BERLIN BURNING

a Weimar Republic Murder Mystery novella

Damien Seaman

Published by Blasted Heath, 2014

copyright © 2014, Damien Seaman

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author.

Damien Seaman has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

All the characters in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover design by Blasted Heath

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www.blastedheath.com

ISBN: 978-1-908688-77-4

Version 2-1-3

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

About this book

Introduction by James Oswald

Berlin, 21 July 1932 – 7pm

21 July 1932 – Fifteen hours earlier

Berlin, 23 July 1932 – 2.57pm

Also by Damien Seaman

About Blasted Heath

About this book

Berlin, 1932...

Roving gangs of Nazi thugs terrorise the streets.

A weak government looks the other way.

A divided police force struggles against a rising tide of crime.

It’s a powder keg waiting to explode. And when the brutal slaying of a young Nazi provides the spark, Berlin detectives Trautmann and Roth must put aside their political differences to solve the murder.

Before the city they love succumbs to the flames of brutal retribution...

Introduction by James Oswald

Weimar Republic. Two words that to a student of modern history mean a great deal, to the rest of us very little. Something to do with Germany after the first world war, a descent into decadence, followed by the rise of the Nazi party and the ascendance of Adolf Hitler. The birthing of the evil that would lead to the Holocaust and World War Two.

I’ve never been a great fan of historical fiction, so I don’t quite know what drew me to a curious book called The Killing of Emma Gross. I’d only just dipped a toe in the whole ebook thing myself, self-publishing a couple of my own novels after they’d failed to find a publisher over a number of years. Allan Guthrie, a writer I very much admire (and not just because of his Maine Coon cats), had just set up the ebook publishing house Blasted Heath, along with Kyle MacRae. Keen to help this enterprise, I picked up some of their early titles and loaded them onto my phone. I even meant to read them.

One of them was by this fellow called Damien Seaman. It didn’t look all that promising – see my earlier comment about historical fiction – but an unexpected wait for a train, with no phone signal to fritter the time away on social media, left me with nothing better to do than read The Killing of Emma Gross.

I was entranced. I knew nothing about the setting beyond vague memories of Liza Minnelli and Michael York in Cabaret. I’d never heard of Peter Kürten, the Vampire of Düsseldorf and the true story on which the book was based. It didn’t really matter. The characters were so vividly drawn, between-the-wars Germany so deftly described, that I raced through. The trick of any fiction, perhaps historical fiction more than most, is to construct your world - paint your picture - in such a way that it seems entirely natural to the way the story unfolds. It’s a hard skill to master, so easy to jar the reader out of the story by labouring some unnecessary point or including some inconsequential detail. Damien Seaman makes it look easy.

And so we move forward to Berlin Burning. I first read an early draft of this novella almost a year ago, and was again struck by how seamlessly the story and setting are woven together. On the face of it, this is an enjoyable murder mystery with enough subtle twists to keep the most die-hard whodunnit fan happy. But it is the characterisation and setting that, like The Killing of Emma Gross, raise the story above the ordinary. Trautmann is a fresh take on the dysfunctional copper, his problems as much to do with the rise of the Brownshirts as the traditional conflict between a need for justice and the uncaring nature of bureaucracy. The machinations of the Kripo and Schupo given more menace by the knowledge of what is to come.

It’s not a long story, Berlin Burning, which makes it all the more impressive. Pour yourself a glass of schnapps, put some Kurt Weill on the gramophone and immerse yourself in inter-war Germany for a while. You won’t regret the trip.

James Oswald

author of the Inspector McLean series of detective mysteries

Berlin, 21 July 1932 – 7pm

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t bring you better news. But I thought you should know.’

The girl on the couch masked her emotions so well it was hard to tell what she felt. Her face was in shadow, so that made it harder, of course. But still it was disconcerting for Kriminalkommissar Trautmann, being unable to read someone like this.

Perhaps he was tired. He’d been through so much in the preceding hours. Enough for a dozen cases, never mind just one.

‘He called for you,’ he added. ‘On the way to the hospital. Yours was the only name. And I couldn’t find any other family, or friends. So...’

‘We were hardly family, kommissar.’

‘But you were... lovers?’ Trautmann cast about the room. There were no photographs, no clues as to who this woman might have been with now; no wedding ring on her finger.

‘Roth is a very proud man, kommissar,’ she said, tucking a strand of her red hair behind an ear. ‘Or he was. He left me after he lost his arm. Didn’t want me to have to be seen in public with a cripple, he said.’

‘There must have been something between you.’

She gave him a self-conscious smile. ‘What did that matter when he had so little love for himself?’

Trautmann tried to make out the colour of her eyes, hoping if he could just do that she might start to respond. ‘I’m sorry if my coming here is unwelcome.’

She shifted on the couch and tucked her legs underneath her body. ‘It’s... a shock. I mean... two years. And now you’re telling me he could die, just like that, out of nowhere. How should I react?’

‘I understand.’ Trautmann rose and put on his hat. The skin on one side of his face was still tight and raw from his burns. ‘I should go.’

She got up then and came to him, stepping into the light from the room’s single corner lamp and putting out a restraining hand. Up close her eyes were hazel and the light picked out the freckles on her nose.

‘Rose red,’ he said to himself, ‘and half as old as time.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing, my dear. Just something I said to him shortly before it happened.’

‘Please don’t leave right now,’ she said. ‘I... I want to know. Won’t you tell me about it?’

He didn’t want to go through the details of Roth’s accident. Not for her or for himself.

‘I’m... sorry. This was a mistake.’

‘I would have stayed with him, you know,’ the girl said, her eyes searching his.

She was looking for a sign that he believed her. He gave it gladly, clasping her hands in his. ‘Then visit him, won’t you?’

She leaned back a little, as though to get a better view of his face. ‘You feel responsible.’

‘Yes.’ He broke away from her and made for the door.

‘Please don’t.’

‘Just say you’ll visit,’ he said over his shoulder as he reached for the doorknob.

‘I’m sure it wasn’t your fault,’ she said.

He paused, door open, wanting to find some words but failing. Instead he tipped his hat and left, her words echoing in the hallway.

It wasn’t your fault...

21 July 1932 – Fifteen hours earlier

Chapter 1

The teletype ran hot through the night shift, spewing its litany of crimes from the precinct houses of Berlin for the detectives at the Alex.

At 00.21 a runner brought the latest to the Kripo squad room – Precinct 87, possible murder in a tenement.

Kriminalkommissar Trautmann and Kriminalassistant Roth took the call and Roth cursed their luck. Trautmann knew what the younger man was thinking.

Precinct 87 meant a small-time pimp or a KPD agitator; the odds of finding the culprit were long. They’d have to talk to Fleischer, see what the usual noses were picking up.

Trautmann sent the runner to requisition an auto and then run on a little further and inform the lab.

The kommissar expected a long night. Little did he know how long.

When they arrived on the scene they saw the 87th had sent a whole squad, some of the men outside going door to door under the flickering street lamps. Word from the Schupo on the tenement door was Kessler was running things inside.

‘Not any more,’ Trautmann said, tasting sweat on his lips from the warmth of the night air. ‘Where is he?’

‘One floor up,’ said the Schupo. He smoked a cigarette, raising it to his mouth with trembling fingers. It was unprofessional but he didn’t seem to care. He chugged the smoke without pause.

‘A whole squad?’ Roth said, as they passed into the dusty tenement hallway. ‘What the hell’s going on?’

The Schupo ignored the question, eyeing a Jew who passed by on the other side of the street. A couple of the uniformed officers stopped the man and began asking questions. Trautmann shifted his attention inside.

Scuffed blood droplets on the stairs and the squeak of heavy shoes on bare floorboards overhead told Trautmann to expect a mess. Sure enough, when they entered the brightly lit apartment there were far too many uniforms in there. A crime scene needed the rigour of a Bach prelude; this was more the chaos of a Stravinsky score.

Trautmann disliked Stravinsky. He disliked procedural laxity even more. He managed a glimpse of a body lying on a blood-soaked rug near the fireplace at the end of the room before calling for Kessler.

‘So they sent me the Mule,’ said Schupo-sergeant Kessler, coming through from a connecting room with his shako dangling from his left fist. Sweat dripped from him and made dark patches in the underarms of his uniform jacket. Trautmann itched to bring out a handkerchief and mop his own face.

As Kessler came nearer, he glanced at Roth: ‘I see you brought Admiral Nelson with you.’

Roth touched the stump where his right arm had once been.

‘That’s enough of that, Kessler,’ Trautmann said, pulling the sergeant’s gaze back to him. ‘I need you to clear this apartment. There are too many people in here.’

‘We’re trying to solve this one before word gets out.’

‘You don’t solve a crime by ruining the evidence,’ Roth said with a jerk of his pomaded head.

‘Roth,’ Trautmann warned.

Kessler just smiled.

‘What do you mean, before word gets out?’ Trautmann said.

‘Victim’s a brownshirt,’ Kessler said, scratching one of his chins. ‘You know as well as I do there’ll be reprisals by tomorrow lunchtime if we don’t make an arrest...’

‘Yeah, reprisals from who,’ Roth muttered.

‘...It’s a tinderbox out there.’ Kessler led them past the body to the next room, a bedroom. Then he waited for them to catch up. ‘The trail begins in here.’

The sheets on the bed were rumpled. A brass candlestick lay in a pool of drying blood on a patch of floor between the bed and a dresser, and there were red-brown speckles on the sheets and on the walls. A picture frame had toppled from the dresser into the blood; one corner of the frame was stained with it and the glass had cracked.

‘Reckon our boy came in and caught his woman with some other chap, leading to a struggle.’

Trautmann pulled a pair of rubber gloves from his pocket and pointed at the candlestick. ‘The murder weapon?’

Kessler laughed. ‘Slow up there, Mule. I’ve got more...’

Trautmann put on the gloves and picked up the picture frame, angling it to catch the light as Kessler rattled on.

‘...So there’s a fight in here, our boy with his woman, or the gentlemen caller, or maybe both...’

The photograph showed a young woman with dark hair and eyes and a beguiling smile.

‘...Our boy takes a nasty blow to the head that knocks him to the floor. There’s a corresponding mark on his right temple, as you’ll see. Then...’

Kessler paused and made them follow him back to where the body lay. Trautmann brought the picture frame along.

‘...at some point, two shots to the torso.’

‘A gun?’ Roth asked.

‘Well, I may just be a humble Schupo,’ Kessler said, ‘but I reckon I know a fatal gunshot wound when I see one.’

Trautmann looked down at the body, a young blond male dressed in the brown uniform of Hitler’s Sturmabteilung. Dead though he was, he still oozed blood onto the rug. ‘Anyone hear anything?’

‘Round here?’ Kessler made a face. ‘What do you think?’

‘I thought you had your ways,’ Roth said.

‘Now now, Admiral. No need to get jealous because we know how to get results.’

‘So what have you found out?’ Roth snapped. ‘Anything?’

‘Do we have the boy’s name?’ Trautmann cut in.

Kessler referred to a notebook. ‘Jan Meist, according to his landlady.’

‘Who is...?’

‘The old girl on the next landing up. And a real pleasure she is, too. I can’t wait for you to meet her.’

‘And the young woman here?’ Trautmann showed them the photograph. ‘She lived with him, I take it?’

‘That’s the best part.’ Kessler grinned. ‘You’ll never guess who she is. Fair gives us our killer straight out of the gate.’

‘You’re right,’ Trautmann said. ‘I won’t guess who she is. So why don’t you just tell me.’

‘Maria Fleischer.’

Trautmann looked at Roth and Roth looked at Trautmann.

‘She’s related to Fleischer?’ Trautmann said.

Kessler clapped his hands. ‘I know. Great, isn’t it? I can have my squad ready to pick him up as soon as the lab boys are done here.’

Roth clicked his tongue in disgust.

‘No, you don’t,’ Trautmann said. ‘Not without we’ve spoken to him first.’

‘Oh, come on, Mule!’ Kessler said. ‘What more do you want? Meist beats up his girl, makes her go out pros-pec-ting’ – he drew out the word – ‘to pay the rent. She tells her uncle, who comes and puts two bullets in him for her. Simple.’

‘Whoa, not so simple,’ Trautmann said. ‘Beats up his girl?’

‘Ask the landlady. She’s full of it. You’ll get all you need from her.’

‘And what about this man she was supposedly with when Meist came in here?’ Roth said. ‘Anyone see what happened to him?’

‘Who else but Fleischer would be able to get hold of a gun in this part of town?’ Kessler said.

‘Maybe they didn’t get the gun in this part of town,’ Roth said. ‘Maybe this gentleman caller was an army officer. Or a pol...’ He cut himself off and regarded the knot of uniformed patrolmen standing close by.

‘Or a what?’ Kessler said.

‘We can soon settle this,’ Trautmann said. ‘Do you have the gun?’

‘Sarge,’ bellowed a voice; a young Schupoman entered the apartment with a pistol in his hand. ‘We found it! In the drains outside.’

Trautmann couldn’t contain his anger. ‘Kessler! Tell me that man isn’t contaminating evidence!’

Kessler blushed.

‘That’s it!’ Trautmann shouted. ‘Everybody out – RIGHT NOW!’

Chapter 2

‘Have a look at this,’ Roth said. He stood by the fireplace, reading a newspaper clipping fixed to the mantelpiece.

Trautmann straightened from his examination of the body. As well as the wound at the dead man’s temple, he’d found some bruising on the knuckles and the arms.

He hoped the pretty girl from the photograph would not turn out to have been abused – or to be the killer. Still, this wouldn’t have been the first time domestic violence had lain behind a murder. He pulled off his rubber gloves as he went over to the fireplace.

‘The bullets passed through the torso,’ he told Roth, ‘so the lab boys will need to locate them. The casings too. I can’t bloody well find them.’

He’d analysed the pistol Kessler’s man had smeared with his prints: a clunky model 8 Walther that took 6.35mm rounds. Matching the spent bullets would clinch it as the murder gun; most Walthers were now 7.65mm, including the standard issue PPK he carried.

‘Think you can work up a sketch before we touch anything else?’

Roth said he could.

‘Much as I hate to say it, I think Kessler was right about the sequence of events,’ Trautmann said. ‘Which means we likely have an as-yet unknown third party roaming the streets.’

Roth grunted. ‘No wonder the 87th are so keen to get this solved,’ he said. ‘Our friend there is practically one of them.’

‘Come now, Roth, let’s not go through this again.’

‘No – you come now. You know that precinct is honeycombed with Nazis.’

Trautmann longed for his pipe. But he couldn’t smoke it at the scene for fear of contamination, so his irritation grew.

‘Politics should be left at the door, Roth.’

‘How can you be so naïve? I wouldn’t be surprised if Kessler was hauling his troglodytes off to Bülowplatz this very second looking for Reds to assault.’

Trautmann thought of Fleischer’s sometime-association with the KPD. The links between communism and organised crime ran deep in those parts, but Trautmann was determined to keep from reaching too hasty a conclusion.

He took in the patch of blue-black stubble beneath his assistant’s jaw, the bloodshot eyes that spoke of beer hall intrigues with his Reichsbanner comrades before work. How old was Roth? Trautmann didn’t know. But he couldn’t have been more than thirty; hardly older than the boy lying dead on the rug with his guts shot up.

‘Politics could well be the cause of this young man’s death, Roth. Not to mention our now pressing need to arrest someone before the streets erupt with yet more thuggery.’

‘He’s a Nazi, Trautmann. He hated us as much as the Reds.’

‘If we refused to investigate the deaths of everyone who didn’t like us, we would have precious little to do.’ Trautmann knew he sounded pompous, but he couldn’t seem to stop now.

‘He probably brought it on himself. What if he did beat his girl?’

‘We don’t know that he did. And what of it? Should we add to the cycle of violence by refusing to solve the murders of people we don’t like? This violence is never ending, Roth! An insatiable fire consuming all it touches. And of all people, you should understand that.’

Roth rubbed at his arm stump. ‘That was different.’

‘Was it? This man might have been a monster. But, just maybe, he wasn’t. He deserves our best efforts, regardless. And I think, beneath your hard, socialist bluster, you know that. Or I hope you do.’ Trautmann shifted his gaze to the newspaper clipping and began to read it. ‘Now, this is what you called me over to see?’

It was a story from the Völkischer Beobachter:

TIME FOR THIS JEW LOVER TO GO

We have observed with growing concern the indulgence shown by new Reich Interior Minister von Gaben towards the Judeo-Socialist leadership of the Prussian state government – and of the Berlin police force especially.

But this is going too far!

Offering his “wholehearted support” to Red Grzesinski and his deputy – the so-called ‘doctor’ Weiss – in curtailing the recent “rise in street clashes between paramilitary groups”. The cheek of it! The lunacy!

After all, were it not for the Slav and his slick deputy ‘Isidor’ provoking the honest, angry working men of Berlin with underhand tactics, such clashes would be few and far between. We have written before in these pages how our brownshirts are forced to resist the most wicked taunts and abuse from Reds and Jews – and their police protectors – while on peaceful protest marches.

Why, Isidor has repeatedly proven himself so pompous and aloof from the honest working German that even his own men lack respect for him.

We all know the Reds want nothing more than an excuse to throw our boys in jail – so they can continue their pernicious work. And this support from von Gaben just shows once again how ineffective our current rulers are at dealing with the realities of today’s Germany...

The piece ranted in similar vein for several more paragraphs. It bore a caricature of a stocky man – presumably the minister – grinding brownshirts under his brogues while back-slapping caricatures of Police President Grzesinski and his deputy – Trautmann’s boss – Bernhard Weiss.

Weiss’ small, round Kiplingesque glasses were emphasised, his nose exaggerated into the usual Jewish hook. It made him look like a cross between a mole and the classic Levantine white-slaver of cheap pulp fiction.

The minister’s caricature had a long, sloping forehead and eyes cut to slits above chubby cheeks, thick, negroid lips and a preposterously small waxed moustache.

Trautmann sighed.

‘You think the SA might be marking the minister out for more than just a little name calling?’ Roth said.

‘Seems more of an attack on us than him.’

‘Well...why pick out this particular story and pin it up. That’s all.’ Roth shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing.’

‘No, no, you could have something. We’ll check with his office in the morning, see whether he’s received any threats.’

‘There’s something else, too.’ Roth held up a small envelope. ‘I found some paper scraps in the ashes in the grate. Still just about readable, but we might want to wait till we get back to the Alex. They won’t stand up to too much scrutiny.’

‘Well done, Roth.’ Trautmann patted the shoulder above the missing arm before he’d given himself time to think about it. Having done so he blustered through. Oh, for a fresh pipe, a glass of schnapps, and some madrigals on the phonograph.

Roth got out his notebook and started sketching the room. Trautmann stole another glance at the framed photograph he’d propped on a nearby table.

‘I’d better go and see this landlady Kessler was talking about,’ Trautmann said. ‘Get some more background on the happy couple.’ He picked up the frame with one of the gloves he was still holding. ‘You’ll be all right keeping the Schupo out?’

Roth didn’t look up. ‘They’ll be at Bülowplatz, like I told you.’

Trautmann tucked the frame under his arm and went to find out if the young woman in the photograph could be his killer.

Chapter 3

Kessler was not, in fact, on the rampage in Bülowplatz. He stood on the next landing up, talking to a woman in a green dressing gown whose face was slathered in cold cream. The sergeant took Trautmann by the arm and introduced him to the woman.

‘This is Frau Schneider, the landlady I was telling you about.’

‘Ah, yes of course.’ Trautmann put out a hand. The woman hesitated before taking it. Her eyes were red rimmed, her hair set in wiry black curls shot through with grey.

Trautmann showed her the framed photo. ‘Is this Maria Fleischer?’

Frau Schneider stared dumbly at the photo. Trautmann hustled her into her apartment and sat her on a stool at the kitchen table.

‘Have you any schnapps?’ he asked, shooing Kessler back into the hall and shutting the door before resting the photo on the table.

The woman pointed at a set of shelves crowded with tins and jars. Trautmann rooted around and found a dusty bottle of cooking brandy. He couldn’t find any glasses, so he rinsed out two coffee cups in the sink and brought them to the table. He filled them, pulled out his pipe and lighted it before the woman had a chance to protest.

He took a sip of brandy and winced, puffing on his pipe to take away the harsh taste. He watched Frau Schneider compose herself, using up half the tobacco in his bowl before she’d done so.

‘Maria came up here to see you and she was dripping blood,’ Trautmann said. ‘Can you tell me what happened?’

‘It was that evil bastard Meist. He got what he deserved.’

‘What happened?’

‘They had another fight,’ Frau Schneider said.

‘When was this?’

‘They fought all the time.’

‘I mean tonight, Frau Schneider. There was a fight tonight? Did you hear anything?’

‘No.’

‘Did you hear any gunshots?’

‘Gunshots?’ She sounded confused. So she hadn’t heard any. Presumably she didn’t know the cause of death.

‘Did Maria have a gun with her?’

‘No.’

‘Did she have any kind of weapon?’

‘No.’

‘What time did she come up here? Tonight, I mean.’

She gazed into her brandy. ‘I’m... not sure. I told the other officer all this.’

Trautmann put some honey in his tone. ‘I know, Frau Schneider, but I just need to go over it with you once more. Please try to remember. It helps sometimes to tell the story more than once.’

‘What time is it now?’

‘A quarter past one.’

She did some mental arithmetic. ‘Then it was about eleven thirty. Yes, that was it. Thinking about it, I looked at the clock in my room when I heard her knock.’

Trautmann waited for her to go on.

‘I came to the door and when I opened it she was there. Blood all over her. She said she’d had an accident and what should she do?’

‘What kind of an accident?’

The woman kept on as though she hadn’t even heard the question: ‘She often came to me for advice. Never took it though.’ She drank some brandy. ‘I told her a dozen times she should leave that boy, but she wouldn’t. God knows why.’

She reached for the photo and Trautmann nudged it away with his pipe stem so she wouldn’t obscure any fingerprints. There’d been altogether too much of that.

‘What kind of accident, Frau Schneider?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘She didn’t say?’

‘Just that they’d fought...’ She tailed off.

‘What advice did you give her?’

The woman shifted on her stool and wouldn’t meet his eyes.

‘Was it to go and ask her uncle for help?’ He didn’t like leading questions, but he wanted her reaction to that one. She looked up and met his eyes, then she looked away, past him, and then down into her cup.

A lump of cold cream dropped from her chin and splashed into her brandy. Trautmann passed her his cup, glad of the excuse to be rid of it.

‘Was it?’ he said.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘Do you remember where she went?’

‘No.’ Too quick, that time. Another reason to visit Fleischer – the sooner the better.

Trautmann hoped the lab boys from the Alex wouldn’t take much longer to arrive; he and Roth couldn’t leave the scene until they had.

‘What makes you think Meist was beating her?’ Trautmann said.

‘Think!’ Her voice grew louder. ‘Think, nothing. If you had seen the bruises, the scratches... He made her go out and... prostitute herself, you know. Sick. Just because he was too damn lazy to work. They argued about it. All the time.’

‘Did you hear them arguing?’

‘She would come up and see me afterwards. Sometimes.’

‘And she told you what they argued about.’

‘I’d have to be blind not to see it.’

‘Is that why she killed him?’

She got up from her stool. ‘Now look here, bull. If you think you can get me to turn stoolie on Maria you’ve got another thing coming.’

Trautmann held the woman’s gaze. Then the apartment door opened to reveal Roth. The noise of chatter and heavy footfalls entered with him.

‘Sir, lab boys are here.’

Trautmann turned back to the woman. ‘Thank you, Frau Schneider. I’ll give Fleischer your best regards.’

Her eyes widened with panic. He rose and turned his back on her, putting on one of his gloves to pick up the photograph of Maria.

‘Hey, now then...’ she began.

‘Thank you. That will be all.’

‘Hey... don’t you go telling him I sent you, you hear me? You hear me?’

Chapter 4

‘Well, she thinks the girl killed him,’ Trautmann said once he’d made sure the apartment door was shut. ‘Unless she was trying to throw me off.’

‘Sir, I found this.’ Roth held up a wallet. ‘It was under the bed. Don’t get excited though, there’s nothing in it. Nothing with an address, anyway.’

They went down the stairs to the murder apartment, passing a couple of Schupo. ‘Fingerprints?’

Roth shook his head. ‘Lab boys reckon they won’t get anything usable off the leather.’

Trautmann opened the wallet. As Roth had said, there was nothing in there bar a photo of a young boy of three, perhaps four years of age. The photo looked as though it had been cut out of a larger picture.

‘This boy could be a relative of Meist’s, of course,’ Trautmann said.

‘No sir. Meist’s wallet was in the dresser. No money, but his party membership card was in it.’

‘So, then this brings us a step closer to our mystery second man.’

‘Not much.’

‘Now now, Roth. It’s another piece of the jigsaw. It’ll fit somewhere.’

They entered the apartment and gave a verbal report to the lab boys, adding the need to get the landlady fingerprinted.

‘We’ll have time to go through all this later,’ Trautmann said.

‘Why, where are we going?’ Roth asked.

‘Gird your loins, Markus,’ Trautmann replied, in a low voice. ‘We’re paying Fleischer a visit. And quickly too, before Kessler gets there. We’re going to take him into custody.’

Roth looked at Trautmann like the older man had lost his mind.

Chapter 5

Harry the Horse was doing his usual shtick at the entrance to Fleischer’s club, singing ‘A girl or a woman’ from The Magic Flute at the top of his baritone voice with thin falsetto back up from Little Eva, a six-foot tall prostitute rumour had it was really a transvestite.

Roth reached for his police ID.

‘Put it away, Roth,’ Trautmann said, placing five Reichsmark in Harry’s proffered hat.

The Horse nodded them past, ahead of the line of hopeful tourists who’d been waiting. Eva followed the two detectives into the fug of sweat and sweet tobacco smoke inside. It was crowded in there: three deep at the bar and every seat taken at every table. Trautmann’s top lip broke out right away.

‘Hey, you didn’t wait for your champagne,’ Eva said, tugging at Trautmann’s arm.

‘We don’t want any,’ Roth said.

‘But that’s how it works, you know that. Five marks on the door for your champagne.’

‘Besides, it’s not real champagne, is it?’ Trautmann added, watching Eva place a cigarette in her mouth while fluttering the desiccated butterfly corpses that clung to her eyelids in imitation of lashes.

He scanned the place for Fleischer, wondering why Eva was stalling them and what it signified. No sign of the big man himself. He reached for his pipe, feeling the unwelcome weight of the Walther PPK in his jacket pocket.

A band of white musicians in boaters and black face performed on a small raised stage in front of the large plate glass window onto the street. If ‘perform’ was the right word. They were sending forth a racket of kick-drum, high hat and scratchy banjos.

‘What’s that caterwauling?’ Trautmann asked Eva, lighting a match for her with his thumbnail.

‘New this week from England,’ Eva said, holding Trautmann’s hand to steady the match.

‘We get our jazz imports from England now?’

‘You heard of Duke Ellington?’

‘I know the name.’

Eva blew smoke in Trautmann’s face. ‘Well, this bandleader’s a real duke.’

‘You don’t say?’

Roth stepped forward, grabbed Eva’s elbow and propelled her further into the room.

‘Where’s Fleischer?’ he said.

Eva frowned at Trautmann.

‘It’s urgent, Eva,’ he told her, shaking out the match as he put his pipe back in his pocket. He didn’t think he’d get the chance to smoke it after all.

‘He’s not in tonight.’ She pouted.

‘Don’t lie to us,’ Roth said.

‘It’s true.’ Eva yanked her elbow from the young detective’s grip and rubbed at it.

Trautmann leaned close to her ear. ‘He’s going to want to hear what we have to say, so stop slowing us down. You don’t have to take us to him. Just step out of the way.’

She pulled an on-your-own-head-be-it face and then returned to Harry and the waiting crowd outside.

‘We’d better check the back,’ Trautmann told Roth. ‘Either he’s planning on going somewhere or he’s doing some kind of business in there.’

The two detectives shoved their way to Fleischer’s office at the far end of the room. The door opened as they arrived and Fleischer walked right into them, jacket in hand. His face bore the scars of childhood pox and his hair, thinning on top, tufted over his ears.

‘Can’t stop, gents,’ he said. He looked to be heading for the back exit.

Trautmann held his ground.

‘Can’t let you go, Fleischer,’ he said.

‘Can’t let you stop me,’ Fleischer said.

‘Off to see your niece, are you?’ Trautmann said. ‘Mind if we tag along?’ Roth stood at his shoulder in support.

‘And why would I be going to see my niece?’ the big man said.

A couple of drunks in evening dress pushed past, on their way back from the washrooms. Trautmann kept his eyes on Fleischer until the drunks were out of earshot.

‘She came here a little while ago,’ Trautmann said. ‘Say about two, two-and-a-half hours. Likely covered in blood.’

Fleischer didn’t move.

‘Perhaps you know where she is,’ Trautmann added.

One of Fleischer’s eyelids flickered.

‘You want to tell us? Before she gets into any trouble?’ Roth said.

‘After all, it’s not as though you’re going to get the chance to warn her,’ Trautmann said.

Fleischer raised a questioning eyebrow at that. He turned and opened the door to his office, showing the butt of a pistol jammed between his belt and the small of his back.

‘Let’s talk,’ he said, gesturing for the detectives to enter.

‘You go first, if you don’t mind,’ Trautmann said. He didn’t fancy Fleischer locking them in and getting away.

So Fleischer led them into the office and tossed his jacket at a nearby wall hook. He took a seat behind his desk, turning on a green shaded desk lamp and selecting a cigarette from an open box etched with pre-war Turkish script. He lighted it, leaned back and blew smoke at the ceiling, affecting ease.

‘Tell me what you know,’ he said. ‘Maybe I can help.’ He hadn’t invited them to sit.

Trautmann plumped for a light-hearted opening. ‘What’s that ukulele rubbish you’ve got playing out there?’

Fleischer shrugged in his small pool of lamp light. ‘The vagaries of fashion, Trautmann, what can I say. Anyway,’ a note of pride entered his voice, ‘it’s banjos, not ukuleles.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘Damned if I know. Now, do you want to get to the fucking point? I’m not of a mind to be receiving guests just now.’

‘Swearing, Fleischer?’ Trautmann said. ‘That’s not like you. Feeling tense?’

‘Are you playing with me, Trautmann? You know I don’t appreciate that kind of treatment, least of all here in my own place.’

‘Tell me about Maria.’

‘Tell you what about Maria?’

‘Her boyfriend was killed two hours ago, give or take. What did you know about him?’

‘Don’t you want to know where I was?’ Fleischer said. ‘I assume I am a suspect.’

An odd thing to say. Trautmann countered with: ‘To some in the department you’re the only suspect.’

‘So you want to know if I killed him.’ Fleischer smiled.

‘Not yet,’ Trautmann said. ‘First you need to come with us into custody.’

Fleischer choked on his cigarette. ‘Are you mad?’

Trautmann heard Roth shuffle uneasily behind him. ‘Not as mad as you’ll be if you refuse. Kessler and his hoodlums are on their way here. It’s only a matter of time. And for some reason, he really wants you for this. I mean he doesn’t just suspect you did it. He wants you to have done it. And I’m assuming you knew about Meist’s political leanings, so you can bet on reprisals...’

‘Brownshirts?’ Fleischer snorted. ‘Those bozos put out my window every other week. Sometimes I wonder what I pay you Kripo boys for.’

Roth tutted, drawing Fleischer’s attention.

‘Hey, Crip, don’t you give me any of that!’ the big man roared. ‘I meant taxes, not bribes. Bribes are for Vice, not Homicide.’

‘What, you pay taxes?’ Roth shot back.

‘Roth!’ Trautmann warned.

‘No,’ Roth said, ‘I say let them get him. What do we care? He’s as bad as the SA. Worse, he’s been around longer. It’s all just money to him. At least those brownshirted cretins are doing what they do out of principle, however cretinous.’

Fleischer looked at Trautmann. ‘One of the new educated intake, is he?’

‘Criminology degree, no less,’ Trautmann said. ‘But he’s done his share.’

Fleischer got out of his chair and walked over to Roth, who was standing by the door.

‘Where did you lose the arm, rookie?’ the big man said.

‘I’m no rookie,’ Roth said.

Fleischer laughed. ‘I’ve killed men for talking to me that way.’

‘That’s supposed to impress me?’ Roth said.

‘It’s supposed to scare you.’

Trautmann slammed the desk with a palm and they both turned his way.

‘It’s Maria you need to be scared for, Fleischer,’ he said. ‘Wherever you’ve sent her, if you try to go to her now you could be putting her in danger, either from the SA or from Kessler’s men. You know what they are when they’re blood’s up.’

‘Trigger happy,’ Fleischer said.

‘So do the sensible thing and come with us. That’ll draw the sting and keep the focus on police headquarters while – ’

There was a loud percussive bang that shook the door. Followed quickly by the sound of screaming.

‘Aw, what now?’ said Fleischer, pulling the door open.

Smoke obscured Trautmann’s view of the club – the black, oily smoke of an accelerant. Even without it, he wouldn’t have been able to see anything for the press of panicking patrons.

‘What is it?’ Roth said.

A flickering orange glow pierced the smoke, hissing as it came closer.

‘Bomb!’ Fleischer shouted, bearing the two detectives to the floor.

Chapter 6

The back of Trautmann’s head bumped the floor. He’d half-twisted his body too, so his Walther dug into his hip at the same time.

The second bomb popped; so did his ears, muffling the patrons’ screams and the sound of shattering glass like a volume dial on a radio turned suddenly all the way down.

Trautmann pushed Fleischer’s meaty arm away and pulled clear, confused by the press of legs – human, chair and table – all about him.

He caught a mouthful of the black smoke and coughed into a sitting position. He put out a hand to steady himself, felt a bite at his palm.

Head spinning – was that from the smoke or striking his head? Looking down, shards of glass were twinkling in the sawdust studding his bleeding palm – impossibly tiny shards. He tasted kerosene at the back of his throat.

Fleischer had got around the end of the bar. His pistol – a Mauser – appeared in his fist and spat out a couple of shots.

Trautmann shouted an order to stop but his words came out like the braying of a barnyard animal. Ringing in his ears told him what was wrong: not his speech, his hearing.

And, to cap it all, he couldn’t see Roth from where he sat.

A woman in a glittering blue dress ran past Trautmann, spearing the back of his left hand with a spiked heel. He grunted, jaw dropping. One ear popped again, this time breaking the silence with a rush of air, unbalancing him – one side deaf, the other awash with formless noise.

A bullet hit the floor nearby, throwing up sawdust and splinters. He could make out the crackle of gunfire through his tinnitus now and saw a brownshirt rush at Fleischer, take the Mauser butt to the bridge of his nose and collapse.

Trautmann couldn’t stop himself from grinning, this was so ridiculous. Just then he realised Fleischer was shouting at him with concern on his face.

Trautmann turned in time to catch an iron bar with his shoulder. He tried to say he was police; the brownshirt carrying the iron bar didn’t hear or didn’t care.

The kriminalkommissar flipped onto his hands and knees and scuttled under a table. He reached into his pocket for his accursed PPK, fired it right through the fabric of his jacket until the brownshirt’s shin broke apart and he hit the floor.

Trautmann crawled out and kicked over the table to put up a barrier against this horror.

‘Where’s Roth?’ he asked Fleischer. But when he looked about, the big man had gone. He called out for him, but again, had no idea how loud he was shouting or whether anyone would be able to hear.

My God – what if he would never hear properly again? Never be able to listen to the Berlin Cathedral choir, or relax with his madrigals on the phonograph, or listen to the nagging of his wife, even?

Someone grabbed him from behind. He spun around, PPK clutched tight, the barrel aiming squarely at Roth’s face.

‘Are you all right?’ Roth gestured at his ears. ‘Can you hear?’

And Trautmann almost wept, because he could. The ringing was still there, but he could make out the words. His hearing was recovering, was the point – the blessed, soothing point.

The sound of automatic gunfire reached him. Kessler’s squad had arrived.

‘Where’s Fleischer?’ Trautmann asked Roth.

‘Gone.’

Damn it! He thought of the brownshirt he’d brought down and pushed the table out of the way.

The brownshirt lay still. Blood trickled from a neat hole in his forehead. Brain matter spread from a gaping exit wound at the back of his skull, mingling with his matted hair. Another youngster, this one’s mouth twisted into a half smile he would take to the grave.

Trautmann gagged, the tinnitus roaring up to consume him. His shoulder burned where the kid had struck him. The hated pistol still nestled in his hand and he threw it away.

When he turned back, Roth was pointing at Kessler approaching them through the wreckage.

‘Got here just in time, eh Mule?’ the Schupo sergeant said.

Trautmann lifted a broken chair and threw it at the bar.

‘This is your justice,’ he cried. ‘This is where it gets you!’

He kicked at the upended table and pain flared through his toe, pulling his rampage up short. Lord, if only his Dagmar could see him!

Kessler reached for him but Trautmann pushed him off and backed away.

‘I’m all right,’ he panted. ‘I’m all right.’

‘We need to go,’ Roth told Kessler. ‘You’ll be ok handling this?’

‘Where’s Fleischer?’ Kessler said.

‘Your friends scared him off,’ Roth said.

Trautmann wanted to stop this endless bickering. But he couldn’t find the breath, never mind the words. He wanted to vomit. Or to have a cup of coffee. Or to have a cup of coffee and then vomit.

‘We’ll put out the word,’ Kessler said. ‘He won’t get far.’ A glance at Trautmann. ‘You all right, sir?’

Trautmann pulled himself to his full height, shoulder tightening as he did so.

‘He’s all right,’ Roth said. ‘Just winded. Right sir?’

I shot that child, Trautmann wanted to say. God help me, I shot that child!

He let Roth lead him out of the club, past groaning patrons and one or two of Fleischer’s men. Of Harry the Horse or Little Eva there was no sign.

The black-faced Englishmen sat in the gutter, smoking handrolled cigarettes and nursing their heads. He wondered, briefly, if it was possible to spot a duke in a group of men all wearing boot black on their faces. Most of their boaters had gone. Most of the banjos too. So the evening hadn’t been a total loss.

The brownshirts had all got clean away, besides the one he’d killed. That meant more reprisals and more violence until they solved this case. Much more violence.

Chapter 7

The redbrick walls of the Alex felt like home when Trautmann finally brought the auto to a stop. He probably shouldn’t have been driving with his head in the state it was, but hell, was Roth going to do it one handed? Trautmann handed the keys to the car pool duty officer and headed for the Kripo squad room in search of coffee.

Once he’d downed a cup he felt better. But his head was pounding, his mouth dry and hearing still muffled. He reached into a desk drawer for some aspirin and found a bottle of schnapps. He poured some of the liquor into his cup and swallowed four aspirin. Then he chased them down with more schnapps.

His head pitching and rolling, he hooked the nearest wastepaper bin with a toe and emptied his stomach into it. Once he was sure he’d finished, he swirled his mouth with schnapps, spat the vile cocktail into the bin, and refilled his coffee cup – this time with coffee.

He was taking small, careful sips by the time Roth came in.

‘I’ve talked to the teletype operators,’ the younger man said. ‘We’ve circulated Fleischer’s description to every detective across the city. I’m damned if Kessler’s going to get to him first.’ He paused and sniffed the air. ‘Ugh, was that you?’

‘We need to put out the call to check the hospitals,’ Trautmann said. ‘And yes, that was me.’

‘I’m sure they’ll check them as a matter of course. Are you ok, sir?’

Roth came close and opened Trautmann’s eyes wider with his fingers, checking his pupils.

‘No, I mean for our mystery man with the empty wallet. Anyone who visited an emergency room in the last...’ Trautmann pulled his head back out of reach and checked his watch: just gone half past two – Christ, was that all? ‘...three hours. I’m not sure how long before we got there the ruckus in the bedroom would have happened, but Frau Schneider said she’d been woken at eleven-thirty.’

‘I’m not sure you shouldn’t just go home,’ Roth began.

‘Damn your eyes, man – can’t you see I’m fine! See? Slow and steady wins the race.’ He demonstrated this by sipping his coffee.

‘You might have a concussion.’

‘Stop yapping, Roth. You’re worse than my wife.’

Roth backed away and found another seat. Trautmann immediately regretted the jibe about Dagmar, still narrow-waisted and full of energy even after all these years.

‘Well, maybe you’re just tired, sir.’ Skirting over the issue of the dead brownshirt in the club, God love him. ‘I know I am, and I’m half your age.’

‘You’re not married, are you Roth? Do you have a sweetheart?’

‘Why?’

‘I was thinking... relationships. Men and women...’

‘Sir?’

‘We’ve just come from a scene of domestic violence. Two young people who presumably came together in the hope of being the better for it. And they argued. They fought. Now one of them is dead and the other is... God knows where. Why do we do it, Roth, eh? This endless, infernal coupling? The compromises and little resentments, they build up. Over time. Until one day... poof!’

Roth gave him a funny look.

‘Maybe this is the coffee talking. But murder, Roth. Murder! Because they couldn’t just get along.’

‘Well you haven’t killed your wife yet have you sir?’

‘Came close a few times.’ Trautmann filled his pipe. ‘No... that’s not fair. I’ve given her cause to want to throttle me more often than I’m even aware of, no doubt. Poor old stick, having to put up with me all this time. Can’t have been easy.’

He struck a match and lit up his tobacco, dizzy from the effort. There was still a hint of buzzing from the blast at Fleischer’s club, akin to that of fat summer bluebottles.

‘You not having any coffee, Roth? Schnapps?’ Roth shook his head. ‘Am I shouting? I feel like I’m shouting.’

‘A little.’

‘Goddamned paramilitaries and their bombs. I shot a boy out there tonight Roth, because of them.’

‘It was their fault, sir, not yours,’ Roth said.

Trautmann waved away the comment. ‘I know that, Roth. Don’t you think I know that? Just said it, didn’t I?’ He puffed on his pipe and tried to forget the image of the boy’s brains all over the floor. ‘I know that...’

They sat silently for a while before Trautmann started up again.

‘The girl, Roth. We need to get her description circulated too. I’m sure that’s where Fleischer was heading. He’s stashed her somewhere or I’m a Chinaman. Probably thinks she did it. Which would rule him out, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Huh, possibly, nothing. Positively’s what you mean. Where’s that photograph of the girl?’

‘The lab boys, sir.’

‘Aren’t they back yet?’

Roth got to his feet. ‘I’ll go and check.’

By the time Roth came back with a bag of their evidence from the crime scene, Trautmann had made a list of everywhere the Fleischer had a financial interest. Places the big man might have stowed his niece, or gone into hiding himself.

Trautmann handed the list to Roth and sent him to the teletype office while he unpacked the evidence, wiping the traces of fingerprint dust from his hands with his handkerchief.

One Walther model 8 – almost certainly the murder weapon. Along with two spent shell casings and two crumpled bullets they’d dug out of the back of the fireplace. The calibre matched the gun.

A blood-stained candlestick – that had probably made the dent in the side of Meist’s head.

Two wallets – one belonging to Meist, one to the mystery man. Ah yes, this mystery man. What was it the landlady had said? That Meist had made Maria go out and prostitute herself? So was the mystery man a suitor – as the girls called their clients – or something more? And why take him back to her place for sex?

Trautmann removed the photograph of the young boy from the wallet and turned it over. On the back was the snippet of a name, sliced off. Probably that of the photographer who took the picture.

Roth came in and sat down with a grunt, pulling a typewriter close. ‘Lab boys were asking about getting a positive ID on Meist.’

‘I don’t fancy getting the landlady or Fleischer to do it. You didn’t find anything in the apartment to indicate any family?’

‘Nope.’

‘I’d call that strange, wouldn’t you?’

‘Just add it to the list.’

‘Well it’s not all bad. Look, I’ve got something for you to put in the report.’ Trautmann handed Roth the photograph, flipped over so he could read what was on the back. ‘Part of the photographer’s name and address. We’ll get the murder commission to come up with a list of possible matches.’

‘That is something,’ Roth said, his voice a little brighter.

‘Do you still have those scraps from the fire?’ Trautmann got a clean sheet of paper from his desk drawer. ‘Empty them onto here and let’s take a look.’

Roth brought his envelope over and tapped it softly to dislodge the scraps onto the sheet of paper. Trautmann dug some tweezers and a magnifying glass from the drawer and used the tweezers to lay the scraps flat.

They were small pieces of paper, and singed a good deal. Two of them were blackened beyond usefulness. Two of them were blank. But there were thin green lines printed on the others, and handwriting on two of them. The loop of what looked like a ‘G’ – or was it a lower case ‘l’? Part of what could be an ‘e’ – or possibly an ‘a’. That was definitely a ‘7’, written with a line through it.

Trautmann passed the looking glass to Roth.

‘Here, see what you make of it.’

‘Some of these edges have been torn,’ Roth said after a few seconds. ‘That’s a “g”, I think. And a number seven. Not sure about those others. Think we can trace the paper?’

‘Let’s get the lab on it.’

‘I’m wondering if the graphologist could make something of this,’ Roth said. ‘If we had another sample from a suspect to put alongside. The seven is quite distinctive.’

‘You want to get handwriting samples from everyone now?’

‘Well, why not? Ok, so it wouldn’t prove they were there. But what if we matched the handwriting and we told them so?’

‘A confession,’ Trautmann said. ‘Yes, good thinking.’

Roth rolled the sheet of paper with the scraps inside and carried it to the lab while Trautmann drank more coffee. What was so damning it was worth tearing up and then setting alight?

Roth returned and managed to get some paper into his typewriter to make a start on their report. With only one hand it was a slow business. Trautmann turned his attention to the picture frame.

Behind the cracked glass, the photograph had slipped in the frame. Trautmann caught a flash of white peeking out from beneath the print.

‘Hello,’ he said, ‘what’s this?’ He opened up the back of the frame and found some folded paper. ‘The lab boys didn’t mention this?’

Roth paused in his typing. ‘Not to me.’

Trautmann pulled on some rubber gloves and carefully lifted out the folded sheets. He laid them on his desk and used the tweezers to unfold them.

‘Now this one definitely is a letter.’ He read it, turning the pages with his tweezers. Then he sat back with a grin and took a celebratory puff of his pipe.

‘Well?’ Roth said.

‘Our man Meist was living under an alias. Listen to this...’

Chapter 8

24 Douglasstrasse

Grunewald

29 May

Dearest Rudi,

This is not the news you want to hear.

I cannot give you what you ask for. I’m sorry, but your father controls our accounts, and there would be no way of withdrawing funds without him being notified. Until you two are reconciled – or at least on some kind of speaking terms – there is nothing to be done.

Still, for all that has happened I am still your Mutti. I love you, Rudi, and I would dearly love to see you.

I know how you must feel. You think I’ve sided with him over you, but surely you cannot be utterly blind to the things he has done for you?

I tell myself this is a phase you are going through, and that very soon you will come to your senses and stop worrying me so. For the answer to both our troubles is for you to return home, Rudi. Patch things up and come back to me.

But no, I told myself I would not seek to blame you. This is not why I have written. In my brighter moments I feel as if this experience could be the making of you as a man. I do hope it will prove so.

Forgive me, Rudi, for rambling. I hope you can see the truth of what I’m trying to say with my inadequate words. That I miss you and you are still my son. Although I know you to be somewhere in the city, you might as well be a stoker on a merchant ship in the far Pacific for how great the distance feels to me.

So please do consent to meet me at the Mulatto Café on the Potsdamer Platz. I do not assume you will write again, certainly not with the risk, however slight, of your father intercepting any correspondence.

Therefore I will make it as easy for you as I can. I will be at the café between 3pm and 5pm every afternoon this week. Please just come and see me. We need not speak to each other if you’d prefer. I can pass you a few Reichsmark – enough I hope to help you for a time.

I must see you, my son, even just to keep my sanity. This is what you mean to me.

I have forgiven you, Rudi. Please now do the same for me.

With all the hope and love in my heart,

Mutti X

Chapter 9

The house was grey stone covered in some kind of clinging plant Trautmann couldn’t be sure of in the wan pre-dawn light. It stood three storeys high beneath a red slate roof, and a small turret marked the entrance. It was also behind a locked gate.

‘So what do we do now?’ Roth said.

Trautmann pointed to the bell hanging by the side of the gate. Roth rang it, and the sound echoed down the dark street, quieting the shrill songbirds for a few seconds.

Roth was about to ring again when a light came on in the porch at the base of the turret. A grey-haired man rushed out of the house towards the gate, buttoning his shirt as he went.

When he saw Trautmann and Roth, he stopped.

‘You’re not the baron,’ he said.

Roth’s look to Trautmann said The baron? What have we got ourselves into now?

But it was to be expected in this part of town. Trautmann flashed his ID and beckoned the man closer to the railings.

‘We’re here to see the lady of the house,’ he said. Then, when the man continued to hesitate: ‘It’s about her missing son.’

The man fumbled a key into the padlock and opened the gate, ushering the detectives inside and into the house.

‘I’ll get the baroness,’ he said, leaving them in a study lined with bookshelves, a large desk facing into the room with its back to a large window with the drapes shut. A half-full glass of whisky or cognac sat on a low table between two sofas in front of the desk. That glass suggested the room hadn’t been abandoned long. The sofas suggested a woman’s touch, upholstered as they were in lemon and cream.

‘Looks like she’s been waiting up,’ Roth said.

‘Jump in if you think of something,’ Trautmann said, ‘but leave most of it to me. This needs the sensitive touch.’

He’d meant it to be reassuring, but Roth tutted in response. Then the baroness entered the room and there was no time to dissipate the tension.

She was dressed for bed but didn’t look like she’d been sleeping. Her face was still made up and her hair pinned back. If anything, she looked ready to attend a society ball if given twenty minutes to change into a suitable gown.

She took in the two detectives at a glance and offered her hand to Trautmann, making him go to her.

‘My butler tells me you have news,’ she said, gesturing for them to sit. ‘Detective...?’

‘Kriminalkommissar Trautmann, ma’am. And this is my assistant, Roth.’

She went straight for one of the sofas and reached for the glass on the table, cradling it as she looked up at the men.

Roth took the sofa opposite while Trautmann sat next to the baroness at a respectful distance.

‘Have you found him?’ she said.

‘We think so, ma’am,’ Trautmann said.

‘You think so?’ Her voice wavered, the weak link in her controlled façade. ‘Is he dead?’

Trautmann took a breath. ‘We’ve found a dead body, but the only clue to his identity came from this.’

He laid out the letter to show her.

‘Did you write this, ma’am?’

She didn’t say anything for a long time, looking first at the letter and then past Trautmann at something in her mind’s eye.

Trautmann waited for a nod. When it didn’t come, he said, ‘Your son’s name was Rudi?’

She shuddered. ‘Rudolph. You found this on him?’

‘In his apartment. Can you tell us Rudolph’s age?’

‘Will you need me to come and identify him?’ Her large brown eyes bore into his skull.

‘Not necessarily, ma’am.’

‘“Not necessarily?” ’ She got up from the sofa. The two detectives rose with her. ‘So you can’t tell me if he’s dead – or even if you want me to confirm whether he’s the man you have in your... meat chiller, is that right?’

Roth cut in. ‘Madam, why was your son living under an assumed name?’

Trautmann shot Roth a look. But the question had an effect. The woman considered it.

‘You’ve read the letter,’ she said.

‘Yes, but it’s not entirely clear. Perhaps you can confirm our thoughts?’

The baroness stepped close to Roth and held his gaze. ‘And what thoughts are those, exactly?’

Roth didn’t blink. ‘That he and your husband had a serious falling out. Possibly over politics.’

She took a sip of her drink. ‘A falling out? Oh yes. My husband disapproved very much of my son’s membership of the party.’

‘So you knew about that?’ Trautmann said, moving into her line of sight.

‘Of course. It was the whole reason he left.’

‘Did you know he was living under a different name?’ Roth said.

‘No, but it makes sense. It could have been embarrassing to my husband otherwise.’

‘So he was upset enough to leave, but not enough to embarrass his father?’

‘Oh, my husband isn’t,’ she caught herself, ‘wasn’t Rudi’s real father. I remarried. They never saw eye to eye. This party thing was just the last straw. In fact, I’d hoped it was just an empty act of defiance. That he’d come to his senses and come home.’

‘But why was it such a problem?’ Roth pushed on. ‘After all, there must be plenty of sons from this part of the city who’ve joined for a lark. It’s not exactly unpopular in your social circle, is it?’

Trautmann willed Roth to step back – but the baroness laughed. ‘Don’t you men read the papers? If you want my opinion, Rudi changed his name to avoid being associated with my husband.’

‘How did you get his address? To write the letter?’ Trautmann asked.

‘He wrote to me first.’ She took another sip and then set the glass down on the table. ‘The first time I’d heard from him in almost a year and he writes to ask for money. How’s that for a son’s love?’

She sank back into the sofa. ‘How did he die?’

This was heading into unhelpful territory.

‘He was shot,’ Roth said.

No, no, no – now the next thing she’d want to know was –

‘But that’s rare – do you have any leads?’

Just a grocery list’s worth of suspects, that was all. Trautmann sat next to her, hand up to stop Roth asking any more questions.

‘That’s one reason we’re here. Did anyone want him dead?’

‘I barely knew him anymore,’ she said. ‘Certainly precious little of his life or his friends. So I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

‘Did you know he was living with someone?’ Trautmann said.

‘A woman, you mean?’ her voice turned colder. ‘Where was she, when it happened?’

‘We have that in hand, ma’am,’ Trautmann said. ‘Did you know?’

‘No!’ she cried. ‘I did not. Does that satisfy you? Knowing how little I knew about my poor Rudi and his miserable life!’

Roth was still standing. ‘Do you have a copy of the letter he sent you, madam? That could help.’

They heard a car engine and the crunch of tires on the gravel drive. The baroness shot out of her seat.

‘I’m sure my husband can help you with any further questions,’ she said.

The front door closed with a bang and a loud voice said, ‘Kitten? I thought I said not to wait up. Is everything ok?’

The door to the room swung open. The man doing the swinging stopped, confusion making his small eyes wide above chubby red cheeks, thick lips and small waxed moustache.

Roth’s face mirrored the confusion. A moment later, Trautmann realised who this was. Thick lips, small eyes, oiled dark hair combed back from the long sloping forehead: this was the newspaper caricature in Rudi’s apartment come to life.

Their victim was the stepson of the Justice Minister, Paul von Gaben.

Chapter 10

‘What’s all this?’ von Gaben said, his words slurring. Or perhaps he spoke with a lisp.

He was in evening dress, a black bow tie flapping untied around his pudgy neck.

‘Kriminalkommissar Trautmann and Kriminalassistant Roth,’ Trautmann said. ‘We’re here about your stepson.’

‘Oh yes? What’s he been up to now?’ Yes – definitely a slight lisp.

‘He’s been murdered.’

Von Gaben went to the table with the glass on it, picked up the glass and drained the contents.

‘Did you know anyone who might have wished him harm?’ Trautmann said.

‘We’d had no contact with the boy for –’ he turned to the baroness – ‘what was it, a year?’

‘You didn’t know he was living in the Scheunenviertel?’ Roth said.

‘The Scheunenviertel? Good God, no.’

‘Or that he was living under an assumed name?’ Roth said.

‘What name?’ the baron said.

‘Jan Meist.’

‘No, we didn’t know that.’

‘Did you know any of his friends who might have joined the party with him?’ Trautmann said. ‘Friends from around here? Boys he grew up with?’

‘Hardly, kommissar.’ Then a thought struck the minister. ‘Wait a minute. If he was living under a different name, how did you know to come here?’

‘We found a letter,’ Roth said.

‘A letter?’

‘From your wife.’

Anger flashed across von Gaben’s face for a second, then was gone. He spoke to his wife: ‘You wrote to him?’

‘He asked for money,’ the baroness said. She didn’t meet her husband’s eyes, Trautmann noticed.

‘You didn’t give him any, did you?’

‘No – ’

‘After everything we said – we agreed...’

‘I said no, Paul.’

Von Gaben’s face softened. He smoothed his moustache, then grasped his wife’s hand and gave it a squeeze. At that, the baroness buried her face in his husband’s chest. She had to lean down to do it, as she was taller than him.

Trautmann wanted to get the baron alone and ask him more questions. ‘Minister, a thought occurs. Would you be able to come with us to identify the body?’

Von Gaben kissed his wife’s cheek. He had turned away from the detectives, and he didn’t turn back now.

‘Yes, of course. Shall we say 10am? You could pick me up from the ministry.’

‘Actually sir, I was hoping we might do it now.’

At this, the minister did turn around. ‘Now? Is that really necessary?’

Roth cut in. ‘Minister, I’m sure you understand that the sooner we can get procedure out of the way, the sooner we can get on with catching the killer.’

‘Do you have any suspects?’ the minister said.

‘Let’s discuss that on the way,’ Trautmann said. Holding it out as bait for his compliance.

Von Gaben nodded, dislodging the baroness from his mascara-smeared shirtfront.

‘Just... give us a few moments, won’t you?’

Trautmann and Roth left the room to wait in the hall. After a while, they heard the sound of wracking sobs – a mother wailing for her lost son.

Chapter 11

They’d driven to the morgue in silence, the minister still in his make-up-soiled evening garb. Now he watched as the morgue attendant pulled the sheet from Jan Meist’s body, his breath misting in the chilled air.

A couple of seconds was all it took. Then he nodded and cleared his throat.

‘That’s him,’ the minister said. ‘Did he suffer much?’

‘Hard to say,’ Trautmann said.

Von Gaben sighed. ‘Ah, Rudi, Rudi, Rudi... It wasn’t easy, you know. Having a Nazi for a step son. I mean, what do you do with someone like that?’

Trautmann didn’t know how to respond, so he didn’t.

‘These boys, they don’t want our problems to be solved. They want everything to start over in cleansing violence, to purge the country of its troubles.’

He smiled suddenly, briefly, making his eyes vanish into narrow slits again.

‘But of course you men know that. You have to see it every day, I expect.’ He looked at Roth. ‘How did you lose your arm, son?’

‘An accident,’ Roth said. ‘During the May Day Riots in ’29. I got in the way of an armoured car.’

Von Gaben whistled. The sound echoed mournfully off the tiled walls and cold steel hatches behind which the bodies were stored.

Trautmann knew the story. Everyone in Kripo knew the story. It had caused a lot of resentment with some of them, as Roth had sued the department for compensation – and kept his job. Disloyal, some of the men had said, and still said.

Especially since Roth had got in the way deliberately, to stop the vehicle from crushing rioters on the barricade. He’d given his arm so that men and women who’d been shooting at him or hurling rocks at him moments before could get away.

Brave, stupid, political... the words would sit well on Roth’s gravestone one day.

‘Minister,’ Trautmann said, ‘you’ve been getting a lot of abuse in the Nazi press.’

Von Gaben smiled again – an odd reaction, perhaps. ‘It’s my cross to bear.’

‘Well, could someone have killed Rudi to get at you?’

The minister rubbed his soft jawline where dense stubble began to show. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. But... well... of course it’s possible. But how do you narrow it down? How many thousands of Nazis are there in the city? And how many more silent supporters?’ His lisp made a soft hiss of ‘silent supporters’.

‘There’s no one in particular you can think of?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, no.’

‘Did you ever receive any death threats?’ Roth said.

‘My dear boy, come to my office and you’ll see a whole drawer of my secretary’s filing cabinet full of nothing but! You’re welcome to them if you think it might help with a lead but... he was living under an alias, correct?’

‘That’s right,’ Trautmann said.

‘So how would anyone know of his connection to me?’

‘People do talk, minister,’ Roth said. ‘Maybe he told one of his party chums, or his girlfriend. Word can get around pretty quickly.’

‘You really think so?’ Von Gaben tensed at the idea.

‘Minister, when Rudi left your house, did you swear him to silence about his real identity?’ Trautmann said.

‘I’m afraid I insisted on it, yes. I didn’t want him... jeopardising my career.’

‘And how did your wife feel about it?’

‘She was upset. Though naturally she took my side.’

‘It can’t have been easy.’

‘Indeed, indeed,’ von Gaben sniffed. ‘But she understood.’

‘What else did you argue about, you and Rudi?’

‘What else? Just the party. That was enough. God knows I tried to argue him out if it, but he was firm. And the more I argued, the worse he got. You know how the young are.’

‘Is that so? But then I’m confused. Your wife...’

‘What about my wife?’

This contradicted what the baroness had said. Trautmann switched tack.

‘Your wife wrote to her son – I take it from your reaction you didn’t know about this?’

‘My reaction? Oh yes, I see you noticed I was angry. I was keen to break off all contact, so I’m afraid I forbade her from writing to him. Seems mighty ogrish now, doesn’t it?’

‘So you have no idea why he wrote to her?’

‘No.’

‘Or where he was living?’

‘No, kommissar. My wife kept it from me. I did not know where he was living, or that he wrote to her, or why. Am I or my wife under suspicion?’

‘If you could tell us your whereabouts this evening it would help rule you out. Officially, you understand.’

There was a loud banging on the door. A plainclothesman from the third floor barrelled in.

‘There you are sir,’ he said to Trautmann, his lungs wheezing. ‘Had the devil of a job finding you. Been over half the Alex, I have.’

He took a moment to gulp at the air.

‘Well?’ Trautmann said. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s Fleischer, sir. We’ve found him.’

The minister would have to wait.

Chapter 12

‘Petra,’ Roth said, as they were speeding to the stock yards in another Schupo pool auto. ‘Petra Kleist.’

The streets they drove through were hazy and there was a slight chill in the air. The haze was the only thing stopping the low early morning sun from blinding Trautmann altogether when it peeked through odd gaps in the buildings.

‘What?’ Trautmann said, looking over at his assistant in the passenger seat and wondering what the younger man was gabbling about.

Trautmann had been turning the case over in his mind, thinking now they had yet another suspect for the list – one powerful enough to influence the course of the investigation if he chose.

Hoping Fleischer would lead them to his niece and they could wrap this whole thing up before the minister got impatient – or angry. Roth had been just sitting saying nothing until that moment.

‘You asked earlier if I had a sweetheart,’ Roth said.

Enlightenment dawned. ‘Oh yes, so I did. Petra, you say?’

‘That’s right.’

‘“Rose red, and half as old as time”,’ Trautmann said quietly, quoting from the junk shop of his memory.

‘What’s that?’

‘It’s a pretty name. Is she pretty?’

Roth hunkered down in his seat. ‘She was.’

‘Was?’ Good Lord, Trautmann hoped the poor girl wasn’t dead. Though it would explain much about Roth if she was.

Roth sneered. ‘We’re not together any more.’

Trautmann took a corner. The trembling steering wheel in his hands told him he was driving too fast so he eased off the accelerator. Should he ask the obvious question?

He decided what the hell. ‘So what – ’

‘I’d rather not talk about it.’

‘Fine.’

The auto turned another corner and the smell of the stock yards hit them. Dung and urine – not just from frightened animals approaching death, but also the tanneries close by. The buildings were lower on this street and now the unobstructed sun bathed them in warmth. It also made it damned hard to see.

‘Oh, great,’ Roth said. He pulled himself upright and squinted through the windscreen. ‘How the hell did he manage to get here ahead of us?’

Dozens of Schupo were forming a loose cordon around the slaughterhouse and stock yards, with more of them tumbling out of an open-topped limousine. Behind that, sunlight glinted off the steel machine gun turrets of a pillbox – a Schupo armoured car.

‘You know, Kessler’s been all over this case so much I wouldn’t be surprised if he did it,’ Roth said.

Trautmann snorted.

‘No, I mean it,’ Roth said. ‘After all, why not? Maybe he’s the disgruntled Nazi who wants to hurt the minister by striking at his stepson. Maybe he found out who Meist really was, and decided to use that to his advantage.’

‘Kill one of his own?’ Trautmann said.

‘Weren’t you the one who just suggested that to the minister? Think about it. This is a party dedicated to breaking the law to get into power – and dismantling the constitution once it gets there. They’ve said it often enough. What’s one sacrifice to achieve that?’

‘But how does this help them achieve that, Roth?’ Trautmann replied. ‘What would they gain by this?’

‘Well, now you’re asking for logic from Nazis.’ Roth shifted in his seat. ‘Or maybe you were right. Maybe Kessler’s got some personal agenda. I don’t know. Feels like we’re just going round and round.’

Trautmann slowed the auto as the first of the slaughtering sheds came up on their right and they reached the outer limits of the police cordon.

‘Show them your ID, Roth,’ Trautmann said. ‘I don’t want them getting over excited and shooting us.’

The uniforms waved them through as Roth wound down his window and brandished his papers. Trautmann heard the cries of cattle from a delivery in the nearest yard.

More Schupo were in the yard, rounding up thickset men in bloodied leather aprons to get them out, out, out. Leaving the cattle to mill around. One Schupoman hauled the driver out of his delivery truck without even letting him turn off the engine.

‘They’re enjoying themselves far too much for my liking,’ Trautmann mumbled.

‘Kessler’s not fooling around, is he? How many squads is this?’

Just then, from somewhere up ahead, the man himself spoke through a loudhailer.

‘Last chance, Fleischer!’

Trautmann saw him then, the Schupo sergeant standing by the limousine, the huddled men in front of him aiming their bullet hoses at the entrance to one of the sheds. Trautmann rolled the auto to a stop next to the barricade, nudging Schupomen off the kerb.

He got a few angry stares but he ignored them.

Kessler looked back at the pillbox behind him, the forward machine gun turret pointing over his head, also aimed at the shed. He raised his arm.

Trautmann had managed to get his door half open when the machine gun opened up. Roth flinched and Trautmann let go of the door handle like it was too hot to hold.

Bullets drove holes into the shed walls and tore up the planks. A section of the corrugated iron roof fell in.

Then the shooting stopped. Silence hung heavy for a couple of seconds, before, little by little, various sounds rolled back in. Cattle snorting and shuffling in the yard out of sight. The murmur of Schupomen. The clanking of their equipment. Laughter from somewhere.

Trautmann kicked his door open the rest of the way and got out of the car: ‘Kessler!’

The sergeant turned to him, a glint in his grey eyes that had more to it that just the reflection of the morning sun. Sweat rolled down his cheeks and he was grinning.

‘Bastard won’t come out,’ Kessler said. ‘We’ve given him plenty of warning.’

‘What about the girl? Is she there?’

Kessler frowned.

‘Fleischer’s niece,’ Trautmann said. ‘Is she in there?’ Roth stood next to him, and Trautmann willed his assistant not to say anything out of turn.

‘Oh.’ Kessler’s grin returned. ‘Good idea. Won’t do any good though, you’ll see.’ He raised the loudhailer: ‘Fleischer! If the girl is in there with you, send her out. You have my word she won’t be harmed.’

Fleischer said nothing. Assuming he was in there – and still alive.

‘See?’ Kessler said to Trautmann.

Roth nudged the kommissar and pointed out some Schupomen who’d snuck up to the shed. Some splashed kerosene about while others set the walls alight with burning brands.

‘Kessler, you fool!’ Trautmann said. ‘Let us try to talk them out of there first.’

‘This is hardly the time for talk, Mule,’ Kessler said, before using the loudhailer again: ‘This is it, Fleischer! If you don’t come out of there now with your hands aloft, we’ll burn you out!’

Flames licked the sides of the building.

Trautmann turned, his pulse thick in his ears.

‘Sir?’ Roth said, his voice seeming very distant, though Trautmann could see how close he was out of the corner of one eye.

‘Back in the car, Roth,’ he said.

‘Sir?’

‘I thought I was the deaf one.’

Trautmann grazed a shin on the still-open door before sliding in behind the wheel. Roth settled into the passenger seat. He looked unhappy. Trautmann didn’t blame him, though he still found it annoying.

‘And you needn’t think I want to look at your pouting face for the rest of the morning,’ he snapped, pulling his door shut.

He turned the ignition and the motor coughed into life. He backed up the auto a little way and then paused.

‘Brace yourself against something, Roth. We’re about to jeopardise our pensions.’

Chapter 13

Trautmann jammed the gearstick into first and floored the accelerator. The auto juddered forwards, bouncing bluecoats off the bonnet.

They coursed across the patch of dry grass between the curb and the flaming shed walls and then smashed through. What little remained of the roof tumbled down behind them.

They drove through a room that was all smoke, then into a connecting room. It was clearer in the second room, but darker. The front wheels jammed hard against something Trautmann couldn’t see. He hit the brake pedal and the auto slid into a long, shallow gutter.

Roth smacked against the windscreen as the engine stalled. The glass cracked but it held, and when Roth leaned back in his seat he was honest-to-God smiling, blood slicking his teeth.

‘I told you to brace yourself,’ Trautmann said.

‘I’ve never seen you this upset,’ Roth said. ‘It’s fun.’

Trautmann applied the handbrake – something of an academic exercise. This time when he kicked his door open it was because the door was stuck and he had to.

‘They shouldn’t have made me shoot that boy back in the club,’ he said.

Black smoke drifted around them, most of it clinging to the floor like a drunken English ukulele band. The roof was still on this part of the building, and flickering electric lights cast jagged shadows, illuminating hanging cattle carcasses between microsecond blackouts.

The carcasses hung on hooks connected to a thick chain on some kind of pulley. Blubbery purple-and-white guts hung from some of them. One carcass spun gently, suspended on one leg, the other shorn through by machine gun bullets.

Trautmann kneeled to get a look under the auto. So that was the cause of the jam: another cow carcass that must have come loose from the chain above. The front left axle had smashed under the impact.

Trautmann wondered how they were going to get out.

‘Good God!’ said Roth.

Trautmann straightened, glad to get his face out of the smoke. Too much like Fleischer’s damned club.

Running along one side of the gutter was a raised platform. Roth was backing away from Fleischer, who looked to have been hiding beneath the platform and had now emerged from under it. There was blood on his face and soaking through his shirt.

The bloodied shirt was from a bullet wound in his right shoulder. That on his face? Trautmann didn’t like to speculate. Still, there was no shortage of the stuff sprinkled liberally about.

‘What’s this, the negotiating committee?’ Fleischer said. His Mauser was in his left hand, right arm hanging lifeless at his side. The breech of the pistol had locked open: no bullets left.

‘Where’s the girl, Fleischer?’ Trautmann said.

‘Far away from here,’ Fleischer said, sitting down atop the raised platform.

‘You’ve packed her off to Alexanderplatz station, I expect?’ Roth said. ‘Some brilliant scheme like that?’

Fleischer looked from Roth to Trautmann and said nothing.

‘Oh, tell me you haven’t,’ Roth said. Now it was his turn to look at Trautmann. ‘The man’s an idiot, after all. You don’t think we’ve got every station crawling with police on the lookout for her?’

Fleischer wiped blood from his eyes and sighed.

‘You’d better hope our people get to her before Kessler’s do,’ Trautmann said.

Kessler’s voice reached them on the loudhailer, a tad tinny, as though he’d shrunk to Thumbelina size and was shouting at them from the corner:

‘What the hell was that, Mule? Have you been drinking?’

There were two doorways at either end of the room, both hung with leather straps. An orange glow from the one to Trautmann’s right told him the flames were getting closer and they needed to find a way out.

‘You needn’t think I’m sending anyone in after you!’ said Thumbelina-Kessler.

‘I wish he’d shut up,’ said Fleischer.

‘You know a way out of here?’ Trautmann said.

‘Look, I killed the Meist boy. I admit it. Just leave me here. Makes no difference if the fire gets me or Kessler does.’

‘Rubbish,’ Trautmann said. ‘You no more killed that boy than I did.’ The kommissar moved in closer. ‘Help me get him up, Roth.’

They reached for him, but he shrugged them off.

‘Why does this mean so much to you? You’re so desperate to prove Kessler wrong?’

‘Isn’t that motive enough?’ Roth said.

‘Your niece didn’t kill him either,’ Trautmann said. ‘Whatever foolish notion you have in your head. And think about it for a minute. If Kessler can’t get you for this, who do you think’s going to be number two on his list? Someone who shares your flesh and blood perhaps?’

That did it. Fleischer stood and glanced at the two doorways.

‘We’ll have to go out through the killing shed,’ he said, and headed for the doorway to Trautmann’s left.

Once in the killing shed, the smell of dung came through stronger. The murmurs of confined cattle were much louder, too. Not to mention the crack of hooves and horns against wood.

The electric lights had failed altogether in this shed but daylight shone in through gaps in the walls – and fire crackled around the room’s single opening to the stockyards. Only trouble was, between the three men and their only way out was a funnel created by two stout wooden fences and blocked off by a gate that slid into place from above like a guillotine blade. And the funnel was crammed with cattle.

That gate was the only thing stopping the cattle stampeding through the shed, and it buckled under the panicking press of flesh behind it.

Sweat dribbled down Trautmann’s back and crawled from his underarms like a nest of damp spiders.

‘This the only way out?’ Roth said. ‘Christ, we may as well give ourselves up to Kessler right now.’

Trautmann shushed him, unsure if Roth could hear over the noise of the fire and the livestock. The gate was attached to a chain that ran up through a ring set in a beam in the ceiling and then ran down again. That was how the stock men opened it. Stood to reason it would still work.

‘Help me,’ Trautmann said, heading towards the hanging chain. Whether the others had cottoned on or not, they followed.

They had to cross in front of the gate to get to the chain, though. And as they did so, the gate cracked.

‘Quick!’ Fleischer said, pushing Trautmann out of the way to the tortured sound of splintering wood.

‘What about Roth?’ Trautmann said, his words lost.

He turned back to see the gate smash open under the pressure and cattle burst out of the funnel. He reached for Roth’s outstretched hand to pull him clear. Their fingers touched.

Just as a piece of the gate flew out and knocked Roth on the side of the head. He slipped from Trautmann’s grip and fell beneath the stampede.

Chapter 14

The hooves carried Roth away. Trautmann, unbalanced, took a half step towards the seething cattle, arms still stupidly outstretched.

A tug at Trautmann’s back told him Fleischer was trying to keep him from getting caught under the stampede too. He sagged backwards even as he cursed his cowardice.

He let Fleischer guide him back against the nearest wall, the hoof-churned dust catching the back of his throat. He coughed, and the coughing turned to hacking, then dry heaving from guts that felt like they’d taken a punch.

The last of the cattle bolted through a hole in the shed wall. The sound of the hooves had been so loud he’d not even heard the wood breaking as the herd punched its way through.

But that could have been the tinnitus; it was with him again, swelling now to fill his head. Dizziness made him stumble before Fleischer righted him. The hair smoked on the rumps of the last of the cattle, giving off the smell of roasting shit.

Then the shed was clear of all but the haze of mingled dust and smoke.

A scarecrow-shaped jumble of clothing lay mid-way between Trautmann and the far shed wall. As he noticed it, it moved. He hobbled over to it, pulling Fleischer along.

Roth groaned as they neared. Thank God he was alive, at least. For now.

‘We need to get him out,’ Trautmann said, his throat so dry it came out as a whisper.

‘Under the arms,’ Fleischer suggested.

They each took hold of an armpit, Trautmann taking the stump side and having to pull on loose clothing. They dragged Roth backwards through the smashed gate and along the fenced-in channel. Roth’s legs bounced on the stony floor and he groaned anew.

Trautmann flinched at each bounce, each one shaking through the tiring muscles in his arms. He was losing his grip on Roth’s clothing.

He wanted to ask Fleischer to stop but his weak voice wouldn’t carry. Besides, they were nearing the exit to the cattle yards now and it was wreathed in flames.

Trautmann refreshed his grip with his left hand but Roth kept slipping. He was paying too close attention to his grip as Fleischer yanked them through the fire. Heat blasted Trautmann’s face, fire burning the hair on his right side. He ignored the pain, crouched low and pulled.

Then, finally, they were through.

Fleischer pushed him to the ground and kicked dust on him. Then he kneeled close and rolled him around. Trautmann didn’t have the strength to stop him – could barely see what was going on through his squinting eyes. His flesh had singed coming through, he knew that. He just didn’t know how bad his burns were.

Fleischer stopped and pulled Trautmann into a sitting position.

‘You ok to drive?’ Fleischer said. ‘I don’t trust my bad arm.’

‘Drive?’

A delivery truck was less than ten metres away and it sounded as though the engine were turning over. Of course, that must be the same truck Trautmann had seen the Schupo pulling the driver from when they’d first arrived.

This close, the truck looked massive, the back doors still hanging open and its ramp still attached for the cattle to walk down. Trautmann wasn’t sure he’d be able to handle it. But what choice did they have?

‘Yes,’ Trautmann spat out dust, and tried not to think about the odds that he’d swallowed some cow dung. ‘I’ll drive. Let’s get Roth on the front seat with us. I don’t want him rolling around in the back.’

They carried Roth into the front and Fleischer got in after him, holding him in place as Trautmann went around to the driver’s side and got in. The keys were in the ignition and the engine was idling, all ready to go.

Good thing Kessler’s men had been so over-enthusiastic after all.

Trautmann shut the door.

‘What about the back doors?’ Fleischer said.

‘You want to go and close them? Or do you want to get out of here without being shot?’

Fleischer said nothing.

Trautmann put the truck in gear and pumped the accelerator; the truck gave a burp and lurched forward, cracking Fleischer’s head against the back of the cabin.

Trautmann grinned. At least, he meant to. He had no idea whether the thought made it as far as his face.

He was still grinning mentally when they crashed through the gate into a side street.

His arms ached already, even worse than before. He wrestled with the wheel, with the unfamiliar weight of the vehicle and its wide turning circle. He managed to turn it just enough so they hit the opposite wall side on.

The engine stalled. Up at the end of the street, Schupomen were gathering.

‘Come on, Trautmann,’ Fleischer hissed.

Some of the Schupo crept toward them. Trautmann wondered if they had any kerosene with them.

He fought with the starter. After a couple of tries, the engine growled back into life. He jammed the gears into reverse, backed into the remains of the ruined gate, and steered right into the Schupo swarm, hoping he wouldn’t hit any of the stupid bastards.

Leastways, not hard to enough to kill them.

At the end of the street, he swung left, back into the main thoroughfare and past the remaining Schupo, who scattered.

A couple of bullets chipped the windscreen, but they were through.

Trautmann hauled on the wheel in an effort to keep the truck straight as it careered past stray cattle that had got into the road. He eased the pressure on the accelerator to avoid hitting any of them.

A fistful of loose stones rattled in the back of the van – or that’s how it sounded. Trautmann’s mind took a second to catch up: more bullets.

He glanced into his side mirror and saw the pillbox behind them move, the turret swinging in their direction. If that thing got within range, they were done.

‘Eyes on the road,’ Fleischer said.

Trautmann snapped back to the road ahead, where one of the cows stood right in their path. Hitting it head-on would mean the end of their merry jaunt, so Trautmann twisted the wheel hard. The van skidded left. He slammed on the brake; the back of the van spun out and nudged the cow out of the way.

Then another shower of machine gun bullets hit their exposed left side and took down the cow, its back legs buckling.

Fleischer loosed a string of curses; Trautmann backed up, wrenched the truck into gear and pulled away.

They were picking up speed, but not fast enough. In his side mirror, the pillbox gained ground.

But the armoured car still had cattle to navigate, while for Trautmann the road ahead was clear. Now he pushed down the accelerator with as much force as he had in him, nudging the wheel left and right to present a moving target.

Roth cried out.

‘Is he ok?’ Trautmann said, taking his eyes off the road.

‘Petra!’ Roth said.

‘Which way’s the hospital?’

‘Which one?’

‘The nearest one, you imbecile!’

‘Go right at the junction here.’

Another burst of machine gun fire made Trautmann look in his mirror again. The pillbox was still getting closer. Up ahead was a crossroads with traffic lights. And the lights were turning red.

More bullets hit them and the van juddered, losing height on the left side. The steering wheel slipped through his hands and tapping the brakes did nothing to help him regain control.

‘Are the tyres hit?’ he asked. That crossroads was coming up fast. Less than fifty metres away now.

Fleischer looked in his side mirror.

Another rattle of bullets and the right front tyre burst, sending them skidding through the red light. A couple of horns screeched. An auto slammed into them and spun them around.

Trautmann let go of the wheel and flung himself across Roth.

Then they hit something else and stopped moving.

Chapter 15

Trautmann opened his eyes.

He ached all over, the blistered skin on the side of his head screeching its pain.

Roth groaned beneath him. Trautmann sat bolt upright and looked around. His head was spinning and he wanted to throw up. Again.

Hell of a night shift this was turning out to be.

Fleischer had braced himself against the dash with his legs. The man’s wide-eyed stare morphed into a smile.

Autos boxed them in. They’d hit a nearby lamp post, far as he could make out, and bounced off it. Drivers hooted their horns, and a traffic Schupo was looking through the windscreen at them like they were something from a HG Wells novel that had crash landed on his beat.

Trautmann fumbled his door open. It struck the auto next to them, resulting in more horn tooting.

He slid out of the van with a rude gesture at the driver, and called out to the Schupo.

‘Son?’ He flashed his ID.

The young cop tried to snap to attention, but, in his shock, he couldn’t quite pull it off.

‘Sir?’

‘Commandeer us a vehicle, will you? There’s a good lad.’

‘Sir?’

‘There’s an injured man in here. We need to get him to a hospital quick smart.’

The Schupo snapped off a salute and bolted into the press of autos, throwing his voice about. Probably helped to give his addled mind something to occupy it. So far, so good. Now where was that damned pillbox?

Not that Trautmann’s addled mind was doing all that well. He stepped up onto the running board of the van, trying not to move his head too violently lest it set off a chain reaction to his guts.

‘Fleischer?’ he bellowed, realising the other man had made it out of the van, and was laughing. He was about to ask why when he followed Fleischer’s line of site down the street they’d driven through. The pillbox had crashed straight into the cow it had shot and got stuck. Bluecoats gathered about the front of the car trying to drag the carcass away.

Trautmann started laughing too. The traffic Schupo had to clear his throat a couple of times to get his attention.

Trautmann wiped his weeping eyes. ‘Yes, officer?’

‘Found you a car, sir.’ The man saluted again, which only set Trautmann and Fleischer off again.

Roth moaned. The sound hit Trautmann like a cold shower. He’d been acting like an hysteric. He had the Schupo help them get Roth out of the van and into the back of the auto he’d found, pushing Fleischer in after him and then getting in the front with the shocked civilian driver, who looked at the gangster’s blood-soaked clothing with some alarm.

Back down the road, Kessler’s men shifted the dead cow from beneath the wheels of the armoured car. Trautmann and Fleisher had to get out of there, now.

‘Well done officer,’ Trautmann said to the traffic cop. ‘I’ll be sure to put you forward for a commendation once we’re through at the Charité.’

‘Thank you, kommissar.’ The Schupo beamed.

‘When our friends get here, do tell them where we’ve gone, won’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good lad.’

Then Trautmann lowered his voice, turned to the driver and told him to take them to the Evangelisches Krankenhaus in Lichtenburg – two districts away from the Charité hospital in Mitte.

Chapter 16

‘Ow!’ Trautmann was getting his burns sponged with salt water, his bosomy, middle-aged nurse being none too gentle about it.

‘Just sit there and take it, can’t you?’ Fleischer said. His attendant – a junior doctor, by his appearance and manner – was sewing up the bullet wound in his arm.

Turned out the slug had gone all the way through. Lucky, as it meant they wouldn’t have to hang around long enough for Kessler to track them while someone fished the damn thing out.

The doctor had cut Fleischer’s shirt sleeve away and now, thick with crusted blood, it flapped in a draft that Trautmann couldn’t source for the life of him.

Aside from the draft it was hot in there, the mysterious breath of air doing little to cool them. The unburned side of Trautmann’s face was slick with sweat he hadn’t the nerve to wipe away lest his ministering angel decided to treat his burns with still less tenderness than she was already.

‘Doctor, is there any news about my... colleague?’ Trautmann said.

‘Colleague?’ The doctor didn’t turn around.

‘Yes, the man we brought in with us. He was in an accident. And I –’ Trautmann winced at yet another indelicate sponge application – ‘I need to know if he’s going to live!’

The doctor turned around with a frown. Fleischer caught Trautmann’s eye, shared a look that said stop drawing attention to yourself.

Trautmann glanced down at the floor. ‘Was I shouting? Sorry... I have tinnitus.’

‘That’s not all you’ve got,’ the doctor said, breaking off from his sewing to look at Trautmann’s injuries. ‘Were you in a fire?’

‘Yes... the accident.’

‘Listen, doctor.’ That was Fleischer, who had come up behind the doctor and now lay a hand on his arm. ‘Our friend was in a bad way. We’re very worried. Perhaps you could just go and... see for us?’

His voice was low, the tone even.

The doctor scratched behind his right ear. ‘Yes, of course. I can see you’re upset. I’ll find out what I can. Nurse?’

Trautmann’s torturer looked up.

‘Perhaps you could finish up here for me?’

The doctor nodded at the needle sticking out of Fleischer’s arm. The nurse stopped what she was doing with a sigh and pushed Fleischer back into his chair.

‘What was his name?’ the doctor said.

‘Schmidt,’ Trautmann said. ‘Johann Schmidt.’

They’d agreed on that when bringing him in. Hoping the false name would keep Kessler off their tail – for a while at least.

‘I’ll be back as soon as I can,’ the doctor said.

‘Take your time,’ Fleischer called. Then to the nurse he said, ‘That tickles. Tell me, you tease your husband with those nimble fingers?’

The woman giggled – actually giggled – and slapped Fleischer’s knee.

Trautmann rooted through his pockets and finally found his pipe. But when he brought it out, only the bowl came. The stem had snapped off at some point.

‘Here,’ Fleischer said, leaning over to offer his cigarette case. ‘Have one of these. Christ knows you need it.’

Trautmann lit up, drawing the smoke deep and suppressing a choke when he let it go. It was strong stuff and caught in his throat. His head swam – or more than it already had been.

Roth.

All he could think of right then was Roth. Yet another young victim of this torturous case.

If the boy died, he’d be to blame.

Frankly, if he didn’t die Trautmann would still be to blame. Even more of a cripple than before – what kind of a life was that?

‘Don’t suppose there’s any coffee?’ Fleischer asked the nurse. ‘Be a dear and fetch some for us, won’t you?’

‘This isn’t a hotel,’ the nurse replied. ‘Besides, I haven’t finished on your arm yet.’

‘Oh don’t you worry about that. We’re not going anywhere, are we? So what do you say? I promise I’ll be good.’

He winked and the nurse got to her feet with a flourish, wiggling her rear end. She gave Trautmann a sour look, then threw a girlish smile at Fleischer. She left their cubicle with a swish of the surrounding curtain. Fleischer bit off the end of the thread in his arm.

Trautmann dropped what was left of his cigarette and ground it out.

‘Fleischer? Where are you going?’ he whispered.

‘No answer from the big man, who crept to the curtain and peeked out.

‘Fleischer?’

Fleischer shushed him and left.

Trautmann jumped to his feet. The movement stung his burned skin, but this was no time to capitulate to his aching body. He followed Fleischer out of the cubicle, caught him turning the corner at the end of the hall.

‘Fleischer!’

He slipped on the waxed floor as he went round the same corner, ducking a swipe from the Fleischer’s fist. The gangster had been waiting there for him with evil intent.

The two men looked at each other, Trautmann flat on his arse, back against the wall, Fleischer looming over him; both panting from the brief chase.

‘Take me with you and I’ll prove she didn’t kill him,’ Trautmann said.

Fleischer seemed to think it over. ‘No good.’

‘For God’s sake man, listen to me. She didn’t kill him and I can make sure she believes that. You don’t have to go through all this!’

‘Kessler’s coming after me no matter what. You said yourself if he can’t get me he’ll get her. So what difference can it make, now?’

The two of them were whispering, trying not to draw attention from the hospital staff at the other end of the hall.

‘Stop thinking about yourself for a minute and think about her instead.’

‘You think I’m not?’

‘Shut up, you moron. She’s alone out there. Scared, confused.’ Trautmann let all his guilt flood through him and come out as anger. At the situation, at the fact Roth could die at any moment – hell, could already be dead, as far as he knew – at strongmen like Fleischer who belonged in the circus ring lifting dumbbells instead of lording it over the helpless in places like the Scheunenviertel.

‘She’s in agony, thinking she killed her sweetheart.’

Fleischer rolled his eyes.

‘Reckon she’ll believe you if you tell her she didn’t do it?’ Trautmann snapped. ‘She’ll think you’re lying to make her feel better. I can put her mind at ease. I can help her get over the death of her lover.’

‘Lover,’ Fleischer snorted. ‘The man didn’t know what love was. Treated her like an animal.’

So, Fleischer had heard the stories about Meist – sorry, Rudi von Gaben – beating her up, making her work the streets. But of course he had. He heard everything. The landlady had likely been one of his noses.

A hospital orderly came by, said, ‘Everything ok here, chaps?’

He stared at Fleischer’s blood crusted sleeve, the burns on Trautmann’s face and neck.

Fleischer tried a smile, the kind a cat gives a mouse. ‘Just fine, thank you. I was about to help my friend up.’

Trautmann saw his chance and put out his hands. ‘Don’t you want that?’ he said to Fleischer. ‘Maria’s guilt. Laid to rest. That’s what I can do for you.’

The orderly looked from one man to the other. ‘Do you need a doctor? I can go and – ’

‘No!’ the two men shouted at once.

‘I’ll... just go and find a doctor,’ the orderly said, backing around the corner. ‘I think that’s best.’

‘Well, shit,’ Fleischer said. Then he leaned down, took two fistfuls of Trautmann’s ruined suit jacket and hauled him up. ‘All right, you can come. But for Christ’s sake don’t slow me down. And if they’ve got to her already then all bets are off.’

‘You’re so needlessly dramatic Fleischer, you know that?’

‘Fuck you, Trautmann.’

Chapter 17

It was during the war when I first met Kessler. The turnip winter, you remember? When the price of pork went through the roof.

Made me rich off black market piggies. But it’s funny what money will do to you. I’d been happy up till then sharing my patch with the Bergmann boys. You remember them? Course you do. Yeah, that’s right. Busted in ’17, but I’m getting to that.

See, suddenly I just had all this cash. And people’s stuff. Old jewellery, the odd antique. Butter. Booze. Whatever people had to trade with.

And it wasn’t enough anymore, being the black market guy. Now I was somebody, somebody who counted for something. And I wanted more. I looked at all the protection, the prostitution, the Jew-smuggling from the east – all that Bergmann stuff. And you know what I said to myself?

I said now the pig business ain’t so different from the people business. It’s all just flesh when you get down to it.

I could do what they do, I thought. Do it better than them, too.

That’s right, Kessler was involved in the Bergmann sting. That’s how he made sergeant. In fact, he told me later he’d been asked if he wanted a transfer to Kripo. He could’ve taken it, you know. Imagine that, eh? Might have ended up working with him – how would you have liked that? But he turned it down. I told him to. He was more useful to me in uniform.

Well how do you think he got involved in the first place? A rat like him wouldn’t know the first thing about going after the Bergmanns. Not unless he had help.

So, one day, two of my guys bring in this lanky kid in a blue uniform and a big, scared look on his face. He’d been out in those empty wartime streets, driving one of the Schupo pool cars, racing it around just that little bit too fast.

Well I’ll tell you what happened, you give me the chance. Drove right over a mother and her kid is what he did.

And my guys were there to see it.

Like I say, they brought him to me, told me what had happened. And Kessler’s practically shitting himself in fear. This is the end of his career, right?

Well, hold up, I say. Maybe not.

Maybe I can help make your problem go away if you make mine go away.

What problem’s that, he says.

The Bergmanns, I say.

So he says what do I mean, and I tell him. And bless him, his eyes pop out of his head.

But he went along with it, all right. Did you never wonder how it was he knew exactly where the latest consignment of women would be? Or where their counting house was?

I’d been busy getting all the information I needed on them. Just waiting for the time to strike. And Schupo did it for me! Shotgunned half the Bergmann brothers and jailed the other half. Beautiful to behold, it was.

He worked for me on and off right up until last year. Then he comes and says he’s not working for me no more, and if I’ve got anything to say about that I can just take it up with the brownshirts.

I knew that was it right there. And he’s been after me one way or another ever since.

For me? A couple of house fires. A car crash. Just the one shooting. No one who’ll be missed.

What do I think?

I think he had his road to Damascus moment, joined the party. Decided he didn’t have enough time for my shit cause he had so much of theirs to take on.

Well, the human brain can take only so much shit before it gets too full up. Least, that’s what I reckon.

Oh, and you know the funniest thing? That mother and her kid weren’t even killed. Kessler didn’t know that. Still doesn’t.

What happened to them? Christ, what do you care? All right, all right. Kid ended up working for me and I gave the mother a load of apartments to run. Sure, you know her. She’s the landlady at Maria’s old place.

Chapter 18

‘So that’s why he wants to get you so badly,’ Trautmann said.

The Fleischer shrugged. ‘I’m no clairvoyant, but I reckon so.’

Trautmann hoped that was all there was to it. He didn’t fancy Kessler being wrapped up in the murder like Roth had said. The case was twisted enough already. And now he was close enough to picking the girl’s brains it felt like the case was almost over.

God, but he wanted this to end.

They were huddled outside the Bahnhof Alexanderplatz, smoking cigarettes and waiting for their chance to get inside. It was just after 9am, the sun already high and blasting the city.

The train tracks ran above ground at the Alexanderplatz, east to west. The ground trembled as another steam train pulled in overhead, its whistle blowing to make sure the tracks were clear.

Roth had been right about one thing: Maria was in there somewhere. It seemed mad; the station was just across the street from police headquarters. Trautmann said as much to Fleischer.

‘I just gambled on your guys being a bit less sharp so close to home,’ Fleischer said. ‘I mean, who would’ve thought I’d send her here, right?’

Trautmann couldn’t work out how or where she’d hidden herself so the police hadn’t found her, and Fleischer wouldn’t say. In the twenty minutes they’d been there they’d spotted just one two-man Schupo patrol, so maybe Fleischer’s assumption stacked up.

No sign of any plainclothesmen so far. But Trautmann dearly hoped they were there too.

His plan depended on it.

He took in their appearance. Torn clothing, burned skin and dried blood between the two of them. It would be a miracle if they made it inside without attracting attention – and the station was packed with travellers.

Of course, there was always the legendary Berliner insouciance to contend with. These folks had seen enough of life – and of Berlin’s infamous nightlife – to consider very little out of the ordinary. A couple of mad tramps promenading through a busy station at nine in the morning could well attract no notice whatsoever. And Trautmann didn’t want that.

Fleischer finished his smoke and tossed it away. ‘Ready?’ he said.

Trautmann took a couple more puffs, then scrunched his out underfoot. ‘We’re not going to get very far looking like this, are we?’

‘Just walk like you’ve got somewhere to go to. Purpose. We’ll be all right, you’ll see.’

They entered the building at street level, passing two men in business suits with briefcases who stopped to gawp. But sure enough, the men didn’t stop for long and just carried right on out of the building as Trautmann caught up with Fleischer.

‘What did I tell you?’ Fleischer said. ‘Purpose.’

He quick-stepped around a middle-aged woman leading a gaggle of children. Trautmann brushed her arm, nodding at her and keeping on, worried now that maybe the girl wasn’t there at all. Maybe Fleischer was just trying to lose him in the crowd.

A sudden stream of people came up from the U-Bahn platforms on the lower floor as the two men came abreast of a cigarette kiosk.

‘Shit,’ Fleischer hissed. ‘Quick – down here.’

And the big man pulled Trautmann down the steps to the U-Bahn, the kommissar getting a flash of blue Schupo uniforms at the edge of his vision to tell him why.

They reached the platform just as another U-Bahn train pulled in. More people got off. Trautmann flexed his fingers, ready to grab Fleischer if he made a dash for the train.

But he didn’t. Instead he led them to the far end of the platform just as the crowd began to thin out. The train doors rattled shut. The two men mounted the stairs, Fleischer acting cautious now – not wanting to be surprised by more Schupo at this end when they emerged.

Fleischer’s actions said the girl really was there – but where the hell were the men from Kripo?

At the top of the stairs, Fleischer doubled back, looking around for cops. Trautmann did the same.

They arrived at one of the ticket offices, and Fleischer knocked on the door to the side of the small queue of people by the window. A couple of those waiting cast their eyes over the two men, their glances turning to full blown stares.

The door didn’t open, so Fleischer barged in front of the window and rapped on the glass. The waiting travellers murmured at this breach of etiquette.

‘We’re here for an inspection,’ Trautmann said, flashing them his ID – just long enough for it to sink in.

The murmurs died away. Honestly, show an official stamp in this town and you could get away with anything.

The plump ticket seller at the window moved leisurely beneath his peaked cap and grey walrus moustache. Until he saw who had done the knocking. Then his eyes widened and he broke off from issuing the next customer’s ticket. He shouted towards the back of the office.

The door opened with a rattle of keys and Fleischer pulled Trautmann inside with him.

The man who had opened the door was dressed in a conductor’s uniform. He looked at his feet as he led them through another small door into a cramped room with the dimensions of a sleeping compartment on a train. It was fiercely hot in there thanks to the pot-bellied stove by the door, lit so the men inside could make coffee. The rest of the room was taken up with two wooden box benches set against the walls, between which was a small table littered with coffee cups, ashtrays and morning papers.

Two other men – another conductor and another ticket seller – were sitting on the benches. The conductor smoked a cigarette while looking dumbly up at Fleischer. The ticket seller shot to his feet.

‘Clothes. And a gun,’ Fleischer said, to the one who’d stood up.

The other man he wrenched off the bench with his one good arm. The man fell against the stove and knocked off the coffee pot that had been bubbling away.

Trautmann kneeled over the conductor, looking to see that he wasn’t coffee-scalded. He freed the whistle from around the man’s neck and sat him upright. He also kicked the coffee pot over to the door, propping it open a crack.

Fleischer pulled the top off the right hand bench. Inside, curled up around blankets, face drenched in sweat, was Maria. Fleischer gave her his hand and helped her out.

Trautmann got out his handkerchief and wiped his face. Then he wrapped the cotton around his hand, hoping it would be thick enough to withstand the heat of the coffee pot handle.

On the opposite side, the ticket seller had taken off the top of the other bench. He pulled out a couple of uniforms and a small pistol, which he handed to Fleischer.

Now there was a gun in the mix, Trautmann had to act fast. He reached down for the coffee pot, kicked open the door and shouted a warning, heaving the pot at the ticket window.

Then he put the conductor’s whistle to his lips and blew it as long and hard as he could before Fleischer could react.

Fleischer’s mouth twisted into a snarl and he raised his gun.

‘You son of a –’ he began, but his words were drowned out with more whistles coming from the station. Police whistles.

‘Police!’ called a voice from the outer door. ‘Open up!’

‘Your move, Fleischer,’ Trautmann said, looking pointedly at Maria and then at the gun barrel still aimed at his chest.

Fleischer flicked off the safety catch. No one moved.

‘Look, Fleischer –’ Trautmann said.

‘Say one more thing, you fucking traitor. Go on, I dare you.’

A bead of warm sweat fell from Trautmann’s hairline down the back of his neck. Would they hurry up and break down that goddamned door?

Chapter 19

‘Where in Hades’ sweaty armpit were you?’ Trautmann thundered, coffee cup shaking in his hand.

The two plainclothesmen – Haas and Franke – looked at their feet.

‘It was shift changeover, Mule,’ Hass said, adjusting his hat and meeting Trautmann’s eye for the briefest of moments before looking away. Embarrassment or the shock of Trautmann’s burns, the kommissar couldn’t tell.

‘I needed you there.’

Trautmann went to his desk and found two notes waiting for him.

You wife wants to know when you’re coming home

– said the first, a phone message with the date and time hastily scribbled on a scrap of paper. Dagmar had phoned twenty-some minutes ago.

He flipped that over and read the second, on headed department notepaper – from Weiss, his boss and the deputy police president in charge of Kripo. This one was several shades more urgent:

Where are we with the Meist case? I’m getting calls from the Minister. Could do with your report for the Murder Commission, post haste. See me soon as you get this.

And suddenly all Trautmann could think of was Roth. How was he going to explain what had happened to Roth?

He sighed. He couldn’t blame Haas and Franke for not knowing the seriousness of the situation. After all, he had no report to show anyone yet. And God alone knew when he’d get the time to put it all down.

It had been Schupo who’d broken through the door and saved Trautmann’s arse. Not that he wasn’t grateful for not having to swallow a couple of bullets, but it meant Kessler would hear what had happened all the sooner. And Trautmann didn’t want to guess the consequences of that. Not before he could solve this damn case.

Fleisher and Maria he had cooling off in a couple of separate interview rooms, and there was no time to lose.

‘Here,’ he said to Franke, the senior of the two detectives. Franke was in his mid-thirties, a thin man with rounded shoulders and a drooping moustache. Trautmann handed him the photograph from the wallet of the mystery man they’d found in Meist’s apartment.

‘What’s this?’ Franke said.

‘You can make it up to me by visiting this photographer and finding out who this photo belongs to.’

Franke angled the photo to catch the light and showed it to his partner.

‘Now gentlemen, please.’

‘Who’s the guy?’

‘Suspect in the Meist murder.’

Franke brightened at the news and turned to go.

‘Just a moment,’ Trautmann said.

The two men paused.

‘I want you to come straight back to me with this. No one else. Understood?’

Franke nodded.

‘Say it.’

‘Understood, Trautmann, Christ! What’s bitten you today? You had a hard night?’

‘The hardest.’

He dismissed them and they left, Haas mumbling as they went.

Trautmann took another sip of his coffee, trying to clear his mind. The image of Roth falling under the stampede in the slaughterhouse just wouldn’t go away – but now wasn’t the time.

He was close. He could feel it. As long as he didn’t slip up. He took a couple of deep breaths and went to interview his star witness.

Chapter 20

He’d left her a towel to wipe off the sweat. But she hadn’t touched it. It lay crumpled on the table in front of her where he’d put it.

Her eyes registered him briefly when he entered, then slid away to the middle distance.

Trautmann passed her a cup of coffee. She ignored that too. He took the chair opposite and looked her over. Dark smudges under red-rimmed eyes. From crying – or lack of sleep. Hair stringy and still damp from lying in her makeshift hiding place for God knew how many hours.

Can’t have been easy going on the run. Or thinking you’d killed the man you loved. However much of a monster he might have been – or however much he might have deserved it.

He pushed away the thought – too much like Roth. Too many assumptions.

The thunder of hooves filled his ears, followed by the faint echo of tinnitus. He sipped his coffee and waited for it to go. The coffee had gone cold.

It wasn’t working – he’d have to just jump right in and force his brain to come along with him.

‘I know what you’re thinking, Maria.’

She looked at him. He had split seconds to keep her attention.

‘He came home and found you with another man. They fought and someone hit him with the candlestick.’

Tears speckled her brown eyes.

‘But you didn’t kill him.’

‘How can you know?’ she said, so quietly he only just heard her. She cleared her throat. ‘You weren’t there.’

He spread his arms wide to show he was on the level.

‘I know things, Maria. Jan didn’t die from the blow to the head. He died of two gunshot wounds to the chest.’ She shuffled a little in her chair and now Trautmann took a risk with his guesses. ‘It happened after you went to see Frau Schneider. After you left to go and see your uncle, I think.’

‘Gunshots? You’re sure?’

He risked a smile. ‘The evidence doesn’t lie.’

‘So I didn’t kill him?’

‘Not unless you shot him.’ He drained the remnants of his cold coffee. ‘You didn’t shoot him, did you?’

She choked then, though no tears flowed. Her sobs were quiet, dignified, as the terrible false knowledge of murder she’d harboured shuddered its way out of her.

‘I’ll take that as a no,’ he said. He waited for the worst of the sobbing to subside. ‘Did your suitor have a gun with him?’

She shook her head. ‘He ran. Jan and me had the fight and he ran off. After Jan had punched him.’

‘You know this man’s name?’

‘No names,’ she said. ‘Never any names.’

‘You fought often, you and Jan?’

She nodded, using a corner of the towel to wipe her nose.

‘I spoke to Frau Schneider. She thought Jan was forcing you to go on the game, but she was wrong, wasn’t she. He didn’t like you sleeping with other men, did he?’

‘He hated it,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t listen to him. His stupid plan wasn’t working, so what else were we going to do?’

‘His plan? What do you mean, Maria – what plan?’

And then she told him why Meist had been killed.

Chapter 21

‘Now listen to me,’ Trautmann said, putting one of Fleischer’s cigarettes in the gangster’s mouth and lighting it for him before taking another for himself and doing the same. ‘You don’t like me very much right now, and I get that. But you help me and she can go free in a matter of hours.’

Fleischer’s hands were still cuffed and Trautmann wanted to keep it that way. He didn’t want to risk the big man lashing out at him.

‘Bull,’ Fleischer said, making his cigarette dance between his lips. ‘You lied to me, you fucking traitor. Why should I trust you now?’

Trautmann went over to the window and looked through the bars to the inner courtyard below. ‘Because this is justice, Fleischer. This is truth. This is how it works.’

‘You know what you sound like? Like that puppy Roth rubbed off on you.’

Trautmann ignored that and hit back with: ‘Meist didn’t force Maria to go on the streets. It was her idea.’

‘Bullshit!’ Fleischer bellowed.

Trautmann turned to look at Fleischer’s broad back.

‘I’m telling you, Fleischer. It was her idea. To make money. Meist hated it, and that’s why they fought.’

‘Why would she do that?’

‘Because she knew you wouldn’t retaliate.’

Fleischer snorted, said nothing.

‘Oh, you wouldn’t like it, all right. She knew that. But she gambled on you looking the other way. Maybe she gambled on you blaming Meist, but I don’t think she thought that far ahead. If she’d realised the risk she was putting him under then she might have stopped. She loved him, Fleischer.’

‘If that Nazi fuck had got himself a job then she wouldn’t have had to.’

Trautmann went and sat in the chair across from Fleischer, reckoning there was less danger of an attack now. Something had been nagging at him about Fleischer’s willingness to destroy his whole crime empire for the sake of protecting this one girl he’d thought had murdered her sweetheart.

There was only one answer that made sense.

‘Does she know?’ Trautmann said.

‘Know what?’

‘That she’s your daughter.’

Fleischer’s eyes narrowed. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Risking everything you’ve built over twenty years. Taking the rap for her when you thought she’d killed him. Come on. Family’s important Fleischer, but to risk it all for your brother’s child?’

Fleischer looked away, then back.

‘She is your brother’s child, isn’t she?’ Trautmann took a drag on his cigarette, casual, adding the sheen of confidence to his frantic guesswork. ‘Officially I mean.’

‘No one knows,’ Fleischer said. ‘Not even I know for sure. But yeah, me and her mother, we... we got close. There’s a chance she’s mine, that’s all. And that’s good enough.’

Trautmann chose his next words with care. ‘Meist was cleaning up his act, she says. Getting out of the party. Moving on. Only trouble was, he was trying to blackmail someone. To keep Maria from going out on the streets. Blackmail, Fleischer. That’s why he was killed.’

‘Who was it?’

‘That’s where I need your help. She doesn’t know. Meist never said. But he did say he was leaving the party.’

Fleischer snorted again and looked away, ash falling from the end of his cigarette.

‘And just how am I supposed to help?’

‘You know everything that happens in the Scheunenviertel. You’ve got people everywhere. Someone must have seen something.’

‘I never heard anything about this.’

‘No one saw anyone go into the apartment the time it happened? No one saw him leave?’

‘What did Frau Schneider say?’ Fleischer said.

‘Nothing helpful.’

‘Well if she doesn’t know, what makes you think anyone else will? She was right there when it happened!’

‘But she was like you. Taken in by the idea Meist was beating up his girl.’

Fleischer took a deep drag of his cigarette and said nothing.

‘She didn’t get those bruises from him, Fleischer. She got them from her suitors. Some of whom she robbed rather than slept with. And you could have stopped it all.’

‘Fuck you.’ Fleischer spat his cigarette out. It sparked as it hit the floor. ‘I talked to her after I found it who this guy was, told her to leave him. She didn’t listen. Said it was nothing to do with me. Made it pretty clear she’d sever all ties with me if I didn’t drop that sort of talk. I thought it was love blinding her. You know how women get when their men beat them. They can’t see him for the bastard he is. Well, that’s how I thought it was. That I’d lose her altogether if I tried to get involved again. She never told me it wasn’t him. She never told me how it was at all.’

It was strange watching the all-knowing Fleischer admit to powerlessness. But there it was. Even with spies on every street corner he hadn’t known the truth about Maria and her beau.

Nor had he any information that would help him track down the killer. Not unless he put the word out. And he couldn’t very well do that from a police cell.

Fleischer looked at him. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘I can still probably let her go. But I can’t clear her name until I find whoever did it. I do that, there’s no threat of re-arrest. No cloud hanging over her. She’s free and clear.’

‘You’re sure she doesn’t know who?’ Fleischer said.

‘You’re sure you don’t know?’

They both sat back at the same time, chairs creaking in defeat.

‘Well here we are,’ Fleischer said. ‘Two useless old men, going nowhere.’

‘Not quite nowhere,’ Trautmann said, putting out his cigarette in an ashtray on the table and getting up. ‘This is enough for the murder commission to get its teeth into, at least. You sit tight. I’ll be back for you and Maria.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘To see my boss,’ Trautmann said, and left Fleischer to stew in the interview room.

Trautmann was full of confidence all of a sudden. Weiss was a good man. Officious, true, but level headed. He’d know what to do.

The trouble was, Trautmann had left it too late.

Chapter 22

Something was wrong when he got to Weiss’ office. There were soldiers everywhere, and raised voices coming from the office. One of the voices belonged to Weiss.

At the door, two soldiers barred his way.

‘What’s going on?’ Trautmann said.

‘It’s ok, men,’ said a voice from within – it was von Gaben. ‘You can let him in. We’ve been expecting Kommissar Trautmann.’

Von Gaben? Was he there to put pressure on Weiss? Even if he was, why all the soldiers?

He went inside. Weiss stood behind his desk, his face flushed. Police President Grzesinski was in the room, too. Next to him stood von Gaben and Sergeant Kessler.

‘I wanted to give you the update on the Scheunenviertel case,’ Trautmann said to Weiss.

‘Too late for that, I’m afraid,’ Weiss said. ‘Seems I’m being replaced.’

‘Sir?’

‘The government is no longer able to sit back and let this violence engulf the streets unchecked,’ von Gaben said. He sounded like he’d been rehearsing in front of a mirror – his lisp almost undetectable, moustache stiffer than a taxidermied slug. ‘Law and order have broken down, and I’m authorised to – ’

‘This flies in the face of the constitution,’ Weiss said.

Grzesinski shuffled uneasily, and von Gaben said, ‘Come now, doctor. This is all perfectly legal and constitutional. As you well know. We can’t put up with this chaos anymore. The government is under pressure to do something about it and so we’ve been obliged to step in.’

‘It’s the worst kind of mob politics, is what it is!’ Weiss shouted.

‘My son is dead, doctor,’ von Gaben said, silencing him, ‘and you tell me I’m wrong to do this? From what I hear, your men have been running around causing major damage to private and public property and endangering police lives. All to harbour a murder suspect with underworld and communist connections. And all with your authority! Can you deny any of this?’

Kessler’s smirk was infuriating. But worse was the look of anger and hurt on Weiss’ face.

‘Is this true, Trautmann?’ Weiss said.

‘Sir, you don’t have all the facts. If I can have a moment, we’re on the verge of a major breakthrough on the case and I can explain – ’

‘I certainly hope you can, kommissar,’ von Gaben broke in. ‘But you can explain it to me. Dr Weiss’ authority is rescinded.’

‘Sir?’ Trautmann appealed to Weiss. Grzesinski went and laid a hand on his deputy’s shoulder and the fight seemed to leak out of him.

‘I understand you have the suspect in custody at this very moment?’ von Gaben said.

Looking around, Trautmann saw he was on his own.

‘That’s correct, minister.’

‘Has he confessed?’

‘He didn’t kill your son.’

‘Ah, this young woman then? The one my son was living with?’

Trautmann’s gaze flicked to Kessler, who didn’t react. Trautmann took a deep breath.

‘No minister. Not her, either.’

‘Oh come now, kommissar. Are you letting yourself be played for a fool?’

‘Minister, I must protest. These are hardly the circumstances to discuss this.’

‘Really?’ von Gaben said. ‘I’m not sure there hasn’t been altogether too much sneaking around in the dark already. Where’s your assistant?’

‘Minister, this isn’t right. I would remind you you’re also a suspect whose alibi has yet to be checked – ’

‘Where is Kriminalassistant Roth, Trautmann? Or are you shirking responsibility for him, too?’

Just how much did the minister know?

‘A car from the Alexanderplatz carpool driven into a burning building, destroying both it and the building itself...’ von Gaben was counting off on his fingers. ‘...Livestock let loose to stampede into the streets... A delivery truck crashed into a lamppost, damaging it, the lamppost, and innumerable autos driven by members of the public. Need I go on?’

‘The building was already on fire, minister! And had been machine gunned by others on the force. That’s what destroyed it! I had to go in to retrieve the suspect who might otherwise have been killed.’

‘You had to?’

‘Yes!’ Trautmann was shouting now. He knew he was close to losing control, but none of this made any sense. Yes, he’d done wrong, but he’d been pushed to these extremes, couldn’t any of them see?

‘You had to endanger your own life – and that of your subordinate? Not to mention countless uniformed officers who were simply doing their duty? And goodness only knows how many innocent members of the public? For some backstreet pimp?’

Grzesinski’s mouth hung open and even Weiss was shaking his head. And no wonder. With his charge sheet listed out loud like that it sounded like another man von Gaben was describing. A very dangerous man, at that. But he had to keep fighting.

‘A backstreet pimp whose niece holds the whole key to this case,’ he said.

‘And you can prove that?’ von Gaben asked.

Trautmann wanted to plough on. To tell what he knew. To justify all the crazy things he’d done. But something stopped him. With Kessler in the room it felt like some kind of monstrous trick. Like this goading was designed just to tease that very information out of him.

So he kept quiet.

Von Gaben turned to Kessler: ‘Well if that’s true it looks like we should put your plan into action as quickly as possible, sergeant. How soon can you be ready?’

‘Ready?’ Trautmann said. ‘Ready for what?’

‘Clearly you can’t be trusted with the case at this point, Trautmann. You will go to your office, type out your report and hand it to me personally before you leave. Then you can turn in your service pistol and go home.’

‘Home?’

‘We don’t need mavericks in Kripo when things hang in the balance out there,’ von Gaben said. ‘You’re suspended, kommissar.’

‘No!’

Kessler left the room. Trautmann reached out a hand to stop him – a reflex action. One of the soldiers blocked his way, his rifle raised across his chest.

‘Where’s he going?’

‘Not that it’s any of your business, but he will be transporting your two suspects to Tegel prison. If they’re as important as you say they need to be somewhere more secure than here.’

‘But that’s...’ Images flashed into Trautmann’s mind. The convoy stopped, Kessler’s men marching Fleischer and Maria out into an empty alley, or a deserted yard. Riddling them with bullets and then claiming brownshirts had ambushed them. Or maybe even setting it up with Kessler’s brownshirt contacts so they were ambushed for real... Only Kessler’s Schupo would be ready for it, primed to give up the two prisoners without a shot fired.

Kessler’s last chance to get even for the years of Fleischer’s bullying and blackmail. And once again justice would be done in the street and not in the courts. Germany would take more steps towards anarchy.

‘Minister, I request permission to be with the convoy when it leaves.’

‘Denied.’

‘But Minister – ’

‘I said denied!’ Von Gaben nodded to the two closest soldiers. ‘Gentlemen, kindly escort the kommissar to his office.’

As the men stepped forward to carry out their orders, Trautmann took a last look at Weiss, the crumpled shoulders, the weary frown, the seething, impotent anger. Then the former deputy police president met his gaze and shook his head. Not now, Trautmann, he seemed to say. Choose your battleground.

Trautmann pulled clear of the soldiers.

‘All right, von Gaben,’ he said. ‘I don’t need an escort.’

‘You’ll do as I asked and then leave?’

‘Yes.’

‘You have an hour to present your report. If you’re not done by then these soldiers will throw you out, if needs be. That clear?’

‘Crystal.’

‘Good. Then get on with it.’

Chapter 23

Trautmann shuffled back to the Kripo squad room feeling like he’d taken a punch to the gut. He passed more soldiers on the way, and plainclothesmen buzzing with the news that Weiss was out. Grzesinski too, apparently.

Seemed like all that Nazi propaganda had paid off. They were getting the mini-revolution they’d wanted, unlikely as it was to sate their lust for change.

Had Roth had been right all this time? Had he, Trautmann, been too concerned with protocol and lofty theories to see the reality of this ugly politics undermining it all? He’d thought justice would win out. But now? The case taken from him, his job taken from him, Fleischer and Maria about to be escorted to Tegel – with some kind of Kessler-arranged retribution a virtual certainty.

And Meist’s killer still free, probably never to be caught. Not now.

Trautmann got to his desk. It was heaped with papers and handwritten notes alongside tweezers and schnapps bottle. Roth’s desk was neat by comparison, his typewriter still grasping the sheet of paper he’d started to write his report on only a few hours ago.

Trautmann went over to see what Roth had typed so far, thinking he had to call the hospital and see whether Roth had pulled through. God alone knew what he would do if he hadn’t.

A throat clearing made him look up. Haas and Franke were back, and Haas was smiling.

‘Well?’ Trautmann said.

‘We got the name,’ Franke said.

‘He’s not far away either,’ Haas said.

‘How far?’ Trautmann said.

‘Lichtenberg.’

‘Is your auto still booked out?’ Trautmann said.

Damn the report, and damn von Gaben. He wanted answers, and this was his last chance to get them.

Chapter 24

The name of Maria’s ‘suitor’ was Klaus Esser. So said the photographer who’d recognised the photograph from the wallet.

They’d gone to the man’s apartment where his wife had said he was at work. Nothing to worry about, Trautmann had said, just returning the wallet and asking a few questions about how he’d lost it. The woman had been angry the police hadn’t been round before to follow up on her husband’s mugging. Trautmann had commiserated and sympathised while doubting very much whether Klaus Esser had reported anything to any precinct house.

Turned out Esser was a clerk at an import company with offices in Treptow near the canal docks. When they pulled up outside, Trautmann asked Haas and Franke to wait in the auto. Haas began to protest before Trautmann said:

‘No, this is supposed to be low key. You think he would say anything with us all there? Especially with his boss within earshot.”

No sense dragging them any further into this than he had to, either.

‘Low key?’ Franke said. ‘You do realise you look like a street bum?’

‘Just wait here,’ Trautmann said, choosing to ignore Haas’ sniggering. Especially as his authority was purely charade at that point.

He got out of the auto and crossed the street to the offices, housed in a squat brick building with deep set windows that might once have been a storehouse for grain. He had to walk through an archway and found the door to his right.

A young man sat in waistcoat and shirtsleeves behind the reception desk, his hair oiled and parted on a razor’s edge. He raised an eyebrow at the sight of Trautmann.

‘We’re not giving out donations, I’m afraid.’

Trautmann’s mood boiled over. He pulled out his papers and shoved them in the clerk’s face.

‘I’m looking for Klaus Esser, son. And I’ve just come from a stand-off with a suspect in a burning building, so get moving before you make me lose my temper.’

The clerk jerked to his feet as though pulled on strings. He disappeared through an anonymous-looking door. Trautmann got a blast of clacking typewriter keys and the hum of conversation before the door closed.

So much for low-key. The clerk hadn’t even asked what it was all about. Doubtless the rumour would spread that Esser had something to do with the burning building fugitive.

The clerk returned and said, ‘If you’d like to walk this way?’

‘No I wouldn’t like to walk that way. Bring him out here, now!’

The clerk jumped back and vanished again. Trautmann grinned. That little outburst had just been for fun. Still, if he was going to take out his frustrations, better to do it with that pompous little fool than the likes of Haas and Franke.

This time when the clerk returned he had someone in tow. Another young man with neat hair above a face full of purpling swellings.

‘Mr Esser?’ Trautmann thundered, brandishing the man’s wallet. ‘Your wife is most upset no one’s been to see you to discuss your mugging as yet. Perhaps you’d like to step outside to talk it over?’

Esser had trouble meeting Trautmann’s eyes, though of course he complied readily enough.

Once outside, Trautmann said, ‘Right, tell me all of it and don’t leave anything out. I know you were in the Scheunenviertel last night. That’s where you left this.’ He handed the wallet over. ‘You give me what I want to know and I might not even need you to make a statement. Nothing official, ok?’

Esser took the wallet and flipped it open, staring into it but seeing the events of the previous evening.

‘She came onto me, I swear.’ His voice came out slightly muffled through puffy lips.

‘Swear all you like. Just get to the point.’

‘She took me to her place, said it would be safer there. We started doing it when her guy walked in on us, out of nowhere. Shit, I didn’t even realise she had a guy. Well, he went crazy. Started punching me. I fell out of the bed and on the floor, scrabbling for my clothes, but he went on punching, and kicking me, you know?’

Trautmann nodded.

‘Well, then his woman starts pawing at him, yelling at him to stop. Of course, that just made him madder. But he stopped hitting me. Started shouting at her instead, then. I saw her pick up this thing off the dresser and go at him with it. I couldn’t see what it was, just that it flashed where it caught the light. Could have been anything. And I pulled my trousers on and got the hell out of there with them still shouting behind me as I went. Then later I realised I’d dropped my wallet. Or maybe she’d stole it. I don’t know. That bitch.’

‘Steady on lad,’ Trautmann said. ‘A little respect, if you please. It’s no easy thing selling your body.’

‘But now my money’s gone and my wife might find out! My wife! Oh God, I couldn’t bear it if that happened, you know?’

‘Calm down, boy,’ Trautmann barked. ‘You swear that’s all there was to it? You didn’t hit the guy back?’

‘No, I told you, I got out of there as quickly as I could.’

‘You didn’t know either of them before last night? You’d never met before? Been a regular customer, anything like that?’

‘No. God, no. No way!’

‘You ever own a gun?’

‘No.’

‘Remember I can check that.’

‘No!’

‘All right,’ Trautmann said. ‘Now take some deep breaths and think hard for me, please. When you left the apartment building, did you see anyone else going in?’

‘Funny you say that. There was someone, now you mention it.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Is it important?’

‘You bet your marriage it’s important. Now what. Did. He. Look. Like.’

‘Well, I noticed him straight off, you know? His clothes were all wrong.’

‘Wrong?’

‘For the Scheunenviertel. He didn’t belong.’

Much like you, Trautmann wanted to say, but didn’t, not wanting to interrupt the flow.

‘He looked like money,’ Esser said. ‘I can’t explain it, but that’s what I thought.’

‘And his face? Did you see what he looked like?’

Esser told him, and Trautmann knew he had his killer.

Chapter 25

Paul von Gaben opened the door to his study and paused to gather his thoughts.

Trautmann didn’t blame the man; he’d have been shocked to find himself there waiting behind the desk too. Not to mention sipping a glass of the smoky Scotch from the crystal decanter on the sideboard. It might have looked like a deliberate affront, but really he needed it to calm his nerves.

Besides, he had permission. He raised the glass, half-toast, half-apology:

‘Your wife said I could. She’s gone out, by the way. I thought it best if we had privacy for what we need to discuss.’

That was a lie, of course, but von Gaben seemed not to be listening. Instead, he loosened his tie and shot his cuffs, keeping his eyes on Trautmann the whole time and refusing to be intimidated.

‘I suppose you know what you’ve done.’

And just like that, he’d stolen back some of the initiative. The wax on his moustache shone in the lamplight.

Trautmann put down his glass and crossed his arms, deciding he’d wait for the minister to continue. Von Gaben came closer.

‘They attacked the convoy,’ he said.

‘I knew it. What did I tell you! Brownshirts? Or Schupo from the 87th?’

‘Communists, damn it!’

What? That was the last thing Trautmann had expected.

‘They detonated the leading armoured car with some kind of explosive device and your friend Fleischer and the girl got clean away.’

Trautmann chuckled. ‘Well, what do you know? Don’t suppose Kessler was any too pleased.’

Von Gaben went to the sideboard and poured himself some scotch.

‘We’ll never know,’ he said, over his shoulder. ‘Fleischer saw to that.’

He turned back with a glass half full, and met Trautmann’s quizzical stare with: ‘They kidnapped him, Trautmann. Stole him right off the street in broad daylight. His body turned up outside the Alex three hours ago trussed up in a potato sack. I take it you’re familiar with the practice of sacking?’

Trautmann nodded. Putting a man in a sack was an old underground enforcer trick. Having coshed your victim and tied his hands behind his back, you then tucked his knees under his chin, running a length of twine from around the knees to around the neck. Lastly, you bundled him in a sack. Waking up later, the victim would panic and try to straighten up, thereby choking himself to death.

‘Well it’s a damned nasty way to go, I don’t mind telling you. And I suppose you realise it raises the temperature of the water you’re already in by several degrees?’

‘All right, this is all very shocking. But it’s time to stop the charade, I think.’

Von Gaben’s lips curled into a sneer. Well, all to the good. He was about to object even more.

‘Tell me, you think getting the sack is worse than two bullets to the gut?’

Trautmann held up the type-written document he’d brought with him; he threw it in von Gaben’s direction.

‘My report, minister. A little late, I know. But worth the wait, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

Von Gaben retrieved the dog-eared pages from the floor. He sat on the edge of one of the sofas and began flicking through them.

‘It was your sudden keenness to admit Meist was your son that first got me thinking. That, and the statement from his girlfriend that he was blackmailing someone. Well, this afternoon I finally managed to put it together. It was all about politics, that’s the crazy thing.

‘I don’t know how long you’ve been a Nazi, minister, but that was the big secret you couldn’t reveal to the world. Not until the government had moved in and taken control of the police, cleared it of all socialist elements. And Meist’s murder was the perfect catalyst, wasn’t it? To show that Grzesinski and Weiss had lost control of the streets and couldn’t be trusted. The perfect excuse.’

Von Gaben looked up from his perusal of Trautmann’s report.

‘What I can’t work out was whether you’d planned it. I mean, you went to see him last night. That was why he left his party meeting and came home early. Now, all of this could have been part of a plan to kill him. I assume you had the gun with you. But then why write him that cheque, only to tear it up and have to burn it afterwards? It doesn’t make sense. Unless you were willing to buy him off and something went wrong...’

The minister’s shoulders slumped. There were bags beneath his eyes, and his lips had lost some of their elasticity.

‘That little bastard,’ he said, his lisp to the fore. ‘All he had to do was keep his stupid mouth shut. I blame that girl of his, messing with his mind. Yes I wrote him that cheque, but then he said he was going to tell the world anyway. Tell them all about my secret party membership. The bloody fool. Well, what else could I do?’

He paused to take a deep slurp of scotch.

‘You can’t prove any of this, of course. The Fleischer girl has disappeared, doubtless never to be heard from again. And it’s just your word against that of a grieving government minister.’

‘You were seen going into their apartment building after Maria had left.’ Trautmann nodded at his report. ‘It’s all in there. Page eleven, I think. Odd, for a man who swore to me and my colleague that he hadn’t known his estranged stepson’s whereabouts. That’s why the anger when you found out your wife had written to him. Because it suggested a link when you thought you’d kept your tracks covered.’

‘An eyewitness?’ von Gaben sneered. ‘And how long do you think he’ll last once you reveal his identity? How long do you think any case would last in the courts with so many party members or open sympathisers sitting on the bench? It’s too late, Trautmann. Too late. We’ve made our move and you lost.’

Trautmann willed his hands to keep from shaking. This part was going to be tricky and he needed to look in control.

‘Oh, I know that, minister. But there is a way to make all of this unpleasantness go away entirely.’

‘I’m listening.’

‘Honourable discharge for me and Kriminalassistant Roth. No charges, no recriminations, no internal investigation. And full pensions in perpetuity.’

Von Gaben blinked in surprise. ‘That’s it? So little?’

‘Some of us don’t need very much, minister.’ Trautmann held up some more type-written pages. ‘I took the liberty of drawing up these for you to sign.’

The minister stood and walked to the desk, shooing Trautmann out of his chair. Then he sat and looked over the documents.

Without a word, he took a pen from his inside jacket pocket, unscrewed the lid and signed the two pieces of paper.

‘This will be the end of it? You’ll destroy your report – and any other copies you have?’

‘I have a copy in a safe place. As insurance.’

‘Wise, Trautmann. Very wise.’

‘Just tell me one thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Did Kessler know about the murder?’

‘Christ no!’ von Gaben laughed. ‘He was a loyal drone, keen to take Fleischer off the streets, that’s all. God knows why. Hell, he didn’t even know I was in the party.’ He relaxed in the chair. ‘Pass me my whisky, will you? We might as well drink to this new accord.’

Trautmann picked up the two signed documents, comparing the handwriting to his memory of the scraps Roth had recovered from the fire in Meist’s apartment. Now he knew they were scraps from the cheque von Gaben had written out, and he was sure they matched.

He crossed to the low table between the two sofas where the minister had left his glass, hoping he could keep up his front for as long as it took to get out of the house and get the writing samples to the graphologist at the Alex.

Then the study door opened. The baroness entered the room, a small pistol in her manicured fist. She aimed the gun at her husband and cocked the hammer.

Chapter 26

Trautmann hadn’t accounted for this.

‘Kitten?’ von Gaben said, small eyes popping wide and jaw slackening.

‘I didn’t believe him at first,’ the baroness said. Despite the wild emotion playing on her face, her hair and clothes were immaculate.

‘He told me what he suspected, and I didn’t believe him. My husband, a murderer. No! I thought. The killer of my own son? How could I believe that?’

‘No, baroness,’ Trautmann said, the whisky glass still in his hand. ‘This wasn’t what we talked about.’

She waved the gun in his direction and he went quiet.

‘You heard him!’ she cried. ‘Nazis on the bench. Nazis in the government. How are we going to get justice for my boy? You tell me. How?’

‘You were hiding there all this time?’ von Gaben said, confusion turning to understanding on his blubbery features. He’d been trapped into confessing, and now he knew it.

‘We’ll find a way, baroness,’ Trautmann said. ‘I promise you. We have the evidence now.’

‘No!’ She pointed the gun back at her husband and took several steps forward. ‘I can’t take that chance. He has the whole government behind him.’

Trautmann did the only thing he could think of. He stepped between the gun and the minister, shielding him with his body.

‘Get out of my way,’ the baroness snarled.

Von Gaben got out of his chair.

‘It’s not what you think,’ he said. ‘I was going to give him money. I wrote him a cheque, for God’s sake. You heard that, didn’t you?’

‘I heard it all,’ the baroness replied.

Trautmann wondered whether he could get to her before she pulled trigger, maybe take the gun out of her hand.

‘I refuse to let you do this,’ von Gaben said, walking around to the front of his desk.

Trautmann followed the flick of the gun in the woman’s hand and mirrored it with his own body.

‘I don’t want to shoot you, kommissar...’ the baroness said, leaving the rest of that thought hanging.

‘This is wrong,’ Trautmann said, creeping closer. ‘This isn’t justice.’

‘Open your eyes! There is no justice.’

‘Please...’

‘He killed my boy!’

Trautmann flung the scotch in her face. She flinched and he launched himself at her. His shoe caught the underside of the table and he fell.

Two shots rang out. Then a third.

Trautmann looked up to see von Gaben slumped against the front of his desk, blood spreading from the wounds in his chest. A thin smoke trail rose from the gun in the baroness’ trembling hand.

Trautmann picked himself up and walked slowly towards her. She dropped the gun at the sound of running feet from the other side of the study door.

‘That’s justice,’ she told him, with a sniff.

‘Not yet it’s not,’ he replied, and punched her full in the face.

Berlin, 23 July 1932 – 2.57pm

Chapter 27

Petra raised a freckled hand to her mouth and smothered a shocked laugh.

‘You punched her?’ she whispered, a little too loud. Trautmann looked around at the other people in the waiting room, but none of them seemed to have heard. ‘But why?’

Trautmann showed her the front page of the newspaper he’d brought for Roth:

MINISTER KILLED BY BARONESS WIFE

Baroness snapped after years of violence, say lawyers

‘To make it look like he’d been beating her,’ Petra said. ‘You think she’ll get away with it?’

‘With her wealth? Her connections? The Nazi party and the government both keen to keep the truth quiet? Of course she will.’ Trautmann shrugged. ‘That’s politics.’

He frowned then, thinking of how his single foray into subterfuge had gone so wrong. Petra pulled his attention back to her.

‘You shouldn’t blame yourself so much, you know,’ she said.

He cast her a smile and looked away, unable to meet her eyes, though he clasped her hand.

‘I’m glad you came to see him.’

‘I’m glad you asked me to.’

The bell rang for visiting hours. They stood and filed out of the room into the ward, Petra carrying a brown paper bag, Trautmann his newspaper and the two discharges signed by von Gaben.

This was their second time visiting Roth. The day before he’d been groggy from surgery. He’d kept all his limbs after the stampede, though the doctors said it was unlikely he would walk again. And all Trautmann could think was it was his fault. If he hadn’t driven them into that damned slaughterhouse...

Well, if he hadn’t then he’d never have caught up with Maria. Never found out about the blackmail. Maybe never put the whole story together.

Though in that event the minister’s wife would not have shot him and he would still have been alive.

Sunlight streamed in through high windows. Slothful ceiling fans did little to dissipate the heat, and the more mobile patients had kicked off their bedclothes. Roth couldn’t, of course, being unable to move his legs.

He smiled at them as they came near, and the smile seemed genuine enough. Petra leaned in and kissed him, first his forehead and then his lips. His smile spread wider as Trautmann pulled up a couple of chairs.

Trautmann was walking stiffly, and he knew it.

‘Wow,’ Roth said to him. ‘You look as if you could do with a week or two in here yourself.’

Dagmar had said the same. More than once.

Trautmann answered by handing Roth the paper and his discharge. Roth looked at the signed document first.

‘What’s this?’

‘What does it look like?’

‘Is it because I’m a cripple?’

‘Stop it, Markus,’ Petra said.

Shades of Dagmar there, Trautmann thought.

‘It’s because we misbehaved, Roth,’ Trautmann said, waving his copy. ‘I’ve got one too.’

‘So that’s it? Chucked away after all these years? For trying to find the truth?’ Roth snorted.

Trautmann tapped his finger at the story in the paper and Roth fell silent as he read.

‘Turns out you were right, Roth. Meist was killed by a Nazi for political reasons. You just got the wrong Nazi.’

Petra poured some water into a glass for Roth from a jug on his bedside table. He thanked her and sipped from the glass, then looked up at Trautmann.

‘So ... von Gaben killed him?’

‘Von Gaben was in the party. His stepson was blackmailing him. That was it. Those scraps you found in the fireplace...’

‘From a cheque?’

Trautmann nodded. ‘Apparently he was willing to pay, but the whole thing with Meist walking in on his girl...’ he looked over at Petra and hesitated. Couldn’t tell if her bland smile was mocking or encouraging him to go on. ‘...Well, the fight they had. He was all fired up when his step father came calling and he said he was going to tell everyone anyway. Wasn’t thinking straight. Hence the shooting.’

Roth snorted. ‘You believe that? Then why take the gun along.’

‘Well, we’ll never know for sure. Not now. Meist was leaving the party, you know.’

‘Leaving?’ Roth said. ‘So he did have some sense after all.’

‘Doing it for his woman,’ Trautmann said. ‘Or so she told me.’

Petra took Roth’s hand and gave it a squeeze. It was Roth’s return squeeze that gave Trautmann hope. Hope for the future in general, despite everything.

‘Look,’ he said, folding his discharge document and getting to his feet, ‘I should leave you two in peace. But think about this, Roth. We’re better off out of things for now. All the politics. It’s going to be a grim couple of years.’

‘You think that’s all?’ Roth said.

‘The Nazis are popular because the economy’s bad, Roth, that’s all. Once things pick up their support will melt away, like snow in the spring. Weiss is saying he’s going to challenge the government in court. He won’t be the only one. It’ll take a while, but things will return to normal. Meanwhile, you keep your head down, use that pension money to buy yourself a nice shop or something. Build something for the future, for when all this is over.’

Trautmann put on his hat and loomed over the other man.

‘And stay away from politics, ok?’

‘I’ll make sure he does,’ Petra said. Roth held his discharge in front of his face. Then, with a quick grimace, he tore in it in two.

‘What are you doing?’ Trautmann said.

‘Pretty self-explanatory isn’t it, Mule?’

‘You have any idea what I had to go through to get that?’

‘But you said it yourself. This is just a temporary storm. What about when it clears? Won’t the people need a few honest detectives to pick up again? To bear witness to the worst of it?’

‘Damn it, Roth...’

‘To protect them?’

‘How are you going to protect them from behind a desk?’

‘Better than from behind a shop counter, that’s for certain.’

‘You idiot...’ Trautmann said. Roth was grinning.

‘You really going to use yours?’ the younger man said.

‘I...’

Trautmann looked from Roth’s upturned face to Petra’s. No one else knew about the papers. Von Gaben was dead and his wife unlikely to remember, much less care. Then he sighed, unfolded his discharge papers and tore them up too.

‘So I see I’m going to have to keep you out of trouble a while longer then,’ he said, before kissing the young woman’s cheek and extending his left hand for Roth to shake.

‘You know I’m right,’ Roth said. ‘You just won’t admit it. And make sure you come and see me again tomorrow, ok?’

‘Ok.’

Trautmann tipped his hat and left a beatific smile in his wake as he walked away from them and out into the sunshine of another hot June day.

###

Also by Damien Seaman

Full-length novels

The Killing of Emma Gross

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