Mordkommission BERLIN 1 (2015)

Paul Lang is the head of Berlin Homicide Division 1. He lost his wife and daughter in an assassination attempt in which he himself was seriously injured. Ever since, he has been traumatized and addicted to morphine. Immanuel Tauss, boss of the Crocodiles, a Berlin criminal syndicate and club, was behind the attack. Tauss is now in Moabit Prison, but not for the murder, which was never solved; he was convicted of tax evasion, prostitution, and drug trafficking. Since Tauss’s conviction, Victor Parkov has been running the Crocodiles. Parkov had betrayed Tauss to the police, and he is also involved with Irma Berger, the boss of the Irrgarten variety theater. Prosecutor Barnekow, a good friend of Lang’s, is found mauled to death in the crocodile enclosure at the Berlin Zoo. The previous evening, Lang had argued with Barnekow during a visit to the Irrgarten, over what Lang saw as Barnekow’s overly lenient handling of the criminal clubs. Lang immediately suspects that Tauss planned the murder from prison. But then a dancer from the variety theater comes forward, having overheard the argument between the commissioner and the prosecutor, and Lang himself falls under suspicion. He questions Irma Berger, grows closer to her personally as events unfold, and spends a night with her. He also visits Tauss in prison to confront him with the accusations and try to get information out of him about his intermediary, but to no avail. He gets in touch with Parkov and persuades him to help the police. Conrad Ruppert, Lang’s colleague, is not convinced of Tauss’s guilt and becomes increasingly unsure whether his boss is chasing a delusion. But with Parkov’s help, Lang eventually identifies the intermediary as a prison guard. The guard identifies Masha Kampe, Lang’s assistant, as an accomplice and the person who commissioned the murder. As Lang quickly discovers, she is Tauss’s daughter. Meanwhile, the witness has been murdered by an unknown person. Once again, Lang falls under suspicion. Masha also plants a syringe with a broken-off needle in Lang’s apartment, evidence suggesting that Lang is Barnekow’s murderer, since a fragment of a hypodermic needle was found in Barnekow’s body. Lang is then arrested and thrown in prison. This puts one of Tauss’s adversaries out of action, and Tauss escapes from prison with the help of a finger knife previously smuggled into his cell. With Masha’s help, he kidnaps Irma Berger and eventually takes over the Crocodiles’ headquarters, where Parkov and his men are gathered, using her as leverage. He manages to rally some of his former associates around him and escapes through the sewers. Parkov gives chase but is seriously injured by a bomb. In the meantime, Lang has managed to convince Ruppert of his innocence. Together they reach the Crocodiles’ headquarters and free Irma Berger from Masha Kampe’s custody. Masha, with whom Ruppert had fallen in love, is shot dead by Lang. The two men catch up with Tauss, whom Lang kills in a duel. At the end, Lang, Ruppert, and Parkov, whose face has been badly disfigured, are back in the Irrgarten, as they were at the beginning, where Irma Berger is singing.