Charly sensed he wasn’t quite as relaxed as he made out. Clearly Gereon was playing hard to get, and Reinhold was wondering why. Had Gereon broken with his friend because he thought he was a Nazi? Without telling him… He was certainly capable of it. Besides, these days who told a Nazi to his face you didn’t share his beliefs?
She realised conversation with her old friend was being suffocated by politics. ‘You really think Gereon Rath would let himself be hen-pecked?
‘By someone as pretty as you, perhaps.’
She met the compliment with a smile, which felt just as false as the rest of their conversation. Once upon a time she had feared Reinhold was in love with her, only to realise that he simply valued her as a colleague. Now she wondered if they were even that.
67
Rath found the boy in the kitchen. Washing up done, he was cleaning the sink. The water gurgled down the drain, drowning out all other noise. Fritze spun around as Kirie jogged his elbow. ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘Morning, Fritze.’
‘Morning, Herr Rath.’ The boy pointed towards the sink. ‘Thought I’d do the washing up before I went looking for Hannah. It’s still only half past nine.’
‘Good,’ Rath said. ‘Perhaps you’ll have more luck today.’
‘Perhaps.’ After two blank days of searching it sounded as if Fritze had a guilty conscience.
‘I think it’s great you’re helping Fräulein Ritter,’ Rath said. He fetched his wallet from his jacket pocket and fished out a ten-mark note. ‘For you.’
Fritze looked at the note as if he smelled a rat.
‘Take it, for your help.’
‘No need.’ The boy looked almost scared of the money. At length, he accepted. ‘Thank you.’
‘Let’s not beat about the bush. We both know you can’t sleep on the sofa indefinitely.’ Fritze folded the note over and over again. ‘You can look after yourself out there, can’t you? You don’t need us.’ The boy nodded mechanically, as if he were a wind-up toy. ‘I’m not going to say anything to Welfare, but I don’t want to see you here again.’
‘And Hannah? Aunt Char… Fräulein Ritter wants me to…’
‘If you find her, sure, let Charly know. She’ll be pleased.’ Rath put a finger to his lips. ‘Not a word about our talk, you understand? It stays between us men.’
Fritze smiled uncertainly. ‘If I find Hannah I’ll be in touch. Otherwise you won’t hear from me again.’ He ruffled Kirie’s fur and she wagged her tail. No doubt hoping for a stroll she pitter-pattered towards the front door. Rath followed, grabbing her by the collar in the nick of time.
‘So,’ he said, raising his hand. ‘Good luck!’
‘Thanks for everything.’ Fritze glanced at Kirie a final time before taking to the steps.
Rath closed the door, feeling uneasy, but he couldn’t let the flat he shared with Charly be turned into a shelter for street children. Two nights with an unwanted guest in the room next door was quite enough. The boy was a real passion-killer.
He sat in the living room and smoked a cigarette. March music blared from the radio; he switched it off. Ever since Gauleiter Goebbels assumed control of the Berliner Funkstunde as Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the station’s output had grown ever more wretched.
68
Charly couldn’t bear it. Karin van Almsick’s radio had been on since ten o’clock. Friederike Wieking had stopped by, but said nothing, not on a day like today when even the schools were closed. Against a backdrop of march music the reporter spoke as if more were at stake than the inauguration of the new Reichstag. The ceremony had been summarily relocated to the Potsdam Garrison Church, and the one-time royal seat of Prussia turned on its head. Festival services, open-air concerts, goose-steps, the whole shebang.
‘Everywhere you look the spirit of Prussia abounds,’ the reporter was saying, after painstakingly listing the regiments that formed the guard of honour which, together with the SA and Stahlhelm, now awaited the meeting of Hindenburg with Hitler.
‘The Reich President, still to emerge from his car, the pleasure garden awash with military federations of the Fatherland. We await his arrival here in front of the guard of honour…’
‘Can you turn it down a little, I can’t concentrate,’ she groaned.
‘Don’t be like that.’ Karin’s right ear was practically nailed to the device. ‘Oh, what I’d give to be there.’
‘I’m sure your Rudi will tell you all about it.’
Karin had ears for the radio only. His voice breaking with emotion, the reporter described how Hitler received Hindenburg, who had arrived at last, with a low bow and shake of the hand.
‘Just imagine, this is happening right now!’
The pathos from the radio made Charly dizzy. She actually felt sick. It wasn’t that she lacked Prussian patriotism, but here it served merely to highlight the hypocrisy on show. The Nazis had already taken Berlin, and now they were taking her Prussia, too! ‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘I have to stop by Registry.’
Karin nodded, and Charly wedged the Bülowplatz file under her arm and left for where she could make a call in peace. There was no radio in his office. Instead she was greeted by the dog. Gereon looked surprised.
Charly gestured towards Erika Voss’s abandoned desk. ‘You did promise me refuge if it came to the worst.’
‘Has something happened?’
‘The radio’s been on the whole day. Reichstag inauguration, in Potsdam. I’m sure you can imagine.’ She set the file on Erika Voss’s desk.
‘Doesn’t look like your standard G Division case.’
‘Mind if I help with yours?’
‘My orders are to find Benjamin Engel.’
‘Then someone has to investigate the leads you can’t.’
‘Make yourself at home,’ he said, ‘and if you need a break, there’s less chance of us being interrupted in my office.’
‘Gereon! I’m here to work.’
‘Just a suggestion.’
She sat down and Gereon returned to his office. Kirie looked for a spot under her desk while she placed a trunk call to Halle.
‘Officer Petzold and colleagues are following events in Potsdam,’ a secretary informed her. ‘Please try again later.’
Charly slammed the receiver onto the cradle with such force that Gereon came back out. ‘That is the property of the Berlin Police,’ he said. ‘It’s Bakelite, not Krupp steel.’
‘Is anyone actually working today? The only thing people seem to care about is Hindenburg shaking this goddamn Hitler’s hand.’
‘It isn’t the only thing,’ he said, pulling her chair away from the desk and into his office, where he shut the connecting door and turned the key in the lock. He leaned over her and kissed her, and, after a brief and half-hearted protest, she kissed him back.
‘You do this with your secretary too?’ she asked.
‘Only every third Tuesday.’
‘Cheeky bastard.’
‘Sorry,’ he said and kissed her on the nape of the neck. ‘But after the last two nights…’
She sighed, but he was right. If no one else was working why the hell should she?
‘Close the curtains,’ she said, pointing to the window. Outside an S-Bahn rumbled past, no doubt bound for Potsdam.
69
The university library reading room was the size of a railway concourse, but much quieter.
Walther Engel resembled his father in all but the captain’s uniform and Kaiser Wilhelm moustache. Rath had been looking over his shoulder but, when Engel turned around, put a finger to his lips. He laid his identification next to the books: German Quarterly for Literary Studies and Intellectual History; Psychoanalysis and Literary Studies; The Literary Generations; Identifying Characteristics of German Romanticism…