The March Fallen Read online

  Praise for the Gereon Rath series

  ‘Kutscher successfully conjures up the dangerous decadence of the Weimar years, with blood on the Berlin streets and the Nazis lurking menacingly in the wings.’

  The Sunday Times

  ‘Gripping evocative thriller set in Berlin’s seedy underworld during the roaring Twenties.’

  Mail on Sunday

  ‘Babylon Berlin brings a fresh perspective to images and material that might otherwise seem shopworn, and its frenetic rhythms are particularly apt for a moment when we appear to be dancing our own convulsive tango on the edge of a fiery volcano.’

  New York Review of Books

  ‘If you like crime, historical or translated fiction, this gives you all three.’

  Nicola Sturgeon

  ‘James Ellroy fans will welcome Kutscher’s series, a fast-paced blend of murder and corruption set in 1929 Berlin. Kutscher keeps the surprises coming and doesn’t flinch at making his lead morally compromised.’

  Publishers Weekly

  ‘The novels on which the dramas are based are even more rewarding than television’s slick production.’

  The New European

  ‘Gripping, skilfully plotted and rich in historical detail.’

  Mrs Peabody Investigates

  ‘Splendid and chilling... This is as good as Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series.’

  Crime Time

  ‘Noir of exceptional quality … Truly entertaining and deliciously dark.’

  NB Magazine

  Volker Kutscher was born in 1962. He studied German, Philosophy and History, and worked as a newspaper editor before publishing Babylon Berlin, first of the award-winning series of novels to feature Gereon Rath and Charlotte (Charly) Ritter and their exploits in 1930s Berlin. The Gereon Rath series was awarded the Berlin Krimi-Fuchs Crime Writers Prize in 2011 and has sold over one million copies worldwide. A lavish television production of Babylon Berlin was first aired in 2017 in the UK on Sky Atlantic. Volker Kutscher works as a full-time author and lives in Cologne.

  Niall Sellar was born in Edinburgh in 1984. He studied German and Translation Studies in Dublin, Konstanz and Edinburgh, and has worked variously as a translator, teacher and reader. He lives in Glasgow.

  Also available from Sandstone Press

  Babylon Berlin (Der nasse Fisch)

  The Silent Death (Der stumme Tod)

  Goldstein (Goldstein)

  The Fatherland Files (Die Akte Vaterland)

  Other titles in the Gereon Rath series

  Lunapark (Lunapark)

  Marlow (Marlow)

  First published in Great Britain by

  Sandstone Press Ltd

  Suite 1, Willow House

  Stoneyfield Business Park

  Inverness

  IV2 7PA

  Scotland.

  www.sandstonepress.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form without the express written permission of the publisher.

  First published in the German language as “Märzgefallene” by Volker Kutscher

  © 2016/2014 Verlag Kiepenheuer & Witsch GmbH & Co.

  KG, Cologne/Germany

  © 2014 Volker Kutscher

  The right of Volker Kutscher to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  Translation © Niall Sellar 2020

  The translation of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe Institut which is funded by the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

  ISBN: 978-1- 978-1-913207-04-5

  ISBNe: 978-1- 978-1-913207-05-2

  Cover design by Mark Swan

  Ebook compilation by Iolaire Typography, Newtonmore

  I could not possibly eat as much

  as I would like to throw up.

  Max Liebermann, upon seeing the torchlight procession make its way through the Brandenburger tor on the evening of 30th January 1933

  For Uwe Heldt

  Contents

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  Part Two

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

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  47

  48

  49

  50

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  53

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  65

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  69

  70

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  72

  73

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  75

  76

  77

  78

  79

  Part Three

  80

  81

  82

  83

  84

  85

  86

  87

  88

  89

  90

  91

  92

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  95

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  100

  101

  102

  103

  104

  105

  106

  107

  108

  109

  110

  111

  112

  PART I

  FIRE

  Saturday 25th February to

  Thursday 2nd March 1933

  A faithful soldier, without fear,

  He loved his girl for one whole year,

  For one whole year and longer yet,

  His love for her, he’d never forget.

  ‘DER TREUE HUSAR’,

  18th CENTURY GERMAN FOLK SONG

  Fire, phenomenon arising from the generation of heat and light. In solids or liquids, ‘glow’; in gases, ‘flame’.

  MEYERS GROSSES KONVERSATIONS-LEXICON,

  1905

  1

  The dead man was propped against a steel pillar in the shadow of the elevated railway line, his chin sunk on his breast as if he were taking a nap. You could be forgiven for thinking he was sleeping it off, huddled as he was in an old, patched soldier’s overcoat, dressed in puttees and holey gloves, a thick woollen hat pulled low over his forehead.

  Detective Chief Inspector Wilhelm Böhm clutched his bowler hat to prevent the wind sweeping it off his head. They were directly under the elevated railway at Nollendorfplatz, barely a stone’s throw from the stairway, but no one had noticed the dead man, or, at least, no one who thought it necessary to notify the police. The deceased looked like a tramp, one of the many living rough on Berlin’s streets, whose number swelled with each passing year. Even in this bitter cold, he stank like someone who had be
en sleeping out for years: stale sweat, urine, alcohol.

  Bird droppings covered the lifeless body in a thin, blotchy film, from the shoes up to the woollen hat. Perched on the struts overhead, a colony of pigeons ensured that the surrounding pavement was also soiled. Hardly surprising that most pedestrians passed under the railway line elsewhere.

  A uniformed cop on his rounds at Nollendorfplatz had – after how many days? – discovered a pool of blood under the inert body and alerted Homicide at Alex. Sergeant Breitzke’s satisfaction at getting rid of the deceased without having to involve his own precinct was plain to see. No one from the 174th would be scrambling to investigate the death of an unwashed vagrant.

  Placing a scarf over his nose and mouth, Böhm examined the corpse. A thin trickle of blood had run from the left nostril onto the pavement, forming a pool that had by now coagulated. Or frozen: at these temperatures it was impossible to say. Blood on the overcoat had seeped into the fabric.

  Gingerly, Böhm scoured the dead man’s pockets, finding a ragged old service record, one corner of which was singed, as if its owner had taken a cigarette lighter to it. He unfolded the greasy, worn document. The reservist Heinrich Wosniak, born 20th March 1894 in Hagen/Westfalen, had joined the 1st Guards Reserve Infantry Regiment on the Eastern Front in August 1915, shortly before it was posted to Flanders. He had survived the trenches, only to perish in his soldier’s overcoat.

  The majority of Berlin’s beggars wore soldier’s clothing; clothing that the men, often hideously crippled, had kept since the war. Having sacrificed their health for the Fatherland, no one gave a damn. There was little sympathy, and certainly no gratitude, for the men who had risked everything for the patriotism of those left behind . . .

  ‘Should I start securing the evidence, Sir?’ Detective Reinhold Gräf blew clouds of breath into the February air.

  Böhm hauled himself into a standing position. Away from the dead man he could breathe freely again. ‘Please. Kronberg’s men are still in Wedding, we won’t be seeing them today.’ He gestured towards the evidence kit in Gräf’s hand. ‘We’ll just have to make do with what we have. Take a look around, see if you can’t find something. Cigarette stubs, footprints, that sort of thing. Not much footfall here. Any trace on the pavement could be a clue.’

  Gräf put down the case and snapped open the lock. ‘What about fingerprints?’ he asked.

  ‘Leave that to me, but I wouldn’t get your hopes up. What kind of person leaves the house without gloves in this weather?’ Böhm looked around. ‘Where’s Steinke?’

  ‘Trying to get the camera out of the boot.’

  Gräf took a packet of marking tags and a handful of evidence containers and got down to work; Böhm turned towards the uniformed cop.

  ‘Heinrich Wosniak. Name mean anything to you?’

  ‘I don’t know what any of that lot are called.’ The man had a Berlin accent.

  ‘Then perhaps you’ve seen him before?’

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘This is your beat, isn’t it? Maybe you’ve seen him somewhere? Begging, or sleeping on a park bench? Something like that.’

  Sergeant Breitzke shrugged. ‘I’d need to take a closer look.’ The dead man’s head was so low on his chest, his matted hair so far over his forehead that his face was barely visible.

  ‘We can’t move him until the evidence has been secured. You’ll have to wait until then,’ Böhm said.

  ‘Hold on a minute!’ Breitzke sounded distinctly less bored as he gestured towards the pock-marked skin underneath the dead man’s hat. ‘It could be Kartoffel. He hangs around Nolle, over by the U-Bahn, cadging off passers-by.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t know what any of that lot were called?’

  ‘It’s a nickname.’

  ‘Kartoffel.’ Böhm said. Potato. ‘You don’t know his real name?’

  ‘Like I just said.’

  ‘Wait until we’ve finished with the camera. Then see if you’re right.’

  Sergeant Breitzke appeared unenthusiastic, but nodded.

  Böhm heard someone cursing quietly. Cadet Steinke had an unwieldy camera wedged under his arm, its heavy tripod draped over his shoulder. Böhm doubted whether the law graduate, who had come to the Castle straight from the lecture theatre, would amount to much. After almost nine months he still acted like a novice, except when it came to rank and pay grades. Even so, Steinke had a good chance of passing the year, which would make him a superior of Gräf, who lacked the ambition to sit the inspector’s examination but was a better criminal investigator. Böhm hoped that Steinke would flunk out; there were enough incompetent inspectors at Alex as it was.

  ‘Steinke, at last!’

  ‘I feel like a packhorse,’ the cadet said, administering a sharp kick to the dead man.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Checking he’s dead, not just intoxicated.’

  ‘If he wasn’t dead, we wouldn’t be here,’ Böhm said. ‘Don’t they teach you not to touch anything until the evidence is secured?’

  ‘Of course, but . . .’

  ‘Besides which: how about showing a dead man a little more respect?’

  ‘Forgive me, Sir, but this is a vagrant, a . . . down-and-out. I’m wondering why we’re here in the first place.’

  ‘Are you implying that a man like this doesn’t deserve to have us investigate the circumstances of his death?’

  ‘I’m just saying.’

  ‘Well don’t. Concentrate on putting up your camera, and get a move on.’

  Steinke opened his mouth to reply just as a train pulled into the station above and drowned him out. He groaned and began unfolding the tripod stand.

  Böhm fetched soot powder, brush and adhesive film from the evidence kit, and set about dusting the steel column. He didn’t find any prints near the dead man, but spied three about one and a half metres up, two of them well-preserved and one half-erased. He started transferring the prints onto the film as Steinke clicked the shutter release. The rivets in the steel column reflected the flash, and the garish light made the corpse look wan and dead for the first time, not just drunk.

  Böhm took the prints to the murder wagon for labelling. Sitting on the backseat, he glanced through the window at the assiduous Gräf, who was lifting a cigarette stub from the ground with tweezers and marking its position; then at Steinke, who maneuvered the camera as if he still didn’t see why they were here in the first place.

  ‘A detective inspector in the making,’ he muttered, bagging the first print.

  ‘These days you need only be in the right party to forge a career.’

  Böhm turned around. Next to the murder wagon stood Dr Magnus Schwartz, spruce as ever, in his right hand a black leather doctor’s bag.

  ‘Careful, Doctor.’ Böhm motioned with his chin towards Steinke. ‘These youngsters hear everything.’

  ‘The same to you, Böhm, but I won’t be silenced. This madness will pass soon enough. The elections are next week.’

  ‘Let’s hope so.’

  These days people like Steinke, who had been part of the National Socialist Students’ Association at university, were in the ascendant, and it wasn’t only Dr Schwartz who hoped the Reichstag elections would change all that. Germany was still a democracy, however much the Nazis babbled on about a national uprising.

  Schwartz set down his bag. ‘You’re not exactly here en masse,’ he said.

  ‘I’m just glad I didn’t have to cycle out, what with ED’s hands being tied.’

  ‘What can you do?’ Schwartz said. ‘There’s a lot happening right now. Another round of elections, our nation’s health at an all-time low. I’m telling you, it’s worse than any flu epidemic.’ He gestured towards the corpse. ‘This one hasn’t fallen prey to the new politics, mind.’

  ‘Nor the flu.’

  ‘You already know the cause of death? Then what am I doing here?’

  ‘He didn’t freeze either.’ They approached the corpse, where Steinke was ta
king close-up shots. ‘I think that’ll do it, Steinke. Let the doctor get on with his work.’

  Sergeant Breitzke, who had been waiting patiently, saw his chance. ‘Excuse me, Sir,’ he said to Böhm, ‘but before the doctor . . . I mean: you said yourself that I should take a closer look at the dead man once he’s been photographed . . .’

  ‘I did?’

  ‘Because . . .’ Breitzke looked at his pocket watch. ‘It’s about time I got on with my rounds.’

  ‘Fine,’ Böhm said sternly. He gripped the deceased by the hair and carefully pulled his head up from his breast until Heinrich Wosniak stared at them reproachfully out of dead eyes. Scarring on the right side of his face really did call to mind a shrivelled potato. His right ear scarcely existed, and his right eye was missing its eyebrow. His face looked like odds and ends glued together, and there was no mistaking the bitterness in its features.

  ‘Yeah, that’s Kartoffel.’ Breitzke said. ‘Just like I said. Can I go now?’

  ‘The nickname’s apt,’ Böhm said. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘A french flamethrower? Search me. He looked like that the first time I chased him off Nollendorfplatz.’

  ‘Chased him off?’

  ‘He could be a real pest. You have to do something.’

  ‘Off you go, Sergeant. Someone has to keep our streets safe.’ Breitzke saluted and was about to turn away when Böhm added: ‘See that you get your written report to me by the end of the day.’ Breitzke saluted a second time and made a swift exit.

  Dr Schwartz leaned over the dead man. ‘Nasty burns. Second or third degree.’

  ‘So, they are a relic from the war?’