The assistant detective opened his mouth to say something when a dark shadow appeared in the door behind him. Rath heard a dull thud as Kowalski hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.
Seconds later he gazed into the double barrel of a shotgun and the inert, unshaven face of Wilhelm Adamek. The only sound was that of the hammer being cocked.
41
The place smelled of blood. Hardly the ideal start to the day.
An employee in white overalls led Andreas Lange along a cold storage hall, in which bloody, skinned cadavers hung from the ceiling, then through a room in which more white overalls stood at large tables hacking the corpses to pieces. Lange toyed with the idea of choosing a salad at lunch. The office was at the far end of the building. He wondered if there was an alternative access point.
Fehling Foods had its headquarters in Tegel, on the northern outskirts of the city. Franz Fehling was an elderly man with a neat white beard, who appeared more respectable than an evangelical pastor, and spoke just as unctuously. ‘I’m surprised the police are bothering with this. It was over a year ago now. Besides, I thought all disputes between the Fehling firm and Kempinski had been resolved. I am more than surprised that Kempinski think it necessary…’
‘Kempinski don’t think anything,’ Lange interrupted. ‘The Berlin Criminal Police are here of their own accord.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t have to. It’ll be enough to answer my questions.’ It was a line he had from Rath. More often than not it had the desired effect. Clearly, Franz Fehling wasn’t immune. Arrogant and upstanding moments before, almost imperceptibly the man’s shoulders began to drop. ‘How long have you supplied Kempinski?’
‘Almost ten years, and our turnover is constantly increasing. Wild game is becoming ever more popular, at least where fine dining is concerned.’
Lange made a few notes. That, too, could put an interviewee on edge. Especially when you took your time. ‘Did you receive any similar complaints before May 1931? From Kempinski? Or other clients?’
‘Every so often one receives complaints…’
‘Of course.’
‘But not as grievous as these…’ Fehling shook his head vigorously. ‘Twenty kilos of fallow deer, and the whole lot crawling with maggots. To this day I can’t explain how it happened.’
‘I’d think it was the flies laying their eggs.’
‘Oh, knock it off!’ Fehling was shouting now. ‘Have you any idea how strict the regulations are? We take a sample from each batch. There wasn’t the slightest contamination. It wasn’t until Haus Vaterland that the problem showed, and then the sheer scale of it… an absolute catastrophe.’ He shook his head.
‘Did you trace the origin of the fallow deer?’
‘The meat came from a breeding farm near Soldin. In the New March.’
‘A breeding farm? I thought you shot game in the forest.’
Fehling seemed put out. ‘It stands to reason that in a city of four million the demand for game cannot be met by local hunting preserves alone. Besides, it’s easier to treat the meat, and you don’t have to pick out shotgun pellets before you start.’
Lange made several more notes. Fehling squinted nervously at the pad, but unless he was clairvoyant, he might as well give up. No one could read Andreas Lange’s handwriting, sometimes not even Lange himself.
‘Is that how it’s usually done? Keeping game as livestock and then slaughtering, rather than shooting it?’
‘Define “usually”. The end customer shouldn’t necessarily be aware.’
‘What about the intermediate customer?’
‘Meaning?’
‘Kempinski.’
‘The kitchen would know. There are no issues there. Our meat isn’t any worse than wild game. If anything, it’s better.’
‘Except when it’s overrun with maggots.’ Fehling fell silent. The subject clearly made him uncomfortable. ‘How,’ Lange continued, ‘did you manage to persuade the Haus Vaterland kitchen to keep using your firm as a supplier?’
Fehling’s eyes flitted this way and that. ‘Naturally we… Well, naturally the first thing we did was recall the spoiled product. And waive our fee.’
‘I should think so.’
‘Even though we weren’t aware of any fault!’
‘You never considered that the maggots might have got into the meat at Haus Vaterland?’
‘Yes, but… it doesn’t usually happen that fast. They take a while to hatch. Someone would’ve had to deliberately…’ He waved the idea away. ‘They noticed the next day.’ He looked at Lange. ‘So the buck stops with us.’
‘I assume that Kempinski is an important client?’
‘Of course.’
‘A client you wouldn’t want to lose, and no doubt it was important that news of the scandal didn’t reach the public.’
‘I don’t know what you’re driving at.’
‘I’m just trying to work out how important it was for you that this matter be resolved, discreetly…’
‘Of the utmost importance!’
‘…and how much you were willing to invest to make it happen.’
Fehling no longer looked comfortable behind his desk. ‘I don’t know quite what it is you’re insinuating, but I’d like you to leave my office now. I have work to do.’
Lange left his card on the desk. ‘Perhaps you were, how shall I say this, pressured. If you ever want to talk, there’s my number.’
He stood up, turning a final time to see Fehling reading his card. ‘One last thing,’ he said. ‘Experience tells me that blackmail never ends. Once you’ve been squeezed the first time, it just carries on. The threat lingers in the air, and there’s nothing you can do. A nasty feeling.’ He put on his hat. ‘A simple confession often works wonders.’
42
Rath stared into the darkness of the double barrel, not daring to move. He had raised both hands, one of which still held the bloody shirt. Old Adamek didn’t breathe a word. Kowalski groaned from the floor.
He decided to put an end to the silence. ‘We not intruders,’ he said. ‘We police. Myself and colleague.’ He gestured towards Kowalski with his chin. The assistant detective was slowly coming round.
Adamek opened his mouth, and this time didn’t speak Polish, or even broken German. There was a light, sing-song quality to his Masurian accent. ‘What are you doing in my home? Do you have a search warrant?’
Rath forced a smile. ‘We wanted to question you. The door was open and we…’
‘Have you been sniffing around?’
‘I just wanted to check you weren’t in bed.’
‘You’re trespassing.’
He hadn’t expected old Adamek to have such command of the Penal Code, or, for that matter, the German language. ‘I’ve explained why we’re here. Now, perhaps you could explain why you floored my colleague and are holding me at gunpoint.’
‘Because I thought you were intruders.’ The man refused to lower his gun.
‘Well, now you know we aren’t.’
Kowalski sat up and felt his head. He needed a moment to grasp the situation, then said something to Adamek that sounded like Masurian-Polish. The man responded in kind, weapon trained as before. There was a brief back-and-forth until Wilhelm Adamek finally lowered the shotgun. Rath put his hands down.
‘Would you like a tea?’ Adamek asked. Rath nodded, and the old man vanished inside the lounge.
‘What did you say to him?’ he asked.
‘That no one cares if he’s been poaching in the Markowsken forest or anywhere else. We won’t be bringing charges for that, or this little episode here.’ Kowalski pointed towards the blood-encrusted shirt. ‘Why don’t you put it back with the other dirty things, otherwise he’ll think we’re collecting evidence against him.’