Forbearance is not acquittance, he thought, and crossed to reception. No one there. He slammed the bell so hard it might have been a high striker.
He felt ready to take on the entire Rickert family if necessary. Rammoser had let him sleep, waking him around nine. After a bath, a decent shave, and a proper breakfast with coffee – sans leg of squirrel – he felt almost human again. Rammoser had offered a replacement suit from his wardrobe. The trousers were a little short and the jacket had patches on its elbows, but otherwise it was a perfect fit, even if it made him look like a village teacher. A village teacher returning from a school trip, for Rath still wore Herr Damerau’s mud-encrusted hiking boots.
He had caught the ten o’clock from Wielitzken. Rammoser had recommended that he find a doctor, but upon reaching Treuburg station the first thing he did was buy three ten-packs of Overstolz. After that he made for the telephone booths and requested a long-distance call to Berlin, lighting the first cigarette as he waited to be connected. He asked for Charly’s extension, but got Böhm instead, and hung up without a word. He had no desire to be recalled while there was still business to attend to here. In the Salzburger Hof, for example.
He slammed the bell again and Hermann Rickert appeared straightaway, looking him up and down, as if to make sure it really was his sometime guest. ‘Inspector, what a surprise!’
‘Isn’t it just?’
‘You left without notifying us. We were somewhat taken aback.’
‘Old Adamek could have told you where I was.’
The hotelier looked at him blankly. ‘I asked Chief Constable Grigat, but apparently you kept him in the dark.’
‘He said that?’
‘I had to have your room cleared, as we had a number of guests over the weekend. You’re welcome to have it back.’
‘How kind.’ Rath wasn’t sure Hermann Rickert noted his sarcasm.
‘You ought to have told us you were staying out of town. We’d have kept your case here for you.’
‘I’m afraid that wasn’t possible.’
‘Well, I don’t mean to be awkward. How about we just charge you for the case? A week in left luggage.’ Rickert smiled his politest hotelier’s smile.
‘Most obliging. Then I’d like to have my old room back.’
‘Of course.’ Rickert fetched the key from the board. ‘I’ll have your case brought up immediately.’
‘Thank you.’ Rath nodded. ‘And… you’ll remember I’d lost something before my… departure? Did you manage to…?’
‘But of course! My apologies, how could I forget?’ Rickert stooped to retrieve a black folder from behind the counter.
‘Where did you find it?’
‘It was my daughter, actually. She found it while clearing your room for our weekend guests, on Sonnabend. It must have slipped behind the bed.’
‘I see.’ Rath took the folder and key, and headed up to his room.
On entering, the first thing he did was check that the letters were all there. At least one was missing, the lines he’d been reading prior to the theft. As for the rest, he couldn’t be sure – and the only person who knew for certain was dead. The news about Maria Cofalka had shaken him. Her death was neither accident nor suicide, nor was it a coincidence.
There was a knock: not Hella, but Reimund, the Rickert’s factotum. In one hand he held a suitcase, in the other a pair of brogues. Rath put on the shoes, but hung his brown suit in the wardrobe, the only one left for the journey back to Berlin. He locked the folder in the desk, pocketed the key and exited the hotel. First stop was Goldaper Strasse, where he called at the shoemaker’s workshop. Friedrich Kowalski wore a leather apron and held a small hammer in his hand. He looked surprised.
‘I wanted to return these,’ Rath said, dropping the muddy boots on the floor so that the crusts flaked off. ‘Please send my regards to Herr Damerau and tell him many thanks. They were a great help.’
‘Inspector!’ The shoemaker looked at the shoes, then at Rath. ‘I thought you weren’t coming back.’
‘I nearly didn’t.’ Rath peered inside the hall. ‘Where’s your esteemed nephew?’
‘In Königsberg.’
‘In Königsberg. I see. What’s he doing there?’
‘Working, what else? He was recalled, about a week ago now.’
‘And the fact that he abandoned me in the forest? That didn’t bother anyone here?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘That’s right, your nephew abandoned me. He and old Adamek. I almost died out there on the moors.’
‘Come inside, Inspector.’ A short time later Rath sat with a cup of tea at Kowalski’s kitchen table. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand,’ the cobbler said. ‘You sent him back yourself, didn’t you? With a message for Grigat.’
‘The last thing I told your nephew was to keep watch by some clearing on the border. By the time I returned he and Adamek were both gone.’
Kowalski shook his head. ‘That’s not like Anton. He never lets anyone down.’
‘What’s this about a message for Grigat?’
‘He didn’t tell me. He had to set off pretty much right away after returning from the district office. Königsberg needed him urgently, him and the car.’
‘No one thought to ask about me?’
‘Anton was rather vague, but somehow we all assumed you no longer needed his help.’
Rath nodded pensively. Someone here was playing him false, and there were no prizes for guessing who.
Wilhelm Adamek sat outside his shanty whittling an enormous stick. He registered Rath’s appearance with a twitch of his eyebrows and returned to his work. If he was surprised at seeing the missing inspector he gave no sign. He examined his stick, stuck out his lower lip and continued carving. Rath wondered if he should be wary of the knife. His Walther might not be loaded, but it should serve for intimidation purposes.
‘Hello to you, too,’ he said. ‘Safely returned from the forest, I see?’
Adamek threw him a brief glance and carried on with his whittling. Rath tried to assess the old-timer’s strength. Even under normal circumstances a man like Wilhelm Adamek might have the better of him. After a week in bed with fever, and still wobbly on his legs, there was no question. Diplomacy, then. He couldn’t just yank the man up by the collar.
‘I was looking for you, recently. Why didn’t you come back for me?’
‘I’d brought you to your destination.’ Adamek didn’t even look up.
‘You left me in the lurch.’
‘I had to escort your colleague back.’
‘Don’t talk nonsense. What did you say to Kowalski to make him go with you? That I was sending him back with a message for Chief Constable Grigat? What kind of message? That I’d manage just fine on my own in the wilds, and didn’t need his help?’ Rath was shouting, but didn’t care. The composure with which this outlaw sat whittling made him incandescent. ‘I would have died on the moors, if someone hadn’t pulled me out!’
Adamek looked up and raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want that.’
It sounded genuine. Rath was surprised. ‘Then you shouldn’t have abandoned me in the forest.’
‘Like I said, I’m sorry.’
The old-timer’s face was hard to read. ‘It wasn’t your idea, then?’ Adamek said nothing. ‘Who put you up to it?’ More and more splints rained down in front of the bench. ‘Who?’
‘I can’t say!’
‘So, someone did put you up to it!’ Adamek looked at Rath with a mixture of anger and contempt. ‘Tell me who it was. Did they blackmail you?’ Adamek’s knife carved ever larger splints, this was wood-chopping now. ‘Your poaching, was it? Did someone threaten to turn you in?’