From my chair I watched the morning sky lift from flat grey to washed-out blue. There was no music playing, the turntable stood still, the pickup arm rested on its cradle. A cigarette smouldered between my fingers, a couple of bottles of schnapps lay empty on the floor beside me.
Hanna Krause was dead.
Kaminsky should have taken the bullet.
I hadn’t stopped it from happening, I had to live with that.
Hanna had been one of us, one of the opposition. She’d been with us in the old days, putting her life and her family on the line, fighting injustice, desperate for change.
There were no tears in me. There was no sadness. Only rage. Furious, impotent rage.
From the rally, Steinlein and I had headed straight to our little office on Stralau. We’d cleaned the place thoroughly, taken away every scrap of paper, every pen and pencil. We’d wiped down every surface, removed every fingerprint and trace of occupancy. When we were done there was nothing left to mark our investigation, not even footprints in the dust.
I came home and drank a bottle of schnapps. I sat through the night, hating myself for not preventing Hanna’s death.