Berlin Burning (6 page)

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

––––––––

‘P
etra,' 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

––––––––

T
rautmann 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.