‘Then I’ll need it back,’ the editor growled.
‘Of course, I’m finished anyway. Many thanks.’ Rath handed the man his magnifying glass and turned towards Wengler. ‘Are you assisting with the article on the plebiscite anniversary?’
‘I don’t need any assistance,’ the editor protested. ‘But tomorrow’s edition will naturally include an interview with the chief of the Homeland Service.’
‘In that case, gentlemen,’ Rath moved towards the door, ‘keep up the good work.’
‘What have you got there?’ Wengler asked, gesturing towards the folder.
‘Just a few papers. Hard to read, very small handwriting.’ He opened the door and the bell rang once more.
‘Did Maria Cofalka give you those?’ Wengler asked.
Goddamn it! The man had seen them together, or it had been one of his many informers. Best to brush it aside.
‘I don’t wish to take up any more of your time. Goodbye, gentlemen, madam.’ Rath tipped his hat and left the offices of the Treuburger Zeitung, folder wedged under his arm. In the street he turned around. Through the glass door Gustav Wengler eyed him with undisguised suspicion.
59
At last they had something to go on. Like all duty officers, Siegbert Wengler had left an emergency contact number with Traffic Police Headquarters. It had been updated four weeks ago, the only indication that his circumstances had changed. It wasn’t a Schöneberg number, but belonged, instead, to a butcher’s near Anhalter Bahnhof, in Kreuzberg.
Gräf stowed whatever photos of Wengler he could find, commandeered a couple of forensic technicians and made his way over. After yesterday’s disaster, when it became clear that not even Wengler’s brother knew the dead man’s address, he had put in another call to Traffic Police. Whether the strike would gain Böhm’s approval was moot, but at least he could feel better about himself.
Approval or not, the DCI had failed to provide any additional officers, leaving him to deal with Forensics alone again. For once Lange or Charly would have sufficed, but they were still occupied with the blackmail case from Haus Vaterland. Today they would pass it, along with the two suspects, onto Arthur Nebe and his colleagues in Robbery, who were responsible for extortion under threat of force. It seemed less and less likely that the case was connected with the dead men, but it was good that someone like Nebe, who had solved several homicides in the past, was involved. If there was a link, he’d be the one to find it.
The butcher’s was in Kleinbeerenstrasse. Despite being close to the Philharmonic, as well as Wilhelmstrasse and the government buildings, the houses became more run-down the further one ventured from Möckernstrasse. Gräf left the ED men in the car and entered to find a red-cheeked woman gazing at him expectantly. The selection in the glass cabinet didn’t inspire much confidence, everything fatty and stringy, bone shards for boiling. Meat for people who couldn’t afford it.
The woman looked disappointed when she realised he wasn’t intending to buy anything.
‘Herr Siegbert Wengler,’ he said, showing her a photo of the deceased without his shako, ‘left your telephone line as his contact number. Can you tell me where he lives?’
‘I’d have to ask my husband,’ she said, suspiciously. ‘Who wants to know?’ He placed his identification next to the photo. ‘I’m a colleague of Herr Wengler’s.’
She studied his identification closely. ‘Are you really a police officer?’
He took out his disc. ‘Any reason to be suspicious?’
‘Herr Wengler said at some point someone might come looking for him. In which case we should say nothing.’
‘He was afraid of someone,’ Gräf said, ‘and rightly so. He was murdered.’
‘Good God!’
‘You can rest assured, my colleagues and I are trying to find out who was responsible. Now, will you please tell me where he lived.’
More than that, the butcher’s wife had a key.
Wengler’s apartment was located in the same block, albeit in the rear building. She led them across the yard and up two flights of stairs until they stood outside a wooden door. The nameplate was blank, and inside was messy. Judging by the newspapers on the floor, Siegbert Wengler had followed the horses. A pair of trousers and a shirt rested casually over the back of a chair. Without further ado the ED officers set about securing fingerprints.
Gräf pulled on a pair of gloves to avoid the technicians’ wrath, before examining the desk by the window. The most interesting items were to be found in the enclosed drawer. Three death notices, one from Dortmund, one from Wittenberge, one from Berlin, confirmed Siegbert Wengler’s links to Lamkau, Wawerka and Simoneit.
He handed the death notices to the ED officers and turned back to the drawer. Something had caught his eye. The plain, black notebook seemed familiar somehow. It wasn’t like those used by CID, but bigger and thicker, a real doorstopper. Soon he was staring at columns of figures.
At that moment he knew where he had seen it before. They had confiscated it from Herbert Lamkau’s office about a week ago. He leafed through and found a pencil mark he’d made himself.
‘Over here,’ he said to one of the forensic technicians, who reluctantly obeyed. He handed him the notebook. ‘See if you can get any fingerprints. The more, the merrier.’
60
Rath realised he’d had too much to drink after all. Before returning to the celebrations, he’d tried to continue reading the letters in his hotel room but, without the aid of a magnifying glass, it proved impossible. No matter how hard he strained, he could decipher no more than two or three words per sentence.
He wanted to speak with Maria Cofalka again, but found her neither at the festival site nor during the evening’s final act: a torchlit procession that included a farewell performance from the musical society and climaxed at the marketplace with the lighting of the great fire.
If what he’d managed to read was true, then the librarian was right: Gustav Wengler’s tale of the wicked Pole who’d murdered an upstanding German girl was built on a lie.
Outside the Kronprinzen he ran into Karl Rammoser, who was celebrating the evening’s final throes with his teaching colleagues. ‘Maria will be sleeping it off somewhere,’ he said. ‘She can’t take her drink.’ In contrast with the group of teachers, with whom Rath sat quaffing into the long, summer night. The rest of the town, on the other hand, seemed to be asleep as he finally started for home.
Reaching the Salzburger Hof well past midnight he caught the owner’s daughter off guard with her SA man. The pair stood in an entranceway next to the hotel; Fabeck was talking insistently. Hella spotted the returning guest and smiled. Rath smiled back just as Fabeck turned around. Seeing Rath, Fabeck pulled Hella towards him and gave her a lingering kiss. Rath couldn’t help but grin: all the while Fabeck’s tongue was working in her mouth she gazed unashamedly in his direction. This Hella was no country cousin.
As he stood in the bathroom brushing his teeth, he thought again of Artur Radlewski, the man who called himself Tokala. The man who had scalped his own father and fled into the woods; who had witnessed a murder and felt guilty for not having prevented it; and who was clearly far removed from the feeble-minded wood sprite everyone took him for.
For a moment he was tempted to retrieve the letters from the drawer, but without the magnifying glass it was hopeless. Besides, he was far too tired, and too drunk. He undressed, lay down and fell asleep as soon as he hit the mattress, where the Masurian Indian haunted his dreams as a noble savage, appearing almost exactly as he’d pictured Winnetou as a child, an honourable Apache who roamed the Masurian forests until he reached a lake, in whose shallows a dead girl lay.