by Philip Kerr
“All lovemaking was strenuous for Heinrich. I can assure you of that. But what was it that first made you think his death might be a murder, Herr Gunther?”
“Something someone said. Tell me, do you know a man named Max Reles?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, he knew your husband.”
“And you think he might have had something to do with my husband’s death?”
“It’s not much more than a slight breeze I have, but yes. I do. Let me tell you why.”
“Wait. Have you eaten dinner?”
“I had a light supper at the hotel.”
She smiled kindly. “This is Franconia you’re in now, Herr Gunther. We don’t do light suppers in this state. What was it? That you ate?”
“Just a plate of cold ham and cheese. And a beer.”
“I thought as much. You’ll stay for dinner, then. Magda always cooks far too much anyway. It’ll be nice to have someone eat properly in this house again.”
“Now that I come to think of it, I am rather hungry. I’ve missed quite a few meals of late.”
THE HOUSE WAS TOO BIG FOR ONE. It would have been too big for a basketball team. Her two sons were grown up and gone away, to university, she said, but my money was on Magda’s cooking. Not that there was anything wrong with it. But any man there for any length of time was taking a big risk with his arteries. I was in that house for only a couple of hours, and I felt as fat as Hermann Goering. Every time I laid my knife and fork together, I was persuaded to have another helping. And if I wasn’t eating food, I was looking at it. All over the place there were paintings of dead game and cornucopias, and bulging fruit bowls, just in case anyone got peckish. Even the furniture looked like they fed it extra beeswax. It was big and heavy, and whenever she sat or leaned on any of it, Angelika Rubusch resembled Alice down the rabbit hole.
I guessed she was in her mid-forties, but she might have been older. She was a handsome woman, which is just a way of saying that she was aging better than a pretty one. And there were several reasons for suspecting she found me attractive, which is just a way of saying I had probably drunk too much.
After dinner I tried to gather my thoughts on what I knew about her husband: “Your husband owned a quarry, didn’t he?”
“That’s right. We supplied a wide range of natural stone to builders all over Europe. But mainly limestone. This part of Germany is famous for it. We call it beige limestone on account of the honey color. Most of the public buildings in Würzburg are made of beige limestone. It’s uniquely German, which makes it popular with the Nazis. Since Hitler came to power, business has been booming. They can’t get enough of it. Every new public building in Germany seems to require beige Jura limestone. Before he died, Paul Troost, Hitler’s architect, actually came down here to look at our limestone for the new chancellery building.”
“What about the Olympics?”
“No, we didn’t get that contract. Not that it matters now. You see, I’m selling the business. My sons don’t have any interest in limestone. They are studying to become lawyers. I can’t run the business by myself. I’ve had a very good offer from another company here in Würzburg. So I’m going to take the money and become a rich widow.”
“But you did bid for an Olympic contract?”
“Of course. That’s why Heinrich went to Berlin. He went several times, as a matter of fact. To discuss our tender with Werner March, the Olympic architect, and some other people from the Ministry of the Interior. The day before Heinrich died, he telephoned me from the Adlon to say we’d lost it. He was very agitated about losing it and said he was going to take the matter up with Walter March, who was keen on our stone. At the time, I remember telling him to watch his blood pressure. His face got very red when he was cross about something. So when he died, naturally, I already suspected it must have something to do with his health.”
“Can you think why Max Reles should have been in possession of a contract tender from your company?”
“Is he someone at the ministry?”
“Actually, no, he’s a German-American businessman.”
She shook her head.
I took the letter I’d found in the Chinese box and unfolded it on the dinner table. “I’d half suspected Max Reles was taking something off the top of supplier contracts. Like a finder’s fee, or a commission. But since your husband’s company didn’t actually get a contract, then I’m not so sure what the connection was. Or why Max Reles should have been worried that I was asking questions about your husband. Not that I ever was, you understand. Not until now. Not until someone else made a connection between Heinrich Rubusch and Isaac Deutsch. And assumed that I had already connected the two.” I let out a yawn. “When I hadn’t. Sorry, none of that is going to make any sense to you. I’m tired, I guess. And probably a little drunk.”
Angelika Rubusch wasn’t listening, and I didn’t blame her. She didn’t know anything about Isaac Deutsch and probably didn’t care. I was making less sense than a blind football team. Bernie Gunther, stumbling around in the dark and kicking at a ball that wasn’t even there. She was shaking her head, and I was about to apologize again when I saw that she was looking at her own letter of tender.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“That makes two of us. I haven’t understood anything for a while now. I’m just a guy to whom things happen. And I don’t know why. Some detective, huh?”
“Where did you get this?”
“Max Reles had it. He seems to have his fingers in a lot of Olympic pies. I found that paper in something else that belonged to him. An antique Chinese box that was lost for a while. While it was missing, I formed the distinct impression that he was very keen to have it returned to him.”
“I think I can understand why,” said Angelika Rubusch. “This isn’t our tender. It’s on our notepaper, but these aren’t our figures. This is way above the price we put in to supply this quantity of limestone. About twice as much. I’m looking at this and thinking that it’s no wonder we didn’t get the contract.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. I was my husband’s secretary. That was to stop him from . . . you know. Well, that’s not important now. I used to type all our correspondence, including the original letter of tender to the German Olympic Organizing Committee, and I can tell you that I certainly didn’t type this. For one thing, there’s a spelling mistake. There is no e in ‘Würzburg.’ ”
“There isn’t?”
“Not if you come from Würzburg, there isn’t. Also, the letter g on this typewriter is riding a little higher than the other letters.” She put the tender letter in front of me and placed a well-manicured fingernail under the offending g. “D’you see?”
In truth, my eyesight was feeling a little blurred, but I nodded all the same.
She held the notepaper up to the light. “And you know what? This isn’t even our notepaper. It looks like it, only the watermark is different.”
“I see.” And now I really did.
“Of course,” I said. “Max Reles must have been rigging bids. And I think that works like this: You put in a bid for something yourself and then make sure that competing bids are priced at an unreasonably high level. Either that or you chase off the other bidders, by whatever means necessary. If this is a fake bid, Max Reles must have an interest in the company that was awarded the contract to supply the limestone. Probably that was a high bid too, but crucially not as high as your husband’s bid. As a matter of fact, who did win the contract?”
“Würzburg Jura Limestone,” she said dully. “Our major competitor. The same company I’ve agreed to sell to.”
“All right. Perhaps Reles had already asked Heinrich to put in a high bid so that your competitor would get the contract. If he’d agreed to do it, he’d have been paid a commission. And maybe even ended up supplying Würzburg Jura himself. The advantage being that he could have been paid twice.”
“Heinrich may have been
cheating on me as a husband,” she said, “but he wasn’t like that in business.”
“In which case, Max Reles must have tried and failed to put the thumbscrews on him. Or simply faked the bid from your husband’s company. Perhaps both. Either way, Heinrich found out about it. So Max Reles got rid of him. Quickly. Discreetly. But permanently. This all makes sense now. The first night I ever saw your husband was at a dinner hosted by Reles for a lot of businessmen where there was an argument. One of the other businessmen stormed out. Perhaps he was asked to supply an inflated bid for something else.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Tomorrow morning I have an appointment with the local Gestapo. It seems I’m not the only one who’s interested in Max Reles. Perhaps they’ll tell me what they know, and perhaps I’ll tell them what I know, and maybe we’ll figure out a way forward from there. But I’m afraid all of that might mean another autopsy. Obviously the Berlin pathologist missed something. These days they often do. Forensic standards are no longer as rigorous as they used to be. Nothing is.”
28
YOU WALK UP TO A DOOR that is guarded by two steel-helmeted men wearing black uniforms and white gloves. I’m not sure about the purpose of the white gloves. Are they meant to persuade the rest of us that the SS is pure in heart and deed? If so, then I’m not convinced: this is the militia that murdered Ernst Röhm and God knows how many other SA men.
Inside a heavy wood-and-glass door is a large hallway with a stone floor and a marble staircase. Next to the desk are a Nazi flag and a full-length portrait of Adolf Hitler. Behind the desk is another man wearing a black uniform and the same unhelpful expression you see all over Germany. It is the face of totalitarian bureaucracy and officialdom. This face does not seek to please. It is not there to serve you. It cares not if you live or die. It regards you not as a citizen but as an object to be processed, up the stairs or out the door. It is how a man looks when he stops behaving like a human being and becomes a kind of robot.
Unquestioning obedience. Orders to be carried out without a second thought. This is what they want. Ranks upon serried ranks of steel-helmeted automatons.
My appointment is checked off on a neatly typed list that lies on the well-polished desk. I am early. I should not be early any more than I should be late. Now I will have to wait, and the robot does not know what to do with someone who is early and has to wait. There is an empty wooden chair beside the elevator cage. Normally there is a guard sitting there, I am told, but until the appointed time I may sit there.
I sit. A few minutes pass. I smoke. At precisely ten o’clock the robot lifts the telephone receiver, dials a number, and announces my arrival. I am ordered into the elevator and up to the fourth floor, where another robot will meet me. I enter the elevator. The robot operating the machinery has heard the order and assumes temporary responsibility for my movement within the building.
On the fourth floor, a group of people are waiting to take the elevator down. One of these is a man whose arms are supported by two more robots. He is manacled and half conscious, and there is blood streaming from his nose and onto his clothes. No one looks at all ashamed or embarrassed at my being there or seeing any of this. This would be to admit the possibility that what has been done is wrong. And since what has been done to him has been done in the name of the Leader, this simply cannot be the case. The man is dragged into the elevator, and the third robot, who remains standing on the fourth-floor landing, now leads me down a long, wide corridor. He stops in front of a door numbered 43, knocks, and then opens it without waiting. When I enter, he closes the door behind me.
The room is furnished but empty. The window is wide open, but there is a smell in the air that makes me think that perhaps this is the place where the man with the bloody nose has just been interrogated. And when I see a couple of spots of blood on the brown linoleum, I know I am right about this. I go over to the window and look out onto Ludwigstrasse. My hotel is just around the corner, and although it is foggy outside, I can see its roof from here. On the other side of the street from Würzburg’s Gestapo HQ is the office building of the local Nazi Party. Through an upper window I can see a man with his feet up on a desk, and I wonder what gets done in there, in the name of the Party, that doesn’t get done in here.
A bell starts to toll. The sound drifts across the red rooftops from the cathedral, I presume, only it sounds more like something out at sea, something to warn ships approaching rocks in the fog. And I think of Noreen, somewhere on the North Atlantic, standing in the stern of the SS Manhattan, staring back at me through the thick fog.
The door opens behind me, and a strong smell of soap is carried into the room. I turn as a smallish man closes the door and rolls down the sleeves of his shirt. I guess that he has just washed his hands. Perhaps there was some blood on them. He says nothing until he has fetched his black SS tunic from a hanger in the closet and puts it on as if the uniform will help to compensate for his lack of centimeters.
“You’re Gunther?” he said in a voice that sounded folksy and Franconian.
“That’s right. And you must be Captain Weinberger.”
He carried on buttoning his tunic without bothering to answer. Then he pointed at the chair in front of his desk. “Sit down, please.”
“No, thanks,” I said, sitting down on the windowsill. “I’m a bit like a cat. I’m very particular where I sit.”
“What ever do you mean?”
“There’s blood on the floor underneath that chair and, for all I know, there’s some on it as well. I don’t make enough money to risk spoiling a good suit.”
Weinberger colored a little. “Please yourself.”
He sat down behind the desk. His forehead was the only tall thing about him. On top of it was a shock of thick brown curly hair. His eyes were green and penetrating. His mouth was insolent. He looked like a defiant schoolboy. And it was hard to imagine him being rough with anything other than a collection of toy soldiers or a fairground coconut toss. “So, how can I help you, Herr Gunther?”
I didn’t like the look of him. But that hardly mattered. A display of good manners would have struck the wrong note. Clipping the tails of young pups in the Gestapo was, as Liebermann von Sonnenberg had said, almost a sport among senior police officers.
“An American called Max Reles. What do you know about him?”
“And you’re asking in what capacity?” Weinberger put his boots up onto the desk like the man in the office across the street and clasped his hands behind his head. “You’re not Gestapo, and you’re not KRIPO. And I think we can take it you’re not SS.”
“I’m conducting an undercover investigation for Berlin’s assistant police commissioner, Liebermann von Sonnenberg.”
“Yes, I got his letter. And his telephone call. It’s not often that Berlin pays much attention to a place like this. But you still haven’t answered my question.”
I lit a cigarette and flicked the match out of the window. “Don’t piss me around. Are you going to help me, or am I going back to my hotel to call the Alex?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of pissing you off, Herr Gunther.” He smiled, affably. “Since this doesn’t appear to be an official matter, I just want to know why I’m going to help you. That is right, isn’t it? I mean, if this was an official matter, the assistant commissioner’s request would have come down through my superiors, wouldn’t it?”
“We can do it that way if you’d prefer,” I said. “But then you’d be wasting my time. And yours. So why don’t you just count this as a favor to the head of Berlin KRIPO.”
“I’m glad you mentioned that. A favor. Because I’d like a favor in return. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
“So what do you want?”
Weinberger shook his head. “Not here, eh? Let’s go for a coffee. Your hotel is not far. Let’s go there.”
“All right. If that’s how you want this.”
“I think it might be best. Given what you’re asking about.” He s
tood up and grabbed his belts and his cap. “Besides, I’m already doing you a favor. The coffee here is terrible.”
He said nothing more until we were out of the building. But then I could hardly stop him.
“This isn’t a bad town. I should know, I went to university here. I studied law, and when I graduated, I joined the Gestapo. It’s a very Catholic town, of course, which meant that, in the beginning, it wasn’t particularly Nazi. I can see that surprises you, but it’s true—when I first joined the Party, this town had one of the smallest Party memberships in the whole of Germany. It just shows you what can be achieved in a short period of time, eh?
“Most of the cases we get in the Würzburg Gestapo office are denunciations. Germans having sexual relations with Jews, that kind of thing. But here’s the anomaly: the majority of denunciations come not from Party members, but from good Catholics. Of course, there is no actual law against Germans and Jews conducting their sordid love affairs. Not yet. But that doesn’t stop the denunciations, and we’re obliged to investigate them if only to prove that the Party disapproves of these obscene relationships. Occasionally we parade a couple accused of race defilement around the town square, but it seldom goes much further than that. Once or twice we have run a Jew out of town for profiteering, but that’s it. And it goes almost without saying that most of the denunciations are groundless and the product of stupidity and ignorance. Naturally. Most of the people who live here are not much more than peasants. This place is not Berlin. Would that it were.
“My own situation is a case in point, Herr Gunther. Weinberger is not necessaily a Jewish name. I am not a Jew. None of my grandparents is a Jew. And yet I myself have been denounced as a Jew, and on more than one occasion, I might add. Which is not exactly helping my career here in Würzburg.”
“I can imagine.” I allowed myself a smile, but that was all. I hadn’t yet got the information I needed, and until then, I hardly wanted to upset the young Gestapo man walking along the street beside me. We turned onto Adolf-Hitler-Strasse and walked north, toward my hotel.
