The demons had returned, only he hadn’t recognised them at first.
He lay in bed, heart pounding, unsure of where he was until, slowly, familiar contours emerged from the darkness, the outline of his bedroom. The heavy curtains only let in a little light.
The demons had returned, but in a different guise. Even now, panting in bed with his forehead wet with sweat, staring at the ceiling, the visions were as clear as if they were on a screen. Everything had been different, but no less appalling for that.
A forest, its trees unusually tall and straight, their tops out of sight; the trunks covered in black moss and disappearing into a thick, white mist. The forest floor was lost in fog too, the trees rising from it only to become obscured again further up.
He wandered here looking for something, though he couldn’t remember what until, amidst the monotony of black trunks, he had suddenly come upon red spots of colour in a sea of black and white. Someone was standing there: a woman in a red coat.
He approached her as if magnetically drawn. Her back was turned, but it had to be Kathi. It was her coat.
‘Kathi,’ he said. ‘Good that I’ve found you at last. I need to talk to you.’
The woman turned slowly, as if struggling against a viscous mass. He saw the face but couldn’t recognise it; its contours were fuzzy, as if her features had been left behind in the gooey matter the air had become. He saw her as if through a layer of thick paste. Something dark opened. Her mouth. She spoke and he heard Kathi’s voice.
‘Baumgart,’ the woman said. ‘What are you doing here?’ It had to be Kathi. It wasn’t just her voice, but her figure under the coat, her breasts, her hips that were slightly too wide.
Rath tried to contradict her, to say his own name but couldn’t, nothing came out, not even a husky croak. Instead, his right arm moved. Rath saw the Kathi woman stare at his arm. He turned his head and saw the long knife in his right hand; tried to prevent the movement or at least divert it but couldn’t, even though his arm was moving as slowly as a film being shown at the wrong speed.
‘Let me go!’ Kathi cried, for it was indeed Kathi. Her face was becoming ever clearer. The thick air was dispersing and growing more transparent. ‘Help, please help!’
The knife continued on its way, slowly but with irresistible force, penetrating her chest with a repulsive squelch that seemed to go on and on. Even after the first blow it was as if the air had been taken from her lungs. Kathi’s screaming died immediately, but still it wasn’t over. The knife stabbed again and again, unbearably slowly, but relentlessly until, at last, he could stop. He saw the blade in his hand, now broken, and Kathi’s blood-soaked body as it slid slowly down the tree trunk, covering the bark in a dark, damp red.
He wandered on through the forest until suddenly there was an electric hum somewhere overhead and spotlights came on one after the other, lighting the way. Only then did he realise he was wearing a Royal-Prussian captain’s uniform. The uniform was covered in blood, but at least the knife had disappeared, filling him with an enormous sense of relief.
‘Are you looking for me?’ he heard a woman say.
Vivian Franck stood in front of him, just as he remembered her from Venuskeller, smiling the same smile she had used to try and seduce him.
‘Come on, we don’t have much time.’ With these words she exposed her upper body, revealing her gorgeous breasts, wagged her finger at him enticingly, and twirled round.
When her back was turned, Rath saw the knife. Her pretty dance dress was soaked with blood. He recognised the butt: the same knife he had been holding moments before. He tried to follow the actress and pull it out, but couldn’t move an inch and had to look on helplessly as she swayed, only to recover and take a few more steps before falling to the ground.
Black shapes, barely visible through the mist, scurried to the corpse and tore it apart, tore it in every direction. Rath tried to intervene, but it was as if his feet were nailed to the spot.
‘Have no fear, they’ll look after her! Everything will be all right.’
Even before he turned, he knew who had spoken. He knew her smell. Charly had returned and was leaning against a tree, smiling at him, white as snow, red as blood, black as ebony, her head tilted to one side as if mildly ashamed.
Suddenly all his worries were forgotten, his guilt and fear too.
‘Everything will be all right,’ she had said, and it was true. Charly was there and everything was all right.
‘You’re back.’ He drew gradually nearer to her. She just nodded. How good she smelled!
‘Do you still love me?’ she asked, turning her face towards him.
He was about to reply but could only recoil in terror when he saw the grotesque face staring back. One side, hidden up until that point, was a giant scorched wound; her hair was gone and her features were unrecognisable.
That was the moment he had awoken, heart pounding and gasping for breath, her scent fading as soon as he recognised the contours of his bedroom, the images dissolving like wisps of smoke in the wind. The telephone rang.
Rath looked at the bedside table. The alarm clock had fallen and the time was impossible to read. The telephone rang again.
No, he didn’t have to answer.
It rang twice more before falling silent. He sat up, his head throbbing slightly. The knuckles of his right hand were more painful. A captain’s uniform lay on the chair, not as neatly folded as was customary in a Prussian barracks. He felt a shooting pain when he propped himself up using his right hand. Damn it! Gradually his memory returned. His fist in Brenner’s face. He had given the arsehole a good clout.
Charly’s horrified look on the dance floor. The way she had stared at him. And the cowboy next to her. Rath felt the same stabbing pain as the night before.
Damn it! It was the first time he had seen her with another man. He hadn’t thought it would hit him so hard.
Their brief romance was months ago now. Why had he made such a pig’s ear of it? He had gone behind her back, deceived her and taken advantage of her, without intending any of it. She hadn’t been able to forgive him, just as he hadn’t been able to forgive himself.
Not that that was any comfort. Quite the opposite.
In summer he had tried to win her back, and failed spectacularly. She had talked to him, been cordial, friendly even, but that didn’t alter the fact that she had sent him packing for good.
Avoiding her wasn’t so easy since, alongside her legal studies, Charly worked as a stenographer at Alex, in Homicide at that. Their inevitable meetings had mostly been fine: sober and businesslike. The one time they had fought had been about Wilhelm Böhm, whom Charly idolised and Rath would have sooner wished in hell.
He had watched her deal with all kinds of men at the Castle but this was different.
It was the first time he had seen her looking at a man the way she had once looked at him. The way he wanted her to look at him again.
He had to get her out of his head this instant!
His bare feet stuck to the cold hallway floor as he made his way to the bathroom, where he peed and started up the boiler, before going into the living room to put on a record. His cognac glass was still on the table. He took it into the kitchen and placed it in the sink. The kitchen clock showed half past nine. As he brewed coffee he came upon a sheet of paper: the letterhead of the Greater Berlin Taxi Owners’ Alliance with the taxi driver’s address, which he had placed on the kitchen table before throwing on his captain’s uniform.
The uniform he had to take back!
Already two reasons to leave the house. After finishing his coffee, he returned to the bathroom, cleaned his teeth and turned on the shower. The water never got particularly warm, but it was cold enough to bring him to his senses.
The taxi driver’s name was Friedhelm Ziehlke and he lived in the shadow of the Schöneberg gasometer. It was midday by the time Rath arrived. The drive to Babelsberg took longer than anticipated, with any number of day trippers heading for the country and blocking the road when all he wanted was to return the stupid uniform.
The street in front of the Ziehlke household lay deserted. The stairwell smelled of cabbage. Rath hoofed it up to the fourth floor and rang the bell. He had to wait a minute before a woman in a stained apron opened. The place smelled of onions and fried liver. Rath hated liver. Someone else was responsible for the cabbage odour.
The woman looked at him disapprovingly. ‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘We’re eating.’
Rath showed his badge and her eyes widened.
‘Cheeky little brat,’ she hissed, ‘and he told me he was at the cinema with his girl!’ She turned back into the flat. ‘Erich,’ she cried. ‘The cops are here. What’ve you done now?’
Rath made a placatory gesture. ‘Please. I need to speak with your husband.’
‘My husband?’ Her eyes were popping out of her head. Before she could say anything more, a young lad of seventeen or eighteen shuffled round the corner. Hands in pockets, he gazed at Rath and his mother defiantly. ‘I was at the cinema! What the hell is this?’
‘It’s OK,’ the woman said, eyeing Rath suspiciously. She looked as though her worst fears had become reality. ‘This gentleman wants to speak to your father.’
Erich disappeared once more.
‘It’s nothing bad,’ Rath said. ‘Just a few questions. Your husband’s a taxi driver, isn’t he?’
Her face brightened. ‘Please come in,’ she said.
Rath removed his hat as he entered. The liver smell was unbearable. The Ziehlke family was sitting at table in the spacious kitchen-cum-living-room, with three more sons sitting alongside the head of the family and Erich, the oldest of the four. Friedhelm Ziehlke was the only one with a beer.
‘Friedhelm,’ his wife said, ‘the gentleman here is from the police and…’
Ziehlke pulled his braces over his shoulders and stood up. ‘Is this a new police method, descending on a Sunday afternoon?’
‘I apologise if it’s a bad time, but this is urgent. Just a few questions, and I’ll be on my way.’
‘What’s it about?’ The man spoke with a Berlin accent.
‘Can we go somewhere more…’
Ziehlke shrugged his shoulders, opened a door and led Rath into the bedroom. Three beds, a large one and two small ones, as well as a giant wardrobe, meant there was barely room to stand. Nevertheless, there were two chairs inside, one of which was in front of a table by the window. It didn’t smell much better here than in the kitchen.
‘Please sit,’ Ziehlke said, showing Rath to a chair. ‘It’s the best I can do.’
‘No, thank you.’ Rath remained standing and took the piece of paper from his pocket. ‘You drive taxi number two-four-eight-two?’
‘Correct. Is something the matter with it?’
‘No, no. It’s about a passenger you picked up on the eighth of February, a famous passenger, an actress…’
‘Well, there’s plenty of them in this city!’
‘Vivian Franck.’
‘Old Franck! Yes, I remember. That was on the eighth?’
‘I need to know where you took her.’
‘Somewhere near Wilmersdorf, I think… But wait, I make a note of everything.’
He fetched a dark chauffeur’s jacket from the wardrobe and rummaged in the inside pocket.
‘Here it is!’ He showed Rath a little brown notebook. ‘So,’ he said after leafing quickly through. ‘Sonnabend. Eighth of February, nine thirty from Charlottenburg, Kaiserdamm. Drove on till Wilmersdorf. Hohenzollerndamm. Corner of Ruhrstrasse.’
‘Then?’
‘Pardon me?’
‘Did she make you wait? Did you go on somewhere? To a station perhaps, or the airport?’
Ziehlke shook his head. ‘There was a man there, he picked her up, and then…’
‘Someone picked her up?’
‘He was standing on the corner with flowers. Looked like an actor.’
‘Did you recognise the man?’
‘No, never seen him.’
‘What makes you think he was an actor?’
Ziehlke shrugged his shoulders. ‘Because that’s what he looked like. Good-looking, elegant. And Vivian Franck is an actress unless I’m mistaken.’
Rath took the photo of Rudolf Czerny from his jacket. ‘Was it this man?’
‘Czerny? Nah, I’d have recognised him. It was someone I haven’t seen in the pictures.’
Rath put the photo back in his pocket. ‘Can you remember where the pair of them went?’
‘Didn’t see. I went straight to the taxi rank and waited for my next fare.’ He took another look inside his book. ‘Reinickendorf. Not until quarter to eleven. I was waiting for ever. Stood there waiting and unwrapped my sandwiches.’
‘And you didn’t see Vivian Franck again. You’re certain she didn’t come back onto the street. Or her companion perhaps?’
‘Sure did, she’s on billboards everywhere. But seriously, I didn’t see her again. Why do you want to know all this? Has something happened? Is it drugs? Because I don’t tolerate that sort of thing in my taxi, believe me!’
Rath gave a wry smile and took his leave.
Outside on Cheruskerstrasse he lit a cigarette before getting into the car and folding the window down to get the smell out of his nose. He had despised fried liver since childhood when his mother had tormented him with it on a regular basis. It was his eldest brother Anno’s favourite food but, even after he was killed in action, she continued to serve it up…
He started the car and drove off. There wasn’t much traffic.
He parked the Buick in front of a wine dealership on Hohenzollerndamm. The junction of Ruhrstrasse seemed like a perfectly normal street corner. One end house was home to a ground-floor restaurant, the other a menswear store; the rest were solidly middle-class residences. Rath climbed out and took a look around. Who on earth could Vivian Franck have been visiting here? The plaques on the houses indicated lawyers, doctors and tax advisors, but there was no sign of any film producers. Nor did the names on the mailboxes tell him anything – but most likely film celebrities didn’t give their real names. There wasn’t even a travel agent where she might have collected her ticket for the crossing. The restaurant, on the other hand, was definitely unusual: Chinese. Yangtao, the neon sign said, whatever that might mean.
Why had Vivian Franck taken a taxi to Hohenzollerndamm on the eighth of February, and not to Anhalter Bahnhof where Rudolf Czerny was waiting for her? And what had she done after getting out of the taxi?
Showing her photo around on a Sunday when there were so few people about was unlikely to be much use. Perhaps he should ask Oppenberg if the address meant anything to him. If there was a film producer living nearby it would be a big step in the right direction.
Rath returned to the car and glanced at the time: half past one. He was getting hungry but had no appetite, and not just since his visit to the taxi driver. He slammed the heel of his hand against the wheel in rage. Damn it! When he had just about managed to forget about her.
Who the hell was this bastard! A man dressed as a cowboy, ridiculous! Probably some pompous lawyer.
He didn’t want Charly in his head, but what could he do? Don’t stop, keep moving. Drive, drive, drive! He started the engine with nowhere specific in mind and simply drove all over town, taking whatever turn he fancied. Somehow his route took him towards Moabit, and into Spenerstrasse where, slowly…
…he rolled past her house. What did he think, hope, fear he might see?
He took another turn around the block and pulled over on the opposite side of the road from her house, before switching the engine off and lighting a cigarette. The last in the pack. Pretty good going, considering he still called himself a non-smoker only yesterday.
He watched the front door, peering occasionally up at the windows. No one, but then he thought he saw a thin gleam of light behind one of the panes. Shouldn’t he just go over and ring the bell? Then what? Start another brawl if a cowboy opened the door?
He threw the cigarette butt out of the window and started the engine.
Half an hour later, armed with a fresh carton of Overstolz, Rath climbed the stone steps of police headquarters. He had left the car in Klosterstrasse and walked to the Castle, as Böhm or one of his dogsbodies might have noticed the Buick in the atrium. The huge construction site at Alex was getting worse by the month anyway, and it was now barely possible to get through by car. Aschinger and the few other stores that, until now, had been spared demolition clustered round the station like condemned men. Rumour had it that Aschinger would be granted a home in the new building. It wasn’t known what would happen to Loeser & Wolff but, for now, Rath could keep himself in cigarettes there. As long as the police commissioner smoked cigars, there was bound to be a tobacconist’s at Alex.
On Sundays most units were reduced to a skeleton staff. He had hoped not to meet anyone but, at precisely the moment he emerged from the stairwell, the great glass door to Homicide opened.
‘Afternoon, Lange,’ Rath said, tipping his hat.
The man from Hannover was surprised. ‘Inspector! You’re not on weekends.’
‘But you clearly are.’
Lange nodded. ‘With Brenner, but he’s reported sick.’ Lange hummed and hawed before coming out with it. ‘He mentioned…well…is it true that you…beat him up?’
‘Let’s just say I taught him a little lesson. No need to shout it from the rooftops.’
‘I’m afraid someone already has.’ Lange lowered his voice. ‘It looks as if Brenner wants to make a big deal out of it: disciplinary proceedings. Prepare for trouble, Sir. The boss was already pissed off with you yesterday because he couldn’t find you anywhere.’
‘Thanks for the warning,’ Rath said.
Lange nodded and went on his way.
Brenner, that back-stabber! Of course he’d run to Böhm. It had been stupid to lose his temper but Brenner had deserved it. In spite of his painful knuckles and the trouble that lay in store, Rath had the rare feeling of having done exactly the right thing.
It was cold again in his office. Perhaps he should spend more time here during normal working hours, he thought, at least then it would be heated. To avoid Böhm, he was currently out of sync with the Castle, carrying out private assignments by day and only appearing in the office after hours.
Everything he was looking for was on Gräf’s desk: the report from Dr Schwartz as well as the initial analysis of the evidence secured by Kronberg’s people. Gräf had been busy, even managing to get Plisch and Plum to set their interviews down on paper.
Still in hat and coat, Rath sat at Gräf’s chair and opened the forensic report. He was now accustomed to how Schwartz composed his texts, and knew which parts he could skim and which parts to read more closely.
There was no doubt about the cause of death: cardiac arrest due to electric shock. No internal injuries, but severe burns to the head and shoulders, a total of five fractures to the clavicle, upper arm and ulna – as well as a spinal trauma. Had Betty Winter survived, she’d have spent the rest of her life disfigured and in a wheelchair.
Clearly, Betty Winter and Vivian Franck were cut from different cloths. There was no trace of opiates, cocaine or hashish in Winter’s system, only a liver that suggested frequent alcohol consumption.
He had intended to skim the section about the contents of the deceased’s stomach, but his gaze fell on a single word: yangtao.
An alien element, more alien than the recurring medical terminology, and yet it stirred his memory. The Chinese restaurant in Wilmersdorf, or was he confusing two Asian-sounding words? It was Chinese at any rate.
Schwartz loved to show off his general knowledge and worldliness, and here he could do both. Thus: yangtao was a fruit from China, a berry about the size of a hen’s egg, with a tough, thin, brown, hairy skin, green flesh and little, hard, dark brown seeds. Satisfying and easy on the stomach, the doctor had added, which suggested he had tried yangtao himself. He had found the exotic fruit in conjunction with banal foodstuffs such as mushrooms, rice and chicken, inferring that the deceased had eaten a Chinese meal on the day of her death.
That was typical of Dr Schwartz. Instead of limiting himself to the facts of his forensic analysis, he liked to make inferences. Rath welcomed the contributions of any departments assigned to the CID, but sometimes Schwartz could be a damn nuisance. Still, as long as he only had to read what the doctor thought, he could put up with it.
ED officers had already examined the spotlight mounting. The technical analysis had concluded that there were no material defects. All threads were in order, and the bolt Gräf had found was intact. It must have been unscrewed by someone, and that someone was who they were looking for.
He reached for the telephone and was put through to the search unit: no trace of Krempin. A few citizens claimed to have seen him following the newspaper appeal, but so far everything had proved a dead end.
He returned his attention to the ED file. His colleagues had also taken in the deceased’s clothing for analysis: the scorched silk dress, as well as her shoes, stockings and underwear. There was something uncanny about the pedantry of these Prussians. Kronberg’s people had done everything to the letter. They had found blood on Betty Winter’s dress (her own, naturally) and several hairs that didn’t come from her (but probably from her cloakroom attendant or co-star). What insight was that supposed to provide in a case like this, a fatality that had actually been filmed?!
He reached for the interview records. Plisch and Plum had been busy. He leafed through the statements, not noticing any contradictions. Everyone who had witnessed Betty Winter’s death had described it in exactly the same terms as Jo Dressler. If it really was murder then there had to be a motive, and the statements about the dead woman were more revealing. Soon Rath realised that lack of motive wasn’t the problem; quite the opposite, in fact.
Betty Winter had been a regular dragon. Although those questioned had chosen their words carefully following her appalling death, reading between the lines, it was clear she hadn’t had many friends amongst her colleagues. She was respected but not well liked. Others hadn’t minced their words, listing all the people who hated her – always careful to except themselves, of course. It was difficult to know what to take at face value, and Rath had to keep asking himself who was trying to damage whose reputation with what remark. Quite a web of intrigue and slander was forming. He would have to take another look at Bellmann’s little family, as the producer called it, since he couldn’t rely on tracking Krempin down.
Henning had dictated a summary of the deceased’s life to Erika Voss. Born Bettina Zima on July 17th 1904 in Freienwalde, she had never undergone classical training, but many colleagues testified to her natural ability. The inflation years had brought her to Berlin, where she had tried her luck in variety, achieving success in a number of revues, before landing smaller roles in stage plays. In 1925 she played in her first film, alongside Victor Meisner, who was four years her senior. It was Meisner who advanced her in film, and not Bellmann as Rath had suspected. He was already well established, above all as a hero in adventure films and crime thrillers.
With Bettina Zima at his side, or Betty Winter as she was now known, Meisner had made the leap into romantic comedy. In the last five years, the pair had filmed about a dozen pictures together, becoming one of the most popular on-screen couples – a fact that had completely escaped Rath, who couldn’t bear schmaltzy love stories – as well as an item in real life, following their second film, Fallstricke des Verlangens. This information didn’t come from La Belle circles alone. Henning had peppered the dossier with references to film and gossip magazines, clearly indulging a secret passion.
According to his research, Betty Winter and Victor Meisner, who had married in 1927 but retained their respective stage names, were regarded as the happiest couple in the industry. No doubt because they hadn’t been divorced after the first three months. It looked as if Meisner was the only one for whom Betty Winter’s death was a personal tragedy.
Rath had felt from the start that Bellmann’s mourning for his star was purely financial.
Nevertheless, Victor Meisner, actor and husband, was missing from the list of those who had been questioned. He still hadn’t returned to the studio yesterday, and it would have taken more than a miracle for Plisch and Plum to have shown some initiative and visited him at home. Still, they had managed to question everybody else in the studio, where Dressler had recommenced filming despite the death of his lead actress.
Time is money, Rath recalled Bellmann’s words. Or was it Oppenberg? The producer hadn’t allowed his people a single day of mourning. They were probably filming now, making use of every day they had access to Terra Studios. Time is money…
He couldn’t help thinking of his father’s motto. Knowledge is power. For some people the ability to reduce everything to simple equations brought order to the world, but Rath couldn’t do it and didn’t want to. He was afraid he might no longer be able to see reality, and reality, after all, was what his work was about: shedding light on what had really happened, however complicated, chaotic and illogical it might sometimes be, however complicated, chaotic and illogical it usually was.
Rath glanced at the time, carefully gathered the files and returned them to their rightful place. It was time to go.