being broadcast on the Berliner Funkstunde, and Charly’s ears were glued to the radiogramophone. Kirie sat beside her, tilting her head as if interested in what the loudspeaker had to say, but now Gereon arrived she pitter-pattered over to greet him.
Charly seldom listened to the radio, though more often than Gereon, who only used it to play his records. Switching it on, she had pushed the transmit button until the rustling and buzzing became a voice holding forth on the subject of Academics and Unemployment. After that it had been music, famous operetta melodies. No word on the election until the news, but they were making up for it now. Typical Gereon, to burst in at precisely the wrong moment.
Voting in Berlin had gone off peacefully for the most part, the speaker announced, something Charly had difficulty believing – unless they meant the kind of deathly peacefulness associated with a graveyard. Then came the preliminary results.
‘The National Socialists,’ the announcer said, ‘seventeen point two million votes. Two hundred-and-eighty-eight seats.’
Charly started at the figure, though she felt relieved at the same time. ‘At least it’s not an absolute majority,’ she said. ‘Hitler still needs Papen and company to govern.’ Despite everything, Hitler’s coalition partners from the Kampfbund Schwarz-Weiss-Rot hadn’t achieved more than three million votes.
Even so, the Nazi defeat that many had hoped for failed to materialise. On the contrary, they had gained almost six million votes. The Social Democrats remained on seven point something million, while the Centre Party had also improved slightly, their share now standing at almost four and a half. As for the Communists, though their newspapers were banned and they had been forbidden from holding campaign rallies, they’d still collected almost five million votes.