‘Bark, so I know I’m awake,’ he said. ‘Or talk, so that I know I’m still asleep.’
He went into the bathroom, switched on the stove, gave the dog something to eat and returned to a lukewarm shower, washing away the previous evening’s disappointment. Only one suit hung in the wardrobe. He had to get the grey one to the dry cleaner’s. He bagged it up, deciding against a coffee in his rush to leave the house. Kirie looked bewildered. Usually they didn’t set off in such a hurry, but usually they didn’t sleep so long either.
A sand-coloured Buick was parked outside the house, its paint so shiny that at first Rath didn’t recognise his old car. It wasn’t until he saw the little scratch on the steering wheel that he was sure. He checked the paintwork, couldn’t find a scrape, and then the wheels: four new tyres fitted. At least three people must have pulled a nightshift to get this done.
Rath was continually astonished at how much influence Johann Marlow wielded. Anyone who could give a garage the hurry-up – literally overnight – must really have a lot of power. Nothing had impressed him more than the remoulded Buick standing outside his front door: not the luxury Marlow could afford, nor the private army, nor even the many connections to the police and municipal authorities.
‘Well, Kirie,’ he said to the dog. ‘Perhaps it was no bad thing Charly didn’t spend the night.’
If anything it was better. She’d have smelled a rat. Charly didn’t know anything about the five thousand marks, or the mutual favours linking him to Dr M., nor could she ever find out.
Rath put the key in the lock and turned – a perfect fit. ‘Looks like we’re all here now,’ he said as he opened the door. ‘You, me and the car.’ Kirie sprang onto the passenger seat, panting expectantly.
47
The man cut a forlorn and hostile figure, sitting uncomfortably on the wooden chair in Interview Room B. Gräf knew they had scored a bullseye yesterday, when he oversaw Leo Fleming’s arrest with a troop of uniformed officers. Renate Schobeck’s lodger had briefly eyed potential escape routes when Gräf pulled his badge but, in the end, come peaceably.
In the absence of Böhm and Grabowski, Gräf had taken matters into his own hands. There was no doubting it was the correct decision, but the Bulldog had still given him an earful this morning, before downgrading him to the role of spectator. The DCI wanted to lead the interview himself.
Böhm said nothing initially, a trick he must have learned from Gennat. Cheap as it was, it seemed to work. Fleming grew visibly nervous, and began polishing the chair with the seat of his trousers.
‘So, tell us what you were doing the night before last in Humboldthain,’ Böhm said.
Fleming gave a start. ‘In Humboldthain? What makes you think I was doing anything there?’
Böhm opened the file in front of him. ‘You were a member of the RFB,’ he read. ‘Got into a few scraps with the Nazis down the years, haven’t you?’
‘What if I have?’
‘After the RFB was banned too. In theory, anyway.’
‘The SA hasn’t been banned. They’re allowed to fight with impunity.’
‘No one in this country is allowed to fight with impunity.’
‘There’s the odd knuckle sandwich when the brownshirts take things too far. Have you seen how they carry on? You shouldn’t go thinking it’s always us Reds who start it.’
‘You don’t go out of your way to avoid it.’
‘We’re not cowards.’
Böhm nodded sympathetically. ‘In the small hours of Wednesday morning one of these fights spiralled out of control, isn’t that so?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I cut myself peeling potatoes. Didn’t Frau Schobeck tell you? Ask her!’
‘We’ve already spoken to Frau Schobeck,’ Gräf said.
Fleming looked at him in confusion. ‘Didn’t she confirm it? I gave her my things to wash.’
‘In the meantime we’ve run a blood test on them,’ Böhm said. ‘Blood type B.’
‘So what?’
‘You’re blood type O, Herr Fleming.’ He turned white as a sheet. ‘Take a guess who else has blood type B.’ Fleming was silent; no doubt he could imagine. ‘Exactly. Gerhard Kubicki, the dead man from Humboldthain.’
‘That’s a coincidence.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense!’ Böhm shouted. ‘Why are you feeding me this crap about peeling potatoes? Do you really expect me to believe you’ve never seen Kubicki in your life?’
Fleming sat ramrod straight on his chair and fell silent.
Böhm tossed a pin onto the table. A hand held a weapon, upon which flew a flag bearing the inscription 4. Reichstreffen Berlin Pfingsten 1928. Underneath were the letters R.F.B.
Fleming stared at the pin. ‘You have no right to go rummaging through my flat,’ he said. ‘You need a search warrant for that.’
Böhm leaned back. ‘We didn’t search your flat. It was the coroner who found it, underneath Gerhard Kubicki’s corpse. It’s safe to say he wasn’t in the Red Front.’
Fleming flung his head this way and that, before positively screaming his response. ‘Alright, for God’s sake. Yes, I dragged the dead Nazi into the bushes.’
‘So you admit it.’
‘Only that I hid him! I didn’t kill him.’
‘You really expect me to believe that?’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘If you didn’t kill him, then why did you hide the corpse?’
Leo Fleming calmed down a little. ‘I meet my girl by the church there every morning. I didn’t want either of us to get in trouble.’
‘Well I must commend you there.’
‘Should I tell you what happened or not?’
‘Go on.’
48
Dark patches on the paving slabs were all that remained of the morning’s rain. Sitting here drinking coffee and cognac definitely had something. The drinks warmed from inside, the sun from outside, and a waiter appeared at regular intervals with fresh coffee, fresh cognac, and anything else you might wish for, even a copy of the Evening Post. Café Reimann had an international flavour.
Goldstein had heard English, French and Russian spoken in the hour and a half he had been here. He liked the European custom of placing tables and chairs outside, and here on the Kurfürstendamm the pavements were especially wide. Meanwhile, the passersby, who were mostly elegantly dressed and counted many pretty women among them, made for a spectacle he never grew tired of.
There was no news from Brooklyn in the Evening Post, or at least none that interested him. Not a single line about Fat Moe, and nothing about the war of the New York Gangs. The paper was six days old, but it was impossible to get a more recent edition. Nevertheless, he was glad to read anything that kept him up to date on events at home, and might inform him of Moe’s untimely demise.
The fat man’s days were numbered, that much was certain. Moe Berkowicz had rubbed too many people up the wrong way, starting with the Italians. He had an inkling he was on the way out, of course, which was why he had grown more suspicious in the last few months, eliminating more and more people, enemies both real and imagined, and weakening his position with every corpse. By now, his bloodlust had accounted for a number of his closest confidants. When even Skinny Sally, Moe’s old companion Salomon Epstein, the walking adding machine, whose precision brain had contributed more to the fat man’s rise than all his gang’s guns and muscle put together, stood on the blacklist, nobody was safe. For the first time in his life Abe Goldstein had failed to complete a contract.