‘Date of withdrawal, Monday, 30th September 1929,’ Rath read. ‘By a PM Naujoks.’ He looked at the porter. ‘Is it normal for case files to be out this long?’ The man with the uniform cap shrugged. ‘Goddamn it!’ Rath said. ‘Someone must know!’
The porter winced at every word, but Grigat’s thoughts were elsewhere.
‘Naujoks?’ he asked. ‘Polizeimeister Robert Naujoks?’
‘You know the man?’
‘I wouldn’t say “know”. Robert Naujoks was my predecessor here. He took early retirement.’
‘He’s the one stashing these case files?’ Rath was surprised. ‘I don’t know about you, but I picture my retirement differently.’
‘Naujoks was a strange bird.’ Grigat gestured towards the date in the register. ‘The 30th of September must have been his final day on the job. I started exactly one day later.’
37
Robert Naujoks was younger than Rath expected, in his late fifties. The former police constable had chosen to spend his retirement outside the Oletzko region, in a garden settlement in the district capital of Lyck, about thirty kilometres south of Treuburg, and situated, likewise, on a lake. It seemed lakes were a necessary condition of Masurian town life.
The Lycker Lake had a small island that was connected by bridge to the mainland, and it was this island that Naujoks viewed from his study window as he sat smoking his pipe. There are worse fates, Rath thought, as he and Kowalski were shown to their seats.
‘So, you’re interested in the Luisenbrand affair,’ Naujoks said. He wore braces over his shirt, and in his cantankerousness was slightly reminiscent of Wilhelm Böhm – despite being ten years older, white-haired, and without a walrus moustache.
‘We’re interested in Herbert Lamkau, August Simoneit and Johann Wawerka,’ Rath said. ‘A chunk of whose past is contained on your shelves.’
‘The file you mentioned on the telephone? Why these three? Are you investigating them?’
‘I’m investigating whoever is responsible for their deaths.’
Naujoks’s eyebrows gave a twitch. ‘They’re dead?’
‘Yes.’
Excepting his eyebrows, Naujoks remained motionless.
A maid served tea. Robert Naujoks was clearly a bachelor, a status common among police officers. Rath wondered if there might be a reason, realising, in the same moment, that he hadn’t contacted Charly, hadn’t even sent a postcard since arriving in East Prussia.
He took a sip of tea. ‘I used to know a Naujoks in Cologne,’ he said. ‘We were altar boys together, a long time ago. You’re not related?’
Naujoks looked at him blankly. ‘I’m Protestant.’
Like Böhm, the man was impossible to engage in relaxed conversation. ‘Why did you take the file?’ Rath asked, ‘on the day of your retirement?’
Like a stony monument to police investigators of the old school, Robert Naujoks sat on his leather-upholstered armchair and stared blankly out of the window. Only the occasional glow of tobacco from his pipe bowl gave any indication that he was still alive.
Naujoks took the pipe from his mouth and leaned forward. ‘Do you know that feeling? When a case just won’t let go?’
Rath, who knew all too well, nodded his response. ‘They’re the ones you’d do anything to close,’ he said. ‘Damn nuisance for your private life when the work follows you home. It can swallow you up.’
‘That’s just it. My case isn’t closed. Proceedings were discontinued at the behest of the public prosecutor.’
‘You were called off?’
‘If you like.’ Naujoks looked out of the window. ‘Though I’m no dog.’
In some ways he was not unlike a bulldog, albeit one distinguished by years of service. He manoeuvred his body out of the leather chair with surprising ease, and fetched a thick lever arch file with the reference number II Gs 117/24 from the shelf. He placed it on the table. ‘Here it is,’ he said.
Rath opened the cover. Photographs of Lamkau and Wawerka gazed back and, for the first time, Simoneit’s face was there too. The trio might not have inspired confidence but they didn’t look like hardened criminals either. Simoneit appeared almost delicate, unlike Wawerka, who was a great hulk of a man. Only Lamkau’s face had something nasty, something devious, about it.
‘A trio of moonshiners,’ Rath said, looking at Naujoks. ‘Hardly a spectacular case, even if a prominent distillery was implicated. What is it that won’t let you go? The fact that you couldn’t prove anything?’
He knew the investigation had stalled, having read the newspaper articles in the car on the half-hour journey over. It was even alleged that a distilling kettle with Lamkau’s prints had been taken from the evidence room. In other words, not the retired constable’s finest hour.
‘The answer’s in there,’ said Naujoks.
‘And my answer? Why the three men were killed?’
‘I’d need more information about their deaths.’
‘None of them died well. They were paralysed by Indian arrow poison and drowned. We still don’t know the exact cause of death. But…’
‘Indian arrow poison?’ Naujoks raised his eyebrows.
‘Two died in their beds, one in a freight elevator, but what it has to do with moonshining beats me. Apart from the fact that Lamkau was clearly at it again in Berlin, this time with a prominent business.’
‘It wasn’t just moonshining, Inspector,’ Naujoks said, knocking out his pipe. ‘We also investigated a fatality.’ He stood to retrieve a second folder. ‘And I believe the two cases are linked.’
A little later, Rath and Kowalski sat in the car heading north-east. Kowalski steered with the same pensive expression he had maintained in Naujoks’s parlour, but somehow this was different. Rath couldn’t have said just how, but he was starting to understand that Masurian silence was a multifarious beast.
‘Something on your mind?’ he asked.
Kowalski took a moment before he began. ‘I didn’t want to say anything in the presence of Chief Constable Naujoks, Sir.’
‘What didn’t you want to say? Do you think he killed our trio?’
‘No.’ Rath had meant it as a joke, but Kowalski shook his head, deadly serious. ‘There could be someone with a motive.’
‘Who?’
‘Did you see Naujoks’s reaction when you mentioned the Indian arrow poison?’
Rath nodded.
‘Perhaps I should tell you the story of the Radlewski family…’
Martha Radlewski was the fatality Naujoks had touched upon, a notorious drunk found dead in her shanty on the outskirts of town. Next to the body was an almost empty bottle of the tainted Luisenbrand. Naujoks believed she had died from methanol poisoning, but was alone in this view, and somehow the investigations were never merged. Noting the abnormal size of Martha Radlewski’s liver, the pathologist had expressed astonishment that she’d made it to forty-nine, and attributed her death to alcohol abuse in general, rather than the tainted Korn.
Naujoks had said nothing about a Radlewski family, but why would he? The files attested that Martha Radlewski had died alone and destitute, a long-time slave to the bottle.
‘If there’s a story, then why didn’t Naujoks tell it?’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t know,’ Kowalski said. ‘Though he must do – everyone here does. I’d guess his silence is a means of protecting someone. Perhaps he regards these deaths as a kind of belated justice and doesn’t want to voice his suspicions.’
‘You know who he’s trying to protect?’
Kowalski nodded. ‘The Kaubuk.’