‘Put that away,’ said Günter. ‘You think the SA would venture into a Communist area unarmed?’
‘I repeat. Reach for a pocket and you’ll find yourself with a hole in your shirt.’
Abe must have been concentrating too hard on the ringleader and Gerd’s knuckleduster. He lost sight of the third man. By the time he registered movement, his arms were gripped from behind. He lost his balance and, together with his attacker, fell to the ground. A shot went off and someone screamed.
‘Aargh, my foot!’
His attacker loosened his grip for a moment and Goldstein slammed the Remington against his temple, knocking him out. He wasn’t the only one rendered out of commission. Gerd was sitting on the lawn next to the unconscious Stefan, clasping his right foot with both hands. On his right hand he still wore the knuckleduster. Dark, shiny lines of blood seeped through his fingers and dripped on the floor.
‘Damn it, my foot!’ he yelled. ‘What have you done, you arsehole?’
Goldstein looked over at the fat man, who stood off, making no move to approach. He picked himself up, ready for the next attack, but the man stayed where he was. ‘So,’ the man said, ‘things look a little different now, don’t they. Drop your weapon!’
At first Goldstein thought he must have misheard, but then he saw the Luger cocked in the man’s hand.
‘I’m warning you,’ Günter said. ‘I’m a good marksman. Pistol on the floor.’
Goldstein shrugged. ‘You know, in situations like this, it doesn’t really come down to who’s the best shot.’
‘Oh?’
‘It comes down to who can hold their nerve.’
‘Drop your weapon!’
‘That’s what I’m talking about. You’re too nervy. Your voice is too loud. Any moment now your hand will start shaking.’
‘An arsehole like you, I’d hit every time.’
‘The problem is you don’t want to shoot me. You can’t. You’re not capable. Otherwise you’d have done it already.’
The Luger began to shake.
‘Shoot him!’ cried Gerd. ‘Do him! The bastard shot my foot! It’s self-defence!’
Günter was already moving backwards.
‘I think it’s about time I issued another warning,’ Goldstein said, nodding towards the Luger. ‘Drop your weapon before I shoot it out of your hand. Have you ever thought how awkward life can be without a right hand?’
The panic in the fat man’s eyes grew. Fight or flight? He dropped the Luger, turned on his heels and ran.
‘Some Scharführer,’ Goldstein said to the whimpering Gerd, who was still mourning the loss of his toes. ‘Leaving you in the lurch.’
Stefan groaned and put his hands to his bloody nose. Reaching it, he gave a yawp and immediately regained consciousness. The third man was also coming round. All three looked at Goldstein. In the meantime Gerd had tears in his eyes, and was making an increasingly strained face.
‘This isn’t a picnic, you know,’ Goldstein said. ‘So far, you’ve managed to escape with a few bruises…’
‘Bruises?’ Gerd wailed. ‘My foot!’
‘…but I warn you. It’s time to get the hell out of here before I change my mind.’
Stefan and the other man cast a final glance at their lame colleague, before taking flight in different directions.
Goldstein planted himself in front of Gerd.
‘Stop dragging your feet, that means you too.’
‘How am I supposed to walk?’
‘Try hopping or crawling. Your whining is getting on my nerves.’
Moments ago, Little Gerd here had been prepared to smash his face in with a knuckleduster. Now he was behaving like he’d just realised that life was unfair. He pointed the Remington at him. ‘I’d get out of here, unless you want to lose the other foot.’
Gerd gave a cry of pain as he tried putting weight on his left foot for the first time. When he shifted the load to his heel it appeared to work. Slowly he limped towards the beam of light and the gravel path, and hobbled out of sight.
Goldstein went over to the old man and handed him his black hat. He was a little worse for wear, and there was a bruise under his white beard. All in all, though, he wasn’t doing too badly. ‘Up you get, old timer,’ he said, helping the astonishingly light man onto his feet. The Jew dusted the dirt and blades of grass from his caftan, and looked at him as if he were the Messiah.
‘Just so we understand each other,’ Goldstein said. ‘I don’t exist. You never saw me!’
‘But I do see you. You stand here now.’
‘But really, I am somewhere else.’
‘I don’t understand. Who are you?’
‘I could be the Archangel Michael for all it matters. Just to be clear again: this never happened. I’ll take you home to your family, and then you’ll forget about the whole thing, yes?’
‘Many times, thank you,’ the old man said. ‘But you shouldn’t have fired shot.’ He shook his head. ‘Shooting is wrong.’
Arguing with pig-headed old Jews of this kind was a waste of time, as Goldstein knew from experience. He gave the man his arm and led him towards the gravel path.
‘Let me tell you the story of old Rabbi Zanowitsch from Lubowitz,’ the old man said. Goldstein rolled his eyes. He had heard it many, many years before.
34
The new month began in a crush as Weiss summoned all senior CID officers, from inspector upwards, to the large meeting room.
For once Rath didn’t mind. He pressed Kirie’s lead into Gräf’s hands, dispatched the detective to the Excelsior and treated himself to a coffee. In the cluster of people that formed outside the room were a few familiar faces from A Division, among them Wilhelm Böhm sporting a holiday tan. Rath wouldn’t have begrudged Bulldog Böhm a few more days off, or, indeed, early retirement on full pay. He kept his distance, shuffling forward beside Narcotics, who were bitching about Nebe, their former boss, whom Weiss had made head of Robbery Division a few weeks before. Nebe was ambitious, unpopular, and seen as Bernhard Weiss’s protégé. Those who enjoyed the protection of superiors at the Castle didn’t have an easy time, as Rath knew from experience, having been seen as the darling of the former commissioner, Zörgiebel, when he started in Berlin.
The crowd pushed through the double leaf doors and into the room. Rath found a space at the back and sat down. The air was already sticky. Most officers were smoking, and no one thought to open a window. He yielded to the herd mentality and opened a packet of Overstolz, sniffing the fresh tobacco before lighting up.
Yesterday evening had ended with him and Charly smoking in his flat on Luisenufer, exhausted and resigned after many hours of fruitless door-to-door canvassing. Rath had waited over an hour for her, and was starting to worry when he heard the key turn. Moments later, her disappointed face appeared in the door. She hadn’t found the girl, of course, although she had worked through her entire list. He consoled her with the prospect of tomorrow, and received a tired, battle-weary nod in return.
His telephone call to the Welfare Office had done nothing to assuage his guilty conscience, and the fact that Charly, tired and resigned as she was, had actually believed his threadbare excuses, almost shamed him more than the excuses themselves. He had visited only one Reinhold family and was met by an indignant woman who said she had no daughter by the name of Alex or Alexandra. At the other four addresses, he had claimed – and Charly believed him – no one had been home.
This morning, that same abandoned list had morphed into her final hope. She tore the evidence of his neglect from the notebook almost gratefully, and he said nothing more on the subject. Certainly not his true opinion, which was that the situation was hopeless.