by Philip Kerr
‘So that’s why you had the Drexlers killed.’
‘Exactly. That was after Linden turned up here in Vienna, looking for more money. Money to keep his mouth shut. It was Müller who met him and who killed him. We knew that Linden had already made contact with Becker, for the very simple reason that Linden told us. So we decided to kill two flies with one swat. First we left several cases of cigarettes around the warehouse where Linden was killed in order to incriminate Becker. Then König went to see Becker and told him that Linden was missing. The idea was that Becker would start going round asking questions about Linden, looking for him at his hotel and generally getting himself noticed. At the same time König switched Müller’s gun for Becker’s. Then we informed the police that Becker had shot and killed Linden. It was an unlooked-for bonus that Becker already knew where Linden’s body was, and that he should return to the scene of the crime with the aim of taking away the cigarettes. Of course the Amis were waiting for him and caught him red-handed. The case was watertight. All the same, if the Amis had been even half efficient they would have discovered the link between Becker and Linden in Berlin. But I don’t think they even bothered to take the investigation outside of Vienna. They’re happy with what they’ve got. Or at least we thought they were until now.’
‘With what Linden knew, why didn’t he take the precaution of leaving a letter with someone? Informing the police of what had happened in the event of his death.’
‘Oh, but he did,’ said Nebe. ‘Only the particular lawyer he chose in Berlin was also a member of the Org. On Linden’s death he read the letter and passed it across to the head of the Berlin section.’ Nebe stared levelly at me, and nodded seriously. ‘That’s it, Bernie. That’s what Müller wants to find out if you know or not. Well, now that you do know, you can tell him, and save yourself from being tortured. Naturally, I would prefer it if this conversation remained a secret.’
‘As long as I live, Arthur, you can depend on it. And thanks.’ I felt my voice crack a little. ‘I appreciate it.’
Nebe nodded in acknowledgement and stared around him uncomfortably. Then his gaze fell upon the uneaten slice of strudel.
‘You weren’t hungry?’
‘I’ve not got much of an appetite,’ I said. ‘One or two things on my mind, I guess. Give it to Rainis.’ I lit a third cigarette. Was I wrong, or had he really licked his lips? That would have been too much to hope for. But it was surely worth a try.
‘Or help yourself if you’re feeling hungry.’
Nebe really did lick his lips now.
‘May I?’ he asked politely.
I nodded negligently.
‘Well, if you’re sure,’ he said, picking the plate up off the tray on the floor. ‘My housekeeper made it. She used to work for Demel. The best strudel you ever tasted in your life. It would be a pity to waste it, eh?’ He took a big bite.
‘I never had much of a sweet tooth myself,’ I lied.
‘That’s nothing short of tragic in Vienna, Bernie. You are in the greatest city in the world for cake. You should have come here before the war: Gerstner’s, Lehmann’s, Heiner’s, Aida, Haag, Sluka’s, Bredendick’s — pastrycooks like you never tasted before.’ He took another large mouthful. ‘To come to Vienna without a sweet tooth? Why, that’s like a blind man taking a trip on the Big Wheel in the Prater. You don’t know what you’re missing. Why don’t you try a little?’
I shook my head firmly. My heart was beating so quickly that I thought he must hear it. Suppose he didn’t finish it?
‘I really couldn’t eat anything.’
Nebe shook his head pityingly, and bit once more. The teeth could not be real, I thought, surveying their white evenness. Nebe’s own teeth had been much more stained.
‘Anyway,’ I said, nonchalantly, ‘I’m supposed to be watching my weight. I’ve put on several kilos since coming to Vienna.’
‘Me too,’ he said. ‘You know, you should really —’
He never finished the sentence. He coughed and choked all in one jerk of his head. Stiffening suddenly, he made a dreadful blowing noise through his lips as if he had been trying to play a tuba, and fragments of half-chewed cake rolled out of his mouth. The plate of strudel clattered on to the floor, followed by Nebe himself. Scrabbling on top of him, I tried to wrestle the automatic from his grasp before he could fire it and bring Müller and his thugs down on my head. To my horror I saw that the gun was cocked, and in the same half second Nebe’s dying finger pulled the trigger.
But the hammer clicked harmlessly. The safety was still on.
Nebe’s legs jerked feebly. One eyelid flickered shut while the other stayed perversely open. His last breath was a long mucoid gurgle smelling strongly of almonds. Finally he lay still, his face already turning a blueish colour. Disgusted, I spat the lethal pill out of my own mouth. I had little sympathy for him. In a few hours he might have watched the same thing happening to me.
I prised the gun free from Nebe’s dead hand, which was now grey-skinned with cyanosis, and having unsuccessfully searched his pockets for the key to my handcuffs, I stood up. My head, shoulder, rib, even my penis it seemed were hurting terribly, but I felt a lot better for the grip of the Walther P38 in my hand. The kind of gun that had killed Linden. I thumb-cocked the hammer for semi-automatic operation, as Nebe himself had done before coming into my cell, slipped off the safety, as he had forgotten to do, and stepped carefully out of the cell.
I walked to the end of the damp passageway and climbed the stairs to the pressing and fermentation room where Veronika had died. There was only one light near the front door and I went towards it, hardly daring to glance at the wine press. If I had seen him I would have ordered Müller into the machine and squeezed him out of his Bavarian skin. In another body I might have risked the guards and gone up to the house, where possibly I could have tried to arrest him: probably I would just have shot him. It had been that kind of day. Now it would be as much as I could do to escape with my life.
Switching out the light I opened the front door. Without a jacket, I shivered. The night was a cold one. I crept along to the line of trees where the Latvian had tried to execute me and hid in some bushes.
The vineyard was bright with the lights of the rapid burners. Several men were busy pushing the tall trolleys which carried the burners up and down the furrows to positions which they apparently judged important. From where I sat, their long flames looked like giant fireflies moving slowly through the air. It seemed as if I would have to choose another route to escape from Nebe’s estate.
I returned to the house and moved stealthily along the wall, past the kitchen towards the front garden. None of the ground-floor lights were on, but one at an upper-floor window lay reflected on the lawn like a big square swimming-pool. I halted by the corner and sniffed the air. Someone was standing in the porch, smoking a cigarette.
After what seemed like forever, I heard the man’s footsteps on the gravel, and glancing quickly round the corner I saw the unmistakable figure of Rainis lumbering down the path towards the open gates where a large grey BMW was parked facing the road.
I walked on to the front lawn staying out of the light from the house, and followed him until he got to the car. He opened the car boot and started to rummage around as if looking for something. By the time he closed it again, I had put less than five metres between us. He turned and froze as he saw the Walther levelled at his misshapen head.
‘Put those car keys in the ignition,’ I said softly.
The Latvian’s face turned even uglier at the prospect of my escaping. ‘How did you get out?’ he sneered.
‘There was a key hidden in the strudel,’ I said, and jerked the gun at the car keys in his hand. ‘The car keys,’ I repeated. ‘Do it. Slowly.’
He stepped back and opened the driver’s door. Then he bent inside and I heard the rattle of keys as he slipped them into the ignition. Straightening again, he rested his foot almost carelessly on the running-board, and leaning on the r
oof of the car, smiled a grin that was the shape and colour of a rusting tap.
‘Want me to wash it before you go?’
‘Not this time, Frankenstein. What I would like you to do is give me the keys for these.’ I showed him my still-manacled wrists.
‘Keys for what?’
‘Keys for handcuffs.’
He shrugged, and kept on grinning. ‘I got no keys for no handcuffs. Don’t believe me, you search me, you find out.’
Hearing him speak, I almost winced. Latvian and soft in the head he may have been, but Rainis had no idea of German grammar. He probably thought a conjunction was a gypsy dealing three cards on a street-corner.
‘Sure you’ve got keys, Rainis. It was you who cuffed me, remember? I saw you put them in your vest pocket.’
He stayed silent. I was beginning to want to kill him badly.
‘Look, you stupid Latvian asshole. If I say “jump” again you’d better not look down for a skipping-rope. This is a gun, not a fucking hairbrush.’ I stepped forward a pace and snarled through clenched teeth. ‘Now find them or I’ll fit your ugly face with the kind of hole that doesn’t need a key.’
Rainis made a little show of patting his pockets and then produced a small silver key from his waistcoat. He held it up like a minnow.
‘Drop it on the driver’s seat and step away from the car.’
Now that he was closer to me, Rainis could see by the expression on my face that I had a lot of hate in my mind. This time he didn’t hesitate to obey, and tossed the little key on to the seat. But if I had thought him stupid, or suddenly obedient, I made a mistake. It was fatigue, probably.
He nodded down at one of the wheels. ‘You’d better let me fix that slack tyre,’ he said.
I glanced downwards and then quickly up again as the Latvian sprint-started towards me, his big hands reaching for my neck like a savage tiger. A half second later I pulled the trigger. The Walther fed and cycled another round into the firing chamber in less time than it took for me to blink. I fired again. The shots echoed across the garden and up the sky as if the twin sounds had been bearing the Latvian’s soul to final judgement. I didn’t doubt that it would be heading earthwards and below ground fairly quickly again. His big body crashed face first on to the gravel and lay still.
I ran to the car and jumped into the seat, ignoring the handcuff key underneath my backside. There was no time to do anything but start the car. I turned the key in the ignition and the big car, new by the smell of it, roared into life. Behind me, I heard shouts. Collecting the gun off my lap, I leaned out and fired a couple of rounds back at the house. Then I threw it on the passenger seat beside me, rammed the gear stick forward, hauled the door shut and stamped on the accelerator. The rear tyres gouged at the driveway as the BMW skidded forward. For the moment it didn’t matter that my hands were still manacled: the road ahead lay straight and down a hill.
But the car veered dangerously from side to side as I released the steering for a brief second, and wrestled the gear into second. My hands back on the wheel I swerved to avoid a parked car and almost put the BMW into the side of a fence. If I could only get to Stifstkaserne and Roy Shields I would tell him all about Veronika’s murder. If the Amis were quick they could at least get them for that. Explanations about Müller and the Org could come later. When the MPs had Müller in the cage, there would be no limit to the embarrassment I was going to cause Belinsky, Crowcass, CIC — the whole rotten bunch of them.
I looked in the wing mirror and saw the headlights of a car. I wasn’t sure if it was chasing me or not but I pushed the already screaming engine even further and almost immediately braked, pushing the wheel up hard to the right. The car hit the kerb and bounced back on to the road. My foot touched the floor again, the engine complaining loudly against the lower gear. But I couldn’t risk changing into third now that there were more bends in the road to negotiate.
At the junction of Billrothstrasse and the Gürtel I almost had to lean over in order to steer the car sharp right, past a van hosing down the street. I didn’t see the roadblock until it was too late, and but for the truck parked behind the makeshift barrier that had been erected I don’t suppose I would have bothered to try and swerve or stop. As it was, I turned hard left and lost the back wheels on the water on the road.
For a moment I had a camera obscura’s eye view as the BMW spun out of control: the barrier, the US military policemen waving their arms or chasing after me, the road I had just driven down, the car that had been following me, a row of shops, a plate glass window. The car danced sideways on two wheels like a mechanical Charlie Chaplin and then there was a cataract of glass as I crashed into one of the shops. I rolled helplessly across the passenger seat and hit the door as something solid came through the other side. I felt something sharp underneath my elbow, then my head hit the frame and I must have blacked out.
It could only have been for a few seconds. One moment there was noise, movement, pain and chaos; and the next there was just quiet, with only the sound of a wheel spinning slowly to tell me that I was still alive. Mercifully the car had stalled so my first worry, which was of the car catching fire, was allayed.
Hearing footsteps on shards of glass and American voices announcing that they were coming to get me I shouted my encouragement, but to my surprise it came out as little more than a whisper. And when I tried to raise my arm to reach for the door handle I lost consciousness again.
37
‘Well, how are we feeling today?’ Roy Shields leaned forward on the chair beside my bed and tapped the plaster cast on my arm. A wire and pulley kept it high in the air. ‘That must be pretty handy,’ he said. ‘A permanent Nazi salute? Shit, you Germans can even make a broken arm look patriotic.’
I took a short look around. It appeared to be a fairly normal hospital ward but for the bars on the windows and the tattoos on the nurses’ forearms.
‘What kind of hospital is this?’
‘You’re in the military hospital at the Stiftskaserne,’ he said. ‘For your protection.’
‘How long have I been here?’
‘Almost three weeks. You had quite a bump on your square head. Fractured your skull. Busted collarbone, broken arm, broken ribs. You’ve been delirious since you came in.’
‘Yes? Well, blame it on the föhn, I guess.’
Shields chuckled and then his face grew more sombre. ‘Better hold on to that sense of humour,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some bad news for you.’
I riffled through the card index inside my head. Most of the cards had been thrown on the floor, but the ones I picked up first seemed somehow especially relevant. Something I had been working on. A name.
‘Emil Becker,’ I said, recalling a manic face.
‘He was hanged, the day before yesterday,’ Shields shrugged apologetically. ‘I’m sorry. Really I am.’
‘Well you certainly didn’t waste any time,’ I remarked. ‘Is that good old American efficiency? Or has one of your people cornered the market in rope?’
‘I wouldn’t lose any sleep about it, Gunther. Whether he murdered Linden or not, Becker earned that collar.’
‘That doesn’t sound like a very good advert for American justice.’
‘Come on, you know it was an Austrian court that dropped his cue-ball.’
‘You handed them the stick and the chalk, didn’t you?’
Shields looked away for a moment and then rubbed his face with irritation. ‘Aw, what the hell. You’re a cop. You know how it is. These things happen with any system. Just because your shoes pick up a bit of shit doesn’t mean you have to buy a new pair.’
‘Sure, but you learn to stay on the path instead of taking short-cuts across the field.’
‘Wise guy. I don’t even know why we’re having this conversation. You’ve still not given me a shred of evidence why I should accept that Becker didn’t kill Linden.’
‘So you can order a retrial?’
‘A file is never quite complete,’ he sai
d with a shrug. ‘A case is never really closed, even when all the participants are dead. I still have one or two loose ends.’
‘I’m all cut up about your loose ends, Shields.’
‘Perhaps you should be, Herr Gunther.’ His tone was stiffer now. ‘Perhaps I ought to remind you that this is a military hospital, and under American jurisdiction. And if you remember, I once had occasion to warn you about meddling in this case. Now that you’ve done exactly that, I’d say you’ve still got some explaining to do. Possession of a firearm by a German or Austrian national. Well, that’s contrary to the Austrian Military Government’s Public Safety Manual for a start. You could get five years for that alone. Then there’s the car you were driving. Quite apart from the fact that you were wearing handcuffs and that you don’t appear to be in possession of a valid driving licence, there’s the small matter of driving through a military checkpoint.’ He paused and lit a cigarette. ‘So what’s it to be: information or incarceration?’
‘Neatly put.’
‘I’m a neat kind of fellow. All policemen are. Come on. Let’s have it.’
I sank back on my pillow resignedly. ‘I’m warning you, Shields, you’re likely to have as many loose ends as you started with. I doubt if I could prove half of what I could tell you.’
The American folded his brawny arms and leaned back on his chair. ‘Proof is for the courtroom, my friend. I’m a detective, remember? This is for my own private casebook.’
I told him nearly everything. When I had finished his face adopted a lugubrious expression and he nodded sagely. ‘Well, I can certainly suck a bit of that.’
‘That’s good,’ I sighed, ‘but my tits are getting a little sore right now, babe. If you’ve got questions, how about you save them till next time. I’d like to take a little nap.’
Shields stood up. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow. But just one question for now: this guy from Crowcass —’
