by Philip Kerr
I followed her and the two Pekingese dogs that were always with her into the office of the hotel’s assistant managing director. This was her office, and when her husband, Louis, wasn’t around—and he wasn’t around much when the hunting season got under way—Hedda Adlon was very much in charge.
“So,” she said, closing the door, “what do we know about poor Herr Rubusch? Have you telephoned the police?”
“No, not yet. I was on my way to the Alex when you caught me. I wanted to tell them in person.”
“Oh? Why is that?”
In her early thirties, Hedda Adlon was much younger than her husband. Although she had been born in Germany, she’d spent much of her youth living in America, and she spoke German with a slight American accent. Like Max Reles. Only that was as far as the similarity went. She was blond, with a full German figure. But it was a healthy figure. As healthy as several million marks. You don’t get a healthier figure than that. She enjoyed entertaining and riding—she had been an enthusiastic member of the Berlin fox hunt until Hermann Goering had banned hunting with dogs in Germany—and was very gregarious, which was, I suspected, one of the reasons why the close-lipped Louis Adlon had married her in the first place. She added an extra touch of glamour to the hotel, like a mother-of-pearl inlay on the gates of paradise. She smiled a lot and was good at putting people at their ease and could hold a conversation with anyone. I remembered a dinner at the Adlon in which she was seated next to a Red Indian chief wearing his full native headdress: she spoke to him all evening, as if she’d been talking to the French ambassador. Of course, it’s always possible that he was the French ambassador. The French—especially the diplomats—do like their feathers and their decorations.
“I was going to ask the police if they might handle the matter discreetly, Frau Adlon. On the face of it, Herr Doctor Rubusch, who was married, had been entertaining a young lady in his room shortly before he died. No wife could ever like the news of her widowhood to be delivered with that kind of postscript. Not in my experience. So, for her sake, and the sake of the reputation of the hotel, I was hoping to put the matter straight into the hands of a homicide detective who’s an old friend of mine. Someone who’s equipped with enough human skills to deal sensitively with the case.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you, Bernhard. We’re grateful to you. But you said homicide? I thought his death was natural.”
“Even if he died in his sleep with a Bible in his arms, there has to be a homicide inquiry. That’s the law.”
“But you do agree with Dr. Küttner that his death was from natural causes.”
“Probably.”
“Only it wasn’t with a Bible in his arms, but a young lady. Am I to assume you mean a prostitute?”
“Very likely. We chase them out of the hotel like cats where and when we can. But it’s not always easy. This one was wearing a tiara.”
“That’s a nice touch.” Hedda put a cigarette into a holder. “Clever. Who’s ever going to challenge someone in a tiara?”
“I might do it if it was a man wearing one.”
She smiled, lit the cigarette, sucked at the holder, and then blew out the smoke, not inhaling the stuff at all, like a child pretending to smoke, pretending to be a grown-up. It reminded me of me, pretending to be a detective, going through the motions with just the taste of a proper investigation on my lips and not much more. Hotel detective. Really it was a contradiction in terms. Like national socialism. Racial purity. Aryan superiority.
“Well, if that’s all, I’ll be getting along to the Alex. The boys in Homicide are a little different from most people. They like to hear bad news as soon as possible.”
10
A LOT OF WHAT I’D TOLD Hedda Adlon was nonsense, of course. I had no old friends in Homicide. Not anymore. Otto Trettin was in Counterfeiting and Forgery. Bruno Stahlecker was part of Inspectorate G: the Juvenile Section. Ernst Gennat, who ran Homicide, was no longer a friend. Not since the purge of 1933. And there was certainly no one with any human skills who worked in Homicide. What good were they when you were arresting Jews and communists—when you were busy building the new Germany? All the same, there were some Homicide cops who were worse than others, and these were the bulls I hoped to avoid. For the sake of Frau Rubusch. And Frau Adlon. And the reputation of the hotel. And all of it courtesy of Bernie Gunther, Ring-cycle hero and good guy, dragon slaying a specialty.
Near the front desk in the Alex I saw Heinz Seldte, the young cop who seemed too intelligent to be wearing a SCHUPO uniform. It was a good start. I waved him over, amiably.
“Who are the duty detectives in Homicide?” I asked.
Seldte didn’t answer. He didn’t even look at me. He was too busy coming to attention and looking over my shoulder.
“You turning yourself in for a murder, Bernie?”
Given the fact that I had actually murdered someone, and quite recently, too, I turned around and tried to look as nonchalant as I was able to. But my heart was beating, as if I’d run all the way along Unter den Linden.
“That all depends on who I’m supposed to have murdered, sir. I can think of one or two people I’d be happy to put my hands up for. Might be worth it at that. As long as I knew they were actually dead.”
“Police officers, perhaps.”
“Well, now, that would be telling, sir.”
“Still the same young bastard, I see.”
“Yes, sir. Only not so young. Not anymore.”
“Come to my office. Let’s talk.”
I didn’t argue. It’s never a good idea to disagree with the head of the Berlin Criminal Police. Erich Liebermann von Sonnenberg was still just a criminal director when I’d been a detective at the Alex, back in 1932. That was the year von Sonnenberg had joined the Nazi Party, and this had guaranteed his preferment by the Nazis after 1933. I respected him in spite of that. For one thing, he had always been an effective policeman and, for another, he was a good friend of Otto Trettin, as well as the coauthor of his stupid book.
We went into his office and he closed the door behind me.
“I don’t have to remind you whose office this was when you were last here.”
I glanced around. The office had been painted, and there was a new carpet instead of linoleum on the floor. The map on the wall showing the incidence of SA versus red violence was gone, and in its place was a glass case full of mottled brown moths that matched the color of von Sonnenberg’s hair.
“Bernard Weiss.”
“A good policeman.”
“I’m pleased to hear you say so, sir, given the circumstances of his departure.”
Weiss, a Jew, had been forced to leave the police and to flee Germany in 1932.
“You were a good cop, too, Bernie. The difference is, you could probably have stayed on here.”
“It didn’t feel like that at the time.”
“So what brings you back here?”
I told him about the dead man in the Adlon.
“Natural causes?”
“Looks like. I was hoping the investigating detectives might spare the widow the full circumstances of the man’s death, sir.”
“Any particular reason?”
“All part of the Adlon’s high-class service.”
“Like fresh towels in the en-suite bathroom every day, is that it?”
“There’s the hotel’s reputation to consider as well. It wouldn’t do for people to get the idea that we’re Pension Schmidt.”
I told him about the joy lady.
“I’ll put some men on it. Right away.” He picked up the telephone and barked a few orders and waited, covering the candlestick with his hand. “Rust and Brandt,” he said. “The duty detectives.”
“I don’t remember them.”
“I’ll tell them to watch their umlauts.” Von Sonnenberg added some instructions into the candlestick, and when he had finished speaking, he hooked the earpiece and shot me a questioning look. “Fair enough?”
“I’m grat
eful, sir.”
“That remains to be seen.” He eyed me slowly and leaned back in his chair. “Just between the two of us, Bernie, most of the detectives here in KRIPO aren’t worth a spit. And that includes Rust and Brandt. They’re strictly by the book because they wouldn’t have the nerve or the experience to know that there’s a lot more to the job than what’s written in there. A good detective needs to have imagination. These days the trouble is that that sounds like it has a subversive, undisciplined aspect to it. And no one wants to be thought of as being subversive. Do you see what I mean?”
“Yes, sir.”
He lit a cigarette quickly.
“What would you say were some of the characteristics of a good detective?”
I shrugged. “The feeling that you’re right, when everyone else is wrong.” I smiled. “I can see how that might not go down too well, either.” I hesitated.
“You can speak freely. It’s just you and me in here.”
“Dogged persistence. When people tell you to lay off, you don’t lay off. I never could walk away from something because of politics.”
“Then I take it you’re still not a Nazi.”
I said nothing.
“Are you anti-Nazi?”
“A Nazi is someone who follows Hitler. To be anti-Nazi is to listen to what he says.”
Von Sonnenberg chuckled. “It’s refreshing speaking to a man like you, Bernie. You remind me of how things used to be here. Of how cops used to talk. Real cops. I assume you had your own informers.”
“You can’t do the job without keeping your ear on the toilet door.”
“The trouble is, everyone’s an informer now.” Von Sonnenberg shook his head gloomily. “And I do mean everyone. Which means there’s much too much information. By the time any of it’s been assessed, it’s useless.”
“We get the police force we deserve, sir.”
“You of all people could be forgiven for thinking that. But I can’t sit back and do nothing about it. I wouldn’t be doing my job properly. Under the republic, the Berlin police force enjoyed a reputation as one of the best in the world.”
“That’s not what the Nazis said, sir.”
“I can’t help that. But I can try to arrest the decline.”
“I get the feeling my gratitude is about to be sorely tested.”
“I have one or two detectives here who might, in time, amount to something.”
“You mean apart from Otto.”
Von Sonnenberg chuckled again. “Otto. Yes. Well, Otto is Otto, isn’t he?”
“Always.”
“But these cops are lacking in experience. Your kind of experience. One of them is Richard Bömer.”
“I don’t know him, either, sir.”
“No, well, you wouldn’t. He’s my sister’s son-in-law. I was thinking he might benefit from a little avuncular advice.”
“I really don’t think I’d make much of an uncle, sir. I haven’t got a brother, but if I had, he’d probably have died of criticism by now. The only reason they took me out of uniform and put me in plainclothes was because I was so short with the traffic on Potsdamer Platz. Advice from me sounds like a ruler across the knuckles. I even avoid my own shaving mirror in case I tell myself to go and get a proper job.”
“A proper job. For you? Like what, for instance?”
“I’ve been thinking I might try to set myself up as a private investigator.”
“To do that you’ll need a license from a magistrate. In which case, you would need to show police consent. It might be useful to have a senior policeman on your side for something like that.”
He had a point, and there seemed to be no use in wriggling. He had me just where he wanted, as if I were a moth pinned in the glass case on his office wall.
“All right. But don’t expect white gloves and silver service. If this fellow Richard doesn’t like boiled sausage from the Wurst Max, I’ll be wasting his time and mine.”
“Naturally. All the same, it might be a good idea if you were to meet him somewhere outside the Alex. And that better include the bars around here. I’d like to avoid anyone pulling his chain about the low company he’s keeping.”
“Suits me. But I’d rather not have your sister’s son-in-law in the Adlon. No disrespect to you or her, but they generally prefer it if I’m not teaching a class when I’m there.”
“Sure. We’ll think of a spot. Somewhere halfway. How about the Lustgarten?”
I nodded.
“I’ll get Richard to bring you the files on a couple of cases he’s looking at. Cold ones. Who knows? Maybe you can warm them up for him. A floater from the canal. And that poor dumb cop who got himself murdered. Maybe you read about him in the Beobachter? August Krichbaum.”
11
ONCE A HUGE, LANDSCAPED GARDEN, the Lustgarten was enclosed by the old royal palace—to which it had formerly belonged—and the Old Museum and the Cathedral, but in recent years it had been used not as a garden at all but for military parades and political rallies. I’d been part of a rally there myself, in February 1933, when two hundred thousand people had filled the Lustgarten to demonstrate against Hitler. Perhaps that was why, when they came to power, the Nazis ordered the gardens to be paved over and the famous equestrian statue of Frederick William III removed—so that they could stage even larger military parades and rallies in support of the Leader.
Arriving in that great empty space, I realized I had forgotten about the statue and was obliged to guess where it had been so that I might stand there myself and give Kriminalinspector Richard Bömer half a chance to find me in accordance with Liebermann von Sonnenberg’s arrangements.
Before he saw me, I saw him—a tallish man in his late twenties, fair-haired, carrying a briefcase under his arm, and wearing a gray suit and a pair of shiny black boots that might have been made to measure for him at the police school in Havel. Deep laugh lines bracketed a wide, full mouth that seemed on the edge of a smile. His nose was bent slightly out of shape, and a thick scar ran through one eyebrow like a little bridge over a golden stream. Except for his ears, which were unscarred, he looked like a promising, young light middleweight who had forgotten to remove his gum shield. Seeing me, he approached unhurriedly.
“Hey.”
“Are you Gunther?”
He pointed southeast, in the direction of the palace. “I think he used to face this way. Frederick William the Third, I mean.”
“Sure about that?”
“Yes.”
“Good. I like a man who holds on to his opinions.”
He turned and pointed to the west. “They moved him over there. Behind those trees. Which is where I’ve been waiting for the last ten minutes. I decided to come over here when it occurred to me that you might not know that he’d moved.”
“Who expects a granite horseman to go anywhere?”
“They’ve got to march somewhere, I guess.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. Come on. Let’s sit. A cop never stands when he can sit.”
We walked up to the Old Museum and sat on the steps in front of a long façade of Ionic columns.
“I like coming here,” he said. “It makes you think of what we used to be. And what we will be again.”
I looked at him blankly.
“You know, German history,” he said.
“German history is nothing more than a series of ridiculous mustaches,” I said.
Bömer smiled a crooked, bashful smile, like a schoolboy. “My uncle would love that one,” he said.
“I take it you don’t mean Liebermann von Sonnenberg.”
“He’s my wife’s uncle.”
“As if having the head of KRIPO holding a sponge in your corner wasn’t enough. So your uncle. Who’s he? Hermann Goering?”
He looked sheepish. “I just want to work homicides. To be a good policeman.”
“One thing I learned about being a good policeman. It doesn’t pay nearly as well as being a bad one. So who’s your uncle?”
“It’s only that Liebermann wanted me to be your uncle, so to speak. And I’m the jealous type. If you’ve got another uncle as important as me, I want to know about it. Besides, I’m nosy, too. That’s why I became a detective.”
“He’s someone at the Ministry of Propaganda.”
“You don’t look like Joey the Crip, so you must be talking about someone else.”
“Bömer. Dr. Karl Bömer.”
“These days it seems everyone needs a doctorate to lie to people.”
He grinned again. “You’re just doing this, aren’t you? Because you know I’m a Party member.”
“Isn’t everyone?”
“You’re not.”
“Somehow I never got around to it. There was always a big line of people outside Party headquarters when I went to apply.”
“It should have told you something. That there’s safety in numbers.”
“No, there isn’t. I was in the trenches, my young friend. A battalion can be killed just as easily as a single man. And it was the generals, not the Jews, who made sure of that. They’re the ones who stabbed us in the back.”
“The chief said I should try to avoid talking politics with you, Gunther.”
“That’s not politics. That’s history. You want to know the real truth of German history? It’s that there’s no truth in German history. Like me at the Alex. None of what you’ve heard about me is true.”
“The chief said you were a good detective. One of the best.”
“Apart from that.”
“He said it was you who caught Gormann, the strangler.”
“If that had been difficult, the chief would have put me in his book. Did you read it?”
He nodded.
“What did you think?”
“It wasn’t written for other cops.”
“You’re in the wrong job, Richard. You should be working in the diplomatic corps. It was a lousy book. It tells you nothing about being a detective. Not that I can tell you much. Except this, perhaps. It’s easy for a cop to recognize when a man is lying. What’s harder is to know when he’s telling the truth. Or maybe this: A policeman is just a man who’s a little less dumb than a criminal.”
