by Philip Kerr
I shot him in the chest and he fell back, still shooting for a second, before he hit the ground like a starfish. I walked toward him carefully, ready to fire again, saw that he was still alive, kicked the MP-18 out of his hand, and then retrieved a Nazi Party badge from his pullover. The heels of his big hobnailed boots shifted as if he was trying to stand, but it was hopeless. He was drowning in his own blood and that was all there was to it; in ten or fifteen minutes he’d have expired, and nothing I nor anyone else could have done would prevent that. But this was of lesser importance beside the continuing danger of our situation: I was already looking around for a second and even a third assassin, as this was how an ambush worked, and since there was little time or inclination on my part for anything other than mercy of the kind practiced by Dr. Gnadenschuss, I put the barrel of the Mauser against the dying man’s head, pulled the trigger, and ran back to the car.
Bernhard Weiss was still on the floor of the Audi where I’d left him. He had a Walther in his hand and almost shot me as I jumped into the driver’s seat. The engine was still running and without further explanation I ground the gear into reverse and accelerated backward down the track before a grenade could be tossed at the car or someone else started shooting. Holding his hat on his head, Weiss stared straight ahead at the body of the man who’d just tried to assassinate him.
“I like your car,” I said, trying to improve his spirits.
“For Christ’s sake, Bernie, forget about the car; he was going to kill me.”
“He would have killed us both. Had to. No witnesses. We were lucky.”
“I guess there is no connection with Surehand Hank or the human centipede. Never was. The whole thing was a hoax, cooked up to lure me into a trap.”
“I have to tell you I had my doubts. When something’s too good to be true it usually is.”
“Goddamn, why didn’t I see that? What kind of a detective am I if I couldn’t spot that?”
“I reckon that’s what comes of posting articles in the newspapers. One of your readers decided to offer a critique of your writing.”
“That’s one way of looking at it.”
“It beats a letter to the editor.”
At the end of the track I spun the Audi around on the gravel and then steered the car south and east, away from the scene as quickly as possible. Weiss turned around in the passenger seat and pointed through the rear window.
“What about him?”
“Who?”
“The gunman, of course. Maybe he’s still alive.”
I didn’t answer.
“Is he still alive?”
“I sincerely hope not.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s dead, chief. I made sure of that. But right now that’s hardly our concern. He might have some partners. These cowards usually do. That’s how they killed Rathenau. And Erzberger. In armed groups of two. I don’t figure you’ll be safe until we’re back at the Alex.” I stamped on the accelerator, hoping the speed would reduce Weiss to silence. It didn’t.
“We can’t just leave him there.”
“Can’t we? That’s what he’d have done to us.”
“But we’re not like that.”
“No?”
“We’re police, which means we should stop and telephone this in.”
“If you take my advice you’ll say nothing about this to anyone except your car mechanic. You chose a left-hand-drive car for the sake of your safety; now you have to listen to me and do what I say for exactly the same reason.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I’m the head of Kripo, Bernie. The deputy police president. And a lawyer. An officer of the court. I can’t leave the scene of a crime even if I am the intended victim. It wouldn’t be right. And it certainly wouldn’t be legal.”
“There’s only you and me know about this, chief. Why not keep it that way?”
“What are you talking about, Bernie? You know very well we can’t do that.”
“Look, chief, do you want to be in the evening newspapers? Do you really want your wife and daughter to know that someone tried to murder you today? Is that what you want? Because the minute we report this, that’s what will happen. You’ll never leave home again without Lotte worrying for the rest of the day that something dreadful has happened to you.”
Weiss was silent for a moment.
“You’re right about that much, anyway,” he said eventually. “Ever since Otto Dillenburger assaulted me, my daughter Hilda’s been begging me to resign from the force. My wife hasn’t said anything about it but I know she agrees.”
“And another thing: leaving that body there for his friends to find is a clear message to these nationalist bastards. After all, they don’t know that it was me who shot him and not you. Maybe now they’ll think twice about trying to kill you again. Maybe they’ll think you’re tougher and more ruthless than you look. There’s all that and the fact that you don’t know what the Nazis will make of it in their newspapers if you report exactly what happened. Who knows? Maybe they’ll find that poor boy back there had a mother and a sister, and that he sang in a church choir and was kind to little animals, and that he didn’t stand a chance against us. That he only meant to scare you. Maybe someone like Goebbels will call him a martyr and write a poem about what a great Fritz he was and how a dirty Jew helped shoot him down like a dog.”
“You don’t know that he was a Nazi.”
“Don’t I?”
I handed Weiss the party badge I’d pulled off the dead man’s pullover.
“And just in case you thought I’m only thinking of you, chief, here’s another thing. You make this thing public and it’s not only you that’s on a Nazi death list. It’s me, too. Maybe you’re used to it by now, being a Jew and all. But I’ve got enough to worry about seeing snakes in my boots, with the booze. The last thing I want is to have to look over my shoulder as well.”
Weiss was silent until we reached the safety of the Alex. I parked the car in the central courtyard, turned off the engine, and lit us each a cigarette.
“And if none of those arguments convince you, then consider this, if you would, sir. You’re a decent man and you have my respect and my admiration; but you’re also a Jew in Germany, which means that whether you like it or not your people are at war with the Fatherland. Have been since 1893, when anti-Semites won sixteen seats in the Reichstag, including Prussia. In case you’ve forgotten, that election made the hatred of Jews in this country socially respectable. You may not like it, sir, but you should remember that when you’re at war the most important thing is to win at all costs. And by any means. You won’t win doing things by the book, sir. You’ll only win by being more ruthless than they are, by doing things the Prussian way. By killing them before they kill you.”
Weiss took a puff of his cigarette and then looked at the end thoughtfully. “I can’t tell you I like what you say, but you’re probably right.”
“I wish I wasn’t, but I am. So. We don’t tell anyone. Not the ViPoPra, not your secretary, and not even Ernst Gennat. Although I happen to think he might agree with me.”
“He might at that. Although not on much else. He wants you out of the Murder Commission. He thinks I should send you back to Vice. At least until you’ve stopped drinking. He thinks you’re about to crack.”
“That’s not an unreasonable assumption.”
“Are you about to crack?”
“This is Berlin. Who’d notice? But no, I’m not about to crack, chief. I’m hard-boiled, at least ten minutes. I may have had a drink in my coffee this morning, but you didn’t see me going to pieces. The way I feel now you could write the works of Goethe on my shell with a fountain pen without putting a hole in me.”
“You saved my life. I won’t forget that. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be dead and my
wife, Lotte, would be a widow. A sheynem dank, Bernie Gunther.”
I delved into my jacket pocket and produced a hip flask full of good Austrian rum. I unscrewed the cap and took a large bite off the top that was part nerves and part bravado; I didn’t care what Weiss thought about me now. Having just saved his neck I figured I could afford to stick mine out a bit.
“Then here’s to your wife,” I said. “You get to go home and see her and your family. That’s all that matters. You get to go home. That’s all that matters for anyone who’s a cop in this city.”
I handed him the flask and watched him take a drink with hands that looked as unsteady as my turbulent heartbeat. It had been a while since I’d killed anyone. I wondered if I would have shot the assassin a second time if I hadn’t already enjoyed a few drinks. When you think about it, sometimes that’s all it takes to kill anyone.
* * *
—
IT WASN’T a detective’s instinct that led me back to the scene of Eva Angerstein’s murder off Wormser Strasse so much as my dismay at the ferocious indifference of the authorities to her death and the deaths of the other girls. That as well as a perverse and insubordinate desire to disobey the Ministry’s orders in the name of true justice; somehow it’s easier to understand what justice amounts to when you’ve had a drink. Besides, it wasn’t like we had a lot of clues to work with in the case of Dr. Gnadenschuss. That’s the trouble with random murders and why they’re so hard to solve; where there is no connection between murderer and victim, you might as well try to mate a German mastiff and a dachshund.
As it happened not everyone was indifferent to Eva Angerstein’s death; at least that was the conclusion I drew from the large bouquet of flowers—twenty-seven white lilies—that someone had left at the foot of the stairs where her body had been found. There was a damp handwritten card on the flowers with a name that was hard to read but the identity of the florist was clear enough: Harry Lehmann’s on Friedrichstrasse. Twenty-seven flowers from an expensive florist that was at least four or five kilometers east of Wormser Strasse meant that the buyer was someone close to the dead girl, someone who’d made a special journey to the scene of her murder. I wondered about the number until I remembered Eva Angerstein had been twenty-seven years old, which seemed to indicate the buyer was very close to the dead girl. We’d tried and failed to trace Eva’s next of kin. Not that I was surprised at this outcome; most girls who went on the sledge lost contact with their families, for obvious reasons. So I was keen to speak to the person who’d bought these flowers and decided to look in at Harry Lehmann’s on my way back to the Alex. Twenty-seven white lilies was the kind of order that would be easy to remember.
I went back up the stairs and was met by a man wearing a blue pinstriped suit with lapels like halberds, a bowler hat, and leather gloves. He was carrying a thick cane, his fair hair was longish, and the lines on his red forehead were so deep they looked as if they’d been carved there by a glacier. It was obvious he’d seen me looking at the flowers.
“Can I help you with something?” he asked.
“Not unless these are your flowers,” I said, facing him now. He was about fifty and a Berliner; his accent was as thick as Stettin soot.
“Who wants to know?”
I showed him my beer token and his eyes narrowed.
“You don’t smell much like a cop.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment, shall I?”
“What I mean is, I could put a match to your breath and torch this whole damn neighborhood. That’s what I mean. Most cops I’ve met at this time of the morning are still digesting their first coffee.”
“Who are you? The local insurance man?”
He nodded over my shoulder down the stairs. “You’re investigating Eva’s death?”
“That’s right.”
“From the Murder Commission?”
I nodded. “Try it sometime. We see a lot of dead bodies in various stages of disrepair. And we like a drink to edit some of that shit out. It helps keep us sane, if not always sober.”
“I can imagine.”
“I hope not, for your sake, Herr—?”
“Angerstein.”
“Eva’s father?”
He nodded.
“I’m Sergeant Gunther, Bernhard Gunther, and I’m sorry for your loss.”
He nodded again, barely hanging on to his composure. “They cremated her before I even knew she was dead.”
“We tried our best to trace the next of kin.”
“Not that you’d have found me. I’ve been away.” He glanced around pugnaciously as if trying to decide if he should punch the wall or me. “According to the locals they haven’t seen many cops down here since the night Eva was killed. So what brings you back?” His voice was more animal than human, all bared teeth and smoked tonsils.
“I’m looking for something.”
“Mind telling me what?”
“I’ll know it when I see it. Something I didn’t see before, perhaps. Until then, I don’t mind telling you at all. The job’s like that, Herr Angerstein. Like playing the tray game, you know? You keep on looking at it, then maybe later on, you’ll remember an object that you missed the first time.”
“Eva wasn’t a whore, you know. At least not full-time. She had a good job. I just want you to know that.” He took out his wallet, found a fifty-mark note, and tucked it into my breast pocket like a handkerchief. “Find her killer, son, clear her name, and there’s more where that came from. A lot more if you let me deal with him myself.”
I removed the crushed note and handed it back to him. “It’s rum I have on my breath, Herr Angerstein, not greed. So thanks, but I can’t take this. If I did, then you’d start to think I owed you something. You might feel sore about your fifty if I don’t catch the killer.”
“Not catching him. Is that a possibility?”
“It’s always a possibility when the killer doesn’t leave a name and address.”
“Catch the bastard who killed her and I’ll give you something else. Something better perhaps.”
“There’s nothing I want from you.”
“Sure there is. You’re a copper, aren’t you? You catch him and you clear her name and I’ll give you the name of the man who burned down the Wolfmium factory. That’s fifty murders solved in one fell swoop. Maybe more—the final death toll isn’t in yet. I’ll give you his name and I’ll give you his address and I’ll even give you a reason why.” He returned the fifty to his wallet. “Think about it. That’s the kind of collar that could make your career, son. Always supposing you’re interested in that kind of thing. The way you smell today, I’m not so sure about that.”
“What makes you think it was murder?”
“Let’s just say that I move in the kind of circle that occasionally overlaps yours. Or perhaps I should say, the kind of ring.”
The rings were professional criminal gangs, mostly in the north of Berlin, of which there were a great many, all with names, strict codes of conduct, and sometimes distinctive tattoos. Organized crime, German style. There wasn’t much professional crime in Berlin they didn’t have a finger in. They were powerful, too, with an influence that extended all the way into the Reichstag. I’d once seen the funeral of a ring leader, a gangster called Long Ludwig, and you’d have been forgiven for believing the Kaiser himself had died.
“Which one?”
“Now, that would be telling and I’ve told you enough for now. But I’ll tell you a lot more if you get a result, Gunther. If you find this bastard.”
“Fair enough.”
“What’s fair got to do with anything? If there was any fairness in this world my little girl would still be alive.” He lit a cigarette and smiled a crocodile sort of smile. “Fair, he says. Listen, son, this country—and this city in particular—are full of shit. And the shit keeps on piling up around our ears. Comm
unists, Nazis, Junkers, Prussians, military men, pimps, drug addicts, perverts. You mark my words, Gunther, one day there’s going to be nowhere clean left for anyone to stand on and we’ll all be in the shit.”
And with that he walked off.
I’d walked the length and breadth of the courtyard when a man arrived with a barrel organ and started to play “The Happy Wanderer,” except it sounded about as happy as a wander across a field in Flanders. But some women came out of a door and started to dance with each other as if they were in a ballroom. The ballroom of Berlin, that’s what it was. With men in short supply, older women who wanted to dance were obliged to dance with each other. I had another look inside the coal bunker and inside the bole of the tree where I’d found Eva’s purse, but there was nothing.
Some kids were playing with a cripple-cart, which reminded me that it was probably the same one I’d seen abandoned on Wormser Strasse the night Eva Angerstein had been killed. Then, it had meant nothing; now, since Dr. Gnadenschuss, it perhaps meant something. Why had the cart been abandoned in the first place? How would the disabled man who’d once used it have got around Berlin without it? A cart like that represented not just a means of transport but also a way of making a living. Just seeing it again begged all kinds of questions.
I walked over to the kids, showed them my beer token, and confiscated the cripple-cart before shooing them off; I could more kindly have bought it from them, I suppose, for the price of a couple of ice creams, but I was feeling a little short. Turning down Angerstein’s fifty hadn’t been easy for a man like me.
