Böhm fetched soot powder, brush and adhesive film from the evidence kit, and set about dusting the steel column. He didn’t find any prints near the dead man, but spied three about one and a half metres up, two of them well-preserved and one half-erased. He started transferring the prints onto the film as Steinke clicked the shutter release. The rivets in the steel column reflected the flash, and the garish light made the corpse look wan and dead for the first time, not just drunk.
Böhm took the prints to the murder wagon for labelling. Sitting on the backseat, he glanced through the window at the assiduous Gräf, who was lifting a cigarette stub from the ground with tweezers and marking its position; then at Steinke, who maneuvered the camera as if he still didn’t see why they were here in the first place.
‘A detective inspector in the making,’ he muttered, bagging the first print.
‘These days you need only be in the right party to forge a career.’
Böhm turned around. Next to the murder wagon stood Dr Magnus Schwartz, spruce as ever, in his right hand a black leather doctor’s bag.
‘Careful, Doctor.’ Böhm motioned with his chin towards Steinke. ‘These youngsters hear everything.’
‘The same to you, Böhm, but I won’t be silenced. This madness will pass soon enough. The elections are next week.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
These days people like Steinke, who had been part of the National Socialist Students’ Association at university, were in the ascendant, and it wasn’t only Dr Schwartz who hoped the Reichstag elections would change all that. Germany was still a democracy, however much the Nazis babbled on about a national uprising.
Schwartz set down his bag. ‘You’re not exactly here en masse,’ he said.
‘I’m just glad I didn’t have to cycle out, what with ED’s hands being tied.’
‘What can you do?’ Schwartz said. ‘There’s a lot happening right now. Another round of elections, our nation’s health at an all-time low. I’m telling you, it’s worse than any flu epidemic.’ He gestured towards the corpse. ‘This one hasn’t fallen prey to the new politics, mind.’
‘Nor the flu.’
‘You already know the cause of death? Then what am I doing here?’
‘He didn’t freeze either.’ They approached the corpse, where Steinke was taking close-up shots. ‘I think that’ll do it, Steinke. Let the doctor get on with his work.’
Sergeant Breitzke, who had been waiting patiently, saw his chance. ‘Excuse me, Sir,’ he said to Böhm, ‘but before the doctor… I mean: you said yourself that I should take a closer look at the dead man once he’s been photographed…’
‘I did?’
‘Because…’ Breitzke looked at his pocket watch. ‘It’s about time I got on with my rounds.’
‘Fine,’ Böhm said sternly. He gripped the deceased by the hair and carefully pulled his head up from his breast until Heinrich Wosniak stared at them reproachfully out of dead eyes. Scarring on the right side of his face really did call to mind a shrivelled potato. His right ear scarcely existed, and his right eye was missing its eyebrow. His face looked like odds and ends glued together, and there was no mistaking the bitterness in its features.
‘Yeah, that’s Kartoffel.’ Breitzke said. ‘Just like I said. Can I go now?’
‘The nickname’s apt,’ Böhm said. ‘What happened to him?’
‘A french flamethrower? Search me. He looked like that the first time I chased him off Nollendorfplatz.’
‘Chased him off?’
‘He could be a real pest. You have to do something.’
‘Off you go, Sergeant. Someone has to keep our streets safe.’ Breitzke saluted and was about to turn away when Böhm added: ‘See that you get your written report to me by the end of the day.’ Breitzke saluted a second time and made a swift exit.
Dr Schwartz leaned over the dead man. ‘Nasty burns. Second or third degree.’
‘So, they are a relic from the war?’
‘His scars aren’t as old as that. If you ask me, he sustained these injuries two or three years ago at most.’ Schwartz took a magnifying glass from his bag along with a little flashlight, which he shone inside the dead man’s nose.
Böhm looked on, growing more and more impatient the longer the doctor held his tongue. He shifted from one leg to the other, biting back the question on his lips.
Meantime, Schwartz had placed the flash between his teeth and was muttering to himself. ‘I’m not certain,’ he said, ‘but it wouldn’t surprise me if someone had driven a knitting needle through the poor man’s nose and into his brain.’
‘A knitting needle?’
‘Something like that, a long, sharp object. Simple but effective.’
‘Could it have been an accident? Was he trying to clean his nose with an unsuitable object?’
‘Not to speak ill of the dead, but I don’t think your man here cared much for hygiene. Besides: he’d still be holding the offending weapon. At the very least it would be lying somewhere close by.’
‘What can you say about the time of death?’
Schwartz gazed at the corpse. Frost and pigeon droppings made it seem as if it had been coated with icing sugar. ‘In these temperatures it can be hard to say. He could have been here for days. A frozen corpse doesn’t decompose in the usual way.’
‘Then I should wait for the results of the autopsy?’
‘I can’t see that the post-mortem will provide any more clarity. I could have the meteorological service send me the weather reports from the last few days, but even then, an exact estimate of the time of death is unlikely. The man could have been here a day, or a week.’
Böhm was disappointed.
‘The best thing would be to look for witnesses. Perhaps some passer-by knows how long the poor devil has been lying here dead, or at least unconscious. Damn it…’
One of the pigeons on the steel struts overhead had left a bright-coloured splodge on Schwartz’s dark winter coat. He tried to clean the mess with a lily-white handkerchief, but succeeded only in smearing the stain across his shoulder. ‘If pigeons could talk,’ he said, ‘then perhaps we’d be getting somewhere. Sadly all they do is coo and defecate. I suggest we get the corpse moved now. It’s too dangerous for me here. I’d rather continue in Hannoversche Strasse, where that lot are barred.’
Böhm looked at the corpse, examining the thin layer of faeces that covered it – and wondered if the pigeons couldn’t be of some use after all.
2
Wie kütt die Mösch, die Mösch, die Mösch bei uns in de Küch?
The voice of Willi Ostermann rasped from the loudspeakers, drowning out the babble of people jostling towards the escalators in the atrium of Tietz department store. Some resourceful salesperson had connected an electric turntable to the tannoy, so that even in Cologne’s largest mall there was no escaping the vernacular hit.
Listening to old Ostermann competing against the hum of shoppers, Rath felt as if he had never been away. The peculiar electricity that filled Cologne in the days leading up to Ash Wednesday fetched him home immediately. How many years had he been living in a city where this was alien? Sensing that familiar charge, he realised he had missed carnival fever – even the inevitable strains of the great Willi Ostermann.
The mannequins in the display window were decked out as gypsies, Mexicans, musketeers or clowns; they wore striped trousers and sparkly jackets, false noses and colourful little hats adorned with paper streamers. Stoical of gaze they watched shoppers barge past shelves full of wigs, masks and make-up, past clothes racks with slanted hats, short skirts and factory-made costumes. Everywhere was a sense of panic; only two days until Rosenmontag, and the start of the official parade.