Der König von Berlin (2017)

The young and ambitious Inspector Carsten Lanner is transferred from Cloppenburg in Lower Saxony to Berlin for further training. His new colleagues do not take him entirely seriously, as they consider him overzealous. Only Carola Rimschow, an extremely nearsighted and similarly eager police inspector candidate, gives him more attention and supports him in his work. Lanner investigates the death of Erwin Machalik, which his colleagues consider an obvious suicide and have already filed away. But Lanner thinks otherwise and continues investigating undeterred. Machalik, owner of a pest-control company contracted by the municipal authorities to keep the city free of rats, had for years acted like the king of Berlin and threatened the city council with unleashing a rat plague on Berlin if anything happened to him. The evidence increasingly suggests this was no idle threat: first, it emerges that exterminator Toni Matthes had to kill a rat with his bare hands because none of his poisons worked. He thinks it is a completely new, diurnal species. Soon, reports of rats appearing in huge numbers from all over Berlin begin to mount. Matthes tells Lanner about a rat-breeding facility in the sewers. Lanner is appointed the city’s chief rat catcher, and Machalik’s sons learn that he is their half-brother and thus also an heir to their father’s company. Lanner suspects this may be a motive for the crime. Another lead points to an organization called “MaMMa,” founded years earlier by Machalik and building contractor Maschmann. The contractor had wanted Machalik dead, and the police chief also seems to be involved. However, Lanner discovers that Machalik really did kill himself. Lanner must now deal with the rat plague. Matthes tells him about specially arranged feeding sites, through which Machalik had apparently controlled the rat population. The rats could be driven there and killed with modified LSD. Tests had shown this to be effective. Meanwhile, Lanner discovers that the rats can be lured with music. Rimschow obtains the drug from the police evidence room, and exterminators equipped with powerful, portable radio speakers drive the rats out of all the subway tunnels to the central feeding site, where they consume the LSD and die. Toni’s mother hands the police Machalik’s diaries, which she had found among his belongings. With them, Lanner is able to expose the members of “MaMMa,” who had poisoned a journalist back in 1964 because he wanted to thwart their plans.