The steps drew closer. Something was different this time, and she needed a moment to work out what it was. There were steps but no voices.
While she was still thinking, the great metal door swung open up ahead. All manner of thoughts raced through her mind as she prepared to retreat. She could only head further back, into the rear rooms, where the stench was at its worst. Damn it, what a stupid hiding place, but what else could Erich have come up with at such short notice? He could hardly have smuggled her under the bed at his parents’ house – or under his own bed, for that matter, which was a mattress in the kitchen – but he remembered the stockyard and slaughterhouse where he’d done his training, and the abandoned building there.
Alex stood with her back against the wall in the furthermost room, like a mouse caught in a trap. Hopefully the intruders would stay up at the front somewhere, otherwise her hideout would be blown, and she wasn’t sure she could find a new one at short notice. She had to stay out of sight of the cops. Vicky wasn’t much use at this sort of thing, having only ever stayed at the old axle factory. Unlike Benny and Alex, she, Fanny and Kotze hadn’t assigned each of their flats a different letter of the alphabet.
Alex peered through the crack, saw them but couldn’t make out their faces. It didn’t seem to be people from the slaughter yard: no blood-spattered white clothing. Instead they wore normal outdoor clothes, nothing special, patched in places and full of holes. A few harmless bums looking for a roof over their heads, just like her.
Or so she thought, until she heard them, and knew they were anything but harmless.
‘Where is she then, the whore? You’re certain she’s here?’
‘Of course. This is where Vicky came out of.’
Alex froze. She had hoped never to hear their voices again. The first belonged to Ralf Krahl, the biggest scumbag in the factory; the second to one of his crew, Felix Pirsig, nicknamed Peaches, a suitably incongruous moniker given his acne-ridden features. Only, right now, it was no laughing matter.
Damn it!
Peaches must have followed Vicky, even though Alex had warned her to be on her guard! Kralle and his crew had had it in for her since she rescued the court woman. A rat like Kralle had a long memory. He had never forgiven Alex for jamming a knife in his arse when he had groped her a while back, rubbing his hard dick up against her as he tried to stick his tongue down her throat. While he was busying himself, she pulled the knife and stabbed him through his trousers right in the middle of his fat arse. Since then he had left her in peace, even if she knew he was only biding his time.
Things were looking better for Kralle than for her. She didn’t even have her knife since the cops had taken it off her. Her best chance was if they assumed she was gone and gave up.
They didn’t oblige. Through the crack she watched them draw closer. There wasn’t much here to defend herself with. She’d have had more choice in the axle factory. Fucking hell! She had deliberately avoided going back there, but these arseholes just had to come to the one place where she thought she was safe.
A wooden handle lay under a mountain of junk.
She pulled until realising what it was: a fleshing knife, an old, rusty fleshing knife which would have been used to scrape the hide from left-over meat. The warped blade was rusty and blunt and had wooden handles on both sides. She grabbed it and searched for a hiding place as the steps drew closer.
No luck, God damnit! There was only one possibility left…
The door opened and suddenly Kralle was so close she was afraid he might hear her pounding heart. ‘Shit, Peaches. What kind of dump is this? Do you see that lezzer anywhere? Or are we supposed to fuck the rats?’
Alex was starting to believe in miracles, holding her breath behind the door, when she heard someone step past Kralle into the room. Felix Pirsig turned slowly around but, before he caught sight of her, she drew back and slammed the fleshing knife against his head. She only struck him with the handle, but it sounded like he had lost a few teeth as he tumbled to the floor. The momentum carried her along and out, so that she stood over Peaches as he bled, staring into the empty eyes of his friends.
73
Erika Voss was bursting with curiosity when Rath returned to the office, but his lips were sealed. Gräf and Tornow weren’t back from Moabit, so he withdrew to his desk and closed the door, which told her that he didn’t want to be disturbed. Kirie settled under the table, devouring a Boulette as a reward for covering so many kilometres. Rath took out a large brown envelope from between the newspapers he carried under his arm. He had good reason to conceal it from her curious gaze. He couldn’t reveal to anyone at the Castle how he had got hold of it. No doubt Böhm would have given anything for its contents, which made keeping it from him all the more appealing. Knowledge is power, his father used to say, and Engelbert Rath had made it to Police Director.
He opened the envelope. The police sketch of Abraham Goldstein tumbled out, complete with a few composition notes, alongside six typewritten sides which packed a serious punch. There was a profile of Abraham Goldstein, at least as informative as the one the Bureau of Investigation had sent by teleprinter two weeks ago, only this time in German, and supplemented by the information that the same Abraham Goldstein, whose weapon of choice was known to be a Remington 51, had come to blows with a troop of SA men in Humboldthain on Tuesday night. Then came summaries of two ballistics reports, one dated from Friday concerning the bullet that had been recovered from Humboldthain; the second, dated yesterday, dealing with two bullets of the same calibre which had been discovered in an unidentified corpse, found at the dump at Schöneiche a few days ago. This was confidential police information, ready made for the press and augmented by certain theories, for instance that the unidentified corpse could have been the victim of a gangland shooting, and that the bullets most likely stemmed from a single weapon, an American Remington 51.
Rath skimmed yesterday’s article. There was no mention of a Remington; Goldstein’s weapon of choice wasn’t mentioned until today’s edition. Jewish Gangster Left To Terrorise Berlin. Fink had taken up the suggestions of his informant and posited the theory that Abraham Goldstein was operating on behalf of a Communist-infiltrated Berlin Ringverein; and that the dead SA man and landfill site corpse were simply the first of many expected victims in an orchestrated campaign of retaliation.
Rath couldn’t help thinking of Hugo Lenz and Rudi Höller. Was it possible that this wasn’t a struggle between Berolina and the Nordpiraten at all? Was a third underworld organisation involved? Or had he simply been taken in by the freewheeling imagination of Stefan Fink, who had let the discovery of confidential police information go to his head?
He put the paper aside.
Realising that Rath had him over a barrel, Fink had passed on everything he knew, which, unfortunately, wasn’t quite as much as hoped for. He still didn’t know where the leak at Alex was. Fink had found the envelope with the sketch, Goldstein’s profile and the first ballistics report, on Sunday in his pigeonhole at work. The second report he had discovered in the same place yesterday afternoon. There was no reason to doubt him. Following their meeting at Aschinger, Rath had accompanied him into the nearby editorial office and made off with the envelope.
He returned the papers and sketch to the envelope and placed it in the lower drawer of his desk, stowing a few files on top and weighing it all down with the Funkturm miniature that stood on his desk, a souvenir commemorating his status as the broadcasting tower’s millionth visitor, and a prime example of the category Gifts that no one needs.