'Why certainly,' Gennat replied. 'I like nothing better than to read myself to sleep with one of that esteemed gentleman's most entertaining fantasies.'
A chuckle rippled through the reporters and Ritter dragged me towards the lectern as I jammed the trilby back over my dirty hair. Gennat acknowledged my presence with a nod and turned back to the throng. That was all. Just a nod.
'And now, ladies and gentlemen, as promised, I must hand you to the public prosecutor for a few moments for the meat and drink of the legal case. No interruptions, please.'
The PP stepped forward, placed pince-nez upon his nose and began reading from the statement in his shaking hand.
'Detailed examinations of the accused, Peter Kürten,' the PP paused and looked up, then back down at his statement, 'have been carried out during the whole of Sunday, Monday and this morning, in some cases in the presence of witnesses. The entire results cannot be made public.'
Shouts of protest filled the chapel. Gennat raised his arms for quiet and the PP raised his voice:
'Cannot be made public, as in view of other investigations still to be made, it is necessary to prevent...' another groan rang out '...it is necessary, that it is necessary, ladies and gentlemen, to prevent witnesses making the mistake of confusing their own experiences with those we are about to make public. This generally recognised danger of influence makes it imperative that in the interests of objective truth full publicity cannot yet...' another groan '...I say, I say that it is in the interests of objective truth...of objective truth, that full publicity cannot yet be given. For the same reason it is not possible to publish a picture of Kürten at the present moment.'
Gennat rounded on me.
'Where have you been?' he hissed. 'You knew we were going for formal confessions this morning, and you knew how much trouble we'd be likely to have without you there, but you buggered off anyway.'
Yes, and now all I wanted was to bugger off again and deal with Du Pont and the green man before they escaped or someone found them.
'Have you had lunch?' Gennat asked.
'No sir.'
'Right, you and me alone, after we're done here. You're going to tell me what you've been up to all goddamned morning. Clear?' He glanced at Ritter. 'Give him the photographs.' Gennat locked eyes with me again. 'Hand this material out to the reporters and keep your mouth shut. And take off that damned hat.'
He pulled the trilby from my head, caught sight of my hair and clamped the hat back into place. He crossed to the lectern, muttering as he went. The PP was going on with the details of the case. Sounded like they'd got Kürten to talk despite my absence. I didn't know if that was good for me or not.
'...focus of our present investigations to gathering more evidence in the cases of poor Gertrude Albermann and the unknown victim discovered in Papendell on Sunday.'
'Apropos of which,' Gennat broke in, 'we are appealing to you good ladies and gentlemen of the press – '
'I don't see anyone from
Volksstimme
here,' one of the local reporters exclaimed.
'Well, you won't,' his neighbour shouted, 'Düsseldorf's own Scarlet Pimpernel, that Andre Du Pont.'
'That's right, he doesn't need to be here, does he?' the first reporter said. 'He can just take the detectives out for beers afterwards, get all the information he wants.'
'Now now, people, we've gone over that,' Gennat said, wagging a finger and holding his cigar in the corner of his mouth.
'Yeah, yeah,' the first reporter said, waving his notebook, '
danger to society in need of a long course of treatment...attempted murder beyond doubt
, blah blah. Tell us something we don't know.'
'Hey, don't forget that
the cases of Ohliger, Scheer and Gross are still uncertain and wrapped in mystery
,' the second reporter said, reading from his shorthand.
'Ain't that what we pay a police force for? To solve mysteries?'
Ritter handed me a stack of photographic prints and shoved me at the reporters.
'No, we pay them to build fancy new headquarters on the edge of town and plunge the city into debt, didn't you know?' said the second reporter.
Bunch of snickering hyenas they might've been, but they had a point about the new headquarters being built down at Jürgensplatz. Damn thing was a publicity disaster, over budget and a year behind schedule already.
'Well why not, there's only a depression on. It's not like it's a bad time for large-scale public works or anything,' said the first reporter.
'Excuse me, can you please shut up?' said a woman dressed in silk and pearls. She had a foreign accent I couldn't place and her dress revealed a lot of shapely stockinged calf muscle. I handed her some photos and tried a smile on her. She smiled back.
'As you can see,' Gennat said, 'we want you to take three pictures each. The first shows a set of house keys buried with the body. The second is a torn silk summer dress she was wearing when killed. The colour is pink. The third is a straw summer hat of common design also buried with her. From the preliminary autopsy information that we have, this woman was most likely in her mid-twenties, with long, straight, blonde hair. Caucasian. She was between one metre sixty and one metre sixty-five in height.'
I stood at one end of a row of chairs, passing photographs down the line. The reporters took what they needed from the pile and passed it on.
'We are appealing to friends and family, to anyone who might have known her or any witnesses who might be able to help us trace her movements in her last days of life. We need to know who she was. According to our information, the woman was killed on Sunday the 11
th
August last year, on the same meadow where we found her. We believe she conversed for some moments with a smartly-dressed gentleman on a park bench in the Hansaplatz on Thursday the 8
th
August. She was next seen around one thirty pm on Sunday the 11
th
, at which point...'
I switched off.
The sun came out as Gennat and I entered the café. Light streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows. A frayed poster of a bullfighter adorned the exposed brickwork of a nearby column, a splash of red, yellow and black against the clay and mahogany tones of the floor and walls. It was a recent national epidemic, this yearning to be from some other country. I got it, I'm not pretending I didn't, but hell, running away from problems ain't the answer to them. Besides which, things seemed to be just as bad all over as far as I could make out from those snippets of truth that did make it into the papers.
Post lunch rush, most of the tables were empty. Gennat selected one in the window. He sat and closed his eyes, his bulk and his bristling moustache giving him the air of a walrus sunning itself on the beach. How was I going to get him to listen to me now?
We ordered bockwurst and potato salad and a large beer apiece from the guy in the stained black apron behind the bar.
Gennat threaded his hands together and rested them on his belly. He opened one eye. 'Not only did you disappear this morning when you knew we would need you, but you turned up late for the press conference. So whatever you've been doing, it had better be damn good.'
He broke off as the drinks and food arrived. He drank most of his beer in a few smooth gulps before starting in on his sausage, which he dipped in the mustard clinging to the side of his plate. The crunch of the sausage skin breaking as he bit into it made me wince, waxen corpses coming to mind. I fought my way through a couple of mouthfuls of beer before wiping my top lip and taking a deep breath, trying not to think of the green man waking up next to a garrulous journalist in a dark coal cellar. Christ, why had I panicked and tied Du Pont up with him?
I forced myself to concentrate. 'Last night I checked Kürten's confessions against the crime scene information, just as you asked.'
'How kind of you,' Gennat rumbled, his mouth full of food. 'Perhaps now you'd like to get round to telling me what conclusions you came to?'
'Kürten didn't kill Gross.'
'No?'
'No, it was the only confession where he got details wrong – '
'Forgive me for interrupting, but could I trouble you for your opinion on the other five cases?' Gennat’s sarcasm was mallet-like in its subtlety. I tried not to betray my impatience.
'With all the others Kürten's recall was clear and detailed and it matched the existing evidence in every way,' I said. 'That's just the point. In the case of Gross he didn't know what he was talking about. Look, I don't have your experience, sir. This kind of maniac is new to me, but I've spent more time with him than anyone else on the department and I think he craves the notoriety. He doesn't want anyone else taking any of his glory. Does that make sense?'
'Yes, fine,' Gennat said. 'Then we stick with Stausberg for the Emma Gross killing, and everyone's happy.'
I sank some beer and took a deep breath. The beer had a bitter after taste. 'But that's what I was doing this morning, sir. Checking with Stausberg. He didn't kill Gross either.'
'What?'
'Stausberg's murder confessions were forced. Now he can't even remember who he's supposed to've killed, much less how he was supposed to have done it.'
'Go on,' Gennat said, shovelling food into his mouth.
'What do you mean “go on”? Isn't it obvious?'
'Watch your tone, detective.'
I lowered my voice. 'Kürten didn't kill Emma Gross. And if Stausberg didn't do it then that means someone else killed her. We've got another murderer out there.'
'And of course you're about to show me the evidence that trumps not one, but two signed confessions from undesirables we already have behind bars.'
Gennat pushed his plate away, emptied his beer and gestured to the barman for another. He pointed at my glass and raised his eyebrows at me. I shook my head. 'And bring a pot of coffee too,' he called.
'It's Ritter,' I said. 'He forced Stausberg's confessions to clear his cases last year.'
'Oh Ritter, Ritter, Ritter.' Gennat slapped the top of the table hard enough to rattle the salt and pepper shakers. 'That's what this is all about, is it? I don't know what it is between you two, and I don't want to know. But if all this is just to prove Ritter wrong then you can drop it. What do you think the chances are of the public prosecutor and the attorney general pursuing this? Undermining the head of the Kürten murder commission? Thereby undermining the case against Kürten? And that's before we even consider how low Düsseldorf
Kripo
's reputation has sunk with the press and the public. You think anyone in authority is going to risk it sinking any further?'
I started to speak but he shut me up with a raised finger.
'If you think I'm going to help you out you can forget it. Kürten gets transferred to Düsseldorf Prison at the end of the week and then Vogel and me are done here, off back to Berlin. So even if I wanted to help you I couldn't.'
The fresh beer and coffee arrived. Gennat downed the beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before pouring the coffee. I ate in silence.
'You say you don't have my experience,' he continued, softening his voice, 'and that's true. When you've been in this business as long as I have, Thomas, you'll know that people don't really care who killed their loved ones. They only care that
someone
did. You understand?'
Ah, fatherly advice. The perfect blend of do-as-I-say and it's-for-your-own-good. This shit I could do without. 'What can I say to that, sir? You're telling me you don't care who murdered that woman?'
He passed me a cup of black coffee. He added milk and sugar to his cup before passing the sugar bowl to me. I ignored it and waited for his response. He had to come back at me with something, for Christ's sake. Hadn't I just accused him of lacking moral fibre? Or maybe he really didn't give a damn. My guts boiled and slung acid up my oesophagus. I tried to cough it out but it lodged where it had landed, slow-burning away.
'You know, about that business in Hanover,' he said. 'Fritz Haarmann was a police informant. That's why Hanover
Kripo
weren't too keen on linking him to all the bones those kids found buried in the riverbank.'
Gennat took out his cigar case and offered it to me. I shook my head. He lit himself one and puffed smoke rings at the ceiling. Was he going anywhere with this or was he back to playing to the goddamned gallery?
'I had a high case clearance rate in Berlin,' he went on, 'good press coverage, and I'd been making noises about the need for a permanent homicide squad in the capital. Basically making myself a nuisance to the brass, who didn't want me undermining them. So the police president sent me out to prove myself by discovering and arresting this Hanover killer.'
He grinned. 'Or to fail in the attempt. I suspect he hoped the latter, then I would come back with my tail between my legs and drop all this homicide squad stuff. It was the parents of one of the young men who went missing. God, what was his name?'
He clicked his fingers.
'Anyway, they hired this private investigator when it was clear the local
Kripo
didn't have the manpower or the expertise or indeed any interest in finding out what had happened to their son. He tracked the kid to Haarmann, and the rest was a matter of following the leads. Hanover got its werewolf, I got my homicide squad. Local cops went from pariahs to heroes, just like that. Luck, really, just like you getting that tip off from Maria Butlies.'