by Philip Kerr
“Best leave those memories alone. If you don’t mind. They belonged to a man with a different name.”
“The splash around the Alex was that for a while you were the best detective in the Murder Commission. An expert.”
“I certainly saw a lot of murders. But take my advice, if you’re looking for truth, don’t ask an expert on anything. What you’ll get is an opinion, which is something very different. Besides, cops and detectives aren’t experts, Max, they’re gamblers. They deal in probabilities, just like that French fellow Pascal. This guy is probably guilty and this guy is probably innocent, and then we leave it to you lawyers. The only people who will always say they’re telling you the truth are priests and witnesses in court, which gives you a pretty good idea of what truth is worth.”
“Working for MRE has more of a future than working in a mortuary, I’d have thought.”
“I’m not so sure about that, Max. We’re all going to end up there sooner or later.”
“I’m serious. Look, give me a few days to speak to Dietrich about you. And let me stake you to a new suit. Yes, why not? For an interview. It’s the least I can do after what you’ve done for me. Tell me that you’ll consider this. And give me an answer in the morning. But don’t leave it any longer than that. Like the saying goes, the morning has gold in its mouth.”
“All right, all right. Just as long as you stop being so damned grateful to me. Kindness might seem like the golden chain that holds society together but it breaks me up. I can’t take it. Not anymore. I know just where I am when people are cruel or indifferent. That never disappoints. But for Christ’s sake don’t be kind to me. Not without a parachute.”
TEN
–
A short walk from the English Garden, Munich RE was headquartered on Königinstrasse, close by the German Automobile Club, in an ochre-colored four-story building of some antiquity that was the size and shape of a small university, with an Ionic colonnade and lots of trompe l’oeil stucco. The rusticated wooden doors and tall iron railings looked like an insurance man’s dream with all security risks covered: a Gypsy parliament couldn’t have broken into the place. One of the two wings at either side of a paved courtyard was being renovated and several gardeners were sweeping the snow away from the main door, probably in case anyone slipped on it and fell and made a claim. Most of the cars parked out front were new Mercedes-Benzes or BMWs, without so much as a scratch on any of them. Clearly there were some very careful drivers in that part of Munich, unlike the rest of the city, and all of them insured. If you’d told me the building was the police headquarters or the central criminal court or an archbishop’s palace I’d have believed you; and from the ritzy look of the place I concluded that it had been a while since they’d paid out on a suspect policy.
I went along to the side entrance on Thiemstrasse. Above another robust-looking door was the stone head of a woman badly scarred by flying shrapnel, like many others in Munich. Inside the door was a reception area where tradesmen were welcome and that was almost true; it was staffed by two women who were just as stone-faced as the one outside. Behind them were two fire extinguishers, a bucket of sand, a fire hose, and a substantial fire alarm. Just being in that building felt as if it was going to add at least a year to my life.
Herr Dietrich came down and fetched me up to his second-floor office himself, which was decent of him. He was tall and substantially overweight and like everyone else in there—me included, thanks to Max Merten—he wore a granite-gray suit that, I soon learned, reflected his attitude to insurance claimants. He had very large ears and walked in a neat, girlish way, with his wrists pointed at the ground as if balancing on a tightrope or—and more likely—as if he’d been told to walk and not run in case his gray bulk caused an accident. In his modern office overlooking the extensive back gardens, he offered me a seat and then served me his entire worldview along with a cup of good coffee and a glass of water on a little steel tray.
“Insurance is all about statistics,” he said. “And in this department, those statistics are, more often than not, little more than crime figures, on account of how a great many customers are crooks. Not that Herr Alzheimer likes me to come right out and say as much. Herr Alzheimer is the chairman of Munich RE and diplomatic, to say the least. It’s bad business to mention all the crooks we insure. But my job is to call a spade a spade even when most people will argue that it’s a heart or a diamond. They don’t seem to realize that by putting in a false insurance claim they’re committing a serious fraud. But that’s what it is. And it happens every day. If I told you half of the outrageous lies that some of the most respectable citizens expect us to believe you’d say I was exaggerating.”
“No, not even if I thought so. You see, as it happens, I’m a bit of a cynic myself, Herr Dietrich.”
“Cynicism is a very respectable school of philosophy. For the ancient Greeks there wasn’t anything shameful about saying you were a cynic. In my humble opinion there’s nothing wrong with a good dose of cynicism, Herr Ganz, and you’ll soon find out that Diogenes is the patron saint of the claims adjustment business. As long as my department continues to think that way then this remains a profitable company. But please don’t think we’re hard-hearted. We’re not. We’re actually performing a valuable public service. That’s the way I look at it. By not paying out on fraudulent claims we keep premiums low for honest customers. But right now I’m short of good men with keen noses for dishonesty. I need a claims adjustor who can think the same way as I do.
“I’m sure you’ve noticed my prominent ears, Herr Ganz,” said Dietrich. “My nickname around this office is Dumbo. You know, like the little elephant in the Walt Disney cartoon? Most people think my ears are funny. And this is all right with me because, like that little elephant, these big ears are my fortune. They’re why I’m running this department. Now I certainly can’t fly, but I do have the advice of Timothy Q. Mouse, who whispers things that only these big ears can hear. Ideas that go straight into my subconscious mind. You see, Timothy says when he thinks there’s something wrong with a particular claim. Dr. Merten tells me you were once a very good detective. In what is now East Berlin. Which is why you can’t provide a written reference.”
“That’s about the size of it, Herr Dietrich.”
“So it’s fortunate that Dr. Merten is prepared to vouch for you personally. In my opinion that makes you a very good risk. A very good risk indeed.”
“I’m grateful for his confidence in me.”
“Did you enjoy police work?”
“Most of the time.”
“Tell me about the part you didn’t enjoy.”
“The hours. The money.”
“Not enough?”
“Not nearly enough for the hours. But I knew it would be like that when I started so I was prepared to live with that. For most of the time. Expecting a wife to live with all that was something else.”
“Would you call yourself a trusting sort of man, Herr Ganz?”
“Well, now, here’s the thing about trust. There’s nothing to it. Trusting people is simply a matter of ignoring your best instincts and all your experience and suspending disbelief. The fact is, the only way you can ever be sure if you can rely on someone or not is to go ahead and rely on them. But that doesn’t always work out so well. People usually behave like people and let you down and that’s that. Of course, if you know they’re going to let you down then you won’t be disappointed.”
He grinned and made a noise deep in his large belly I assumed was something like approval.
“Tell me, Herr Ganz, are you fit?”
“Sure,” I lied. “Just don’t ask me to dance around a streetlight with an umbrella.”
“Dangerous things,” he said. “Every year almost a hundred people in West Germany are seriously injured as a result of someone who was careless with an umbrella.”
Suddenly I had a glimpse into t
he hazardous world he inhabited, in which everything a human being did came with its own inherent risk. It was like having a conversation with an atomic scientist: Nothing was too small to be significant. “Is that a fact?”
“No, it’s a statistic,” he said. “There’s a difference. You can’t always put a price on a fact. So. I have another question. Just how cynical are you, Herr Ganz?”
“I have twenty-five years’ experience of living in a tub on the streets of Berlin. Is that what you mean?”
He smiled. “Not quite. What I mean is, give me an example of how you think.”
“About what, for instance?”
“I don’t know. Tell me something about politics. Modern Germany. The government. Anything at all.”
“You know it could just be that I’m a bit too cynical for your tastes, Herr Dietrich. With my mouth I could be talking myself out of a job here.”
“You can talk quite freely. It’s how you think I’m interested in, not what you think.”
“All right. Try this on, sir. We live in a new era of international amnesia. Who we were and what we did? None of that matters now that we’re on the side of truth, justice, and the American way of life. The only thing that’s important in Germany today is that the Americans have a canary in the European mine so that they’ll have enough time to get out if the Russians decide to come across the border. And we’re it. Tweet, tweet.”
“You don’t think the Amis will defend us?”
“After what we did? Would you?”
Herr Dietrich chuckled. “You’re the man for me, Herr Ganz. I like the way you think. Skepticism, yes. This is essential in the claims-adjustment bureau. Don’t believe what you’ve been told to believe. Expect the unexpected. That’s our motto. I pride myself on being an excellent judge of human nature. And it’s my opinion that you’re my sort of man, sir. When can you start work?”
“What’s wrong with February first?”
“All right then. Now you’re talking. But first I have to ask Herr Alzheimer to approve your appointment. He’s the chairman of the board but he takes a special interest in my department, so he’ll want to meet you himself. Is that agreeable to you, Herr Ganz? Are you prepared to endure a moment of scrutiny in Alois Alzheimer’s office?”
I was on my best behavior so I said it would be an honor and Dietrich must have believed me because he picked up the telephone and made a call. A few minutes later we were walking upstairs into a more rarefied atmosphere. Certainly the gray carpets were thicker. There was a lot of wood paneling on the walls, too, which, while nice, struck me as a potential fire hazard. I might even have pointed out the lack of a safety net in the stairwell; someone could easily have fallen over the banister from the fourth-floor landing, especially if someone hit him first, or waved a gun around. Calculating risks was already second nature to me.
According to Max Merten, Munich RE had insured all of the Nazi concentration camps against fire, theft, and other risks. They’d also been in business with the SS. I certainly wasn’t about to look for any moral high ground where that was concerned. Besides, I actually believed what I’d told Dietrich about international amnesia. Nobody was losing any sleep about what Germany did in the war. Nobody but me, perhaps.
The chairman’s office was an aerie fit for some giant bird of prey and the small thin man who occupied the premises was no less keen-eyed than any mythical hawk or eagle. Alzheimer was a smooth, rich-looking Bavarian with a tailor-made gray suit, a light tan, dark hair, darker eyebrows, and a face as shrewd as an actuary’s life table. If Josef Goebbels had stayed alive he might have looked like Alois Alzheimer. While Dietrich went about the task of recommending me, the chairman gave me an appraising sort of look as if he were calculating how long I had to live and what the premium on my policy ought to be. But even Pollyanna could have seen that I was a risk too far. In spite of that, the chairman of Munich RE approved my appointment. I was now a claims adjustor making twenty-five deutschmarks a week, plus bonuses. It wasn’t a fortune but it paid a lot better than the mortuary; like my mother used to say, it’s good to make ends meet but sometimes it’s nice to have enough to tie a bow. And I owed it all to Max Merten. I walked out of the building feeling almost happy with myself. Insurance seemed no less obscure than what I’d been doing at the hospital and therefore every bit as appealing. More so, perhaps. Even the word “insurance” seemed to underwrite a desirable element of safety. It was hard to imagine a disgruntled claimant putting a gun to my ear while he argued the finer points of the small print in his policy.
I was wrong about that.
ELEVEN
–
“Do you know where the Glyptothek is, Christof?”
“I know where it is,” I told Dietrich. “I’m not sure what it is.”
“It’s Munich’s oldest public museum and the only one in the world solely dedicated to ancient sculpture. There was a break-in last night and I’d like you to go and see what’s been stolen. Which is another way of me telling you to find out if they’re going to make a claim. If they are—check them out for contributory negligence, that kind of thing. Something that might affect a payout. Did someone leave a door unlocked or a window open? You know.”
“I know.”
And I did. Before joining Berlin’s Murder Commission I’d attended enough burglaries to feel confident and even quite nostalgic about investigating this for Munich RE.
It was about a thirty-minute walk southwest to the museum on the north side of Königsplatz; the Glyptothek had been badly damaged in 1943–44 and restoration was now almost complete but there was still scaffolding on the side of the west wing and I wondered if this was where the break-in had occurred. Behind a portico of Ionic columns with two wings adorned with niches were the exhibition rooms deriving their light from a central court and, in a way, the place reminded me of the offices of Munich RE, which said a lot more about the insurance business than it did about the plastic arts, at least in Germany. The marble group on the pediment featured a one-armed Athena ordering around a bunch of workers who couldn’t have looked more indifferent to her protection, which made me think they were already members of a trade union—and very probably English, since none of them seemed to be doing much. Outside the entrance was a police car; inside were a lot of Greek and Roman marble sculptures, most of them too big to steal or already too badly damaged to notice if they’d been damaged, so to speak. A uniformed cop asked me who I was and I gave him one of my new business cards, which seemed to satisfy him. They certainly satisfied me; it was several years since I’d had a business card and this one was as stiff as a starched wing collar.
The cop told me the break-in had taken place on the floor above and, noting an alarm bell as big as a dinner gong and a ladder under the stairs, I followed the sound of voices as I climbed to a suite of offices on the second floor of the west wing. A detective was inspecting a cracked window that looked as if it had been forced open, while another was listening to a man with glasses and a chin beard, whom I took to be someone from the museum.
“It’s very odd,” said the man from the museum, “but as far as I can see almost nothing was taken. Just a few very small pieces, I think. When I think of all the treasures they could have stolen, or vandalized, my blood runs cold. The Rondanini Medusa or the Barberini Faun, for example. Not that it would be easy to move such a thing as our treasured Faun. It weighs several hundred kilograms.”
“Was anything damaged?” asked the detective.
“Only the desk in my office. Someone forced it open and had a good rake around in the drawers.”
“Probably kids,” said the detective, “looking for some easy cash.”
It was about now that they both noticed me and I stepped forward with my business card and introduced myself. The detective was an inspector called Seehofer and the Fritz from the museum was Dr. Schmidt, the deputy assistant director.
�
�It looks as if you’ve had a wasted journey, Herr Ganz,” said Seehofer. “It seems that nothing has been recently damaged or taken.”
I wasn’t convinced about that. “Is that where they got in? These kids.”
“Yes, it looks as if they climbed up the scaffolding.”
I walked over to the window. “Mind if I take a look?” I asked the detective inspector.
“Be my guest.”
I put my head out the window. There were fresh-looking footprints on some planks stacked nearby. They might have been a builder’s footprints but I’d already seen a similar footprint on the carpet by the office door. A big fellow by the look of it and not kids at all, I thought. But I didn’t contradict the detective inspector. I decided it was best to keep on the right side of him for now.
“Do you get many visitors in this museum?” I asked Dr. Schmidt.
“It’s February,” he said. “Things are always a bit quiet in February.”
“What about the alarm?” I asked. “Why didn’t it go off?”
“What alarm?” asked Seehofer. “There’s an alarm?”
“I don’t know,” said Dr. Schmidt, as if he’d only just thought of it, and clearly he hadn’t mentioned it to the detective inspector, who looked slightly irritated to discover the existence of such a thing now.
“If you could show me where the bell is, sir?” said Seehofer, a little too late to fill any insurance investigator’s heart with confidence.
We went back downstairs, crossed the hall, and looked up at the bell that was mounted on the wall about a meter above our heads. From where we were standing it wasn’t going to reveal very much and after a while I felt obliged to move things along a bit and fetched the ladder from under the stairs.
