Babylon Berlin Read Online Free PDF

Homicide.’

3
     
    ‘You take care of it, Rath, you know about this sort of thing,’ Lanke shouted. They were sending him onto the roof again.
    Behind Superintendent Lanke stood the silent figure of Police Director Engelbert Rath and, behind him, an army of uniformed officers. Above the white moustache, his father’s eyes were icy and full of reproach. It was a familiar look, the same look he had assumed the first time little Gereon brought a bad report home from school. In contrast, Lanke’s face was a fantastically grinning and sadistic caricature.
    ‘How many more innocent people have to die before you get your arse up there? If you think you can avoid getting your hands dirty, you’re very much mistaken!’
    Rath gazed up at the roof, which seemed not only to be getting steeper but also to be growing in size. How the hell was he supposed to get up there? When he turned back the troops had all disappeared, replaced by rows of women with children. That was when the shooting started.
    Row upon row went down, mown to the ground, dying mute as their children screamed. More and more children, and the more women who died, the louder the screaming became.
    He hurried skywards, forgetting his vertigo, until suddenly the house was cloaked in scaffolding and he saw the sniper with a battery of rifles that he reloaded one after the other.
    When he reached the upper platform the sniper lifted his shirt to reveal a pale, emaciated upper body with a gaping bullet hole. The blood had long since dried. It was the sort of wound you found on the corpses in the morgue. Clinical. Clean.
    ‘How about that?’ the sniper said in a reproachful whine. ‘I’ll tell my father.’
    Rath pulled out his service revolver. ‘Drop your weapon!’ he cried, but the man trained his rifle on him.
    ‘Drop your weapon! I’ll shoot!’
    The other man wouldn’t be swayed. ‘You can’t shoot me. I’m already dead,’ he said. ‘Have you forgotten?’
    A fuse blew inside Rath’s head and his index finger pulled on the trigger again and again. The Mauser only clicked in response. Click, click, click, it went, as the other man quietly took aim and placed his finger on the trigger. He began to pull down, almost in slow motion…
    ‘No!’
    Rath was awoken by his own cry, suddenly wide awake and sitting bolt upright. His brow was cold and sweaty and his heart was racing. The clicking continued, but it was coming from the window. The clock on his bedside table showed half past one. He peeled himself out of bed, threw on his dressing gown and looked outside. Nürnberger Strasse was completely devoid of people. The only sound was that of the wind rustling through the trees, but there were three or four small stones on the window sill. Someone had been trying to wake him. He opened the window and leaned out.
    The heavy front door opened and there was a short, sharp cry. ‘What are you doing hanging around here like a bad smell?’ a woman’s voice asked.
    A young girl, in her early twenties perhaps, entered Rath’s field of vision, turning to look over her shoulder before hurrying towards the taxi rank. Weinert must have been entertaining again. Rath couldn’t help but smile, but goodness knows what Elisabeth Behnke would make of it. The landlady was very strict about tenants receiving female visitors at night, and yet the intrepid Weinert had someone there most evenings. Who, he wondered, had Weinert’s latest conquest bumped into down by the front door? Who had given her such a fright?
    While he was still thinking he heard the heavy front door click shut and someone pull on the bell, followed by a hammering on the door to the flat. Rath stepped out of his room into the main hall. The door leading to Elisabeth Behnke’s rooms was shut. No sign of Weinert either. He probably had a guilty conscience.
    There was another crash against the door.
    ‘ Kardakow ,’ cried a deep, foreign voice, only slightly muffled by the closed door. ‘ Aleksej