by Philip Kerr
“Papers,” said the second cop.
Slowly, I put my hand in my pocket. The two cops didn’t look like they had much more policing experience between them than a scoutmaster. And I didn’t want to get shot because some new bug cop was nervous. I handed over Gruen’s passport carefully, and put my hands up again.
“I’m a friend of Frau Warzok’s,” I said, and sniffed the air. It wasn’t just the room that smelled. It was the whole situation. If the cops were there then something bad had happened. “Look here, is she all right? Where is she?”
The second cop was still looking at the passport. I wasn’t worried that he would think it wasn’t me so much as that he would be abreast of whatever it was that Gruen was supposed to have done.
“It says here that you’re from Vienna,” he said. “You don’t sound like you’re from Vienna.” He was wearing the same outfit as his colleague, only without the baker’s hat. A smile was stapled to the opposite cheek from the way his nose was angled. He probably thought it made him look wry or even skeptical, but it just came off oblique and distorted. All of his recessive genes seemed to have concentrated where his chin ought to have been. And the hairline on his high forehead matched the line of a long S-shaped scar. He handed the passport back to me as he spoke.
“Before the war, I lived in Berlin for ten years,” I said.
“A doctor, huh?”
They were starting to relax.
“Yes.”
“Her doctor?”
“No. Look here, who are you? And where’s Frau Warzok?”
“Police,” said the one with the hat, flashing a warrant disk at me. “Deutschmeister Platz.”
This seemed reasonable enough. The Kommissariat on Deutschmeister Platz was less than a hundred yards away from where we were standing.
“She’s in there,” said the cop with the scar.
The two cops put away their guns and led me into a tiled bathroom. It had been built at a time when a bathroom was not a bathroom unless a football team could bathe in it. As it happened, there was only one woman in the bath. Except for the one nylon stocking she was wearing, she was naked. The nylon stocking was knotted around her neck. It wasn’t the kind of knot that would have detained Alexander the Great for very long, but it was effective enough. The woman was dead. She had been strangled. Beyond the fact that I had never seen her before it was impossible to say more because the smell didn’t encourage delay. Both the body and the water it was lying in were a slimy shade of poisonous green. And there were flies. Curious the way there are always flies on bodies, even when it’s very cold.
“Good grief,” I said, reeling from the bathroom like a man who hadn’t seen a cadaver since medical school, instead of less than half an hour earlier. And it was my hand I put up to my nose this time. For the moment the kickers were safely in my pocket. The effect the smell had on me was real enough. I went straight back to the open window and leaned into some fresh air. But it was just as well the stench left me gagging for a moment or two. Otherwise I might have said something stupid about how the body in the bathroom wasn’t Britta Warzok. And that would have spoiled everything, in view of what the cop in the hat now said:
“Sorry to let you have it like that,” he said, following me to the window. It was now plain to see that it had been the two cops who had opened it. “It was a bit of a shock for me, too. Frau Warzok used to give me piano lessons, when I was a kid.” He pointed to a piano behind the door. “We’d only just found her ourselves when you came in. The neighbor downstairs reported the smell and the mail stacked up in her box.”
“How do you know her?” asked the other cop. He was eyeing the holdall I had arrived with, and was probably wondering what was in it.
I was inventing my story even as I told it to him, trying to fix a plausible chain of causation in my head. The body in the bath had the look of a body that had been in the water for not quite a week. That would be my approximate start point.
“I knew her husband,” I said. “Friedrich. Before the war. Before he—” I shrugged. “About a week ago I received a letter from her. At my home in Garmisch. It said that she was in trouble. It took me a while to get away from my medical practice. And I arrived in Vienna just a short while ago. I came straight here.”
“Do you still have the letter?” asked the cop with the scar.
“No, I’m afraid I left it in Garmisch.”
“What kind of trouble?” he asked. “Did she say?”
“No, but Britta isn’t—wasn’t the kind of person to say that kind of thing lightly. The letter was really short. It just asked me to come to Vienna as soon as I could. Well then. I telephoned before I left Garmisch. But there was no reply. So I came anyway.”
I started to wander across the parquet wooden floor like some ordinary Fritz, distracted with grief. Which in part I was, of course. Vera Messmann’s dead body was all too vivid in my memory. There were some nice rugs, a few elegant chairs and tables. Some good Nymphenburger porcelain. A vase of flowers that looked as if they had been dead for about as long as the woman in the bath. There were lots of framed photographs on a sideboard. I went to take a closer look at them. Many of them featured the woman in the bath. In one of them she was getting married to a face I recognized. It was Friedrich Warzok. I was quite sure it was him because he was wearing his SS uniform. I shook my head as if I was upset. But not in the way they imagined I was upset. I was upset because I had a very bad feeling about everything that had happened to me since a woman calling herself Britta Warzok had walked into my office.
“Who would have done such a thing?” I asked the two cops. “Unless.”
“Yes.”
“It’s no secret that Friedrich, her husband, is wanted for war crimes,” I said. “And of course, one hears things. About Jewish revenge gangs. Perhaps they came looking for her husband and killed her instead.”
The cop with the hat was shaking his head. “It’s a nice idea,” he said. “But it so happens we think we know who killed her.”
“Already? That’s amazing.”
“Did you ever hear her mention a man called Bernhard Gunther?”
I tried to contain my surprise and look thoughtful for a moment. “Gunther, Gunther,” I said, as if raking through the bottom drawer of my memory. If I was going to pump them for information I would have to give them something first.
“Yes, yes, I think I have heard that name before. But it wasn’t in connection with Britta Warzok. A few months ago, a man turned up at my house in Garmisch. I think his name might have been Gunther. He said he was a private detective and that he was looking for a witness who might assist in the appeal of another old comrade I used to know. A fellow named von Starnberg. He’s currently serving a sentence for war crimes in Landsberg Prison. What does your Bernhard Gunther look like?”
“We don’t know,” admitted the cop with the scar. “But from what you’ve told us, he’s the man we’re looking for all right. A private detective, based in Munich.”
“Can you tell us anything about him?” asked the other.
“Yes, but look here, do you mind if I sit down? I’ve had a bit of a shock.”
“Please.”
They followed me to a big leather sofa where I sat down. I took out the pipe and started to fill it, then hesitated. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“Go ahead,” said the hat. “It will help get rid of the smell.”
“He wasn’t very tall,” I said. “Well dressed. A bit too fastidious, you might say. Brown hair. Brown eyes. Not from Munich, I’d say. Somewhere else, probably. Hamburg maybe. Berlin, possibly.”
“He’s from Berlin,” said the scar. “He used to be a policeman.”
“A policeman? Yes, well, he did strike me a bit that way. You know. Full of himself. A bit officious.” I hesitated. “No offense, gentlemen. What I mean is, he was very correct. I must say he didn’t strike me as the type to murder anyone at all. If you don’t mind my saying so. I’ve met a few psychopathic persona
lities during my years as a doctor, but your Herr Gunther wasn’t one of those.” I settled back on the sofa and puffed at my pipe. “What makes you think it was he who killed her?”
“We found his business card on the mantelpiece,” said the hat. “There was blood on it. We also found an initialed handkerchief with blood on it. His initials.”
I remembered using my own handkerchief to staunch the flow of blood from the stump of my little finger. “Gentlemen, she was strangled,” I said, carefully. “I don’t see that a bit of blood proves anything.”
“The handkerchief was on the bathroom floor,” said the scar. “We figure that she might have hit him before she died. Anyway, we phoned the murder in to the IP on Kärntnerstrasse. It seems the Amis have a file on this Gunther. There’s an Ami on his way here now. From the Stiftskaserne. Matter of fact, we thought you might be him until we heard you call out for Frau Warzok. And saw the bag.”
I felt my ears prick up at the mention of the Stiftskaserne. This was where the headquarters of the U.S. Military Police in Vienna was located, on Mariahilferstrasse. But it was also the home of the American intelligence community in Vienna. I’d been there before. Back in the days when the CIA had been called the OSS.
“My clothes,” I said. “I was expecting to be here for a couple of days.”
There was something about what these cops were telling me that just didn’t add up. But there was no time now to quiz them further. If the Americans had a file on me, then it was equally possible they had a photograph, too. I had to get out of there, and fast. But how? If there’s one thing cops like to hang on to it’s a witness. Then again, if there’s one thing they hate it’s a forensic amateur—a member of the public who thinks he might be able to offer some advice.
“The Stiftskaserne,” I said. “That’s the 796th U.S. Military Police, isn’t it? And the CIA. Not the IP. So this must be an intelligence matter, as well as a murder. I wonder what Britta could have got herself mixed up in that might involve the CIA.”
One cop looked at the other. “Did we mention the CIA?”
“No, but it’s obvious that they’re involved from what you’ve already told me,” I said.
“Is it?”
“Of course,” I said. “I was in the Abwehr during the war. So I know quite a bit about this kind of thing. Perhaps I can be of assistance when the Ami turns up. After all, I’ve met this Bernie Gunther. And I did know Britta Warzok. So if there’s anything I can do to help catch her murderer, then obviously I’d like to help. As well as being a doctor, I also speak English. That might come in handy, too. It goes without saying that I can be discreet if this involves something top secret between the CIA and the Austrian police.”
The two cops were already looking like they wanted me gone from there, and as quickly as possible. “Perhaps later on you could be of assistance, Doctor,” said the hat. “When we’ve had a chance to examine the crime scene in further detail.” He picked up my bag and carried it to the door for me.
“We’ll be in touch,” said the other cop, taking me by the arm, and encouraging me onto my feet.
“But you don’t know where I’m staying,” I said. “And I don’t know your names.”
“Call us at Deutschmeister Platz and let us know later,” said the hat. “I’m Inspector Strauss. He’s Kriminalassistent Wagner.”
I stood up, affecting a show of reluctance to be gone from the apartment, and allowed myself to be steered to the door. “I’m at the Hotel de France,” I lied. “It’s not far from here. Do you know it?”
“We know where it is,” said the hat patiently. He handed me my bag.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll call you later. Wait. What’s your telephone number?”
The hat handed me his business card. “Yes, please call us later,” he said, trying not to grimace too obviously.
I felt his hand in the small of my back and then I was out on the landing, with the door closing behind me. Pleased with my own performance I went quickly down the stairs and stopped outside the apartment beneath Britta Warzok’s from where, allegedly, the phone call about the smell and the mail had originated. None of that felt plausible now. For one thing there was no smell detectable on this floor. And for another there was no nosey-parker neighbor peering out of the door to see what the police were up to. As there ought to have been if the story I had been told had been a true one.
I was about to continue with my swift exit when I heard footsteps in the hallway below and, glancing out of the second-floor window, I saw a black Mercury sedan parked on the street below. Deciding that it might be wise to avoid crossing the American’s path, I knocked quickly at the door of the apartment.
After several agonizing seconds, the door opened to reveal a man wearing trousers and a vest. He was a hairy man. A very hairy man. Even his hair seemed to have smaller hairs growing on it. He made Esau look as smooth as sheet of window glass. I handed him the cop’s business card and glanced nervously behind me as the mounting footsteps grew nearer. “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” I said. “I wonder if I might come in and have a word with you for a moment.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Esau looked at Inspector Strauss’s business card for what seemed like an eternity before inviting me inside. I went in past him and smelled dinner. It didn’t smell good. Someone had been using some old, worn-out fat in cooking whatever it was. He closed the door at just about the moment the Ami would have rounded the corner on the stairs and seen the second-floor apartment’s door. I breathed a small sigh of relief.
The entrance to the apartment, like the one on the floor above, was as big as a bus station. There was a silver tray for mail by the front door and an umbrella stand made out of an elephant’s foot. But it might just as easily have belonged to the large woman standing in the kitchen doorway. She was wearing a pinafore and was supporting herself on a pair of crutches, having only one leg. “Who is it, Heini?” she asked.
“It’s the police, dear,” he said.
“The police?” She sounded surprised. “What do they want?”
I had been right after all. Clearly these people hadn’t reported anything to the police at Deutschmeister Platz, or anywhere else for that matter.
“I’m very sorry to disturb you,” I said. “But there’s been an incident in the apartment upstairs.”
“An incident? What kind of incident?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you too much at this stage,” I said. “However, I was wondering when you last saw Frau Warzok. And when you did, if she was with anyone. Or if you heard anything unusual from upstairs, perhaps.”
“We haven’t seen her in over a week,” said Heini, absently combing the hairs on his arms with his fingers. “And then just for a minute or two. I thought she was away. Her mail’s still there.”
The woman on crutches had maneuvered herself toward me. “We don’t really have much to do with her,” she said. “We say hello and good morning. A quiet woman.”
“When she’s around we never hear very much,” said Heini. “Just her piano, and then only when the window is open in summer. She plays beautifully. Used to give concerts before the war. When people still had money for that kind of thing.”
“It’s mostly children and their mothers who come to see her now,” said Heini’s wife. “She gives piano lessons.”
“Anyone else?”
They were quiet for a moment.
“There was someone, about a week ago,” said Heini. “An Ami.”
“In uniform?”
“No,” he said. “But you can tell, can’t you? The way they walk. Their shoes. Their haircuts. Everything.”
“What did this Ami look like?”
“Well dressed. Nice sports jacket. Well-pressed trousers. Not tall. Not short. Average height, really. Glasses. Gold watch. Quite tanned, too. Oh yes, and another reason I knew he was an American. His car was parked outside. An American car. A green one with white tires.”
“Thank you,” I said, retrieving
the inspector’s business card. “You’ve been most helpful.”
“But what’s happened?” asked Heini’s wife.
“If anyone asks, I didn’t tell you,” I said. “I shouldn’t be saying anything at all. Not yet. But you’re respectable people, I can see that. Not the kind of people to go around spreading idle talk about something like this. Frau Warzok is dead. Murdered, probably.”
“Murdered! Here?” She sounded shocked. “In this building? In this district?”
“I’ve already said more than I should,” I told them. “Look, one of my senior officers will speak to you in more detail later on. You’d best pretend that it’s news to you when he does, all right? Or it might be my job.”
I opened the door a crack. I could hear no steps in the building. “And you’d best lock the door behind me,” I said, and went out.
By now it was dark and it had started to snow again. I walked quickly out of the building and down onto the Ring, to a taxi stand where I took a cab back to my hotel. There was no question of staying there, of course. Not now that I knew that Eric Gruen was as interesting to the International Patrol as Bernie Gunther. I would collect my things, check out of the hotel, and then go to a bar and try to figure out what to do.
The cab turned onto Wiedner Hauptstrasse, and as it neared the hotel entrance, I saw the IP vehicle parked outside. My already queasy stomach turned over, as if someone had stirred it with a long wooden spoon. I told the driver to pull up on the corner. I paid and then meandered innocently to the back of a small crowd of nosey-parkers that had gathered beside the doorway, apparently eager to watch someone get arrested. Two military policemen were stopping people from going in or coming out of the Erzherzog Rainer.
“What’s all the excitement?” I asked one of the nosey-parkers.
An old man, as thin as a pipe cleaner, wearing pince-nez and a black homburg, supplied an answer. “They’re arresting someone,” he said. “Don’t know who, though.”
