by Philip Kerr
“I can let you have five rubles,” he said.
“It’ll take a lot more than five rubles to bribe that major,” said Sajer.
“I’ve got to start somewhere,” I said as Metelmann gave me a five from his pocket. “Thanks, Konrad. How about you, Sajer?”
“Suppose I need to bribe someone myself?” He grinned unpleasantly at Metelmann. “If it’s you they pick, you might regret giving him that five, you silly bastard.”
“Fuck you, Sajer,” said Metelmann.
“Where does someone like you get five rubles, anyway?” asked Sajer.
Metelmann sneered and reached for his chunk of chleb. With his left hand.
I also noted the livid-looking scar on his forearm. He might have got the injury on-site. But all things considered, I thought it more likely that he’d got it while murdering Gebhardt.
I spent the next three days alone in Gebhardt’s hut catching up on my sleep. I knew what I was going to do, but I saw little point in doing it before the MVD’s allotted time had elapsed. I was determined to enjoy every minute of my holiday at K.A. while it was there to be had. After months of hard labor on starvation rations, I was exhausted and a little feverish. Once a day the SGO came over and asked how my inquiry was progressing, and I told him that despite any evidence to the contrary I had made good progress. I could see he didn’t believe me. But I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I was going to lose my army pension because of his opinion. Besides, the SGO and I were two different heads on the same imperial eagle—me looking left and him looking to the right. Even in a Soviet POW camp he could seldom leave a room without clicking his heels. Oh yes, our Colonel Mrugowski was a regular Fred Astaire.
On the third day, I rolled the stone away from the front door and went to the site to find Metelmann. I handed him back his five rubles. “Here,” I said, “you might as well keep this. I shan’t be needing it where I’m going.”
Quickly pocketing the note in case one of the guards should see it, Metelmann tried not to look relieved at my obvious disappointment. “No luck, huh?”
“My luck ran out on me a long time ago,” I said. “It was going so fast, it must have been wearing running shoes.”
“You know, maybe that MVD major was bluffing,” he said.
“I doubt it. The thing I’ve noticed about people with power is that they always use it even when they say they don’t want to.” I started to walk away.
“Good luck,” said Metelmann.
Major Savostin was playing chess when I found him in the guardhouse. With himself. Colonel Mrugowski was there, too. They were waiting for my report.
“There’s no one here that plays,” said the major. “Perhaps we should have a game, you and I, Captain.”
“I’m sure you’re much better than me, sir. After all, it’s virtually your national game.”
“Why is that, do you suppose? One would think as logical a game as chess would suit the German character rather well.”
“Because it’s black and white?” I suggested. “Everything is black and white in the Soviet Union. And perhaps because the game involves making sacrifices of smaller, less important pieces. Besides, sir, with you I should worry how to win without losing.” I snatched off my cap. “As a matter of fact, sir, I’ve been worried about that for the last three days. I mean, how to solve this case without pissing you off. And I’m still not satisfied I know the answer to that question.”
“But you do know who killed Gebhardt, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then I fail to understand your difficulty.”
I wondered if I had misjudged him—if he wasn’t quite as intelligent as I’d thought. Then again, there is a whole earthwork of understanding between someone who is hungry and someone who is not. I could see no way of identifying Metelmann as the culprit without putting my own head in the lion’s mouth.
“I mean, you’re not suggesting it was a Russian, I trust,” he said, fiddling with his queen.
“Oh no, sir. A Russian would never have murdered a German and not owned up to it. Besides, why kill a pleni in secret when you could just as easily kill him in the open? Even if he was an anti-fascist agent. No, you were right, sir. It was a German who killed Gebhardt.”
I cast my eye over the board in the hope that I might see some evidence of intelligence there, but all I could tell was that the right pieces were on the right squares and that the major needed a manicure like I needed a hot bath. They probably didn’t care about manicures in the Soviet workers’ paradise. They certainly didn’t care about hot baths. It was a little hard to be sure, but I had the idea that the major smelled almost as bad as I did.
“The murder was not premeditated,” I said. “It happened on the spur of the moment. Frenzied stabbings are often like that where there’s no sexual aspect involved. Of course, it’s hard to say much with certainty at a crime scene that I’ve had to work without a thermometer to take the body’s temperature. And there were certainly fingerprints that could have been recovered from the murder weapon and the brass door handle. What can be said with confidence, however, is that the murderer was left-handed. Because of the pattern of wounds on the dead man’s body. Now, at the canteen, I observed all of the men in this camp and drew up a list of all the left-handed plenis. This was my initial pool of suspects. Since when I have identified the murderer, I will not say his name. As a German officer, it would be wrong for me to do so. But there is no need, since his name appears in Gebhardt’s notebook.”
I handed the red notebook to the major.
“Metelmann,” he said quietly.
“As you will see, this page contains details of payments that were made to this particular officer in return for information. In other words, the culprit was acting as the murdered man’s paid informer. I believe the two men argued about money, sir. Among other things. Possibly Gebhardt refused to pay the murderer five rubles—his usual rate—for information received. After the murder, the culprit took the money anyway.”
I handed Savostin a hundred of the five-ruble notes I had found behind the poster of Stalin. Savostin handed the notebook to the SGO.
“I found these bills hidden in Gebhardt’s hut. As you can see, all of the bills are marked in the top right-hand corner with a small pencil mark, which I believe is a Russian Orthodox cross.”
Savostin examined one of the notes and nodded. “All of them?” he said.
“Yes, sir.” I knew this because I had marked every one of the bills myself. “It’s my guess that if you were to search the officer named in that notebook, you would find him in possession of one or more five-ruble notes with the same penciled cross in the top right-hand corner, sir. The same officer is left-handed, and his arm currently bears a livid scar that was most probably sustained during the attack on Gebhardt.”
Still clutching my cap, I rubbed my shaven head with my knuckle. It sounded like something happening to a piece of wood in the camp workshop. “If I might speak frankly, sir?”
“Speak, Captain.”
“I don’t know what you’re going to do with this man, sir. Given who and what he is, I can appreciate that it might leave you with a problem. After all, he’s your man’s man. But he’s no good to you now, sir, is he? Not now that we know who and what he is. I suppose you could always use him to replace Gebhardt, as the anti-fa officer, although his Russian isn’t up to much. And you’d have to take him away anyway, for political reeducation. Either way, he’s finished in this camp. I just wanted to let you know that, sir.”
“Aren’t you jumping the gun a little, Gunther? You haven’t proved anything yet. Even if I do find this marked money on Metelmann, there’s nothing to prove he didn’t receive the money before Gebhardt was murdered. And have you considered the possibility that if this man is an informer, then it might suit me better to leave him here and have you and the colonel transferred to another camp?”
“I have considered that, yes, sir. It’s true there’s nothing to stop you doing th
at. But you can’t be sure that we haven’t told all our comrades what I’ve told you. That’s one reason why it wouldn’t suit you to send us to another camp. Another reason is that the colonel is doing an excellent job as SGO. The men listen to him. With all due respect, sir, you need him.”
Major Savostin looked at the colonel. “Perhaps I do, at that,” he said.
I shrugged. “As for proving anything to your satisfaction, Major, that’s your affair. I’ve handed you the gun. You can’t expect me to pull the trigger as well. However, if you do decide to search Metelmann, you might ask him the name of his wife, sir.”
“Meaning?”
“Konrad Metelmann’s wife is called Vera, sir.” I handed Savostin the ring I had found, which I had assumed was Gebhardt’s wedding ring. “There’s an inscription inside.”
Savostin’s eyes narrowed as he read what was engraved on the inside of the gold band. “‘To Konrad, with all my love, from Vera. February 1943.’” He looked at me.
“That was on Gebhardt’s ring finger, sir. The finger was broken, I think, because Metelmann tried to get the ring off Gebhardt’s finger after he killed him and failed. Possibly he even broke the finger, I don’t know. But I had to use soap to get it off myself.”
“Perhaps Gebhardt bought this from Metelmann.”
“Gebhardt bought it, all right. But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t from Metelmann. Metelmann hid that ring up his arse for weeks. Then he got a bad dose of diarrhea and had to wear it on a piece of string around his neck. But one of the guards found it and made him hand it over. As a matter of fact, I saw it happen.”
“Who?”
“Sergeant Degermenkoy. My guess is that Gebhardt bought it back from him and promised to return it to Metelmann but never did. Possibly he may have used the ring as leverage to obtain information from Metelmann. Either way, I’m certain this ring is what the fight was about. And I’m sure the sergeant will confirm what I’ve said, sir. That he sold the ring to Gebhardt.”
“Degermenkoy is a lying pig,” said Major Savostin. “But I don’t doubt that you are correct about what must have happened. You’ve done very well, Captain. I shall question both men in due course. For now, I thank you, Captain. You, too, Colonel, for recommending this man. You may go back to work now. Dismissed.”
Mrugowski and I went out of the guardhouse. “Are you sure about all of this?”
“Yes.”
“Suppose Savostin searches Metelmann and he doesn’t have that five-ruble note.”
“He had it half an hour ago,” I said. “I know that because it was me who gave it to him. And it’s marked with a lot more than just a Russian Orthodox cross. There’s a thumbprint in blood on it, too. Rather a good one, as it happens, although I daresay the Ivans won’t be looking to make a match.”
“I don’t understand,” said Mrugowski. “Whose thumbprint?”
“Gebhardt’s. I put the print on the bill using his dead hand. And I borrowed five rubles from Metelmann the day before yesterday, just so that I could repay him with a marked bill. I marked the bills with the cross myself. The thumbprint was merely for added effect.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“I chalked him out for it. Metelmann. Framed him, so that he could take the bath out.”
Mrugowski stopped and stared at me with horror. “You mean he didn’t kill Gebhardt?”
“Oh, he killed him all right. I’m almost sure of that. But proving it is something else. Especially in this place. Anyway, I don’t much care. Metelmann was a point. A lousy informer, and we’re well rid of him.”
“I do not like your methods, Captain Gunther.”
“You wanted a detective from the Alex, Colonel, and that’s what you got. You think those bastards always play fair? By the book? Rules of evidence? Think again. Berlin cops have planted more evidence than the ancient Egyptians. This is how it works, sir. Real police work isn’t some gentleman detective writing notes on a starched shirt-cuff with a silver pencil. That was the old days, when the grass was greener and it only snowed on Christmas Eve. You make the suspect, not the punishment, fit the crime, see? It was always thus. But more especially here. Here most of all. That Major Savostin isn’t the laughing policeman. He’s from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. I just hope you didn’t sell me too hard to that coldhearted bastard, because I tell you this. It’s not Lieutenant Metelmann I’m worried about, it’s me. I’ve been useful to Savostin. He likes that. The next time he gets cold hands, he’s liable to treat me like a pair of gloves.”
Konrad Metelmann was taken away by the Blues the same day and life at Krasno-Armeesk resumed its awful, gray, unrelentingly brutal routine. Or at least I thought it did until it was pointed out to me by another pleni that I was receiving double rations in the canteen. People always noticed things like that. At first none of my comrades seemed to mind, as everyone was now aware that I had uncovered an informer and saved twenty-five of us from a show trial in Stalingrad. But memories are short, especially in a Soviet labor camp, and as winter arrived and my preferment continued—not just more food, but warmer clothes, too—I began to encounter some resentment among the other German prisoners. It was Ivan Yefremovich Pospelov who explained what was happening:
“I’ve seen this before,” he said. “And I’m afraid it will end badly unless you can do something about it. The Blues have picked you out for the Astoria treatment. Like the hotel? Better food, better clothes, and in case you hadn’t noticed, less work.”
“I’m working,” I said. “Like anyone else.”
“You think so? When was the last time a Blue shouted at you to hurry up? Or called you a German pig?”
“Now you come to mention it, they have been rather more polite of late.”
“Eventually, the other plenis will forget what you did for them and remember only that you are preferred by the Blues. And they’ll conclude that there’s more to it than meets the eye. That you’re giving the Blues something else in return.”
“But that’s nonsense.”
“I know it. You know it. But do they know it? In six months from now you’ll be an anti-fascist agent in their eyes, whether you are or not. That’s what the Russians are gambling on. That as you are shunned by your own people you have no choice but to come over to them. Even if that doesn’t happen one day, you’ll have an accident. A bank will give way for no apparent reason and you’ll be buried alive. But your rescue will come too late. And if you are rescued, then you’ll have no choice but to take Gebhardt’s place. That is, if you want to stay alive. You’re one of them, my friend. A Blue. You just don’t know it yet.”
I knew Pospelov was right. Pospelov knew everything about life at K.A. He ought to have done. He’d been there since Stalin’s Great Purge. As the music teacher to the family of a senior Soviet politician arrested and executed in 1937, Pospelov had received a twenty-year sentence—a simple case of guilt by association. But for good measure the NKVD—as the MVD was then called—had broken his hands with a hammer to make sure that he could never again play the piano.
“What can I do?” I asked.
“For sure you can’t beat them.”
“You can’t mean that I should join them, surely?”
Pospelov shrugged. “It’s odd where a crooked path will sometimes take you. Besides, most of them are just us with blue shoulder boards.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Then you will have to watch out for yourself, with all three eyes, and by the way, don’t ever yawn.”
“There must be something I can do, Ivan Yefremovich. I can share some of my food, can’t I? Give my warmer clothing to another man?”
“They’ll simply find other ways to show you favor. Or they’ll try to persecute those that you help. You must really have impressed that MVD major, Gunther.” He sighed and looked up at the gray-white sky and sniffed the air. “Any day now it will snow. The work will be tougher then. If you’re going to do anything, it would be best to do it before the snow,
when days and tempers are shorter and the Blues hate us more for keeping them outside. In a way, they’re prisoners just like we are. You’ve got to remember that.”
“You’d see the good in a pack of wolves, Pospelov.”
“Perhaps. However, your example is a useful one, my friend. If you wish to stop the wolves from licking your hand, you will have to bite one of them.”
Pospelov’s advice was hardly welcome. Assaulting one of the guards was a serious offense—almost too serious to contemplate. And yet I didn’t doubt what he had told me: If the Ivans kept on giving me special treatment, I was going to meet with a fatal accident at the hands of my comrades. Many of these were ruthless Nazis and loathsome to me, but they were still my fellow countrymen, and faced with the choice of keeping faith with them or joining the Bolsheviks to save my own skin, I quickly formed the conclusion that I’d already stayed alive for longer than I might otherwise have expected and that maybe I had no choice at all. I hated the Bolsheviks as much as I hated the Nazis; under the circumstances, perhaps more than I hated the Nazis. The MVD was just the Gestapo with three Cyrillic letters, and I’d had enough of everything to do with the whole apparatus of state security to last me a lifetime.
Clear in my mind what I had to do, and in full view of almost every pleni in the half-excavated canal, I walked up to Sergeant Degermenkoy and stood right in front of him. I took the cigarette from the mouth in his astonished-looking face and puffed it happily for a moment. I discovered I didn’t have the guts to hit him but managed to find it in me to knock the blue-banded cap off his ugly tree stump of a head.
It was the first and only time I heard laughter at K.A. And it was the last thing I heard for a while. I was waving to the other plenis when something hit me hard on the side of my head—perhaps the stock of Degermenkoy’s machine gun—and probably more than once. My legs gave way and the hard, cold ground seemed to swallow me up as if I’d been water from the Volga. The black earth enveloped me, filling my nostrils, mouth, and ears, and then collapsed altogether, and I fell into the dreadful place that the Great Stalin and the rest of his murderous Red gang had prepared for me in their socialist republic. And as I fell into that endless, deep pit they stood and waved at me with gloved hands from the top of Lenin’s mausoleum, while all around me there were people applauding my disappearance, laughing at their own good fortune, and throwing flowers after me.
