The Devil's Opera(64)
For all that Gotthilf was the youngest detective in the Magdeburg Polizei, he was well-respected by his peers; a respect he had earned, he admitted to himself.
“What do I think? Honestly, I don’t know what to think…but something about this fire does not feel right.”
Honister stared at him for a moment, gave another nod, and touched the brim of his hat with a finger before turning and following the watchmen into the crime scene.
Gotthilf waited where he was. After a couple of minutes, he could see Byron make one last comment to Herr Frost and then head his direction. “Back to Metzger?” he asked when his partner stood beside him taking futile swipes at the fine particles of ash clinging to his clothing.
Byron straightened. “Yep. Back to Metzger.”
* * *
Stephan Burckardt sighed as he tied a ribbon around a file folder and carried it from his desk to the filing cabinet in the corner. It was one of Master Schmidt’s special files—as the red ribbon color indicated—one of the files that only Stephan and the master were supposed to see. The men who updated the regular ledgers knew that they weren’t supposed to touch any folder tied up with a red ribbon. In fact, Master Schmidt had made it very clear that anyone other than Stephan who tried to look in the red ribbon files had better leave Magdeburg. And those who had been in the office for very long took that statement seriously.
He turned away from the cabinet after locking it. To be honest, he hadn’t seen anything in those folders that was particularly risky. Nothing that couldn’t be found in any master merchant’s files, he supposed, based on things he’d heard other secretaries and accountants say. But Master Schmidt’s rules were iron hard.
Stephan tested the door to Master Schmidt’s office. Locked, as usual. The master never forgot to lock it. He closed and locked the door to his office, walked down the hall and out the building, then locked the front door.
Dark again. It had been so long since Stephan had seen the sun. Master Schmidt demanded he open the building just as the predawn light was filtering into the eastern sky, and he very seldom got to leave before dusk was well settled. He turned up his collar, shoved his hands in his coat pockets, and trudged down the street.
* * *
Franz was waiting when the river boat from Halle tied up at the dock and threw its gangplank up. Two scruffy looking men, one swinging a live chicken by its feet, disembarked first. Then the man he was waiting for appeared, treading with care up the springy plank. Franz didn’t blame him for the care, because the case the man was carrying was absolutely irreplaceable up-time technology. Once the passenger had both feet on the ground, Franz stepped forward.
“Herr Cochran, I see you made it safe and sound.”
Atwood Cochran—music teacher, guitarist, radio personality, and, not least, friend—grinned at him. “Don’t call me that, Franz. People calling me ‘Herr’ is like calling me ‘Sir’—I look around for my dad.”
Franz returned the other man’s grin. “Well enough, Atwood. Let me take one of those bags,” and he reached for one.
Atwood hastily handed him the other bag. “I’ll keep this one, if you don’t mind. It’s not that I don’t trust you, or anything, it’s just that…”
Franz laughed. “You would not trust your own mother with that recording equipment right now, admit it.”
Atwood laughed, and said, “You’re right.”
“This way,” Franz motioned. “We should be able to catch a cab pretty quickly.”
Atwood followed him over to the nearby street. When a pony cart stopped in response to Franz’s hail, he chuckled.
“That’s not exactly what I imagined when you said ‘cab.’”
“Heavy wagon, light wagon, large cart, small cart, everyone just calls them ‘cabs,’” Franz said. “Something we picked up from you up-timers.”
“As long as it saves my feet and gets me and my duffle where I want to go faster than walking, you could call it a Range Rover for all I care.” The music teacher carefully placed his case on the floor of the cart. After he clambered in, he kept the case between his two feet.
Franz tossed the other bag into the cart, then climbed up to sit opposite Atwood.
“Where to, Mac?” the cab driver tossed over his shoulder in understandable English.
“Nine Musikstrasse. Sylwesterhaus.”
“Got it. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
With that the driver shook the reins and clucked to the pony, which leaned into his collar and harness to start the cart rolling with a lurch.
Atwood wasted no time in asking the question that Franz expected to hear from him. “So, how are things with Marla?”