It would have been useful to consult Gereon, but no one had heard from him in days.
Though still registered at his Treuburg hotel, he had failed to return calls from headquarters. ‘Gereon Rath missing in action’ was by now an all too familiar trope, and Böhm was beside himself.
Even more vexing was his failure to contact her. If he had done so, she might have covered for him. She’d have given him a piece of her mind, of course, but never in a million years would she have shopped him to Böhm. Didn’t he trust her, or was he simply trying to avoid the inevitable quarrel?
In the meantime she had relieved Erika Voss of her canine duties and moved into Carmerstrasse with Kirie, in the hope that he might call there, but the line was so dead she wondered if it was even connected.
One evening she decided she’d had enough and telephoned his hotel. Inspector Rath was currently unavailable, said a voice on the line, and it wasn’t certain when he would be back. The porter noted her request, but Gereon’s call never came. She hardly dared try again, to suffer the staff skating politely around his absence. Having called at all times of day and night, she asked herself if he was sleeping there at all. But then… where was he sleeping…? The bastard!
Nor could she reach him through the Treuburg Police, since he hadn’t shared the details of his investigation with his Masurian colleagues. The local chief constable was decidedly miffed. She could just imagine Gereon treating him with the arrogance of a big-city cop investigating a small-town crime – seasoned with a good dose of Rath-ian pig-headedness. Gereon Rath, one-man investigation machine. God, she hated it. If he would just give them something, or was he planning to arrest Artur Radlewski on his own?
The Treuburg Police seemed not to trust him, and the same was true in Berlin, with the exception of Gräf, perhaps, and a few others.
She focused on the job in hand. She couldn’t work this Gustav Wengler out. How he listened to Weiss in a spirit of reverence, when she knew that he harboured Nazi sympathies, and would not be pleased that a Jew was delivering his brother’s final address. Slippery: the word could have been coined for the man.
Maybe they’d crack him without Gereon’s help. They had cited him to appear at Alex again before leaving town, and this time they had a surprise in store.
64
The clock tower on the administration building showed twenty past nine. Bright neon lit the grounds and was reflected in the water of the harbour basin.
Reinhold Gräf looked down from high above the quay, in the cabin of a loading crane belonging to the Berlin Harbour and Warehouse Company, through a set of field glasses taken from police stocks. A lone ship was being discharged, otherwise all was quiet. Most harbour workers were gone, with only a couple of dozen still on their feet – as well as a platoon of anti-riot officers currently hidden from view.
Until last year Warehouse 2 had been where the Ford company assembled its cars for the German market, before shifting production to a factory in Cologne, contributing at once to Berlin’s growing unemployment and the vacancy rate of its warehouses. It was the ideal hideout for a hundred or more waiting officers. The Chief Customs Office had suggested it, and Berlin CID had put in its men as discreetly as possible, with civilian coats thrown over their uniforms, their weapons and shakos stowed in crates. They looked like a company of workers charged with restoring the warehouse to life. Detective Chief Inspector Böhm and a senior customs official were last to enter. Böhm issued the men with their instructions, and distributed their shakos and carbines.
Gräf gazed at the telephone beside the levers and buttons, fearing the slightest touch might set the crane in motion. The phones were used by crane drivers to co-ordinate with the foremen at ground level, but Gräf’s was connected directly with Warehouse 2. He knew this, but still gave a start when it rang.
‘Yes?’
‘Anything doing?’
‘Nothing.’
Nine o’clock, Lamkau’s notebook had said. Nine o’clock, Tuesday night. Five hundred crates, each containing twenty-four bottles. Stacks of paper – and even more schnapps. Enough to bring serious charges, but they didn’t know which boat, only which harbour, and here in the northern basin as many as five vessels were moored.
He was wondering whether someone had smelled a rat when there was movement on Westhafenstrasse. They were coming. One vehicle after another rolled onto the site via the eastern gate, five lily-white delivery vans bearing slogans for Mathée Luisenbrand and Treuburger Bärenfang. Gräf hadn’t expected the Lamkau firm to transport such a delicate load so openly. Perhaps they were wrong, and the contents was the legitimate, taxed product of the Luisenhöhe distillery? But then why would Lamkau have entered the delivery date in a notebook otherwise recording illegal income that had no place in official company documents?
The vans pulled up at the loading bay next to the warehouse and Gräf used his field glasses to check the name of the ship they had stopped beside. MS Erika.
A few men appeared on deck and opened the loading hatches. Others emerged from the vans. Each vehicle held two men, clad in the uniform of the Lamkau firm. He was surprised at first, but anything else would have been more conspicuous. The men weren’t doing anything illegal, just loading a cargo ship with crates of schnapps, identical to those Gräf had seen in the lift at Haus Vaterland, next to Lamkau’s dead body.
The difference was that these crates held illegally distilled rotgut rather than brand product. No doubt it was for the American market, where it would be shipped with the aid of the Concordia Ringverein.
At least, that’s what he hoped. If not, they could be made to look very foolish.
A gangway slid out from the ship, and the men formed a chain from the first truck. It wasn’t long before they were loading at breakneck pace, like a bucket brigade – only with crates. He reached for the telephone and waited for Böhm to pick up. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Warehouse 2, westside, the MS Erika. Five trucks, all told about a dozen men. None armed so far as I can see, but possible some are carrying – above all, those on board.’
A few seconds later a large sliding door opened and the customs inspector stepped onto the loading ramp, behind him Wilhelm Böhm, megaphone in hand. Lamkau’s men didn’t notice until the uniform cops took up position on the ramp, carbines at the ready. ‘Your attention, please,’ Böhm’s voice echoed. ‘This is the police!’
A lone crate crashed to the floor.
‘That’s right,’ Böhm continued. ‘Drop the crates, and place your hands in the air. You’re surrounded and under arrest. As of this moment these goods are the property of the Berlin Chief Customs Office.’
A driver climbed into his van and stepped on the gas. The engine roared as the vehicle raced across the quay, perilously close to the harbour edge. Two men jumped aside to avoid being knocked down. The driver was headed for Westhafenstrasse, but the eastern gate was locked, guarded by armed uniform cops. The van screeched into a turn, but no one gave chase. Heedless flight only confirmed that an illegal operation had been blown. Encountering more armed officers, the driver gave up and exited the truck with hands in the air. Gräf stowed his field glasses and began the descent.
Arriving below, he heard diesel engines and saw the police vehicles stationed behind the admin building move in. The smugglers had their hands in the air, and made no move to resist arrest.