Berlin Burning (4 page)

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

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T
he 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

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2
4 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.