‘Could I ask you to stop talking? So we can make a start.’ Charly addressed Charge Sister Ingeborg, but meant Karin too. Why couldn’t she just shut up for a change? Karin raised her eyebrows, reached for her pad and leaned back. She took the huff easily but was usually keen to make friends again. Charge Sister Ingeborg was more like a boxer limbering up before a fight. Perhaps she really was related to Max Schmeling.
Charly cleared her throat before beginning. ‘Can I call you Hannah?’ As Charly expected, Hannah Singer gave no response. She needed to be patient, see how the girl reacted. ‘A man died,’ she continued. ‘We think you knew him and that you can help us.’
She pushed the photograph of Heinrich Wosniak across the table. It had been taken at the morgue after the corpse had been washed. The lack of blood made it just about bearable to look at. The worst thing was the burns, but Charly couldn’t spare the girl those.
Hannah’s dark brown eyes remained fixed on the ground.
‘Don’t you want to look?’ No reaction. ‘Heinrich Wosniak.’
The eyes flitted briefly to the photo and back. Then to the photo again, disbelieving.
‘Do you recognise him? He survived the fire.’ Hannah’s gaze had returned to the floor. ‘And now he’s been killed, on the street.’ Silence. ‘They’re nearly all dead now. The men who stayed on Bülowplatz, in the Crow’s Nest.’ Crow’s Nest was the name given to the wooden shack by its residents, the Crows, a band of beggars and wastrels. ‘Now there are only two left. Gerhard Krumbiegel and you.’
A wrinkle appeared on the bridge of Hannah’s nose.
‘Do you know where we can find Krumbiegel?’
Hannah’s face gave little away, but the name Krumbiegel might have triggered something. The second survivor of the fire hadn’t had a fixed address in years. CID were only able to question him and Heinrich Wosniak when they were laid up in hospital in the immediate aftermath of the blaze. There was no getting hold of him now. They didn’t even know if he was still in Berlin, and they didn’t have a photo either.
‘Perhaps he can tell us something about Wosniak, if you don’t want to.’ Silence. ‘You were one of the Crows, weren’t you?’
Hannah’s eyes flashed with suppressed rage and protest, though against what, Charly couldn’t say.
‘You weren’t?’ Charly tried to catch the girl’s eye, succeeding for a brief moment. ‘But you lived with them. With your father.’ It was gone, Hannah’s gaze returned to the floor. ‘They didn’t treat you well, did they, the Crows? You had to beg for them…’ Silence. ‘Together with your father…’
Charly paused here, too. She didn’t want to insist, or put the girl under too much pressure, but provoking a reaction or two gave her hope. Hannah certainly wasn’t deaf.
‘Why did you start the fire? Did you really mean to kill the men? Or did you just want to give them a fright? Before it all went so terribly wrong…’ Charly opened the envelope in the patient file. ‘Your father died in the blaze. You can’t have wanted that. Tell me why you did it.’ She took the photo of Heinz Singer and pushed it across the table to lie alongside that of Heinrich Wosniak. ‘Or perhaps it’s precisely what you wanted? To… deliver him from his pain – because you couldn’t bear to see him that way?’
For the second time, Hannah lifted her face, staring at the wall, the ceiling, the tabletop and the vase of flowers, but never at the three other women in the room. Again and again her gaze returned to the photo on the table and the image of the dapper soldier until, finally, it rested there.
Charly thought she saw her trembling slightly, almost imperceptibly, like trees quivering in a breeze, until two dark-green blotches appeared on the pale green of her nightshirt and grew steadily larger. Tears. Hannah Singer was crying silently, releasing everything that had built up in the last fourteen months, and her trembling became more pronounced. Concealed within that tiny body it seemed there lay an unsuspected strength which was now ready to explode.
All at once, so suddenly that no one in the room was prepared for it, Hannah’s hand shot forward, grabbed the photo of her father and pressed it to her chest.
‘Is that your picture?’ Charly asked.
‘It was recovered from her father’s possessions,’ the sister said.
‘So it does belong to her.’
‘You’ve read the file, haven’t you? This little wretch torched her own father alive. Do you think she deserves a photograph of him?’ She planted herself in front of Hannah. ‘Give it back,’ she said. ‘This instant! It’s not yours.’ The girl cowered on the chair. ‘Let go, give it back!’
Before Charly could say anything or intervene, Charge Sister Ingeborg grabbed Hannah’s right hand and tried to prise the photo out of it.
Hannah folded her body inwards and pressed the image tighter against her chest.
For God’s sake let the girl go, Charly was about to say, but suddenly there came a cry so shrill that she had to cover her ears. Hannah was screaming at the furious charge sister, screaming right into her ear, as she scratched the fingernails of her left hand across her face.
Charge Sister Ingeborg touched her bloodied features and, before any of them could move, Hannah was on her feet and running as if her life depended on it. Just before she reached the door, Charge Sister Ingeborg sounded her whistle, ran two or three steps and dived like a goalkeeper saving a penalty, bringing the fragile girl flailing to the floor.
Charly stood up, unsure what to do. She ought to have helped bring the fugitive under control, but her instincts told her to tear Charge Sister Ingeborg away, to help Hannah. Suddenly, the door flew open and two men in white uniforms swooped on the screaming girl. One pressed Hannah’s arms behind her back while the other threw his weight on her flailing legs. Charge Sister Ingeborg plucked the photo out of her hand.
The wartime image of Heinz Singer was badly creased but still intact. Charge Sister Ingeborg lifted it like a trophy before placing it back inside the envelope.
The two men secured poor Hannah Singer in a straitjacket, apparently enjoying themselves, and dragged her from the room. Hannah would most likely be placed in a padded cell, or whatever they did with obstreperous prisoners, Charly didn’t like to think about it.
She couldn’t be sure, but for some reason she couldn’t help thinking that Charge Sister Ingeborg had been waiting for a chance to show this disturbed girl who was in charge. As for the police, who had dared disturb the tried and tested routine of the Wittenauer Sanatorium… Perhaps ‘insane asylum’ was the more appropriate term.
‘I fear your interview is over,’ Sister Ingeborg said. ‘I did say you wouldn’t get anything out of her.’ Her gaze said more stilclass="underline" if you hadn’t come here none of this would have happened. Why did you have to get the poor child so worked up?
‘What… what will happen to her now?’ Charly asked.
‘First she needs to be sedated. After that the ward doctor will decide.’
No doubt she hoped the ward doctor would plump for the most painful treatment he could find.
7
From the back of the town hall balcony, Rath looked over the heads of Cologne’s ruling class, seeing little but the gable end of the building opposite. He felt he didn’t belong, but neither would he wish to, unlike his father who had already moved two rows forward.
Still, not even Engelbert Rath could get next to Konrad Adenauer, who stood at the railing looking down on the Alter Markt and the crowd assembled for the Rosenmontag parade. That place of honour was reserved for the so-called Dreigestirn, the mad triad of virgin, peasant and prince.