PROLOGUE

 

1

Potsdam, Germany. 1928

 

Imagine standing on a roof terrace, seven or eight storeys high, with a city stretching out beneath you. It is early morning. The city wakes to the sound of church bells and the distant crunch of a horse-and-cart over gravel.

Now imagine standing there and watching a man thrown over the side of the terrace. You weren’t expecting it, but it has happened. Right there in front of you.

You can see him, you can see him fall. He was once standing on the same horizontal as you, but no longer. He was once right there, stood before you, high up over the city.

Then imagine what your next question might be: Is it possible for someone to fall and for them not to die? Is it possible to treat a human life like that and yet for no damage to have been done? For no crime to have been committed? Not even a body to prove it?

But what if you saw it with your own eyes? This was the question that hurt Thomas the most. He had seen it with his own eyes. He had seen it all. It was early in the morning. They were high up on a roof terrace with a sheer drop below. The three of them.

One killer. One victim. And one witness.

 

* * *

 

The young man who approached was unremarkable enough.

‘I’m sorry to bother you,’ he said. Between the strands of an overgrown beard, his teeth flashed white as he spoke. ‘I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I thought I recognised you.’

The walls of the bar were painted absinthe-green. A cloud of cigar smoke spiralled under the ceiling. Thomas and Erich – two old friends who had spent the night drinking in the taverns of Potsdam town – glanced at each other.

‘Are you from Orenstein and Koppel?’ the young man said.

‘No,’ Erich replied flatly.

‘From the factory?’ the stranger persisted. ‘They make railway engines, carriages, freight cars. I used to work there. The factory is only a few miles from here.’

‘I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else,’ Erich said.

‘I’m just trying to find someone I know. A familiar face.’ He turned to Thomas. ‘What about you? Do you know Orenstein and Koppel?’

‘Not me,’ Thomas said.

‘In that case, I’m sorry, I must have made a mistake. I saw you both from a distance. I’m so embarrassed.’

‘That’s fine,’ Thomas said. Now he began to see that the man was much younger than at first glance. In fact, he was really no more than a boy. He wore a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles that, along with the beard, disguised a much fresher face.

‘I never thought I’d be in this position,’ the young man went on. ‘I’m nineteen years old. I’m a father. I’m due to be married. Now I’ve lost my job.’ He gave a self-pitying chuckle. ‘I’ve been staying at the hostel upstairs from here. Six nights I’ve been there, but it costs more than I can afford. I just need to find someone who can help me. I thought you might be from the factory.’

Thomas began to dig around in his pocket for a few coins. ‘I’m sorry, but we’re nothing to do with Orenstein and Koppel. Here, take this.’ Thomas held out his palm.

‘It’s not enough,’ the boy replied, turning Thomas’ hand away.

‘Ungrateful bastard,’ Erich said. ‘You ungrateful bastard,’ he said again, louder.

‘I don’t know where to turn,’ the boy pleaded.

‘Why don’t you pull yourself together?’ Erich said, now getting to his feet. ‘What’s the matter with you? Where’s your wife? Where’s your child? You’re here begging money from us, then when you’re offered, you refuse it.’

Thomas put his arm across his friend. ‘Stop it Erich,’ he said.

But Erich didn’t stop. ‘I hate this kind of thing. Beggars and animals.’ He began to push forward. ‘When are we going to see vermin like this cleaned up? We’re too soft on men like this.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the lad said. He turned to Thomas. ‘I’m truly sorry.’

‘Take the money,’ Thomas said, deciding it would be the last time he offered it.

‘Put your money away,’ Erich said. ‘He’ll only waste it. That’s what men like him do. They waste their lives. It’s happening all across Berlin. You try to help them and they throw it away. He’s destined for the same thing as the rest of them. Dope-addiction, then prison.’

‘Maybe you’ve had too much to drink,’ Thomas said, in a vague attempt to excuse his friend. As he spoke, the vagrant looked at his watch and began to move away, disappearing through the tavern door before Thomas had finished his sentence.

‘There you are,’ Erich said. ‘He’s not interested. He’s gone. Ungrateful lowlife pauper. We’d be better off without rats like him.’

 

It was the brink of morning by the time they found their way home. Only clouds obscured the first blue hints of sky that might have illuminated the doorway to the apartment block. Exhausted, the old friends fell into silence as they climbed the staircase.

On entering the apartment, the two men bid each other goodnight. The hallway was dark and both trod carefully, trying to remember the location of ornaments and other objects to avoid, like naughty children who had stayed out too late.

They were just parting company when a strange sound came from the door they had just entered through. It was a sort of scratching, followed by a distinct click. Erich put his finger to his lips and Thomas fell quiet. Together they watched as the door began to open. Through the bluish shadow a figure entered, as quiet and cautious as a hedgehog.

His frame was small, moving through the cavernous dark like a key through a keyhole. Advancing further, he was apparently unaware of the two men standing only a few feet away. The figure drew past them towards the living quarters, and once in the adjacent room could be heard sifting through drawers and cupboards. Erich tiptoed over to Thomas. ‘A thief,’ he whispered excitedly. Then, not hesitating for a response, he followed into the living room with just as much carefulness as the intruder.

Thomas paused, thinking he was glad to be drunk on such an occasion. At the doorway, he heard his friend call out. A panicked cry followed – the thief had been interrupted. A moment later, two bodies flew past Thomas’ nose, the second in pursuit of the first. A crashing of doors and floorboards followed. Suddenly the action had moved outside to the roof terrace adjoining the apartment.

Outside, the dawn light was threaded with an uncertain orange, shifting imperceptibly like the hour hand of a clock. The thief dashed out onto the patio with Erich following closely behind, out into the morning darkness, bursting out onto the patio, the remorseless rush of frightened men following their instincts. The light grew and the breeze moved across, and on his cheek Thomas felt its cold as he came to the door. The thief charged about in mad circles. Thomas was summoned to guard the door and told that the intruder had no other escape route.

The power of Erich’s large form loomed over the thief, an increasingly slight shadow that swung like a pendulum from one end of the terrace to the other. Close at hand, a chair became the intruder’s weapon of defence, which he swung in wide arcs, banging against the terrace floor and clanging against the railings. But this hardly detained Erich’s charge, which was fast and flying, so that in a second, the chair was cast to one side and the thief had been seized with two large hands.

The boy struggled as Erich asserted his weight. When held still, Thomas could see his face. Undoubtedly, it was the same face as the vagrant in the tavern. The beard was the same ragged brush, and the glasses, thin wire-framed with circular lenses, were just the same too.

‘It’s you,’ Thomas said. ‘I knew it was you.’

‘He followed us,’ Erich said.

‘I don’t believe it.’

The young man didn’t say anything, just wriggled inside Erich’s grip. He seemed so small and malnourished that it was clear there was no hope of him overcoming it.

Still, Thomas thought, it was best to find something to tie him with. He went to the kitchen and rummaged through a drawer, where he found a length of rope and some strips of material cast-offs. The rope was perfect, but the material might be more appropriate, so he brought both. Now back on the terrace, he felt suddenly relaxed, as if he was quite right to think about binding the boy until the police could be alerted, and moreover was fulfilling his duty with practical efficiency.

Yet as he headed back out onto the terrace, instead of hearing the familiar groans of the boy tussling under Erich’s grasp, a sharper cry now accented the air. No longer the whimpering moans, but a scream of undeniable fear.

Thomas chased out to the terrace. There he saw Erich with the boy in a new sort of embrace, more aggressive on Erich’s part.

‘He swung at me,’ Erich shouted out as he shoved the intruder against the balustrade.

The thief-boy struggled some more. Erich took hold of his lapels and shook him like a rattle, then in one strenuous manoeuvre, pulled him away from the iron railings and raised him clear off the ground. In the same motion, he bared all his weight and lifted him upwards, pushing him over the edge of the railings into the abyss on the other side. The boy yelled in horror as he toppled backwards. Over he fell, quickly and immediately, into the miserable gash of blue darkness, quickly and terribly.

Thomas watched on in astonishment. He was barely aware of what he saw, so rapidly it all happened. The thief’s body succumbed swiftly to the shadows of the brickwork corner, disappearing into the dark heart with a scream and a shout, followed seconds later by a heart-sinking thud. It was hard to believe it. The intruder cast onto the other side of the balustrade, the wrong side, the imponderable side.

Thomas raced forward to the edge. It was all dark below, the young man’s fate indeterminate. For a moment there was silence, then the whir of a motorcar echoed along the avenue beneath them, causing his heart to jump. He turned to Erich, who came up close to his friend, his face right up close, full of life, hot and twitching, his hair fallen forward. ‘Quickly!’ he said beneath his hot breath, clutching Thomas’s arm as he moved past. ‘Quickly. Let’s go.’