Berlin

Berlin is both the scene of Hans Meyer’s murder and the institutional landscape in which the case against Fabrizio Collini takes shape. Its landmarks appear close to private violence, while its newspapers, courthouse, and crowded trial turn that violence into public business. For Caspar Leinen, the city is also the place of everyday habits and professional beginnings that are abruptly overtaken by the case.

The murder in the city

From the window of the suite where Fabrizio Collini kills Hans Meyer, the Brandenburg Gate seems strangely close. The rooms are cool and expensive, with beige carpet, dark wood, and large windows; then the carpet absorbs the blood as Collini shoots Meyer four times in the back of the head. Afterward, Collini repeatedly stamps on the dead man’s face until the heel comes off his shoe. The broken heel leaves protruding nails that scrape across the lobby’s marble as he goes downstairs and tells the receptionist to call the police. His footprints trace his route back through the lift and toward the suite; he sits on a blue sofa and waits to be arrested. In this sequence, Berlin’s polished interiors and recognizable landmark do not stand apart from the killing: they frame it, and the city’s surfaces preserve a physical record of Collini’s movements.

The hotel lobby’s electronic panel announces an event scheduled for 8 p.m. on 23 May 2001 at Spree Hall: the Association of German Engineering Industries. That notice places the murder beside the city’s ordinary public calendar, without making the killing part of the event. Collini’s brief report to the receptionist and his silence as he waits sharply contrast with the institutional announcement beside him. The city is not presented as a distant backdrop; its public-facing spaces make the crime both starkly local and immediately subject to official response.

Leinen’s working Berlin

The morning after the murder, Leinen leaves his apartment at half past seven and buys all the daily papers at a news kiosk. Meyer’s murder is on nearly every front page. Before reaching the courthouse, Leinen passes the bakery below his building, where he often sits outside in summer to drink coffee and eat a croissant. The baker notices that he looks terrible. This ordinary stop gives the case a place within Leinen’s familiar urban routine: the morning’s news has entered a life that still contains a neighborhood shop, regular habits, and brief exchanges.

Leinen takes a suburban train to the Moabit Criminal Court, arriving shortly after eight. The route carries him from the apartment and the widely reported murder into the formal systems that will handle it. In the Capital Crimes Department’s registry, files on violent deaths fill pigeonholes, shelves, desks, and even the floor. Leinen presents the document appointing him as court-appointed defense counsel and receives a thin folder. The clerk, who remembers him from his work experience in the department, wishes him luck and warns that the defense will be difficult: Richard Mattinger is appearing for the accessory prosecution. The autopsy is scheduled for one o’clock at the Forensic Institute. Berlin thus supplies the practical chain by which a headline becomes a case file, an appointment, and a contest between opposing counsel.

The courthouse and the public trial

On the morning the trial opens, television crews and reporters gather outside the courthouse, and the café is full of journalists trying to appear unconcerned. Leinen encounters young public prosecutors he knows from their training period; their familiar jokes about wealthy lawyers and poorly paid state servants make the legal community feel close-knit even as the case draws unusual attention. None of them expects a surprise. The press presence, however, has already made the trial a public spectacle before its first formal proceedings.

The courthouse’s central hall rises thirty metres, with six allegorical statues above the stairwell representing Religion, Justice, Belligerence, Tranquillity, Falsehood, and Truth. Its scale is intended to make defendants and witnesses feel small before the power of the law. Even the floor tiles carry the initials of the Royal Criminal Court. Leinen still finds the hall overwhelming as he crosses it and enters Courtroom 500. Around 130 people crowd the spectators’ benches, and journalists have to draw lots for seats. The contrast is pointed: the opening day is expected to consist only of the arraignment, yet the building’s monumental staging and the packed room make even that routine procedure feel consequential.

A city of investigation and revelation

Berlin is also the point of departure for Leinen’s investigation beyond the courtroom. After examining the crime-scene photographs in his room, he recognizes the Walther P38 listed beneath a photograph of the weapon and calls his father again. The next morning he travels by rail from Berlin to Ludwigsburg to follow the faint lead. The journey makes the city a hub rather than the limit of the inquiry: evidence encountered in Leinen’s Berlin rooms sends him elsewhere, but the consequences return to the Berlin courtroom.

When Leinen names Hans Meyer during his statement in Courtroom 500, spectators gasp and reporters hurry to telephone their newsrooms. Leinen repeats the name more quietly, then asks the judge to postpone the rest of the statement until the next day because his client is worn out and he is tired himself. The reaction transforms the courtroom’s earlier expectation of an uneventful opening into a moment of public alarm. Across the novel’s Berlin scenes, the city’s defining movement is from private or routine space into collective attention: a hotel room opens onto a lobby and a police call; a morning commute leads to a file and a trial; and a name spoken in court sends the press rushing outward to report what the proceeding has uncovered.