‘There are lawyers who hold me in higher regard.’
‘But they’re not the ones making decisions about your career.’
Perhaps they are, Charly thought. She stubbed out her cigarette.
‘Let’s see what happens,’ Gereon continued. ‘The way I see it, Weber won’t want to make too much of a scene. He should never have left you alone like that. You’re a judicial clerk. You can’t be playing magistrate in your preparatory year!’
‘I wasn’t. Weber just didn’t want his meeting with the public prosecutor to fall through. I was meant to get the girl’s personal particulars, that’s all.’
‘He must have a guilty conscience.’
‘He didn’t appear to just now.’
‘Maybe,’ Gereon said, ‘but have you thought about everything that’s happened? The dead policeman, the shoot-out on Frankfurter Allee. Who’s going to care about some tramp jumping out of the court window? I can’t imagine Weber’s going to be shouting his mouth off about this. He’s trying to scare you because he wants to hound you out of his court, and the profession too. Don’t let him intimidate you.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’ She took a sip of tea and attempted a smile.
‘Of course I’m right,’ Gereon said, looking at her encouragingly. ‘Now drink up, we’ve got work to do.’
27
The corridor lay empty ahead, with only the dim light of dusk reflecting from the polished floor. So far, no one. Most people had gone home long ago, and the patients were asleep. Goldstein had to wait for a moment outside, until two ambulances arrived one after the other, delivering the victims of a fight. At the same time a flood of relatives, friends, and others affected by the incident had rolled up and, within seconds, created an almighty stir in Accident and Emergency. Evidently, a wedding party had gone wrong.
He slipped onto the premises as the quarrelling started again, then through a door into a dim corridor, locating the stairwell and taking his bearings. This afternoon had been worthwhile after all.
The hospital wasn’t especially big, not in comparison with the Jewish Hospital on Prospect Place where they had removed his appendix, but there were many wards, doors and long corridors. It was better to know your way around.
He stood before the brass-numbered door again, and though aware that all he would encounter was an old man wandering through dreams, he hesitated as before. This time he hadn’t brought flowers, only the Remington in his inside pocket.
His hand pressed down on the handle and the door moved without a sound. He gazed once more across the corridor – the door to the nurses’ office was still closed – and crept into the unlit room. The curtains were drawn, but a glimmer of light outlined its contours. The bed stood against the end wall, and in it lay an old man with a wrinkled face. The sign at the foot of the bed confirmed what Goldstein knew already. The only sound was the rattling in his chest, but his eyes sparkled. He was awake. He sat up as Goldstein drew closer.
He hadn’t expected recognition, but the eyes in that lined face were alert.
The old man opened his mouth and his lips moved. His voice was scarcely audible, but each of the three syllables was plain to hear in the silence of the room. Abraham. They had never met, but the old man recognised him. The eyes that looked at him were already awaiting death.
28
Rath and Charly entered the Castle through the public entrance and made straight for Records. It reminded him of class trips where he and schoolfriends had roved the girls’ dormitories of youth hostels. Charly was a civilian now, and here he was helping her procure information that ought to have been off-limits. It was easier than he thought.
When he showed his identification, nobody was interested in the woman at his side except the clerk with responsibility for the letters L to R. ‘I know you, don’t I?’ he asked. ‘Are you working in Homicide again?’
Charly had to think on her feet. ‘Temporarily! I have to help the inspector here track down an address. Reinhold is the name.’
The clerk nodded and made for an enormous card index cabinet. ‘D or dt?’
‘Both.’
The man took a huge drawer out of the cupboard and hauled it onto the table. ‘They should all be in here, both ‘d’ and ‘dt’. What’s the good fellow’s name?’
‘We’re looking for a woman,’ Rath said. ‘More precisely: a girl.’
‘A minor? That makes things trickier. Do you see? At the top of the cards you have the names of the heads of household. Wives and children aren’t shown separately, and I’d be willing to bet some of them aren’t registered.’
Rath sighed. Charly, on the other hand, got straight to work.
There were ninety-seven Reinhold families in Berlin. If you counted those that spelled their name with a ‘dt’, over a hundred.
‘And we’re supposed to find a girl called Alex among that lot,’ Rath said, but Charly was already looking through the first card.
They found five Reinholds and one Reinholdt who had registered either an Alexa, an Alexandra or an Alexia. ‘There’s no way you can be sure that’s all of them,’ Rath said. ‘Do you want to visit every Reinhold family in Berlin?’
Charly was now leafing through index cards, and beginning to sort them in piles.
‘What are you doing?’ Rath asked.
‘I think she’s from the East, Friedrichshain or Lichtenberg. We should start with those addresses.’
There were still around a dozen. Rath thought she was joking when Charly suggested visiting them all today. ‘It’s already half past six,’ he protested. ‘People are eating their dinner, and in a few hours they’ll be in their beds.’
Charly’s frosty gaze nipped his opposition in the bud. Rath sighed, pulled out his pencil and began transferring the first addresses from the card to his notebook. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘but let’s split up. We’ll be quicker that way.’
Charly smiled at him, and Rath realised, not for the first time, that he’d do anything for that smile. Canvassing addresses was a cinch.
29
Outside the hospital Goldstein faced an unexpectedly fierce wind that cut through to his core, but decided against a taxi. Too restless to let himself flop onto the cushion of a vehicle, he walked. Walking always helped. He took out a Camel and lit it from behind his upturned collar.
The old man had the eyes of someone who knew he was about to die, but refused to let it affect him. How many people failed to recognise when their time had come and, if they did, couldn’t accept it, clinging to their lives until the end? Most people simply didn’t bargain on death, and when, inevitably, it came, their only response was surprise at the shocking revelation that it was all over.
At Badstrasse, behind the restaurant he had sat in earlier, the road led down to a perfectly straight little stream. He paused on the bridge, took a few drags on his cigarette and flung it into the dirty water. There was still a lot of activity on the street. He put his hands in his pockets and followed the flow of pedestrians.
A welcoming white ‘U’ shone in the night, above an elegant, modern brick building. Looking at the route map he saw that the next train was heading south. There was no queue and an escalator led below the ground. He allowed it to carry him down before checking behind. A figure in a black hat stepped on at the top and, for a moment, he thought his mind was playing tricks. The man stood on the stairs, gliding down at the same, monotonous pace as everyone else, an old Jew who reminded him of his father, whose hair was also white by the end. It wasn’t so unusual a sight, what with a Jewish hospital nearby, but the man looked like a spectre, a dybbuk, the ghost of Nathan Goldstein returned to haunt his son.