Despite knowing that Gräf and Steinke were chasing a killer who was resting at the bottom of the Spree, he continued to devote more time to the Alberich case than his own. The same was true of Charly, or else why was she so desperate for Hannah Singer to talk? He doubted whether they’d get much sense out of the girl but, like him, Charly wouldn’t let go until they knew whose body they had pushed into the river. What kind of person he was. Why he had been out for Hannah. Why he had killed three men. Above all, who he was. Benjamin Engel? Gerhard Krumbiegel?
Over the past few days he and Charly had asked themselves repeatedly whether Engel and Krumbiegel might not be one and the same but, whatever possibilities they played over, they always found some objection.
The Bonn officers shadowing Eva Heinen didn’t know that Rath had been taken off the case, so he continued to speak with them on the telephone, passing on their written reports to Gräf when, two days later, they arrived in the Castle’s official mail.
Gräf had carved out a space for himself and Steinke in the main office. They had made little progress in their first week on the Alberich case, which was hardly surprising but which pleased Rath all the same. Sometimes it pained him to see Gräf at morning briefing, and he would think back to the old days, to shared evenings in the Nasse Dreieck; shared investigations, more often than not in defiance of Wilhelm Böhm and service regulations… Those days would never return.
He had known from the start that Eva Heinen wasn’t telling the full story, but it was only after re-reading the reports that he’d decided to head back west. He was growing tired but, whenever fatigue threatened to overcome him he drank another bottle of Afri-Cola. It was after midnight when he parked the Buick on a dirt track and finally yielded. His Cola supplies were finished, his cigarettes running out, and his eyes threatened to close. No sooner had he nodded off, however, than he was wakened by a downpour drumming against the roof and windscreen. Looking at his watch he saw that two hours had passed. It would have to do.
He smoked a cigarette and started the engine. Only three left, to be rationed over the next few hours. It was no fun driving in this weather but he couldn’t risk being late. Reaching the Bergisches Land around half past six, the rain behind him with the rising sun, he felt bone weary. He stopped to pee but what he really needed was coffee, wishful thinking in a rural wasteland such as this.
Away from the road he found a stream and splashed ice-cold water on his face. After running his wet hands through his hair, he plopped himself in front of the car mirror and parted it with a comb. If you ignored the rumpled suit and five o’clock shadow, he looked almost respectable.
An hour later he reached his destination, a car park built for day-trippers from nearby towns. This must be the place his Bonn colleagues had described. He had telephoned yesterday specifically to ask, using his credentials as a former Cologne boy to feign local knowledge, and extract a few details that weren’t contained in the reports.
Turning in the car park he concealed the Buick with the Berlin registration in a farm track leading downhill, and returned on foot. The clouds were gathering, but it was a pleasant enough morning. He looked at his watch. Another half hour or so. He crossed the car park and followed the narrow track into the forest. Reaching a clearing moments later, he knew instinctively this was the place. Through leafless branches he looked across a decommissioned quarry into the Rhine Valley and towards Bonn. On the edge of the precipice was an old beech tree with shimmering grey-green bark, between the roots of which the forest soil was brightly flecked. Stones, Rath realised as he crouched, little pebbles from the banks of the Rhine that someone had discarded here. He took one in his hand and laid it back down. Taking up position behind a rock, he smoked his last Overstolz and waited.
He had just stubbed out his cigarette on the damp rock when he heard the sound of an engine, a deep drone that could easily belong to a Mercedes, the crunch of gravel in the car park, and the clank of a Prussian Police Opel. Though the police car continued uphill, Rath was certain his colleagues would stop behind the next curve and observe the parking lot. They had never followed Eva Heinen into the forest, but, with Prussian meticulousness, merely recorded the time she exited and – usually a quarter of an hour later – returned to her vehicle.
Morning stroll the observation reports noted, nothing more, then the time, varying by four or five minutes at the most. Unlike Rath, the officers from Bonn had failed to take a closer look at the site, most likely because they were locals and knew the track led only to a decommissioned quarry, and because they couldn’t imagine the forest was suitable for anything other than a brief stroll.
Still, at some point the regularity of Eva Heinen’s dawn excursions had got Rath thinking, and now here he was.
The Mercedes puttered in neutral, then the engine was switched off. Moments later there was a crackle in the undergrowth, and a well dressed Eva Heinen approached with slow, measured steps to stop in front of the tree with the pebble stones. She stood with her back to him, lost in thought. It was almost as if she were praying, which perhaps she was. Reaching inside her coat pocket, she fetched a small white stone and placed it alongside the many others on the ground.
He felt curiously moved. A spirit of reverence seemed to have gripped the forest. He stepped out and cleared his throat. Her eyes filled with icy fury when she recognised him.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Not so loud, or my colleagues from Bonn will realise you’re talking to someone. In the last few weeks they’ve been happy to wait in the car. It would be a shame if today was the day that changed.’
‘I’m being watched?’
‘You’re surprised?’
‘Your colleagues from Bonn don’t know you’re here?’
‘To be perfectly honest, my colleagues from Berlin don’t know I’m here either.’ He looked around. ‘Nice spot, this. Of the Siebengebirge I know only the Drachenfels.’
‘The Ennert hills are part of a different range.’
‘Oh? Well, it’s a great view, anyway. That’s Bonn down there, isn’t it?’
‘What do you want?
‘The truth.’
‘I told you everything I know three weeks ago.’ She avoided his gaze.
‘At first I thought you were meeting him,’ he said, ‘but now I understand why you come here every morning. He’s really dead, isn’t he?’ Rath pointed towards the tree. ‘You buried him there.’
Eva Heinen nodded. It felt like a surrender.
‘Why did you bury an empty coffin nine years ago? Because your husband wanted a Jewish grave, and you couldn’t do that to your strict, Catholic family?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Edith has converted to the Mosaic faith and her grandparents haven’t disowned her.’
‘Then why a Jewish grave?’
‘It isn’t a Jewish grave, it’s just his final resting place. He wanted us to bury him here, in the forest. Without a headstone.’
‘But it’s a Jewish custom to lay stones on the deceased’s grave.’
‘I like the custom, and I didn’t want to lay flowers. No one can know a man is buried here. It’s illegal to bury people in the wild, as you are no doubt aware.’
‘You still haven’t answered my question. Why all the fuss at the cemetery nine years ago?’
‘Because my husband was still alive when we lowered the empty coffin into the ground.’
‘He was still alive when you had him declared dead?’ Eva Heinen nodded. ‘Then when did you bury him here?’
‘Four years, seven months and five days ago,’ she said. He thought he saw tears.