The alarm clock this morning had sounded brutally early. She let Gereon sleep on and got up, sitting at the kitchen table with a coffee after her shower. She wanted to smoke but her Junos were finished, and so she reached inside Gereon’s jacket for his Overstolz. Whereupon she discovered the rings.
She had a guilty conscience even now thinking about it. Two identical rings that looked damn expensive, and one of them fit her ring finger perfectly. The other was a little bigger.
Damn it! So many opposing thoughts ran through her mind that she had to sit down. In the process she even forgot about the cigarettes.
Engagement rings! He had engagement rings in his pocket!
Was he really planning to propose yesterday evening, on the same night she had summoned him to talk? With Gereon, anything was possible. She couldn’t help thinking back to Cologne, to that awful evening in the restaurant, to the roses he had used to strike Guido. He could have been carrying these rings around for days, weeks, months, waiting for the right moment. It seemed hard to imagine that Gereon Rath, who could be pretty bold when dealing with superiors and criminals, was too cowardly, or too meek, or whatever, to ask for her hand in marriage. But, then again, was it really? Perhaps it wasn’t.
She didn’t know whether it was joy or despair, this feeling that was coursing through her veins, gnawing away at her insides and, even more than her jumbled thoughts, had her slumped on the nearest chair.
She always thought she knew what she wanted. But with Gereon she wasn’t sure. He had disappointed her more than anyone in her life, but she had never given up on him and, if that was a mistake, it was one she savoured with every fibre of her being.
The six months they would have to spend apart suddenly seemed like a godsend. If after these six months she still didn’t know what she wanted, whether she wanted to share her life with him or not, then perhaps she really was beyond help. Until then – well, why shouldn’t she just enjoy being with him, and cast all reservations aside.
At the Wertheim gate a lorry halted directly beside her, smelling of blood and diesel. On the driver’s door was the logo of the Central Stockyard and Slaughterhouse. The driver got out and showed the uniformed guard his papers, climbed back and drove into the courtyard. It proved trickier for Charly to enter. No papers, no right of access. Not even her feminine wiles, so effective on Herr Eick, could help. The man at the gate was unmoved.
‘No entry for unauthorised persons!’ seemed to be the only sentence he knew.
‘I’m looking for an Erich Rambow.’
She might as well have been talking to the no parking sign. After two or three more attempts, the gatekeeper froze to a statue and simply ceased to react, not so much as flinching until the next truck appeared, likewise bearing the Central Stockyard and Slaughterhouse logo. The meat they handled at Wertheim must come from Friedrichshain.
For the first time in her life she found herself thinking a little queasily about the mountains of flesh Berlin must consume each day, and felt a sudden desire for a simple green salad. The smell of blood soon overwhelmed everything else, leaving no room for vegetarian thoughts. A cigarette helped.
She stood smoking in Vossstrasse, waiting for she didn’t know who. Alex’s erstwhile suitor must be in his early or mid-twenties, she thought, keeping an eye out for men who fitted this description. Someone approached now who looked like a butcher’s apprentice. She intercepted him a few metres outside the gate.
‘Are you Erich Rambow?’
The boy was twenty at most and looked her up and down unashamedly. ‘What do I get if I am?’ he asked.
Charly was speechless, but only for a moment, then she found an appropriate response. ‘How about a boot between your legs?’ She hadn’t grown up in Moabit for nothing.
‘Alright, alright!’ The boy raised his hands in self-defence. ‘I wouldn’t like to be in Erich’s shoes.’ He shook his head, swung his bag over his shoulder and carried on to the gate, where he showed the gatekeeper his time card and went inside. Charly gazed after him. This could get interesting. Three more attempts, she told herself, and no more. She had better things to do than listen to little boys cracking wise.
The next candidate approached riding a bicycle. He braked furiously in front of the entrance. Charly went over and tried her luck again, this time armed with a proper comeback.
‘Erich Rambow?’
‘Who’s asking?’
It sounded more suspicious than hostile. He looked a little spare for a butcher, but his flushed cheeks denoted the slightly raised blood pressure common among meat-eaters.
‘I’m a friend of Alexandra Reinhold,’ she said.
Rambow dismounted and pushed the old boneshaker in the direction of the gate. ‘OK,’ he said, still suspicious. He had a thick Berlin accent. ‘What is it you want from me?’
‘I’m looking for Alex. You’re friends with her, aren’t you?’
‘I haven’t seen her in ages. You’re asking the wrong man. She ran away, didn’t she? Now let me past. I’m running late already.’
Erich Rambow ditched her, waved his time card at the gatekeeper and entered. Countless bicycles gleamed in the sun next to the steps by the loading platform. He parked his alongside and bounded up. Standing at the door for a moment and gripping its metal handle, his eyes searched for Charly through the bars of the fence. He looked her up and down shamelessly, which she observed, back turned, from the safety of her make-up mirror, before disappearing inside the enormous building.
She waited for a moment before approaching the gatekeeper again.
‘No entry for unauthorised persons,’ he began, before she could speak.
‘I don’t want to go in,’ she said, pleased at the look of bafflement on the man’s face. ‘When do staff in the butcher’s usually finish for the evening?’
This time, the gatekeeper was more forthcoming. He was probably just glad to be rid of a nuisance like her.
69
Margot Kohn was flabbergasted. Her nephew Abraham was in Berlin, her brother’s son? She didn’t know anything about it. And that Nathan’s boy was a gangster, a killer to boot, well, she just couldn’t believe it.
‘My brother founded a textile dealership in America, which Abraham’s been running for years.’ She looked outraged. ‘A gangster, you say? He’s a respectable textile trader!’
‘Has your brother retired?’ Rath asked, pouring oil on troubled waters.
‘My brother is dead.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.’
This was anything but a model interrogation. Rath glanced at Tornow, who seemed unmoved. At that moment a girl broke the embarrassed silence with a tray of tea and biscuits.
They sat in an elegant drawing room, a little old-fashioned perhaps, but impeccably furnished. Margot Kohn, née Goldstein, lived with her family in the shadow of the Siegessäule, barely a stone’s throw away from the Reichstag and only a few doors from the Interior Ministry. From its beginnings as a pleasure quarter, over the decades In den Zelten had become a more exclusive address, especially where it bordered on the Alsenviertel, an area full of diplomats and politicians.
Rath looked out of the window at the stony bulk of the Kroll Opera House silhouetted by the grey-blue sky behind the trees. The girl handed out the tea things and, after a nod from her mistress, disappeared, leaving Margot Kohn to serve her unbidden visitors herself. Rath added a little sugar and glanced briefly at Tornow, who understood. Time for a change-up.