He sat at the table. ‘Looks delicious,’ he said, but Sieger didn’t think to offer him any.
‘Frau Ruland from number two cooks for me,’ he said, hacking off a large slice of pork. ‘In exchange I take care of whatever repairs need doing.’
Gräf waited with rumbling stomach until Sieger finished.
‘So what can I do for you, Detective Inspector?’ Sieger asked, wiping his mouth with a white napkin. Probably Frau Ruland did his washing too.
‘It’s just detective,’ Gräf corrected. ‘As I said, it’s about Gerhard Kubicki.’
‘I read about it in the paper. Poor Gerd.’
‘You’re his direct superior in the SA?’
Sieger nodded.
‘When did you last see him?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean? Am I a suspect?’
‘You were seen with Kubicki on the evening of 30th June. Apparently you were in uniform.’
‘Says who?’
‘Kubicki’s corpse was still in uniform when they found it.’
‘A man has been murdered, and the Prussian Police have nothing better to do than accuse the victim of wearing a banned uniform?’
‘I’m not accusing anyone, I’m just trying to find out what happened. Is the uniform ban the reason you haven’t made a witness statement until now?’
‘You never know how the police’ll treat you. When old Isidor Weiss releases his bloodhounds, a man of my political beliefs is easily cast as villain.’
‘You should choose your words more carefully. Before I charge you with insulting a public official.’ Sieger fell silent. ‘I’m not interested in the uniform ban,’ Gräf went on. ‘I want you to tell me what happened on Tuesday night. I already know that you and your comrades hounded an old man out of the U-Bahn station after harassing him on the platform.’
‘But, Inspector!’
‘Detective.’
‘Detective, then. It was nothing serious. An old Yid. We just made a little fun of him.’
Scharführer Sieger looked as innocent as a young boy trying to justify concealing his sister’s doll. ‘It can hardly come as a surprise when someone goes around dressed like that.’
‘Why did you pursue the man? You could have let him go. Wasn’t it enough to drive him out of the station?’
‘What do you mean “drive him out”? The lads went upstairs, and I followed. They can be a little over-exuberant at times.’
‘How exuberant were they on Tuesday night?’
‘Nothing would’ve happened if he hadn’t been there.’
‘Who are you talking about?’
‘Gerd’s killer, of course. It’s a disgrace you still haven’t caught him. He accosted us upstairs in the station building, and we walked away. We weren’t looking for a fight, but he wouldn’t let go.’
‘You weren’t looking for a fight? Is that why you marched through a workers’ district in your banned uniforms?’
‘I thought this wasn’t about the uniforms.’
‘So tell me what happened.’
‘He insulted us. Said someone had shat on our uniforms, and worse. I don’t want to repeat it here. We went to the park to be rid of him.’
‘But he came after you.’
‘We couldn’t have known he had a pistol.’
‘Otherwise you’d just have beaten him up, four on one. That was your plan?’
Sieger looked outraged. ‘I won’t have the SA’s honour being insulted in this way.’
‘The SA’s honour! No doubt your mysterious pursuer besmirched it too?’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘That I’m surprised four SA men should raise the white flag as soon as someone insults them.’
‘Well, the man seemed a little off his head. Drink, drugs, what do I know? Someone like that, you try to avoid.’
‘But he followed you anyway.’
‘Caught up with us by some meadow. Then started abusing us again. We thought this guy must be off his hinges. Until he pulled the gun.’
‘So, who was he? A Communist?’
‘He was too well dressed.’
‘A drawing room Communist then.’
‘A foreigner, I’d say. Spoke good German, but used some strange words.’
‘Russian?’
‘A Bolshevik in a suit like that? Come off it. He was a Yank.’
Gräf remembered the American cigarette butt, whose origin Grabowski was trying to trace. An SA troop that’s insulted before beating a peaceful retreat… arcane as it might sound, there was a grain of truth in Sieger’s tale somewhere. ‘A Yank, and he soft-soaped you on his own, did he?’
‘That’s not how I’d put it.’ Sieger was offended. ‘He broke Comrade Schlüter’s nose, and sent Comrade Mohnert to the floor. As for Comrade Kubicki…’ the Scharführer broke off, apparently overcome with grief.
‘That’s what I’d be most interested in hearing.’
‘But you’ve seen for yourself.’
‘Tell me!’
‘He shot him, the bastard.’
‘I need a little more detail.’
‘He shot him in the foot. Said if we didn’t scram right away, he’d finish us all off.’
‘So you scrammed.’
Sieger nodded.
‘And left your injured… comrade where he was?’
‘Gerd scarpered too. How were we to know the bastard would follow him and stab him to death?’
Gräf looked in Sieger’s eyes, as if the truth were to be found there. ‘Would you be able to describe the man? So he can be sketched by a police artist, I mean?’
Sieger nodded and Gräf handed him his card. ‘Come to Alex tomorrow morning, A Division. Ten o’clock. I’ll have a sketch artist by then.’
55
Rath leafed through one of the Tom Shark crime novels Czerwinski had left for him. They were idiotic, but still beat the hell out of boredom. Das Hotelgespenst. The Hotel Ghost. The title was apt. Sometimes Rath thought they really were keeping tabs on a ghost, so seldom had Abraham Goldstein been seen in these last few days. He yawned. Only an hour to go, and Czerwinski would take over for the nightshift.
There was nothing doing in suite 301. The man hadn’t even had breakfast taken up. Rath leafed back through the notebook. Czerwinski had last seen him about seven yesterday evening. Goldstein had greeted him politely, gone down to the lobby, drunk a whisky at the bar, smoked a cigarette and returned to his suite. An excursion totalling half an hour, the detective had painstakingly noted.
It looked like Marion had finished for the day. A different chambermaid approached from the corridor. She was noticeably older and less attractive than her pretty colleague, if not to say profoundly ugly. Rath couldn’t help but grin. Served the Yank right! He had almost envied him Marion’s presence, even if he didn’t think Goldstein had actually started anything with her. But the sight of her alone… Rath pictured Marion making the bed; she would definitely make it easier to stay in your room.
The chambermaid who was about to knock on Goldstein’s door, however… well, perhaps she’d scare him to death. Or manage to achieve what the Berlin Police had singularly failed to do and hound him out of town.
Rath watched out of the corner of his eye while he leafed through Czerwinski’s penny dreadful. What a sour face. So, she was ugly and ill-tempered. Rath couldn’t have been happier for the Yank.
Only, he didn’t open.
The chambermaid knocked again, and Rath began to wonder. Was the man asleep, or had he sensed what awaited him? The woman jangled a set of keys, opened the door and went inside. Rath put the novel down. Tom Shark had lost his attention once and for all.
What followed was an interesting insight into the hotel’s hierarchy. First it was a slightly older boy who emerged from the lift and headed for 301, knocking and entering as soon as the door opened. Not a minute later came Teubner, the porter, stepping hurriedly into the corridor and following suit, without so much as a glance at Rath.