The cops who weren’t busy with handcuffs began loading the crates, not just from the Lamkau vans, but also from the quay and cargo ship. Böhm already had a crate open, and fished out a bottle. He took a sniff, made a disgusted face, and passed the bottle to Gräf.
It looked like the Luisenbrand served all over Berlin, but smelled more like methylated spirit than high-end Korn. They’d need to undertake a chemical analysis for the courts, but there was no doubt about it. This was rotgut of the cheapest order. Could they really be palming it off as a German speciality to the Yanks? Gräf wondered how much money was to be made smuggling alcohol into the US given the current dollar exchange rate. Evidently enough to justify doing so on a large scale.
He looked at the men. On board were a few villains whose mugs no doubt already graced the rogues’ gallery, but the men from the delivery vans were just normal Lamkau firm employees. He thought he recognised one or two from the company offices at Tempelhof.
The men took their places on the vehicle platform next to their smuggled goods, and suddenly there was a loud crash of metal. Gräf looked round to see a Lamkau van door fly open and a cop hitting the ground. A white overall flitted through the night like a ghost. Goddamn it!
They must have overlooked someone hidden in the front van, and he had slammed the heavy rear door against the unsuspecting cop’s head. Now he fled across the quay, overalls flapping.
‘Halt!’ Böhm cried into the megaphone. ‘Stay where you are! Or we’ll be forced to shoot!’
The man turned and, in the pale neon light, Gräf thought he recognised Dietrich Assmann, the East Prussian heading up the Lamkau operation to support the grieving widow. But the man kept running, and Gräf could no longer be sure.
‘Stay where you are,’ the megaphone sounded again. ‘Or we’ll shoot.’
A warning shot was fired in line with police protocol. When most crooks would have given up, this one just ran faster.
A second shot ripped through the night, and Gräf was afraid the operation would claim its first fatality when the white overalls appeared to take off, and seemed, for a moment, to be flying, before dropping like a lead weight and disappearing behind the wall of the landing stage. He chased after a couple of cops as they ran towards the harbour edge, and shone his torch on the water below, still foaming from the body’s impact.
‘There!’ The torch beam caught something white rising slowly to the surface, the overalls borne upwards by air bubbles. The fugitive had disappeared.
65
It was late, the office dark and deserted. Gräf had gone out to the Westhafen with Böhm, and Erika Voss had finished for the day. Charly switched on the light and hung her coat on the stand. Surveillance work wasn’t popular, which was why it was usually left to the cadets. She had been shadowing Gustav Wengler since early morning. For most of the time he had been with relations from Danzig, who had stayed on after the funeral. Now they were back in their hotel. It didn’t look as if he would make for the harbour anytime soon, but they would stay on him all the same.
Lange had relieved her about an hour ago, and while he sat in the green Opel outside the Eden Hotel, awaiting their target’s next move, she headed back to police headquarters. She didn’t know where else she could go.
Despite taking mental leave of the flat in Spenerstrasse, she hadn’t found the courage to tell Greta about the changes in her life and, even after spending the last few nights, she still felt like a stranger in Charlottenburg. The flat was too big, especially when she was alone. Perhaps if she’d been able to keep Kirie… but the surveillance operation had meant handing canine duties back to Erika Voss. She fetched the Vaterland case from the shelf.
Herbert Lamkau. Three crimes converged in the person of the deceased spirits merchant: murder, blackmail and bootlegging. How were they linked?
By now, blackmail was beyond doubt. Riedel and Unger sat in custody awaiting trial, each blaming the other, which only made things easier. Skimming Nebe’s interrogation transcripts, she couldn’t help but smile. The way he had duped the pair was a thing of beauty. A throwaway remark had led Unger to believe Riedel had dropped him in it, which resulted in the head chef doing the dirty on his partner. The back-and-forth had continued between interview rooms, culminating in two written confessions waiting to be signed.
By accusing Lamkau of selling cheap rotgut, Unger and Riedel had unwittingly touched a nerve. The Lamkau firm was indeed pedalling moonshine, the proceeds of which were painstakingly recorded in the notebook Gräf had recovered from Siegbert Wengler’s flat. It had taken some time for police to decipher the columns of numbers, but it had been worth it. Though still unsure how and when Wengler might have stolen the notebook, they were no longer in any doubt that he had.
Even so, Wengler hadn’t been able to protect Lamkau from his blackmailers. That task had fallen to others. Charly had recognised one of the men she’d seen in Linkstrasse in the rogues’ gallery: Rudolf Haas, aka Lovely Rudi, the right hand man of Concordia chief Paul Marczewski, also known as Polish-Paule. Though still unidentified, there was every reason to assume Haas’s accomplice was, likewise, a fully paid-up member of the Concordia Ringverein. Charly wondered if the pair hadn’t been involved in Lamkau’s death, or whether it was a vendetta, as Gereon suspected, pursued by a man whose mother had fallen foul of the company’s rotgut. What Gereon didn’t know, because no one could possibly have told him, was that Lamkau was still at it eight years on. Which meant there could be countless additional victims, and therefore, countless additional people with grounds for revenge.
Gereon. Goddamn it! She was thinking about him again. She looked out of the window, but dusk had already turned to darkness, and all she could see was her yawning reflection. She was tired. If only she knew where he was, the swine!
She was starting to worry. Had something happened to him? No, the Treuburg authorities would have been in touch – or that colleague from Königsberg he’d mentioned on the telephone.
She decided to try his hotel again, no matter how ridiculous it might feel. At least in Carmerstrasse she could use the telephone without colleagues listening. To say nothing of Greta. Her friend would have killed herself laughing if she’d known Charly was worried about a man. The truth was she wasn’t sure if it was worry; it could just be anger at the bastard’s stubborn refusal to get in touch.
66
Strange smells. Animal sweat and herbs. Camomile and vinegar. Light behind the darkness. A gleam behind the eyes.
Dream scraps. Memories.
The moon.
Charly’s smile.
Slipping out of reach.
Eyes open. Stinging light.
A wooden spoon. Steaming fluid. Disgusting smell. Animal sweat. Herbs. Camomile and vinegar.
Drink, drink!
A gnarled voice.
Turn away. Close eyes.
Charly’s smile.
A jolt towards the light.
Infernal grin, black beast, teeth bared; red, panting tongue. Above, a blonde beard.
No strength, no fight.
Drink!
Gnarled voice. Behind the beard.
The spoon again. Disgusting taste, bitter and oily and hot. Involuntary swallow. Camomile and vinegar and honey and herbs.
A sudden shiver. Enveloping warmth. Great fatigue.
Fatigue that excludes all else.
Falling back.
Eyelids.
Heavy.
Closed.
Darkness, sleep, death.